Memorial Day

Memorial Day was hard.  Let's face it, every holiday, birthday, vacation, and days in between is hard.  And there are many days where I just ache for the "old life" back.  While I'm happy for those whose Memorial Day was all about the boating and barbecues, I can't help but be a little angry that life sometimes feels quite unfair and unbalanced.  But, I'm grateful for these people in the pictures.  There's not a day that goes by that I can't be grateful for those that are still in my life and for memories that I have.

Happy Baby

I can't get over how happy Aiden is.  It is the cutest thing to see him smiling and trying to laugh.  It doesn't get any better than that. :)

I could stare at that cute face all day long.

Little Pirates

Oh hey, another blog post.  I can't help myself.  I'm hoping to print this blog off soon so I want to make sure I'm all caught up.  Anyway, this last Saturday our niece, Afton, had her 3rd birthday party.  The theme: pirates.  Kami told us to dress up the kids and at first I thought, "cool, I'll go find an eye patch," but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to just get in the fun and actually dress up my boys...but still as cheaply as possible. :)  I realized the other day that someday I'll look back at these times and remember them as "the good old days," and we'll laugh about how cute our kids looked when they were young and I should just embrace everything about this time in our lives...including putting effort into parties, dressing up, etc.  I would go into a tangent on that but really I have a lot of pictures to upload and those are much more exciting than my tangents.  Enjoy our cute little pirates. :)

 I was a little excited at how cute Patrick looked and I guess he picked that up because from then until the time we left, he just ran back and forth through our house yelling, "run, run, run!"  This was the clearest picture I could get.

 And how adorable is a baby pirate?

 Random: Apparently someone named a street after me in Pocatello. ;)

 Yeah, kids just don't like to look at the camera at the same time and smile.

Patrick was a little obsessed with the pinata once he heard there was candy in it.  He was Clayton's little buddy while it was being set up.

Cute boys. :)

There was a lot of tramp time.  Jon and I were a little embarrassed at our tramp skills.  I remember it being a lot easier to flip around last time I was on one...10 years ago.

This happened to be a day where I thought I looked a little better than I really did when I left the house and then I look back at pictures and they're really not flattering.  So, good picture or not, I'm trying to be better at being in some of the pictures with my kids.

We definitely knew where Patrick's priorities were.  The other kids were enjoying a treasure hunt but Patrick  had no interest in running around a house.  The slide is where it's at.

Exhausted after a fun party.  Poor guy couldn't even finish his cheese puffs. :)

This next picture has nothing to do with the party but it's a cute story so I wanted to add it as well.  After we left Pocatello, we stopped at Best Buy because Derek wanted help picking out a laptop.  Patrick had no intention of just standing there so we ran around the store and he decided to sit on this shelf here.  The little girl in the picture decided he was fun and sat right next to him.  He moved away from her, she moved closer, he moved away, she moved closer.  He went all the way to the end and gave me this look.  I don't think he was interested. ;)

May

I am on a roll with this blog thing lately.  Either our lives have become incredibly interesting or I'm just obsessed with taking pictures of my two little boys.  I'm pretty sure it's the latter.  So, this post is just a random bunch of pictures of things we've been doing in May.

First of all, Jon turned 27 on May 3rd.  For Jon's birthday, he just wanted the two of us to go on a date.  We did, but then I had the genius idea of inviting everyone to a party the next day so we could all celebrate together.  And, I also decided that doing it at the park would be awesome.  Really, I need to get over this childhood mentality that everything is better at the park.  Smart me, didn't look at the forecast close enough and while we went through and had our "barbecue," it was raining and blowing and freezing cold.  Cold hamburgers are always delicious.  At least the kids had fun... I told Jon I'm not planning another party for a long time but my brain is already trying to decide what to do for Patrick's 2nd birthday.  

Patrick was being a little helper to Jon while he opened the gifts.

So sometimes...all the time...Patrick decides he wants to share Aiden's bed with him when he watches a cartoon in the morning.  Aiden loves it.  

Every morning we take Jon up to school(we love BYUI parking), and Patrick has decided it's much more exciting to read a book during these boring drives.

Sidewalk chalk.  One of the greatest things ever invented.

And lastly, just another picture of Patrick doing what he does best.  Playing on the slides at the park. :)

Mother's Day

I finally got the pictures loaded to my computer so this is a little late, but here are pictures from Mother's Day.

Happy Mother's Day to these two women:

I'm adding these two pictures, which look really similar, because Aiden looks so darn cute with his smiles.  I really can't get enough of either of my boy's smiles.

After church and lunch we decided to have some good quality family time.  Croquet. :)  Patrick was in heaven.  It's one of the only times we let him carry around a big stick and tell him to whack something over and over again.

One of the first pictures with all of us together.  I love these boys.

