Christmas {Thoughts} in July

I just read a series of blog comments in which the readers were saying they don't let their kids believe in Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, etc. because it will cause them to doubt the reality of God. Um, am I missing something? I get that Easter and Christmas are far too commercialized, which is why I always make sure to attempt to teach Clara the reason we celebrate these sacred holidays. I make an effort to have the reason for celebrations the main focus of the celebration. I think that some people go way overboard on gifts for these holidays. But I think it's very possible to teach your children about why we celebrate them while also letting them experience the excitement of the pretend side. Christmas is a time to celebrate the birth and life of our Savior, to help and serve others and to spend time with family. Santa and gift giving don't have to overshadow the more important parts of Christmas, if we make an effort not to let it. It's very possible to teach children that even without gifts, Christmas can still be an enjoyable holiday, because the real reason we celebrate it will never go away. I guess I am not understanding how some people think it's one way or the other.

Oh, and the Tooth Fairy has nothing to do with God in my opinion. It's just a fun little game of pretend. Does pretend play and imaginary play lead to doubting the reality of God as well?

Rant over.

Pros & Cons

Worst part about coming home after five days in the mountains? Unloading the car in weather 50 degrees hotter than the mountain weather.

Best part? Sleeping in my own bed.

I Love Surprises

Surprise numero uno: I'm pregnant. Yeah! (Okay, not a surprise to anyone I've told or anyone who's noticed my swelling mid-section).

Surprise numero dos: It's a girl. Yeah!

Surprise numero tress: I know about 15 words in Spanish, ten of them being the numbers one through ten.


And now to answer all your questions (or in other words, everything my journal needs to know)...


Was this planned? Yes. Over a year ago. Guess it doesn't really matter what we plan, does it?



How am I feeling? Great, thanks for asking. Past most of the sickness, past most of the exhaustion and just starting to be out of breath all the time thanks to my stomach smashing up into my lungs.


Due date? Christmas Day. I loved having Clara close to Christmas and I love celebrating her birthday during my absolute favorite time of year. I'm thrilled to have another December baby.


How does Clara feel about it? She's so excited. We videoed her when we told her and her reaction is awesome. We told her over a month ago and I'm really surprised she hasn't told anyone (we never told her not to). She is already bossing around her imaginary sister (even before we knew what we it was), but she would have loved a brother too. One day she was whining and I asked her what was going to happen if I was holding the baby and she started whining like that. She didn't think twice and responded, "Then you can set the baby down and hold me." Ahh, she has a lot to learn, my little golden child. She pats my stomach every day and asks/says, "You're stomach getting fatter?" A few days ago she whispered to my belly, "Hi baby. I love you. I am waiting for you to come out." Then she sang it the cutest, most random song... I was on my computer and wrote it down and then didn't save the file I put it in (argh). She asked me how the baby comes out and I told her just the way Heavenly Father wants it to. Fortunately, that satisfied that curiosity. She talks often about "when the baby comes out" but has no concept of time. I can't explain a week to her, let alone five months. She asked me how the baby got in there and I just stared at her - didn't have enough creativity to make something up. She asked if it's when I got married... so I said Yup! The next day we were driving in the car and she said, "You got married twice. Once when you had me and again because you have another baby inside of you. I want you to get married again so we can have another baby after this one." Tricking her is not easy. She also wanted to know why there is a microphone at the OBGYN's office. You know, the black one at the foot of the table.

I've Been Waitng

I almost got angry today when my 25-30 minute drive took an hour and fifteen minutes because of a fender-bender*. But then I remembered I get to spend the rest of the week with my awesome family (they have been slowly trickling into town). No work for the rest of the week. See, I told you this week was going to be even better than the last. I've been looking forward to it for a long time.

Oh, and not that this has anything to do with anything in this post, but check out this GIANT bug Clara found at the post office.
It looked like a giant beetle. Maybe one of these? It was seriously like five inches long.


*Debris was covering the road and I saw two cars being hauled away, one of which had about 35% of the back-end mutilated. Pretty sure I wouldn't have called that one a fender bender if I was doing the traffic report.

