Happy Mother's Day!

I had a fabulous Mother's Day weekend. Friday night Todd and Evan went on their first father's and son's camping trip and had a blast. All day saturday we worked out in the yard getting a small garden planted. The kids had a blast playing in their kiddie pool in the shade. That evening we grilled hamburgers, stuffed jalepenos, corn-on-the-cob, and watermelon. It was a beautiful day too!

Today Todd woke up just before 6 and made me a special breakfast in bed (something he has never done for me before). He made and "adult" grilled cheese sandwich that he had heard about from someone at work. Since he had never made it before, he got up extra early so he could figure it out. It was so sweet! He even made a little menu with checkmarks and had the kids bring it in to me (of course he had the preferred meal choice starred and frist on the list). It was adorable and made the day so special.

All in all, this has been the best Mother's Day I have ever had. I absolutely am in LOVE with being a mother!

Easter Pictures

I took these pictures the week after Easter since I worked Easter sunday. We spent a whole 10 minutes at the temple with the wind blowing my hair in front of my face. I prayed I got some good pictures and I was very pleased.

I wish, I wish

I think most of the comments I make about this house start with those two words. Today I want to make my house mine by throwing paint on the walls and getting more decorations up. Then I decide on colors and realized EVERYTHING clashes with the horrid green carpet. I wish.... I could replace this carpet!

I'm caught in the place where I want all the fix-ups done at once, and there isn't enough money to do even one of them. All in time, I know!

Wish We Had Our Garden

So the last post told of sprinklers not being fixed, which now are Yay! I've realized the reality of how much lawn we have when I did the first mowing... with a push lawn mower. Holy cow! All I can say is that I better lose some weight this summer!

We took the kids to the temple grounds this morning to take some pictures of them in their Easter clothes. I love that my kids pretend to be royalty and the temple is so special to them. Evan is always saying things about "when I get married in the temple..."

So, with the last post I said I hope the sprinklers would be fixed soon, and now they are! With that said, the next post should have our garden going. I can wish, right?

We did get our playset put back up. Now our yard looks like our yard, and the kids are really happy. As we were digging through stuff, both of the kids found their life jackets and wore them around all day. Evan even added his bike helmet. It's pretty bad when the parents put together the playset, and the kids play on it wearing bike helmets and life jackets. Don't they trust us?

Hello Again

I don't blog much these days. Since we bought a house and sold one in the past few weeks, our time has been scarce and stress has prevailed at our house. The selling of our house was sad and we were angry about how the appraisal turned out, but the young couple who bought it love it and they are adorable. That being said, our new house is great. We have a lot of kinks to work out before we can get our grass greener and the house less green, but it will all take some time. We just have to be patient!

Our kids have been so good with all the stress surrounding them. They are loving the house too. It's hard to believe that Evan is nearly done with kindergarten. He has done so well this year. The thing that excites him the most is that he can now pick up any book and read it to us. We are incredibly proud of how well he is doing. He has picked up naughty words and behaviors from school though and willingly shares them with Madi. Grr!

Madilyn is all drama and emotions. A girl, right? She speaks so much better than Evan did at this age. I love watching her talk because her eyes are SO expressive! She is always the little shadow following me around the house all day. I just wish the kid would stop getting sick all the time. I swear her sicknesses come from her sucking her fingers. How in the world do I get her to stop?

Someday we will have all of our boxes unpacked, and the house more organized. Between both of us working full-time and trying to get the sprinkler system in the yard fixed, there hasn't been a lot of time for putting things in their rightful places. I was just glad to get pictures up on the wall. We still have a lot to do, but we are glad we decided to make the move and be out of our 2 bed/ 1 bath and into a 3 bed/ 2 bath with an acre of land. Plus, Central has been great!

Thoughts on Being a Nurse

Being a nurse is hard, especially when I have kids to care for at home and feel guilty for workig full-time. I would stay at home if I could. Some days are really hard at work--draining stress, difficult patients, or the all-too-common bickering amongst fellow staff members. Then you couple all that with the terrible economy and the news of no raises and the loss of hospital income. Grrr... sometimes I wonder why I wanted to be a nurse in the first place.

This week I floated to the medical-surgical floor on a particularly busy day. I think we turned over half the census with new patients... some of them so time-consuming! The one thing that makes me sad about what I saw that day was the after-math of the lifestyle changes some of the patients were experiencing. Thank you work of wisdom! I came home tired, sad, and so glad that I get to work in OB.

