You don't have to read...I'm just whining.

I feel so wipedout tired today. Jack and I have been staying up so chatty the past few nights, which I cherish and we need to do more often. But it is whooping my tooshie during the day. Today was one of those days that I wanted to leave the TV on and go back to bed, although I haven't done that, so I need that much credit. I had my "visiting teacher" come over today who is actually a good friend so we ended up, of course, just talking for almost three hours so that really helped me make it through the day. Then Emma had her group violin lessons this afternoon and she absolutely LOVES her teacher so that also helped. Her teacher is incredible. I love her! After every lesson Emma tells me how much she loves it. She's growing up so much. It makes me so happy and sad. I was pushing Jackson in the stroller on Saturday while she rode her bike and we have a neighbor down the street with six foot privacy walls around his whole house with the only opening when he opens his driveway gate. I had no idea he was coming but missed Emma by MAYBE 2 inches and I had to back up Jackson in the stroller so he didn't get hit. They waved at me like all was well and drove away. I don't think they had a clue they almost hit my little girl. Had she seen them and hesitated, they would have hit her hard. I was so grateful we had had family prayer a few minutes earlier. We're going karoaking tonight for FHE. That's always a good time. We don't go near as often as we used to. And I'm so tired today, that I don't want to go tonight, but Emma's friend is celebrating her birthday there tonight. I should be fun, and I'm sure I'll perk up when I get there. We'll see how perky I can get.

Another little Tribute!

So I stole this from a friend's site (Thanks, Cathy!). It's an awesome tribute to President Hinckley. I am among the worst, I am sure, at expressing my feelings...which no one can say better than my husband...however, with the passing of a prophet who I loved so much, I haven't felt like I can express even this very well. Anyway, this little tribute was AWESOME!!! Enjoy!

http://www.onetruemedia.com/shared?p=4e0f7d2451b15b77cbbf36&skin_id=601&utm_source=otm&utm_medium=text_url

Bittersweet

I'm sure I am feeling like many of you tonight. A little over an hour ago, I got the call that President Hinckley died tonight. How did you react to that? I didn't break down crying or anything close to it, it was more just absolute shock. Why should I be shocked? He was 97 years old! But he was just awesome! And just spoke at our stake conference 2 weeks ago today on tenderness in marriage with your spouse. It's just unexpected because I never heard he was sick or anything, but he was surrounded by family when he died so he must have known it was coming. I'm so happy for him to be back with his wife. He was so tender and sweet whenever he spoke of her and never failed to mention how much he missed his eternal companion. How awesome a reunion that must have been. I really don't mean to make light of anything, so I hope it is not coming out that way. I love our prophet. He was so happy and vibrant and a man of God that you could not deny that what he was saying was true. You can choose not to follow the counsel yourself, but you cannot deny the power of truthfulness behind the words of God that he spoke. I am going to miss him and his words in general conference and seeing his smile and walking with his cane and his humility when "We Thank Thee, Oh God, For Our Prophet" is sung. I got to sing that to him a few years ago and it was a fantastic experience. I hope everyone else is okay tonight, too.

A few pics that I forgot to post on that last book I just wrote!

Bruce, Jeanne, and Emma ahead of me on the hike.
Few from a spot on our hike. It was so pretty. I actually had dressed for cold weather including long johns under my pants and several layers of shirts and socks. Little did I know we would be playing in the water in great weather this day!

These few pictures were so beautiful that I had to post them cause remember it was NEW YEAR'S EVE....and this is what I was doing! It was great! This was part of that small hike I was saying. It was intimidating looking down in a camera to take this picture cause no one was around when I took it and I was dizzy!

The Past Christmas Season! This might be a long one with pictures!

First time on Santa's lap this season.

We started off with a lovely last day at Disneyland with Dad because he won't be able to go with us again before they expire next September (unless we get lucky and can break away or a day...doubtful). It's decorated so beautiful at Christmas time. Especially It's a Small World.

A picture of me and the kids at Disneyland. I had to put it in there just because I don't get pictures of me and the kids together that often.

Her second (at least on camera) time on Santa's lap.

Emma obviously enjoying grandpa's reading and hanging on to every word!

Grandpa reading his traditional Christmas Eve "How The Grinch Stole Christmas!"

