a happy baby and something I need to remember to be happy, too

I started writing a blog post in my head last night at 10:30pm while I was feeding baby B. Every thought that came into my head was mean, negative, and whiny. I eventually banned myself from writing blog posts in my head after 8pm. When you are exhausted after a long day, no good can come of that. It's always amazing to me how what seems so overwhelming and awful at night seems so manageable and doable after a night of rest.

It is also true that what seems overwhelming at the end of a week of single parenting (Eric spent 6 days in Italy last week!) seems much more manageable after a few days of taking a break. I was trying to sort out schedules on Friday and reply to a bunch of texts and emails about various things. But I finally just stopped and told myself I would sit down on Monday and do it all. That's what I did. On monday, I whipped it all out and figured out the scheduling conflicts with no problems. What seemed like a mountain on Friday was hardly a hill on Monday.

Love this adorable, happy baby!

Disneyland (day 1)

We were all sooo excited for Fall break this year! We worked hard on our no sugar, dance more, family scriptures etc goals and we earned our trip to Disneyland. And so we played hard at Disneyland all week long.

It was thrilling to me to be on our first vacation as a family of seven! B did great on her first road trip. Though, the way to California was about 45 min too long (that last little while is when Perry got car sick and B was ready to be out of her car seat). But I thought we actually held up pretty well.

We checked in to our hotel. Jenny recently moved to LA and so she was able to meet up with us. We took a walk through Downtown Disney and grabbed dinner.

We introduced B to Mickey Mouse.

And Layla wiggled a tooth right out! Which meant that the tooth fairy got to visit us in our hotel.

We left downtown Disney pretty excited to enter the park the next day!

today

My brain is fuzzy. Whether that is because we are on the tail end of fall break or because of this cold I am fighting off, I can not say.

In some ways this has been a most unproductive week. Because I haven’t felt well, things have not gone as I imagined they would this week. But for some reason Eric and I have been extra productive in getting some home projects done that we have needed to do for a long time. We have ordered hanging shelves for the garage, organized the entryway closets, made furniture decisions for our bedroom, and hung a shelf on the wall. We even hung up Halloween decorations as a family.

I am hoping I will shake this cold thing soon. I keep thinking I have and then it keeps coming back. You know, it is much easier to mother when you feel well. 

And I’ll end today with one more thing. I know I’ve said it before, but I love these quotes I get in my inbox from Gretchen Rubin. Some of them I find particularly striking. And I love this one because I think it’s true! Oh, so many ideas, thoughts, and my favorite conversations with people come from walking.

Perry these days

Our Perry boy! Oh how he is adored around here. His facial expressions crack me up. You can always tell how he is feeling about a situation, that’s for sure. 

Perry loves all of his siblings. He loves spending time with his big brothers (especially when they were out late one night playing capture the flag). He is often Kacin’s little shadow and Kyler’s buddy.

He also an extremely special relationship with his sisters. Baby B has been so good for him (someday soon I’ll have to share more about their connection) and Layla has always been his greatest friend and teacher. Though, they often have their fair share of sibling rivalry.

Perry loves water. This particular day, he started out mad at me, but I turned on the hose for him and after a long time spraying and playing he was feeling much better.

Another time he was mad at me and I was grateful we have that gate so he couldn’t actually escape. 

Perry did an amazing job at the primary program a few weeks ago! He had his part memorized right away. He got a little confused when he got to the microphone and the older primary child who was helping pointed to the words on a paper for his part and so he asked out loud “what is that? (Like in a why the heck are you pointing to those words way)” But then he said his part just fine.

Perry is playing baseball again this season. He loves it, but still asks to try soccer out (hopefully soon).

He is doing well in first grade (since we adjusted his meds) and loves his teachers and friends and is making progress on most of his goals. He loves being on the big kids playground this year instead of the smaller kindergarten playground.

Perry received a character award at his school’s first assembly. How very proud of him we are!!

Perry was extremely excited for Apple Day at school. I got to help out with his group as they went around to their apple stations. It was a fun morning!

Perry loves playing his Lego Batman video games. He is becoming extremely good at putting Lego sets together. He loves transformers. His favorite books to read at home are Berenstain Bears and Little Critter. He enjoys working on sticker books. He is a homebody and so would much prefer staying home than going out to the store or anywhere else.

Perry has recently made another speech jump and we have all noticed how clearly he speaks and how much more he speaks now. We love hearing his questions and ideas!

One day he got the chopsticks and tried to use them to pull his teeth out. He told us he wanted to earn some money. We tried to explain that there are other ways to earn money besides from the tooth fairy, but he still tried for awhile to get those teeth out.

