Kiddie Kam

The girls love to play with my camera and every now and then they take an entertaining pic. It's just so fun to see what they deem picture-worthy. Here are a few from the other day(this is 5 out of the 60 from one day):

Shan's blog

My family made some brief appearances on my sister's blog with some awesome videos. I think it's one or two posts down.

http://jedandshannon.com/shannon/

Thanks Shan. :)

Gratitude

(I wrote this yesterday but forgot to post it)

Shannon J. had a post that got me thinking about gratitude and some of the things I'm grateful for lately. So I thought I'd post them here:

=The RS broadcast Saturday night. I almost didn't go, but I was sooo glad I did. It was so great!! The few things that stuck out to me were Pres. Monson saying something like, "Don't pray that your tasks will be equivalent to your abilities, but that your abilities will be equivalent to your tasks." And Sister Thompson(wasn't she great??)said(paraphrasing), "Don't tell your children what to do, show them and do it with them." I feel a lot like the mom a few posts down, constantly telling my children what to do...over and over again. But I could definitely stop being so lazy and take the initiative more often.

=My sister. She and Jed came over yesterday and we had the best time making pizza and playing games on the Wii. She is so great with my kids! I am rather selfishly hoping she never has kids because she is such an amazing aunt. My kids absolutely adore her.

=Primary. I'm finally beginning to really love my calling. I still miss my YW so so so much, but the kids in our Primary are just so fun! Senior Primary was really hard yesterday, but Junior was awesome. They are so sweet and responsive. Some Sundays it's the Senior primary I enjoy the most, so it was nice to have a change. Although...Senior primary had some pretty stellar moves during "Book of Mormon Stories."

=The Crabtrees. We have a great family in our ward who we've just bonded with so quickly. They have two teenage girls, an 11 year old boy, and a 9 year old girl. They've had some tough stuff going on lately but I feel like instead of me helping them, they've been so helpful to me! Molly, the 15 year old, texts me about once a week to ask if she can take Mckenna and David for the morning(she's homeschooled). It is such a help and when I go pick them up we all visit for a while. I think she does it because she's bored but what a blessing! Hunter and Becca(the younger two) are having a sleepover here tonight while the rest go to Dancing with the Stars(I know...jealous!). And Hunter is amazing with Mckenna. He is so sweet and gentle and what a peacemaker! I could rave about them forever.

=A hard working husband. He's amazing, and I don't ever give him enough credit. He's constantly on the go.

=Shorter hair. I went from an hour and a half of blowdrying, straightening and curling to 30 minutes!! I love it! (although it's not as short or as thinned as I wanted it...it will be next time)

=Blogs. I love reading about everyone's lives. Hearing the struggles, joys, and random thoughts puts things into perspective for me. Plus you're all so dang entertaining!!

=My sweet children. Lately I feel like I can't hug them enough! They can be so tough and make me so frustrated, but my love for them has been and will always be my driving force. Being a mom is by far the most rewarding job ever.

What makes you smile today?

Oops!!

Mckenna had a bit of an accident Sunday, before church...I had just finished getting her all dressed and ready for church and we were waiting for Emma to finish her bath. I was sitting on Kenna's bed and she went into the bathroom. Just a few seconds later Mckenna starting screaming and crying. I ran into the bathroom (a whole 4 steps way), to find Mckenna(fully dressed, hair done and everything) crying and sopping wet IN the bathtub!!! Apparently she wanted to get the soap from the tub, so she climbed IN the tub and once she got in, started crying because she realized she was wet! It was SO hard not to laugh!

Hair cuts!

Mckenna before:

Mckenna after:
Emma before:

Emma after(just a trim):

I didn't take a before of me, nor did I take an after...but Mckenna was playing with the camera on Saturday so this is as good of an after as you'll get. :)

And in the same round of camera playing, she managed to catch this great shot:

Ballerina girl

Ode to Katie

Megan B. posted the other day about my niece, Katie and how she gets into everything and how Megan spends half her cleaning time cleaning up Katie's messes... So a couple of days ago I went through our pantry and completely organized it - wiped down the shelves, vacuumed the floor, condensed and rearranged, etc. It was spotless. I went in the other room to sit at the desk and not ten minutes later I realized Mckenna had been going back and forth from the kitchen to the garage door quite a few times. So I walked over by the garage door and there was half of my pantry stock, all neatly lined up by the garage. She was "shopping at the food store." She had also spilled a bag of quinoa all over the step-stool, bottom shelf, and floor. Of all the things to spill - that was probably the worst! It's like rice only much much smaller. So I had to take everything out again, vacuum, and put it all back in. Luckily she couldn't reach the rest of it. So there you go, Megan, they really are made from the same mold. :)

Never Talk to Strangers

We've always struggled with convincing Emma not to talk to strangers. Well, it's not that we can't convince her not to, we can't get her to remember not to. So last night we went out to dinner* and while we were waiting for our table Emma made a new friend. It was a sweet little girl who was there with her mom and dad. So they played and talked and Emma told their whole family our whole family's names. Eventually they were taken to their table and we were taken to ours. As we were leaving the restaurant and on our way to our car we met up with them again. Emma was so excited to see them that she ran up and gave them all hugs - the mom and dad included(which surprised them...). So in the car on the way home we had another discussion about strangers. Near the end of the discussion we were running through different scenarios and talking about when it's OK to talk to strangers and who strangers are. We had a neighbor, Mercy who lived two houses down but recently moved. Now it's a house of 3 young bachelors. The other day she ran down to their house (without permission...), rang the doorbell, and was just chatting away with the new neighbor she had never met. I think she'd forgotten that Mercy had moved and was hoping to play with Mercy. Anyway, I asked her about those neighbors and if she thought they were strangers. So this is the paraphrased version of her answer:
"Yes, but Mom - if I was sleeping and they came to our door, you could answer the door and talk to them. And if they said, 'When that girl wakes up - you know, the beautiful one - tell her she can come and play at our house with you because we're strangers, so you can come too.'"

I just thought it was so funny that she referred to herself as "the beautiful one." It won't be so funny when she's in high school, but for now I can be happy that I've raised a confident child with high self esteem...who talks to strangers...hmmm.


*tangent: TGI Friday's has the best new menu!! They have smaller portions, smaller prices, and healthier choices! They even have small desserts so you can get a little sweet treat but not make yourself overly full. I loved it!

Picture time!!

Random pics from our week:



The lipstick found Mckenna's face again:

No, he's not crawling, he's starting to follow in his sister's steps(or I should say in his sister's slitherings) by army crawling. But the other day I put him down and he stayed like this for about 30 seconds. :)

Why we moved the coffee table to the garage... David's been getting into my magazines which are stored on the shelf under the coffee table.

This is INSANE

My friend Heidi sent me this link to a website that teaches what they call Infant Swimming Resource. It is a method of swimming designed to prevent young children from drowning. They teach from 6 months to 6 years. Watch the video on the front page before you enter the site. It shows a baby who's (in my estimation) about 1 to 1 1/2 years, but they have more videos on their site with younger babies; one of them is 8 months old. Anyway...it made me almost sick to my stomach to watch the beginning. I literally tensed up. OK enough of my talking, the video shows you more than I can say.

http://www.childdrowningprevention.com/