Christmas Card Message

When I sent out our Christmas cards this year, I didn't include our usual update letter. I thought it'd save me stress, but instead, I have just been feeling guilty for not making an effort to capture what 2014 has been for us. So I've decided to do it here on my blog instead.

In no particular order, here's a quick look at what we've been doing this year:

1. ABBY

 Abby of course, has changed the most this year. She has gone from being a little squishy ball of cuteness to a full fledged toddler-- walking, climbing, chasing after her siblings, etc. She loves to wrestle with Max and tries to copy whatever he does. (Yes, we are concerned about this.) She is a happy little soul and especially adores her daddy. When she hears the garage door open at the end of the day, she runs to meet him and demands all his attention. Her favorite foods are string cheese and mandarin oranges, but she is pretty willing to try all sorts of food. She has a funny little smile that screws up her whole face and crinkles her eyes shut-- that's when you know she's really happy. We love our little Abby Kaye!

2. ANNA

 Anna is ten years old now, and is growing more and more beautiful each day. She has become a big help to her family. She loves playing soccer; she plays on a rec team and plays every day at recess and after school with her friends. Anna continues with piano lessons and is over the moon excited because she can now play songs that she knows from the radio, like "Demons" by Imagine Dragons. Anna is extraordinarily creative and always has some sort of store/classroom/play/etc. that she is putting together with the neighbor kids. One of Anna's best friends recently moved to Texas and she is saving up money to fly out and visit her. We are trying to encourage this, so Travis made her a deal that if she picked up the dog poop for a year he would give her $100-- and she's been doing it! She is empathetic and kind and tries hard to choose the right.

3. EVE

 This was a big year for Eve. She learned to ride her bike with no training wheels (and no shoes, as you can see in the photo), lost her first tooth, started kindergarten, and has learned to read. Eve still loves dressing up, sometimes she is a princess and other times she will be a pirate with Max. Eve is our little fashionista and always puts together the cutest ensembles. Each night when we tuck her into bed, Eve needs her blankies put on in a certain order-- no easy task since she requires seven of them to sleep each night! She has become passionate about art and says she wants to be an illustrator when she grows up. Eve is spunky and sweet and we couldn't live without her!

4. LAURIE AND TRAVIS

It's been a fun year for us as well. Travis continues to work for Albion and has been able to travel to Poland, New York, Florida, Texas, Boston, and New Orleans this year. He trained for and participated in the Spudman, a sprint triathlon in Idaho, and discovered this is his passion in life! Trav loves being with our family and we are lucky that his schedule allowed him to take Max on Father's and Sons, the girls to a Daddy/Daughter campout, and help chaperone Anna and Kate at their Activity Days camp this summer. We've decided that we are going to be a skiing family so Laurie and Trav hit the slopes the day after this year and Anna and Kate started lessons in December. (Now we just need some snow!) Laurie keeps busy doing four different girls' hairdos each day, preparing meals that often go uneaten, and comforting children who wake up during the night. I wouldn't want it any other way. I have been fortunate this year to get away once in a while with some of my closest friends-- a sleepover with my two high school besties before one moved away, another sleepover with my college roommates at a hotel in Salt Lake, and Time Out For Women with ladies from my ward. 

5. MAX

Max is the most positive and enthusiastic person I know. He's constantly telling me things like "You're the most beautiful mama" or "You're the best in the west." He is super sweet and is the cuddliest of all my children. He loves reading books, playing with Duplos, pestering the dog, and riding his new bike. He went to Father's and Sons with Travis and it literally changed his life. He had so much fun camping and then one of the neighbor boys told him about Scout camp, which blew his mind. Ever since May, every time Max prays he says "and please bless me and Daddy can go to Scout camp." This boy cannot wait to be eight! Max has been trying really hard to get potty trained, and I have been trying really hard to not totally lose it with him when he makes mistakes. :) Max is full of energy and brings a lot of fun into our family.

