An Ice Cream Sundae

I did a fun singing time this week; this morning Justin taught our Come, Follow Me to the kids and as he was talking about the 7th day when God created the day of rest, I was reminded of a primary sharing time I listened to when I was subbing in primary in WA. I brought in some scoops of vanilla ice cream (thank you Justin for bringing that to the primary room; thank you Mom and Dad for providing the ice cream) and told the kids we would be building an ice cream sundae as we sang (so "sing loud and proud!" Ha - this turned into "sing the WORDS and be REVERENT" hahaha). We sang through the verses of "When He Comes Again" and I picked a kiddo to come up and put any topping on the ice cream they wanted. I had whipped cream, chocolate chips, and I also had ketchup, mustard, ranch, BBQ sauce...you get it. By the end of our singing we had nine various disgusting toppings on our ice cream sundae. I emphasized to the kids that some things are NOT good on an ice cream sundae...they might be good on a hamburger, but not on a sundae. Similarly, some activities are not good to do on Sundays. They are fine for the rest of the week, but not on Sunday. I think they may have been too distracted by the toppings to hear the point I was trying to make at the end...ha. We'll see.

Beckham boy has been waking up just before 6:00 and it's rough. I don't get him up until 6:00 and even then...I'm crossing my fingers he gets back to his 7:00-7:30 wake time.

I've been back to the gym consistently even during the work week. I LOVE throwing some weight around again. Postpartum is no joke. I am doing a postpartum recovery specific program which has been SO beneficial. Ladies, if you don't want to pee yourself after having babies, this is the recovery program for you.

Justin and I are trying to decide on an official house plan. It's tough to decide when we don't know what the estimated cost will be. We plan to meet with Clint soon to see if we can get any concrete information. As much as I'd love a 2,400+ sq ft house I'm not sure we will be able to afford it! I am trying not to think about being stuck in this rental another two years...I want us to get a new house but I don't want the house to get us. Inflation is another BIG issue that I'm worried about. 

Thursday was the last day of 1st semester. We're half way through the school year! Crazy! I am so excited for 2nd semester. My 8th grade class just went from 30 to 21. I'm going into that school building tomorrow dancing with excitement. It will be LOTS better. I'm enrolled in a two-credit class to go toward my certificate requirements for the next several weeks.

I bought myself a KJV study bible. I want to enjoy the scriptures this year and I think this is really going to help. 

Beckham still will not sit up or crawl and he turns 7 months old in two days. At Granny's house today during our visit we propped him up and he stayed sat up for probably a whole minute which was the best I've ever seen him do. He wobbled a little to the side and was able to recover back to sitting steady - yay baby! Then he face-planted shortly after that. We've given him 30 foods so far with his solids; some purees but mostly real food cut really big so he can't choke on it. 

Logan is cracking us up. He said tonight at bedtime, "Mommy, I don't like my brain telling me to do bad things." He drags out his words right now too so it sounds like, "Mommy, I don't like my braaaaain telling me to do bad thiiiiings." Lately his thing has been, "My brain told me to do it," when he does something naughty and we are repremanding him. He said something to Granny today at her house about "my brain told me to" and it is quite charming/hilarious.

Emmett is super interested in phonics right now. He asks us to spell words with him; we sound it out and he identifies the letter and writes it out. I wish he would start with more basic words than all the names of dinosaurs, but he did do all our family members names tonight which was much less tedious than pachycephalosaurus. We've been working on sounding out certain words as we read together. 

We finally were able to get outside today to add some hours to our 1,000 hours outside goal. It "warmed up" to 20+ degrees. It actually was lovely once we got out there with all our snow gear on. The chickens seem to be doing fine with the below zero cold with no heat lamp, no insulation, no nothing. We are still getting 4-6 eggs every day.

Justin says there's nothing going on with him. Ha! That's us this week. I'm reading "Glow Kids" and "The Dental Diet." It seems like I'm always trying to read the next thing to guide us to eating more nutritious foods. Someone find me a freezer for sale; I'm ready to buy 1/2 a cow of grass-fed beef. 

Polling the social media world on whether to cut his hair or not....definitely NOT!

baby egg

cucumber

tomato - thank you Mitzi for the most amazing bibs ever

air fryer for the win; these were better than Chick fil A

found his foot

I love this <3 

Normally the fence post is my height!

Happy Holidays

 Wow - we've had an amazing couple of weeks of Christmas break. I have absolutely loved every second and am in complete denial that I go back to work tomorrow. 

