Election

Today is Election Day. Today I feel proud to be an American. I stood in line for an hour today to vote. The time didn't bother me because I looked around at all the other people standing there and I couldn't help but smile. Here we were all so different. I saw rich, poor, elderly, young, black, white, Hispanic, Indian,  Muslim, Jew, disabled, and able bodied waiting in that line. (Yes, all that diversity in my voting precinct! How awesome is that?) All different in many ways, yet on this one day we are all American. Our votes are all equal. Every person's vote counts the same as the person next to them no matter their religion, race, or socioeconomic background. We are so fortunate to live in a country where we get to choose! How grateful I am this day to have been allowed to live in a country that practices democracy.
I love little minds and how they think. I tried to explain to Belle what a democracy was and how it is different from a monarchy. She said, "Mom, I don't know what you are talking about." At least I tried, right? When I asked her who she would pick to be the President if she was allowed to vote she said, "Is Obama the one with the short black hair?" I told her yes. She said, "I would pick him because he is funny." After talking for awhile I figured it out that she thought he was funny due to this video that we watched:

Hilarious, right?

I told her that's why I voted for him, too. Oh, whoops! Did I just divulge who I voted for? Pretty sure all you who are reading this just crapped yourselves. Oh well, It's my blog.

Bedtime with Daddy

My children are so lucky to have such a good dad. I adore seeing him interact with them. I love seeing him love them, and watching them love him. One thing that Will does that I especially love is bedtime for the kids. Every night since Liam was born Will reads the girls stories and a chapter from their Book of Mormon Stories. They love that time. They rush to get in their jammies and brush their teeth so they don't miss it. When Will tells them it's time they both go running into their bedroom. Cutest thing ever. Then after stories we all say prayers together and do hugs and kisses and tuck ins. Sometimes if we're feeling extra ambitious Will and I will sing a song to them. Here's a picture of Will reading to the girls a couple nights ago on the couch. And yes, Belle is wearing ear muffs.

Rebel Race

So my sister, Angi, reminds me that I need to get back to blogging. So here I am. Today Will and I ran in the Rebel Race. We ran it with a couple of good friends, which always makes things more fun. It was a 5K that had several obstacles. We had to swim through a lake, jump over fire, climb walls and haystacks, monkey bars, crawl under barbed wire fence, go through a muddy river and some other ones. It was seriously so..much...fun. Normally when I run races I'm dying through the whole thing and then after I think it was fun. But not with this one. I even found myself in the middle of it saying a quick prayer of gratitude that we could be there because it was seriously a blast. Here are some pictures from the race. Will took most of them since he wailed on all of us. He's a speed demon.

Will pre-race

Kristina flying over the hurdle

Curt mid-air

Love the contrasting expressions in this one :)

Coming off a fun slide into Chesapeake Bay

Under the barbed wire fence right before the finish line

The end! (Lovin' those two extra peace signs coming out of Curt's head)

We are rebels!!!

I swiped this one from Kristina...(hope you don't mind)

Liam's Shadow

So yesterday I walked in on Liam playing with his shadow. He has just recently discovered his shadow and gets the biggest kick out of it. He kept raising his hands up in the air and then putting them down and tried touching his shadow. It was very cute.

For some reason you can't see his shadow very well in these pictures, unfortunately.

This kid has gone crazy in the month of July. In this month alone he got his first two teeth, learned to sit on his own, started scooting, is now crawling, and he pulls himself up to stand while holding on. Pretty wild!

Isn't he darn cute?

Our OBX Adventure

This last week was a crazy one for us. My sister, Kari, remarried last fall to a guy named Doug. We love Doug. He is awesome. His family was having a reunion this summer down in the Outer Banks in North Carolina. Doug decided that our family is his family so he convinced his family to let us join them. Will and the kids and I came down with Tommy in tow for the last two days they were there. The family had rented two beach houses which were huge and so fun.

Chilling in one of the houses. As you can see, the ukuleles were a hit.

Doug's family is awesome. They were welcoming and we felt like we fit right in.

 

 1) Belle and Miles (Doug's son) playing in the lake by the house 2) Liam and I in the water 3) Evee and Isabelle (Doug & Kari's granddaughter) You can see us and Doug's family in the background     4) Will and the kids on the boardwalk to the beach 5) Will and Steve going out to hit the waves.

Well, everybody left on Saturday morning, but our family decided to extend our trip. We brought stuff to camp. We set up camp in Kitty Hawk. Our spot was right next to some peacocks which the girls loved. Evee looked like she was going to pass out when she noticed them. She was so excited.

