Enjoying the Small Things

The craziness and stress of life seems to somehow hide the small things. What I mean is that the small treasures of life I feel I forget to enjoy because I'm so caught up in laundry, writing a talk for Sunday, remodeling a basement, preparing another meal or calling electricans, plumbers etc to keep things running smooth. I haven't stopped to write down the cute things my kids say or take pictures of the precious moments of them playing together. It seems like an eternal quest to get caught up. I'm learning to face the reality that we don't ever really get caught up, there will always be something else new to tackle. For example I just feel like once my basement is finished being remodeled I can relax and enjoy my kids and life in general - but only after that's done. I truly hope that is the case but based on life experience I already know that won't happen. So instead of hoping to get over that next hill I am training myself to accept that life IS busy and I need take time and enjoy it. Today I took time to put fragrance in the burner, I stopped to watch my children sing "The Wheels on the Bus", I let myself enjoy the help my children offered when I was folding laundry, even though they unfolded more than I like to think about and made the process take twice as long I enjoyed how excited they were when I expressed my appreciation for their help. Today was a really good day because I took the time to enjoy it.

Caution: Witch Crossing

Happy Halloween!

What Not to Do When Potty Training Triplets

DO NOT set three little 18 month old girls all on their potty chairs at the same time. The problem: Once their all set down you never know when they will get up and run all over the house naked, and since they aren't potty trained accidents can happen. I learned this the hard way, I set them all four down to go potty and after 10 minutes or so one decided she was done and ran off, I went after her to get a diaper back on before an accident happened. While I was diapering her the other two hop up and run around naked as well. Frantically I run after them, first I tried herding them into the kitchen so that if an accident did happen at least it would be on tile. As I finally caught one and proceeded to diaper her I saw it happen, yep a little accident, was it on the kitchen floor? Nope, it was just barely off the tile. Oh well! So I learned.

View From my House

I'm so spoiled. I look out over this view everyday.

Time for Children

Quote of the day: “The best thing to spend on your children is your time” (Arnold Glasow, in Richard Evans’ Quote Book, p. 18). A couple weeks ago I was sick so I spent hours laying on our couch, one of our little girls was sick as well. So I laid her down with me for a couple hours. It was so enjoyable! Although I generally hate being sick, the experience was a wonderful reminder to me that time with our children matters. I've been thinking about ways to make more time for my children and here are some of the ideas I came up with:

Three easy ways to make time for your children

Simplify - don't spread yourself too thin. Recognize the things you can "let go of", for me when I had my triplets it was landscape design work, I had to be much more careful of work that I accepted - if any. I enjoy politics very much and I had to let go of that.

Schedule it - give yourself several hours to get the house chores done that you need to and then stop at a certain time and sit down and play with your children. I've found if I do this its amazing how much I'm still able to get done knowing that I have a deadline in which to accomplish my goals. Set aside at least 15 minutes a day to be with your children one on one.

Sacrifice - Take note of the things that you do daily that ties up your time. For me this was surfing the internet and especially facebook. I decided to make a conscious effort to only get on facebook once every two days and I was amazed at how much more time I found myself enjoying, and I was surprise to see how little I actually missed my internet time. Children need our time. Parents play a key role in helping a child develop a healthy level self esteem. Children need our love and the best way to show our love for them is through time. I love my kids and I'm so grateful for them.

4th of July Celebrating

The 4th of July is such a wonderful holiday! Pool parties, BBQ's, Parades, fireworks make it one of my favorite holidays. I love spirit of Patriotism that fills the air.

On the morning of the 4th I woke up to the sound of a torch and flame of a hot air balloon, I jumped up to look out the window to see a big hot air just coming up over the hill, it was so close we could see and hear the large flame. I quickly changed out of my PJ's and ran with my husband and three year old boy outside to see and wave to the people in the hot air balloon.

Every year the Provo Freedom Festival hosts a hot air balloon festival, they get at least 20 or 30 hot air balloons that launch off at the same time from the field by the hospital.

This balloon almost landed on University parkway, it was literally right on the shoulder of the road, but they pulled it over into Carterville park where they would rolled it away.

Celebrating Our Six Year Anniversary

We had a wonderful day away from our crazy kids. We took our car (not van hehe) opened the sun roof, went shopping, went to the theatre and saw the movie "Now You See Me" and then dinner at Brick Oven. It was so good to just be together and enjoy each others company uninterrupted.

My hottie - love him more everyday!!!

Pictures from the past and dating years.

Outing to Bridal Veil Falls

Our family went to Bridal Veil Falls and for a picnic. Our children were able to feed the fish, run around and we got some good family pictures!

There is a small pool that is full of fish our kids loved feeding them. It drew a lot of attention :).

Childrens Play

I love watching my children play. They are so creative! They were so excited to sit behind the steering wheel in out car and pretend to drive haha. They also didn't especially enjoy sharing the drivers seat, its funny how mad/frustrated they can get with each other.

Cake Pops

Cake pops are so fun to make. I've made them a couple times now, they can be a bit tricky but each time I learn from small mistakes. Reguardless of the mistakes they still look pretty good!

How to make them:

Bake a cake, let it cool (trust me on this I learned the hard way by not letting it cool)

Crumble cake and slowly mix in any favorite icing (chocolate, vanilla homemade or store bought) Don't mix in too much icing, I also did that :). If you mix in too much it gets too sticky and is really hard to dip into the chocolate dip without it dropping off the stick into the mix.

Roll out into balls (one cake mix will make about 50 balls). Refrigerate

Once cooled, dip the loli pop sticks into the chocolate melt (or you can use vanilla or whatever flavor or melts you prefer) and then stick the sticks into the cake pops. Put back into the frig to set.

After cooled now dip into melted chocolate or whatever flavor of melt you like (I used chocolate and white chocolate) then you can dress with sprinkles, coconut, nuts etc.

The most helpful video on this was by Stephanie Jaworski. She has tons of wonderful advice. The video is a little long though. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DfL6B6Vpus

Family Outing to See New Provo Temple

We went for a little stroll through downtown Provo to see the new temple construction. What an incredible engineering feet! They have completely dug out the the existing building to add a basement. We so loved seeing this.

Here are some links to other great info and pictures of the project. http://www.ksl.com/?sid=24203973&nid=1164 http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=rCR4q1Oqk3A

New Baby Niece

Congratulations to my Sister and her husband who recently had a beautiful baby girl. Their little baby is adorable and I'm so excited for them.

Travel: Our Trip to San Francisco

We had so much fun in California. Rob has an amazing family and I feel so blessed to be a part of them. It was so wonderful to see everyone. Many of which have kids close to my kids ages so its so fun to see them play and interact together. One of my favorite things about Rob's family is that they LOVE to eat, and they eat good! Wow! There are some incredible cooks in that family. I just can't stop eating, and they keep insisting you eat! Ahh. Such a vicious cycle for someone (me) on a diet :). But we had a blast! Even with such a beautiful park with tons of fun toys our kids favorite thing was chasing the pigeons. Playing with the girls

Triplets at the Park

Lately we have really tried to go on outings that we all enjoy, so for our Friday night date night we went to the center street park in Provo. We often go to parks but we like to vary it up a bit and go to different parks, ones that we haven't gone to before. We had a blast and we all had fun! Our girls loved the swings, but there were only two for small children (bummer) so we put two girls together and it worked out perfect. They loved it!