Enjoying Christmas time...

Some of my family was up north after dropping Drew off at the MTC, so we went to the South Town Mall to find Santa.  Sitting on Santa's lap this year went only slightly better than last year.  I put him on Santa's lap and he jumped right back off. 
But he REALLY enjoyed riding the train around the mall and the carousal.


I love this picture from my mom.

You didn't think I could do it did you?

Neither did I!  But it's all pieced together and hand quilted.  The only thing left is the binding.

The most exciting part is it's a one of a kind.

What do you think?

Sadness....

I am finding more and more that this world is FILLED with sadness.  It is impossible to escape.  This past week has brought a lot of sadness and heart ache for me and I am ready to make a change.  Since I can't escape the sadness I am working on focusing on the joy.  With sadness there is a lot of joy in this world.  This is one of my moments of joy:

Clear back for Mothers Day I received a special gift.  It came in the form of a crossword puzzle and when I finished filling it all out I was supposed to read through all the words and guess what they all had in common and then I would know my gift.  Turns out I got two tickets to Wicked in Denver.  A play I have been dyeing to see and missed my opportunity to see it in Salt Lake this year.

We dropped Chase off in Moab (again- I'm SUCH a great daughter, dropping my son off to my parents all the time), and drove to Denver.  It was a quick trip.  We went to the play, ate dinner, slept, and went and saw the temple in the morning and headed back home, but it brought a lot of joy to me.  We didn't take many pictures or I probably would have posted something about it earlier.  These are the only pictures from that trip.

New bed

This is Chase's new bed.  It's actually his crib with one of the side taken off.  We have been testing him to see if he is ready to move up to a bed so the new baby can have the crib and it's gone MUCH better than I thought.    I thought we would be back to the crib after one day.

-Saturday night we took it off.  We put him to bed and he never got out.  I opened his door to check on him before we went to bed and woke him up.  He ended up falling asleep in bed with us before we put him back down.
-Sunday at nap time I put him down and he got back up and played in his room for 45 minutes.  I went back in and took him into my bed and took a nap with him.
-Sunday night we put him down and left the door open a crack so I could check on him.  He got right up and walked right out of his bedroom holding DeeDee and Ray and giving us a look like, hey it's not bedtime yet.  We put him back down and closed the door and he stayed.
-Monday nap time I put him down and he got back up.  I went in after 1/2 hour and laid on the floor next to him for 20 minutes and he fell asleep.
-Monday night we put him down and he never got up.

We are learning and it's going better.  I think we may be confirmed in buying him a new bed and passing the crib down to the next little guy.

One things for sure, he loves feeling like a big boy in his new big bed.

Go shine your sink

I thought I would pass this website on in case it might interest someone else.  The FLY Lady.  This website is about helping you get organized in your house cleaning.  I'm sure that most of you already have a good system down, but I don't.  Some of the things I like about this lady's system.

-You work in small steps.  She never has you spend a whole day cleaning.  It's all about what you can do in an hour here or an hour there, but since you have a system down and you do it everyday you don't have to spend a whole day cleaning.
-She's about forgetting perfection.  Her theory is that as women we want perfection so much that we struggle doing some things if we can't get it done perfect.  She has you do what you can, when you can.
-Once you get her system down, she helps you write your own system that fits your house and your life better.
-She gets you into a routine so you don't have to wonder what to do or where to start.
-Step #1 was to go shine my sink.  It may be the only clean thing in my house right now, but by golly it's sparkling in there.

FLY is an acronym for:  For Loving Yourself.  It's all to avoid CHAOS: Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome. 

Her website is hard to navigate and this probably isn't for everyone (especially if you are the one who already has this figured out on your own).

Give it a try, Go shine your sink.

We will miss you Debbie-

Today my aunt Debbie passed away after 51 years of living with cerebral palsy.  This picture comes from a book I made for him to practice learned names.  It has since become a book he loves to read and refers to as "Debbie".  For one reason or another he grew really attached to this image of Debbie and looks for it as soon as he sees the book.  When he wants to find the book he asks where "Debbie" is.

I feel sadness when I think of the fact that Chase probably won't remember her, and our next little guy won't have even met her.  I do, however, take great comfort in the knowledge that she is in a better place with loved ones who have already gone on. 

We will miss you Debbie!

....and this makes 5!

little grandsons for my parents. No granddaughters. We are thrilled (except when I realize that I will now have TWO overly energetic little guys running circles around me :).

The ultrasound went well. They had us a little scared. After the Ultrasound tech had finished the ultrasound, a doctor came in and explained that some things didn't show up as clearly as they would have liked. He began looking at the baby's heart from all angles for about 20 minutes. In all the ultrasounds I have had, they have never taken 20 minutes just looking at the heart so I started panicking.

I gave Daniel a look that said " are you as worried as I am?" and the doctor answered for me. He apologized and said that he wasn't seeing anything wrong but was unable to get a picture of the 4- chambers of the heart. With great relief, everything looked good.
Don't ask me what exactly you are looking at here, but somewhere in there are little boy parts.

We weren't been able to come up with any boy names that we agree on so we were kinda hoping for a girl to make it easy on us, but we finally have a couple boy names that we like, so I am feeling relieved about that as well.