AND Samantha

The last two blog posts have been about Tommy and Eliza so I better work my favorite little 4 year old in. And she is my favorite 4 year old but boy oh boy has she been pushing my buttons lately. I have a mommy theory that one or more of your children have to be going through a "phase" (read: never-ending tortuous chunk of time that makes you want to scream and hide) at all times so that you don't get complacent. But rather than expound on these things that are driving me crazy I'm going to accentuate the positive and come up with 5 things that I love about Samantha right now. I would do 10, but you know...

1. She is extremely inquisitive and interested in everything. I was driving home on the freeways yesterday and she was like "are we to the 303, because right now we are on the 202" Not only was she right about where we were she was right about what direction that the other freeway was in. I was amazed.

2. She is trying. She says her prayers, she talks about what she learns at church, she takes the scriptures to heart and talks about what Heavenly Father wants her to do. Today she actually refrained from hitting her brother (and he probably deserved it-though obviously we can't condone it) and she definitely was drawing on a higher power.

3. She is learning to read and loves to do so. I have been working with her and she absolutely loves to "rhyme it out"

4. She's singing a duet for the primary program in a couple of weeks and takes each and every opportunity to practice. She sings in the car and in the bath. She asks everyone if they want to hear it. I'm not sure there will be anyone who hasn't heard it by the time it comes around.

5. She's just my baby, what else could I want really?

Hi, y'all! This is Tom -- Emily is letting me be a guest writer today, so I thought I would post about something near and dear to my heart: my son's sleeping habits. Every night we put our kids to bed about 8:00 PM. Samantha and Eliza are little angels and just go to sleep (Samantha might read for a little while). Tommy, however, refuses. Every night, he stays in his room for about 3 minutes and then wanders out. Sometimes he just stays upstairs, but usually he'll come downstairs where Emily and I are. We encourage him to go back to bed, and sometimes even carry him there. Invariably, though, he comes back out. Eventually he falls asleep somewhere -- last night it was sprawled on the floor at the bottom of the stairs; tonight I'm pretty sure he fell asleep leaning on our office chair by the computer. Finally, we get him in bed. But it's not over yet. Tommy will often wake up two or three times in the night and come into our bedroom -- so I wake up and look over to see this little person standing right beside the bed, not making any noise. After putting him back in bed a few times, he usually stays -- until about 5:30 AM when he wakes up. I don't think he's slept past 6 in weeks. Honestly, I don't know how he goes on such little sleep. Maybe he's getting ready in case he has to pull any all-nighters for preschool. Anyway, I better get to bed myself -- Tommy will be in to wake me up soon!

Eliza Lou

Eliza had her 1 year check-up today. Try, for my sake, to ignore the fact that she's 14 months. She jumped from 75th percentile to 90 percentile for weight (25 lbs). The doctor thought that was just fine since it was in proportion to her massive 90th percentile height. I think she was just trying to be like her big siblings

Oh, and the poor thing got five shots. Ouch

That it's true....

Ah, Sundays. I love Sundays. Even though my kids make my head hurt with their Sacrament meeting antics I love feeling happy, peaceful and energized while I'm there. I always come away with the feeling that even though I'm not perfect and that I have a lot to work on that I can work on things and do better and progress. I know that I belong to the true church. I know that Heavenly Father lives and loves me. I know that Joseph Smith was a prophet. I'm grateful for the scriptures because I find truth in them and can find guidance for living. I'm so happy to be part of it all. It makes me feel great. That's my testimony.

One Person's Junk.....

Is pretty much another person's junk too. I had a garage sale today. We did it with some friends in the ward. We'd been planning on it for a long time and then realized that our general window of weekends included our subdivision's "community yard sale" so the traffic would be greater. So it worked out and I had fun.

I'm interested to find out how she did but we made 69 dollars. Not so hot, but you know-it's better than having that stuff around still. I've also managed to unload most of the rest of it through freecycle. Now I'm going to try to sell two last things on ebay/craigslist (that were probably priced too high for a garage sale)

She is not for sale!

See that big white thing-it's my wedding dress. So far the reactions are about split between utter shock and vague support for my decision. I'm not planning on wearing it again and I KNOW Samantha/Eliza won't want it....so no big deal right? That's the one I'm going to try to sell elsewhere. And Tom's extra Window's 7....for $100-any takers anyone? (it's selling for 120 in stores...)

And then from the $69 we earned you can subtract 10 dollars for a donut run and this super find at someone else's sale. A train table with all the tracks/cars/stores/etc. for 15 bucks!!! That's about the cheapest Santa present I've ever come up with (for Tommy obviously) Woo-hoo for me.

Missing Miss Delee

So in Virginia I had this friend named Delee. And we are friend soul-mates :). After not seeing her for a year and a half (since we moved to AZ) she came to visit!!!! It was so, so much fun. We had her over for dinner Wednesday night-that was super fun. Samantha actually remembered Jaxson really well. He's younger than her and didn't quite remember as well but they got along great and Tommy found a new buddy as well. And we played games of course, it's tradition!

Thursday she came down again and spent all day hanging out at my house. We talked about doing something but ultimately decided we wanted to talk and talk some more. For example, we talk about:

Kids, kids, kids

Being parents to kids

Our plans to have more kids

That thing that leads to kids

Food

Finances

How cool we are

This is a picture of us then (almost 3 years ago).

This is a picture of us now. NOT the most flattering picture but it was like midnight at this point and we had a long day having fun.

And this is a picture of the guys. Ah, some things never change.

Today we drove up to see her at the hotel and go swimming. Then they came down and the adults went out to dinner while the kiddies stayed home with a babysitter. They slept here for awhile while the adults played more games and Delee helped with my garage sale stuff (I officially can't have a garage sale without her).

These are the best friends then: (Not quite 2 years)

And here they are now, and they've grown! She's added Ehlana, I've had Eliza (Who wasn't even there, she was sleeping).

I think we'll always be friends. I was nervous because we both stink big time at keeping in touch but it pretty much felt like nothing had changed-we were still friends. It was so fun to have her come. Maybe in another 2 years I can go to Washington?

Oh My Craftiness

We had our "Super Saturday" (Thursday) craft night tonight. Look at my cute little Christmas decorations. It was fun-I like these kind of Enrichments Relief Society Meetings.