And February Birthdays!

Kendra and Camille both have February birthdays, so they are now 12 and 5, respectively. Naturally, much celebrating occurred!

Any ideas I may have had about dieting always get thrown out the window here...  I end up making a cake for the actual birthday day, plus some sort of treat for their birthday party with friends, and then we end up getting doughnuts when we celebrate with Grandma and Grandpa!  So, yes, February is a FAT month!  But we've had a lot of fun!!!

Camille on her actual day

Why bother being a Tiger Mom if you can have a Tiger Daughter?

And her party with Scarlett and Quinn (Sydney was also supposed to come, but then was sick)

Eating out at Five Guys with grandparents and wearing hoods without coats!  As one does...

Opening presents from Grandma and Grandpa

Her favorite gift-- gotta love stuffed animals with sequins!

And Kendra got this fabulous sweatshirt!

Birthday doughnuts!

And Kendra's actual birthday!  Since Craig had a busy day, we let her open her presents first thing in the morning...

And for her party with friends, she asked for cookies instead of a cake...

I just picked Kendra's friends up from school, so our van was quite the party vehicle!  It's fun when we get it filled up like that!

Happy birthday to my beautiful girls!!!  

Random February Happenings

So remember how I said that we'd been busy around here?  I guess it's time I got this blog caught up!

I was kind of proud of this artsy picture I took out my window-- I love the fog and the rain drops glistening in the tree branches

My friend Sarah taught me how to do my hair up like this...

And then when you take it out, you get these fun curls!

And while I'm on a selfie kick, I got this cute dress off Amazon and realized it needed red pumps.  This may be the most fashionable I've ever been!

We decided to throw a Super Bowl party, so here we are buying extra snacks for it.  Camille looked in our shopping cart and said, "We sure are wasting a lot of money!"  I've taught her well...

It turned out to be a pretty fun party, though, so that was good!

We got to visit Ryder's classroom and hear him read a book he'd written!

Camille and I like to eat artichokes together.  This time I even included Craig!

Camille explained to me, "The brontosaurus is saving the T-rex from drowning!"  That's a very nice Brontosaurus there!  Also, T-rex should know that he's not going to be a good swimmer with arms like that!

For an upcoming Relief Society activity, I have dutifully been folding origami dresses.  This is about as crafty as I get!

A lady in our ward gave us a bunch of hats that she knitted (crocheted?) so the kids are modeling them!

And me, too!

Pretty sunset, even in the winter...!

Camille and I visited Yoder's with my friend Kari and fed the goats!

CDs

I got tagged on facebook to post ten CD albums that influenced me.  You're not supposed to say anything about it, just post the album artwork.

Well, I can't do that.  Do you people even know me at all???  I can't post stuff and NOT go into pointlessly long explanations!  Those are what I do best!!!  And, also, I pretty much only lurk on FB.  This isn't worth getting over my status as "lurker" for.

But it did get me thinking.  Quite a lot, actually.  So I decided I could post it all here on my blog.  With my overly long explanations, of course!  So here you go.  In absolutely no order at all.  Ten CDs that influenced me in some way:

Other than "Mysterious Ways" I really didn't know a whole lot by U2, but that all changed with a good buddy my freshman year at BYU who insisted I listen to this entire album.  And it blew me away.  I asked him what to buy next and he answered, "Achtung Baby.  And then buy the rest of them."  And he was totally right!  U2 really is that great.

I don't listen to Offspring very much any more because I already have too much noise in my life, but when I knew this album really well in high school was probably the coolest I ever managed to be in my entire life.  It was an incredibly short-lived victory.  In fact, it was SO short, that I decided to never bother trying to be cool again.  It just was way too much effort for not nearly a long enough pay-out.

I spent SO much time listening to this when I was a kid!  And it really introduced me to a lot of very fun musical theater.

And yes, I also got my snob on in a big way when I was in high school.  Thanks, Mom and Leah for making me a music snob, a position I have always relished!  This was probably a major point leading to me getting that humanities degree, now that I'm thinking about it...

I remember playing Beatles Rock Band with my in-laws in Houston and they were so surprised by how well I knew the Beatles.  I can tell you that it all started with this album.

There's a small part of this that is written for a children's choir, and which the choir I was in in middle school performed.  At the time, I think I only knew the part we'd learned.  The huge opening (and closing) number was a revelation.  Nothing can leave an impression on a middle schooler like beating an enormous gong during a concert!

This probably single-handedly revived my love of musical theater.  We've been listening to Hamilton NON-STOP for about five years now and I STILL love it!  I can never be satisfied!

This was my standard background music when I did math homework in high school.  I had to switch to classical one day when I looked down at my geometry theorems and realized that I'd been scribbling the lyrics to the song I'd had playing!  I'm no math genius, but this was a good switch and I'm sure it improved my grades!

My love of Handel's Messiah has been well-documented on this blog, so I won't repeat myself here.  I love this music with all my heart.

