Spotlight on Eliza

I've promised Eliza that I'd do her spotlight for months now.  I'm finally sitting down to do it!  With her birthday last Saturday (the 13th), this seems like an extra good time to spotlight my wonderful little girl.

Eliza is everything I could ever ask for in a little girl - affectionate, beautiful (she's got such a unique beauty with her "platinum hair and violet eyes" - as my dad puts it and her freckles and dark eyebrows), graceful, smart as a whip (she writes whole essays on her own - because she feels like it - and can read chapter books already), musical (always singing some cute song in Spanish from school or something she heard once on the radio and already knows all the words to), artistic (she produces about 5 major works of art a day - collages, watercolors, sketches, artistic arrangements of items in a room, you name it...), kind (she gives me the sweetest notes almost every day and is almost always so kind to her brothers).  She's full of spunk and style and I love seeing the outfits she comes up with.  She's into everything girlish from nail painting to dolls to mothering everyone younger than her.  She's also highly dramatic and emotional - but that keeps things exciting!

 

While being "all girl," she's still tough and adventurous and athletic.  She's a great little hiker and can go for miles and miles (she complains when we say we're going hiking but she loves it once we're out there and we don't hear another complaint from her).  She's also a great biker (got 3rd in a mountain bike race) and rock climber.  She's my only child who'll do the Jillian Micheals 30-day Shred with me from beginning to end.  I love that Liza is such a great combination of so many things!

Here's Liza with freshly painted finger nails and one of her snazzy outfits.  Below are a couple of her lovely, colorful art pieces.  Lots of kids simply eat their Halloween candy but Eliza decided to celebrate all the candy she ate by creating a collage with all the wrappers.   

Sorry this one is sideways - I tried and tried to get it turned but had no luck.  When I was on the phone one time after promising to take Eliza and the twins on "a loop" around the neighborhood, Eliza got sick of waiting for me and rather than interrupt my phone conversation, she wrote me a very frustrated note.  Here's what it says in case it's hard to read sideways: "Cum! un!! now!  You !! sed! we!! wr! goin! to go! arawnd The lup!!"  I got off the phone pretty quick after this polite but firm reminder!

Here's the front and inside of a card Jared and I found on our bed:

And here's Eliza ready for her birthday tea party with her beloved Christmas doll, Tasha (in the new princess outfit the twins got for her for Eliza's birthday) and the tiara and sash she dug out of somewhere.  This is a girl who dearly loves dressing up!  Every year, Eliza has insisted upon a proper tea party (with cucumber and peanut butter and banana sandwiches as well as lots of fruits, veggies and treats - but just apple juice for tea) as well as sugar cookie decorating for her birthday.  She was so cute about helping to set the table and arranging the food nicely on trays.

 

 

These are Liza's best friends - with no sisters, friends become extra important - Olivia, Hattie and Grayce

 

Can you tell how much these boys love their sister?  They couldn't ask for a better one.  And she's so good to them (most of the time, anyway).  Liza's got a little tomato soup (we had her favorite grilled cheese sandwiches with tomato soup for dinner) on her face - even a princess can be a sloppy eater, I guess.

I love you Liza Loo!

 

Happy Birthday Krawnchie Boo!

Krawnchie Boo is our house. The twins came up with this lovely name a couple years ago and somehow it stuck. Today was Krawnchie Boo's birthday and the kids came up with this for our celebration: clean the house ("Krawnchie Boo hates to be dirty"), make and eat cookies, have a dance party where we dance through every room in the house and top it all off with our favorite dinner (green chili chicken enchiladas) and a game night. It rained all day and we all loved just staying here and celebrating this wonderful house that we get to call home.

On February 6th 4 years ago, we moved into this house. The twins had just turned 1, Eliza was 3, Isaac was 4 and Ashton had just turned 6. The month leading up to moving into the house was sheer craziness with 4 preschoolers (two of them wild babies), one 1/2 day kindergartner, a hard deadline for getting out of our rental house and into our new house that really wasn't finished at all. A couple weeks before our move-in date, I remember telling one of the subcontractors that we were moving in on February 6th to hurry him along and he looked at me in credulously and said, "This here house ain't gonna be ready." I told him ready or not, we'd be moving in. What else could we do?

