Underwear Robber

Today I told the girls that when we went to Wal Mart they could each pick out some new underwear.  As I'm driving to the store with the kids, Gabriella very impatiently says to me "Mom, why is it taking so long to get there!?  What if we take so long that someone steals all the underwear before we get there."  I thought for a second not sure what to say, when Kate took over the conversation saying "Gabriella, why would someone go to the store to steal underwear?"  "No one would want to steal underwear!"  I could not stop laughing.  I think we had Gabriella convinced by the time we got there that there would be plenty of underwear left for her to choose from.

Sweet Moments

The past couple of weeks I've been pushing a "no t.v." rule in our home.  It's so easy to let the girls turn it on the morning and then just let them sit there and watch while I get chores done around the house.  This was leading to a lot of awful behavior, mostly from Gabriella, and I also noticed that they never played with their toys which made me sad. 

The first few days felt like I was fighting an uphill battle.  The girls would whine all morning about not watching t.v.  But after a couple days they got over it and started playing more.  One afternoon they were being really cute playing with each other.  Later that night I told Kate how happy it made me that they were playing so nice.  She told me while they were playing upstairs, she was being so nice to Gabriella to play what she wanted to play that she almost started crying because she felt the spirit.  It was so sweet.  I hope she remembers how it makes her feel when she does kind things for others like that. 

Hiatchi

A couple weeks ago Matt was out of town for the weekend and it was just the kids and I.  We had made it to church but after 2 hours, and all the kids crying at the same time I gave up and we came home.  I decided to just make the best of our time and we watched a movie together.  I picked some dog movie that looked good.  Well in the movie the dog's owner ends up dying and everyday the dog waits at the train station for his owner to come home.  It was seriously sad. I was making the girls lunch when I called over to Kate to come eat.  She didn't move and I thought maybe she had fallen asleep.  I walked over to her and there on the couch she was curled up bawling while watching the movie.  I held her in my arms as she told me how sad it was to watch the dog show up everyday waiting for his owner who had died.  She could not stop crying.  It was so sweet and sad at the same time.  I didn't realize how tender she would be towards the movie.  I sat with her for the rest of the movie, and finally got her all calmed down.  All day after that all she could talk about was the movie Hiatchi and how sad it was.  She is such a sweet girl.  And from now on I'll have to be careful about what kind of movies I pick for us to watch. 

Bad dreams

Last night I had Gabriella in my bed, she had a nap that day and in true Gabriella form was up until about 11:30pm because of it.  She had just fallen asleep and right as I was about to fall asleep I hear Clayton start to cry over the monitor.  I waitied to see if he would stop but he didn't so I made my way to his room where I watched him for a minute.  He was trying to crawl and sit up in his sleep.  It was kind of cute to watch him try to practice his new skill he's learned.  I rocked him for about 10 minutes until he was sound asleep then layed him back in his bed.  I returned to my bed so happy to finally get to sleep and a minute later Kate was at my bedside crying.  She had a bad dream so I walked her back to her room and laied in bed with her.  She told me her dream was about the "Beast" from the Sandlot.  She kept crying until I told her silly stories to try to make her happy.  After a few funny stories and with tears still streaming down her face she said, "Mom, even though it seems like Heavenly Father doesn't hear your prayers sometimes, because you still have bad dreams, he actually does."  "It's just that sometimes he doesn't answer them the way you want him to."  She told me she had prayed to not have bad dreams but she still did.  My heart literally broke for her.  That is such a hard lesson and concept to understand.  I was so impressed that at 5 years old she still had faith that Heavenly Father was hearing her prayers even if he wasn't answering them. 

Over a Year, What The Heck!

I've been majorly slacking on my blogging lately.  I'm not sure what it is about the third child, but I just find I don't have the time/energy I did before to get things done.  But I'm going to try to be better. 

In March we moved into a new house, I should say we bought a new house.  We've loved it.  All of our other moves seemed like hard transitions for the kids, they wouldn't sleep well, and just seemed off.  But with this move the opposite happened.  The kids love the house.  Clayton finally started sleeping through the night as soon as we moved him to his own room, and the girls haven't had any problems in their new room either.  We've all loved the house.

Kate graduated Preschool in May, and then went on to do summer preschool the next week along with Gabriella.  Gabriella was pretty excited to be going to Miss Carries.  After preschool ended we started up with swimming lessons with Nancy Page.  Clayton and I sit outside for 2 hours from 11am-1pm (in 100 degree weather) so the girls can take from her.  It's been a little rough for him but he's been a trooper.  The girls have improved a lot, and love going. 

Clayton finally started feeding himself at 11 months old.  Is that crazy or what!  He turned One last Friday, and  barely started to crawl this week.  He only goes a short distance and other than that he continues to sit on his bottom and rock back and forth to get to where he needs to go.  He still loves to hold my hands and walk around, but hasn't mastered standing and holding onto the furniture yet.  He has seemed frustrated by his lack of mobility these days.  I'm grateful he sort of started crawling, hopefully that will bring him some happiness.  I think he is just a super cautious little person and that's why he hasn't crawled or walked much.  I'm always happy when my babies start crawling, even though it means they will get into more things, it brings them so much joy so I'm happy for them. 

Gabriella continues to be a handful.  She is still super happy which I always appreciate but she has an intense little personality.  She yells through the house for me constantly which just about drives me nuts.  She's been really good to play with Clayton, and he adores her.  She loves to be with her family and loves it when we are all together. 

I've been loving Kate at the age of 5.  She tries hard to do what's right and make good choices.  She can be helpful when she wants to be, and is pretty good to not talk back to me.  She notices quickly when I'm frustrated and tries her best to cooperate.  I'm going to miss her next year when she's in school all day.

Other than that things are going pretty good.  Aftin and her family moved to Michigan.  It was a very very sad day for me.  I cried, she cried.  She was really my first and only friend here in Phoenix.  I'm feeling a little lonely and off ever since then.  Hopefully I'll be able to find someone else that will be just as good of a friend as she was to me.  I will miss her a lot.