Saint Patrick’s Day turned out a lot better than I ever could have made it this year. We had so many things leading up to it–two daughters’ birthdays, a new niece born, pi day, and just the normal chaos–that I didn’t even decorate the mantel until two days before. (I know!!!) So I honestly didn’t have any plans. But Josh made it a wonderful holiday for everyone this year!

He made a fun, fancy breakfast and dinner, and helped the kids and I decorate the table!

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Also for St. Patrick’s Day I made another dress. I decided to try a refashion this time. So I found a super fun green dress at DI that I played with.

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I looked at stores online to see what kinds of dresses are “in” right now. J-Crew had a huge section of “sheath” dresses. After a little more research I defined a sheath dress to Josh as “basically shaped like a woman.” I thought such a dress a good candidate for this refashion project.

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I’m glad that I chose to use this project for my exposure to a sheath dress. I think it is a fine look for a dress, but not particularly practical for a mom of young children. But now I have one if I am feeling like being super on-trend, and it only cost me $7! Plus it was very festive, and still classy for St. Patrick’s Day. 🙂

The week after St. Patrick’s Day, Josh and I ran away! It was a very planned-out running away experience and it was glorious! We’re definitely planning to do it again!

We ran away to San Diego and left the cuties with Mother and Daddy (mostly Mother). Josh and I had a blast, and based on our phone calls with the kids, and their reports afterwards, I think we all missed each other about the same amount.

I won’t go through an itinerary, but I’ll share some highlights.

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I’m so glad we got to run away for a few days and that we got to come home to happy well-loved cuties. The best parts of this trip were probably just the super simple aspects of getting to sleep through the night every night, and getting to spend tons and tons of time with my love! I’m even more grateful than before that he is mine forever!

Our angel Helen turned one year old today! She is such a light in our lives, and I don’t know what we ever did with ourselves before her!

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If I’m being honest, I have to admit that adding Helen to our family has been hard. Something about kid #4 has pushed me past my limit! But Helen herself is SO WORTH all the frustration of trying to figure out how to not fail at life. The only thing that keeps her from being the perfect baby is that she has never been a good sleeper. And she still isn’t. But in every other way she is the sweetest little chunk of chub the world has ever seen! We love her!

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One thing we love about Helen is how curious she is. She loves to explore any new setting, including, but not limited to: the dishwasher, cupboards, the bathroom sink, the aisle at church, the garbage, drawers, and outside. She does make her share of mischief, but she always has the sweetest, most innocent grin, or even better, the sweetest most guilty grin!

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Another fun thing about Helen is that she loves to rock out to music. For multiple months I have noticed that if she is upset about being in the car I can turn on music and she will be placated. She also loves to move to the music in a seated baby-dance. It is adorable and makes everybody else want to dance with her!

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One of the reasons Helen is such a good baby is that she is just content. She doesn’t demand undivided attention–which is probably because she’s smart enough to realize that the chances of really getting it are slim–but she will happily take any and all she can get. She’s content to explore the house; she’s content to sit and play with toys with someone; she’s just content. She is, truly, so good to us!

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Some other interesting info about Helen includes:
-She has 8 teeth!
-She can stand up in the middle of the room (I.e., not holding on to anything) and take 3-5 steps!
-She used to say “Dada” and something like “hi” on command, but now she mostly just babbles (though it is the cutest babbling in the whole world!)
-Mom is her favorite! (I will savor it with my whole being until the bitter end!!!)
-Her favorite foods are yogurt and fruit. She could eat them all day!

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I am beyond grateful for my sweet baby girl! She has been such a fun adventure for the past year and I am super excited to see how she will change and grow in the coming year!

We love our little Chub-chubs more than a million! Happy Birthday, Sweety!

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Our sweet Portia Eve turned three years old today! She is seriously so much fun! Here’s what she’s like!

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Portia has been a communicator since she was a little baby. Back then her method of communication was screeching so loud that it left our ears ringing for 15 seconds after she stopped. But now, and really ever since she was about 18 months old, she is all about words! Portia says the funniest things! For example: When asked how she enjoyed the dinner at Grandma’s house she responded sweetly “Oh! It was just a little bit yucky.” There are countless others I ought to share; but I can’t recall them right now. I need to do better at recording them when they occur.

