He is Risen

It's still boggling my mind that it's 2013. Just had to share.

Easter was so beautiful! How thankful I am to know of my Savior's love for me, for my family, for every human being. As with each of life's trials (and blessings) my testimony of His tender and watchful care has been strengthened a great deal in the past year and a half. I have a deeper and more personal testimony of God's eternal Plan of Happiness and our purpose here in this life. I truly "feel my Savior's love in all the world around me".

For the first time in five years, I decided to buy new Easter dresses for all the girls and make them look all fancified for our 9:00 meetings. Not an easy feat, I tell you, but well worth it. My day began at 6:30 and I didn't "sit down" until 9:30 that night. There were a couple of moments of "what was I thinking?", but they quickly passed as I spent a beautiful day serving my family and a yummy meal. We had a quick evening easter egg hunt and read from the Bible on the back porch about the first Easter.

Hazel was running so fast, that she couldn't be stopped for a picture, but you can
glimpse her in the background - behind Elsie's awesome pose.

I'm so thankful for the Atonement and Resurrection of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I'm so thankful for the life I have and for the blessings of the temple. I'm so thankful for the love we share in our family. This ARTICLE in the March 2013 Ensign has been on my mind quite a lot over the past month. It has been changing my view on what the Atonement means to me on a daily basis. To me, it means that my struggling, flawed, and feeble efforts as a friend, as a wife, as a daughter, and most importantly, as a mother are enough. That through Jesus Christ I can be more than I am, more than I'm capable of being.

I don't understand it all, not even close, but I get glimpses of heaven and feel his grace daily.

After church, the sun was shining so bright and lovely-like that we pulled over at a random strangers' pretty little patch of property and climbed out with our wild and beautiful little hooligans to snap a few pics -- while an anxious neighbor looked on. :)


The girls stopped their giggling and screeching long enough to get a couple of decent poses, but Violet had a moment of concern after I explained to her that the little round things she was collecting were, in fact, not easter eggs but moose poop. :)

Keep your chin up, Vi! Haha!

This picture cracks me up.

Day 13: Thirteen Things --- And the Long Bridge

Oh, it was a gloriously successful and beautiful day!

The girls helped me clean all morning long. I promised each of them a dollar. :) They are amazing.

It was so sweet and unusual. They were in the best moods about it (mostly). :) Lilie loved helping. - which is not always the case. :) It was a lot of work to manage my little cleaning crew, but well worth it. I felt as though they could just "feel the love" as they served and worked. That kind feeling just carried me through the rest of the day.

When we finished, we ran some errands and then took a bike ride across the Long Bridge. The weather was perfect and the girls were delightful.

Gonna have to come back and play in this perfect little strip of sand next week.

Having my three oldest all on bikes and then having the bike trailer, I couldn't help but sing, "Doe, a deer, a female deer..." Ah. Good for my heart.

The only downer was that Clara (was tired and) thinks Violet is truly terrifying. She cried every time Vi would look at her sideways, let alone the fact that Violet just kept wanting to love on her and hold her hand. Clara was quite put out about it all. :)

Elsie is working hard on learning to ride a two-wheeler. She'll have it down in the next week for sure. She did such a great job at keeping up with everyone the entire time. She's the cutest little thing and I have to remind her the entire time to not tell every passing runner or bicyclist our life's story. :)

For Day 13 the photo challenge topic is "Yourself with 13 Things". Really hard for some reason. Well here you are, 13 sort-of visible appendages. :)

Time Keeps on Ticking . . .

I set out to make silhouettes of the children a year ago.

I did, too. They turned out SO beautifully.

However, I wanted to wait until Clara was born (and silhouetted) before I put them all up, because she really needed to be a part of the club.

Then last July life turned up.side.down.

It's been TEN {!} months since Nels got that phone call from Coldwater Creek. I can't believe how quickly this last year has flown by. It seriously takes my breath away.


Slowly, slowly, I am getting my feet under me again. Slowly regaining my desire to create a beautiful home. I hung up my little ladies in our new living room shortly after moving in and Clara's empty frame has been nagging me to not let her grow any bigger before capturing her sweet, little profile.

