goodbye and hello

You know how it has been two weeks since I posted? I have had this post almost done for about a week now, but things kept happening that I wanted to add to it. So, today you get two weeks of material, right here in one big blog post. Be excited, be very excited.

The end of Thanksgiving Day marks the end of the fall season for me. Thanksgiving is still crinkled, colorful leaves and sweaters, but as soon as it is over I feel ready for snow and winter coats. So, with this post I will bid farewell to a beautiful, lingering Fall, and usher in Winter and all of the happiness that comes with this season.

Walking home from church a few weeks ago I thought the yellow leaves looked so pretty littering the park path. I fought off the urge to go straight inside and put Pea down for her nap, and instead ran in the house to grab the camera, and then brought the kids back to snap a few pictures. Neither child was very cooperative (they both clearly would have rather just gone straight home), but I wanted some Fall photos, so we powered through. Nothing fancy, but they are definitely Fall-ish, so it was worth it, I guess.
(Aside: anyone else hopelessly in love with their children wearing coordinating colors and outfits to church? I seriously LOVE when I have the time (and the clothes) to put them in things that sort of match for church. It doesn't happen super often, but I wish it did :).)




He was pretending that the leaves were "spoooooky," but he couldn't stop smiling.




Look at all those pretty leaves!


She was freezing, poor baby.


Sweet little smilers.










If you live in Utah you know about the gigantic blizzard that was forecast to kill and maim all who crossed her path. I kind of think things like that are exciting-- I like the idea of having to hunker down in our cozy house and watch the snow swirl outside the windows. The blizzard came, and was somewhat blizzardy, but mostly pretty underwhelming-- I was wanting a legit blizzard since we had already changed our Thanksgiving plans so that they did not include a 5 hour long drive on (supposed) icy roads. Both mine and John's families went south for Thanksgiving, and we had planned to go too, and spend time with both sides. But when word of the storm got out (and J got scary warning emails from BYU about closing campus due to the worst blizzard conditions in decades) we made the decision to just stay home (there were some other deciding factors that contributed to this decision, but the blizzard pushed us over the edge). We were bummed about not being with family, but we also got excited about making the entire Thanksgiving feast ourselves. We sat down and planned the menu and grocery list and went shopping. If you've never done the whole Thanksgiving thing yourself before, you should. John and I had so much fun being in the kitchen together for hours and hours. My brothers stayed behind as well, and we needed more ovens, so we decided to cook and eat at my parents' house. It was such a production (as Thanksgiving always is, but I had never been in charge of EVERYTHING before), but everything turned out and we had so much fun.

I know that there is probably not a single person reading this that cares to see pictures of the food we made, but I want to remember it all-- it was our first Thanksgiving by ourselves, and I want these details recorded. I also want to remember the 2 on 2 basketball that we played (John and me vs. Adam and Ben) to work up our appetites and the fact that John and I totally won. (Nevermind the fact that we played three games and only won one, we won, okay?! Also nevermind that my brothers probably could've blocked every shot I took if they had really tried.)

Our day, in pictures:

Adam and John stuffing the turkey. John took complete charge over the cooking of the turkey, and I was happy to let him. It turned out perfectly.


Thanksgiving is not Thanksgiving without Cheese Whiz on celery to snack on while you cook, right Grandma and Grandpa?

My boys taking a break to watch a Christmas movie, eating the celery, of course.

Since John and I were pretty much in charge of all of the food (except for that one time when Adam chopped some onions. Thanks, Adam!), I put my brothers in charge of setting the table. Most of the Thanksgiving tablescapes I saw this year were all decked out with beautiful centerpieces, festive place cards, fancy dishes, place mats, and cloth napkins. Here we have ours. We were just lucky to get silverware and cups out, but take note of the special attention paid to having TWO plates for each person instead of just one. Dead giveaway that boys set this table.

John carving the turkey. Garth got to enjoy the remnants of the turkey later and took no more than 6 seconds to have them completely gone.

Green bean casserole (my first time making it), and savory yams (oh yum).

Sweet yams (not my thing, but the boys claimed they were awesome), and cornbread (it is possible that I ate this whole pan by myself over the next couple of days).

Ham (John insisted-- I thought we were good with just turkey), and stuffing.

A sampling of our homemade pies (apple and pumpkin, respectively). I LOVE the pie crust shapes that I happened to find in my mom's cupboard. We also made a plethora of cream pies. We had more pies in total than adults present at our feast. And we were very proud of that fact.

