Jolly Holiday, Jolly Holiday

Here are a few hilights of our holiday festivities this year:

The girls had the cutest little preschool Christmas program!!  Here they are wearing their reindeer "crowns".  It was pretty much the most adorable program in the history of he world, if you want my honest opinion.

Poor Daddy - the man can't sit down without being smothered by our girls :)

Christmas is absolutely amazing when you have kids.  Amazing!!

Santa did a wonderful job of getting the girls what they wanted this year.  Lucky for Santa, my girls are easy to please, and didn't want anything crazy expensive this year.

Lalaloopsy everything and some princess figurines and they were ecstatic.
Santa also left a note about sharing.....I'm not sure my girls heard a single word, but A for effort, big guy!

The closest thing to a good old fashioned "here we are in our Christmas outfits sitting in front of the tree like perfect little angels" picture just before church.

How I got lucky enough to have such beautiful girls, I will never know. 

Bryan loves to wrap presents in a way that makes it impossible to NOT guess what's inside.  This is a Lalaloopsy lunchbox-type thing that we gave the girls to carry their mini dolls in.  It was obviously guessed instantly.

What they didn't get from Santa or Mom & Dad, they got from the rest of the family.  Lalaloopsy silly hair dolls {seeing theme here?}, Monster High dolls {thanks again, Shara, for finding 2 that aren't dressed as street walkers}, and Strawberry Shortcake dolls whose hair changes with cold.  They kind of live in my freezer now.  It's OK, it makes the freezer smell yummy.

I found this chair on KSL a few weeks ago and fell in love.  My Christmas present is getting it painted and reupholstered.

I'M SO EXCITED!!!

Mya has the best morning hair!

Jane learned to crawl during tithing settlement in the Bishop's office.

And then a week later, we found her in her crib standing up.

She is so unlike my other 2 kids - she is constantly wanting to move onto the next thing.

Last night she was holding onto a toy, then would grab my hand, stand up all the way, and then try and let go of me.

This kid is nuts!!

Love this picture :)

Shopping is hard work for babies.

And there is Christmas of 2011!

The Name Tag

A few days after my brother passed away, we got his stuff.

And with his stuff, was his name tag.

The one he was wearing when he passed away.

As soon as I saw it, I grabbed it.

It's ovbiously been worn, you can tell it wasn't new.

I kept running my fingers over the indented letters on the front.

I turned it over, and found these stickers.

I asked his mission president's wife about the stickers, and she told me he used them to help teach kids about the Gospel.

I informed my siblings and my parents that I would really like to have it. 

I don't care if I have anything else of Trevor's, I want this name tag.

I wore it the day of the viewing, and again at the funeral, clipped to the bottom of my sweater.

Now it sits on my kitchen counter, on top of a pile of pictures and CD's.

I can see it when I'm cooking dinner, and doing the dishes.

I still pick it up from time to time and run my fingers over the indented letters on the front.

I think about how many times he must have picked it up, and clipped it on his short sleeved, button down, white shirt pocket, and left his apartment to go preach the Gospel he loved so much.

And I turn it over and run my fingers over the worn stickers on the back.

This name tag makes me smile.

Zoo Lights

I love a good Groupon.
So I felt I snagged a great one for half off our little family to go to the zoo for Zoo Lights.
The only stipulation was we had to go between Dec 3-7.
We figured the best night to go would be Tuesday night - we'd miss the weekend and family night crowds.
Well, there was definitely no crowd.
Because it was FREEZING!!!!
We bundled up everybody pretty well, but we all still froze our little tootsies off.
But the kids loved it - the light displays are so much fun, and they still got to go on a carousel ride {their favorite part of the zoo}.  They didn't even whine about being cold {I can't say the same thing for me and Bryan}.  Jane was a little bitty trooper and didn't make a peep until the last few minutes.  She just stared in awe at the lights, all bundled up in her onesie, leggings, jeans, boots, sweater, coat hood, beanie and super thick blanket.
The tigers were all wrestling and playing as a little family.  It was super cool.
But I do have to say, knowing you are at the zoo and it's dark and you can only see certain things is a bit creepy.
Sorry, I have no actual pictures of us there {the one at the top I yoinked from the Deseret News} because I forgot my camera, and the thought of taking my gloves off to take a picture with my phone made me want to cry like a little baby.
BTW, I wasn't aware that the iPhone touch screen only works with bare fingers.  Must be a body heat thing.  I learned something new yesterday!
We will definitely be going back next year.......hopefully on a warmer night :)
Christmas time is just getting more and more fun the older my girls get!!

Ripping the Bandaid

I've had a bunch of things to post, but I'm having a really hard time doing it.  It's amazing how moving on with life after a tragedy like this makes you feel guilty.