Jo and Aja helped out a ton and my Mom and Dad came down for a few days to help us push through the craziness. The twins spent quite a few hours fussing and whining in their pack-and-play set up on the front walkway and we tried to engage the other kids in somewhat helpful little jobs to keep them out of trouble while Jared and I painted and urged contractors along and dealt with one problem after another (the wrong baseboards were sent, several doors were wrong, we had to fire one set of painters and bribe a new set...). Plus we had to pack up the rental house. I felt like I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and Jared developed some sort of odd pain that felt like appendicitis and we spent the one evening that my parents had the kids so we could work like crazy on the house in the ER instead. We never found out quite what the pain was but he literally could barely move - might have been a kidney stone that broke up, might have been acute stress... I look back and have no idea how we managed to stumble through.

But somehow we did actually move in here on the target date of February 6th. One of the missing doors was the front door so we lived here for a week or so with just a piece of plastic for a front door and the first two weeks of living here involved living with a mess of contractors and projects. Plus we had the silly idea of showing our house during the Parade of Homes so that we could maybe get some homebuilding and interior design clients so we worked like crazy to make our house not only liveable but "showable" (the home show was mid February). As I write this, I realize we took on way more stress than we should have - but somehow at the time, this seemed like a good idea. So along with installing baseboards, finishing some painting, and the huge job of unpacking (not to mention taking care of 5 kids), we were hanging pictures, putting together crates of furniture we got wholesale through some connections and shopping for lots of odds and ends we needed to stage the house. In the end, even though the home show didn't result in many clients, it was very nice to have a deadline and push through so much stuff so that we could get on the business of living our lives again - and be able to do it in such a lovely and mostly-finished house.

October 2005

February 2006 (2 weeks after moving in we got the landscaping in)

Spring 2007 (I love all the flowers in the spring!)
February 6, 2010

Krawnchie Boo was a great house when we moved in. But four years later, Krawnchie Boo is so much more than a house - it's a beloved home. We've celebrated Christmases, Easters, Halloweens and tons of birthdays here. We've read 100's of books together and had over 200 Family Home Evenings and almost as many family movie nights, dance parties and game nights. We've cooked and eaten thousands of meals and made countless batches of cookies. We've hosted lots of little get-togethers and some great parties (our favorites: adult Halloween parties each year and our Children for Children concerts each Christmas). We've had literally hundreds of house guests. We've prayed and cried and celebrated and fought and laughed so much here. We've worked through big decisions and dealt with hard problems and had so much fun together within these walls. I've taught Joy School to 4 different Joy School groups here and hosted summer classes for the kids and their friends. We've cleaned every Saturday and we've gotten to know every nook and crannie. We've done piles of homework and piles and piles of laundry here. Jared and I have made a couple websites right here and sent them out to the world. We've seen our kids go from little babies to fun people who we love to hang out with.

We thought we'd build this house as a spec house - make it really nice so it would make us some money when we sold it after living in it for a couple years to avoid capital gains taxes. But we fell in love with this place - and since the house values went down, we're quite happily stuck here.

The once-pristine walls that we painted so carefully are now banged up, the cork flooring we had to drive to Vegas to pick up due to a shipping problem is now faded and worn, the furniture is a dinged up, the pricey maple doors and woodwork that we agonized over now has plenty of dents. But Krawnchie Boo doesn't really mind - so much living and loving is bound to leave its marks. And can a house really be a home without a few scars?

This afternoon, after doing a ton of cleaning and photographing the house so we could always remember how it looked at this point in our lives, we were celebrating with a smoothie when Krawnchie Boo talked to us. It was pretty darn cool. Through the speaker system built into the house, Ashton had this "text to speech" program he found on the computer say "Krawnchie Boo here, thank you for cleaning me. Can you please sing me Happy Birthday now?" The kids got these incredulous looks on their faces then broke into huge grins. We all sang happy birthday. Then the house said "thank you so much. I love you guys!" I was pretty impressed with Ashton for coming up with this! After that, Oliver and Silas kept everyone on their toes by saying things like "hey, don't make a mess! Krawnchie Boo hates messes!" or "We need to talk nice because Krawnchie Boo hates loudness and meanness." I guess having a house that talks and probably has feelings can be a good thing for your kids' behavior!

Everyone got a candle in their cookie and ice cream to blow out on behalf of Krawnchie Boo.

Here are everyone's favorite things about this house: (skip this if you want - I just recorded it for posterity- might be boring to anyone but us. I was sort of surprised by some people's favorite things.)