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Another thing to love about Portia is that she is SO enthusiastic! On Friday I took her and the other girls to a meeting I had. I needed to go pick up Carter from preschool and asked if I could leave the girls at the house. When I told Portia that she could, indeed, stay and continue to watch her movie while I did the boring job of picking up Carter she got the hugest smile, clasped her hands together by her face, and giggled with pure elation. That sort of response is not uncommon for our girl.

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Right now Portia’s bread and butter is playing dress-up. Her favorite is Elsa. She puts on the Elsa dress and braid (which she absolutely insists goes over her right shoulder, not her left) and dances around singing “Let it Go” at the top of her lungs. It is even more adorable than it sounds. She also loves dressing up as basically any Disney princess.

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Another of her most adored past-times is playing with dolls. Her favorite is again Elsa, but she must have somebody else to play with her and be Kristoff. She likes to play that same thing in dress-up too.

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Portia also loves to read books. She could sit and listen to story after story–with her thumb in her mouth–forever.

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And when it is warm enough outside she love Love LOVES to be pushed on swings. She just chats and giggles the whole time, and can stay there as long as anyone will keep pushing her. Other loves include: going swimming or wearing her swimming suit, jumping on trampolines by herself, choosing her own clothes and changing multiple times during the day, being pushed around the circle where we live in the pink car, and being a helper in the kitchen.

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One funny thing Portia does is when I request that she ask nicely for her sippy-cup of milk or whatever else she wants she shakes her head back and forth to her shoulders in an almost dance, and says in an almost song “Mommy can you please give me a sippy-cup of milk?!” I should get it on video sometime so you can witness how adorable it is.

She’s just so much fun! We are immeasurably grateful that this girl gets to be ours forever if we are good! That fact is great incentive to keep us doing what we should!

We love you, Portia! Happy Birthday!

So we did!

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Anyway, we took a quick trip to Saint George and loved it! Our only regret was that we would have liked about one more hour to spend at the park. The weather was so nice, and the kids were all so happy to be out and doing fun things! Josh and I are included in the term “kids.”

Last night we all watched the first half of The Happiest Millionaire together. The kids liked it. But, frankly, they like anything you put on a screen in front of them. 🙂

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I love holidays! I love having an extra excuse to make a day special by wearing something festive, eating an extra treat or something, and decorating the mantel and/or table! And Valentine’s Day is especially wonderful because the whole holiday is about celebrating love! I feel exceptionally blessed to have always had lots of love in my life, and it is most definitely worth celebrating!

The first festivity to enter the Valentine’s scene this year was the mantel! (It is the best place to start, so it frequently is the first thing, but not always.)

I got to help out with Carter’s preschool class Valentine’s party on the day before Valentine’s Day. It was so fun to see Carter interacting with the other kids in his class and be part of their fun crafts and sharing their valentines with each other. Fay and Carter each insisted on home-making their valentines this year. We used up almost all our construction paper and valentine stickers! I think they were quite proud of their work, too.

A month or so ago I came upon this fashion blogger who decided to design and create a dress for each month of the year. Her dresses are all super over-the-top and you really couldn’t wear them anywhere; but I liked the idea of designing and creating seasonal dresses for myself. I started with a Valentine’s Day one. I made several significant blunders as I was constructing the dress; but on the whole I think it turned out fun. It is a red crushed velvet fit and flare with a white heart cutout thingy on the back.

Sorry for the lousy pictures. I probably should have actually posed and had somebody else take the pictures. Oh well. I still had fun wearing it!

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On Valentine’s Day proper, we had heart hole-in-the-wall (I stole your idea, Kathryn), strawberry milk, and doughnut holes for breakfast! I think everybody enjoyed it. Fay had her class party at school and loved every second of it. And for dinner we had yummy tortellini, which Josh made for us. We also invited my brother Morgan over to share the evening with us. He was good enough to take a picture of our festive family together.

I also took the liberty of taking a picture of him at dinner.

After dinner we went out for ice-cream courtesy of Mother and Daddy! We went to Leatherby’s and got a brownie sundae and another sundae. It was all so delicious!

The day after Valentine’s Day the city hosted The Daddy Daughter Princess Ball at the library. We missed it for some reason last year, so Josh and the bigger girls just had to go this year! I stayed home with Carter and Helen. Carter and I had a games night with snacks followed by our own dance party with fancy lights to make it extra fun!

