the best mother's day gift ever amen

i happened upon the best mother's day gift ever. i had just returned home from taking my sister to the airport and i walked into the front hallway and noticed that my vacuum and floor shark were pulled out of the closet. i was about to be annoyed at the children when i noticed who the real culprit was.

my dearest love, thomas, was deep cleaning the front staircase. he looked at me and said, "happy mother's day". there is no better gift than service. for the past month he hasn't been getting home from work until around 11 o'clock at night and he chose to spend a good chunk of his precious saturday doing this for me. he could have bought me pretty much anything under the sun and it wouldn't have meant as much as this gift of cleaning. he just gets me. i especially hate and despise cleaning the stairs. until today, i had forgotten that the carpet could be so clean. 

so handsome. look how he handles that shark like he was born doing it. i'll add carpet cleaning extraordinaire to his lengthy resume of home economical skills, right next to master cookie sheet scrubber(so that all the baked on non-stick spray comes off) and the ultimate curtain rod hanger. 

beautiful! 

happy mother's day to me.

ye olde garage sale

a large part of being a parent is doing things that you really don't want to do, but since everything sounds fun to kids and nothing sounds fun to a mom who will be doing the majority of the work, we end up appeasing kids so they can have good memories and we can clean out our goodwill boxes. for example, having a garage sale. it's a parental rite of passage. the kids have been begging to have one but they haven't really wanted to give up any of their junk, so our garage sale was mostly 5 years worth of goodwill clothing. cleaning out the goodwill box is a really great exercise to remind you 1. to not shop impulsively, 2. to not buy something simply because it is on the clearance rack and 3. to never expect your hips to be the same after having a baby because you will be sorely disappointed. that pretty much puts all those items of clothing that meet those criteria on the chopping block. finally, i recall when my family had a garage sale when i was about 11, i calculated that i would make a whopping $80 with how strategically i had priced my items for the sale(because, who wouldn't want my stuff???). imagine my disappointment when i made only a paltry $3. so, that was a deterrent. nevertheless, i made a new goal of making enough to pay a babysitter for date night and having loads of fun with the kids and i plunged forward into garage sale oblivion.

1. prep

2. finished product(i knew all that time doing merchandising at the BYU bookstore would FINALLY come in handy.)

3. my unhelpful helper

4. scarlett is a born salesperson. every person that wandered down our driveway was greeted with, "COME  BUY SOME COOKIES AND BROWNIES FROM ME!" and it worked because she sold out rather fast.

5. i did tear up a few time having to part with blythe's baby clothes. 

6.i naturally had major issues parting with much of my clothing even though much of it had been in my goodwill box for so long. i just hate wasting money and i always try and convince myself that maybe i can revive some of my bad decision or unloved clothing and love it again. 

7. capitalism at it's best.

'

*none of it was marked otherwise. being married to a lawyer, i felt like i had to add that caveat for safe keeping.

final tally, $71. not bad. and then i dumped the rest at goodwill that afternoon. 

the end. 

april showers make your yard muddy

april recap plus 3 videos!!!

 word to the wise. don't have the first day of spring break be the same day grandma sandy leaves after her visit. reagan spent a lot of time in the garage trying to decide how to follow her back to missouri.

blythe enjoyed going up and down this big step:

 i tried to do some sort of project on each day of spring break:

painting

parking

garage saling

i bought these ugly vases. they are unexplainable. they are hideous but delightful. scarlett stuffed them full of cookies as soon as we got home.

shaving cream painting

dealing with sickies. this was a less fun project. we had a barfing triumverate. (that dark shadow is drool. i loved it.)

climbing in the dishwasher

austim awareness month. we went to the south carolina upstate walk for autism.

boggin' for autism. i could say that all day. BAWGIN for austim. try to add as many syllables as you can. 

reagan "the boy who does magic" got to show a magician a thing or two

and thomas is never without his legal pad

last week i locked the baby in the car at the ymca. it was AWESOME, any way you look at it! police, firetruck, passersby. and then thomas saved us. 

i had an especially ghetto moment this week. blythe is exclusively drinking whole milk these days and i spent one day on the road for several hours and i didn't have an ice pack or an insulated milk storage bag, so i rummaged around for an old lunch box and a couple of bags of frozen peas. my pioneer name is macgyver.

scarlett lost her first tooth. it was ridiculous. nothing subtle about that child. 

scarlett had her ymca ballet recital. it was the cutest thing ever. 

she's pretty hotsnot.

what else? this baby likes fake walking.

and i like taking pictures of her doing things that most babies do but she does better.

like push this rocket around. perfect technique.

i love this time of year because i can keep putting off getting curtains in my kitchen. there is so much leafy tree cover that delightful sunlight filters in but it's still shady and cool. 

