Everything Can't, And Shouldn't, Be Perfect

Yesterday we had a fabulous day! That statement might make the title seem confusing, but I'll explain. This is mostly a memo to myself. I hope that others may gleen some wisdom out of it, but if not, at least I will have this thought preserved when I need a reminder later. You see, I often get caught up in needing to do everything perfectly and that's just never going to happen. Got that me - you are NOT EVER going to be 100% in this life and that's OK. Let the unimportant things go and focus on the moments in life that matter. And now, I'll explain.

My boys have been driving each other, and therefore me, crazy lately. I finally realized what I already knew (or maybe I just decided that I it was worth it to put the effort into it) - my boys are getting older and need more engagement in their day. So yesterday morning, we got up and started our day with beautiful music and coloring and cutting. Then we got dressed and in our stroller and headed to the park. We played at the park for a good long time, came home, actually ate a good lunch (they usually just don't eat very much at lunch) while I let them watch only one episode of Dora. Then it was nap time and they went to sleep quietly and quickly. After naps, they got up and we went outside again on a meadering walk to get our mail. We were outside walking for another good chunk of time when my mom called me to find us so she could show us her new-to-her (used) car. It's beautiful, by the way. We went for a ride. The boys really like go for rides with Grammy and it was even more exciting that it was a new car.

When we got back from our ride to Target, Derek's family was over for our fun celebration of Edger Allen Poe's birthday. In our toddler approved attempt at the macabre, we watched the movie Coraline and made dirt cups. The boys helped pound the chocolate grahams into crumbs while Cristina and I made the pudding. Then we got to dig into the mess.

Mud (pudding), dirt (chocolate Goldfish), and worms - not super macabre, but toddler appropriate, at least on the right lines, and yummy!

Ollie actually ate a couple of his super sour worms. I was so impressed!

Jude was all about the pudding!! So much so that he kept taking everyone's spoons in an attempt to get more pudding in every bite!

It took Dexy a while to warm up to any of it, but once he realized that it was delicious food, he dove in. We all had a fun time just watching the movie, chatting, and seeing the kids enjoy their deliciously messy treat. After everyone went home, I got the boys wiped down and into jammies, read a few stories, said prayers and they went to bed without a fuss. And that's a lot at this point. My boys have always been really good about bedtime, but recently Ollie has been unable to wind down, stop talking or screaming, and actually fall asleep until about 10:45! That's crazy late! It was a big part of my "hammer to the head" moment telling me that it was time to do something different. But last night, they was hardly a peep out of them after I shut their door. Then I went downstairs and my house looked like this.......

......toys were scattered everyone from playing with their cousin and having such a grand time.

And the kitchen was a mess from having people over for pizza and a fun, messy treat.

Then I looked down and my shirt looked like this. Now, this picture does not do it justice. It was covered in chocolate pudding splatters, dirt from the park, snotty nose spots, you name it. At that instant I thought to myself, "Wow! Disgusting! Everything is a filthy mess." And then in the very next moment, I had another "hammer to the head" moment where I realized that this was not the shirt of a filthy, disgusting housewife. No, no. This was the shirt of a good mom whose toddlers had had an engaging, active, fabulous day! And then I realized, everything can't be perfect. Nor should it be. If my house and shirt were spotless, then my kids would probably have had a much less fulfilling and stimulating day. And I choose my kids! Then I wore my dirty shirt proudly as I cleaned up the toys and did the sink full of dishes. And you know what, it didn't take all that long to clean up the mess, especially with my sweet husband's help, and the great day that we had had, will last much longer!

These are the moments that really matter! Remember me - focus in on what's really important, let some stuff go, and just try to enjoy the ride!

Blue Skies

The weather was beautiful on Monday. The sky was blue and the sun was out and eventhough it's January, it wasn't even that cold. It was also a holiday, so Brian and Derek didn't have class. We therefore decided to get together. We put our boys tricycles in our trunk and headed over to Derek and Cristina's apartment out in Ivins. After Alice had been fed and could be left happily with the daddies, Cristina and I took the boys out to the parking lot behind their building to ride their trikes. We had a grand old time! They rode and pushed their trikes and filled their baskets full of rocks, played peek-a-boo from the garbage area (lovely, I know), found ledges for jumping off, and chased after balls. We were all so happy at that moment (as well as just in general) to be living in St. George where we could go outside in January to find not only no snow, but blue skies, only cool weather, and a lovely day!!

Being a Boy is in the DNA

Marie and her boys came down to St. George and stayed with us for a couple of days. They left this afternoon. We had tons of fun playing with 4 of our fun boy cousins! We went out to say goodbye as they drove away and Ollie and Dexy of course found their way into the dirtiest spot in front of our house.
Not only are the sitting on the black, but in one of the few remaining patches of disgusting parking lot snow, and right up by the curb where it's most filthy! The best part? Shortly after snapping these pictures they started EATING the disgusting parking lot snow!! I certainly didn't give them this kind of idea. It just comes in boy DNA!