6. KATE

This was a big year for Kate too! She turned eight in July, which meant she was able to be baptized by her father in August. She's also old enough for Activity Days, which she LOVES. Kate also loves sports. Over the summer Kate and Anna participated in a kids mini triathlon, Kate also plays soccer, and has recently discovered basketball. This is her biggest passion-- she lives for her games and loves to sit down with Trav and watch the Jazz play and discuss the game. Kate is a great student and is very creative. She entered the school Reflections contest and won with a collage she made of the earth. Kate continues to play piano and is very talented (in fact, although she and Anna started at the same time, Kate is a level ahead of Anna now. Just goes to show what practicing can do I guess. :) ) Another big event for Kate this year was her 8 year old trip with Mom and Dad. We took her to Boston while Travis had a work conference, then headed up to Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. It was so fun to spend time with this sweet daughter one on one! Kate is truly a sweet, sweet girl. She loves adventure and is the most likely of all my children to go skydiving. Kate is compassionate and kind, and always looks for ways to help other people.

2014 was a great year in our family. We hope it was for you as well. As always, we are eternally grateful for our Savior-- for His birth, life, Atonement, and Resurrection. May His Spirit be with you this holiday season.

Halloween 2014

Do you want to know a secret? I sort of hate Halloween. Stress finding/making the perfect costumes, goopy, gross pumpkin guts, enough candy to induce a coma.... Really, why do people like this holiday?

 But then the big day comes and I find myself feeling as excited as the kids. It helps that they all look so darn cute in their costumes.

 We've been reading the Harry Potter series with Anna and Kate before bed for the past few months. It's been so fun to share it with them. They're not allowed to read ahead-- we just read all together for a few pages each night. It's something we all look forward to. So of course we needed a Hermione for Halloween night.

 Kate, of course, did not need a costume to be an angel. It's just her modus operandi. But, who can resist a big poofy skirt and halo?

 Eve's class had Dress Like Your Favorite Book Character Day before they went off track. (my kids were not in school on Halloween.) We had just finished reading Charlotte's Web with Eve and she insisted on being Wilbur. So I made her costume, thanks to this tutorial. Then I kind of tweaked the tutorial to make a Charlotte the spider costume for Abby.

 This picture was taken later that night but shows off her spider legs a little better. One year olds are hard to photograph! Too many places to go I guess.

We trick or treated with our cousins this year which made my children SO HAPPY. I guess I've been the Halloween Scrooge making them trick or treat in our home neighborhood. I missed the photo of all the kids together, but this is a great one of Anna and Bailey, her best friend cousin. There was a huge horde of us--12 kids plus parents-- all traipsing around a Grandma Nancy's neighborhood. My mother in law is seriously the queen of holidays, so she had lots of fun stuff like spider web seven layer dip, jack-o-lantern pizzas, and cupcakes with zombie hands sticking out of them.
It turned out to be a great night. I'm going to try and remember that next year when I start feeling those anti-Halloween feelings.

Why It's Okay to be Off Track in October

Since moving up to Davis County we have been on year round school. At first, I was not a fan of our shortened summer and hard-to-remember school schedule. But I'm starting to come around. We just finished up our first off track of this school year and we packed in tons of fun activities.

 We started off with Anna's birthday party-- pizza, Jamberry nails, hair salon, a movie.... basically all a ten year old could dream of!

 I am so grateful that my kids have found good friends.

 The next morning we joined 4,000 of our closest friends at Gardner Village. (It was UEA.) In spite of the crowds, my kids had a blast finding all the witches and-- oddly, loved going into the home decor shops to help Grandma Alice find a new bedspread.

 Since UEA is a state-wide school break, we headed down to Utah county to catch up with some of our old people down there the next day. We {heart} BYU.

 Our good friends the Claytons met us at Bridal Veil Falls. Above we have Kate and Megan, who are only a couple months apart.

 Here's Anna and Hannah, who met as 3 year olds in a preschool class. I am so grateful for that class that brought my cute friend Becky (Hannah's mom) into my life!

