Nap Time

Both my little ones are napping right now. This should be the time to "go go go". There's so much I could get done. But it's so quiet. My house is calm and peaceful. And so here I sit. There's a pile of laundry next me. And I'm slowly getting through it. I know when they wake up I'll be all stressed out and wish if done more. But for right now this feels so nice. 

 

Update on my Little Ones

Nash is 2 1/2. In every way. He's demanding and volatile. Happy one minute laying on the floor crying the next.  Commercials can send him over the edge. (He doesn't understand why you would ever need to interrupt a show) but as soon as it comes back on he's singing and dancing again. He's also absolutely adorable. We call him the happy maker. He can make the grumpiest of siblings smile in a matter of seconds. 

Update on J will have to wait. He's screaming. And it's back to reality. 

Day of Rest

The first few months of my mission I hated really didn't love Sundays.  They were my biggest adjustment.  Pre-mission they were blissful, wake up later than normal-go to church for a few hours-come home-take a nap-eat a home cooked (not by me) meal-and just chill for the rest of the day-days.  

I remember my first Sunday in the mission field thinking "this is anything but restful! what happened to my day of rest?"  After a few months I acclimated a bit and just enjoyed the fact that three hours of church, which could easily be stretched in to 4+, meant those were hours not spent on my bike and/or knocking doors.  Sundays weren't as bad as I thought but I still dreamed of coming home from my mission and welcoming back those restful Sundays.  And I did.  I think.  But I am having a hard time remembering what a restful Sunday feels like.  

Five kids is rarely restful, even in the middle of the night but after getting them all gussied up and then spending 3 hours practicing reverence and harnessing all their energy, 5 kids at home in our rather "cozy" house the Sabbath day is anything but restful.  Every few weeks I vow that Sunday meals will from now on be simple to prepare and easy to clean up, I have a really hard time sticking to that.  Today I went for a meal that everyone likes and "wouldn't take too much work."  I am such a bad judge of that. Add to that the fact that I decide to throw together rolls 15 minutes before needing to walk out the door because "rolls just go with this meal."  Why do I do this to myself?  In the end it took twice as long to make and it will (eventually) take way too long to clean up.  But it tasted good.  There was no belching and not even one glass of milk was spilled, so that's a huge accomplishment.  (After having to clean up dinner by herself, I think Kimball has, at least for now, learned her lesson about belching at the dinner table.)

So I just plopped the kids in front of the tv and told them to give me a few minutes to "rest".  And what do I choose to do?  Sit down and blog about how it's not a restful day.

I think the conclusion I am coming to is that I really do put this all on myself.  There's no one to blame but me.  If I lay down right now how many minutes do you think I could get in before someone comes and interrupts?  Hey at least I don't have to go jump on a bike in a skirt and spend the next 4 hours knocking doors.  It's all about your perspective ladies.

Better than it Was

When Seth and I were first married we lived in a tiny 1 bedroom apartment (didn't we all?)  It was a whopping 680 square feet

After McKay came along we had this awesome little nightly ritual where we would put her down in her pack-n-play in our room and then when we were ready for bed we'd very carefully pick up the pack-n-play and shimmy it through the bedroom door out into the eat-in area of kitchen.  At least once a week we would bump up against a wall and wake her up.  It was a fun little process.  Every night.

We have gradually made our way up to a bigger home.  Still not huge but easily 2.5x as big as that first quaint little establishment.  

A few weeks ago on a Saturday while we were doing our weekly big clean (something we try to do every Saturday) I remembered how Seth and I used to do something similar when we were first married.  We would deep clean pretty much every Friday or Saturday.  We would clean that tiny little one bedroom/one bath apartment for 2+ hours.  Two hours!  What in heaven's name would take us two hours?  And how dirty/messy could it have possibly been?  Two of us cleaning for 2 hours and no children of mess making age.  Do you know what my house would look like now if I had 4 uninterrupted man hours of cleaning a week?  I don't know if our housekeeping skills were seriously lacking or if our standards were significantly higher, maybe a little of both.

Oh how our lives have changed.  In so many ways.  10 years and 5 kids makes a huge difference.  

Today I cleaned/laundered/tidied the house pretty much all day long.  Add in diapering, feeding, kissing, hugging, channel changing, homework helping, etc, etc and the house looks better but far from amazing.  

My new mantra "It's better than it was!"

Blog Makeover - Here we go again

I think its time for a blog makeover.  I have gotten lazy.  Facebook and Instagram are so easy that I've kind of given up on my little blog and I am missing her.  Writing is therapeutic for me.  A kind of escape from my sometimes, brain-numbing life.  (A life that I absolutely adore even if it doesn't "exercise" my intellect much.) And I was reminded recently that we should be keeping a journal.  Earlier today while looking for an old picture I jumped on here and ended up reading a bunch of posts from 5+ years ago.  There were things that I had completely forgotten about and I realized that there are probably a lot of things happening in our lives right now that 5 years from now I will have little or no recollection of... so here I go.

I am recommitting to keeping up with this, to taking a few minutes, a couple times a week, to just purge my brain a bit.  And to document our lives.

I do not commit to catching up on all that I have missed.

I'll just give this one brief recap of the past 6 months.

We now have 5 children.  And in case we ever were to forget that there are five of them, strangers regularly count them for us and then ask if they are really all ours.

The summer was long and hot.  (We live in Phoenix.  And I have 5 kids nine and under, thus the long part)

School is back in and now life is good as we are finally moving into fall (which the rest of the country would refer to as summer weather).

Football started this last week.  My life is complete.