My 2nd Mother's Day

I think Mother's Day is my favorite holiday.  Well, Christmas and Easter are pretty great too, maybe after them.  I LOVE Mother's Day!  I love sharing the special day with my wonderful mother and mother-in-law and all of the amazing mothers I know.  Selfishly, I love the small bit of recognition and gratitude I get for trying so hard to be the best mother I can be and making it my most important job and becoming so much less selfish.

Chris had to work, but he sent me a Groupon for horseback riding in Estes Park.  It sure was fun in Santa Fe, and it will be even prettier in Estes Park!  My sister had been visiting my dad in Arizona and they drove in and arrived in time for dinner.  We had a nice visit with my Dad and Keira loves her Grandpa!

Swimming and Biking

I LOVE SPRING!!!!  We have been having sooo much fun now that the weather is getting nicer!

Keira LOVES swimming!  The last time I took her was before Christmas I think and she was scared and clung onto me for dear life.  Now she coudn't get enough of the water and swimming around and jumping in.  It was so cute!

A little chilly outside of the water.

We went on our first bike ride of the season around Bear Creek Lake Park about five miles from our house.  It's a beautiful state park with a wonderful beach.  Keira did awesome in the bike trailer and I didn't do too bad pulling the trailer.  It's definitely a harder work out though.  Poor Chris must have been bored to death.  They have a great playround and Keira just loved climbing up the ladders!

BYU Women's Conference

This is a post I really wish I would've taken the time to do right away.  I had the privilege of going to BYU Women's Conference in April and what an amazing experience it was!  I had so much FUN!  And as much as I did miss my wonderful hubby and cutie pie, it was sooooo nice to be there!  I flew in on Wednesday evening and the flight was so nice, I was able to read!  I didn't have a squirmy, cute, baby girl climbing all over my lap.  And I didn't even get lonely, I must be growing up!  I met up with Chris' sweet cousin Danielle who is from California and we stayed in a super nice hotel and met up with one of her friends for dinner that evening.

BYU is just amazing!  I REALLY hope that my kids will want to go there, or to the one in Idaho.  I just loved it!  Conference was just as perfect as could be.  I don't even know how to describe it, and it certainly won't do my trip justice or the wonderful experience I had.  First of all, it was just awesome to be there surrounded by thousands of LDS women who are striving for the same goals as me, trying to enrich their lives and make themselves better.  There are so many classes offered, and sooo many that sounded great but some even better.  It was hard choosing which classes to attend.  This year I mostly chose classes that were focused on marriage, family, being a great mother, and on being more Christ-like.  I loved all of the classes I went to!  I'm so grateful for all of the speakers who prepare talks and share their knowledge and testimonies. I learned and gained from every class I attended.

There were so many wonderful speakers, including a General Authority, members of the Relief Society and Young Womens' presidencies, and so many others church officials.

There was a wonderful concert on Thursday night with at least five different LDS performers and they were fabulous!  I couldn't believe that we didn't even have to pay extra to go to it!  Unfortunately I didn't realize how great it was going to be and missed out on about half of it while having way too much fun at the BYU Bookstore.
Hilary Weeks was one of the performers.

Danielle and I

After the conference we met up with Danielle's little brother at a delicious pizza place.  We stayed with one of her friends and the next morning we ate breakfast at this fantastic little bakery type place.  I had the best french toast in the world covered with a caramel syrup.  YUM!  I must say, Utah as some fantastic food!  Afterwards we got to go to the beautiful Mount Timanogos Temple!  It was huge, busy, so much fun, and just wonderful being there!  I'm so glad we were able to to initiatories there.  I'm really going to make it a point to go to the temple anywhere new.

Before heading back to the airport we met Danielle's sister-in-law Megan and her CUTE little boy Max, for lunch.  It was so nice seeing so many of Chris' wonderful cousins!  I'm so blessed to have such amazing in-laws!!!

I felt like a new woman; enlightened, invigorated, and with a new love, appreciation, and excitement for my family, my role as a wife and mother, and the church.  I returned home to a daughter who wanted to have nothing to do with me and an upset husband who didn't want more kids.  :-(  Luckily, after a few days for the former and a couple of months for the later, those feelings have passed.

Easter 2011

Holidays are SO much more fun with kids!  On a very cold Saturday morning we had an Easter egg hunt at the park with several families from church.

The delight on her face as she found the eggs.  :o)

The Easter bunny was so excited that he kind of spoiled her.

Jason, one of Chris' friends from work joined us for dinner.

We had another egg hunt for the kids.

John, Nicole, and Jaxon joined us for a short time.

Laurie joined us for dinner also!  What a wonderful day to celebrate the resurrection of our Savior!

Food Storage

I finally have food storage!  I had been having a hard time with food storage, especially since Chris went paleo.  Most everything we buy is fresh and we are so limited as to what we can eat that it just wasn't working to stock up on things.  Not to mention, it's soooo time consuming to shop all of the ads for things on sale when we don't even eat them.  So I decided to bite the bullet, work a few extra shifts, and just buy our three month food supply.  This way, things won't continually be expiring since we don't eat the items anymore, it really should last at least three months eating 2000 calories a day each (so it will be good for kids too since we probably don't eat that many), and it's for emergencies so who cares how yummy it is or if we usually eat it.  We, and our family, friends, and neighbors will be SO thankful we have it.  I'm pretty happy with it and I feel better knowing I have it.

My sister was SUPER sweet and helped me write the expiration date on everything and was great company!  Organized with earliest expiration dates in the front.

(P.S. She must have been standing on a box or something.)

This and our 50 gallon water tank is a good start for now.  :o)

20 Months!

Well unfortunately I can't really remember many specifics from April when she turned 20 months.  So here's a couple of pictures.  I remember she loved being outside, going to the park and going on the swings and slides.  Her vocabulary continues to grow which is just so much fun!

I realized that it was probably about time to start teaching her how to use a cup and she picked it up fairly fast.

Daddy bought her Dora and Boots stuffed toys which she just loves!

WARNING

Ironically, in my last post I was finally caught up, three months ago!  And at this time I've started 17 posts over the last few months (with pictures).  So I just want to warn you that hopefully soon (maybe even tonight if I'm SUPER lucky at work!) there's going to be TONS of posts.  Luckily, probably not too much updating and words, but lots of pictures.  It's kind of overwhelming being so far behind.  And I just don't know what to do about this blog.  This is one of the the main things I'd like to do in my spare time.  Actually it's number three or four.  Scripture study, e-mails, exercise, and blog.  But nap time and night time just don't leave enough time to get everything done.  And this often gets neglected.  And then I feel like it's always hanging over my head and I just need to get on my computer to get more caught up.  I know it's for myself, and one of my hobbies, but I think it's also for my little family and Keira when she's older and for our families so they know what's going on in our lives and can see pictures, and for a couple of friends who might take a look every now and then also.  So I'd like to be better and I know it's annoying how there's nothing for weeks or months, and then tons and tons of stuff.  And really, that's just no fun for you.  Sorry.