• Eliza -I love that our house can talk to us. And on regular days I love that whenever I'm in bed, I feel so safe. I like that there are lots of windows so we can see the beautiful view and I can draw it. I like that I have such pretty pictures on the wall in my room and all the colors look really nice together.
  
• Oliver - I love that I have tractor pictures and a drawer for all my special stuff in my room. I like that our roof keeps the rain from dropping on our heads in here. I like that we have a couch for reading books. I'm so glad our house has every food we want.
• Isaac - I love that we have a movie theater. I like that we can fit lots of stuff in our house and we have lots of cupboards for everything. I like that you can see the red rock mountains out the window and the wash. I like that we have a downstairs and I get to sleep down there.
• Ashton - I love the view and that we can play in the wash all the time. I like that we're really close to a bunch of hikes. The movie theater is awesome. I like that my room is really big and I have a huge closet and a cupboard for all my inventing stuff.
• Silas - I love that our house can really talk to us and I love that our house has computers in it and I have tractors and transformers to play with in my room and I have a picture of me and my cousins on a snowmobile in my room.
  
• Me - I love the mudroom where all the kids backpacks and shoes can be stashed away. I love the big kitchen and huge pantry that makes cooking so pleasant. I love all the paint colors and how they reflect all the colors of nature outside our windows. I love all the built-in storage. I love the speaker system that makes it so we can have music all the time (and love Pandora for the great mixes of music it makes for us). I love the way I can see the sun hit the red mountains from my bed each morning. I love the basement where the kids can be noisy and messy without driving me crazy and I love that we can have an adult party upstairs and a kid party downstairs at the same time. There are plenty of things I don't love and would have done differently if I had it to do over again - but there's a whole lot right about this house.
• Jared - He's not here right now but I think he'd say he loves his workbench and tools in the garage, the fact that he never has to mow the lawn (landscaping upkeep in included with our HOA fees), and the movie room (his baby when we built the house). I hope he's pretty darn proud of all the baseboards and casing because he did all that himself - serious big job. And I hope he's pretty pleased with the over all house since he was the general contractor on the house and oversaw every little thing that had to happen to get this house built - plus he worked alongside a lot of the subcontractors. Jared really built this house. I came up with the ideas and Jared made them into reality.
  

Photo Contest

On our website, The Power of Moms, we're having a photo contest and over the past few days, my email inbox has been filled up almost hourly with wonderful photos of moms and their kids - photos that show joy and love and that have filled up my heart with gratitude that I get to be part of the ranks of wonderful mothers who are changing the world, one hug, one story, one meal at a time.

If you'd like to participate in the photo contest, please send your photos in TODAY! This is the last day we're accepting photos. Click here to see the details of the contest.

Next week, we'll be posting all the photos we received and inviting everyone to come and vote on their favorites. Then we'll be featuring all the top photos on our site, awarding the winners with free Motherhood Book of Secrets books or Learning Circles materials, and using all these wonderful photos to really enhance The Power of Moms.

So if you've got some great photos of you and your kids or want to take some today, send them on in!

Amazing Travels

I'm sure lots of you might already be following my parents' blog about all their amazing adventures traveling and speaking around the world. But just in case - here's the link:
http://eyrealm.blogspot.com/

And my brother Talmadge and his new wife Anita are spending their "honeymoon" traveling and doing humanitarian service in Africa, the Middle East and now India (where they've met up with my parents and sister Charity to all serve together at a school for the children of lepers). Here's their blog:
http://talandanita.blogspot.com/

The kids and I have loved participating vicariously in their adventures through their blogs. We've loved learning about people who are so rich they're worried about their kids turning out OK (my parents speak to some high-powered groups of parents as they travel) and we've learned about lots of people who are so poor they're worried about getting their kids the basic necessities of life. We've seen beautiful things (the Taj Mahal, the great architecture and art of various places, the beautiful colors of India, the faces of gorgeous children of all colors). We've seen sad things (the feet and hands of lepers, the humble homes, the dirty streets, the children in rags). I'm so grateful for this chance to give my children a larger view of the world through these blogs and I thought you might enjoy doing the same.

Michael Jackson Sings "Clocks" and "Power Rangers"

Oliver and Silas worked hard on a special show for me yesterday and I thought you'd enjoy seeing it as well. They break into this song that they call "Clocks" all the time but I think it's actually Vida La Vida by Cold Play. And this video also features a new song they made up about Power Rangers - it's snappy, it's simple - sure to be a big hit. They attribute the whole thing to Micheal Jackson somehow. Oh these boys are fun!