A look at my plate. See, I didn't take close-up pictures of ALL the food! Notice the raw cranberry salad (you want that recipe, I promise), mashed potatoes & gravy, and rolls, all not pictured above. Be proud of my restraint.

The whole (small) Thanksgiving feast partakers. Except me.

I hate ("We don't say that word!" is what George would be saying right now if he was reading this) this picture of Adam, but he told me I had to post it. He was offering his approval of the feast in a gross, boyish way.

My girl, on her first Thanksgiving, and my boy, on his fourth (how is that even possible?!).

This was a true Thanksgiving Day miracle. The boys (all 3) did ALL of the dishes while I fed Pearl and entertained George.

I had to get this picture of my brothers doing the dishes together because it likely will not happen again for a very long time. And then my kids, ready for some rest after the meal.

And just like that, goodbye Fall!

Hi (anti-climactic) blizzard! (This technically happened the day before Thanksgiving, but for my purposes I am taking some liberties with time here :)).

The view of my boys building a little snowman from my living room. I love how John is throwing a snowball in that first picture because that is just so him. Guaranteed he was testing out his aiming skills and trying to hit some sign off in the distance.

G threatening me with a snowball of his own.

Putting the facial features on their baby snowman.

Happy little snow boy.

I am so grateful that George has a daddy to do these kinds of things with.

And then Sunday (this was two weeks ago, now) came and a less-talked-about but more potent storm came our way. John gets to come home in between his meetings and church starting to help me get out the door with the kids, and was able to get a little jumpstart on the shoveling (all this snow and it was only 8:45 AM). George HAD to help shovel, of course, so I got a few pictures of my handsome dressed up boys shoveling snow.

The boys and the girls, all ready for church.

When we woke up on that Sunday I looked out the window and saw all of the snow and was excited that I could dress Pearl in her pretty wintery dress that I have had for her since before I was even pregnant with her. It was one of those things that you (or, in my case, my mom and me) love so much that you buy it when it is on sale because you just know one day it will work for one of your children. I have been looking at this dress for a couple of years now, just waiting. It was fun to dress Pea in it, and it truly is stunning, but I didn't get any good pictures of it. Just take my word for it :).

After the snow stopped falling and settled in on our lawn the next day, John and George got to work building an igloo. I came home from running errands with Pearl to the boys outside proudly working on this gigantic snow fort.

Their igloo was fully equipped with stairs going up the side and a snow slide going down the front. A little boys dream, I tell you.

I love this one of George swimming through the fresh snow in the back yard.

G was proud of how high he could be, and loved being taller than John.

What good is snow if you can't eat it, right?

Peeking out of the igloo from the back. Oh, I love this boy.

And finally, in our last bit of winter news for now, we got our house all decorated and ready for Christmas on this past Sunday. Don't mind that my children are still all dressed in church clothes and I am in sweats. I needed to get out of my tights.

Ha, I love my curious little Pea in this one. She was watching me decorate and then heard John come in and was like, "Wait! A noise! I must turn around and see what it is!" She is SO different than George was at her age, and it is so much fun to see what it is like to have a busy baby. I loved and adored (and still do) George's mellow, calm, go-with-the-flow, personality. He was just always so content to lay on my shoulder and just kind of observe. Pearl is so the opposite. She only cuddles when she is nursing, and even then, I cannot nurse when people are around anymore because she cannot not look if she hears any noise. She lunges out of my arms to try to get things she is interested in, and holy cow, the things she has found to put in her mouth when I am not looking for a split second would scare you. I can't get over how much joy there is in having children and getting to know the differences in their personalities that are uniquely theirs. The happiness in our home because of these babies is tangible, and I am so grateful for it, and recognize that there are those out there waiting and praying for their babies to come to their homes and bring with them this joy. I am mindful of these dear friends of mine, and am praying that their hearts will be full this Christmas season with the promised blessing that all of their heartache and waiting will be more than made up for in joy and abundance when their babies come. That was a tangent, but something that I feel every time I write about the happiness that my children bring me, and I wanted those who are having to work hard for their children to know that I think of them often, and am so mindful of their hurting hearts. Anyway, here is the photo that prompted that soliloquy.

I told George to put his cheek by Pearl's for a picture and this is what he did. She was not happy about it, and George was like, "What?! You told me to grab her cheeks!"

