Where does the time go?????

     So I had a baby the other day...and now he's almost sitting up, trying to roll over, playing with toys and (most recently) eyeing our food.  In fact yesterday while I looked away (for a fraction of a second) Tony definitely gave him a little taste of his whipped cream.  (Sigh)  Where did the time go??  I mean this child (you know, my little tiny 4-and-a-half-month-old baby boy?) is wearing 12 month and even 18 month size clothing!!  I swear if he starts scootin' around and walking as fast as Lily did, I'll cry.


     And speaking of Lily...she used to be my big girl.  Something happened around the time she turned 13 months old (I think we call him TJ) that made me start seeing her as bigger than she really is.  But then something happened in the last few months.  I started to consider whether or not I should put her in preschool next year.  NEXT YEAR?? But she's my little baby girl!  She's only three...shouldn't she be at home for the next... few years? Seriously lately now I've started seeing her through different glasses, and everything she does makes me think of her as my cute little baby girl who needs to stay home with me forever.
      She's getting really big though.  She's starting to color in the lines, and randomly practices letters without my help.  I find pieces of paper everywhere that just have 5-10 random letters that she's been writing for practice, and they're starting to look really neat and big-girlish.  (There is usually also a picture of a girl/princess at the bottom too.)  She also recently learned to button up buttons.

     TJ is getting big too. He thinks he so funny, and always cracking jokes and making us laugh.  The older he gets, the closer he and Lily get it seems like...and the more they fight as well.  Mostly because he thinks teasing is hilarious.  Sigh...I have fun kids.

So...I wrote this and hadn't quite finished it the day before our unexpected trip to Canada, so it's kind of outdated by a few weeks, but I thought I'd share anyway. :)  BUT the reason I really got on the computer tonight was this:

Jaxon loves sweet potatoes.  I thought you would like to know. 

He inhaled them, and got frustrated when I didn't keep them coming fast enough.  And it was cute.

Life

     So much has happened in the last few months that I meant to blog about.  I even knew what I would write and how...and just never got around to it. 

     This fall has been a kind of ridiculously crazy one for my family.  My awesome brother Nick went on a mission (with no notice). 

...And I wished I was there.

     My absolutely amazing sister welcomed a beautiful baby girl after months of bedrest/ hospitalization, 10 weeks early.  Emery Hope was a tiny 1 lb., 13 oz. of perfection.   

And I wished I was there.

     Alisha and her family have blown us away with their hope and trust in the Lord during this very difficult time for their family.  I truly wish we happened to live in Lethbridge right now so that we could help lighten their load a little bit.

     Not only were a bunch of crazy things happening at home that I wished I could help/ be there for, but every 6 months or so I get homesick anyway, and that was really starting to kick in. About 3 or 4 days before Thanksgiving (the Canadian variety) I got tired of wishing and I started looking up plane tickets to make it happen.  And then remembered how expensive last minute plane tickets were...and and went back to wishing.

     The very next morning my mom called to let me know my Grandma Leavitt passed away.  About 12 hours later our whole family was packed into a mini van about to drive 30 hours to get home.  We made it just in time to have the first Thanksgiving dinner we've ever had with my side of the family.  I got to see family I haven't seen in years, got to help my mom a little bit, and visited with my Grandma Johnson a lot more than we usually get to.  (We stayed with her because on the same day that my Grandma died, my parents' basement also flooded.) 

     It was so nice to be home to remember and celebrate my Grandma's life.  She will be very missed.  She was honestly one of my very favorite people.  She was always there for me, and supported everything I did.  She was fun and happy and just someone who really made a difference in my life. 

I know that she must be so happy now though, being reunited with her beloved husband.  She talked about him always, with sooo much love in her eyes.  And I can't help but smile at the tender mercies of the Lord in the timing of the family reunion she arranged for us.  If she had to leave us this fall, it feels like it was for me that it was that week, because it ironically saved me from falling apart.  I need my awesome family in my life.



    But now we're home.  And with my family fix I feel like I can move forward (I kind of have to, so might as well:)  And yesterday was Halloween.  And it was sooo fun.  We cleaned our whole house up/ decorated it with paper pumpkins.  I made Lily a Princess Aurora costume (she wanted the blue dress) and a coordinating Prince Phillip costume for Jaxon.  (TJ had an opinion about what he wanted to be this year so I couldn't get him in on the theme.  Anyone want to guess what he was?).  Tony rescheduled karate and we went to the trunk-or-treat at our church.  And then we came home and had a little party with a few awesome friends.  The kids had a blast.  I was totally exhausted at the end of the night.  It was worth it.