Since it's been a year since I painted the older four girls, the age difference between Violet and Clara in these is only going to be six months! LOL! However, I'm not quite up for redoing all of them again right now ---- since, after all, this is the first time I've really been able to enjoy them. :)

Maybe I'll update them all next spring.

When I'm finished painting Clara's onto canvas, I'll post a picture of all the completed silhouettes, along with a picture of my living room. I'm hoping to do that tonight once the girls are in bed.

Nels volunteered our house for an Elder's Quorum party tomorrow and I really wanted to have them all up beforehand.

-- I love incentive. --

The Scenes of Sunday

I love Sunday.

I love this Sunday.

Last Sunday, after being late for church three Sundays in a row I made a vow to never be late - because of me - again. Sure, if a bomb blows up in my living room, I'll give myself a break --- but never again because I wasn't ready.

(That being said, I have five other people to get ready every Sunday as well, so it's not like I'm sittin' around on my rear all morning or anything when everyone is ready to walk out the door but me . . . )

So. This morning I was up by 6:30. Showered, dressed, and ready before breakfast. I got all five girls ready with 3 bathed, 4 heads of blonde hair curled, five bodies dressed with SHOES! and dinner 80% made - all while Nels was writing a talk for Sacrament Meeting.

(A talk which, by the way, went incredibly well. It was so good.)

We were there with time to spare.

I love this Sunday.

I love sitting by the fireplace and looking out the back windows at the mountains and the sunset while Nels sleeps on the floor next to me on Sunday.

I love hearing my girls teach themselves how to play the piano on Sunday.

I love this beautiful girl who begged to stay in her purple church dress and frilly slip - that comes and lays her head on my knees on Sunday.

I love sweet sisters who love and snuggle and maul each other on Sunday.

I love this baby that is not only crawling and pulling herself up to everything and cruising around the furniture - but also has just started letting go of that furniture and standing all on her own for a second or two on this Sunday.

Even though she doesn't realize that she's still just too little to do such things.

And I love this little Chick with the chicks who is conspicuously absent in all the photos that I took on this Sunday afternoon because she was graciously sleeping off her crazies. :) 

Home Bodies

 
Life just keeps on ticking right away. 

It is so strange.

I just spent a little bit of time searching through my blog - quickly scanning and scrolling through the years. Turn by turn watching the lives of my children roll past.

Bam! Clara's not there.

Bam! Violet's not there.

Wham-o! and I'm looking at the sweet face of my baby Elsie who is just learning to sit by herself. My itty bitty Hazie with a pretty pink leotard and ballet slippers on and tiny Lilie's got my lipstick smeared across her lips and up to her ears.

We just bought our home. I walk through the pages and see all our hard work. All the love put into it and all the love felt within its walls.

I am overwhelmed.

I looked into the face of my darling baby Clara tonight. I kissed her little cheeks and blew raspberries on her busy little legs. She is just learning to squeal and laugh. Nels and I laugh with her. She is adorable. So often lately as I am holding her I snuggle her up just a little bit tighter and try to burn that moment so deeply into my memory that it won't ever leave. Because I know that this moment will pass. She will grow. So slowly that I won't notice, but so quickly that I'll hardly remember what happened in between. And I know I won't remember. There are vague glimpses in my mind of my other girls being so tiny, but they are not vivid. They are not clear. Just shadows.

And it hurts my heart just a little bit that I can't have it all -- all the time before me. To feel that past and to love the present. I want it all and it's not fair that I can't.

I watched my children tonight.

Hazel - right on the cusp of shooting into her "tweens" (such a stupid word, but it classifies those children that are no longer 'little'), stirring a pan of stroganoff on the stovetop. Dancing for a moment with her Daddy. She's getting so tall and so beautiful and amazes me daily with her goodness and willingness to help.

Lilie - sitting at the table folding bits of paper into swans for her younger sister. She is so meticulous. The handwriting papers that she brings home from school are so precise and clean. She finishes her math in no time flat. She laughs loud and makes up silly names for the crazy meal that Nels made the other night - "Stroganator" is my favorite.