My Downer Day

OK, so I was having a downer of a day yesterday. I was reading my sister Shawni's blog where her husband and kids wrote all these sweet things about her for her birthday (all of which I agree with whole-heartedly) and I wondered if my husband and kids would ever be able to say such nice things about me. So I started feeling down about myself as a mother and wife. Then I looked at my week and felt overwhelmed by all the things I need to do for Joy School and The Power of Moms and the kids' school - and started wondering if all this "extra" stuff I'm always doing really matters or if I'm just sort of running on a treadmill, getting nowhere at all but tiring myself out like crazy. My poor husband got the brunt of all my overwhelmed and frustrated feelings that don't entirely make sense now that I look back on them (I don't know how he puts up with me sometimes). I know it's awfully easy to fall into the "Compare Snare" (read my friend Allyson's great article on this here if you want). I know it's not healthy to compare. I know I need to do what feels right and take things bit by bit and not look at the big end goal and get overwhelmed. But sometimes I'm weak and I fall into these traps.

Anyway, my husband consoled me as best he could but I had a counterpoint about how I really wasn't very good to go with every positive point he brought up - so he gave up after a while and left me to wallow in my negativity. I did ultimately listen to some of what he said and recognize the validity of his points - he's so good to me. And I went to bed feeling better about things. Then this morning, here's what I found in my email in-box:

• a note from the local newspaper editor saying they would be running a story about the Power of Moms this week (so nice to see all the press releases and working to network with other mom websites starting to pay off)
• a whole bunch of blog comments dating back to last September that somehow just showed up today - many of them where wonderfully kind comments about things I'd said on this blog that really made a difference to people (I'd been wondering whether all these things I keep throwing out there were actually helping anyone).
• an email from "Ladies that Launch" with the title "Protect yourself from Negativity" - pretty clearly talking to me there.
• an email from my friend April linking to a great new article she wrote about taking small steps and not getting overwhelmed - Just Begin.
  
• an email from LDS "Daily Gems" offering this reminder: "I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little" (2 Nephi 28:30)
  

OK. I got the message. I love how the Lord sends us messages in so many different ways. Today He used my email inbox - since He knows that's were I got first thing each morning. I'm sorry for allowing myself to spiral down into familiar old traps. I can move forward now. Those shots in the arm really helped. I'm so blessed with inspiration if I can just stay open to it!

Oliver and Silas's Birthday

How can it be that my babies are FIVE! It seems like it really couldn't be that long ago that I was holding my brand new tiny little guys in my arms (here they are at 2 days old with a wasted, swollen mama after a nasty emergency c-section).

And I can still hold them - but just barely!

They had a great birthday. We had their favorite egg burritos for breakfast, they got to go to preschool and I came to the end of preschool with them, we got them burgers and fries to eat at the park for lunch (they think the drive-through is pretty darn cool). We picked up the big kids a little early from school and took everyone swimming at this big indoor pool with a waterslide for their main birthday activity. It was great - we had the ENTIRE huge pool and waterslide to ourselves and we all had so much fun. Then we came home to open presents and have their favorite mac and cheese and cake and ice cream.

Here are all the kids first thing in the morning, getting ready to open presents. The big kids were SO excited about the twins birthday and helped me set everything up and decorate the night before. There really weren't that many presents but when they're wrapped up in big boxes and bags, it makes for a pretty exciting birthday display!

Ashton and Isaac used some of their hard-earned money to give the twins some Transformers. Do you think they were excited? The new Transformers became the perfect birthday cake decorations.
Here's their exciting Transformers birthday cake. My cake decorating skills are non-existant - but the twins were thrilled and what the cake lacked in beauty, it made up for in taste - we all love homemade dense chocolate cake (when the cake falls, it makes some more interesting Transformers terrain...and makes the cake extra yummy and dense...maybe when the kids get older they'll realize how pathetic I am at making decent looking cakes but for now, they think my cakes are pretty wonderful).
Jared and I gave the twins some new costumes (they're so into dressing up). They were thrilled.