Too Exciting

Now life is too exciting to waste time posting on my blog... it's always one extreme or the other in my life.

Here's what I was up to this week: eating five meals at R&K's, feeding R&K once (5:1 ratio? that's my kind of return on investment), Fountain Hills splash park (totally worth the drive, although for me, it wasn't much different than any other local splash park), work, water slide and slushies (too hot and humid to take pictures apparently), Barro's (I arrived at my final opinion about Barro's - it's my favorite 'Chicago' style pizza and shouldn't really be compared to wood fired or thin crust pizza) and DI to visit Grandpa.

Lily told Clara when she says "Abandon ship!" to jump off... so Clara would say, "Function ship!" and jump off.
Most of my pictures are from the splash park in Fountain Hills... Leta had fun although she wouldn't let me take a happy picture of her.

Annie was more obedient at smiling for the camera.

And let's hope I never have triplets because I have a ton of pictures of these three and guess how many include three sets of eyes looking at the camera? None from this trip.

For me, the ducks were as cool as the splash park. They were extremely comfortable around people and some would take the food right out of the girls' hands. (I hadn't planned for ducks so they got veggie straws instead).

Clara wanted to ride with Kathryn to DI and since Annie and Clara have basically the same carseat, we did a little swapperoo. It sure was different having a little person in my car that didn't make a peep the entire time. I kept turning around thinking she was asleep. If Clara is quiet for more than 15 seconds in the car it normally means she's sleeping.

I'm not exactly sure why I think this is so funny, but I do. I wasn't going to be home for dinner on Thursday and Jason has a hard time coming up with food ideas. So I "made" this for him for dinner. (By make I mean I pulled the cans and jar from the pantry and set it on the counter for Jason to warm up... he only gets canned ravioli when I am not home because I think it's disgusting).

This week is going to be even more fun...

Sometimes I'm Just Boring

Life has been simple, enjoyable and pretty plain lately. However, it's the plain and simple that create the enjoyable so it seems I must write about something. Oh, what to write about...

... the raging headache that I've had for three days (it was almost gone today and then I got a little stressed this afternoon and it came back - I don't really handle big decisions well).
... eating about 90% of the Rice Krispy treats all by my big girl self. Mmmm.
... my laundry that I wish would fold itself. (Jen N., I promise I have been so diligent about keeping up on it since you served me well, until this weekend.)
... being excited that my mom is finally feeling better.
... Clara and I spending most of our days using other people's pools and eating other people's food. It sure is nice!
... wishing editing, resizing and uploading pictures didn't take so long, otherwise I'd add some pictures to this post.
... my room getting so close to being clean, then being neglected again.
... lots of work waiting to be done.
... watching the pure excitement on Clara's face when she does a puzzle without any help or gets a "fun card" in Candyland, even if it moves her farther away from the castle.
... my niece Alexis coming to town.
... our family reunion is just around the corner and it's going to be splendid, despite a major error we discovered today in our cabin 'reservation' (Hey Family, better that we found out today than next Wednesday, eh? :)).
... my sweet little Clara that makes me laugh every day (except today when I woke up at 6:30am to get some work done and I heard her chattering away in her room).
... Clara really does make me laugh, like when she says she's thankful for Catgirl and Batman in her prayers, when she corrects Jason or me (even in the middle of a prayer) if we refer to her, Jason or myself as Clara, Jason or mom instead of her current assigned disguises (since Friday, she's been Itchy, Jason's been Charlie {All Dogs Go to Heaven} and I'm just the mom dog), when she tells me about "her friend" that is clearly made up and the stories are all made up, but they are inspired from recent things we've talked about/seen/done, when she remembers when the missionaries came over for dinner six months ago with Steven AND what we ate for dinner, when she tells me her stomach is full so I tell her she must not have room for dessert and she says, "I just have a tiny little bit of room left for dessert", when she is tired and asks 'why' questions for 10 minutes straight or when she smothers me in hugs and kisses, all while saying, "I love you Mom" in her fake/dramatic voice.