Elsie lay on the couch her head propped on the armrest with the glow of the iPod illuminating her darling face, playing some silly bowling game. Sitting so quietly and happily. I tell her that she's so little and she laughs. I tell her that I love her and I'll love her even when she's big. She laughs again and says she loves me, too. "Elsie, can you stay little forever? Please?" Laughing, "No." Me, "Why not?" Giggling, "Because I want to grow big and be a mom."

Nels calls me from the kitchen, "Rachel, you'd better see this." He is standing at the foot of the couch. I walk over and see Elsie is still there, but Violet has crawled up next to her, laid down beside her - with their heads touching, she watches Elsie's game. She has the softest and sweetest little toddler body. Laying there in her diaper, snuggled next to her sister. I could kiss and cuddle that girl all day. She is what every toddler should be.

Why can't I have it all? Why can't I live in this moment and all the others, too? It's not fair.

I read through my words from yesteryear and can remember who I was then. I am amazed at how funny I am sometimes. Ha! I was so clever and it feels so effortless. Ha ha! Who is that girl? Where did she go? Will I ever see her again?

I miss Home.

I miss Idaho Falls. I miss my family and friends. But it's not really that. In most ways, I'm coming past that kind of "homesick" feeling. What I miss is HOME. This apartment isn't home. I am a home.maker. I want Home. It makes me feel lost and not quite certain what to do with myself without it.

I just hope that when I get to the end of whatever process we're in right now, I can also find the rest of me there waiting to be reunited.

I know that this post is all over the place. Somehow everything that I've written is connected, I'm just not sure where.

Maybe my blog is my way of finding all those different parts of myself, so I can see them and bring them all together eventually. Maybe it's my way of being able to have the past and the present. To be able to live in all these memories. for just a moment. And that's why I need to record them.

Sunshine, Bikes, and Vampires

It's been weeks . . . have you missed me? I've missed you.

When I don't post anything on my blog for long periods of time, I feel . . . almost like there's a hole in my life. Like there's something missing. I've analyzed this -- because that's what I do -- and I think I've come up with an explanation.

Lest you think that it's out of vanity or addiction.

I've realized that when I don't blog, I feel like that portion of me and my life starts to evaporate - or cease to exist - anywhere beyond my own memory. - Which, frankly, is questionable at BEST lately. - My thoughts, my feelings, our goings and comings, they cease to be anything but memories.

Gone.

And that makes me sad. When I don't record it, I have nothing to look back on. Nothing to remember of this time in our lives. I love so much and learn so much from what we experience everyday, that I just can't stand for it to be nothing but a vague blip on the map that is my life.

So I write and record and feel anxious when I don't. Not for you, but for me and for my family. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Today. Was. Gorgeous.

It was Spring. Really Spring. And my sun-kissed face agrees.

Yesterday I got my "birthday presents" in the mail. A new bike (finally!!) and a new bike trailer.

*sigh* 

I'm so happy about that. I love riding bikes. And I love taking my kids with me . . . wouldn't be nearly as fun without them.

Yesterday evening I spent almost all of it putting together both the bike and the trailer. It wasn't nearly as much fun as I had anticipated . . . because it took so long and we had a few "hiccups" . . . but I tell you what, I think my neighbors were impressed. :) Five months pregnant woman out on her driveway with a toolbox and a bazillion kids milling around, assembling a bicycle. I'm nuts . . . 

. . . but it was well worth the effort (and the swollen feet and the sciatic nerve pain) as I rode with Lilie to school this morning in the crisp Spring air -- Elsie and Violet in tow - literally.

It was such a grueling day.

Rode with Lilie to school.

Rode home.

Cleaned up bedrooms.

Bathed Elsie and Vi.

Watered yard.

Rode to pick up Lilie from school.

Took detour.

Leftovers for lunch.

Vi down for a nap.

Make brownies with Lilie and Elsie.

Play "Dead Man, Dead Man, Come Alive" on the trampoline with Lilie and Elsie. (consisting of me soaking up some vitamin D while laying on the trampoline, grabbing the girls legs and tripping them while they bounced the begeezees out of me, and laughing like crazy while I then used them as pillows and tickled them :)

Eat hot brownies at the park with friends.