Perry is a great boy and we are so lucky to have him in our family!

Layla These Days

When I read this quote, one of my first thoughts was of Layla.

That's probably because of all the smiles she wears and spreads wherever she goes.

We had an impromptu date before her first baseball practice. She chose MOD pizza. For the lemonade. Though she took a sip of my water and I took a sip of her lemonade. Then she said, "We can share anything. We're best girls."

When she wasn't dancing around the table, she was playing with her pizza like this and requesting a photo shoot of it. 

She had to make sure we included a picture with a dab.

She also says things like this to me out of the blue:

"Mom, guess what B decided we should have?"-L

"What's that?"-me

"A puppy"-L 

"Oh, really?"-me

And in a conversation about how kind and sweet great-grandma was she confessed that she gets mad sometimes. Then she said, "I'm starting to be autism and Perry is not."

We were waiting for Kyler to finish soccer practice and she took pictures of the beautiful sunset. She loves capturing beauty on the camera. 

And selfies. She still has a thing for selfies.

Though, she has some confusion about what a selfie is. She told me to pose for a selfie by opening my mouth or sticking my tongue out. Apparently, that is her definition of a selfie. She satisfied with my "selfie" like this.

And somehow along the way of her taking that gorgeous picture of the sunset and trying to get me to pose for a "selfie", she took these of me and my sweet baby.

One night, Layla decided to make a cafe for dinner. She worked feverishly to write out menus for each spot and to create a welcome to the cafe sign. She roped Kyler in and they plated and served the dinners after she took the orders.

See, she sows flowers wherever she goes. She makes life happier.

A couple more quick updates on Layla...She has started baseball.

I took a picture of the very first time she swung at the ball. By the end of the game, she was able to hit the coach pitched ball. 

She rocked the primary program with her memorized part. 

She loves kindergarten. She makes friends easily. 

She is extremely proud of the fact that since starting kindergarten she has learned how to pump on the swings and can get herself going really high. So she is obsessed with swinging right now and begs to swing at the park near our house every night. Many nights we oblige and she is oh so happy on that swing.

She comes home every day and the first words out of her mouth are usually asking if she can hold baby B. She tells us all the time that B "needs" her sister time. I know I already posted this one, but I love this sweet picture

Layla is taking music theater class (with her cousin) again this year. She also started piano lessons. She loves lessons, but practicing is a bit more stressful (mostly for me!) so we are finishing this month and then will revisit lessons next year.

We love our (L-Belle) (Ellie) (Stinkerbelle) Layla!

a cruise (part 2)

Our second full day on the cruise brought us to Ensenada, Mexico. 

We had an amazing experience on the canopy tour zip lining! I remember when I used to be terrified of heights. I may still need to work on the fear of a snorkel mask, but I am proud to say I'm doing well overcoming my height fear because the zip line was all fun and no fear. It was seriously my favorite and I'd love to do something similar again.

There were 5 zip lines and 5 bridges to cross. 

This huge zip line is the one that Eric and I got to ride together on. Such a blast!

We drove to the ocean and kayaked over to La Bufadora. We didn't get any pictures when we were out on the kayaks but we loved experiencing La Bufadora from the water. 

After all that adventuring we were pretty hungry. We got some delicious tacos and then did a little shopping for little things to bring back to our kids.

Ensenada was good to us.

Back on the cruise ship, our dinner ended with a slice of jiggly blueberry pie. Um, we didn't think pie was supposed to wobble like that. 

While we are on the topic of funny things that made the trip especially memorable (clearly, the blue-jiggle pie did just that for us), I will shout "55!" That is all.

Which leads into the fact that Jared and Julie were celebrating their 15th anniversary! Yay!

Eric and I were very cultured on this cruise, too. We attended a seminar about the artist Thomas Kinkade. I actually love his art and thought it was pretty interesting. Later we also admired the art in the ship's gallery. This was my favorite piece.

On our last full day of the cruise, we played a lot of card games and ate a lot of food. We went and saw the comedian again during the family show. #section8cruise The first time we saw him, he cracked some Mormon jokes at the end and told us of the Mormon gang sign he was hoping would catch on. We ended up taking a picture with him. Someone made fun of my inability to make M's with my hands. And that's how we got these pictures.

We disembarked on Thursday. And then it worked out that we made a quick visit to Jenny in her new apartment before heading home. 

Now, I don't really think cruise life fits me all that well, but we really did have an amazing week and I'm grateful we got to experience it.