sunday afternoon at the temple

my parents have been in hong kong, picking up my grandparents from their mission. so, instead of our usual sunday dinner gathering at their house, we had some time on our hands last sunday. we decided to take the girls and go walk around the provo temple grounds. they loved it.  i enjoyed it too. i rarely go to the temple just to walk around and forgot how peaceful the temple can be, even on the outside.

diane actually loves it when madeleine rubs her head.

madeleine was constantly moving while we were there. 
 

looking at the fountain.

diane was trying to get up on this bench without using her hands. it was pretty funny to watch. maybe you had to be there.

our girls spent a long time rolling down the hills behind the temple. 

this girl is all legs. 

my favorites. 

it was really windy the whole time we were there, but it really started to pick up and the rain clouds were heading our way, so we decided to head home. 

playing outside

one of my very favorite things about our new place is that there is an elementary school a stone's throw away with three playgrounds at it. one of them is specifically for the kindergarteners, so everything is smaller - just the right size for my girls. when the park is only a couple minutes to walk to, i don't mind popping over for just fifteen minutes when we get the chance. 

on mother's day, i took some pictures of the girls in the tulips for my mother-in-law. the girls weren't wild about the process, so they aren't the best.

our new place

exterior shot

this is our new house. well, our new rental. some of our family has requested pictures, so i took a bunch. feel free to cruise through. 

this is the view as you walk in the front door. that plant is going to need some tlc to get it back to health. we'll see how i do. 

looking back at the front door. 

this is the front room. it still needs a little unpacking and we are still trying to figure out a good arrangement to fit everything in without it feeling crowded around the edges. it is nice and big though.

randy's work station (still under construction).

my work station (also still under construction).

looking back from our desks. 

the kitchen. this is my favorite part of the house. it is nice and open, with lots of space for the girls to run around while i am cooking. 

 i hadn't realized how spoiled i was at my grandparents to have higher countertops. these are lower than i am used to (standard, i'm sure). there is lots of working space though, so that is nice.

looking back at the dining nook. i love the padded bay window. madeleine loves to climb up on it and look at the horses in the fields across from our house. randy is still working on the book arrangement.

there's even a nice spot for my starts. 

this is the girls' room.

i need to rearrange the toys on the shelves, but for now i am just glad to have them out of boxes.

this is our bedroom. it still needs some stuff hung up on the wall.

one of these is a closet, and one is a half bath. it is nice to have a bathroom connected to the master, but would be even nicer if it didn't share a very thin wall with diane's crib.

the view down the hall from our bedroom door.

the bathroom. nothing thrilling, but nice and big.

 and the laundry room, which has become our catch-all and needs to be organized. but very big and great counter space for folding/sorting.

so that's it. our new environment. it's finally starting to feel like ours. just needs some pictures on the wall and the last few boxes unpacked.

consumed in motherhood

attempts at a mother's day photo

my cereal is not my own. by the time i finally get around to eating my own breakfast in the morning, my baby birds flock to my knee and demand bites. one for you, one for you, one for me.

i rarely go to the bathroom alone.

i can't wear nice clothes. if we are going to a nice event, i wait until the last possible minute to change into something nice so that it doesn't end up covered in food or bodily fluids.

my children are my alarm clock.  and the snooze button is broken.

if i want to get something productive done, i just have to pray to the naps gods that the stars will align and i will have a window of time longer than 15 minutes to myself.

it's all consuming. 

but there are moments when i am reading to my children, singing a song in the car with them, or sitting on a bench at a park and watching them go down the slide when i am consumed in the joys of motherhood as well. it's not all hard. there are rewards. i imagine that the older they get, the greater the rewards become.

i don't regret it for a moment.

radio silence

my life is crazy right now.

probably not that crazy compared to other people's crazy, but crazy compared to my normal. i have a cold sore the likes of which haven't graced my face in quite some time.

we've been moving for the past week and it has caused more disruption than i anticipated. my children are emotionally traumatized and acting out as a result. i am trying to be as patient as i can because i know that it is because their lives are in upheaval, but sometimes i am less than successful. not my favorite week.

have i mentioned that i am a creature of habit and i like my routine? apparently i passed that on (genetically and behaviorally) to my children.

we are finally getting settled in though, and next week promises to be much better. i will be back soon with more posting: thoughts on motherhood, pictures of the new place, and as always, more pictures of the girls.

across five years and a day

attempts at capturing our fifth wedding anniversary on camera with the self timer. after randy humoring me for quite some time and still not getting it right, i gave up. 

yesterday was our fifth wedding anniversary.  best described with the cliche that in some ways, it feels like much longer, and in some ways it feels like it was just yesterday. i guess many things become cliche because they are true or universally understood.

in general, randy and i don't do much for anniversaries. we usually go out to dinner. perhaps we decided to do a little more this year because it was our fifth anniversary, but i don't generally identify particular meaning with randomly assigned odd-numbered intervals. i think that number five just happened to coincide with us being a little burnt out at the end of a long semester and having two kids at the stage that they are at.

yesterday, we sent our girls up to my parents house for the night (thank you mom and dad) and then headed up to a family cabin in heber. it is the first time that randy and i have both been away from the kids for a night.

it was glorious.

we splurged and treated ourselves to an amazing meal at the stein eriksen lodge. randy says it is the best meal he as ever had and it rivals my favorites. as we risked our lives driving down the snowy roads heading away from the lodge, i noted that at least if we died, we would have had a really good final meal.

i had the first good, uninterrupted night's sleep that i've had in a long time. and even though i still woke up naturally at 7:30 in the morning when i could have slept in as long as i wanted, i felt rested (it is hard to sleep in much later than that when you are used to waking up around 5:00 most mornings).

after 24 hours all to ourselves, we headed back and picked up the girls. after excited greetings, they acted pretty nonchalant about our return. my mom must have taken good care of them.

it was a wonderful weekend with my favorite.