 Provo Canyon has tons of leaves to jump in!

 Eve's big accomplishment of the day was finally managing the monkey bars by herself. She and Maddy swung across those things for more than an hour-- until cute Maddy fell and broke her arm! That was the end of our fun with the Claytons. :(

 My sweet next door neighbor from Spanish Fork had us over for dinner that night. Man, we sure love those guys!

 The next week we went to Black Island Farms with Max's playgroup. It was pretty windy but lots of fun!

 Pick a pumpkin!

 Eve is all about the corn box.

 There was this enormous slide made of hay bales that I was nervous to go down, but as you can see my kids had no problem with it and slid down a dozen times in whatever weird ways they could think of.

 Grandma and Pappy took us to the zoo. Great weather and no crowds= October zoo trips for the win!

 Like I said, great weather. So great that we had to soak ourselves in the splash pad.

 Abby LOVES pumpkins. It's been her nickname since she was born and it has been really funny this fall to see how she gravitates toward them. We have a few mini pumpkins as decorations and she loves to just walk around with them all over the house.

We couldn't decide between painting or carving our pumpkins, so we ended up doing a little of both.

Snapshot 2014

I saw this idea on another blog and thought it was smart, so I am going to copy it. Basically, it's just a snapshot of what life looks like at our house as 2014 is getting started.

Travis and I do not sleep through the night. We have an understanding that he takes care of Max and I take care of Abby-- both of whom have decided to wake up every few hours ever since our Disneyland trip. Max has had sleep issues forever; in fact we would regularly lock him in his room at night and he would cry for about an hour until he fell asleep on the floor in front of his door, only to wake up again around 2 am and repeat the cycle again. Then one night I had a "lightbulb" moment and offered to leave his door open a crack if he would stay in his bed and not cry. Counterintuitive, but it totally worked. So now, he goes to sleep without a hitch, but then when he wakes up during the middle of the night he comes and gets Travis (technically he asks for Mom, but I am emotionally unavailable to Max from 9 pm to 6 am). It's not perfect, but it's better than listening to him yell for hours.
As for Abby, she was sleeping through the night, but then we went on vacation and she got sick..... and now she's not. Good thing she's cute.

Most mornings, Trav goes for a run while I continue to snooze until Max starts begging for breakfast. T has decided to do the Idaho Spudman triathlon this summer so he is exercising quite a bit to get ready. He just bought a fancy pants road bike that literally weighs as much as my cell phone, so he should be speedy for the bike portion. We also got a membership at the rec center in Clearfield and he's been swimming a couple of times over there.
Anna and Kate are pretty good to get up, eat breakfast, get ready for school, and make their own lunches. Sometimes they are slothlike about it, but I try to bite my tongue and let them learn consequences. I keep thinking that I'd like them to practice piano in the morning before school, but then I think that I would have to set up some kind of schedule so they weren't both trying to practice at the same time.... and I get overwhelmed at that. So for now, the rule is just that they can't have any screen time during the day until piano is done. Which kind of works, but I'd love suggestions if you have them.
Eve does preschool with a group in our ward and really loves it. I just finished teaching my rotation last week and I loved it too. Little kids are just a fun group to be around.
On the days that she doesn't have preschool we try to run errands or get chores done, but I swear-- for every one thing I clean up and put away, Max empties/destroys/mangles ten things more. So my house is never clean and my to-do list is miles long.
Eve absolutely loves card games lately. Her sisters taught her to play War, SlapJack, GoFish, and SkipBo and she is always looking for someone to play with her. Word of warning though-- she doesn't keep track of the cards too well, so lots are missing. SlapJack is a lot more interesting when there's only one jack in the whole deck.

We also spend a whole lot of time loving on Abby. She has started eating rice cereal and pounds it down. She also rolled over for the first time a couple weeks ago. But mostly she is just an extremely smiley little baby and we love to talk to her and tickle her and snuggle her.

