Addy Lou

This spunky little girl has stolen our hearts.  The more I get to know her personality, the more I love her.  She is so determined which can be difficult at times, but I know she will accomplish great things.  she loves to dress herself and always picks dresses and boots or flip flops.  She will ask me to comb her hair and always has a very specific idea for how she wants it to look.  She will bring several bows and ask for all of them and then walk around like she is the queen of the world with 4 multicolored non-matching bows in her hair.  She brings some spice and zest to our family.  we sure love her!

Girly girls are so Sweet

Eloise and Adeline love to play with their girly toys so much.  They play with dolls, doll houses, dress up and coloring all day every day together.  They do play with Teagan's bat cave and cars and trucks too, but they always have just a motherly girly way about them.  

We went to visit great grandma Packer and Adeline just sat and stared at her case of dolls for the longest time.  She was completely taken with them and was just so darling.  I remember doing the exact same thing when I was little.  Grandma Packer has always had the most beautiful dolls.

I love having little girls and I feel so lucky that I get to experience being a mom to both boys and girls.  The experiences are so different and there are easier parts and harder parts for sure, but no matter what, being a mom is the greatest.  Kids are amazing and unique and each have something to offer.  I am feeling so lucky to be a mom today.

Big Strong Man

Teagan is becoming quite a man.  He didn't even freak out when we were cleaning out the garage and he found a dead mouse in the trap.  He actually brought it through the whole house to show me and then proceeded to wave it in front of all the girls' faces to make them scream.  They he disposed of the mouse and reset the trap.  It was fantastic, I am not interested in dead mouse duty!  

The other day he got bit with the service bug and made me so proud.  Our friends, the Ivins, have been having some crazy issues with their sewage and my dad helped them rebuild their drainage field but they were left with a backyard that was in need of some TLC, they had a low spot over their field which is what cause the initial problem so they had to build up that area.   They are Teagan's scout leaders and he had seen it and asked if he could come help them.  So when we saw the truck go by bringing in the load of dirt he ran over to their house and proceeded to help them spread the dirt for several hours.  Me and the girls went to check on him and he had started an epidemic, there was another of the scouts and another neighbor that all had shovels and rakes and were working hard.  We all ended up helping and took a quick dinner break and then went back to it.  When it got to be 8pm Teagan was so disappointed that we had to leave, he couldn't stop talking about how awesome it was to help their family.  When all the other kids stopped to play around, he stayed and worked even harder.  He pushed wheelbarrow loads of dirt all over dumping them where Jeremy told him and then he would jog back and refill the wheel barrow.   He prayed that he wouldn't be sore the next day and was fine, but the following day he was crawling around the house because he hurt so much.  

I just can't believe he is growing up so fast.  I want him to stay little, but I also love seeing the amazing man that he is becoming.

General Conference

We got to spend Saturday conference with the Lewis kids while Jeff and Julie were looking at some property.  Zac was being the hero of painting all the basement doors (YAY!!!!) and my mom came and helped me wrangle these 8 cute kids.  We all had so much fun coloring and drawing and lounging.  As always, we didn't get much out of conference because we couldn't hear it above the chatter of 8 small people, haha.  That is why they put them up on lds.org I guess.  

Sunday was so good and there were a ton of talks about the Holy Ghost and being a good parent and I need to read them all and highlight my favorite parts so I can remember all the gems.

Fantasy vs Reality on home projects

With a new baby on the way, I have become hyper focused on the basement.  I tend to do this and I am trying so hard to pace myself and not put my family on the back burner.  It is so hard for me when the end is growing so near!  I try to get the kids involved and working with me and take time to be involved with other things.  But the reality is that most of my time is spent in the basement working during the day.  

One day I decided to have the girls help me paint so that we could have a magical day working together.  They were so excited about it and loved helping.  The only trouble was that Adeline couldn't seem to keep the paint on the right walls and Eloise got so much paint in her hair.  

Usually, the reality is that I work from 9-11 am and the girls reign free upstairs and generally play really well together, then I come up (and try to not flip out about the mess) and we have lunch and switch the laundry and read books, and then I work again after lunch while Addy naps and Eloise watches a movie or colors or something.  One day their free reign upstairs didn't go very well.  I came upstairs and found that Adeline had taken off all her clothes and tried to swing like Tarzan on our curtains and broke them.  Luckily, I listen to excellent podcasts while I work and I had been listening to one about not being surprised when people in our lives (kids, friends, parents, spouse...) do things that they have a tendency to do and have done many times in the past...  So I wasn't surprised, I wasn't particularly happy about the events, but at least there was no initial shock and freak out.  She is two and was left unsupervised for a couple hours, she also has a vivid imagination and a tendency for destruction, how could I possibly expect anything else then a tarzan swinging from the curtains, especially since they had just watched that movie.  It was almost endearing...almost.

I know that one day we will finish and we're getting so close and it's very exciting.  I'm trying and working so hard to prioritize my time.  The house has definitely been let go, that was an easy one.  I'm trying to hold strong to some quality time with the kids and Zac, making dinner, and reading my scriptures every morning.  We hope to have the carpet in by the 1st of May, it's so close I can almost taste it.

Princess Lunch Date

We got together with the Ivins and did a princess lunch date and it was so fun!  Eloise and Adeline loved it so much.  Eloise had big plans for what she would wear and how we would fix her hair and paint her nails and she checked several times to make sure lipstick was going to be allowed.  Adeline caught on very quickly to the enthusiasm and we spent a fun morning getting all dolled up.  It was so fun for me to take a little step out of my comfort zone and do something that made the girls so happy. They were in heaven!

Reese has super fun dress up clothes and was so sweet to let Eloise and Adeline borrow dresses and shoes to wear.  We went to cafe rio (because me and Brittney love it there) and the girls loved all the ooooohs and ahhhhhs they got from people in the restaurant.

Little girls are so much fun, I sure do love them!

Grandpa Fun!

My kids just love their grandparents all so much, we are lucky to have all of their grandparents living close by now and we get to see them all at least once a month or so which is really great.

My dad has been coming over to help with the basement a lot lately and every time he walks in the door the girls run up to him and ask to be thrown in the air, he throws them insanely high!  I can barely lift them up onto the counter to fix their hair and he throws them high enough to make me nervous.  None of my grandpas were alive when I was growing up so it is fun experience what it would have been like through my kids.  

They love their grandpa Kurt as well.  He is always good for a snuggle that turns into tickling and the girls love both.  They run up to greet him when he walks in the door too, there is just something about a grandpa.

I don't have any recent pictures of Teagan with any of his grandparents, but one thing I have noticed is that when Teagan has a game and his grandparents are there he plays so much harder and better.  It is so sweet, and I love that he pushes so hard to give his grandpa's a good show and make them proud.  We sure are lucky to have all these special people so close!