today i...

i need a shower

i am trying to motivate myself to get on the treadmill

i think pinterest is not helping

i served ethan his favorite breakfast: toast, yogurt and milk

i over slept and so did everyone else - ooops.

i miss creative day

i feel excited and nervous about spencer's call back audition!

i am trying to find the right wedding clothes for b&m's big day

i disappointed allie because i don't know how to french braid

i think i would like to give my blog a make-over

i am still fighting the longest lasting cough of my whole life 

i am coveting the new nikon d4 - in my dreams

i feel shocked at the grown up girl who lives here

i am completely obsessed with downton abbey

i wonder where taylor will be studying next year

i wonder how long it takes to hear back about scholarships?

i adore my husband in his levi's and black jacket.

i am thankful that i was born to "goodly parents"

i find myself humming the "little bill" theme song - love that show

i am sort of dying to do something creative and crafty

i am dreading my errand running 

i giggled when i realized it was groundhog day!

i wonder if we have time to watch that later?

i am wondering what to fix for dinner?

i feel tired of wearing sweat pants all the time

i want to attack the left over sheet cake allie made

i am practicing self control

i feel tired of all the brown in my house

i want to paint lots of blue

i wish i could find just the right shade

i want someone to tell me what to do with my entry way

i feel proud of my week of extreme productivity 

i feel drained from my week of extreme productivity

i am thinking i lack balance

i feel irrationally worried every time taylor is out driving

i feel a little unsure of the future being faced with so much change

i weigh sixty pounds less than i did in september

i am still the same on the inside

the big one-five

when we come down from our christmas high and the calender turns to january, it means that it is time to celebrate spencer's birthday. so last saturday morning we did just that! i love it when a birthday falls on the weekend, it's so much fun to wake up to celebrating and have a relaxed yummy breakfast and presents.

spencer's birthday wish was to play xbox with friends for the entire day. seriously? normally, the amount of gaming time is pretty restricted, so the idea of a gaming marathon makes the teenage boys at my house all giddy with excitement.  it also makes all my "you're a bad parent" alarms go haywire. however, when it's your birthday wish, rich and i tend to loosen the "meanest parents EVER" title a bit, and so a gaming marathon birthday party it was.  on the up side,  it ended up being the easiest birthday party i've ever thrown. i had to order pizza, and then, wait... that's it. in fact, it must have been a little too easy because i found time to clean and organize a couple of unruly closets and forgot to take any pictures of the rare gaming event. lame. 

sunday evening we did more celebrating with friends and grandparents, don't forget the spaghetti and strawberry cupcakes - spencer's choice every year. we all have our favorite things i guess,  he knows what he likes and that's cool.

i know i must say this with every kid at every age, but i just cannot believe that my "other" baby is fifteen. spencer was the baby for a long time before ethan came along, and that's still sort of how i feel about him. baby is kind of funny label for him i guess since he's taller and stronger than everyone else in the family now, well, as tall as rich, but i'm sure that's (for rich), sadly temporary.

now for the sappy part. i am just so lucky to be his mom. spencer has been such a blessing in my life because i can relate so personally to his challenges.  i have learned so much about myself while parenting him, and i have been required to push myself to grow and learn so that i could be a better teacher and advocate for him. i am still learning of course, it's all a process, but i am grateful for the opportunity. i just adore the nerdy tall black nike socks off this boy.

happy happy birthday spencer.

jumping back in

it seems kind of strange to be posting.
but good to be getting it down at the same time.
there are a few good reasons that i fell off of the blogging map...

at the beginning of september, i set a few personal goals to achieve more balance in my life.

the first was to make my down time less idle. for me, this meant not even turning the computer on in the mornings which was hard, and as a result, i didn't blog, but i got more crossed off the daily tasks list, spent more time being creative without photoshop, and it gave me more time for my second goal....

i read the book of mormon. (if you don't know what this is, you can click on the title and read all about it) lately, scripture study has felt a little overwhelming, and when that happens i tend to avoid it. so, i gave myself permission to just read it. you know, like a book. imagine that! no highlighter, no study guide, no pen, no journal, no notes in the margins, just reading. it was marvelous, i highly recommend it, and really, i don't know why i didn't think of it before. i finished yesterday and was excited this morning to start it all over again.  i could, and probably will at some point, do a whole post on why i love this book so much. but today, just know that i do, that i know it's true, and that we are richly blessed when we are obedient to God's commandments.

third, rich and i resolved to spend more time together, especially after we put the kids to bed. we have teenagers with a big work load and full schedules themselves, so this usually means that the one, precious, "golden hour" cannot be spent with the computer on. it's been totally and completely worth it. its been the best couple of months of our whole marriage, truly.

lastly, i've been kind of sick. at the beginning of september, i started having a difficult time swallowing and digesting food and it just sort of seemed to get harder from there. a lot of doctor visits, tests, and blood work later, haven't given us a ton of answers to these problems and that was a little discouraging. in general i just haven't felt great and as a result my energy level has been a little low. even though my symptoms seem to be stinking around, i'm definitely feeling better by managing my diet very carefully.

so that's it. its been a very full several months since fell off the blogging map, and i don't even pretend to think that i can catch up documenting it all, so i think i'll just jump in with today.  lately i have been feeling really strongly that blogging is something that i need to make time for once again, and since i'm trying to be a better listener to that voice, this is me, jumping back in.

wish me luck...

six is super

the halloween posting will have to wait a day or two, because what happened the day after halloween is really what the big news is around here...

ethan tanner turned SIX!

it's a good thing too because, he says he has been "waiting and waiting and waiting" for it to be his birthday and it's finally here. phew.

the morning celebrations were pretty low-key since everyone has left for work or school by the time he wakes up. he was so excited for it to be his birthday that i put a candle in a donut and sang to him to try to distract him from the empty house.