Little Fishy = Increased Paranoia

Clara has always loved to swim. Actually, she loves water in general, but she really enjoys swimming. Last summer I didn't feel the need to put her in swimming lessons because she was so young and at that age, most of the options (within my budget) seemed to be classes to get kids used to the water. She definitely didn't need any coaxing to get in the water. This summer is half over and I never signed her up for lessons. Why? Pretty much just plain laziness*. Besides, I kept telling myself there's no reason I can't teach her myself. Clara uses one of those 99 cent rings and jumps in and swims all around without incident. Yesterday, I decided enough of the ring, she's perfectly capable of learning. I lasted about 5 minutes, but luckily, my mom got in the pool and worked her grandma magic. Clara was swimming to us from the step and back to the step within about 10 minutes. She kept saying, "Move back more!" In the process, she learned that she absolutely loves the feeling of just floating in the water. She started floating away from the step, "dancing" under the water (hilarious) and then swimming back to the step. Well, sometimes she'd swim back. You see, she has little fear and does not get the risk of not being able to get a breath of air in time. If she wasn't ready to come up, she'd push my hands away when I tried to help. She can hold her breath for a while, but she isn't always able to get back to the step and to go up for air in time. She was put in time out twice when she jumped off the step when I was not by her. We stopped altogether when she inhaled so much water it made her puke her peach up, which didn't phase her.

Before she was ultra confident in the water with her ring and never let go of it. Now she's ultra confident in the water with no ring, which makes me super duper nervous.

*Sometimes I think I am a little too honest with Clara. If she asks me to do something, sometimes I tell her I'm too lazy. Today it backfired when I asked her to do something and she told me she was too lazy. :)

The 4th {and 3rd} of Joo-ly

Earlier this week I found myself humming Battle Hymn of the Republic at my client. Someone asked me if I sang that with my church choir (he'd recently found out I sang in the choir). I responded affirmatively and added that we'd be singing that song this month in church. Someone else said, "I thought you were only allowed to sing religious songs in church." His comment totally surprised me. I told him that song, and many other patriotic songs are contained in our hymn book and those songs are in fact, very religious. They all reference God and acknowledge Him as the reason this Country exists. Then I thought long and hard about how people consider songs about our Country, our Country that was founded by God-fearing men, our Country that gives all freedom of religion, non-religious. How soon so many have forgotten the foundation for this Country began long before our founding fathers were born. It was prepared and then men were prepared to start a great nation and God's hand was involved in every step of the way. How far we've fallen from respecting, honoring and revering our founding fathers that were divinely inspired as they paved the way and took the steps to building the beginning of this great Nation that we are blessed to live in. It left me feeling a little sad. Sad for our Country and sad for those that don't recognize God's involvement.


We celebrated on Saturday with swimming and a BBQ at R&K's. Original, I know, but lots of fun regardless. Maybe that's why it's such a great tradition, no one gets sick of it. The girls had a dance party in L&E's bedroom after dinner. I tried to join in and was informed by Clara, "This is not for mommas. Only for big girls and babies." They must have been jealous of my dance moves.
Around 9:20pm, Kathryn, Angela, Clara, Lucy, Elsa and I loaded up and drove to an empty dirt lot near downtown Mesa to watch the fireworks from the car that were set off from MAC. We had a perfect view, comfy seats, the kidlets were contained (heads popping out the sunroof and windows), a light breeze, no crowds and parking and exiting were done with ease. Best time I've had watching fireworks in this lovely scorching desert.


In church today we sang The Star Spangled Banner for our closing hymn. By the middle of the second verse, I could no longer stop the tears as I reflected on the circumstance these beautiful words were written. I was reminded of the thoughts I had earlier this week at my client and the realization that many have forgotten. The last verse especially left me thinking a lot about God's presence in our Country and how that has changed over the decades. I was overwhelmed with gratitude for those that have sacrificed, those that continue to sacrifice, the opportunity to live in this land, the freedoms I enjoy and also, for those that continue to worship the almighty God and recognize his hand and Him as an essential role in the coming forth of our Nation. But I must admit, I was also a little saddened to think of how many try to rid this Country of God, try to discredit his inspiration and orchestration of events that took place so many years ago and no longer respect our founding fathers.