Visiting "Painty and the Brain"

My sister Melinda (aka Painty) and I had our new babies less than 2 weeks apart. We enjoyed visiting them last weekend for the blessing of their sweet baby Hannah.

Close Cousins - Hannah and Joshua

First Picture of our BIG Family

Emily and Joshua

Emily loves posing for pictures!

Dessie "shooting" Uncle Aaron with her stick

Andrew in his 'beaver's nest'

While the rest of the kids are having some good clean fun playing on the grass with sticks, our curious little Alyssa thought the swampy sandbox looked more inviting.



Lately Jacob loves to give me goofy grimaces when I take his pictures. Here are just a few.

A smile at last!

Jared and "The Brain" (aka Uncle Jacob) had a great time dreaming about their future cabin.

Face Trouble with courage, disappointment with cheerfulness and triumph with humility

Early this morning... around 1:00 a.m. I was reading Pathways to Perfection by Thomas S. Monson to keep myself awake long enough to feed Joshua without falling asleep, I stumbled upon the source of my new bathroom decor quote that I got to hang in the kids bathroom downstairs so they can see this reminder often.

I absolutely loved Elder Holland's most recent Conference address, and this quote in President Monson's talk "Yellow Canaries" reminded me of his message.

"Can we not appreciate that our very business in life is not to get ahead of others but to get ahead of ourselves? To break our own records, to outstrip our yesterdays by our todays, to bear our trials more beautifully than we ever dreamed we could, to give as we have never given, to do our work with more force and a finer finish than ever-- this is the true idea: to get ahead of ourselves.
To live greatly, we must develop the capacity to face trouble with courage, disappointment with cheerfulness, and triumph with humility."

As I reflected on this, I thought of how curt I've been lately in the early morning hours with my kids who awake me with a flood of demands when all I want is to get some rest after a rough night. I recommitted to be more cheerful when fatigued and to be more grateful that I am blessed with a large family to "give to" even when I'm not always in the mood, and to enjoy my work as a mother, because my children will be gone before I know it.

Good things:

• The quote my mom hung on our walls growing up stuck with me until now when I need to apply it. "Cleaning and scrubbing can wait til tomorrow For babies grow up we've learned to our sorrow So quiet down cobwebs and dust go to sleep I'm rocking my baby and babies don't keep"
• The rain is watering my peas, strawberries and lettuce so I don't have to:)
• Jacob did much better on the ISAT than he expected to
• Alyssa is chanting her ABC's in the background in random order
• I'm done with taxes
  

Time Flies - Joshua

Joshua is still such a sweet little guy. He typically just cries when he's hungry, needs his diaper changed or needs more gas drops. He's not picky about pacifiers or taking a bottle. I love to see some of his sweet smiles creeping onto his face in the early morning hours.

Joshua - 5 weeks (already!)

newborn

3 weeks old

4 weeks old

5 weeks & almost smiling

Easter Fun

On Saturday we started with our usual Easter tradition of coloring eggs.




We then all packed up in the car (not an easy feat) to head to an Easter egg hunt that a friend texted us about. When we reached the care facility hosting the hunt it was pretty barren and we thought maybe we were the victim of a practical joke, but it ends up that the egg hunt was on Friday not Saturday. So we had our own egg hunt in the backyard. One of Jacob's eggs rolled into the outdoor heat vent, but fortunately the next morning he found it had blown out and he enjoyed some warmed peanut butter m&ms:)


That evening Rebecca and I headed out to see Saturday's Warrior at the local theater...

Good Things:
Nice Thrift Store Finds
1:00 church with a newborn
Warm weather for several days
No one got burned with the mattress in the trampoline hole
Enjoying inspiring Easter videos about the Savior on the Mormon Channel
Watching Emily get excited about pulling out her summer "hand-me-down" clothes
Family Scripture Study in the Dark
Daffodils peeking up their heads in the front
One row of peas planted

Spring Break Fun

To start out Spring Break, Jared's dad came up to visit for a few days and used his expertise to help fix a few leaks and get our sprinklers up and running for the year.
After spending most of the break inside we made a fun excursion to have a picnic lunch at the new giant playground in town despite the overcast sky. It started to rain a little as soon as we got to the park, but the kids were having so much fun we decided to stay anyway.
Emily packed the picnic lunch for all of us.





I thought the "musical section" of the playground was pretty cool.


As we drove away with drenched pants and dripping hair, the sun finally started to peek through the clouds.