32 isn’t that old after all…

After 32 years of life experience, I have very gratefully learned a few things…

1.  When I was 23, I thought that when I was in my 30’s I would be really old.  Now that the numbers are reversed, I find out that 32 really isn’t that old after all. 

2.  While having a clean home certainly does bring me peace of mind, sometimes it’s OK to have a messy house.  Sometimes life takes precedence. 

3.  Children can make you feel happy, sad, joyful, depressed, impatient, loving, angry, and peace.  Sometimes all within the space of 10 minutes.

4.  Laundry is the true labor of love.  It is never ending and piles up at an alarming rate, but having lots of clean outfits for your kids to change into after they have smeared chocolate across their shirt, spilled their drink in their lap, covered themselves in dirt from head to toe, or decided that their plain white shirted needed stripes just shows them how much you love them.

5.  You can still type pretty fast with a baby sitting on your lap.

6.  Regular exercise makes me feel great, but sometimes it is hard to squeeze it in to a schedule revolving around kids.

7.  Heavenly Father blesses me not because I deserve it, but because He loves me. 

8.  Heavenly Father blesses everyone differently.  My blessings may not be the same as others blessings.  But in the end, we are all blessed.

9.  A baby’s laugh is one of the best sounds in the world.

10.  Men are SOOOOOOO different from women.  But some of the differences are what I love most about Nathan.

11.   Life normally does NOT go as planned.  But it’s ok, because things have a way of working out for the best.

12.  You can choose to be happy.  Today it’s my birthday and I’m going to make it a happy one!

I have learned many many other things as well, but frankly I have gotten tired of listing them.  See another lesson learned.  It’s ok to stop when you’re tired!   Hope your day is as happy as I’m planning on mine being.

Christmas in August

Sometimes cleaning up can be just like Christmas.  I finally went through Dallin and Mandy’s OVERFLOWING toy boxes.  We threw out all the broken ones and I made each of them pick a few things to give away.

At the bottom of Dallin’s toy box he found his train set.  He was overjoyed and has now played with them everyday since then!  Mandy and Layton have enjoyed the “new” toy too!

Speaking of Hair-dos

Mandy did her own hair. She often likes to wear it up in a little pony-tail or partial bun, but I wasn’t getting to it fast enough so she did it herself.

I thought that it turned out surprisingly cute. Very in vogue.

Artistically off-center. With the rough un-brushed look that seems so popular right now.

Regardless, just like Layton, even if she had done something really crazy with her hair, I would still think she was beautiful.

The Haircut

During the past month or so, we have had two different people who have mistakenly referred to Layton as a girl. We took that as a sign that it was time to cut his hair. I have to admit, I was a little sad because I loved his little mullet. The curls in the back were so cute. But, it was time for him to get the little boy haircut look.

It is not exactly easy to cut the hair of a 17 month old.

He wiggled and squirmed and turn his head from side to side. Oh, so much fun!

The cut isn’t perfect, due to a combination of his squirming and my only so-so hair cutting skills.

I think he looks cute though.

But then, I do willingly admit that I would think he was cute even if we had shaved his head bald.

Beach Time

Our niece Breanna recently celebrated her 8th birthday.  In just a few more weeks, another niece Sarah will celebrate her 8th birthday as well.  We are so proud of both of them because they both have decided to be baptized and make a covenant with Heavenly Father to keep his commandments.  It is such a wonderful thing to see two beautiful young ladies make such an important choice on their road to happiness in life.

In honor of Breanna’s birthday, we spent some time at the beach.  Can you tell that Mandy is just a little excited to get to the water?

Jump!

And Layton loves everything about it.

The water…

The sand…

And even going under…

And let’s not forget Dallin.  When we first got there, he had to sit on the sand and just watch the fun for a few minutes because he got in trouble for pestering Mandy.

But we finally let him get up and then he had a blast!

 

I love this picture because it looks like he’s walking on water:

And even though Mandy was having a great time, she did eventually get tired of me taking pictures.  Man that girl has some attitude:

All in all it was a great day!

Bad Housekeeper

You know you are not a very good housekeeper when after spending hours cleaning up the house, your six year old looks around and says, “Wow mom, it’s really clean in here.  Is there someone special coming over today?”  Yep, that’s right.  I ONLY clean if there are visitors coming.  Sad.  And funny, all at the same time.  Now if I could just get HIM to clean up his room.  Maybe I need to pretend that he is going to have a friend over and then he’ll clean it up :)

The next Beethoven

Only much cuter and happier.  And not exactly musically gifted (holding hands over my ears).   He’s got the wild and crazy hair thing down pretty good though.

Beautiful

No special story today. I took this picture of Mandy a few days ago and I just thought she looked so beautiful in it that I wanted to share. Love that girl to pieces!

Mr. Personality

Sometimes Layton is so full of personality that is just comes bursting out of him in weird and unusual ways.  Some examples of this behavior is smiling like crazy, squealing a high pitched squeal, running around in circles on his tippy toes and yelling out his exuberance to the world.  These are a few pictures that show this most bazaar behavior.  It doesn’t do it justice, but I think you’ll get the idea.  This little phenomenon of bursting personality always seems to occur right after his bath, just before we put him to bed.  We generally refer to it as the slap happy syndrome.

Layton sometimes inspires some rather interesting behavior from both Dallin and Mandy as well.

Exercise

You all know that I’ve been trying to exercise a little more lately, right?  Well I have found an excellent work out.  Try pushing three kids in a stroller designed for two.  It is pretty heavy and makes for some excellent resistance training!

If you have ever pushed a jogging stroller then you know that to turn it, you have to press back and down on the handle bar and lift the front wheel.  Try doing that with Dallin sitting right at the front wheel.  That’ll put some muscle on ya!

It is pretty fun to take them with me though.  Every now and then Mandy and Dallin will get out and jog a little bit as I walk.  If you’ve never seen Mandy jog on her tippy toes, you should ask her to do it for you sometime because it is quite funny.  But then, she is quite funny a lot of the time :)