In The Spirit Of Thanksgiving

For the past couple months I have seen my life in a bit of a different light. I mean I've always been grateful, but maybe I just didn't truly recognize the amazing, unmeasurable blessings in my life and stop to actually see what has resulted because of them. A new life. Love. Health. A home, a job. Family. Peace. Happiness. Knowledge. Insight. Humility. Faith. Strength. Courage. Comfort. Endurance. Friends. Compassion. Laughter. All the result of blessings big and small. I am not only grateful for my blessings, but also for how they've changed and shaped my life. It's touching really. It's amazing too how there are so many different ways and forms my blessings have come. It's nearly impossible to think of them all.
A few weeks ago I was checking out at Walmart (a blessing in it's self to be getting out of that place) and as I grabbed my bags and finished paying, the checker said, "have a blessed day". I thought about that simple little comment as I left the store and drove home. I really appreciated what she had said, because it made me think not only how blessed my day was, but also my life after that and how that checker cared enough about somebodies day to wish them a blessed day. Not many people say things like that these days.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving I give thanks to my Heavenly Father and all those who have blessed my life incredibly. I am living the dream...my dream, at least...which requires a few changes and adapting here and there, but I am grateful for changes, for the opportunities they bring, the new chapters they begin, and the memories they create. I am grateful for 2nd chances...and 3rd, 4th, and 5th ones too. I am grateful for the ability to pray, and for the answers to those prayers. I am grateful for my testimony of Jesus Christ. I am grateful for pure, unconditional love and that I have so much of it in my life. I am eternally grateful for family- for my remarkable parents who through living have demonstrated and taught love, devotion, passion, service, wisdom, care, hope, and faith. I am grateful for my strong siblings; Casey, Rose, Kurt, Jake, and Newt.
I am forever Grateful for my best friend, my amazing husband, Shawn, and for knowing with much confirmation, that we were meant to find each other and love together for the eternities. I find myself wordless to describe how grateful I am for my beautiful daughter, Victoria-she is the most astonishing blessing. I love having her smiles, laughter, sweetness...and even sassyness in my life, I love having her tiny hand to hold, being able to wipe away her tears from those chubby cheeks and to help her experience the world, all along side her Daddy. Although it is sometimes frightening to raise her in a world such as ours, I am overwhelmingly grateful to have her and to be a mother. I am blessed, and I am grateful.  

Digital Scrapbooking Help

I need some help from all you digital scrapbookers who do such and amazing job on all your designs...
I need a few good websites to get some cute stuff....or any freebies you know of would be awesome too! I need some good stuff for our Christmas Cards...

It's a Good Morning

Lately we've had some crazy hair days around here. The other day we woke up to this munchkin mohawk.

GOOD MORNING!

Doesn't she look like a little rocker giving the "hang loose" sign!?

The next day I found her hair like this when she woke up from her afternoon nap...

The walls in her room are still blue, yes...with an airplane painted on the wall too. We haven't gotten around to painting her room yet. This weekend we will though, right Shawn? {I think we've said that for the past 3 weekends.}

Later in the evening, Shawn hooked up his ipod and head phones and put them on Victoria.

Feelin' it...

Victoria is 14 months now. She is such a cuddly, sweet baby and I am amazed at how fast she picks up on things. It seems like she understands just about everything I say to her. Of course she always has something to say back. She says a number of words like cracker, ball-which she used to pronounce as "bah", now she has tried to add the L sound at the end but it sounds like a W, it's too cute. She trys to say Jesus, she can say clock, Seth -the name of one of her little friends, her word for movie is still baba. The list goes on. A couple of weeks ago She was looking at a wedding picture of Shawn and I and Shawn asked her "who is that?" She pointed to us in the picture as she said "mama", "dada".SO sweet! When we get ready to pray before she goes to bed, or any other time she will smile really big and fold her arms...only for like 2 seconds though, but it's a start! And occasionally she will try to say "amen" at the end of the prayer. We're still working on that one.  She can meow like the kitty...for some reason though it's a loud, harsh meow...really funny. And she'll meow back at Trixie and say "Pssst, Pssst". Trixie and Victoria are pretty hilarious together. Victoria will play with Trixie by swinging the kitty wand around, and she does tease her a bit, but Trixie gets her back by going into Victoria's room while she's taking a nap and meow really loud to wake her up...which makes me want to drop kick the cat!

