Family Pictures 2012

It had been almost a year and a half since we had our family pictures taken.  I love getting the kids' pictures taken, but I don't love getting my own picture taken so much. So I procrastinate.   I finally decided that since the kids have changed so much since the last family picture, it was time to bite the bullet and go get some new ones.  Here are some of my favorites:

Dax had burned his finger on the curling iron I was using on Cora's super-straight hair, so he was pretty sad all the way to the studio.  I was worried we wouldn't get any good shots of him, but he cheered right up once the camera was on him.  He is such a ham.  Love it.

Here is the whole fam-damily.  Cheese!

  Unlike last time she got her pictures taken, Cora was super smiley!

 Another group shot that I liked:

 But the ones with the kids by themselves are the cutest, don't you think?

My beautiful, toothless Arden:

And one last group shot...Cora loved having her hands on her hips, but I didn't love the way they had Arden folding her arms, she looks mad or something?  Maybe it is just me?  Oh well.  Still cute.  

And here is my little cutie-Corbie one more time.  Should I have taken her orange bows out for the shots where she is alone?  I kind of wish i did now, since they don't match her dress?  Oh well.  Again, still cute.

There were a few things I wish I could go back and change, but overall I am pretty happy!  Now I don't have to worry about doing that again for another year or two :-)

Daxton's Preschool Graduation

Last Wednesday was Daxton's Preschool Graduation!  Wa-hoo!  (He still has one more year of preschool before he is old enough for kindergarten, so I guess you could say he was "graduating" from 3-year-old preschool to 4-year-old preschool.  But still.)  The graduation ceremony was supposed to be at a nearby park, but it was starting to look like rain so it was moved to our church.  It was a little dark and hard to take pictures, so bear with me.

Here is Dax with his amazing teacher, Miss Sue.  Sue really loves these little kids, and they love her back.  Dax pretty much thinks that Miss Sue hung the moon.  When I asked Dax who he wanted to invite to his birthday party, Miss Sue was pretty near the top of his list.  He is so excited whenever he sees her drive by our house in her car, and every morning he hopefully asks, "Is it preschool day today?"

Dax has learned SO much in preschool this year.  Not only has he learned things like what sound letter R makes and how to count to 20, but really important stuff.  Stuff like how to wait your turn, how to sit in a chair for longer than 3 seconds, and how to share.  I don't know how she does it, but Sue has got the touch.  Dax's time in preschool have really helped him to overcome some of his caveman tendencies. 

Dax is a typical "boy" and is not as interested in drawing or writing his name or coloring inside the lines as Arden was at this point.  He is getting better, though.  He is still not very good at writing his name, but at least he is trying now :-)

I try to tell him he can just write "D-A-X," but he always says, "No, Mom.  D-A-X-T-O-N!"  Anyway, back to the show, er-ceremony. 

After the kids all got their supercute graduation hats on, they did the Pledge of Allegiance for us.  Dax knows it by heart, and I love hear him say it.  He says words like "A-wee-jense" and "In-di-biz-a-boo."  Awesome.

After the pledge and some more showing off of their knowledge of our country (example, Miss Sue says, "Who is the President of our country?"  Dax:  "Rock Obama!")  The kids sang a bunch of songs for us that they learned throughout the year.  Dax is SO excited!

Proud sister is documenting everything:

After the songs, Miss Sue had the kids come up one by one and gave them each a little diploma.  She also asks the kids a couple of questions beforehand about what their favorite food is and what they want to be when they grow up, and she tells us what they said when she gives them their diploma.  Here is what Miss Sue said about Dax:

"Daxton says his favorite food is "meat."  When I asked him what kind of meat, he said, "the brown kind."  And he likes vegetables like carrots, peas, and corn.  He told me that when he eats those, he gets to have dessert, and his favorite dessert is Cinnamon Bread.  When he grows up he wants to be a "flyer from an airplane, and drop people down from the plane."  And his favorite things at school are the dinosaur book (when I can't find him he is usually under the table with the dinosaur book,) and he likes playing with friends, and he likes snack time."
 
Sounds about right. 

Needless to say, the kids who aren't getting their diplomas get a little bit fidgety.  The day before the graduation Dax got a new pair of sunglasses, since we can't find his old pair (he must take after me in that way, because I lose sunglasses like you would not BELIEVE).  Anyway, he somehow snuck them past me and had them in his hands during the whole show.  He decided it was time to put them on while he was watching the other kids get their diplomas.  He is too cool for school:

Here is my big preschool sort-of-graduate, with his diploma (and his sunglasses). 

After the graduation was over, we headed over to McDonald's to celebrate with one of Dax's best preschool friends.  Dax was still wearing his sunglasses.  

Thanks Miss Sue!  I don't know how we will survive the summer without you!