Come home and play on the grass with the girls, waiting for Hazel to get home from school.

Ride our bikes to our neighborhood playground. Swing and let all four girls get filthy while playing in the sand.

Pick up tortillas and ice cream and then head over to a friends' house for carne asada and guacamole.

Yes. A grueling day.

The likes of which I rarely allow to happen in my need to "accomplish" something.

But today, I'm really pleased with my accomplishments. I laughed with my kids, spent most of the day outside playing, and showed them that I really love them.

The other kind of days are important too, but today was really wonderful. And I need to remember it. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On a separate note - and as a parting treat for you this fabulous . . . Friday morning :)  - 

I will now share THIS with you:

 LOL!!! We traded in Lilie's front teeth . . . for a vampire.

:)

Ah. I love that girl. She is so funny.

Both her front teeth have been loose for a few weeks now. However, I've had to restrain myself from even "checking" them because, if it could be helped, I really still wanted her to have them for Genny's wedding. (Me? Vain? Why, yes. Yes, I am.)

A few days after we got back, I was walking into a store with Lilie. I smiled at her, she smiled back and

 WHOA! Lilie? Did you brush your teeth today????

Yes.

Echk! Let me see your mouth.

Her teeth were disgusting! - but she promised she'd been brushing. When she got home, she was told to immediately go brush her teeth and then come show me. Needless to say, it didn't help much . . . and by that time, one of her teeth was practically dangling. - The obvious reason for her horrifying hygiene results.

She put up no fight about pulling it out, but once in there, I realized that the other front tooth was only slightly more attached than the one to be pulled. 

She said NO.

I said I wouldn't --- I just wanted to feel it --- and then I did.

I'm a liar. And compulsive.

But now she can again thoroughly brush her teeth . . . 

. . . and she has been making crazy faces for a week now.

She loves being toothless.

And she is an absolute ham.

Friday's Fabulous Five

How many one-year-olds can open up mascara?? Seriously.

Okay, dudes and dudettes. I'm feeling it today. We're going to get caught up. I KNOW it. It might take a little while, but I'm going to start and well . . . that's something.

But first. First, we must have a fabulous five. It's been way too long. And after that, there will hopefully be some more goodness - after I see if my hard drive with all the pictures from the past year and a half can be saved . . .

1. It's been a good week. I could leave it at that, but here's the skinny. Monday was Valentine's. {sigh} Just kidding, I don't sigh about Valentine's day. It's a nice holiday and we had a good time - but it's always overshadowed by a much better day. Nels brought home flowers and potato wedges and corndogs and chicken strips. It was a simple dinner (that I didn't have to make) and the girls and I all loved our roses. Nels is quite the man to be enough for five ladies. :)

Both the older girls made it to their parties that day and were so happy. Elsie felt very left out. However when I asked her if she'd be my valentine, she was not impressed. She looked at me funny and kind of scoffed saying, "NO! I'm a human!" (The girls had been making valentines all weekend, apparently it was confusing. :) Love that kid. So, instead of turning her into a valentine, we gave her a fancy hair-do and took her to have a lunch-Valentine's-party with daddy at work.

Cool effect on this picture, huh? That's what happens when your camera is on the fritz -
'cause it got dropped on its eyeball.

2. The much better day I referred to in #1 is NELS' 31st BIRTHDAY - which, every year, seems to fall the day after Valentine's. :) And this year, I was home for it (and V-Day) -- for the first time in two years. :) Both of the previous TWO years I'd been attending weddings. :) So it was extra special.

Nels took most of the day off of work and came home to be with us and keep it simple. He decided to take his ladies out to a movie for his birthday and then we went out to get Chinese food afterward. It was very nice to be together and PERFECTLY low-key. Just how Nels likes things. I also made him an awesome raspberry cream pie that everyone reading this MUST try. SO, SO good. And so easy. :)

Oh, how I love good food.

