Four Months

Eva Marie is growing up so fast. She's laughing, cooing, grabbing her toes and is such a joy to our family. She is a fantastic sleeper and can actually sleep in her own bed (unlike some certain brothers of hers). She wakes up at night to be fed around 5 in the morning but goes right back to sleep and stays that way until about 9:30. She could not possibly be a better baby.

Handsome Boy...

He's my handsome boy.

He's the best husband I could ever have dreamed of. I sure love this guy!

The Simple Woman's Day Book: September 13, 2010

September 13, 2010.

Outside my window... Is a wonderful view of the mountains of Pleasant Grove. I can see the G monument on Little Mountain. We climbed the mountain yesterday and almost made it all the way to the top. It was a lot of fun but kind of scary coming down.
I am thinking... About trying to be organized and motivated. Trying to find the time to create, rest, clean and give all my babies the attention and love they need.
I am thankful for... A husband who follows his dreams. I am thankful for happy children.
From the learning rooms... We need to begin our preschool activities. I am going to try to help Gar with one workbook page today, read Gar and Mag a story and go for an exploring walk.
From the kitchen... We ate a couple of delicious peaches and one super yummy pear for breakfast. Mag and I picked them off the ground as we walked home from taking Uly to the bus stop. I am thinking of trying to germinate the seeds and put them in pots. They have to sit in the fridge for a few months so I don't know if I will remember or if I will lose interest. But oh so yummy! Also, Gar and Mag were pretending that they were frogs. They each had a bowl of flies in milk for breakfast (coco pebbles). It was fun. I love the imagination in these little heads!
I am wearing... Comfy clothes; maternity knit pants that I cut off the extra waist fabric, a magenta t-shirt (that was a long sleeve shirt yesterday until I cut of the long sleeves) and a magenta and red striped hoodie sweater. My Chocos too.
I am creating... I have a list of sewing projects that I want to complete this week. It includes three skirts and an apron with matching pot holders. I copied the pattern of Olea's Korean apron and am making it out of an old cream with red paisleys sheet. I want to make matching pot holders and give them to Olea for a house warming present. I also want to make a Halloween wreath for my front door or wall. You take a picture frame, put some dried twigs in it and paint it all black. Then hang it with a black ribbon. I need to make it. I have been thinking about it for about two weeks.
I am reading... The Art of Homemaking by Daryl V. Hoole. So good! So inspirational. I need to buy my own copy of this book so I can give it back to my sister in law, Katie.
I am hoping... To lose a few more pounds by the end of the week. I am planning on running every day this week and also punching the bag and doing some other exercises every day, Monday through Friday. I am almost out of this pants size and would like to just hurry up and cross over the size threshold!
I am hearing... SuperWhy on PBS. It's a great kids show. I like it and Gar and Mag seem to like it too.
Around the house... The house is mostly in order. I need to go around and pick things up, do the dishes and take care of a mountain of clean clothes. I love washing clothes but HATE folding and putting them away. It's so tedious.
One of my favorite things... Is snuggling with my new baby. Babies are the best snugglers in the world. It also helps that they are so cute!
A few plans for the rest of the week... Sewing. Folding. Exercising.

Here is picture for thought I am sharing... These are pickles I made last week. I still need to figure out what to do with a giant zucchini I have. Should I make relish? Should I just grate up and freeze? Probably freeze. Maybe I will make half a batch of relish too. I don't know.

The Business of Being a Stay at Home Mom

Sometimes it is really, really, really, really hard to get motivated to do any of the "mom" jobs around the house. All I want to do is hang out with these cuties.

Some days I just want to sell them to the gypsies. But not today! I just want to snuggle and ignore the laundry, ignore the fingerprints on the windows, ignore the smudges on the floor. Today is the best kind of stay at home mom day.

Grade 1, Day 1

Bang! Bang! Bang!

This has been our current favorite family activity lately. Every spare moment that we have all together (which are very few as of late) we gather the kids and go out to the West side of Utah Lake and go shooting. One of our favorite things about living in Utah is the abundance of public land. You are never very far from public land in which you can camp or shoot. I just hope we can take advantage of that often.

Here are all the boys shooting the Mossburg 12 guage, with a little help from their dad.

Eva Marie Ann

Sunday the 18th, was the day that Ben gave Eva Marie Ann Stier her baby blessing. It was a beautifully warm summer day filled with many family and friends. We had a wonderful time celebrating this new little member of our family. Ben did a great job with the blessing (like usual - he's a pro!). Sacrament meeting was especially nice as well. There was a return missionary speaking and he had some really great things to say.

A few hi-lights from his talk were that people in Brazil use the word Blessing instead of how we use the word Luck. So instead of saying how lucky we are to have this wonderful new baby in our lives, I would say how blessed we are to have her in our lives. I really like this and am going to try to abolish the word Luck from my vocabulary and use Bless instead.

Another comment that he made was about the Plan of Salvation. He said that each of us has our own Plan of Salvation to return to our Heavenly Father. It is an individualized plan formulated for our individual needs and experiences. I liked how he put that because it really centers around the fact that Heavenly Father knows and loves each one of us individually.

