Turning 30

This month was my big 3-0! It was a little hard for me to move on from my 20's, but I'm over it now. However, I did have a great birthday celebration. Jake and the girls gave me the Royal treatment on my birthday, my cute friends hosted a birthday dinner party that night, and I even got to go to Salt Lake for a day (later that week) for a little break. I went shopping, went to dinner with my mom, and to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert. It was fabulous.

So in honor of my 30th birthday, I'm posting a list of 30 things that make me happy. Of course, this list isn't conclusive, because there are 100's of things that make me happy. Here's just of few that come to mind:

1. The Gospel
2. Being at home with my family
3. Gummy Bears
4. Playing or listening to classical music
5. The temple
6. Hearing my kids laugh
7. St. George
8. Skiing at Sundance
9. Being alone with Jake
10. A clean house
11. Being with my parents and parents-in-laws
12. Serving the primary children
13. Pear Mousse Dessert at Sweetly Divine
14. Talking to my friends
15. Seeing my kids progress and grow
16. Teaching piano
17. Being with ANY family
18. Holding my little tiny babies
19. 5:00 dance parities with the kids
20. Tulips
21. "Little Women"
22. Going to Church
23. Saturdays
24. My grandparents
25. Being in a canyon
26. Starting (and continuing) Holiday Traditions
27. Creating Things
28. Living in a small town
29. Singing as a family
30. The Savior

I feel pretty blessed to have to so many great things to make me happy. It's been a great 30 years.

Ben's First Birthday

HAPPY 1st BIRTHDAY BEN!

My little baby is so grown up now! Ben is such a joy in our family. It has been so fun to experience a baby boy in our home. Ben's little personality started to show when he was just a few months old. Here's a list of things that describe our Benjamin Timothy:

1. He gets so excited to be around his sisters (and they love him)

2. Ben especially loves his dad (and his dad adores him).

3. Somehow, he knows when things are funny, and lately, he's the one trying to get us to laugh.

4. Ben LOVES balls and books. If you gave him a room full of them, he'd be content for hours.

5. He turns into smiley/shy man when attention is on him.

6. He's learning some baby sign language. So far, he knows 'all done', 'hot', 'dog', 'bee', 'butterfly', 'elephant', 'more', and 'toothbrush'.

7. He loves to dance. (I think this may have come from observing ballerina Sophia.)

8. He does NOT like it when I teach piano.

9. He STILL has cradle cap on his head!

10. He is allergic to dairy.

11. He learned how to run this week

12. He loves peas (but not the baby food variety)

13. He is a good sleeper.

14. He likes to hide our remotes and play in the toilet.

15. He is loved dearly by his mommy.

We love you Ben!

Ben's Ball Cake

Silly Ben wouldn't eat his cake until we gave him a spork. Aren't they supposed to get super messy when they eat their birthday cake? Who knew we were raising such a proper young man?:)


Ben signing 'more' cake.



He was super excited to ride on his new toy. Yeah for Ben!

November in Review

November was an eventful month for us, both good and bad. Here's what it looked like:

THANKSGIVING '09

We really have so much to be thankful for this year. Wonderful family, sweet children, healthy bodies, a good place to live, kind friends, and most of all, the gospel of Jesus Christ. We had a great thanksgiving, thanks to my family who hosted us so well!

Indian Chief Grace-Grace

The girls made these cute candy turkeys while waiting for the real meal to start.

More candy turkey making


The Shaw fam enjoying the lovely meal


This was my first attempt at a pumpkin pie. Gracie helped cut and shape all the dough leaves.
The trickiest part was transporting it to my parent's house!

GRACIE'S 1st GRADE PROGRAM

This program was so cute. Her amazing teacher made them all matching shirts with their names on it. They sang songs all about the family (by the way, I sang these same songs in MY kindergarten program...how weird is that!) Gracie even had her own speaking part to memorize that was quite lengthy...I was so proud of her.

Gracie's little class

Gracie posing in the family tree

Sophie trying to be like Gracie after the show

Cute little Ben supporting his sister

Gracie and Mrs. Martinez

SWINE FLU ATTACK

We've all been sick with various issues these past weeks, but I think we're starting to recover. Sophie and Ben were the sickest, and Sophie later developed pneumonia. In the midst of all the swine-flu-ing, I was having pretty bad chest pain. The doctor heard this strange "squeaking" sound in my heart, sending me through lots of testing and doctors visits as well. In the period of 3 or 4 days, we went three times to the doctor, once to the instacare, twice to the pharmacy, once to the lab, and once to the ER. We are usually pretty healthy people, so all these medical issues caused a bit of stress in our family! But thanks to my sweet mom who braved exposure to the virus and came to help us, we made it though. She did laundry, cooked meals, and stayed up with Sophie almost all night. Thanks so much mom!