I love being a mother.  Sometimes at night I think over the day and realize it was one of those mommy fail days but it's ok having those once in awhile.  By the next morning, Patrick has already forgotten that I had less patience the day before or that we might have watched a little too much of Mamma Mia.  Being a mother is a constant growing experience that I learn from everyday.  Sometimes I'm grateful for it and sometimes I'm not but I can say that I love Patrick and Aiden more than I ever thought possible.  

I appreciate now, more than ever, the example I had from my own mom.  I try to incorporate in my own house things I learned growing up(although my kids aren't old enough for some things yet).  Such as:

-It's really a great thing to cook from scratch.  Boxed meals just aren't that great...in any way.

-Being home when my kids get home from school is really important to me.  That's the time kids are excited to talk about their day(I realize every circumstance is different and some people don't have a choice)

-Sometimes, even when a child is older, kids just need to cuddle with their mom.  And maybe even sleep in their bed at night...when they're 17 years old. ;)

-Making and eating breakfast with my kids every morning is a good bonding time.  I was used to eating a good breakfast growing up and as a result, Patrick and I eat breakfast together every morning(Jon normally is running off to school), which is a really fun thing for me.

-Snow days are a good thing because it's actually fun to have your kids home from school

- It's a good thing to want to be involved in your child's life

-Sometimes your child needs to hear the honest truth, even if it's not what they want to hear

-Going to things your child is involved in is really important...even if it's going to be a really bad orchestra concert.

-We need to have faith that everything in life happens for a reason and to trust in the knowledge we have.

-Family is where it's at. ;)

Happy Mother's Day!

Aiden: 2 months

I wanted to write about Mother's Day but at the moment I can't get all of the pictures off my phone so I will wait on that post.  Me and technology...  

But, Aiden turned 2 months old today so I'm going to do a little update on him instead.

Where to begin...  We love Aiden.  He has brought such a sweet spirit into our house and we have loved almost every minute of it. ;)  He's such a happy, talkative little baby.  His constant smiles tend to distract me and all I want to do is pull silly faces at him just to hear his babble and see his cute smile.  He tries to talk much more than I ever remember Patrick doing, which is saying something because Patrick constantly talks.:)

As of last week, Aiden usually sleeps from 10:00-4:00, eats, sleeps again until 7:30ish, eats and falls asleep again until 9ish.  Really, he put himself on that schedule and I am soo grateful.  If you know me, you know I like/need sleep and having a baby who naturally falls asleep for naps and put himself on a good schedule at night was the greatest thing I could have asked for.  Thank you, Aiden.  The only thing I did was make sure his naps weren't too long so that he saved his longer sleeping times for night.

His face has filled out but mostly he just keeps getting taller.  Newborn clothes would still fit if it weren't for his height. Here are his stats:
                  Length-57.15 cm, 22 percentile
                  Weight-12 pds, 65 percentile

Really, I can't say enough how much joy Aiden brings into our family.  I would be lying if I didn't say life seems more crazy and hectic with two little boys around, but I love seeing the two of them interact.  Part of me wants Aiden to grow quickly so that they can play with each other but the other part of me wants Aiden to stay small and cuddly for a long time.  I love babies.  I love this stage when they're sleeping more but are still small and cuddly.  I know this phase will pass quickly so right now I'm just trying to enjoy it...even if it means cuddle/play time takes the place of laundry, and dishes, and sweeping, and any other chore needed around the house.  Someday my house will be perfectly clean but I'm ok with that being later. ;)

      This little face is totally worth a little mess.

Patrick,

I have a lot of pictures that I want to add to this little blog of ours; pictures of our daily activities, but for the moment I want to tell you how great it is to be your mom.  This week(May 6th), you told me you loved me for the first time.  My heart melted.  I had just gotten you out of bed for the morning and it seemed like, for a few minutes, you wanted nothing more than to cuddle with me in the rocking chair.  We had a busy day ahead of us but for those few minutes, it was just you and me, and there was nothing in the world I would have rather been doing than cuddling with you and telling you how much I love you.  I love moments like those.  It seems like this week I've had a lot of moments where I look at you and think how lucky I am that you changed our world.  I had one of those moments today when we were at the park and I saw how cute you were with the other kids.  I loved that you made a little "girlfriend" and even grabbed her hand so you could hold it till you both got to the stairs that led to the slide.  I love your little giggle and big grin as you take off outside, yelling "run!" "run!" like you've been waiting all day for that moment when I finally let you free to run off some energy.  I love that at random times of the day you'll turn to me and say, "happy" just to let me know you're happy and having fun.  I also love that you like to hear me sing and even asked for me to sing to you in the car today.  I can never say no to you when you look at me with those big blue eyes and say, "pwease?"   I love watching you grow but sometimes I wish I could just push pause on life and keep you at this age for a little longer.  I wish I could keep you safe from all the pain this earth life will throw at you but I can't.  But, I hope you always know how much your dad and I love you.  You mean the world to us and I'm seeing just how fleeting our time is at having you as our little boy.

Love you forever, bud
Mom