New Year's Day

OK, so here is what we did for our New Year's Day festivites. We went to a big snowy hill and strapped our feet into death traps!

Just kidding! They weren't death traps, but I did fall......a lot..........a really lot. Ben's family has snowboards and these little skiis, so he and Amanda had a great idea to take us up the Salt Lake Canyon to try them out. Since the boys didn't really love it when we tried sledding, we left them at home with Grandma to eat lunch and take a nap while we hit the slopes. Only Ben has ever done any of this stuff before.

That became very obvious as the rest of us fell all over the place and he glided down the hill with grace.

I tried the skiis first and didn't do too, bad. Then I took a shot on one of the snowboards and fell so many times it wasn't funny. But, when I did stay up on it, the board went way fast, which was a fun ride. For a few seconds anyway. Brian stuck to the snowboard. Amanda and Angela stuck to the skiis. Ben did a little of both, too. And it wasn't even as cold as we thought it would be. It was a fun, adventurous, active way to kick off the New Year!

Belated Christmas Break Post

I haven't done a post in a really long time! We had lots of fun up North playing with the Bowles clan for a couple of weeks and I have lots of pictures that I was going to post sooner. However when we got home, I found myself buried under a moutain of new toys to put away, a truck-bed full of our stuff that my parents brought down for us, and for some reason tons and tons of dirty laundry eventhough I had gotten most of the stuff from the trip clean before we came home. We have been spending many a day rearranging, organizine, washing, folding, and trying to find a place to fit everything. So anyway. Here's some more pictures from our fun up North. It was Grandma Bowles' idea to fold only one side of this table down and turn it into a slide. The boys thought it was spectacular that all of a sudden there was a slide! Cool Grandma, huh?
After sliding a few times, the took to running down it....one right after the other. We quickly had to implament turns to ensure safety. The had a ball playing on this thing!

We visited Great Grandma and Grandpa Bowles. Grandpa showed the boys his train. The were blown away by it!

Ollie especially loves trains right now, but they both like them and thought that a small, real moving train was the most amazing thing ever.

Great Grandma Bowles even showed them how to get down on the floor and take a closer look.

After all the excitement, Dexy had to chillax in this old fashioned rocking chair. I feel like this picture should be in black and white and in some really large, old world frame.

Then Great Grandpa Bowles took us to the near by parking lot where hundreds of birds wait for him to come and feed them everyday. And yes. That is a gianormous bucket of bird seed that he is carrying over to random parking lot pigeons. Odd? Of course......

.....but the boys had their brains wrinkled once again by something that they have never seen before. Again, they were fascinated. We love playing with the Bowles side of the family!

Then on the 30th of December, we went to the fabulous, new home of Brian's MTC companion, John Forsythe. Johny 5, as we call him, and his sweet wife Hailey and their little boy Landon, are good friends of ours. We had a great time. We did some catching up, ate delicious dinner, they boys had great fun playing with their long last friend (it's been a while since we've seen the 5s) and even got to take a bath together.

After bath time, they were all cozied and clean in their jammies, Hailey made them popcorn and got them all drinks and they got to watch some Shrek 4 and stay up late while we had some grown-up friend time, too. We had a sleep over, even! The boys did a great job sleeping there. I was so well pleased in them. And it was so nice for Brian and I to have real beds to sleep on, even 2 twin beds, rather than the bean bags and air mattress that we had been sleeping on for 2 weeks.

The next morning, we got up to Johny 5 and Hailey making us pancakes and hasbrowns. Then we bundled the kids up and attempted to take them sledding. There was a big hill really close to their house, so we just went there. And it was a good thing. It was sooooooooo cold!! Oliver basically hated the whole experience.

Dexy found a little joy in the sledding, but mostly just sat motionless and expressionless. I think he was trying to perserve his energy so that more could go to warming himself.
Our boys had more fun sliding down the cold, icey slide than sledding. Even that didn't last very long though. After only about 10 minutes, all the babies were totally finished with the freezing, winter wonderland experience.

Dexy and Landon let Johny 5 give them one last ride from the playground back up the hill to the car. Mental note to self: I took this sled down the hill once. It was wicked fast and totally awesome. Look into getting one. Johny 5 says that they are straight out of Canda. Probably going to have to start there to track one down.

After our fun in the cold, we all had to warm ourselves with cups of hot chocolate and snuggling on the couch while watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. Landon even cuddled up to me. He's a fun, happy, friendly kid. I'm a fan! I'm so glad that we got to go spend some time with friends. We had a fabulous time! We had lots of fun up there. I still have to post the pictures of our New Years Day celebrations, but my lower back is killing me, so I'll have to do it another day. Hopefully I'll dig myself out of all the house work I've been doing and have time not only soon, but preferrably not at 1:25 am.