3. I just realized that most of the pictures that I need to catch up on my blog are not, in fact on my haywire hard drive. They're still on my SD card. Awesome. Hooray for being lazy. :)

4. In the past few months of doing occasional transcription work for Melaleuca, I've gone from earning about minimum wage - which is, in all honesty, hardly worth my time - to, on a really good day with no interruptions and an awesome speaker, about 5 times that amount. Of course it also takes about 1/5 of the time as well. :) But all in all, I'm pretty much an awesome transcriber . . . transcriptionist? Yeah. Transcriptionist. :) It's only about once a month, but totally worth a few hours of my time. Nice.

5. I think the worst of the "winter blues" are behind me. Hooray for change. I know that winter in Idaho could still quite possibly last for another 2 (or even FOUR!) months, but I'm feeling much better and that, my friends, is a happy, happy thing. Fabulous, even. :)

P.S. Oh! happy to report, the pancake was successfully removed from my carpet this week! :)

My Soul is Happy

I've genuinely got much more pressing things to do today than spend time blogging, but I miss my baby and I need to record a little bit of what's going on in our lives and in my brain.

I {love} Fall. Winter is always wonderful, with all the wonderful coziness that comes with cold weather. Summer is fabulous with lazy hot days and lots of busy fun. But in the bottom of my heart I hold a special, special place for Spring and Fall. I love the rebirth of Spring. I love the closing that comes with Fall. I love seasons.

This Fall has been particularly beautiful. A gift from the Lord, since Spring was so -- well, un-Springy. It's been lovely. Highs in the 70's most days and not freezing yet at night. I've been loving it.

A few weeks ago, right before our "Fall Birthday Week," we headed down to Salt Lake to go to the Barnum and Bailey Circus with my sister and her family and my parents! It was SO fun and well worth the money and time. The girls were in awe the entire show. There is nothing better to me than watching my girls' faces light up with amazement. SO fun! Lilie LOVED the high wire and the trapeze artists. Well, almost anything where they were high up in the air. :) All of it was incredible.

I also got to go to Relief Society Conference with my mom, sisters, and sister-in-law. What a beautiful experience. I felt absolutely overwhelmed with gratitude for the amazing women that I have been blessed with having in my life.

Hazel and Lilie have been loving school. Those smart little chickies just soak up all the learning that they can. They love their teachers. I still don't think Lilie has learned anything new in Kindergarten, but she has lots of fun and has finally remembered some of the names of the kids in her class. :) (For more than a month, when I'd ask her who she played with that day, she didn't know. She couldn't remember a single child's name. :) She was just too darn busy having fun that she didn't think to ask anyone their names!) Hazel loves everything about school --- except having to get up early. :) She is an EXCELLENT reader and has finally learned to do her homework in less than 3 hours! Ha. Ha. We'll just suffice it to say that she is slowly learning to overcome perhaps her biggest obstacle in life thus far. Focusing on one thing at a time. :) Although I still can't say whether or not I feel that homework is necessary for 1st Graders, it has been good and it's really wonderful to be able to actually see her working on the things she's learning at school. It's been awesome to watch her progress over the past month and a half. I'm so proud of her!

Elsie is my little shadow all day. She loves helping. She misses her sisters while they're gone, but I dare say that she really likes just being with me and Vi, too. Even if I spend a lazy morning blogging or whatnot on the computer, most of the time, she just rolls around on the ground in my bedroom - pestering Violet or talking or admiring her beautiful self in the mirror. :)

Violet is getting more and more mobile by the day. She crawls everywhere - fairly fast now - and pulls herself up to everything. At her last appointment, she was nearly 18 pounds (a feat not accomplished by any of her sisters before they were a year old!) - in the 70 percentile for both height and weight. She is such a happy little bug and smiles from ear to ear all day long. She is such a perfect baby! Our little Smiley Violey. She babbles quite a lot. Ba-ba-ba-ba. Da-da-da-da. And most recently Ma-ma-ma. But she only says ma-ma when she needs something. :) Typical, right? :) I stopped nursing about a month ago. She's had no problem with a bottle and LOVES eating solid foods. It's been wonderful - as it gives me a little bit more freedom. She's also a great sleeper, for the most part. Like I said, she's pretty much a perfect baby. She makes me think that I could just keep having babies forever. :)

The transition in life to having a new baby is always taxing -- whether with #1 or #4, but I must say, having four children is lovely. It seems that by #4, I've learned to relax about all the things that first-time moms STRESS about. -- All those things that baby books make out to be of UTMOST importance. I just love her. I love having a little baby to snuggle. I love the way that she looks at me and needs me. I love her little sounds and her soft little body. I've loved each of my babies fiercely (still do, of course), but at this point in my life, I feel much more able to just roll with the inconveniences and just love it all. Life is so very, very good.