There was one in a cage and three roaming free, and they were pretty tame.

After we set up camp we went down to the beach. Here was where the real adventure began. We switched vehicles with Kari, so we had her Mercedes. When we went down to the beach Will put the key in his swimsuit pocket. After about an hour of playing in the ocean he realized his pocket had a hole in it. We searched the beach and parking lot over in hopes that it had dropped out before he entered the ocean. I was praying for a miracle. Well, we got one - just not the one I was hoping for. No luck finding the key. All our stuff was locked in including money and phones. Luckily the lifeguard let Will borrow his phone and a kind woman overheard our predicament. She had the same car insurance as us because she was in the military (USAA is for service members). This woman (Ellen) was our saving grace. She got her insurance info and we called them and they took care of the tow - all the way to Virginia Beach (the nearest Mercedes dealership), which would have cost us a pretty penny. And they are going to reimburse us for the locksmith. Ellen gave us a ride back to our campground which was a 1 &1/2 away. She seriously was amazing all that she helped with. She said "Us military families have to take care of each other." I hope she is blessed for her service for us. It saved me from a near panic attack. Unfortunately the rental car company was closed until Monday. Did we let that stop us from having fun? No way! Sunday we walked down to the beach carrying two babies and Belle walking herself. It was incredibly hot, but we were glad we went. 

 Liam took a face dive  into the sand.

We stopped at a park halfway back because it was too insanely hot to complete the whole walk back. 

Stopping for a rest.











At our campsite we met some interesting people. There was an international hostel there so there where some interesting fellows staying there for several months. They were kind to the kids. One came and brought us a bunch of peaches from a produce stand. We met a family (of sorts) who lived there in a tent. They had a little boy who was three and the girls played together. We got to know Jason, the dad figure for this boy. These people certainly had come from a different walk of life than us, but Will and I were sad to leave them. We really came to like them and we worried for them. We will be keeping them in our prayers.

What a unique campground, but we had a great experience there.

The girls still asleep in the morning.


             


                         


                                 Liam playing
                                 in the dirt.





Monday morning (when we normally would have been going home) we called the car rental company and they said they couldn't get a car to us until 3. That still didn't stop us. Though it felt like a hundred degrees out we walked to a nearby area that had a pond full of turtles. The girls and Will got the biggest kick out of feeding those turtles.

Throwing bread to the turtles. There were probably thirty or so.

Liam in the turtle gazebo. If you look closely you can see his two little teeth that have popped through.

We found out from the Mercedes dealership that the key wouldn't be there until hopefully Tuesday night, but most likely Wednesday morning. It was incredibly hot and we decided to find a hotel with A/C. The prices down there were outrageous and I said to Will, "Let's just throw caution into the wind and go explore the islands." If you know me, this is not typical for me. A) I struggle with anxiety and B) I am the tightiest tight-wad there is, so I would usually research everything to death to get the best deal. Will was so happy to hear me say that so he went with it. It felt so freeing to have no idea what was going to come next. I felt like adventurers. We drove on the other side of the sound on the mainland, too. We explored the swampy alligator refuge and it after awhile it appeared like we were in the middle of nowhere. Luckily Ellen had given us a phonebook with a map in it. It was getting later and fortunately we stumbled into this tiny town with one little hotel. The hotel ended up being ridiculously cheap. It was so quaint. I felt like I had stepped into one of those little mom and pop hotels they feature on the travel channel. The place was run by a husband and wife who were from Germany and used the hotel as their retirement. We were treated so well. They had a little pizza parlor in the hotel and the husband made us dinner. In the morning they also made us breakfast. It was obviously the hangout for older guys there. It was just like you see in movies. The old guys talking and ruffling each others feathers. The owner came by and said, "Don't worry about Artie, he's the mouth of the group." It just made me laugh. I felt like we had stepped back into the good old times.

Next on our journey we decided to take the 2 &1/2 hour ferry ride from the mainland to Ocracoke Island. I had never been on a ferry before. Will had been telling me for years about this cool ferry he went on as a kid and saw dolphins. This was the very ferry, but unfortunately no dolphins. Belle absolutely loved it.

