Thursday, September 21, 2017

{8.28.17 - 9.3.17}

 I love my crew! 
He's so dainty when he eats his food! // I love when Axel initiates cuddles! 
"Now we're ready to go hunting!!" -Lyla 
 Can you see all three of them? 
 My climber and popsicle lover! 
This boy kills me! // You can't tell, but they are standing near a huge drop-off and even having them this close makes me nervous! Haha! (Lyla & Alya) 
Alya was refusing to let me have a picture of her...but I'm not complaining about the one that I got! // Lyla...picking wildflowers! 

I love my handsome boys! 
Lyla 
Alya

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

.one year.

.twelve months.


My baby is one and I am in denial about it! I remember the first year for the girls taking forever!!! But it has gone way too fast with Axel! We celebrated with a dinosaur themed smash cake and it took him a minute to figure out what he was supposed to do with his cake, but once Dad helped him smash it he thought it was pretty great!
Axel has been rolling his tongue again! He did it for a while when he was younger but he stopped for a minute and I was pretty bummed, but he started doing it again and I love it! Everyone comments on how awesome it is!
This boy loves to be on the move. He loves that he knows how to walk and he practically runs everywhere he goes!
He is a talker! He loves to jabber all the time, and I have no idea what he is saying but it's so cute to listen to!
He says "UH-OH!" "Mama" "Da" "Y-a" "Ee-a" "MoMo" "WOW!" and "Whoah!"
When we are looking at pictures and books I can ask him things like, "where's the puppy?" and he will point to it!  
He is an organizer! He walks around the house gathering up toys and things and piling them all in one place...on top of the bookcase or in his monkey chair, or wherever he feels like they should be!
He is really good about trying to put things away or at least not throwing it on the floor. He usually asks for help by trying to hand it to me but if I'm not fast enough he gives up and just drops it so he can get on with what he's doing.
He likes to play with his toys for a minute and then give it to me to play with until he wants it back-usually just a couple seconds later.
He is so good at going down the stairs, we don't worry about locking our baby gate anymore. It's really cute because if his sisters head downstairs to play he is usually right behind him! And the girls are so good to just let him come explore their room while they are playing. Probably because they have a better chance of blaming their mess on their brother! Haha!
He waves "hi" and says "Bu" when he's waving goodbye!
He likes to clap his hands and he LOVES to yell. I don't always love it so much, but he thinks it's great!
His favorite things are playing outside (heaven forbid we shut a door without letting him go outside first!), he loves to play with anything with wheels...cars, trucks, trains, etc. He likes the TV remote and he LOVES shoes. When he is upset he will bring me a pair of his shoes and I used to think it was his way of asking to go outside so sometimes I wouldn't put them on him, because I just couldn't take him outside right then. Well, one day I was cooking dinner and he brought me some shoes and even though I knew I couldn't take him outside I put his shoes on him anyway. He stopped fussing and being ornery and just wandered around the house with his shoes on. They don't even have to be his own shoes, either! He's happy in his shoes, my shoes, dad's shoes, and his sister's shoes. 
He likes water, but for a minute he did not like the bathtub! I think he gets nervous in it because he can tell how slippery it is...he also doesn't like to get his ears wet, I think. 
Axel is a climber! He loves to climb on boxes and benches and couches. One day I even caught him up on the table our TV is on and he had climbed behind the TV and was trying to reach his picture hanging on the wall above the TV.
He loves fruit. His favorite fruits are strawberries and oranges! He also loves waffles and pancakes!
He likes to feel and hear different textures. He was walking on the driveway one day and his foot met with some dirt and kind of slid...well he thought that was pretty cool, so he kept trying to make his foot slide in the dirt. He likes to go from carpet to tile and hear the different sound it makes. He will stand and stomp on the tile just to hear it. 
He has 8 teeth and is 20 lbs (15%) and 31" (85%). When he got his vaccinations he didn't even cry for the first two - he just gave the nurses a really dirty look! Haha!
This tall, skinny mama's boy is my favorite little boy! I am struggling with the fact that he is already one, but boy do I love him and I am so grateful to be his mom and watch him grow! He is going to keep me on my toes, but I am looking forward to his future!

Happy Birthday Little Man! 

{8.21.17 - 8.27.17}

2017 Eclipse - I didn't worry about looking for special glasses we could use to look at the eclipse, but then when the day came I really wished I had! Luckily Matthew was working near the science building at the college and they were handing out slides you could use, so Matthew brought some home and we all got to look at the eclipse! 
The best part of baking anything is licking the bowls and spoons! Alya really enjoyed helping me make frosting for Axel's birthday cake! 
Little man got to enjoy donuts for his birthday breakfast! // Boxes are the best! Seriously...why buy toys when they can play with boxes! 
Lyla & Alya 
We get some beautiful sunsets! 
I canned many jars of green beans! I love having a garden that blesses us with so much produce! // My kiddos all came down with some kind of weird flu this week. They were all miserable and I felt so bad for them! It took a while for them to be back to normal, but I'm grateful they are good as new! 
Axel's smash cake! // He loved his birthday balloons!!