So we had a doll be the baby Jesus because in Primary the day before the kids said they were told you weren't supposed to use real babies in the nativity because no one should be acting as the baby Jesus. WHAT?!? Has anyone else heard this and can you give me a good reason why? Babies are so sweet and perfect. Do you really think this is offensive to Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ? I have a hard time thinking they don't think it is just as sweet as the rest of us do. I think it is a bunch of picky Mormons throwing out their opinions...unless this came from the First Presidency, in which case I will humbly and repentingly retract my statement and follow the "rules" from now on.

Jack was the donkey. And a very good donkey, too, I might add.

Emma got to be Mary in our Nativity this year. She was VERY excited about that because she wanted to be that in her school program, which we weren't there for anyway, so it's a good thing she wasn't.

Jackson hated being so bundled up and wanted someone to sit by him in the snow the whole time. But at the very end I forced him to go down with Grandpa and he thought that was pretty cool and then asked to do it a couple more times.

Emma was not at all timid to sled for the first time. She thought this was the greatest!

Our whole family is on the sled. Jackson is hidden behind me. We had a blast!

One of the few pictures I feel like I am in. I am always the one taking the pictures. I didn't have my camera this day so my brother in law, Bruce, took these. Thank you, Bruce, for taking my picture!

This was at the Huntington Gardens where they filmed the statue part of Wedding Planner where Mathew Mcconahey (no idea how to spell his name) glues his hand to the statues manly man parts. So a quick story. I hold grudges, unfortunately. It is a burden that I bear. ESPECIALLY when it comes to someone offending me with me kids. So we get to this part called the Zen Garden, I think, and it is sand with rocks put in it and they have made the rocks islands and designed the sand to look like waves. It was really cool looking. So Jeanne, Emma, and I go to this garden and Emma picks up a rock and throws it in and another visitor like us says "little girl, don't throw rocks!" That's fine, although I was about to say the same. So I say "thank you, we won't do it again" and he says "I wasn't talking to you, I was talking to your daughter." A-hole. (sorry, I was so angry at that!) (and no, I just thought that, I didn't call him that) So I said something along the lines of Well I am her mother and I will take care of it with a very disgruntled "thank you for your concern" at the end. He was such a jerk. She's a little girl, first of all, and if you're going to be mad, be mad at me for not taking her to enough of these places for her to know better. We only go to outdoor camping/park places that when you see a rock, you pick it up and throw it, dangit.

Just walking.

Cute picture...Jackson was too scared to sit on a hand!

So this is the day we went to downtown LA to see the Walt Disney Performance Center and we went to this GREAT farmer's market that had beautiful fruit and vegetables. This picture was outside of an art museum that we didn't go into! Very fun picture, though.

Jackson obviously didn't have any problem relaxing either, although he is still very reluctant to go anywhere near the waves. He is so scared.

Emma playing with Aunt Jeanne. She had so much fun having them here with baby Beckett. Although, Jeanne, I haven't heard her sing the Beckett Bear song since you left!

So we spent New Year's Eve at the Point Dume in Malibu. We had a fun lunch at the Hideaway Cafe and then played in the water and hiked to some beautiful lookout viewpoints. The views were breathetaking! It loved that it was December 31st and I was on the beach...especially after FREEZING in Idaho and Wyoming.

So somehow we were totally blessed with seats at the Rose Parade this year. I wasn't even planning on going because Jack had call that day and like I really want to venture out in three million people with two active kids and go to a parade. But because Jeanne and Bruce were there and wanted to go, which also meant I had help, we did it. At church two days earlier we had a friend tell us they had a tradition of staking out a spot and guarding it the 24 hours before the parade and invited us to be a part of it. So we dropped off chairs the day before and had front row seat for this parade. IT WAS INCREDIBLE!!!!

Us in front of the float for transplant patients. They were holding pictures of their donors. I thought it fitting to be in front of this with my dad being a transplant patient.

The guy from Sesame Street that has been on that show since TV began. He was so cute and excited that everyone was cheering so loudly for him!

The floats were so awesome! The best part is that everything you see is absolutely made out of plants or seeds from earth! Everything had to be natural...I learned this there. That made it even better to see the brilliant color and how creative the got and it was fun to learn about the volunteer efforts that go into making this parade happen. We will so go to this every year we are here.

A Little About my Kids

Just an adorable picture of an adorable boy!