We had several free passes to the pool, the costumes we gave the twins were $5 each (75% off at a post-Halloween sale), we splurged on $3 kid meals at Wendy's for lunch (usually the kids just get a burger off the dollar menu, a big fry to share and water - so a kid meal is very very exciting for them - keep the expectations low and you get some pretty excited kids when you go beyond expectations!). They got thoughtful little gifts from their siblings, great new construction vehicles from their wonderful Grandma Loosli and they got to go on a special mommy date to Walmart the next day to pick out some more Transformers with their birthday money from Grammie. All in all, I think we spent about $30 on a full day of birthday fun and birthday presents for two birthday kids. Pretty good, huh? Yes, I'm cheap - but seriously, I don't think the twins could have been happier with their birthday. And with 3 adoring big siblings and two doting parents showering them with love and attention all day plus swimming and Transformers, the twins really had a fun day.

I love my little guys so much. They are more and more fun every day. Those first several years of super hard times have really paid off. All the crazy messes they made, all the diapers, all the feedings, all the getting up again and again in the night, all the wildness of so many little kids with so many mutually exclusive needs at all hours of the day and night - it was all worth it - SO worth it.

2009 Snapshot

OK, I'm going to blatantly copy my sister Shawni here (see her 2009 snapshot here - and see my sister Saydi's snapshot here). In the midst of capturing all the big events and trips and extra special moment and my musings about motherhood on this blog, I don't want to forget the little things that make up the fabric of our everyday life around here. There are so many random little parts of what we do around here that I don't want to forget - but that I probably will if I don't write them down. So here's my "word photo" of what our every-day life has been like in the last year:

When they wake up (usually at like 7am), the twins usually grab their pillows and head downstairs to hang out with their big brothers. It's turned into the boys' special snuggle and play time. When I tuck them in bed at night, they're always having to run downstairs to retrieve their pillows...

Eliza wants us to paint our nails together all the time and I think maybe I've gone along with the idea maybe once or twice. I've never been a nail painter but I realize Liza needs this special "girl" time with me so I should make time for it more.

Eliza does "art" all the time and loves doing her homework and writing stuff. She presents me with a special picture she's drawn or a sweet note that she's written for me at least once a day (it's often wrapped in wrapping paper with a bow and everything). She looks at me with a twinkle in her big deep blue eyes and says "mommy, I've got something for you!"

All the kids still call me "Mommy." I like it. Isaac toyed with calling me "mom" after a friend said "you call your mom mommy?" and he got self-conscious about it. I told Isaac it didn't matter what other kids called their moms, I still liked him to call me "mommy" because "mom" made me feel old. He happily switched back to "mommy" - it seems the "mom" thing didn't work really feel comfortable to him either.

Silas has learned to say his "L's" properly and makes a real point of enunciating them very clearly. I love how he says his name: SiLLLLas LLLoosLLLi. Oliver seems to have decided to stick with the "w" sound for the "l" and the "r" sounds for now. He's never one to be affected much by popular opinion.

Ashton finished all the Harry Potter books in about 10 days a couple months back, tore through several Narnia books and now he's on book three in the Lightening Thief series. The main thing he wants to talk about these days is Greek myths. He sneaks off to read all the time and reads under his covers when he's supposed to be sleeping.

I do all my kids' hair while they eat breakfast at the bar (didn't realize Shawni did the same thing until I read her 2009 Snapshot) - I just go down the line with a spray bottle and brush down the crazy sleeping hair. The kids cringe when the cold water hits their heads. The twins used to whine about it but a while back I pointed out that I was just doing their hair because I love them and want them to look nice so no one will laugh at them. Ever since then, Silas (and often Oliver) cringes when that water hits his head, then he says "thank you for doing my hair, mommy" in his sweetest little voice. What restraint!

The kids take lunch to school every day - a pb&j, an apple or pear, some carrots or snappeas or cucumbers, juice - pretty boring but they don't complain. Ashton puts the lunches together while Eliza empties the dishwasher and Isaac does the breakfast dishes.

The twins' hair is shaggy but I sort of like it that way. Ashton and Isaac fight off hair cuts like the plague. And I don't really mind putting off hair cuts because I'm the one who cuts their hair and cutting 5 heads of hair (I do Jared's too) isn't something I really look forward to - the whining, the hair everywhere. I still use the clippers we got for our wedding. I'm pretty good at cutting boy hair after 11 years. I'm a little more challenged with Eliza's hair.

We carpool with a little boy named Heath who lives in the next development. I try to plan ahead and get the kids to school on time but we're usually a few minutes late. Heath's a little kindergartener - but my kids love him and treat him like a little brother and Heath wants to play pretty much every day. But we usually only get in one play date a week with him. I love how my kids are so nice to younger kids.