In stark contrast, the next two days I spent a lot of time with a labor induction of a sweet family who was so appreciative of my care. They thanked me many times over for the care I rendered. Then the icing on the cake... 16 minutes before the end of my shift after two days of an agonizing induction for this young lady, her baby made its presence. I love birthday parties! Life is such an amazing miracle! Every time I help with a delivery, feeligs of amazement consume me. This partifular family made me feel like a million dollars with the appreciation they showed me.

Yes, I am happy that I chose to be a nurse. Thank you to all those who thank their nurses!

6 Days until 6 years old

I can't believe how quickly my little Evan is growing up. Starting school seems to be the point where your kid becomes "BIG." Talking back, making friends, and making me SO SO proud! Evan has been such a joy and blessing to us since the day he was born. Something about his chocolate brown eyes and gorgeous smile just sucks me in, and he has the sweetest personality to go along with to good looks! I feel like the luckiest mom in the world to get to claim this little man.

So what are we doing for the special little man? We are taking him to the Arizona Museum of Natural History so he can see the dinosaurs. It's going to be a fun day celebrating with this man dinosaur style!

12 more days until Christmas

Christmas season is fun this year. Evan is finally old enough to really be into it and has hit us with loads of questions! But, he is still gullable, and that is twice as much fun! Madilyn is really excited too.

This past months has been filled with sickness, sewing, work, karate, and lots of time with the kids outside.

We have nearly finished the porch on the back of the house. Now it just needs a little more paint and some rain sealing on the roof. Wohoo! We thought we'd have to wait until next summer to enjoy it, but the weather has been so nice that we are already loving it!

I promise to one day learn to post more pictures. I post them all on facebook though, so I don't see the need to do both.

I hope your house is as excited about Christmas as mine is!

I can't believe it's almost November

It seems like this year in particular has gone by so quickly. Todd and I are both working full-time and he is still going to school full-time online. Because of this, we just don't have much spare time. My only hope is that at some point, we will start enjoying our time more. It feels like the time we have with our two beautiful children is quickly slipping away. Working full-time at with my kids so young just breaks my heart. Although I wouldn't want to stay at home all the time, full-time is just so hard! The only consolation is that our kids love their babysitter and really enjoy and look forward to the days they spend there. They are such good kids too!

Evan started karate in July, and it has kept us quite busy, but he LOVES it! We love watching him too. It makes me proud to watch him gain so much confidence from it. He is really good at it too! In a few weeks he will be participating in his first belt exam to get his yellow belt. He is so excited! He starting to get really interested in being strong and beating bad guys.

For Halloween this year, Evan was Batman and Madilyn was a princess. They had so much fun at the trunk-or-treat and then we went to a few houses afterward so they could knock on a few doors. Evan asked about Halloween constantly for over a month, so we are waiting to mention Christmas to him.

We bought land last year hoping to build a house on it in a few years. I wish we would have waited a little longer. We were trying to move back to St. Johns for awhile, but have since decided to stay here in the Gila Valley. With the economy the way it is, the houses near where our land is are not selling, and we are afraind to build since Todd is not finished with school and working his dream job. We also have bills we need to pay off, but because we are putting such a huge chunk of money toward our land, we aren't getting anything paid off. So, we decided to put our land back up for sale. I am praying that we get it sold quickly! It is so sad to let go of a dream. The land is 1.7 acres of horse property way out away from busy streets (like the college street we live on now) and is backed by BLM land. It has a GORGEOUS view of Mt. Graham and the surrounding smaller mountains. We really fell in love with it. I hope someone else does too. There is just no way that we can afford to build a house on it in the next year, and we HAVE to move into a bigger house sooner than the 4 years we have left to pay on it.

The house we live in now is too small for our family of four, and there is no way we can fit another child in it if and when we have one. We haven't decided to rent or sell our house yet. So many decisions!

Maybe It's Time to Start Again

It's been a long time since I've posted a blog. Partly because I got a new camera and can't find a place that makes it easy to downsize my pictures so they'll load to blogger. Any suggestions?

My neighbor and dear friend died from cancer last night. She fought off breast cancer and then was hit with neuroendocrine cancer which spread throughout her entire body. She was in a lot of pain at the end, but even last thursday when I was able to say my last goodbyes, she was alert and taking visitors. It has been the hardest two weeks I've ever dealt with emotionally. I have been holding my kids more over the past months and spending as much qaulity time as I can. It really opened my eyes to the precious things in life to see my nieghbor dealing with this terrible disease. She was so strong.

