afeena bwyfe

 athena blythe turned 4. for the second year running, i was a lame birthday mom. her "party" consisted of calling the neighbor kids over for cake and ice cream at 7pm on saturday. everyone had about 3 pieces of cake and then burped and bounced off the walls until bathtime. i did not bathe the neighbor kids. 

we continued our tradition of presents for breakfast. i even coordinated the gift wrap which really means it's not christmas paper.

athena blythe has had this thing with cages for quite a while. for about a year now she's been stuffing animals in tiny bird cages. when we went to florida, we had a map of all the things one can do in saint augustine and there was a picture similar to this one:

and athena blythe was so determined to see the "people in the cage".

other cage sightings, "athena blythe in a cage a the grocery store"

"athena blythe in a cage bathtub"

she loves to watch the garfield movie, which she refers to as "garfield rescuing odie out of the cage".

so naturally, we got her a cage. she still wants a real dog and chases them down whenever we see them in public. but i'm not interested in any more things to take care of. ever.

what genetic trait is visible in this picture? take a "crack" and guess.

athena blythe's favorite person in the world is "mrs. heidi" but not me, mrs. heidi, my friend, heidi. athena blythe screams and runs away from me when it's my day to do preschool pickup. it's very flattering. 

this is how the handoff normally goes. or i have to go out to mrs. heidi's van and pull her out and carry her in over my shoulders. what would it be like to have boring kids? i'll never know!

this was hilarious. it's not a good picture, but athena blythe fell down and scraped her knee several days ago. i put a bandaid on it and we were good. however, every time she wears shorts or a skirt she becomes a limping invalid. she hobbles around the house and crawls up and down the stairs on her knees but as soon as she  changes into pants, it's a miracle! she can walk again!

the transformation in progress: 

she's the baby that changed my perspective on babies. she's the child that has to be held on my lap for the entire duration of sacrament meeting to ensure reverence. i like her. i love her. i want to put her in a cage too.

highest of highs and 1st world country lows

highest high

reagan ran in 3 races at special olympics and placed 1st in all 3. of course, i wasn't there. i'm sure i was doing something exceedingly important like grocery shopping or errand running. i hate when daily life gets in the way of the stuff i actually want to do or i don't realize that it's actually going to be a school activity i want to attend. so many school activities are the made up parent must attends that i feel i miss the actual gems. 

highest high- this darling girl has the highest science grade in her class.

highest high- this is my baby

highest high- this baby loves being outside and wants to crawl everywhere, wood chips or concrete be darned.

 highest highs- favorite shirts- green california and batgirl for my batgirl. it matches her batgirl underwear. 

highest highs-

reagan and scarlett's piano recital. reagan and scarlett both performed admirably. each wrong note was confidently and boldly played. after each performance, athena blythe rather loudly proclaimed, "is it my turn?"

highest of highs- this girl's hippie love child sense of style.

highest of highs- these best friends

highest of highs- a FREE oreo mcflurry because mcdonald's messed up someone's order and i became the beneficiary.

1st world country low- my leperous, peeling skin. sheets of skin fall of my legs when i walked briskly. i am disgusting.

1st world country low- our rental house dishwasher died and wasn't replaced for a week. lots of hand washing. then our garage door fell of it's hinges and was hanging awkwardly for THREE DAYS until a technician could finally make his presence known. this was what we were dealing with. i wish i had held onto that old mattress to complete the picture.

highest of highs- these girls dancing to prince's let's go crazy. 

highest of highs- we get to move out of this debacle of a rental house in a month! fingers and eyes crossed! FOUR offers later, we have a contract on a house!

the land of jorts and alligators

you know how you write an entire post for posterity and then the internet rejects it and you have to start over again, completely uninspired? hi, i'm completely uninspired. 

we went to florida for spring break. aunt heather just moved to jacksonville and i was raring to go visit. we  tried to leave on tuesday, we tried to leave on wednesday. we tried to leave on thursday. the hold up was this house:

it came on the market as we were trying to leave but i was in loooooooove and i knew it wouldn't last. i just want to kiss it. with a little tongue. huge kitchen, interior already painted my shade of gray, two decks, on the corner of TWO cul de sacs so the kids would never be killed by cars. the whole fam damily loaded up and we went and saw it and we made an offer that day. then we headed out of town.

 the trip was pretty uneventful except for a little barf by herschel and that frankly, is not that big of a deal anymore. i had a frosty and remembered wondered why i can't have dairy anymore.

we also listened to the 2014 annie soundtrack on repeat. and repeat. and repeat.

we arrived in the wee hours and saw heather the next day. is that diana, the goddess of the hunt, the moon, and childbirth? nope, that just heather in her natural habitat. 

thomas was lucky enough to get a work assignment so he spent the day at the hotel working, while heather and i took the kids to the beach. i was probably not the most fun beach companion because i was on pins and needles on the phone discussing house negotiating with our agent. but i could taste that house, with hardwoods floors, it had a bit of a woodsy flavor.

heather is the total package. fun, funny, hardworking, a go getter and a party starter. likes a good pun. goes to bed early. i'm glad she's mine.

while the atlantic ocean is known for it's titanic level of frigidity in april(see what i did there? human disaster pun!) scarlett was undaunted. she spent the whole day jumping over waves. 