After the great Sacrament Meeting we returned to our house and proceeded to eat a fantastic spread. BBQ pork, BBQ baked beans, coleslaw, rolls, smoked salmon, pasta salad, potato salad, pickled beets and cucumbers made by Aunt Pam and a few dessert breads. Then we had a super yummy carrot cake and homemade strawberry ice cream. So yummy!!!!!!! Everything was just delicious.

Here are a few photos of Eva Marie on her big day.

Eva Marie with Papa.

With Great Grandma Allen. It was such a blessing that she could be there for this special day. The circumstances of her being in Utah were not so happy as she was down for her sister's funeral but we were happy to have her with us on Sunday.

The little princess in her beautiful dress.

With me.

Hanging with daddy.

Diet Schmiet!

Making this delicious coffee cake with Number 1 Helper, Magnus and enjoying gobbling it up with all my boys was a whole lot more fun than sticking to my diet.






Since I can't just cook a recipe the way it is written out, I had to add a bit of quick cooking oats an extra egg and a 1/2 Cup of dry milk. Next time I make it, I want to add a dollop (maybe 1/4 Cup) of applesauce. It was a tiny bit on the dry side. Just a tiny bit. But oh so yummy!

Summer Fun

This is a double post since I just put these up on MomShots. These are some photos from the past couple of weeks. They include a couple from the 4th (actually the 3rd this year in Utah), the Pleasant Grove carnival in celebration of Strawberry Days and a little cookie making extravaganza.

3rd of July

We live in Utah. No surprise there.

In Utah when a holiday like the 4th of July or Halloween fall on a Sunday then the community celebrates it on the Saturday before. It is kind of fun because then you get an entire weekend of festivities.

That was my surprise.

Ben has been working so hard on all of his projects that we couldn't get away to go up to my family Walker family reunion this year (which we celebrate over the 4th weekend) so we stayed close to home and had a fun little time. We went to Ben and Kristina's house for a little BBQ. Sarah and Kala'i were there with there kids too.

Good food. Good folks. Good fun.

After eating, we all left their house and found an empty parking lot behind the Highland high school to put on our own mini pyrotechnics display. They kids loved it. They thought they were in heaven.



My favorite picture of the night was this one of Gar holding a California Candle. That's like a Roman Candle except it doesn't shoot out balls of fire it just emits a nice shower of sparks. Unfortunately it is slightly out of focus. Oh well. Squint your eyes and it looks like it is supposed to be that way!



More out of focus shots, this one is of Uly. The sky is in focus though...



The crazy beautiful sherbet colored sunset.



Uly wearing the flag t-shirt he painted that day:


Uly & Eva Marie all dressed up for the 4th of July:

Marshall-Latu Family Pictures

Here are a few of my favorites from a portrait session I got to do a few weeks back for the Marshall and Latu families. I had so much fun shooting this group. My favorites ended up being shots of the kids. Go figure! MomShots to the core!

Thanks for giving me the chance to shoot you all!








Please ignore the giant watermark. I have never used one before and I am in the midst of a learning curve! :)

Lavender - Her first scoot

Lavender was sitting on the floor next to my dining table and suddenly she was under the table. She scooted backwards. It was very exciting!

Introducing...

Hair Raising

I just found this picture. It was taken in October 2009. I love it!

A couple of pictures

I just really like how these turned out. I used them on my most recent 52 Week project collage.

Visiting Teaching

I found a cute new blog today and wanted to share it with anyone who cared. It's chock full of Visiting Teaching ideas, projects, thoughts, etc. I found it and was able to whip up these cute little paper purses to go with our February message about Provident Living. They were super easy and I thought they turned out really great. I don't pretend to be a paper crafter by any means, but I am really happy with the results.

I just used heavy scrapbook paper for the body and a pink ribbon for the handle. The pattern has a paper handle but I like ribbons better so I used that instead.

These photos were taken with my phone because I was in a hurry and didn't want to run downstairs and get my camera so please ignore their poor quality and enjoy their intended cuteness instead.



I couldn't find any chocolate coins in the few minutes I had to run into the grocery store but I got little golden eggs and I think that works just as well.

Just thought I'd share incase anyone needed a last minute idea for their February VTing or needed ideas for the future. I added her blog to my RSS feed and am excited to read more of it and see what great things she comes up with in the future. I'm a procrastinator with it, are you too?

52 Week Project

In case you haven't been following MomShots, I am working on a 52 Week Project which is basically a weekly compilation of photos of my kids and family. I do this weekly and then at the end of the year I can get them all printed out and have a photo album ready made. I'm excited because it will help me get better at PhotoShop and hopefully my photography will improve as well. Plus, as many photos as I take you'd think I would have photo albums all over the place. I don't. Hopefully this will help remedy that. I'm hoping to also get some great photos for my walls.

Here are the last three weeks collages:

Kid Decor

I just saw this adorable idea to decorate a kid's room. It could easily be for a boy or a girl and so I just love it. Now I've got my eyes peeled for a cheap, light birdcage that I could do this to. I even love the color they chose for the cage!