Glena taught me so many things. When we first moved here, I didn't have any friends and I was miserable. She was the best neighbor and we quickly became friends, as did our children. Her kids are 4, 5, and 8. Glena helped me with my sewing. She was so goofy and fun in the was she interacted with her kids. I was always wondering what game she would think up next to entertain her adorable children.

I think about her kids and hurt for them. I only hope I can do enough to help them through this time. Kids are resilient, thank goodness, but the loss of such an amazing mother is going to be so hard for them! Another friend and I are putting together a book for her kids that will be filled with memories, stories, and pictures from her friends (her family has on from the family). Do any of you know of a good place to publish such a book in a hardbound book for a decent price?

I feel angels around her home right now and feel such a peace. She was one of those friends that if you knew her and were her friend, you felt like a celebrity because everyone who know her loves her. I have been so lucky to have her in my life, and in my kids' lives. I have a sweet last memory of our last visit a few days ago, and that will carry me through the next few months.

I promise to post more if I can find a good place to shrink my pictures, because I have TONS to share. Until then, please say a prayer of comfort for her family.

One step closer....

to a finished yard!

Before:




After:




Now we just need to add the edging rocks around the grass!

Now you know what I do for exercise: haul gravel!

Two years old!

Still my little redhead!

Madilyn is still in the 98th percentile for hieght and weight (34.4 pounds and 3 feet 1 inch tall). I hope that sometime soon she will slow down! Poor girl is going to be a giant!

We have enjoyed Madilyn so much. Her little personality is SO much fun! Yes, she is two in all of it's glory, but she is just so precious!

I know

I am so bad at keeping my blog updated. It seems like our lives are a continuous round of the same things happening over and over again. We are still enjoying this cooler weather by spending most of our spare time working in the yard. It has been a great workout for us, and it's looking really great.

Our kids keep us so busy and always make us smile. Evan is registered for kindergarten next year. It's amazing that he is old enough to attend school. To me, he is still too little to be in school. He is so excited to ride the bus!

Madilyn is always a charmer with her painted on smile and fiery personality to match her hair. She has been talking a lot more and is so bossy.

It makes me so proud to see my kids loving eachother and playing together.

Todd just finished his first semester of his bachelor's program in computers. Three more to go! It is so hard for him to work full-time, go to school full-time, and find time to spend with the family. He is juggling it all really well I think.

Other than that, our lives are just filled with typlical life.

Weekend at the Ranch

Madilyn is two!

Madilyn's birthday isn't until the 31st, but we celebrated it this weekend with family at Todd's Grandpa's ranch. Here are a few cute photos of the birthday girl. We sure enjoy having this happy little red-head in our family. I could watch this girl for hours and never get bored. She is so cute and funny! If she's not mad, she has an adorable grin painted across her face all the time.

Flyin' kites

What we do for fun!

Todd and I decided that instead of spending money on crazy stuff for our anniversary, that we would fence in our yard instead. Living on a college street is really scary with little kids. Our yard was fenced along he back, but not on the sides of the house. So we had our first chain-link experience. Now our kids have a nice, safe place to play.

Spring

The two weeks of nice spring weather that Arizona gets is here, and although my blog might miss me, my yard is looking great. I will post pictures later!

So much love

I know I don't write a whole lot on my blog, because I just love to share pictures of the cuteness that surrounds me. I have great kids, and even though my camera is really crappy, they are still so cute!

I have so many reasons to love these adorable little kids. They make me so happy every day. I have had a lot of fun conversing with Evan since he now understands so much. He has been telling the funniest stories! Madilyn is getting a little more hair, and we are having fun with it. They are really liking each other more, but with that comes more fighting. We just keep trying to get them to love each other more, and reminding ourselves that this is just a phase.

Todd and I had a great weekend. We were able to have his parents and older sister and her family over on Saturday for steak and visiting. I am the luckiest woman in the world to have such an amazing husband! We are looking forward to celebrating our 7th anniversary in a few weeks.

Aunt Brindi

This weekend I took the kids down to see Aunt Brindi/ Uncle Brandon and Grandma and Grandpa Shreeve. Todd was working, so we made the trip alone. Despite having to take the back streets around to Superior, we finally made it!

We did a little shopping, took the kids to a really fun park, and spend an evening visiting and making yummy food.