hersch had a pretty good time too. except for when his mother wanted to take a few oh-so-casually-posed-i'm-a-famous-blogger beach photos. 

i'm not sure why i thought these flexing photos were a good idea. though i've increased my weightlifting, i'm still not visually impressive. i'm only impressive when your eyes are closed. and you're asleep. and you're dreaming that i'm a very famous blogger from utah. 

 at least you know i have a sense of humor.

the official national geographic photo of what it's really like to take children to the beach:

pioneer children sang as they walked and walked and walked and walked.

it must have been too early in the season for me because i'm actually a prolific sun screen user. this is just a fluke. a painful, flaky, peeling fluke.

but this sunburn is just old-fashioned bad parenting:

to add insult to injury, after the day of negotiation on my dream house, at the last minute, another buyer stepped in and offered all CASH MONEY. so i did cry a little that night from sunburn and disappointment. i shall hope for average things forevermore. 

one of my lifelong dreams has been to visit saint augustine. the other is to visit key west. since heather is soclose to saint augustine we thought we'd make a day of it. but so did everyone else in florida. the entire historic district was packed and parking was full for MILES. we were not interested in hiking 5 miles with six small children and one stroller, so we ate at el potro, even though reagan has decided that he's done "eating mexican food with family." he's totally weird and wrong on that one. a nice man witnessed our struggles with athena blythe and june and secretly paid for their meals. super nice. i'm sure he was actually saying, "stop having so many children if you can't control the ones you've got!" 

instead of taking a picture in front of the castillo de san marcos we took a picture in front of this bank. just another glamorous trip in the books for the famous blogger. 

to appease our disappointment at saint augustine being a bust, we ate ice cream at a park, a la beck family style.

look at my skin discoloration after ONE DAY of sun exposure. all my hard work and valiant efforts of skin protection! i'm heading to burqas R us for a summer wardrobe. it's like jcrew, but instead of east coast sporty, it's middle east sporty. 

the apple shaped head doesn't fall far from the tree:

i couldn't find any good quotes about sisters and farts, so this will have to do.

"i could never love anyone as i love my sister." 
little women

but we're more along the lines of medium women after all that ice cream.

the end!

patience

cue axl rose whistling

"said woman take it slow and things will be just fine"

over the past 10+ years, whenever i pray for help on a few particular recurring issues that i struggle with in my life, the answer is ALWAYS, have patience. which is not my favorite answer. frankly, it's almost as frustrating as when you're about to lose your cool on something and someone tells you to calm down. i despise being told to calm down. it's the answer we know we should do but it's almost physically impossible to do because flipping out gives at least some sort of relief or instant gratification. but, flipping out is like emotional eating, you feel better momentarily but damage has been done. you're now in the hole in the situation that you need to be navigating and you have even further to dig yourself out. 

but today, as i was struggling with something and the kids were asking question after question about nonsense or why things weren't progressing how we planned and blah blah blah and i'm hungry and i spilled crystal light all over the floor, i chose to practice patience. and it worked. things still didn't progress how we had originally planned but we kept working together to do the things that we could do and then we rode bikes to the park  and made up games on the play equipment instead of moping and rolling around on the floor and foaming at the mouth like normal. things aren't perfect but i chose patience and things were fine anyway. 

so maybe prayers do work?

athena blythe at the park, completely unaware that her mother could have spontaneously combusted just moments earlier:

those are the only shoes she wears. ever.

we had a most glorious conference weekend. i made cookies and a fantastic lasagna. but more importantly, the Spirit dwelt within our home for the whole weekend. on saturday morning, we went to see a few more houses and we ended up finding an absolutely perfect house for our family. it met our needs and it nailed my kitchen wants, enough counter space for each of us to have a spot to nap. i was a little shaky on the inside because it seemed almost too good to be true. we were going big time! we made a healthy offer and we got giddy because we were almost done! 

then the next morning, after we ate our conference breakfast consisting of eggs, fruit, and chocolate chip pancakes, i got the news. our offer was too late. it had just gone under contract right before they got our offer. they didn't even know about us and how wonderful we are! then we wallowed, and gnashed teeth, and beat our chests and sang, "nothing compares 2 U" at the top of our lungs. we were the pits. conference started and i felt lame as i possibly could when all of the messages were about service and love and i'm losing my mind because i can't get a house i want and i already live in america and have plenty of food in my pantry(and in my couch cushions). pretty humbling. i clearly have not been forsaken. 

i'm grateful for all of the messages from our inspired leaders. like han solo said, "it's true. all of it."

 monday morning was more house hunting and my costco/thrifted outfit pleased me muchly. those jbrand jeans knock off distressed pants i'm wearing? costco! i distressed them myself. they fit perfectly over my motherhood stomach. what we all want, but don't want to admit. "no kids, i'm not smuggling a bag of frozen peas in my pants."

i also went house hunting again today, with ALL the kids, because that's what kids want to do on spring break! this was our house hunting highlight. an office chock full of georgia bulldog merchandise, including this herschel walker signed jersey. and a cute girl.

 anatomically correct heart shaped pancakes. i should homeschool. 

the end. but obviously not the end of house hunting.