I have four beautiful, healthy, smart, and unique little girls. I get to stay home with them everyday. And daily work on overcoming my own shortcomings and pitfalls. Slowly learning how to be the woman I truly desire to be. I have a wonderful husband who is my very best friend in the whole world. I could never say enough to express my love and gratitude for him. At times I genuinely feel the stress of daily life seeping into our relationship, sometimes I feel like I've barely talked to him in months! But then life slows down a little bit again (maybe or maybe not) - or maybe more than anything I start to focus on how grateful I am for him and start to look for more ways to serve him. That always seems to magically fix any distance I'm feeling between us.

In the coming weeks, we're planning a family vacation!! I'm SO EXCITED!! I'll tell you all about it later, but I've made reservations and lists and lists and lists. I'm so looking forward to having this uninterrupted time with my husband and my girls. It's going to be awesome. Nels, I'm sure, will be working right up until the minute we leave (that always seems to be the case), which leaves me to plan and pack and organize almost entirely by myself. Yesterday I was feeling incredibly overwhelmed by the unfairness of this prospect, but today is a new day. The beds are made, the floor is vacuumed, the dishes are in the dishwasher, the family room is SO clean (thank you Nels and Hazel!) and now I'm ready to tackle my mountains of laundry and my piles of To-Do's and To-Packs and To-Buys.

A Very Long Post About a Very Long Night

You know, for the most part, (thus far) I don't think that having four kids is a lot more work than having three -- or almost even two. As you have another baby, the older ones keep getting older. Thereby, requiring less of me as they become more independent and also they learn to occupy and entertain the younger ones (Elsie, in particular). There is definitely more mess, with more children -- more toys, more laundry, more dishes -- but mess is inevitable. I've been cleaning up "mess" for a LONG time - LOTS of it - and what's more laundry or more dishes? I already hate doing it - having one less load wouldn't change that. :) So, most of the time, I haven't felt that this transition has been too dramatic.

There are, however, a couple of exceptions to this rule. Shopping and Bedtime. These are times when having more children ABSOLUTELY makes exponentially more chaos. Especially with a newborn. Now shopping? I can learn to live with rarely going to the store. I can learn to make due with what we have in our home, even if it means using baby wipes instead of toilet paper or a day or so -- or even having every person in the family eat something different for dinner because we don't have enough of any one thing to feed everyone the same. :) However, bedtime (unfortunately) cannot be bypassed.

Case in point.

Tonight Nels is with some friends filming . . . whatever. The details of what he is doing are really irrelevant, aside from the fact that this is more of a recreational activity. - Not work or necessarily money related. I'm glad that he's having fun. So Nels is gone for the evening. His parents are in town and we spent the evening with them swimming at their hotel pool. Nels needed to meet up with friends as 7:15, we didn't get home until 7:20 and he still needed to get ready. The girls were tired and hungry.

I immediately began figuring out dinner with three little people hovering around me (and the refrigerator) wondering what and WHEN I was going to feed them. We settled on tacos and I shooed them out of the kitchen for the tenth time in as many minutes. Violet was still snoozing blissfully in her car seat as I began cooking hamburger and kissed Nels goodbye. Fifteen seconds after he drives off, the girls are once again circling around me at the stove and Violet begins howling from the next room.

I am faced with a decision here. Do I stop making dinner right now? Delaying the feeding of my ravenous little beasts - to feed their sister? Who could, quite possibly decide to take the next twenty minutes nursing before she will allow me to finish dinner. Twenty minutes of nursing, twenty minutes to finish dinner, twenty minutes for girls to eat dinner. At least an extra HOUR until the girls can get in bed and it's already 7:45 -- Hazel has school in the morning and she's already exhausted. OR do I NOT feed my starving Violet, finish making dinner, and then feed her while the other girls are eating -- thus combining activities and getting my girls in bed about half an hour earlier?