final baby cuteness

and this is gross and funny. a conversation that happened to get recorded while i was recording that cute baby. dumb dog got scared in a rainstorm. reagan watched this about 34254 times. he thought it was hilarious.

me at 33

i'm 33. and i'm excited! 3 is my favorite number and i get to have two of them!

my birthday date dinner one week early. shrimp and grits with cream cheese grits. and it was awesome. and then we watched the new tom cruise movie, oblivion, and it wasn't terrible and i only slept through 10 crucial movie minutes. maybe if i'm good, next year i'll get to pick my birthday movie. (it's a joke. who wouldn't want to watch tom cruise? there are 3 of us in this marriage. thomas, me and tom cruise. 4 if you count tom cruise's ego.)

showing off my birthday wares.

thomas was going to be out of town for my actual birthday. i was going to be okay with it. the bright side is that at least i wouldn't have to cook a real meal for 5 whole days. and then he spoiled it by surprising me and coming home late saturday night, 2 days early. plus, he brought a cake. i guess i don't mind cooking actual meals that involve more than scramblings eggs if that means he is home with me. 

too bad i pretty much looked like this when he got home because i was lounging on the couch reading regency novels in my worst clorox stained sweats. because that is the 2nd best way to spend my birthday.

the 1st best way to spend my birthday is beating these monsters back from blowing out MY candles on MY cake. 

and eating food someone else prepared. i'd eat cow tongue if it meant someone else had prepared it. i think my grandma bonnie would too. 

a special birthday treat::

heidi at 13. so chic. so sophisticated. reagan LOVES to watch home videos and he thinks heidi at 13 is really special. 

can you find all 5 beck kids in this photo?

i do not recall why i am holding a bag of garbage. it's obviously some sort of early 90s teen angst statement. 

everyone needs an easy baby

psalm 127:3

children are an heritage of the Lord. 

so, my little stinkerbum is one. i wish i could remember more of this past year but since it was also pretty much the craziest year ever i'll just have to settle for remembering that whatever happened, i liked lots of it. mostly because i really like my kids. and like in true heidi fashion,  i'll happily repress all the hard memories and eat a few dozen handfuls of chocolate chips instead of actually dealing with my problems. 

 

poor little 3rd child didn't get the birthday blowout for her 1st birthday like the older kids. she barely got a cake. and i still haven't gotten her a single present. she hasn't complained about it yet. 

but her presence has been glorious and calming amid all the chaos. 

 though, she has earned the title of most difficult diaper change at the YMCA childwatch. 

and she has a tendency to bite me on my neck. trendy vampire baby.

and it is physically impossible for her to eat quietly. baby enjoys her food.

8 really is great

i can't think of a more momentous weekend than the one we just had. reagan was baptized and became a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on saturday afternoon. thomas was able to baptize him and it was a really incredible moment for our family. the Spirit was strong, scarlett sang, "i am a child of God" and i laughed and cried at the wonderment of my special son that Lord has entrusted to me. 

and it was especially fun because reagan was WIRED before the baptism and then decided as soon as he and thomas were in the water that he actually wasn't convinced immersion was the way to go and he DIDN'T want his head to go under water. so, reagan's baptism was of the more acrobatic variety. but, it was a success. 

 my special 8 cookies. i think my luck ran out after reagan's birthday cupcake spectacular. these don't look very inspirational, but they tasted fantastic. thank you emily! 

afterward we went to dinner at reagan's choice. of course it was pizza and all the way downtown i tried to convince him that mexican food was actually the baptismal food of choice but he held to his guns. 

we really did have a good time though this picture suggests otherwise.

easter sunday was a delight. we were nearly on time for 10am church and it was only slightly awkward when i walked in late to the front of the chapel because i was actually one of the speakers. 

and this was as good as it was going to get. everyone but me in this family has a camera aversion. thomas didn't even make an appearance for easter morning pictures.

scarlett set up this cadbury egg vingette and then she was suddenly on board with easter photography. 

for the record, i purchased those flowers and glue gunned them on the headband and clip myself. big deal for easter. 

and in closing, i was lucky enough to be able to speak on easter sunday about the atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ and specifically the garden of gethsemane. preparing a talk for church is always such an uplifting a refreshing experience for me. i truly love it. 

one of my favorite quotes i used in my talk was from elder kent f. richards. 

"The Savior is not a silent observer. He Himself knows personally and infinitely the pain we face.

“He suffereth the pains of all men, yea, the pains of every living creature, both men, women, and children.”5

“Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”6

Sometimes in the depth of pain, we are tempted to ask, “Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there?”7 I testify the answer is yes, there is a physician. The Atonement of Jesus Christ covers all these conditions and purposes of mortality."

it was a great weekend indeed.