Christmas was one of my favorites yet. We had snow on and off for the whole two weeks leading up to Christmas, and it even snowed Christmas day which is always extra special. We went to Mom and Dad's on Christmas Eve for the classic dinner; this year I made the turkey and mashed potatoes and gravy. On the last day of school before break they handed out free turkeys to the teachers - how awesome is that? I had to make my turkey a few days in advance because I thawed it too early and we didn't want to risk it getting too old but it turned out really great regardless. I tampered with my turkey gravy for a while getting it just right and we're STILL enjoying leftovers. After dinner we did the program and we let Emmett and Logan take turns reading parts which was so cute to me. I love listening to their little voices speak gospel truths, even if they're just repeating what we whisper to them. We played some Christmas bells, ate strawberry ice cream, and watched It's a Wonderful Life. I didn't think we'd stay the whole time but all the sudden we were at the end of the movie. I love at the beginning of that movie when George is panicking over what to do and he sees a sign, "Ask Dad; he knows!" if that isn't true about my dad! I love that movie because it always reminds me of him. The kids fell asleep toward the end of the movie which didn't bother me too much - it's rare when they will fall asleep on me, let alone both of them! <3 We got everybody home and got our Santa chores to work. 

Christmas Eve snowfall

The only thing wrong with Santa is I don't get the credit I deserve...Christmas morning rang to the song of, "I love Santa!!" and I'm over here agreeing while I'm seething inside..."I bought that for you!!" ...Santa delivered this year with three new dinosaurs for Emmett and a dino nerf gun for Logan. We also got Logan a mini-four-wheeler motor toy that he will absolutely love driving around all summer long. We tried it out on the road a little bit, but it's been COLD (in the negatives) and windy ever since Christmas so we haven't ventured outside much at all. I got a new hair curling tool, new lifting shoes, and a new water bottle. We headed over to Mom and Dad's for Christmas breakfast and then came back home to video chat with Jon and Judy for the boys to open their gifts from them. We played bingo later in the afternoon with them as well. 

Logan stayed up with us watching the Lord of the Rings

Church was canceled the next day due to the blowing snow. The whole rest of the next week we were home and happy. I got myself to the gym every single day which felt really great! I'm doing a postpartum recovery program "return to weightlifting" course and I'm finally picking up a barbell again. In preparation for the weekend, we drove to Idaho Falls New Year's Eve for a dentist follow up appointment for Justin. We swung to Costco to get some ribs. We had New Year's Eve dinner with Mom and Dad and hung out for a while. Justin and I have been watching The Lord of the Rings in the evenings and we finished The Return of the King that night. Wow those movies are truly amazing and they hold up really well 20 years later.

The boys helped me make taco salad

taking scraps to the chickees

the boys had a sleep over on New Year's Eve

Stuffed French toast two ways 😍

As far as resolutions go, I have three: 

One is to spend 1,000 hours outside with the kids. It's about 3 hours a day. I need the 0 hours in January plan because I will not go outside when it is in the negative and windy. So we'll have lots of hours to make up in the spring/summer/fall but I think consciously trying to get more nature time will be so beneficial (the research says so too).

The Second is to have a weekly date night with Justin. There is not much for entertainment in Arco, and I'm not interested in spending lots of money to make this happen either...so I decided we're going to use our air fryer and pick out a recipe every week that we make together. Last week we made cream cheese avocado fritters with dipping sauce while we finished our movie.

The Third is to read (and comprehend) the Old Testament. I got myself a bible study guide and I'm looking forward to diving deep into all the miracles the Old Testament has to offer. I bore my testimony in church today because we just finished reading Moses 1 and Abraham 3 where we learn a few tidbits of what God has to say about the universe. Ironically in school we are about to start astronomy and evolution. I shared that there's nothing in the fossil record (or missing from the fossil record, for that matter) that shakes my testimony that God created us, and Jesus Christ created this world. Scientific discovery is just catching up with what God already knows and practices. Among the incredible universe, our solar system, the Earth, and our amazing bodies which are all a wonder, WE are God's work and His glory; to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of US. We, His spirit sons and daughters. As I take time to understand the magnitude of that truth I am filled with wonder.

Beckham seems to have grown SO much the last few weeks. He popped his first two teeth TODAY! I felt them in church when he started chewing on my finger and they were not there last night when we were feeding him dinner. That boy loves trying new food. If he sees me eating and not sharing with him, he lets us know he does not appreciate it. We're trying baby led weaning and I'm still too nervous to give him certain foods quite yet. He's not sitting up independently yet (he's too busy pushing backward trying to rock) and he's not crawling, but he's getting up on his haunches and maneuvering around as best he can with rolling/scooching/reaching. 

Logan tried to ring in the new year with a bang...yesterday I was feeding Beckham on the couch while the kids were eating snacks under the kitchen table. Suddenly I saw a flash and heard a boom. Upon investigating I saw black scorch marks on the outlet near where the kids were. Turns out Logan snuck a bobby pin and by the looks of things, stuck it in the outlet. Before I get a ton of judgement just know all my outlets are covered with baby proof coverings, but this outlet had both ports in use from the freezer and a charger. I'm convinced having those plugged in is the only reason Logan didn't suffer burns or electric shock because the plug in helped to block any arc that would have come his way. I freaked out, unplugged everything, turned off the breakers, and called Justin (he was at the gym) who came home and replaced the outlet right away. He is extremely lucky.