Poor little doll screamed her little head off - strapped into the front carrier - the entire twenty minutes that it took me to finish the tacos and get them dished up for everyone. :(

As I'm sitting at the dinner table, discreetly feeding Violet while also "gently encouraging" the other three "starving" children to please eat and stop poking, talking, picking, disassembling, etc., Elsie proceeds to sit up on the back of her booster chair and inform me that she needs to use the potty. As I'm instructing her to get down and go do so, she proceeds to empty her bladder right then and there - filling up her booster seat and overflowing onto the floor.

I get her down, one-handedly take off her sopping drawers and shoo her to the the toilet. Hazel finishes eating at this point and I ask her if she thinks she can manage putting a "nighttime" diaper on Elsie while I finish feeding Violet. SURE! sure . . .

The next ten minutes are spent still "gently encouraging" Lilie to stop picking apart her tortilla and spilling out its contents all over the pee-covered floor, while Hazel chases Elsie screaming around the kitchen and down the hall.

Lilie and Violet both finally finish eating. I capture the Streaker, instruct Lilie and Hazel on the specifics (for the billionth time) of brushing teeth and using the toilet in less than 45 minutes, put nighttime diaper on said Streaker, and sit her back down (in a different chair, of course) at the dinner table to finish her taco.

Hazel and Lilie actually brush their teeth AND use the toilet in record time, we have "family prayer" without Elsie, and amazingly neither of them throw a fit when I kiss them and send them to tuck themselves into their beds.

Elsie spends the next twenty minutes demolishing and slowly devouring morsel after morsel of her taco, while I once again feed Violet who has decided that she is still hungry. All the while, I keep reminding Elsie to stop talking and keep eating. She eats one black bean or one piece of cheese. "Eat your taco, Elsie." "What you want me to do?" "Eat your food." "This food? You want me to eat my food?" "Yes. Eat your taco." "Okay. Eat it?" "Yes. That food." Picks up small piece of tortilla and eats it, then starts trying to get down. "Eat your taco, Elsie." "What you want me to do?" "Eat your food." --- And the conversation continues in this cycle for the next twenty minutes. She and Violet finally finish and I then get the disgusting opportunity to clean up the pee-filled seat and pee-smeared floor, while Elsie "helps" Violet "stay asleep" while erratically swinging her back and forth in the baby swing. (No harm came to Violet whilst on the receiving end of this sisterly love -- beyond being woke up.)

Ten minutes later, Elsie was FINALLY in bed.

The dishes are exploding out of the sink, I just started the washer to RE-wash a load of laundry that I forgot was in there two days ago, the basement is covered in forts, dinosaurs, wii remotes, and dress up clothes, I have an unfinished library book that's due tomorrow, a bank account that hasn't been balanced for three weeks, and my body is still covered in chlorine from this afternoon. But you know what, now that I've recorded this night for future laughs, I'm going to cuddle up in my bed with my snuggly little baby (who will want to eat again in half an hour) and watch The Biggest Loser. Dishes, Laundry, Cleaning, Balancing, and Showers will all still be there and need to be done again tomorrow.

Bedtime is not my favorite time of the day . . .

Fabulous Thursday Night

I'm not quite sure if I'll get around to doing my Fabulous Friday tomorrow, so I think that I'll just post tonight.

1. As of today, I am officially in my third trimester!
          That is just so weird to me. I can't believe how quickly time goes at times. Maybe that's part of the reason that March is such a perfect time to have a baby. -- You are so busy all through your second trimester with the Holidays, that by the time they're over you're practically there. We're really looking forward to meeting this new little addition to our family.

2. I'm pretty much done Christmas shopping.
          How great is that?! Other than some random things for stockings and whatever Nels finally concludes he would like, I'm D-O-N-E, done. Even better, almost all of my shopping was done from the comfort of my own bedroom, in my pajamas, while my kiddos played happily together. I love online shopping. I can usually find as good, if not significantly better, prices online - AND - every time a package comes in the mail, it's like early Christmas for me! I love it. -- The joys of planning ahead!