E is for Egg

This year I decided to start a little preschool/playgroup for Sophie and her friends. It's been so fun. All the moms rotate weeks with the kids, as well as the letter for the day. Since we had the letter E for our last turn, we decided to go on a real live field trip to visit some eggs (and chickens). They were not your normal chickens! A lady in our ward keeps these exotic chickens as pets and was kind enough to let us visit. We fed them bread and even got to feel a warm egg that had just popped out of a chicken. Then we came home and colored our own eggs. It was eggcellent! (sorry, I had to say it!)

Triangle Hair, Eyeballs, and a Girl's Prerogative

I know were a little behind on Halloween, but I still wanted to post our fun times we had. This first picture isn't actually of Halloween, but it might has as well have been! It just so happened that red ribbon week was the same week leading up to Halloween, so this is Gracie's "crazy hair day" creation. We used lots of wire-I liked it. By the way, red ribbon week had quite the effect on my children. We found them leading the neighborhood in a parade as they marched around the cul-de-sac chanting "WE HATE DRUGS! WE HATE DRUGS!" Pretty funny.

Triangle head Grace

So on to Halloween....we had a super holiday. It was a beautiful day, and my parents even came up to celebrate.

Carving pumpkins on the driveway...why didn't I think of this before?

Ben and grandma cruisin' the sidewalks.

Grandma Shaw taught us how to make these spooky eyeballs. You can read all about them (for next year) on her food blog.

Jake freaked all of us out this year. I've never known him to be creepy, but he surprised us minutes before we were to go trick -or-treating with this lovely face. Yikes!

Poor Ben. He was a sick little puppy. There is an unwritten law in this universe that one of my kids has to be sick on Halloween. We took him to one or two houses, then called it quits for him.


On a good note, Sophie and Gracie had a great time this year. They opted to be princesses (their respective favorites, by the way), and I was just fine with that. We had a whole dress up bin in our basement just waiting to be worn. Sophie chose to take full advantage of the bin, as you can see. Why wear just one costume per year?

Trick-or-treating princesses

1st grade Halloween party Tinkerbell (and Briar Rose)

Story time mouse

Preschool cat

Family Pictures

My cute friend Lacie took some family pics for us last week during the peak of the fall leaves. She did a great job. Here's some (actually, a lot) of the favorites...

Silly Billies

Gracie: "Grandma Garlock said that she has read Little House on the Prairie." (we just started it)

Me: "Yep, lots of girls have read it. It's a good book."

Gracie: (pause) "Has anyone ever finished it?"

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Gracie runs into the bathroom with a flashlight and looks at her throat that is sore.

Gracie: "Mom! Mom! There's a big hole in my throat!"

Me: "Come here-let's see"

Gracie: (still yelling) "See-it's like THIS big"

Me: "It's your throat...you know...where your food goes down"

Gracie: "Oh."

Like mother, like daughter-another generation of worriers!

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Sophie: "Mom! Mom! You painted my room pink! Thank you! Thank you! Gwacie, come here! Come and see! Mom painted our room pink!"

Me: "You're welcome."

(Note: I painted it almost 2 years ago. Glad she likes it, though.)

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Sophie: "Mom, I want to be ballerina when I grow up."

Me: "Sounds good."

(20 minutes later)

Sophie: "I changeded my mind. I want to be rattlesnake."

Me: "O.K. then"

Recent Discoveries

Discovery #1: My mom (finally) started her own cooking blog! It's about time, becuase just about every recipe I have ever made has come from her. Check it out here.

Discovery #2:
My girls actually miss winter. This is how I found them the other day. They told me they are ready because they are tired of all the bees. Interesting.

Discovery #3:
My kids are getting to be helpful in the kitchen. For years they have wanted to help me, but it took a lot of extra work and patience on my part. These past weeks we've been doing a lot of canning and jam making and they were actually a lot of help. Gracie peeled peaches like a pro and Sophie is really good at stirring until the timer beeps. Love my little helpers.

Discovery #4: Putting a chip clip on the end of a burrito holds in all the filling for a three-year- old. (This was actually my mom's idea.) Sophie used to cry every time we had burritos because all her filling would end up on her plate or on the floor. I really does work!

Discovery #5: Life is different with a little boy who has learned to walk this week! Keeps me on my toes. He's so cute, though. He still walks like Frankenstein. I love it.