Thursday, September 7, 2017

{8.14.17 - 8.20.17}

These hams!! This picture sums up pretty well my little family! The girls love their dress-up clothes...although I don't think they would consider them dress-up! And Axel is always just so happy! 
This boy loves to climb on anything and everything. His favorite these days is climbing up on the bench in his sister's room. He also loves to  climb on the dishwasher and he's tried using the drawer handles in the bathroom to climb up on the bathroom counter. So far that hasn't worked, thank goodness!! 
My blue-eyed beauties! 
Lyla reeled in her first fish!!! 
Alya was breaking out the dance moves, and it was adorable!! 
OH MY GOSH!! I love this handsome boy!! 
Oh the attitude!! // She looks pretty relaxed, doesn't she?  
One of our beautiful Sanpete sunsets! 
Miss Lyla! 

My Grandpa celebrated a birthday this week so we went up to visit with him! It was so good to see him and I am so grateful for the love that he has for me and my family and I feel so blessed to be able to visit him every now and then...even though I don't see him often enough!

Thursday, August 31, 2017

{8.7.17 - 8.13.17}

My kids were able to come with me to my mutual activity this week! A couple of the girls took Lyla and Alya out on kayaks and let them row by themselves! They took a net over to a spot that had trees growing out of the water with low hanging branches (the girls felt like they were in "Princess and the Frog" and they caught some little fish!  
Some of the girls even took Axel out on the water! I'm glad the young women like my kids! 

Axel had (what I think was) his first taste of Mountain Dew. I'm honestly not sure how he felt about it.  
Just Anna and Elsa riding two-by-two. 
We went to the Downey, Idaho fair! While at the top of the ferris wheel something caught Alya's attention. As soon as she got off she took off running...
...and we found her at the mechanical bull! Both the girls took a ride. They loved it but they were also "a little scared!"  
They make me crazy. CRAZY! But I love them with my whole heart!!!

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

{7.31.17 - 8.6.17}

The last few months leading up to this week have probably been some of the most stressful months of my life! In February (I think) I was called to be the young women girls camp director for our ward. I have not been to a girls camp since I was a teenager, and I had no idea how much effort my leaders put into camp until I had to do it myself! I was really only able to focus on planning girls camp while Axel was sleeping and then when I was planning, it seemed like that's when my girls wanted or needed me for something. I would sometimes get so frustrated because I really only had at most 2 hour chunks of time to plan - which was probably plenty of time, but I felt so clueless that it didn't seem like enough! Many times I felt like I was either being a horrible camp director or a horrible mom...it felt like I wasn't doing either job to the best of my abilities despite my best efforts!
We all survived and I'm sure my kids still know how much I love them and I think - I hope - that girls camp was a success! It's so much different going as a leader than as a young woman! There were times that it was honestly really hard for me to feel the Spirit because I was either trying to get ready for the next activity or I was dealing with some drama within the young women. I will say that we have some awesome young women in our ward/stake!! They were so nice and accepting of each other and, other than a few hiccups, I was so impressed!!! We also have some awesome leaders and I am so grateful for their help in the planning and throughout the week! There are some things that I would do differently next time, but I really do think girls camp was a lot of fun and I really hope that the young women could feel the love that I and their leaders have for them and more importantly, the love that their Heavenly Father has for them!
The them for our stake young women camp this year was "It's A Jungle Out There" and each ward chose an animal to represent them at camp, then we each got to decorate a bucket for a totem pole that the stake leaders put together. Our ward was assigned the value of Faith and we chose to be a white lion. I asked one of my young women to draw our lion on our bucket and I think she did an amazing job!! One of our crafts at camp was to make flower crowns (because we are daughters of a king...so it was like our princess crown! Also because we were lions and lions are kings of the jungle...so, ya know! We got creative!) So we put a flower crown on our lion and I was very happy with our bucket and I'm so grateful for such talented young women! // I got to pull the trailer with all of the girls' luggage, etc. so I had Matthew take me to the church the night before we left so that I could practice backing it up...and I'm glad I did because I had to use those skills when we got to our campsite! I backed the trailer up into this little space with trees on either side of the trailer and trees on the passenger side of the truck! It was very tricky but I was so excited, so I had to document it! 
We had some awesome priesthood holders/camp cooks!! One of our days at camp our priesthood went down and cut a bunch of firewood, so we made the girls hike down and load all of the firewood into the truck. They were hilarious and worked so smart to get this job done quickly!  
I learned that teenagers are much like three year olds when it comes to listening to instruction and cleaning up after themselves! Haha! We made flower crowns, we made mason jar lanterns, we sang some beautiful songs by the light of flashlights, we did a really fun hike and Bishop brought his horses for the girls and leaders to ride while we hiked, we played, we sang karaoke and we had some awesome devotionals and a wonderful testimony meeting. I grew to love our young women even more than I did before! I am really looking forward to planning another camp - hopefully everyone is okay with that!
While I was gone for the week, Lyla and Alya went to Idaho with Grandma Sorenson and Axel got to hang out with Nana and Daxton! They all had so much fun and I am so grateful that I can go in the mountains and have no service and have very little stress about how my kids are doing! The girls got new swimsuits, they swam and went to Walmart (haha!!)...they got very spoiled! Axel went to the zoo, he went to Seven Peaks and swimming with cousins! I hope they were okay with coming home! 
The girls were asked to draw a smiley face in primary on Sunday...Alya did a pretty awesome one!! I am so impressed!! Lyla decided not to draw a smiley face... 
...and drew a camel instead! But how awesome is her camel!?
"If all the raindrops were lemon drops and gumdrops, oh what a rain that would be!" Alya tasting the raindrops!! I love this picture! I love the rain splashing off her tongue and the water pooled up near her eye! So cute!