Victoria still loves books and collecting the fallen leaves and pine cones on our walks. She has such a sensitive  little heart. I love her so much and I love being her "Mama".

All Things Halloween

I know Halloween is old news by now, you know me-I'm always two weeks behind on just about everything! Anyway, here's how spent our very happy Halloween...

Saturday we carved our Walmart pumpkin. Victoria thought that was pretty cool and loved helping me clean out the pumpkin.

Here is Victoria helping me pick out the pumpkin seeds so we could roast them. She loved getting her hands dirty with this stuff.

She even tasted it a few times. It took her a few more times of tasting the pumpkin to decide that it wasn't her favorite.

My turn to carve the pumpkin now.

Getting ready to go Trick or treating.

Cute little witch!

Our pumpkin. It's supposed to be a witch stirring her brew with a face in the steam...I'll never carve that pattern again. It took way too long.

Victoria had her friend Seth over on Halloween night for dinner and Trick or Treating. They were pretty cute!

These pictures below are from the night before Halloween, when we had our ward Trunk or Treat.

Peering into her little witches pot and checking out all her candy.

Victoria and Daddy trunk or treating.

Here is Victoria and Sierra as a cute little fairy just before going out to trunk or treat.

Shawn's awsome costume... that he made...he's "Balloon Boy"..ya know, the kid all over the news who was thought to be inside his dad's science balloon thing that floated away, but he wasn't..the whole thing turned out to be a hoax planned out by his parents who told their kid to go hide in a box in their attic while all sorts of rescue teams tried to catch him in the balloon....if you don't know what I'm talking about, you should, so google it! In the picture above Shawn is pretending to throw up...as the kid did on TV during his interview because he was so nervous about lying.

And here we are as a family..haha, kind of a ridiculous picture! We had such a fun Halloween!

The Perfect Pumpkin...Smashed

So in the previous post I wrote about our trip to the pumpkin patch a couple of weeks ago and how we picked our perfect pumpkin...it really wasn't that perfect. It was half green and half orange...but it had a great stem! Anyway, the next day I picked up the pumpkin to put it out on our porch next to the cute little hay bail we bought at the farm where we got our pumpkin. The bottom of the pumpkin was a little soft...rotting obviously...I forgot to mention that the pumpkins were 40 cents a pound. Our pumpkin was 22 lbs, so we paid almost $9 for it...so I got the pumpkin out the door and as I was placing it on our cute little hay bale that "perfect" 22 pounder slipped out of my arms, rolled down all of our porch steps, spilling pumpkin guts and seeds along the way, then finally landing on top of the storm drain in the street. Smashed. All I could do was stand there and watch it all happen in slow motion with the "great stem" left in my hand. I just stood there staring at my smashed pumpkin and couldn't believe what had just happened. I sighed, started laughing a little, then looked up to notice that some worker was sitting in his truck parked in front of our townhome had watched the whole thing...kind of embarrassing, but totally hilarious to watch I am sure! I am still laughing about it!

Yep, there's the truck with the guy in it who saw the whole thing...probably recorded it with his cell phone and posted it on youtube

I might as well have thrown $9 down that storm drain

Picking The Perfect Pumpkin

{Victoria and our perfect pumpkin}

On the 22nd of October we headed to a near by Pumpkin Patch. We were kind of bummed out that we missed the hay ride, which are only given during the weekends...we had to go on Thursday, before the rain came on Friday and Saturday. The pumpkins had definitely been picked through and we were left with the green ones..Victoria loved them just the same though, especially the tiny ones she could actually pick up. She loved the wagon ride down to the pumpkin patch. She bounced and pointed and gibber gabbered excitedly for the whole two minute wagon ride down there! She always has something to say!

Notice Victoria's cream cords? Not the best idea I've had... definitely cute, but not very practical. For some reason they seem to attract everything from V8 Splash juice and Mac N Cheese to sticky fruity cheerios, smashed bananas and soggy graham crackers...the five main food groups at our house (which change on a daily basis actually).

{Victoria trying to sit on the pumpkins}