Christmas Fun!

We've been having such a good time with Brian's side of the family. This is very dark, but we all went up to Temple Square on Monday night for Family Home Evening, Christmas style.

The boys looked so cute bundled up in their winter clothes.



It was cold, but beautiful! While we were watching the nativity scene, people started taking pictures and Ollie freaked out, pulled his hat over his eyes and screamed, "I don't want the people to take pictures of me!! Don't take pictures of Ollie!" We all found it quite humorous, the poor kid.

This is kind of a fuzzy picture, but up at the Christus, the reflection of the statue was reflected in the window and with the Temple and the Christmas lights, it was just so beautiful. It was a great way to start out our Christmas holiday!

On Thursday, the boys and I went down to Eagle Mountain to my sister, Marie's house. My parents are up spending Christmas with her family, so they were there and then they invited us and Jeff's family. It was great to see some of my family eventhough it isn't our year for Christmas. My mom had brought up all the kid's nativity costumes and they loved it! Our little boys (Ollie, Dexy, and Bridger) were happy to play the parts of the animals.

The bigger kids did a great job acting out the story of the first Christmas. Jeff's wife, Melissa and I even got to get into the action (we ran out of kids and needed 2 more wisemen - or in our case, wisewomen).

Then we sat and sang a few Christmas carols and learned Grammy's song about pulling the covers over our heads with a flashlight.

The kids got their presents from Grammy and Granpy and they were - a book and a little flashlight that they could use to read their story in their beds under the covers! Just like in the song. It was such a cute idea!

We love books! We had fun and it was so nice to get to see so much family this year!

Back at the Bowles' house we played and enjoyed our Christmas Eve day. Grandma prepared a great Christmas Eve dinner that we all sat down and feasted upon. Well, except the boys. I think they were starting to understand and were getting too excited for Christmas to bother with such things as food.

Grandma Christensen and Brian's Uncle Ron joined us for Christmas Eve. After our delicious dinner, we read the scriptural accounts of Christ's birth. Ollie thought that he needed a paper to read, too, so Brian gave him and blank sheet and he just took off making up all sorts of crazy gibberish. He's so entertaining!

Then the present maddness began. Ron and Grandma C. brought gifts and they wanted to see the boys open them. Ron got them this fabulous toy called the Tri Bot, a Buzz Lightyear car that races off after you shake it, and a couple of packs of Hot Wheels. They were all big hits, if you couldn't tell by Dexy's reaction.

Grandma C. got them this. They loved it and have been wanting one for a long time! They have already had tons of fun racing all the little cars that they got down it.

They lastly got to open their traditional Christmas Eve jammies (it's always what we got on Christmas Eve in my family and I have insisted on carrying that tradition on). Dexy was even more excited about the letters on his jammies than I thought he'd be and the firetrucks and such were a great pick for Ollie, too.

And then it was Christmas morning! Now Brian's family has a tradition of waking up at 5 AM that they are insistant upon carrying on, even now that all their children are adults. I didn't want to wake the boys that early, so we left them sleeping (thankfully), but this year I finally decided that since I wasn't pregnant our breastfeeding all night long that I could get up with them at 5 AM, too. It wasn't too bad after all. Brian and I got a brilliant, red Wii console from Brian's parents! That's what Brian is triumphantly hoisting over his head! Then we all went back sleep until the boys got up.

Around 8:30 the boys woke up. A time that is much more to my liking!

They came out of their room a little confused at first, but once they saw the fun, new toys, they got the idea of Christmas morning real quickly! They ran right into their castle tent and started draging all their toys from last night in with them.

Then they saw their trikes and had to hop on and take them for a test drive.

I swear to you, Ollie WANTED the pink and purple one!

Then there was more presents to open. These great, big Cars pillows....

....a play city rug which is so fabulous because the boys bedroom has a wood floor......

.....more cars and trucks to drive on the fabulous rug, more train tracks to add to the sets we already have at home.....

.....a super, cool Lightning McQueen night light (I guess the boys' room's decor has been chosen for us this Christmas, but that's ok because we love Cars), 4 Gossie and Friends board books, and a big box of those freezer ice pops that Brian loves. Every gift was a score! The boys loved all of it and have been happily occupied all morning playing with their great new toys!

I brought the castle upstairs where everyone was obsessively playing the new Super Mario Brothers for the Wii that was included in our set (sweet!), so that the boys could play with all of us. Ollie dragged a bunch of his toys into his castle tent, came downstairs and got the rug, dragged it up there too, and then sat in his tent for a good hour just contently playing. A good investment, I'd say! Thanks to everyone who got them such good presents and helped make this Christmas great! It was looking like it was going to be pretty lame from our end, but so many family members helped to make sure that the boys got some good stuff. Thank you!!!