All you need is Love

I stole this cute little idea.  And I LOVE the way they turned out!

Prescott, Az

When we went back to Arizona (way back in November!) we got together with Bryan's family and took some pictures.  I purposely didn't post them because they were being put into a photobook for my MIL and I wanted them to be seen first by her, and not on my blog.

 Old family friends, the Peacocks.  We somehow managed to talk them into taking the group shots of us!

I love a good book. This wasn't it.

I read a book this month called Flunking Sainthood.  The book wasn't great by any means, but it did get me thinking, so I guess it wasn't a total waste of time.  The book is pretty much about a girl who decided to set a different (and sort of outrageous) spiritual goal and do it for an entire month for a whole year.  After reading it I got to thinking about my life and ways to improve it, in both temporal and spiritual aspects.  So, I set a goal to set some goals.
Pretty ambitious aren't I?

I have no desire to fast from Sun-up to Sun-down or to observe an Orthodox Sabbath, but I do want to improve my relationship with my Heavenly Father.  I have set a couple of goals.

1. Read my scriptures every day this month  (notice I didn't impose a set time or length...I gotta start small, so if I get 3 verses in, it counts!)
2. Add a family prayer in the morning to our usual routine of evening prayer. 

(Most of you reading this probably already do this...but I really struggle with both of these spiritual basics)

To help, I made a 'chore chart' for the kids and added 'morning' and 'evening' prayers to check off to the list.  Charts are awesome.  Peter will do ANYTHING for a sticker on that chart.  And the kid never forgets.  He is my biggest motivator for my new goals! 

The second part to my goal setting are these

1. Go to bed every night this month with a clean kitchen- including the floors.
2. Just for the heck of it, I am boycotting shopping for the ENTIRE month.  Which means, no purchases of anything other than food, diapers, and maybe toilet paper.  Maybe. 

I decided that the second goal up there was so huge (for me) that I needed to ease into it, so I started this 2 weeks ago in the middle of January.  I did  great until I found a HUGE frame at Micheal's on clearance for 8 bucks...(I am gonna need some serious will power to make it to March!)

I have been lax on setting goals this winter and it feels great to have some direction and motivation for self-improvement.  All I needed was to actually sit down and take the time to write it down to make it real.  I am somewhat like Peter too.  I will do about ANYTHING to check something off a list.  Wish me luck!

Busy January

I think January is an exceptionally long month.  The weather sucks, the days are too short and there is generally nothing to do.  Even though it still proved to be longer than I hoped, we did have a ton to do.  I think we may have even had some fun too!

My mom came out last weekend.  To say I enjoyed having her would be an understatement.  We didn't get to go out because the weather was well, Pittsburghish, but we stayed busy playing pretend and making video's on Abby's phone.  

 Brooke changes her clothes about 40 times a day.  In these pictures she is wearing her princess outfits, but she changes her 'day clothes' regularly as well.  And she insists that she needs jammies during naptime. 

Cold isn't exactly the best way to descibe what we went through last week.  I think a more appropriate wording would be 'dangerously frigid temperatures'.  It was -20 a couple days last week and the wind blew 30 miles an hour.  Going outside for any reason was torture. 
Pittsburgh has strange weather patterns, because the next week it was 65 so we went to the zoo.

 I decided to go for a jog outside before trekking over to the zoo.  There was such thick fog I couldn't resist a picture.

 Four years and I finally got a picture of the Pens flag in the penguin exhibit.  Sometimes I love Pittsburgh.

And for the grand finale-

Heath's first birthday

I love this guy!  His first birthday was a busy one!  We ran errands, played with friends, made a cake and cookies and squeezed a short nap in.  (well, Heath did.  I wish I could say the same!)

 I wanted to do a 'cookie monster' theme, just so I could make cookies.  There really was no Sesame Street anything involved.  I made blue cupcakes with a hidden Oreo inside, and topped it off with a mini-homemade chocolate chip cookie on the top. 