One of the few albums that I loved when I was 18 and STILL love today.  The last three songs on the album especially-- The Background, Motorcycle Drive By, and God of Wine-- are slow and contemplative and intense and lovely.  I don't think they were ever big hits, but I love those songs so much.  This is one of my favorites to listen to on a road trip.

Bonus #11:  I LOVED this album when it came out.  I remember listening to the entire thing in our family room and my Dad finally yelling at me, "All these songs sound exactly the same and the first one wasn't that great to begin with!"  And that totally cracks me up, because really, all their songs DO sound the same!  But "The Sign" is a great song, in my book.  The funny thing though was that Ace of Base got so popular so fast and then just as quickly, it became popular to be over it and NOT like Ace of Base anymore.  (I believe the technical term for this occurrence is "Flash in the Pan.")  And that just drove me nuts.  If you liked something last week, you should still like it this week!  That's something I still firmly believe.  It's one of the reasons Craig is so lucky to be married to me-- I never get sick of him!  So even though I don't listen to these guys hardly ever, when I hear "The Sign" I still acknowledge to myself that it's a dang good song.  Even today.

All right, enough about me!  What CDs do YOU still love???  Consider yourself "tagged"!

Delight

The Bloggess recently posted asking her readers to share something that delighted them.  She said that when she is in a depressive state, her therapist had recommended she try to keep a gratitude journal, but that ended up backfiring because it just made her feel guilty for feeling so miserable when she ought to feel grateful but just couldn't.  So instead, she tried to focus on things that delighted her.  I think this is a wonderful thing to focus on more, and reading some of the responses on her post gave me even MORE things to find delight in.  So much so that I figured I ought to record some of them here.  Let's see how many I can remember?

1) When Camille comes into a room by making her own fanfare and sings, "DUN-duh-duh-duh-DAAAA!"

2) Any time Craig comes home and the kids scream "DADDYYYYYY!" and run up to hug him and jump around in sheer joy.  He's as great as Santa Claus in their eyes.

3) When I cut up an apple, I always give the core (minus the seeds) to our bunny.  She'll see me coming and starting running all around her cage in excitement.  It's so cute!

4) When I turn on our gas fireplace and makes this awesome "FOOMF" noise as it lights up.  That noise is great.

5) Craig.  I just really like him.

6) Cardinals.

7) And also blue birds.

8) Leaving my neighborhood, when I can see the hills and then Carter Mountain behind them.

9) Returning home, and I can see the hills with the Blue Ridge Mountains behind them.

10) Taking the kids swimming and realizing it's not NEARLY as stressful as it used to be!

11) Hearing other people's babies crying and they aren't mine and I don't need to do anything about it.

12) Depositing a check on my phone and hearing that little cha-ching! cash register sound.

13) Staying home and watching TV with Craig.  I know that sounds super lame, but we just don't get to do that very often.  I love it when we get the chance!  If it's a rainy, cold night, so much the better!

14) The foot heater on my bed.  It's got a timer, so I can leave it on as I go to sleep and it's so warm and cozy and makes me happy.  It's the best way to go to sleep.


I'm sure there are loads more.  I might do another post when I think of the rest...!

The Merry-Go-Around Doesn't Stop

Things have been nuts around here.  Sunday was Camille's birthday, and her party is this afternoon (I need to make a cake!).  Kendra's birthday and party are next week.  I will definitely be posting lots of pictures soon.

But the really big news around here is that on Sunday, Craig was called as the bishop of our congregation.

{Big sigh.}

So he's going to be insanely busy for the next... five years?  And I will be doing the usual mom's job of trying to pick up all the rest of the pieces.

We found out about this new calling nearly a month ago, and last week on Tuesday we rushed out to the Raleigh temple so we could gain a little peace of mind ahead of it all.  That was wonderful, but we'd already planned to go to the Philadelphia temple the following Saturday with our friends the Atkinsons so Kendra could get a chance to do baptisms there.  So that was a lot of driving for one week!  And MUCH thanks go to Craig's parents for doing a TON of babysitting for us so we could do all of this!  (I guess they're picking up the pieces that I'm not managing!). As insane as it all has been, it's been really wonderful to feel the spirit so much, too.  And it was nice to have a good long ride in the car where Craig and I could talk without any interruptions (or me whining that I'm too tired and can we talk about it tomorrow!).  And all this has me even more excited for the Richmond temple to be built.  AND, it also gave me lots of opportunity to force Craig to listen to Six the Musical!  An overall win!

Bentley and Kendra with their buddies Lily and Spencer

So now Craig is sustained and set apart and we keep looking at each blankly and asking, "Now what?"  It's like watching the ocean suddenly get all sucked out with the tide and knowing a tsunami is coming, but you probably don't have time to actually run away so you're just sort of staring wondering how it will feel when it all hits.  Kind of?

Bishop Smith.  My husband is now going to be called Bishop Smith...



P.S. The title of this post is a shameless steal from Grey's Anatomy.  I can't be original all the time, okay?