Max uber loves Jake and the NeverLand Pirates these days. It's so funny to hear him randomly say things like "Yo Ho Let's Go!" when he's walking around the house. I love having a little boy; he really brings a different spirit into our home. He is my biggest fan and cries any time I leave the house, hold Abby, or try to take a shower.
The weather has been decent the past few days so Anna and Kate are walking home from school. By themselves. A year ago I was terrified at the prospect, but now it just seems natural. They really are responsible and safe little girls. They walk home with a couple other girls on our street and they feel extra cool to be without parental supervision. My cute neighbor has just decided she will always drive my kids to school ("I remember what it's like to have a new baby, let me just take them," she says) which is insanely lucky for me.
It is somewhat of a victory that I can make dinner again. We were eating a whole lot of spaghetti and taco soup after Abby was born because I didn't have time to prepare much more than that. But now I can count on her to sleep at least a half hour somewhat close to dinner time so I can usually put together something decent. Unless you ask Eve, who tells me every night that she hates what I cook and why can't we just have shrimp alfredo?
Bedtime takes forever at our house. We do scriptures and family prayer, read books, brush teeth (my dentist just informed me that I should be brushing my kids' teeth for them after they do it to get whatever gunk they missed, so brushing teeth has now doubled in time), etc. We've started reading Harry Potter to Kate and Anna down in their bedroom at night and it is so fun. They are loving it, as are Trav and I. It's kind of fun because all four of us gather in their tiny bedroom to share in the reading. We've forbidden the girls to read it on their own because we want it to be a fun thing we do all together and so far they have obeyed.
I'm still in Young Womens as the assistant secretary. One of my main jobs is Personal Progress and I was in charge of our New Beginnings program a couple weeks ago. We did an Olympic theme and it was so awesome! We kept the decorations really simple with just the Olympic rings with a YW torch overlaid on it. Our program was fun-- kind of like a little play with the girls acting out various Olympic activities like the Parade of Nations, the torch runners, Athlete Profiles, interviews, etc. Definitely the highlight was the value skits that each class put together. Our Beehives did this whole synchronized swimming thing wearing goggles and shower caps and I was dying of laughter. But when it was time to turn serious and feel the Spirit, we were able to do that too. It was a great night. I am learning more and more that the Lord loves these Young Women and so He takes whatever effort I put in and makes it so much better so that it can be good enough for them, to teach them the things He wants them to know.

Trav is pretty much the best dad ever. The school had a Daddy/Daughter dance around Valentine's Day and the girls loved getting dressed up and going with their dad. They came home bouncing off the walls, telling me all about Dad's amazing dance moves, which Kate described as "out of the zone!" I am grateful that he loves them enough to do the Chicken Dance with them.
The only other thing we've been spending a lot of time on is cleaning out the garage. The previous owners left some stuff  that we just shoved in a back corner and now we're finally going through everything and getting things organized out there. Our progress is slow but it's been nice to see improvement. Maybe I'll post pictures when we're done.