 Here comes the cake...

 Hmmm...I think I like it.

I think I will shove the whole thing in my face.

Yup.  That was the right course of action. 

 Mom, I love sugar.  Why didn't you give this stuff to me sooner?!

  


 

 Outside, in January in Pennsylvania, taking pictures.  Not much success, but I got a couple cute shots.  Heath was soaking wet by the time we finished and I was freezing cold. (It was raining, if you can't tell...)

Looking Back at 2012

To sum up last year:

Bryan started his 4th and final year of school at PITT.  He did a internship with an endodontist in Georgia.  He did another crazy bike trip from here to DC with his friend Tannon.  (This time around they were psychotic and did the 330 mile bike ride in 3 days).  I don't think I should mention that they encountered some really rough weather (28 degrees at night) and they were camping.  So not only were they tired and dirty, but freezing.  (I was jealous they were doing it without me, until I heard about the brilliant plan to haul the camping gear and sleep outside)

I learned how to juggle 3 small children. (This is something I think I will be learning for the rest of my life!)   I enrolled in the Pittsburgh Ballet Theater adult division and took a ballet class.  I ran a half marathon and beat my previous time by 12 minutes.  I experienced a dinner-co-op'.  I also didn't sleep more than 5 hours at a time the entire year. (thank you Heath).

Heath came to be a part of our family, and I cannot imagine life without him.  He learned how to smile at about 2 months, and hasn't stopped since! 

Brooke grew up so much.  She pretty much potty trained herself in June, started sleeping in a big girl bed, can dress herself, speaks in complete sentences, goes to dance, and torments her brothers constantly.  She is the first one to wake up in the morning and the last kid to go to sleep.

Peter started Pre-school, and got to play soccer.  He stopped taking naps, started liking obsessing,really loving Pirates (Jake and the Neverland Pirates to be specific) and discovered Super Hero's.  He continued to eat very little for dinner (but a ton for breakfast!)

As a family we drove over 1,988 miles to Maine and back in our little Honda.  We flew 2x to Az and went to Disneyland.  We took a couple trips to Ohio, drove anther 800 miles round trip to Busch Gardens in VA.   Our poor little Honda has seen better days.  We have doubled the mileage in the 2.5 years we have owned it.

Bryan and I got to enjoy many Pirates baseball games, and Pitt basketball games.  2012 was full of bike rides, trail runs, and playgrounds.  I am looking forward to 2013.  There are so many changes coming and I am excited to find out what my Heavenly Father has in store for us.

Possibly going stir crazy...

The snow is here.  The sun is gone and I don't anticipate seeing it again until May.  This is always my least favorite time of year.  The excitement of the holidays are over and the reality of the long cold, dark winter always hits.  To jump start the grand misery of winter, Bryan has spent the last week of his break studying for his dental boards.  He goes downstairs to the basement at 8 am and I don't see him again until 8 pm, minus a 10 minute break to come upstairs and eat dinner with us.  I can't imagine it is much fun for him, but it really sucks for me too!  Its tough having him in the house, but not be able to hang out.  Now top that off with a foot of snow and ice and you have a recipe for boredom on my part.  The kids have been having a ball in our house since Christmas.  They are loving their new toys and don't really want me to do much with them except watch them play. 
My excitement for the week has been getting all the laundry done and the Christmas decorations put away.  I did find a cute idea on Pinterest for putting the kids 'wish list' into an ornament each year.  I am really excited about this.  I think it will be fun for them to have when they get older. 

Peter talked me into venturing out into the backyard.  He REALLY wanted to build a snowman.  It was kind of a bust.  Peter was having a blast, but after about 3 minutes, Heath was freezing and mad that he was stuck in the stroller in the middle of the snow, and Brooke was soaking wet due to Peter throwing 'snowballs' at her face.  So, we got the base of the snowman started and will wait for Bryan to get finished with boards so he can come play too!

 
Friday can't come fast enough!