Made it Another Year

Today is our 5th anniversary.

Time is just flying by so fast I can't believe it. We are still madly in love, still having a good time and still looking forward to the future. I love being married to Aaron, he's the perfect one for me! So happy anniversary darlin'! Let's go do something fun!

10 Years Younger

Since I've been home, I've been able to watch many of the lame daytime TV shows while I'm feeding Everett. In one of my channel flipping excursions I ran across a show called "10 Years Younger" where these old bag-looking ladies get some much needed TLC and are promised to look at least 10 years younger by the end of the show. I never would have given that show a second thought if the events from this morning didn't happen.
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I was up more than usual with Everett last night, then we had a rough breastfeeding session at 4am that I'm still trying to recover from, and at 6 am Everett decided to wake me up by screaming at the top of his lungs sending me flying out of bed. After I got him calmed down, I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth. Aaron was getting ready for work. We were chatting about the crazy morning when Aaron said, "...it's almost like you've aged 10 years in the last 3 months."

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Oh hell, I'm one of those bag-looking ladies like on that show.

Aaron by no means meant that as an insult, it was just his way of saying that I looked "worked". That got me thinking about the show I had seen and I decided I need to not look so "worked". I swore to myself that I would never end up looking like those ladies that show up to church with no makeup, a potato sack looking jumper and Birkenstocks. Now that I have a kid, boy is it a slippery slope and I feel like I'm well on my way to the Birkenstock store. I decided today I would do my own makeover show called "My Kid Took a Long Nap, So Look What I Got Accomplished".

Here I am in all my glory. Yep, I need some major work done.

So, without a clothing expert, hair stylist or makeup artist I attempted to fix myself up. The under eye bags and double chin need to go, but that's a whole other show. That's it for today's show. I hope your kids will take long naps for you so you too can look 10 years younger. See you next time!

Shoe Box Party

Saturday, I got to be a little Christmas Angel.

Every year my friend, Amanda has a Shoebox Party. That's where we save our empty shoe boxes throughout the year and buy small, inexpensive toys, candy, school supplies and hygiene items and bring them to Amanda's house.

From there, we wrap the shoe boxes in Christmas paper and pack them full of goodies for the kids. Amanda brings them to her church and they distribute them to the kids that need them. For a lot of the kids, this is the only gift they will receive for Christmas.Last This year was just awesome, because not only is Amanda 4 months pregnant, but we were able to make 103 boxes. It was just amazing and I loved that I was able to be a part of it. Many families bring their kids to help, and the kids have a wonderful time packing the boxes full and learning compassion for others at the same time. I will be looking forward to next years' party.

Blessed Baby Boy

Sunday was Everett's baby blessing at church. Like any important day, things started out crazy but once I calmed down it turned out to be a wonderful day.

To start off, Everett got a giant bug bite on his face Halloween night, just in time for it to be a big red welt by Sunday. I was having an extreme bad hair day because of the humidity which caused me to fuss with it longer which caused me not to have enough time to feed Everett for one last time which caused him to scream and spit up on his new outfit as we headed out the door. Aaron said it reminded him of the days when his mom used to take him to church...not exactly the effect I was hoping to have since the last time Aaron went to church with me was over 7 years ago.

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I was nervous beyond belief because not only was Aaron there, but his entire family and one of his friends came also. That comes to 16 non-members and my 5 inactive brothers and sisters. I was hoping everything would go just right so they would come away from this as a positive experience. I need to learn to calm down and not worry so much. We made it to church early and my mom informed us she saved us a seat...on the front row. She had 7 kids, did she not remember that sitting in the front row with an infant is like committing Sacrament Meeting suicide? Oh well, it was nice of her to save us a seat. I started feeding Everett his bottle and he and I started calming down. There were to be 2 baby blessings that day. Just as they started to call the participants up for the first baby blessing Everett loaded his pants. It was so loud family members sitting 3 people over looked my way to see what happened. Aaron and I ran out the door to try to change him since his blessing was next. We realized we would not have enough time to change him before his blessing, so we came back in just in time to hand Everett over to my brother with a loaded diaper.

I had visions of leaking diapers bouncing through my head on his pristine white blessing outfit (which by the way was freaking expensive! Who sets the prices on those???). Everett started crying. My dad, step-dad and brother who were doing the blessing are not skilled in the art of calming a baby down and I thought, "here comes the cherry to top off this disaster of a day". Luckily, that's when Heaven opened up and sent some love and miracles my way.

Our Bishop who was helping with the blessing has a little one of his own and knew just what to do. He stuck Everett's pacifier back in and got the guys to start bouncing him and he calmed down right away. He didn't make another peep. My brother, Ben did Everett's blessing. It was his first time so he was so nervous, but I couldn't tell, he did a perfect job and gave Everett a wonderful blessing. Everett slept for the rest of Sacrament Meeting. (After we took him out and changed his pants of course...no leaking! Woo hoo!)

I was finally calm and focused on what was really important. Everett's blessing and all of the family and friends that were there to support us. I know our non-member friends and family all have their own opinions and feelings about the LDS church, good or bad. Whether the experience was positive or negative for them, I'll probably never know. What I do know is that they left that meeting knowing that we believe in a loving Heavenly Father, we believe Jesus Christ is our Savior and that he loves us so much, we believe the love within a family is so important and that we believe in the power of prayer. That made me a happy girl.

After Sacrament Meeting we headed back to our house for yummy food and to enjoy the afternoon with our wonderful family and friends. We truly have the most amazing families.

Everett, you will never have to question if your family loves you. (this blanket was made for Everett by his great, great Grandma Bland)

Happy First Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone! Our internet was down yesterday so I couldn't post photos of our little bumble bee, so here they are today. We had a great day. We visited the grandparents and then headed back to our street for a big neighborhood party. There's about 10-15 families that all get together with lots of food and tons of fun. What a great night.

Wish I could take credit for this way cute idea. It was too cute not to copy. Everett and I made this card for his grandparents for Halloween. They turned out so cute! All in all, a great first Halloween for us! Hope you all had a great day also!