My Baby Girl is 3!

I can't believe my baby girl is 3 already! Where does the time go? She was a surprise for us and what we would do without her, I have no idea. Our family definitely wouldn't be complete without this little munchkin. She's so funny, loveable, strong-willed (I have no idea where she gets that from! ;)

This is one of her favorite places in the house to sit, so when I pulled out my camera she thought she needed her picture taken there. She fits so perfectly in there.....until I gut it out this summer anyway.

She is such a girlie-girl! I don't know where she gets that from....I'm the furthest thing from being a girlie-girl. She was so excited to get a couple of new spring dresses....she'll be wearing them around whenever I let her. She loves to dress up and play princess or mommy.

This is her new "cowgirl" shirt. She started saying "Giddy-up" over and over...which is really funny because that is what the shirt says.

Most of the day she kept telling me that she didn't want to have her birthday today. She didn't want presents or a cake or anything. She was pretty growly! It wasn't until we went to the store that afternoon to pick out her cake she was going to have that day (I'm making her Princess Castle cake Friday...pics to come later) that she finally started to get excited about her birthday. Awww...Miss Em, I love you so much and we are so grateful to have you in our family! You're getting to be such a big girl. You're so much help (when you want to be!) and you are so independent....if any of your siblings are doing something than you think you should be able to do it too. I love watching you grow and learn. Everyday you teach me something too and I thank you for that from the bottom of my heart. Happy Birthday Baby Girl!

Update....

So finally here are some pictures of Joe's birthday cake. It was really simple and he loved it.

Those are all the Transformers that he got for his birthday. I wouldn't let him actually put them all on the cake. So he picked out the three that made it on the cake and helped me put them on.

This was one of the first cakes that I've done in a long time that I was actually done decorating before anyone showed up for the party. Most of the time I'm still trying to finish the cake while everyone is showing up. It was so nice to sit back a little and enjoy it all.

So it's been awhile since I've written anything. I kept hoping my laptop would get fixed, but the more it was looked at, more things wrong kept being found. :( It is really frustrating! I will be picking it up tomorrow though and hopefullygetting somethings off of my hard drive. Ugh. Plus we need to get out taxes done, so on the computer all weekend I will be. I am not looking forward to it. Oh well, so goes life. It's a good thing my kids are big enough to kinda take of themselves. That sounds bad, but it's what they and I have to do. It seems like it has been one thing after another for the last 6 weeks. Why is the first of the year always like that? One of these years it would be awsome if it would suprise me and just be smooth sailing for the first 2 or 3 months of the year. Yeah right.....then I would probably miss out on something that I need to learn....but if it did wait a few months, then I would patiently wait for it to happen, so I would still actually be getting something from it, right? It sounded good in my head anyway. But not all is bleak. We are all healthy, there is food on the table, the house is warm. I don't have too much right to be complaining. So time to focus on good things. We had a pretty quiet weekend. Sierra and Grace were able to go with their Grandma Bagley to my sis-in-laws house (Gloria's) for the weekend. They left right after they got home on Friday and came back Monday night. They had a great time. We missed them while they were gone, and so did the neighbor kids. Emmalee's birthday is next week. I can't believe my baby is going to be 3! Wow, where did the time go? I love how grown up she is getting, but I'm definitely in a sort of mourning for her babyhood. I am also so glad that I'm all done with diapers and potty training. I'm loving moving on to another phase of our lives with our big kids. I'm not looking so much toward the teen thing, but it's coming quickly. Ugh, Sierra, why can't you slow down a little! Well, I'm starting to feel like I'm just rambling, so I'm gonna stop for now. But I am going to try to be better about posting. I know how much I love reading everyone else's and how much I enjoy just "talking" to all of you, so I will do better!

Birthdays and Bedrooms

Okay, so first and foremost I must say a big Happy Birthday to my awsome son Joseph. He is 5 years old today. I cannot believe how fast he has grown up. He is such a joy in our lives. Some days I like to throw him away...but I really don't know what we'd do without him. He is so funny! He loves to bust a move, so this week he started a boys hip-hop dance class and he loves it. It was so much fun to watch him in there. He is such a friendly, loving boy. He will talk to anybody about anything. His eyes just sparkle when he smiles, he just lights up the room being in it. So Happy Birthday to my big guy! It's gonna be quiet today without him around. He got to go to work with his dad for his birthday. He was so excited. He had his toolbox full of tools ready to go last night. He got up and got dressed like his dad...in layers....a shirt, a sweatshirt, a vest, a silk scarf around his neck and his hat on his head. Those two are peas in a pod...I love to see them together.
So yesterday I finallydecided to move the kids around in different bedrooms. Gary and I decided it was time to put the two big girls back together and put Joe and Emma in the same room. It seems like you forget how much stuff you can actually get into a little space. But we were able to wade through it and get it moved around for the most part. This will be nice, especially for the big girls. With this arrangement we can put Joe and Em to bed at 8:00, as usual, and the big girls can go to bed and read for another 30 minutes without worrying about the younger sibling in the room with them. It was so nice last night. I know the girls loved it. Joe and Emma were much quieter than I expected also! But Joe getting to go to work with his dad today probably had a lot to do with that. Well, now I get to finish cleaning the house today, so I can make a cake tomorrow and decorate it Saturday for Joe's little party.

Responsibility...Accountability...For me!