Prince Phillip

Thomas The Train

 And Princess Aurora.  She had a very specific image in mind when she told me she wanted to be Princess Aurora, in the BLUE dress.  I spent all evening on it one day last week, and when she woke up she came in and saw it.  I thought she'd be so excited, and I said, "Do you want to try it on?"  She politely said, "No thanks.  I'll wait 'til you finish sewing it."  "Um...it's done." I said.  She looked at me super confused, "where's the spikey things, and the white spikey thing," she said pointing to random places on her body.  After looking at a picture on the internet to understand what she meant, and about 3 hours of work later, we had the dress she was imagining.  And she was right, she looked much more like Princess Aurora, even down to the very red lipstick lips that she insisted she needed to have. 

 The Princess looking happily at her Prince

 

At trunk-or-treat.  Yay for little friends!

Helping set up our live angry birds booth at trunk-or-treat

Party!!!

    We had a lot of fun, and looking at all of these pictures I think I'll put some of them up on facebook.  I love pictures of my kids on Halloween, I took a million!  I hope everybody else had a fun time!

The "Sweethearts"

I was talking to my Mom the other day and she was sad she didn't even know what Jaxon looks like anymore.  I told her that he was pretty much the same, but then I looked at him.  He's getting so big and changing so fast!  So I decided to do a little update on him and my other "sweethearts", which is the word Lily thinks means children.  (I love it, she's always asking everyone where their sweethearts are.)

The Jax

I can't believe he's already 4 months old!! He's getting really strong and a little bit chubbier.  I've been trying to get him to roll over for a couple of days, because he's strong enough to turn to his side and back...he's not motivated though because he hates being on his tummy.  But this morning I found him like this when I went to check on him during a nap:

I definitely had him on his back when I left him. So I guess that counts as his big first roll over?

This little man loves to play with toys. We call this one baby D.D.R.  His feet go crazy while he pushes the foot buttons and tries to make it spin and sing.  He loves to look at and try to grab mobiles and any other toy you put in front of him.  It's fun for us, we've never really had a baby do that before so much.

We just discovered that he's strong enough to go in the jumperoo now, which totally helps when I need to make supper (or do anything that requires hands).  He really likes to be held and snuggled...a lot.

He's also totally a thumb-sucker.  Or finger-sucker I guess, or whatever he can get his hands on.  I try to replace it with the soother, but as soon as it's not around his fingers/ thumbs go straight in. 

 

 The Teedge 

Our sweet little TJ is getting bigger too.  He is semi-potty trained as of this month.  As in, we potty trained, he learned how, and he basically just doesn't really want to do it yet.  So we're not pushing.  He'll be ready one day, I figure.  Every now and then he just takes off his diaper and uses his little potty randomly, and comes running to tell me, "Mommy, come see something!!", or my favorite "Come check-it-out!".  You know he's pretty proud of himself if he tells you to check something out. 

As you might be able to tell from the picture on the left (see the one with my very big 2-year-old in the high chair?) TJ is having a bit of a rough go at this new baby brother thing.  He's pretty sensitive, and needs a little more attention than he's been getting the last few months.  And he's been letting us know it (loudly).  He's still super sweet to his little intruder though, and definitely loves him!

And this is basically what he can be found doing at any given time of the day lately: 

He LOVES his trains.

The Lil

Lily can be found snuggling up to this little guy all day long.  She loves to sing him songs (she makes up words for him.) She also loves to play princesses with her friends and loves to do her hair and put "make up" (lip balm) on. 

Sometimes we like to go watch her daddy do Karate, and she loves to pretend she's doing karate at home.  She watches pretty closely too, and tries to do what he does.  The other night she wanted to do karate with Tony in our living room, so he was letting her pretend to do karate.  TJ thought they were dancing, and cut in, and started singing the theme song for sleeping beauty (He knows all the words so that he can be the prince and dance with all the princesses who come to our house.  We need more little boy friends maybe.)  Anyway he then continued to pretend to hold a little stuffed animal and be his "daddy" and cuddle him and make his owies better.  Lily continued to punch  and kick her daddy who had gotten some of his gear out by this time.  I love funny role reversal moments like that.  Lily will be a strong beautiful karate princess one day, and TJ will be a very sweet daddy:)

This is Lily with her friend Abby today.  We ended up having three different sets of friends over today, for a total of about 10 hours worth of playing.  It was totally unintentional, but a lot of fun!

Tony just walked in (home from karate) and we had a conversation something like this:

Me: "Blogging takes a long time.  I totally meant to be in bed by now.  It seems like I don't have time to do anything, or at least do anything well because it takes too long."

Tony: "Well you look beautiful, you always do a good job doing that."

And that's why I really like him.

And those are my sweethearts.  The end.

My name is Carly, and I'm a Christian

I realize that this isn't my typical, "hey look, my kids are cute and I love them" kind of post, but I just feel a need to shout this at the top of my lungs right now.