Four

Guess who's turning FOUR today?

Isn't he too-die-for-off-the-charts adorable?  I can't tell you guys how much I looooooove this little crazy little big kid. 

We are finally moving him into a big-boy bed for his birthday.  We decided to build it tonight while he is sleeping and then put him in it so when he wakes up on his birthday in the morning he is in his new bed, complete with dinosaur blanket.  Just now I picked up his sweet sleeping self out of his toddler bed and carried him down the hall to my bed so we could start on our little project.  Taking him out of his toddler bed (that had been his crib before we converted it) for the last time hurt my heart.  As a friend of mine recently said...Time is my enemy. 

Most of the time I am excited to see how much he is learning every day and how he is growing, but sometimes...I so long for the pause button.  Here and no further.  I love 3-year-old Daxton.  I adore him.  Why can't I keep him forever?  WHYYYYY???

Anyway...

This has been a crazy week...Ogden Marathon Relay, Preschool Graduation, doctors appointments, family pictures, Daxton's first official "friends" birthday party, kindergarten zoo field trips, on top of all the usual stuff and that is my excuse for not blogging for a while.  I promise I will do some catch-up posts soon.

My Two Favorite Recipe Books Right Now

For anyone out there looking for some new recipes, I have two recipe books that I have been loving lately. 

First, up is the 350-calorie meal "Cook This, Not That" book.  We got this book when Preston was doing his Biggest Loser challenge, but the recipes in it that we have tried are so good that we are still using it OFTEN and trying new recipes.  Some of our favorites so far are the Chili-Mango Chicken, Moroccan Salmon with Quinoa and the Chicken Fajita Burrito.  All the others we have tried have been delicious (though some are kind of spicy for the kids), and it is fun to look at the comparisons they have at the bottom of every recipe that tells you how many calories you are saving when compared to a similar item purchased at a restaurant.  For example, the Chicken Pizzaoli (which was very good, by the way) is only 360 calories,15 g fat, and 812 mg sodium, compared to Olive Garden Chicken Parmigiana, which has 1090 calories, 49 g fat and 3,380 mg sodium.  Wow.

 

The only complaint I have about this book is that the index is AWFUL.  There isn't a very good table of contents either, so I have had to mark the pages of the recipes I want to be able to find again without flipping through the whole book.  Kind of annoying, but I can live.

For anyone who doesn't have this book, buy it:

Again, everything I have made from this book has been awesome.  Just last week Arden and I made the Caramelized Banana Ice Cream.  Sounds questionable, but it was HEAVENLY.  We also really like the Black Bean and Mango Salsa and the Spicy Honey Chicken, and the Thai Peanut Noodles are one of my new favorites.  My only complaint about this book is that there are no fish recipes.  None.  We eat quite a bit of fish around here, so that is kind of a bummer for me. 

If you are looking for something new to try, give these two books a try, and I guarantee you will find a few that you love.  Let me know if you have any recipe books that you think I should try.

Happy Mothers Day

I know a lot of people out there have a hard time with Mothers Day.  I know that it can make some incredible mothers feel like they are not living up to the ideal "Angel Mother" that gets talked about so much on Mothers Day.  I know a lot of people who are far away from their mothers or who have lost their mothers miss them terribly on Mothers Day.  And then there was me a few years ago...during the Mothers Days when we were still struggling with infertility...

Mothers Day used to be one of my least favorite days.  Well, at least part of it.  I still loved the part where I got to visit my own wonderful mom and my sweet grandmothers and give them cards and presents and tell them how much I loved them.  That part was good. 

The part that was hardest for me was where I went to church and looked around at all the moms proudly wearing macaroni necklaces that their darling kids had made for them.  Then I got to listen to talks from youth speakers about how much their moms meant to them and how much they loved them.  And then I got to watch dozens of precious little children walk up to the stand where they would wiggle around and wave to their moms.  Then with huge smiles on their faces they sang those familiar songs to their moms.  You know them..."I Often Go Walking," "I Know A Name"...then came "Mother I love you, Mother I do, Father in Heaven has sent me to you...." 

I struggled with that song the most. 

Through my sadness, I would get a little angry.  I wanted to know WHY.  WHY did Father in Heaven send all of those beautiful children to the women sitting around me, but I sat with my arms empty, year after year?  WHY wouldn't Father in Heaven send a child to me?  Had I not prayed hard enough?  Was I somehow unworthy, not good enough?  WHY?

After that song, I would pretty much just struggle to survive the rest of the meeting.  Then came the dreaded announcement "Can we have every woman over 18 please stand so that you can receive your Mothers' Day gift?"  I know the gifts are small, but I felt so awful, so exposed, standing there waiting to be handed a gift I didn't feel like I deserved.  One year I couldn't even bear the idea of it, and I bolted out the door before the "amen" from the closing prayer had finished echoing.  I practically ran all the way home in my high heels and didn't stop until I was safe inside my house. 