Abby Kaye and Grandma Kaye

I am so behind on blogging, but I have a goal to update/maintain my blog more and try to have it become a place where I can record things that matter to me.
Starting with this: the reason we named her Abby Kaye. See, my middle name is Kaye as well, after my dear Grandma Kaye, and when we first were thinking of Kaye as a middle name, I liked it because it gave her a connection to me. But the more I reflect on it, the more I like that she has a connection to Grandma Kaye.
Grandma Kaye is really an angel here on the earth. She is generous, kind, funny, complimentary, loving, and a huge BYU fan. She always has positive things to say to me and my family and simply adores Travis. She is a great grandma.
When I look back on lessons learned in my life, I think I learned about the true meaning of love from Grandma Kaye. My dad's first mom died when he was 14 and his father later married Kaye Dickson. She took over the house full of teenage boys without a mother and brought her own teen daughter into the mix. Rough way to start a marriage, for sure.
They had only been married about 15 years (which is almost as long as Travis and I have been married!) when my grandfather was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, a degenerative disease similar to Alzheimer's that takes away your muscle function in addition to your mental abilities. At first the changes were minimal, but after a few years Grandpa Merrill went downhill. He became confined to the house because of his inability to walk, and eventually lost coherence and speech as well. Grandma Kaye lovingly nursed him through all of this until he passed away in 2002. Which meant , in the end, that she had spent more years taking care of him than they had together before he got sick.
When I was a teenager, Grandma Kaye took a rare (as in, the only time in 20 years) vacation with her daughter and her family. Grandpa Merrill went to a care facility for about a week while she was gone, and she asked my dad and his brother to check in on him there. My dad and I drove down and were just leaving the nursing home when Grandma Kaye arrived, back from her trip.
We stood in the parking lot as the setting sun cast its long yellow rays over us. She was worried, anxious, and feeling guilty for leaving him. We tried to ease her mind, reminding her of how good she was to take care of him for all those years and that it was good for her to have a life outside of her caregiving role. I distinctly remember asking her why she did it.
Without pausing a moment to think about it, she replied, "Well, I know he'd do the same for me."
And that was it. In that moment, I knew what true love was all about. And I vowed that when the time came for me to find an eternal companion, I wanted someone who would serve me with the same devotion she showed to my grandpa-- and vice versa. A love not based on infatuation or desire, but anxious concern for the other's well being. She didn't need to preach a sermon to me; she was living it.
Fast forward to Thanksgiving 2013. Grandma Kaye hosted 20 of us in her home, and after the meal was finished, she hurried my dad out to the garage so he could get started hanging her Christmas lights, an annual affair. I stayed inside with Abby and my other kids were in and out of the house as children tend to be.
Eve came to me a few minutes later with her head hanging low. She told me she had to show me something in the bathroom that she did (Panic bells starting to ring-- this could be something really gross, right?) The cause of her shame was in a little glass bowl of artificial flowers that were on the counter. Eve loves anything fancy or beautiful, and these flowers had called out to her. But in her enthusiasm she accidentally dropped them and a piece of the bowl broke. She was devastated about it.
Myself, I was embarrassed for not keeping track of my child. We went out to find Grandma Kaye in the garage to apologize. I made Eve do the talking, and of course Grandma Kaye forgave her. I was ready to put the matter aside and tell Eve to be more careful next time.
But Grandma Kaye looked down at this precious little four year old and had compassion on her. She saw that Eve's heart was still broken just like that glass bowl. So she took her by the hand (dropping the Christmas lights project for a minute), and went into the house together. A few minutes later, an exuberant little Eve bopped out the door.
"Mommy, guess what? Grandma Kaye and me fixed the bowl!" She dragged me into the house to look at the "fixed" bowl. I looked closely, but could see no sign of a crack or glue or any indication that this bowl had ever been broken.
"Wow, Eve, that's amazing! It looks great!" Then Eve started to giggle and told me they had pulled a trick on me. Grandma Kaye had a similar bowl in her master bathroom, so she and Eve had switched the bowls so the perfect bowl was in the main bathroom. Eve proudly explained to me that the broken bowl could be shoved in a corner in Grandma Kaye's bathroom so you couldn't even see the crack, and then both of them took me back to show me, all the while Grandma Kaye congratulated Eve on the "trick" they had played.
When I saw the broken bowl in its' new place, it was obviously broken, but stuck in a corner and not looking too shabby.
What was no longer broken was my little girl's heart.
How simple it would have been for Grandma Kaye to forgive and dismiss Eve. She was involved in the Christmas lights and Eve's concern was minor. But I will forever be grateful for a grandmother who took the time to be with my precious child, not only to forgive her, but to restore her.
These are only two of the many reasons that Grandma Kaye is awesome. I love her so much, and yes, I will be pleased if Abby turns out to be even just a little bit like her.

Inspire 2.9.14

 I know of no experience more sweet or feeling more precious than to heed a prompting only to discover that the Lord has answered another person’s prayer through you.

-Thomas S. Monson