Ocracoke and Hatteras were our favorite islands. We had to take another shorter ferry to get to Hatteras Island. We drove all the way back up the islands and were able to get the new key that night. After driving up to Virginia Beach and back (to bring back the rental car) and back up to head home we didn't get back until nearly 3 that morning. What a great trip! We all loved it so much. Probably the best trip I've been on, and a lot of it wouldn't have happened without us losing that key. Isn't it so funny how Heavenly Father answers our prayers in better ways than we even plan for ourselves? I can't tell you how many times that has happened for me. And fortunately the key was a lot less expensive than we even imagined. Kari had thought it would be about a thousand since they told her to fix her other key would be five hundred. Luckily for us it was only 200. See, everything turned out just fine, and being adventuresome and letting go of my anxiety for a few days actually turned out great!

Three

So I've super sucked at this blogging thing. Can I use the excuse that having three kids has been really hard to adjust to? I have a difficult time finding a moment for myself. Actually as I'm typing this Liam is crying. Better go check that out.

.... (the next day) Like I said, busy. I will try again. So though it has been busy it has been happy. I absolutely adore my three children. Belle has gotten to a good age. Those first few years were quite challenging. I thought I would always be battling with that little one. Such a strong will! Luckily the last two years have been awesome. We still have moments, of course, but generally she is really an easy kid. She is silly and creative. She has an imaginative mind. Everyday she is creating some kind of world or game for her and Evee. I sometimes have to remind myself to have patience because her creativeness equals major mess. I want her to create because I think a creative mind equals a genius mind. This is why I hate that schools stifle creativity - but don't get me started on that one. Anyway, Belle is also my big helper. She helps with things around the house and with Evee, but this girl is the biggest help with Liam. She loves babies and she is good at caring for them. She will change his diaper, hold him, play with him, and the coolest part is I don't even usually have to ask. She just wants to. Belle loves to learn. She honestly does. Like other kids she asks so many questions, but she actually wants the whole answer. For example, the other day Belle asked why we don't buy potato chips very often. Will and I went on to explain how eating healthy food affects your body in detail (plaque, heart attacks, the way the body carries blood, etc.) She was truly interested in the whole process and was trying to explain it to someone the next day. Sometimes when I picture that girl's thirst for knowledge I imagine the top of her head open just sucking in information. She's like her dad, always loves to learn new information. 

Evee is my happy-go-lucky girl. Though she has entered the dreaded fit stage, she still isn't that bad. I don't love the fits, but typically she can be distracted and usually she is still always happy and smiling. She is so bubbly and full of energy. She is finally able to talk a little more clearly. She says a lot of words, and only one full sentence - "I want some." A couple days ago she was watching me breastfeed Liam and said, "I want some." Hmm, sorry, no. She is a scratcher in a big way. Poor Belle gets the brunt of it. She frequently has scratch marks on her face from Evee. Luckily Evee is usually quick to apologize and pull out of her funk. The longest they usually last is 15 minutes. Amazing to me, since Belle's were never under an hour. Evee has gotten where she is not so jealous of her brother and has started playing with him more. Poor kid sometimes ends up as her horse 'til I come to the rescue. Evee is my swimmer. That girl is crazy about the water, always has been.

Liam is a joy to me. I love having a boy. How fun! He seems like he is so much more mellow than the girls. Even in my womb he was. It makes me laugh because most of my friends will say how their boys are wild and their girls are calm and mellow. I think we got the reverse in our home. Liam is a happy guy. He smiles and laughs a lot. His sense of humor is so cute. He can already tell when you are trying to goof around with him. He is now sitting on his own and he will get on his hands and knees. He can alternate his knees, but hasn't figured out his hands yet, so he usually goes backwards. He cruises all over the living room backwards . He now has two teeth on the bottom. They just busted through two days ago. How has his little life already gone by this fast? I think of Belle and that first year felt so long. With Liam it is just sailing right by. It makes me nervous that they will all just grow up so fast. Though it is busy and hard, I love this time with my little children. They are darling and so fun.Can't I just freeze them?

A Swiss Candle Night

I love camping just about more than anything. It is my favorite thing to do. When spring comes rolling around I get the itching to go. Well, I think the whole family is getting that same bug. For Family Home Evening not long ago Will made a swiss candle, which is basically a fire in a log. We roasted marshmallows and had a great time.

I just hope the warm weather comes back quickly because we are really wanting to go camping next weekend. Come back 80s weather!

Best Sister Friends

So I was just thinking about my sweet girls and their darling friendship. I love the way they love each other. Sure they have their not so tender moments, but most of the time they just love each other's company. They play together all the time. Typically if they're not together, they are looking for each other. It is so lovely that they entertain each other, but even more than that it brings such a joyful feeling to my heart. There is a love that comes from watching your spouse with your child, and in a similar way I feel such feelings of love watching my children love each other that adds to the love I already feel for them.

I hope they always stay close.