Today is one of those days that makes days like those all worth it.  Today was bliss. 

This morning my three beautiful children crawled into bed with me, bearing beautiful, priceless gifts.  Dax made me a card with his sweet little hand print on it.  Arden made me a necklace in kindergarten with her thumbprint in clay on one side, and her adorable kindergarten signature on the other side.  I proudly wore it all day.  Cora gave me a card with a button on it that said 'Me!  ME!  MEEE!  It's All About Me!!!"  On the inside of the card it said something like, "You can borrow this button for today, mom, but tomorrow I want it back.  Happy Mothers Day."  It was funny because it is so true, but precious because she wrote a wobbly "Mom" with her own little hand, just for me, inside the card.  Arden also filled out a little survey and put it in a card for me.  Here is how it goes:

"My Mom is the most wonderful Mom in the whole world! 
She weighs __8__ pounds and
She is _____83____ feet tall.
Her favorite food is ___fish____.
In the good old days when Mom was little she ___played with her sisters___.
I wish Mom would ___help me clean up my bedroom____.
I wouldn't trade my Mom for ____A Hundred Million Dollars___.

Then Preston made me delicious homemade cinnamon rolls for breakfast. 

Is anyone as blessed as me?

I understand now that I had to go through those dark, gut-wrenching Mothers Days so that I could get to these sunny, joyful Mothers Days.  For whatever reason, being a mother came to me the hard way.  Maybe it was so I could appreciate days like this all the more.  Getting here was NOT easy.  But it was so worth it. 

It was a little slice of heaven for me today, watching Arden and Dax up on the stand at church, singing songs to me.  (Arden even stood where I could see her this year!!).  I thought my heart might burst with happiness.  I love those little stinkers so much!  In years past, I dreamed of days like this.  I am so thankful. 

So Happy Mothers Day, to my own amazing Mom and to my sweet Grandmas!
Happy Mothers Day, to the incredible mothers who gave birth to my children and gave me my family.  Thank you.

Happy Mothers Day, for anyone out there still dreaming of days like this.  Hang in there.

At the Park - If You Are Three

We have regular weekly "Park Days" during the summer with a bunch of other moms and kids from the neighborhood.  We had our first official park day last week.  While I was sitting and talking with the other moms, Cora took my camera and asked if she could take "just a cuh-poo pit-chas."

The next thing I knew, she was wandering all around the playground, snapping away.  I was just going to delete them all, but some of them are actually pretty interesting.  I don't really look at the playground from the perspective of a small preschooler.  The pictures kind of look kind of artsy and abstract.  I also love seeing her little finger obscuring at least part of most pictures, and ALL of quite a few (that I won't show you).

This one is titled, "Bottom of Slide, with Finger."  I will admit, it has been a long time since I saw the bottom of a slide.  Interesting.  What exactly is she trying to say with this piece?  I leave you to find your own interpretation.

This one is called "Sky and One of Those Rotating Circle Things."  Interesting, the contrast of the solid metal when compared with the ethereal quality of the clouds...(or at least that is what my college art professor would say).

This is called "Tootsies and Holes."  (Sorry, that girl needs a pedicure almost as bad as I do!)

This one we call "A, B, With Finger Shadow."  Actually, I don't really get this part of the playground.  This is on an angle like a slide, but it has big numbers on it that stick out half an inch or so, so when the kids try to slide down it, their pants almost get ripped off.  Maybe they are just supposed to climb up it, but the letters aren't think enough to get much of a grip on??  Maybe Cora is trying to point out the absurdity of it all with her photo.

This one is called "Why Aren't Daxton's Flip Flops On His Chubby Little Feet?"  It is one of those deep, lingering question we may never know the answer to.

This one is called "WHEEEEEEEEE!  And Finger" for obvious reasons. 

This is another one of her "new perspective" shots.  She took this one from UNDER the playground, looking up through the holes.  We call it "Holes to Heaven and Finger."

There are quite a few more, but you get the idea.  And here is the artist herself:

She is upstairs right now sleeping, but occasionally making sad little sucking sounds and heart-breaking little whimpers.  We (finally) took her binkie away a couple of days after our trip.  Except for one GARGANTUAN meltdown the first time she tried to sleep without it, she has been very brave about the whole thing.  She is still struggling a little, but hopefully in a couple of weeks she will have forgotten all about her beloved binkie.  It is so hard to see her having such a hard time sleeping when it would be so easy to pop that dang thing in her mouth and watch her instantly relax and float off to peaceful dreamland.  I swear, if it wasn't making her teeth crooked, I would have let her keep that dang thing until college.