luckily, he loved it.

he's such an easy going kid.

it was a great day!
some of the highlights were:

being sung to in kindergarten and getting to wear a birthday crown.
handing out his all-time favorite treat, reese's peanut butter cups to his class
the dairy queen ice cream cake he's been ogling for months now

french toast breakfast for dinner
all the phone calls and visits from friends and family
presents! i loved catching his reaction on film.

and hearing him say,
"this is the best. birthday. EVEEEERRRR!"

which is good, because the night before he was a little sad about not being five any more.
silly boy.
six is super!

happy birthday little e.
so so glad you finally came!

sweet sixteen weekend

two fridays ago, on the fourteenth, 

this little baby girl...

and this little one year old girl...

and this little two year old girl...

and this little four year old girl...

and this little five year old girl...

turned into a big sixteen year old girl!

really?

yes really.

i know.

i can't believe it either.

but it happened.

because fridays are so crazy around this place, and no one in the family, including the birthday girl herself, would be able to attend our traditional birthday family dinner, she opted for a saturday morning french toast kind of party with everyone in attendance.

(it's not fair that she is so cute, even in the morning without getting ready.)

most of her presents started with the words "justin bieber", as in: justin bieber perfume (it actually smells surprisingly lovely), justin bieber posters - which we will post later after we've found room on her walls for them, and maybe her favorite present of the day...

 a justin bieber tshirt!

in case it's not already clear, allie is a huge j.b. fan. HUGE.
and while sixteen may not be the average age of a girl with bieber fever (more like 12), that doesn't bother her in the slightest. she's loved him from the beginning and doesn't care that it isn't a super popular way to be in high school. i love this about her, she is not a fair weather fan. everyone knows of her love for j.b., even ethan knew a card with justin bieber on it would be a hit, all without any help or prompting from me.

 (justin on the front wearing purple, his trade mark color, and allie in yellow with pink hair. 

i can translate ethan writing, it says: justin loves you allie. i love you too. ethan)

needless to say, i think this card was her second favorite present!

later on saturday her big birthday plans were to go get a pedicure with her BFF, lauren, but when we went to pick her up, there was something in the backyard that lauren was dying to show her....

SURPRISE!

lauren, with a little help from her cute parents, threw a fantastic sweet sixteen party for allie that she never saw coming! it's possible i'll go straight to hell for all the lies i had to tell her over the last few weeks and especially on saturday, but they worked because she never had a clue about any of the preparations and was genuinely surprised to see so many friends in lauren's back yard. it was awesome.

the girls ate and played games and roasted smores by the fire pit, ate cupcakes, laughed their heads off and then snuggled up in blankets to watch a movie outside in the backyard. allie was so touched, she's pretty much been smiling for the the last two weeks over it.


it was a great thing for her to feel so loved and so special on her big day! 


my thoughts on having a sixteen year daughter are complicated. i admire her strength and her love of others and her strong testimony of our Savior's love. i worry about falling short on being the mother she needs - its often hard to balance when to push and when to step back and let her figure it out. some times i feel like i can't keep up with the hormones and drama of being sixteen! but more often than that i feel so proud of all the good things that she's choosing for herself and excited for her future that looks so bright. 


love. this. girl.

happy happy birthday allie !

 sixteen is going to rock.

(p.s. allie, i did this whole post in purple in honor of your beloved j.b.)

star wars nerds, ur, i mean, fans.

ok so, obviously, i'm struggling a little bit with keeping this blog current. i can't believe we're into the last week of october already. the idea of trying to catch up makes me want to dive into a vat of ice cream, so today, i'm just jumping in with some randomness. jumping into my blog that is, not ice cream.

the other day, i looked out the window to this scene in the back yard. proving, once again, that big boys are really just little boys on the inside. they never really grow up no matter how much hair is on their legs.

the best part, besides the fact that they are still in their pajamas, is that they mean it. light saber battles are not for the faint of heart at our house. they have had the bruises to prove it, and it's not a coincidence they're fighting outside instead of in. there's less chance of any dry wall damage if the battle stays outdoors. light sabers, and the desire to use them like a jedi, are a big deal around here because my boys, all of them, are such big star wars fans.

this summer when we went to orlando there was some kind of nerd, i mean, star wars convention going on at the disney studios park. there were tons of extra star wars characters walking around the park, and my boys were in heaven. and i'm not kidding, when jango phett walked by, the look on taylor's face told me it was maybe his best day ever.
who the heck is jango phett you ask?
exactly.
they're nerds.
nerds who want to use the force so dang bad.
and i love it.

birthday love

here's my first part of a september re-cap...

september is a big deal around here because rich and i both celebrate our birthdays within a couple of days of each other. first rich, then me. but i'm the photographer so we usually only have photos of him. :)

we always have a date somewhere in the middle of our special days to celebrate, and i love sharing that with him. this year, the date was just us, which it usually isn't, and while it's always fun to have a group date, it was lovely hanging out just the two of us. 

somehow, we always end up going to the restaurant that i want to go to. i always try to persuade rich to choose his favorite place, but he's too much of a gentleman. we ate at happy sumo, because somehow my birthday always makes me crave sushi. (i crave it all the other days of the year too, but whatever.) 

the thing i took away from birthdays this year is just how much LOVE we have in our lives. everyone was so thoughtful and went the extra mile to make us both feel special and loved. and it worked! there was something kind of big going on every day for a full week - a birthday WEEK. it was a big deal. and a lot of fun. and humbling because i really just feel so blessed.
we have the best friends and family.

have i written out the thank you notes? 

no i have not. i need to get on that. 

tomorrow.

right after i post the second series of september happenings.