3. My tree is not dead.
         Even after a week and a half, my cute little tree is still sucking up water! Hooray! This hasn't happened in years!

4. It's supposed to get warmer this weekend! - And snow!
          If you've ever lived in Eastern Idaho, you will appreciate that it might actually make it above THIRTY degrees this weekend!! The past WEEK has been frigid. Negative numbers nearly every night -- and into the daytime. It was -12 as I drove Hazel to school this morning and is, even now, back down to -4. We've barely gotten into double digits during the day. Not even warm enough to make a snowman.

5. This day is finally over and this week is drawing toward it's end.
          It hasn't been a horrible day. It hasn't been a horrible week. But every single day this week has felt like it should be AT LEAST Thursday to me. It has felt so long. I don't know why. Nels has been sick the past two days. He's had fevers of 103 - 104 ---- and has been all but useless. :) Just kidding. I feel so bad for him. He's got so much to get done, that is getting pushed back as he lies in bed moaning and groaning. Poor man. This evening Lilie was complaining of feeling sick and I'm not positive that Elsie isn't coming down with it as well.
          On top of my little sickies, I ruined a project that I've really been looking forward to completing. I've planned on making a calendar / bulletin board for my bedroom out of an old - and big - frame that I picked up this summer. As I was finishing it up - with several irritating, but fixable mistakes along the way - I pushed the glass to center it better and cracked it. Right through the center. ---- As it is, I'm not going to stress about it at the moment and it will remain with its huge crack until some distant date. But still incredibly . . . frustrating.
          So yeah. It's been a decent week, but I'm ready for it to be over. I'm ready for Christmas break. I'm glad it's getting closer.

6. We have a name for our new baby!
          The girls (Hazel and Lilie) ask Elsie all the time things about having a new baby. Things like, "Are you excited, Elsie?" To which Elsie gives them unrelated answers, because she doesn't really understand what they're talking about. :) She's an incredibly talkative little lady and has recently started making up her own words to things -- or at least her own meanings to words. Words such as "laslards". I have absolutely no idea what this word means to her or what word she is perhaps trying to say, but I laugh every time she says it. She has also been playing a lot with a shapes puzzle we have. I'll tell her the name of the shapes as she puts them in their correct place.
          So as my big girls were asking Elsie all sorts of random questions the other day, they asked, "Elsie! What should we name our new baby?!" To which she promptly replied, "Baby Otadon." So their you have it folks. Our next baby, by sisterly decree, will be named Baby Octagon. One of my all time favorites. So named by her sister, Fish.

(When I was pregnant with Elsie, Hazel insisted that Fish was a very nice name for our new baby.)

7. I have fingernails.
         That's worth posting about, isn't it? Of course it is. I've always been a compulsive nail biter. - Not something I'm proud of, but a habit that has been with me as long as I can remember. I've gone through brief spurts of reform in the past few years, but in the end, I always seem to regress. I've learned, however, through these sporadic periods of self control, that I have kind of thin nails that are prone to chip and break easily. Well, with the help of some serious introspection and the joys of pregnancy hormones, I've been able to achieve something that I have coveted of others (especially my SIL, Melyni) for most of my life. Healthy, long nails. {{{satisfied sigh}}} I don't know if it will last, but I'm relishing it for now.  ((Melyni, I honestly think that you have some of the prettiest nails I've ever seen. I'm not, by nature, a jealous person, but I wish I had nails like yours. Heck, I'd even settle for nails like Nels's. Such perfect nails should never be wasted on a man! :)

8. I have creative children.
          I was just thinking that I couldn't think of anything else for now. That my brain had come up with all the fabulous things it could think of in its sleep deprived stupor. Then, I looked down at the desktop next to my hand and saw the word "MOM" etched there in my sweet Lilie's adorable handwriting. It is also scrawled in the file cabinet drawer to the right of me. I thought of how I could rant about how irritating it is to me that my child feels the need to "leave her mark" wherever she sits. That she has defaced several pieces of furniture here in the basement. But you know, as I looked at it, it brought a smile to my face. Of all the things she chose to write. MOM.

I love my girl.