We have pizza and movie night pretty much every Friday night. We've got the cheapest Netflix subscription (on DVD at a time) but it gives us unlimited instant movies (since Jared's got an old computer hooked up the the system in our downstairs movie room we can stream from the computer to the big screen - great for Hulu too - we don't have cable so we watch any TV shows via Hulu or Nexflix). Some favorite movies for this year: Bolt and Transformers (the twins' top picks), Romancing the Stone, Star Wars, Harry Potter, Pollyanna (even the big boys loved it). It's so fun having the kids old enough to enjoy watching some movies that aren't too little-kid-focused. Our favorite pizza for the past year or so is Papa Murphy's stuffed pizza with half meat lovers and half chicken and all the veggies (zuchinni, spinach, artichokes, onions, tomatoes, peppers) - one family size pizza is enough for all of us plus we have some leftovers. Yum yum yum.

We go for a hike every week - Saturday or Sunday after church (now that we've got morning church it's been the perfect way to keep the Sabbath Day holy as we commune with nature and enjoy being with each other on a laid-back beautiful hike/walk). Often we'll just walk the bike path in Snow Canyon or hike the great trails right behind our house. Sometimes we go to Zion National Park or other more adventurous places. This regular hiking means that the kids are excellent hikers and really never complain about the length or difficultly of a hike.

We bike a lot. I do quick bike rides to the nearest park with the twins when I need to break up my work and spend time with them. We bike to Bajio to get lunch on Saturdays sometimes (one of the kids' favorite things to do). We bike to near-by friends' houses. We all love to bike. Sometimes Ashton and Isaac and Jared roller blade and sometimes we throw some scooter riding in there - but we all love getting some wheels on and going. I used to pull the twins in the bike trailer and that became a more and more serious work-out as the twins got bigger and bigger. I'd huff and puff up big hills pulling about 100 lbs of weight behind me (twins' weight combined with the trailer weight). Now that the twins can ride their own bikes, riding my bike is so easy!

We love rainbows. Whenever there's a rainbow we all drop what we're doing and watch it and photograph it until it fades. I love when the kids come bursting in with "there's a rainbow!" And we love sunsets

We clean the house most Saturday mornings. The kids don't love it and neither do I but it has to be done. We're trying to make it more fun by giving smaller chunks of jobs and pumping up the music. Eliza usually cleans the baseboards and straightens the shoes in the mudroom. Isaac cleans the stools and chairs and ledges on doors and cupboards. Ashton does the downstairs bathroom and sometimes vacuums. Isaac folds laundry quite well. The twins get assigned to help various people. Jared and I vacuum and do bathrooms or oversee Ashton and Isaac doing bathrooms. I dust, dust, dust. This house gets so dusty! We try to do what we can do in an hour or so and call it good.

The kids go to bed at 8pm (Ashton and Isaac get to read until 8:30). I often read a chapter from a book with the kids at bedtime and we get into these great discussions about the events and ideas in the books we read. Favorite book for this year: Chasing Vermeer (I loved talking about art and coincidences with the kids...)

Jared does scriptures with the big kids at 7:45 while I do picture-story scriptures with the twins. We eat breakfast at 8am (oatmeal, cereal, eggs) and need to be in the car at 8:45 (although it's often 8:50 by the time we get out there) to go pick up Heath.

After school I try to have a snack out for the kids and we talk about their days. Eliza always has a lot to share - Ashton and Isaac, not so much.

Jared teaches Ashton guitar lessons and I teach Isaac piano and Eliza art. Our lessons are more sporadic than we'd like but they're great when we do them.

Ashton and Isaac do scouts one afternoon a week - that's all the official extra-curricular activities we've got right now - and all we can handle. There's so much I want to teach the kids myself - and so little time after school each day. And we don't have any extra money right now to pay for lessons.

The kids have some very nice friends - Ashton's best friend is Dallen, Isaac has Brett and Zack, Eliza has Olivia and Grayce, the twins have Samuel, Nickolas, Asia, Georgia, and Jack who we play with at the park most Wednesdays.

The twins go to a little co-op Joy School on Mondays (with Nickolas and Samuel) and go to Busy Bee Preschool (uses the Joy School curriculum) on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. I do grocery shopping and errands Tuesday mornings while they're at school and volunteer in the big kids' classrooms on Thursday mornings.