At the ball everyone got a crown, and the girls each decorated their own princess wand. Then there was a show where a bunch of Disney princesses sang songs from their movies. After the show the girls got to meet some princesses. They chose to meet the princesses whose dresses they wore to the ball.

See! What’s not to love about holidays?!

And I just wanted to include some other pictures for the sake of remembering them.

There were a handful of noteworthy things about this past week:

• My half birthday was on Thursday–we had ice-cream. 🙂
• On Friday, Josh and I had a great date after our house was miraculously cleaned by angels.
• The downstairs bath and shower is complete, beautiful, and has been used by every member of the family.
• We made the very wise decision to hold off on starting the other bathroom. (It is a step toward curbing our large-project addiction!)

Other than that, here are some pictures of the cutest kids in the whole world.

said it

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Also, here is one more picture from the snow storm. The evergreen tree in our front yard looked like something from a Christmas fairytale, so I took a picture.

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Come Follow Me is studying John 1 this week. One of the sections noted how John began his Gospel with his testimony of truths about Jesus Christ. It suggested that we might consider doing the same thing: writing down what we know about Christ. It also suggested we consider who could benefit from hearing our testimonies. I thought perhaps somebody could benefit from mine through this venue. If anybody else feels comfortable sharing theirs with me, I would be only too delighted!

Here is what I want my children to know that I know about Christ:

Jesus Christ is all about love. He made the world, paid the price for our sins, obeyed perfectly, and everything else He has done and continues to do because of his pure, perfect love for the Father and all His spirit siblings. He was able to do those things because of love. That love lives on today and is available for all who seek it. The Savior’s love is enough to heal any sin, any hurt, any weakness that any person may experience. But He will not compel anyone to embrace His love. He allows us each to choose for ourselves. He is also able to bestow His love for humanity and individuals we encounter on us. As we seek His love for ourselves we will develop love for Him which He can translate into love for those around us. And sharing His love through selfless service is how we show love to Him. If we focus on Christ’s love, how it can change us and how we can use it to bless others, we have caught the essence of Christ.

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I feel like this past week was our first real week of the new year. Last week (which feels like SO LONG AGO) was full of wedding festivities, etc. so it felt like an extension of the holidays. It is nice to be back to a routine. Nothing particularly monumental happened this week except one project we have been discussing for … the whole time we’ve lived in our house.

When we moved into the house neither of the bathtubs were fit to bathe a child in. We actually bathed Fay and Carter in the kitchen sink for about two months because I didn’t dare put them in either of the tubs. We put a shower mat down in the one downstairs that Josh and I used while we scraped old paint off the upstairs tub and walls, and then repainted the tub because we were in no position to replace it. If you are ever considering painting your tub just for aesthetics, my recommendation is do. not. do. it. It doesn’t last very long and when it stops lasting it is quite terrible. Anyway, we’ve been using the upstairs tub, painted, for the past 3.5 years and it is starting to “stop lasting” so we knew we needed to do something soon. We promised ourselves when we stripped it and painted it the first time that we would never do it again, and we still feel that way. But we don’t want to be without a bathtub–especially since we have twice the number of children now–so we decided to do the downstairs tub first and then use that one while working on the upstairs one.

Josh wanted to do it himself in the interest of conserving resources, and I have been really impressed by how thorough he is being. I was nervous about DIYing something that had potential to leak without us realizing and Josh has allayed my fears significantly by doing lots of research and refusing to cut any corners. I truly believe he has done a superior job to the original work.

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Now the old tub is out, the new tub is in, the old tub surround (which is newer and we really like) is back in along with a new faucet, shower head, and drain system. And, as far as we have been able to observe, there is no leaking! (We saw that there had been leaking before. Good thing we didn’t use it much.)

Other than that (and I do admit that remodeling bathrooms is significant) we have been enjoying doing normal-type stuff like school, reading stories, and even doing some dishes.

Here are some pictures.

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Also on Saturday, Josh helped the kids build a house out of cardboard boxes (the one the tub came in was particularly exciting!) Here is a video tour!

Next week’s project is supposed to be potty-training Portia. Wish me luck!

I can’t believe it has been less than a week since New Year’s Day. It feels like we have done SO MUCH! My sister, Christina, got married on Friday and the week was filled with festivities galore! But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Here is what Christmas looked like after Santa came!