I just needed to post a couple good pics of my kids. I cannot believe how grown up they are. Jackson is talking and communicating like crazy and I'm so impressed with how well he can sing, too. This boy brings so much laughter and happiness into our home and makes it hard to be in a bad mood for very long when he either makes me laugh at anything cute he does or is so sweet and wraps his little arms around my neck and I get a big kiss (or lick if he is pretending to be a dog or cat). He's so my little happy boy. I just want to kiss him like crazy. I have constant stories that I'm calling to tell my mom and husband and I'm totally drawing up blank right now. He wakes up every morning and asks to listen to the "Oh, Oh!" song which is Good Morning Baltimore from Hairspray. And he knows that CD so well that if Emma or I am singing it he randomly screams out the next part like yesterday at lunch Emma was singing and at the perfect moment he screams out "nicest kids in town"...not in tune, but in the perfect rhythm. And when I tried to get him to do it for my mom on the phone...I say that part to remind him and he started belting out the ooh's tha came right after it in the song. He's just got so much going on in tha little brain. He's so boy, although because of his older sister he gets very excited to see princesses. But if you sword fight with him or pull out the toy guns he is in heaven. And dancing is most definitely his specialty. We went to a guitar store today to get some recording equipment and there was a room with speakers all over and strobe lights going and music playing the whole time and I was so wishing I had a camera for these kids. I was laughing my head off at how dang cute they are. Being a mom has been very fun this week. I think my first trimester is officially over because I have felt so good this week and had so much fun.

A dress for Christmas from Grandma

I feel like I write about Emma a lot more than I do about Jackson. She is just so grown up and is making so many big choices now. We were at Target on Thursday peeking through their 90% off stuff, which I totally scored on, by the way! So there was this little Christmas Dora the explorer ornament that had candy inside of it and it was obvious that other kids had been in it. She ate one before I even saw the ornament...can you blame her? Candy just sitting out in the open? Anyway, so i asked her what was in her mouth and she showed me where got it and I explained that that was not a good choice and told her we needed to show a worker and say we were sorry. That, as you can imagine, was very scary to her. She cried the whole way to the front of the store and kept telling me she was sorry, and I wasn't mean or angry or anything, I just thought it was an awesome learning experience. So she was dawdling behind which worked well for me so I could explain to the checkout guy what we were going to do and to bear with me (fortunately it was not busy). She stayed hidden behind me through the whole checkout and said she didn't want to do it. And when it was over she kept telling me to tell him. Anyway, we walked away for a few minutes to talk and I told her about some nail polish that I stole when I was her age and how scary it is for me to say sorry, too. Anyway, she said she would do it and she walked right up to him and said "I'm sorry" and that was good enough for me. He came up to us as we were leaving the store and said she was going to be a strong woman someday. Emma was so sweet. I think she was a little overwhelmed with emotion because she just broke down crying when we left. I couldn't help getting teary, too. I was so proud of her cause that just takes guts to do. She went home and when she said the lunch prayer she prayed about having to say sorry about eating the candy. Was I wrong to make her feel so bad? I don't think she recognized it was stealing...and she shops with a mom who munches on the crackers she is about to buy when she grocery shops. I don't regret doing it because I think she really learned a lot from it, but did I create a situation for her to feel bad when she may not have necessarily needed that kind of pressure? I don'tknow. That man was true, though. She is so on the track of becoming a strong girl. She's incredible.

Good News!

Alright, so here's the deal. Many of you may know this, but I'm officially announcing that I'm pregnant again. Here's another deal....I'm barely into my second trimester and can you say holy weight gain batman? My sister in law is wondering if I am having twins (does this sound familiar Jani?) Except for my weight is actually from the amount of food I'm consuming. The only thing that I can say that I'm really happy about is that I don't mind the weight gain. It's weird to me because I'vebeen a person who worries some about my size, but I really just don't care. Anyway, baby #3 is well on the way, but because it's #3, I still haven't seen a doctor or made an appointment for that matter because the longer I wait, the less time I will be pregnant in my mind (other than the feeling like I want to hurl the better part of the day). However, my last period was Sept 26th so if one of you would figure out my due date I would appreciate it! :) I really want a girl cause I love looking through Emma's old baby clothes, but everything is telling me it's a boy so I guess I'll find out in a month or so. Gotta make that darn doctors appointment! Congratulations to me!

PS I need to say that yesterday, my daughter was one of the few people in this world who have sat in a Frank Lloyd Wright chair. We were at the Huntington Gardens Museum and one of the art exhibits was his chair and she hopped up there and sat down. She had more than one adult telling her to get down quickly. Poor Emma, we have not cultured her enough in places like this and there were way too many times she was getting in trouble. I love that sweet girl!