I work out at least 3 times a week - sometimes I do the eliptical machine while reading for a mellow workout but mostly I do Jillian Michaels' 30 Day Shred workout - I sweat up a storm and mostly hate it but after 20 minutes, I've had a really serious workout and I'm getting stronger and less flabby and it feels great.

Jared turned the trucking company over to others and now he works from home. For all of 2009, he worked long hours and often on weekends and evenings as well (he often had trucks break down or issues that would arise at all hours of the day and night). It's quite a change to have him around a lot now. He's got an office set up in the guest room and he's off to meetings sometimes, but mostly he's around. He's helping me update lots of stuff on the Joy School and Power of Moms website and pursuing lots of promising leads. It's been so nice to have him around.

Oh, there's more but that's plenty for now.

Very Interesting New Website

One of my dear friends, Neylan McBaine, has just launched an exciting website that spotlights an array of wonderful Mormon women. I love how Neylan is using real stories of real women to help people inside and outside of our church see the depth and breadth of Mormon women and how their faith affects the choices they make and the way they live their lives.

Check this out - you'll love the interesting stories and inspiration!

The Mormon Women Project

Birthday Tips

I grew up in a big family - a really big one - so I've been part of a lot more birthday celebrations than your average person. With Jared and Ashton's birthdays for this year under by belt now, Oliver and Silas's birthday this Thursday and an extended family birthday coming up pretty much every day from here until mid-February, I've been thinking about what makes a birthday good (both for the one having the birthday and the mom behind the celebrations). Here are a few tips that seem to work (I'm sure others have great ideas too but this is what I've figured out so far):

• It's all in the presentation. You can put a birthday "spin" on just about anything. The most mundane things can be very special when they're presented the right way. And the most fabulously exciting things can be quite dull when presented the wrong way. Although Ashton wanted egg burritos for his birthday and we didn't have any eggs in the house after getting back late the night before from our road trip, he was pleased as punch with oatmeal (which actually is one of his favorite breakfasts) when I told him I'd put extra birthday sugar and birthday raisins (extra nice plump ones) and the birthday boy could even add chocolate chips if he wanted to.
  
• The birthday kid is king or queen for the day - they to pick all activities and they get to choose all three meals. Pretty much anything they say goes all day. For one day a year, everyone should get to be royalty - especially in a big family where getting your own way doesn't happen all that often.
• Have a birthday tradition (bowling or swimming or biking or whatever the kid really loves doing - it makes it easier to plan a fun birthday if there's at least one set activity - and it's so fun to have photos each year of the child growing older while doing the same activity. The tradition may evolve and that's OK. Ashton's birthday tradition has been bowling but after the fun party we had yesterday - see below - he's thinking of changing his tradition to eating his cake in an unusual place.)
• Create some special time for just you, your husband and the birthday kid. Let them pick a game they want to play or activity they want to do with the two of you when the other kids aren't around. Giving them your undivided attention is a great birthday gift.
• Keep presents simple. Most kids appreciate time and services as much or more than they want stuff. But if you're going to keep the expectations low on presents, you've got to start them out low or do some real explaining. If they get something really big one year and something small the next year, they need to understand why. I like to keep the expectations nice and low - then they're so excited and grateful for anything they get!
• Sometime during the day (like at dinner), have everyone present share one thing they really appreciate about the birthday kid. My parents did this when we were growing up and now I think all my siblings have carried on this simple tradition with their kids. There's nothing like compliments to make you feel great. And it's a good thing for the other kids in your family to learn to think about what they like and appreciate about each other.
• Take time to open gifts. Have the birthday kid really thank each gift giver when they open a gift. I've been to parties where the birthday kid just tears through the presents with hardly a thank you and not only does that seem sad for the giver, but the birthday kid doesn't get a chance to thoroughly appreciate and recognize what is great about each gift. As he or she takes the time to thank the person, maybe say what he/she is going to do with the gift or express how perfect the gift is, and maybe get a quick photo with the giver and the gift (to use on a thank-you note or thank-you email), the giver and receiver are learning a lot about gratitude...
• That said, you really don't have to have kids bring gifts. And you really really don't need to do party favors - they usually end up in the trash in an hour or so - or if you do a bag of candy for a party favor, you're not only sending kids home sugared up on cake and ice cream but also equipped to keep pumping sugar into their systems. There's no real need to support the rampant consumerism that surrounds us just because of tradition. Can't we just have a fun party without gifts and favors being involved? The kids at Ashton's party yesterday had the time of their lives and we spent no money and had no favors.

What works for you???