See those specks of glitter on her face?

Yes well, George noticed them too.

Thanks, George, for taking care of that for me so I could get some pictures of Pea without the glitter :). (Just so we're clear, I did NOT ask G to get the glitter off. That was all his own idea.)

Love this one. She is such a little squish, I could eat her.

Once we had established that putting his cheek by her cheek did not entail squishing her face, and once the glitter had been safely removed, we were able to get a couple of pictures of them together.

George wanted to get wrapped up in some garland and have us rescue him. Pea just wanted to eat it.

And, since the picture was taken on this day, I had to include this one of her crawling to document this new stage. She is getting better and better every day, and she refuses to army crawl. She has to be up on her hands and knees. Again, this is so different than George was. G never really crawled. He was seriously just so content to sit in one place, and if he ever really needed to get somewhere, it was good enough to just slowly scoot there on his bum. He pretty much just went straight to walking at about 12 months. Pea, on the other hand, wants so desperately to be able to move and get around. She crawls around on all fours, stopping to inspect whatever she finds on the ground and immediately put it in her mouth. Holy cow, I love her.

So many more things to post, but I'll save them for another day :).

then he swooped her up just like in the books

John and me in line for a ride at Lagoon this past summer. I have always loved how perfectly I fit right underneath his arm.

I want to tell you about the man that I get to call my husband. He doesn't get a lot of attention on this blog (a fact that he is undoubtedly quite happy about), but today, on our 5 year anniversary, I want to give him some of the credit that he deserves. A couple of years ago I wrote down the story of how we met and fell in love (read that here if you missed it), but today I just want to share some thoughts about this most incredible, beautiful man that I married.

This is a man who does not raise his voice in anger. I have never ever heard him yell.

This is a man who cleans the bathrooms (always), washes the floors (always), and starts loads of laundry without being asked (sometimes).

This is a man who has faithfully risen at 3:00 AM for the past two years to go to work (at one of his 3 jobs, mind you) and who has never complained about it. Yes, he has expressed how tired he sometimes feels, but I have never once heard even the slightest complaint from him about having to get up for work. He just does it, happy to provide for us, and anxious to make me feel like he lives to take care of his family.

This is a man who goes into our baby girl's room at night to smell her. That might sound weird, but I think it is a beautiful illustration of his tender feelings for his baby-- that he just loves the sweetness of her scent.

This is a man who memorizes poems. This was one of the first things that immediately stood out to me about John-- what other 18 year old guy memorizes Ulysses or God's Grandeur or The Tyger? He has dozens and dozens of beautiful poems filed away in his brain. He rarely recites them aloud (and will never perform on command), but one of my favorite memories is of laying on his lap on a beach in Hawaii (right before he left on his mission) while he quietly recited poem after poem after poem to me. I love knowing that I married a man who appreciates and values beautiful words.

This is a man who loves sports. This might seem weird, but it was seriously important to me that I marry someone who knew more about sports that I did. I know a lot about sports. Like probably more than any girl you know. I dated lots of guys who were just casual sports fans and didn't get into it the way I did. I was always bothered by that. I wanted my man to be manly! And in my world that means having that competitive and athletic side.

This is a man who covered his eyes when he was a little boy and women's ice skating was on TV. He was worried that the costumes on the skaters were immodest and thought he shouldn't look at them. This makes me laugh now, and I tease him about it sometimes, but really, wouldn't you love it if your sons did the same thing? I pray that George has the exact same moral compass as his father.

This is a man who changes diapers and cleans up body fluids from our children without even blinking.

This is a man who tells me he loves me every time we talk on the phone. Every single time.

This is a man who loves it when I wear baggy long-sleeved tee-shirts. He notices when I take some time to dress up, and is good to tell me he thinks I am beautiful, but honestly, he has a hard time keeping his hands off me when I am just wearing a plain old tee-shirt. I love that I can feel comfortable and beautiful when I am in his arms.

This is a man who tempers my passion with his calm. And even though I sometimes want him to get all up in arms with me about something, I mostly am just really grateful for his level-headedness and clear thinking.

This is a man who, upon hearing about the way a jerky DMV employee treated me, immediately called and talked (calmly and level-headedly, of course :)) to a supervisor just because it was important to him to stand up for me (I didn't even know he had done this until well after the fact).

This is a man who calls my mom just to chat. (What son-in-law does that?)