Living in the south, I've never been so frustrated about what others have to say about this subject (whether or not I'm a Christian) than the last 6 years! I remember the first time I was ever introduced to the idea that other people claimed the right to say who is and who is not a Christian.  I remember it was like somebody stabbed me in the gut to suggest that because I am a Mormon I'm not a Christian.  How could anybody think I'm not Christian?  It makes me so sad to think that even one person might not know that I know and love my Savior, Jesus Christ, and that he lives.  And that I know that he atoned for my sins, and that following him is the reason for all of my happiness.  I recently read an article that I love which addresses this topic, by Daniel C. Peterson. This is the last few paragraphs from it and it is exactly what I've been feeling and trying to figure out how to say (especially the last line): 

"Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints easily meet the definition of a Christian as implicitly defined in the New Testament: they believe that ancient prophets foretold Christ's coming, that Jesus Christ suffered for our transgressions, that he was put to death but rose from the dead, that through him we may obtain forgiveness of our sins, and that he will come again in glory.

"The doctrinal reasons some Christians give for excluding the Latter-day Saints from Christianity make little sense, because many of the doctrines used by traditional Christianity are late developments, reflective of creeds formulated in the fourth and fifth century or developed during the Reformation.

"Given the wide variety of beliefs among the various Christian churches, it is better to take persons claiming to be Christians at their word and to let the Lord be the judge."

(Emphasis added)  The link below leads to the full article, which addresses some of these reasons that some Christians use to try to exlude me from Christianity. (Yes, me.  I take it quite personally.)
 http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/transcripts/?id=93

Smiles:)

Um...my baby smiles.  And it's cute.  Based on the last post you wouldn't know it, because it's hard to get a picture of since the camera distracts him.  But he does do it...

See?  I told you.  Cute.  

(Also a cute nephew.)  That's all I really had to say.  Thanks for listening.

Jaxon's Blessing

So....I wrote this 3 weeks ago, seriously like 20 minutes after my family left.  Then I thought to myself, "I'll have to wait until I put my pictures on the computer to put it up."  And here we are 3 weeks later.  Oops.  Here it is:

Well my family that was here just left us (tear)  We had a really fun and completely exhausting week with them.  So we were very very sad to see them go, and then had a giant nap.

We were outside all week, most days in 107 degree weather, so we were wasted.  The first day we went to Dallas to meet them, and went swimming outside in our hotel.  Then the next day we went and spent the entire day at Six Flags (best roller coasters ever by the way).  It was a good day for it, there were almost no lines, because it was a weekday and probably because it was ridiculously hot and everybody else had the good sense to stay home.  But you don't come from Canada to go to Six Flags and then let a little heat get you down (107 is about 41 degrees Celsius, for all of my Canadians out there.)

TJ didn't want to leave that bunny.

Isn't my mom super cute?

Then on Friday we went to Splash Kingdom in Canton, Texas, and it again was crazy hot.  I know for sure at least Lily and her cousin Champ had a lot of fun there.  TJ had fun for a little while, but he was in desperate need of a nap, so he was pretty grumpy.  Jaxon had his first swim (for the 15 minutes that we dared take him out from under a giant umbrella.)  I think he enjoyed it. 

At Chuck E. Cheese's that night.

We had planned to go to Natchidoches on Saturday but we were all totally wasted, so we just relaxed in the hotel in the morning, went shopping a bit in the afternoon, and headed home.  On Sunday we blessed Jaxon, which was awesome, and it was so nice to have his Uncle Ryan be able to join in the circle for the blessing.  Jaxon looked so handsome in his little blessing clothes.  We had a nice family dinner that afternoon.

Blessing Morning (July 17) TJ. and Jaxon had matching suits.

Auntie Lanni

Grandma and Grandpa D.

We said, "Smile Mike".  Awesome.

Uncle Ryan

Nana & Papa

Then on Monday we went to Natchidoches to the Alligator Park, and to a plantation, which were kind of cool to see.

I was a little worried that it would be a hard week with Jaxon, but he did really well.  He was very patient at Six Flags as we tried to keep him in his hat, and always under something to keep the sun off of him.  We were so blessed to have things go as smoothly as they did, and it was so nice to have family here for his blessing!  This was definetely the highlight of our summer!

What a Guy:)

I just wanted to take a minute to wish the sweet love of my life a happy 5th anniversary!  I can't believe it's been that long, but Tony, I love your freakin guts.  You're sweet, you're patient, you wake up with the baby when I sleep through his cries, you get up early to work or play with kids, you let me boss you around (for the most part) and quite frankly, you're ridiculously good looking.  I'm so glad I found you and get to spend forever with you!

Happy Anniversary!!!!