Christmas in Utah

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Why I wear my hair up all the time ^^ haha

At the Provo LDS Temple–one of the most beautiful I’ve been to!

We spent the week between Christmas and New Year’s in Utah! It was so nice to be with family (although so hard to figure out how to split our time between both of them!) I won’t overload this post with pictures, but I will say that we sure packed in our time there—lots of dinners, visiting, movies, games (you know that hungry hippos game you’ve probably seen circling pinterest–the one where you actually roll people across the floor to gather balls in a basket? We did that! Well I didn’t with my pregnant belly– but it was so fun to watch!), shopping, lunches, skiing, relaxing, EATING (so. much. food!), going to the temple–even a family wedding! and staying up way too late. I even got to visit with one of my dearest friends that I hadn’t seen in so long. It was as though things never changed–grateful for friendships like that. We had a great trip!

Talking about the funky hair-do’s we had as kids. Poor Mom got a lot of flack for those bangs!

Also, Christmas was so fun this year with the kids–they were both so happy and excited. At the end of the day Ava said to us, “This was the best Christmas ever!” and made sure to thank us with big hugs. How did we get so lucky? I was also excited to finally empty all those boxes that I’d been stuffing in the front closet all this time. I couldn’t wait to give them their gifts!

You can fly

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The other day I put Disney songs on Pandora for the kids to dance to and the “You Can Fly” song came on. They’d never seen the movie so I told them what it was about and they spread their arms, racing around the room (and jumping off the couches.) Ever since, Ava has wanted to see what it was all about. So, the other night we all went downstairs and watched Peter Pan.

When I brought down popcorn, the kids were so excited. It’s funny how they can get excited about the smallest things. They both squealed, “Popcorn! Yay! Popcorn!” Hyrum giggled and “hmmed” with the most satisfying grins while he stared at the popcorn and crammed handfuls into his mouth. Later he picked out orange after orange to have us peel for him (eating all of them in no time). When we told him no more, he went off and peeled them himself.

We turned on the kids’ Christmas tree and tucked them in bed, hoping they would settle and fall asleep in the same room (totally hit and miss with this). In her bedtime prayer, Ava mentioned, “…and please bless Hyrum that he can fall asleep and not refuse his naps, and please help him to not refuse new food, and please bless me to try new foods…and thank you for our warm house and helping us drive safely…” I just love her prayers.

Later when Hyrum got out of bed (for the fifth time) and came downstairs, he picked up two little oranges and held them right up to his nose, just smiling at them. Jake and I just laugh, it is so fun watching them.

#mamanotes

Come Unto Me

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One morning when I didn’t feel like getting out of bed (those pregnancy hormones remember?) and feeling quite tired and unmotivated to do anything, I read this scripture that someone had posted online.

Matthew 11:28-30

28 Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.

29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.

30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

I have read and heard that scripture countless times, I even have it memorized! But for some reason I hadn’t fully considered it in all my “heavy laden” feelings until that moment. And I so needed it! I read each verse a few times, then sat and thought about it for a few minutes.

“What does it mean to come unto him?” I thought. “How can I really feel that rest, how does it work?”

I closed my eyes and asked those same questions. “Please help me. Please help me learn how this works.” I thought of the Savior and how much I just wanted to be strengthened again.

It’s interesting how spiritual things work. I wish I could lay out just how it worked for me, just how He answered my prayer, but I can’t even explain it. I think it’s something that everyone experiences differently, but it made all the difference for me.

After that prayer, I got up and determined to try my best, and somehow it seemed easier. After asking for help, I knew that I could do it. That’s how faith works I guess. I knew that I had laid my burden at the Savior’s feet, asking for His help to carry it. I was happier. Honestly, days before this it was so hard to feel enough energy or motivation to take care of my house, make meals, or tackle those bathrooms that I had been putting off cleaning for longer than I want to admit. I usually just did the bare minimum and then felt pretty crummy about it. But I did what I needed to all that day! My house wasn’t totally clean, but my bathrooms were! And I even made a fresh dinner and finished some other things. I was able to rest in a way, knowing that I had heaven’s help. That’s all I needed to get me going and keep me going. It’s been five days since I prayed for the Savior’s help, and I am still feeling it.

I’m still having mood swings here and there, perhaps those will stick around until sometime after the babies are born, but I know I can do this because I have the Savior’s promise of rest (even if my kind of rest means the strength to do the things I need to). What a gift.

Making Christmas in Our House

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Ava waited all day to get out the Christmas tree and the Christmas decorations. We cleaned the house and waited for my hard drives to finish backing up before we could move the desk and computer for the Christmas tree.

Then Jake put on a coat and his super tall boots and trudged through a few feet of piled snow drifts to the garage to get the tree and all the fun Christmas stuff.

We’ve been hibernating the past few days in our warm little townhouse while a true North Dakota storm has been piling snow and blowing it all around us. No school and work from home means a lot of together time and we really like that.

I’m supposed to drive to Bismarck tomorrow for an important ultrasound that needs to be done no later than this week so we’ll see if we can make it out there. School is closed again tomorrow.

We put up the Christmas tree, broke a few ornaments, and noticed that some chunks of lights weren’t working on the tree. So we decided to hold off on the ornaments and ribbon until we could get those working again, and tucked the kids into bed.

Ava sat up in her bed marveling at the little Christmas tree we set up in her room, the same one I had in my room when I was young. Her bed time prayer went something like this:

“Dear Heavenly Father,

Thank you for the Earth and for Christmas. Thank you that we could have Christmas and make Christmas in our house today. Thank you for our bodies and that we could have a nice home to keep us warm. Please bless Mommy and Daddy and Hyrum and the babies and help us have a good day tomorrow. . In the name of Jesus Christ Amen. “

She fills my heart this little one.

Family Time

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We LOVE being with our families. We both come from big families, and we feel like we can never get enough togetherness with them.

So why do we live so far away!?

It’s interesting how that works. We feel like North Dakota is where we are supposed to be, for now. We love being out on our own, exploring new places and growing together as a little family of four. We love our life here, AND we love being with our family in other states. Eventually we would like to live near them, but for now we can be just as happy.

With that said, we had a BLAST with our families in Utah. We packed our days full of Christmas parties, potlucks, game nights, lunch dates, late night chats, downtown lights, charades, dodgeball, basketball, settlers, sledding, backyard ice skating, and a whole lot of togetherness. It was such a good trip.