I spent Mother's Day home with a sick Ellen. Anders had seceral responsibilities to fill and I only had one that was easy to switch out of, so we sent he and Summer to church. Summer ended up witting with him on the stand the entrie time and apparentyl did really well, even though she refused to get up and sing with the primary kids. When they got home, I greeted them at the top of the stairs in the garage and Summer was so excited to see me. She yelled up to me that she colored at church. She then said : "Mom, I made you a beautiful picture. You are going to love it!" It was pretty cute to see how excited she was. And I do love, since she made it for me. Here is the picture:

Elder Rasband of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints came to our Stake today for a special stake conference. We were informed about a month ago that it would be occurring. Apparently he spent yesterday in meetings with some stake presidents and just chose our stake to come to today. He spoke for about 45 minutes and there were a few things that really had an impact on my that I'd like to remember. The first was that he said if President Monson were here today, he would say two things. The first would be that "I love you" and the second would be "thank you." These are things that I have heard President Monson today, but for whatever reason, today the Spirit bore testimony to me so strongly that this is true. President Monson, a representative of the Savior, loves each of us so much and is so grateful for the things that we do to serve and love others. The rest of Elder Rasband's talk was about families. Here ar...

My baby is 18 months! How'd that happen? This is really a fun stage-one of my favorites really.  I love watching Ellen explore and interact with the world around her. It's like you can see her little brain thinking. She smiles and laughs easily, communicates relatively well with us, enjoys being with other people, and she still will happily cuddle with me. She is really a joy to be around. Here are Ellen's stats from the doctors office today:      Weight: 19 lbs, 8.02 percentile      Length: 29.75 inches, 3.88 percentile      Head Circumference: 17.5 inches, 9.78 percentile Here are a few developments: 1. Ellen can say the words Mom, Dad, No, Uh-oh, Shoe, Hi, and Bye. She is very good at waving and likes to especially say hi and bye to Anders. She likes to wave to him while he sits on the stand at church and will do it, often yelling "dad," until he waves back. 2. Ellen is wearing 12 month clothes with room to grow. Sinc...

We had a nice, but busy Easter (which will be proven by the large quantity of pictures in this post). The Friday before Easter, Anders went on a campout with the scouts in our ward. I thought it was really bad timing for a campout, but we both felt like he needed to go and get to know the boys in our ward a little better, so the girls and I were on our own for a couple of Easter activities. Friday evening we headed to my Grandma's assisted living facility for their Easter Egg hunt. There was lots of eggs, a relatively small amount of children, and lots of awesome prizes (you know, things like bikes). With four kids participating (2 of my neices), the odds were in our favor of winning a cool prize. However, it was not meant to be. We had to be content with some candy, a cookie, and a picture with the Easter Bunny (Ellen wouldn't go near him)-which we were! Saturday morning, Summer and I dyed eggs while Ellen ate snacks. We tried a couple of different methods, but S...

One of a mother's most fearful times of the day is when she is in the shower. Destruction and injury can become quite rampant when she cannot hear or see what is going on in the house. Since Anders' works from home, I don't worry too much about the injury aspect of it. If there was a true emergency, he would hear the crying and noise, and come help. Although, today during my shower Ellen knocked the lamp off my nightstand and he didn't notice.  Anyway, a couple of days ago I climbed out of the shower to hear Ellen crying. It wasn't a "I'm hurt" cry or a "my mom left me" cry but was an "I'm annoyed" cry. Wondering what Summer was up to, I quickly went in search of the girls. I found them in Ellen's room. Summer had a comb in one hand, and a spray bottle of water in the other hand. I also noticed that Ellen's hair was soaking wet. Summer quickly informed me that she was doing Ellen's hair with hairspray. Not too c...

This is a copy of a text I received from a friend a couple of weeks ago. This happened  right after church. "I forgot to tell you a funny story about your daughter. I ran into the bathroom, and Summer got on the floor and peeked under the door and asked me if I was done and if I was ok!" I'm so glad that Summer is concerned about the well being of others. I am also glad that my friend has a sense of humor.

Today was one of those days.  You know the kind of day I'm taking about. The kind where you can't wait for the kids to go to bed and foolishly hope they'll sleep in longer than they ever have. We started the day out with Summer's preschool group at our house.  Summer took some convincing (and by convincing I mean a timer) to get dressed before everyone arrived. The three other kids arrived and the regular chaos ensued. Pretty soon though we had lots of fighting and crying, which is a little on the unusual side. I had to literally haul one child off to timeout a few times,  Summer got kicked in the head,  and there was a fair amount of pushing in general going on.  Not to mention my table with a glass top holding my laptop almost got knocked over (I promise is not in a super easy place to access) right after the piano bench got slammed into the piano. Gratefully the great outdoors saved us for the remaining time.  This afternoons activity consisted ...