So last week was a really long one. I was stressed out! It seemed like it was just one thing after another coming straight at me, full speed and I could get out of the way fast enough! I really started dogging on myself pretty bad....I was having a real good pity party and I was the only one invited. I just was not happy with anything. The kids were irritating me with whatever they were doing, everything that I had to do was really a chore....it was hard to get motivated to do anything! I just wanted to go in my room and lock the door. Okay, you get it.....anywho, I have some wonderful friends around me that really helped things turn around. I was messing around on Facebook when one of my friends popped up on screen to chat with me. She asked me if I wanted to go to Enrichment with her that night. I had been thinking about it and hadn't really decided if I was going to go....it was a big Stake Enrichment. Since she asked, I thought "Why not?". So I told her I go with her. It turned out to be the best decision I'd made all week! A recurring theme that night was that God knew us and loved us and that we need to love ourselves more. That was what I got out of it anyway. It just struck me so hard and really made me think about my week and look at why it had been so crappy. I started to realize that the biggest problem was not the 20 million things that needed to be done, but how I was perceiving those 20 million things! I have been slowly sliding down the last month without realizing it and it was affecting everything in my life drastically! One of the ladies that spoke talked about how we need to trust in the Lord and hand over our troubles to him.....but after we are feeling stronger we need to make sure that we leave them with him and not try to take them back from him. That was such an "Ah-Hah" moment for me. I do that way to often. I start feeling good and stronger and that I can handle it, so I start reaching for those same burdens over and over when I know that Heavenly Father already has them securely in his hands taking care of them for me. I have really struggled so hard with my faith and my testimony that last little while because I've actually been trying to find them again. It seems like they've been lost for so long that I'm starting over and trying save and fix my crumbling foundation. It's been a struggle and a journey that is so difficult and so rewarding. There have been many Sundays the last few months where things hit me so hard that I can barely breathe and I just feel like I'm burning on the inside because I know, without a doubt that what was just said is so true and SO relevant to ME! Like right now, I'm bawling writing this. Anyway, I just needed to write this down and let all of you out there know how much I love you all and appreciate you love and friendship so much. Even if it's only a note on a blog or a full afternoon of face to face conversation, I know you're all out there and I can feel your strength and thank you for it.

Been going to update, but.....

I've been going to update, but Gary messed up the cord for my computer when he dropped my computer last week. Ugh! So I've been using his and checking on things and what not, but I've really wanted to post some things. The problem is I wanted some pics to go with the blogs, but those are all on my computer. So I need the cord. I did finally get one ordered and it should be here tomorrow. Then I'll have all sorts of things to do.....like getting taxes ready. That's always one of my favorite things to do, NOT! Oh well, I guess it's not that big of deal this year. We don't have near the paper work this year with the business stuff, which is sad and nice at the same time. One of these days I hope it will get better and we can get back out on our own. I feel like I'm just rambling, but it's my blog and I can. Nothing too exciting has happened lately, which is good. Well, that's not completely true.....not much exciting has happened to me, but Gary has had a couple of bad days lately! Yesterday was not a good day....as he was pulling out of the garage to go to work, he hit his mirror and ran into his brother's pickup that was parked behind his in the driveway. The pickup was far enough away that he could have got around it, but it's 4:50 in the morning and he didn't see the pickup because he forgot his brother was crashing here last night. Anyway, so he broke his tail light and his brother's front corner. When he gets to work, he finds out he has to replace the two batteries on his Gradall, he cuts a $400 piece of wood wrong, and on and on. He told his boss about noon that if anything else went wrong he was going to go into his work trailer, curl up into a ball and not leave till it was quitting time! I felt bad for him. I made him a nice dinner and that helped him smile when he got home. I love him so much! I can't help but ache for him when he has a bad day. *Sigh* Well, today should be a better day. Tomorrow should be even better when I get my computer cord!

Grace's Teeth

So last week Grace tells me that she has a hole in her mouth. I was not sure what she meant so I asked her to show me. When I looked, she didn't have a hole in her mouth, she had a permanent tooth coming up behind her baby teeth on the bottom. She hadn't lost any baby teeth at all yet, so up it came anyway.

So we finally got her into the dentist yesterday. They took some x-rays to see how bad it really was. It turned out that her baby teeth still had all the roots on them and her other front permanent teeth were ready to come up. So the verdict was in.....all 4 of her front bottom teeth have to come out!

So she finally lost 4 baby teeth and got her first visit from the Tooth Fairy.....but the Tooth Fairy will be paying for those 4 teeth for awhile! Oh well, at least they did tell me that if we can keep up with her teeth we can probably keep her out of braces! That would be so nice! You know what they say, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure" - Benjamin Franklin

Moving on from the Holidays!

I am so happy the holidays are over! I love them and all but it is nice to get back to my "normal", boring life. I'm so happy the girls are going back to school today. I always think how nice it is to have them home because they are bigger and can help more, but oddly enough they just aren't as much help as I wish they were most days.....*sigh*. Oh well, so goes life. At least now I can clean my little house, leave to do some things and come back to a still clean little house. At least until after school. ; ) It is amazing how little time it takes to make my house look like I never do anything at all! Some day I will have more room to spread out the mess in, but until then it will just drive me silently crazy. Ugh! Anyway...just a little rant to get my day going. I must start folding laundry now so I can reclaim my bedroom!