I feel like I'm betraying the memory of my brother by thinking about other things, by not crying every day, by getting on with the day to day.

In the days after the accident, I couldn't fathom doing the day to day.  Make my kids lunch?  What?  Do laundry?  How?

But I know that moving on and living life is the only way to truly heal.

Every time I have to integrate myself back into a normal life situation {going into the office for a meeting for the first time, first day back at church}, Bryan and I look at eachother and say "rip the bandaid".  Because it's hard.  You know people are going to talk to you, to ask how you're doing, and it brings all of those feelings and memories of the last few weeks back up to the surface.  Ward members aren't going to still be giving me tearful hugs every single week for the rest of my life - most likely just the first time they see me.  So if we just get it over with, rip the bandaid, the next time I see them things can be somewhat normal.

And I know that people care about us and love us and just want us to know that they are thinking of us and are here for support.

So I'm ripping off the blog bandaid now.  I won't see Trevor's picture at the top when I open this anymore, and that's OK.  It doesn't mean I don't love him and miss him.

Grief does weird things to a person.

So here we go - here's to healing!

How about these 2, huh?  Decorating their Christmas tree was so much fun this year!  We turned up Christmas music way too loud and danced around.  Giving the girls their own tree was the best - they don't have any glass ornaments, so it's totally fine that they move them around at least 3 times a day.  And it keeps them away from my tree in the living room :)

They are both so excited for Christmas, and it's so much fun!  Everyone should have a 5 year old at Christmas time.  Lauren is a riot and every day she talks about Santa and what she wants.  Yesterday we went to Aunt Shara's to drop something off, and she showed Lo her present under the tree.  Lo took it shook it and didn't really say anything.  But in the car after we left, she told me she thinks it's a doll and a puzzle {she's totally right}.  She really hopes it's a Monster High doll, and if she gets one from Santa and from Shara, then she can give one to Mya.  This kid has such a big heart!

Miss Jane is now 6 months.  What???  Yep, that's right.

She is almost crawling, and can already get where she wants to go by doing "the worm".  She gets up on her hands and knees {or feet - see this beautiful downward dog?} and then flops down on her tummy while pitching forward.  Then kind of pulls herself forward again while on her tummy, then back up to do it over and over again.  Sometimes she face plants pretty hard, but it doesn't bother her.

For a long time, she would only push herself backwards, and then get super angry because she was moving away from whatever she was playing with.

So now we know 2 yoga positions - let's not forget her perfect plank position from a couple months ago :)

I can't believe how fast 6 months have gone by with my little Ginger Baby.

She is such a big girl - doing everything so much quicker than my other 2.  She just wants to be able to keep up with her sisters.

At her 6 month appointment, she was not quite 15 lbs - still 25% for weight and 95% for height.

The doc says her metabolism must be pretty insane, because she eats A TON!  At night before bed, she will eat 2 big containers of baby food {with rice cereal in them}, and then drink a 4 oz bottle {more cereal in it}.  She wakes up around 2:00 and downs a 6 oz bottle, then back to bed until about 8:00.

I asked her doc about cutting out this middle of the night feeding, and he said she obviously needs it, given her stats.  I'm just used to my babies sleeping all through the night.  But neither of my other babies were this skinny or tall, so if the kid is hungry, I will gladly feed her.  She needs the food!

She LOVES her sisters!  She is so used to one of them being in her face and thinks they are the greatest things in the world.  If she's fussy and I'm trying to get stuff done, one of the girls {or both} will just go talk and play with her and Jane just eats it up.

She has just about the biggest smile ever, and the happier she is, the bigger it gets.  A smile is just opening her mouth as big and wide as it can get - it melts my heart!

She is starting to babble, and there's a constant stream of "babababa, dadadada" coming out of her cute little mouth.

She loves eating EVERYTHING!  Everything, except peaches and apricots {what the.....she doesn't know what she's missing}.  She would choose veggies over fruit any day, and is the only child of mine to like peas and green beans.

She will still occasionally snuggle.  I might have to work really hard for it, but about twice a week we make it work, and it makes me so happy.



Jane is an absolute joy to have in our family, and I just want to eat her up.  Sometimes I sit and think "do I seriously have 3 kids?"  When did I grow up enough to have 3 KIDS???

Sometimes I cry when I look at her, because she will never meet her Uncle Trevor in this life, and he sure would've loved her.

The last conversation I had with him on the phone on Mother's Day was about how he & Scott needed to say a Missionary Prayer to get this baby out.  Because of course missionary's prayers count more than mine :)

 

I am so blessed.

And my kids are so blessed to have such a wonderful angel watching over them.