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And here is what Christmas looked like on Christmas morning!

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We had the perfect Christmas day! We opened presents at home, then we went to Grandmother’s house and talked with Mary on her mission, and opened more presents and played with cousins, then we went to Grandma’s house and opened more presents and played with more cousins! So so happy!

I am usually super stoked to take down all the Christmas decorations the day after Christmas; but with our trip to Disneyland in December I was feeling like I had missed a week of Christmas. I could’ve kept the decor up until the new year, but Josh was ready. So I think we lasted through December 27.

We celebrated New Year’s Eve with the Monsons, though Fay and Carter were having a sleepover at Christina’s house. It made me feel better that Josh and I were not the only ones having a hard time staying up all the way until midnight; though a lot of the party consisted of parents, so whatever that means. 🙂 We celebrated New Year’s Day with the Muhlesteins eating the traditional black-eyed peas, rice, and collards along with the traditional frozen finger foods! So yummy!

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I know you all must be SO CURIOUS to know what my theme-verb is for 2019! So I’ll tell you! It is ………………… Laugh! My goal with this word was to sort of embrace the goodness of delight again, but also to really simplify things for myself. If I laugh or make somebody else laugh (especially my kids) in a day, I count it as a success. Fortunately I live with Portia, so it hasn’t been very hard to find a reason to laugh each day! Another element to the laugh goal is to laugh more about the little things going wrong instead of getting frustrated. I’m excited for some good ab workouts this year!

This past Friday, January 4, Christina and Colton got married! They are great together and we’re excited to add Colton to our family! We had a ton of fun with all their wedding festivities! It was a wonderful privilege to be in the temple with them when they got married and to have my own prince holding my hand reminding me how glorious it is to be sealed for time and all eternity! I can’t recommend it highly enough!

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Christina asked Josh and me to make her wedding cake, but Josh was throwing up on Wednesday and I didn’t dare let him make the cake and make the newly-weds throw up their whole honeymoon, so I made it! I did get help from Kathryn (thank you a MILLION for letting me use your house to make the cake instead of my potentially-contaminated kitchen), Michael and Natalie (though they claimed they were terrified of baking), and Josh on Friday after he had been “clean” for 48 hours. I probably wouldn’t have dared be the head chef except that she only wanted a single tier. Because of that I wasn’t really concerned about it coming together nicely. Josh pointed out that it is pretty impressive that I could feel that way about any wedding cake. I am pleased with how it turned out, and Christina’s wedding planner said that it was the “best ever” as taste goes, and she would recommend us! How fancy is that?!

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As you can see from the pictures, the wedding was in a beautiful venue! It was at the Capitol building, and I don’t think I’ve ever attended a fancier wedding. But people who live anywhere besides Utah probably have.

After we got home that night I showed the kids my wedding dress. They wanted me to try it on, which I did, then Fay wanted to try it on, which she did. She had gotten some flowers from the table decorations to take home and used it as her bouquet! It was so cute! I guess this is why I’m keeping this dress!

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It has all been so much fun these past few weeks! But I must confess that I am looking forward to going to bed on time a little more frequently this coming week. 🙂

I had a lot of fun doing my little Christmas home tour last year and I really wanted to do it the same way again this year–have a day where I cleaned the whole house to perfection, did the tablescape and had people over for dinner. But this year has just been a little too exciting for that to happen. Fortunately, however, I was able to get pictures of just about everything that got decorated, though on different days. And I straight-up didn’t even actually clean the front room when I was taking pictures of it. I just moved the pile of junk around so that it was never in the shot. (Just keepin’ it real. 🙂 )

So, though it wasn’t as perfect as the dream, I am really pleased with how everything turned out! And one thing that is a solid improvement on last year is that I took pictures while I had daylight! It made a huge difference! Take a look.

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This year didn’t get an official tablescape; but the counter did get decorated and we used some of the gold stuff I loved from last year that didn’t match either of the other rooms’ color schemes.

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Then we move into the family room. I went for the winter-wonderland theme again this year with blues and whites.

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So there you have it! It felt so special to have the house so pretty all season! I loved when people came over because I felt like, with the decorations and the Christmas scented candles we had, it was like walking into a Christmas fairytale just coming into the house. But maybe that was just me. 🙂