This is a man who I knew would be an affectionate and dear husband because of the way he treated his own mom and sister. I have very specific memories from high school of him giving his mom and sister kisses on the head or cheek and thinking to myself that that is exactly the way I would want my future sons to treat me and their sisters one day.

This is a man who can make my heart skip a few beats just by winking at me from his seat on the stand at church on Sundays.

This is a man who eats anything and everything I cook and always expresses his gratitude to me for making dinner. If he particularly likes something I've made he makes sure to make a big deal out of it, ooooing and aaahhing over and over :).

This is a man who makes me feel comfortable in my own skin, who has never ever said one negative word about the way I look. Even when I am 9 months pregnant and feel gigantic, I really do believe him when he says that he finds me just as attractive then as he does when I fit into my skinny jeans. I have never once felt like I am not attractive to him.

This is a man who gets me glasses of ice water whenever I ask (and I ask a lot).

This is a man who saves the best/last bites of yummy things for me.

This is a man who loves to play jokes and tease people. He secretly changed his name to "Bonesaw" in my mom's phone and then proceeded to call her for a few days and leave her totally baffled at who "Bonesaw" was. He used a scary voice and told her he was coming for her and her children until he couldn't keep up the charade any more and cracked up laughing.

This is a man who knows the names of all the old ladies in our ward and makes a point of shaking their hands, calling them "Sister _____," and making them feel like a million bucks. I am certain they all have crushes on him.

This is a man who hugs people. That is something that so many of my extended family members have commented on-- how you can always count on a hug from John.

This is a man who, after spending a few days stewing over the fact that we had almost gotten TOTALLY ripped off by a heating company, felt bad about how frustrated he was with them (though he was completely justified in being so), and one night in our prayer asked for forgiveness for being prideful and thinking he was right (which he was, by the way).

This is a man who is so, SO funny. He makes me laugh all of the time. And not just kind of, sort of laugh-- I am talking like a full on, stomach muscles are sore, eyes are watering laugh. He really does have the quickest wit and best sense of humor.

This is a man who, despite his deep spiritual sensitivity and convictions, is also able to just be real. He appreciates the occasional naughty joke, and he laughs hysterically at the completely inappropriate things that my brothers say. Before I knew him well in high school I wondered this about him-- sure he was the most incredible person I knew, but would he also be a prude and think that some of the things I said were totally out of line? I soon found out that, oh no, he certainly wasn't a prude. And I love that about him.

This is a man who cut up peaches and crushed up ice for me (by hand) after I had given birth to my babies, and brought them to me in my bed so I wouldn't move. He was constantly telling me I was "over-doing it" and would try to get me to lay down whenever I would attempt to do anything for myself. I used to think that men wanted their women to be tough, and I still think that they do in some ways, but I never knew how much it would mean to a man to just be able to take care of his wife. I am so grateful I married a man who truly finds his purpose and happiness in taking good care of me and our babies, and I am learning to be better about just letting him do that sometimes.

. . .

I am not writing this all out to try to paint the picture of a perfect man. He isn't perfect, and we don't always see eye to eye about everything. Maybe you can tell by now that he isn't necessarily the most romantic guy on the planet, and my list wasn't full of all the times he has bought me flowers and taken me on extravagant trips or dates. Those kind of things aren't really his forte, I guess, but I am okay with that. I am okay with that because of how good he is at everything else-- at doing little things constantly and effortlessly that show his deep devotion and love to me and our children. I can honestly say that I am married to the best person that I know. The very best. He is so much more than I could have ever hoped to have, and I sometimes feel inadequate to be his wife.

We have had this conversation more than once-- that I cannot see how he could possibly love me as much as I love him because of the kind of person that he is compared to the kind of person I am (and I'm really not trying to put myself down here-- I know I am a fine person. But have you met my husband?)-- and he always responds by telling me that one day I will understand his feelings for me, that one day I will know the depth of his love for me. But here is the truth:

I already know it.

Even if I can't understand it, I know it. I cannot doubt something that is shown to me time and time again, every single day of my life. His love for me is laced seamlessly and beautifully through the hours and minutes of my life, woven into each and every good thing that is mine. It is in all the things I described above, plus a thousand other little details that, when added together, comprise all of the beauty and happiness in my life.

I hope that he can feel my love back for him just as tangibly.

5 years into our marriage, happier and fuller than I have ever been.