One of the Many Reasons I LOVE Being a Mom

From Blog Favorites #2

How could you not smile if you saw something like this? These girls keep me laughing constantly!

From Blog Favorites #2

Ducky and Cowy have never looked better! The girls got a little help from daddy with the tie. (o:

Princess Art

From Blog Favorites #2

This is one of my favorite Natalie pieces of all time. I may have to frame it. She did such a cute job on all the princesses I can't help but smile when I look at it. I love her phonetic spellings of their names: Bell, Aroru, Gasmen . . . (O:

Pouty Princess

From Blog Favorites #2

Angela came downstairs one morning looking like this. She looked so beautiful, except for one thing. That frown. (o: I just had to get some pictures though because at this age, even when kids frown it's cute. I know that won't be the case in a few years! And while she didn't really want me to be taking her picture, she put up with it. I doubt in 10 years I will be allowed to do a photo shoot when she is feeling grumpy!

From Blog Favorites #2

From Blog Favorites #2

From Blog Favorites #2

From Blog Favorites #2

Yes! She finally cracks a smile at my antics!

Last Day Teaching Preschool )o:

After four years of teaching Natalie and then Angela, I finally taught my last preschool lesson. It was bittersweet. I will miss having my kids at home with me. I love being a hands on mom, even though it's crazy sometimes.

Making "tree juice" - mixing yellow lemonade with blue food coloring.


Ethan the leaf king.

Angela loves when the art project includes painting hands!

I love this picture of Tyler - he is normally a pretty quiet boy, but at the end of our second year of preschool he really came out of his shell every now and then! Cute.

The cute trees the kiddos made. They all look so cute and different.

We Got a Dog!!

Isn't she cute? I've always loved Dalmations.

She came with the pink tutu too! She's even potty trained!
Angela LOVES this dress up - but it is getting WAY too small. It's supposed to go down to her feet and hands.

To Anonymous

This began as a comment on my comment from "The Big Secret Revealed" and I thought it should get more space because it really got me thinking ... So "Anonymous", the only thing I apologize for is for the length of this comment on your comment! (o:

To "Anonymous" who wrote, "Too much information for an open blog! This should be personal."

I read through the post again and don't think that there's anything too personal in it. The only personal part was my view/opinion about the sacredness of sex and how offensive I find the way it is depicted in the media. I shared my beliefs and I'm assuming this was the part that was too much information?

It was just my opinion. Not stories of my personal life or experiences. Personally (ha! no pun intended), I think more people who agree with this view (treating sex with more respect) need to speak up, otherwise we'll be drowned out by all the filth and lies about sex out there. For example, the lie that there are no bad consequences for sleeping around - how often do you find a character on TV or movies, who sleeps with someone, end up pregnant or with an STD? Pregnancy is only shown if it is part of the storyline and STDs are hardly ever depicted happening. Not to mention the emotional havoc sex creates for people who are not ready or in a committed relationship. (especially girls) So many teenage girls are OBSESSED with being sexy because that's all they see in the media. They get fed lies that they are not worthwhile if they aren't sexy. It is degrading. Ironically, people in the media talk all about and depict women being equal - but the next minute they depict women as objects. It's all about money and sex sells. Do we really want the people who are motivated simply by money to be the ones having all the say in our children's morals?

It needs to be a more open, less "taboo" subject or television, magazines and music will teach our children and teenagers everything. YIKES!

If you are curious about my motives for writing the post on an open blog, it was very simple: I thought friends/family with children of similar ages who feel the same way I do about sex, would appreciate hearing my experience. I know I would have appreciated hearing how someone else worded the whole thing. I didn't go into gory detail - there was nothing offensive.

Having "the talk" is one of those big moments in a parent's and child's life. I am glad I could share this in an open blog where others might get to hear my point of view. Why should the media (which it completely lacking in morals) get all the say?

So whether you are a good friend or a complete stranger, I hope you understand better why I chose to share my experience of giving my daughter "the talk". (o: Sorry if it made you uncomfortable.

General Conference

President Monson
One of the highlights of conference is hearing the amazing Tabernacle Choir. I love to hear them sing! Especially their Easter songs today - they gave me chills.

We had an awesome weekend and feel so uplifted and inspired by the talks we heard this weekend for General Conference. (Our biannual two day conference broadcast from Salt Lake by our LDS church leaders.) I always look forward to conference. This time I was able to take notes and listen to most of every talk. The kids did pretty well, most of the time. There was one moment when I was ticked off at Natalie during Elder Bednar's talk. I had to pause it to yell at Natalie to listen to me. (She was ignoring me when I asked her to do something, several times - she was blatantly ignoring me, I was right, I was right!) It's kind of not a good thing when you are yelling at your child while an apostle is talking about teaching children by reading the scriptures together, heart to heart talks, etc. Great motherhood moment. That was our down moment, but mostly we had ups.

I look forward to studying these talks more. I felt like the theme for the whole weekend, although there is never a theme or instruction to the speakers on what to speak on, was for parents and leaders of youth. I love that each of the speakers is encouraged to learn for themselves through the spirit what the Lord would have them speak about. It's interesting that so many of the speakers focused on messages parents - strengthening families. I enjoyed the talk by Elder Ballard about mothers and daughters. Though it was a tough subject I appreciated Elder Holland's talk about pornography and love vs. lust. He talked to parents about the importance of open conversations about sex as children are growing up and exposed to so much degrading and evil media. The timing of this talk was perfect because Sarah and I had a date last night to have "the talk" and I had ideas come to me during his talk about how to approach our discussion. (It went great, by the way - more later...)

So many talks inspired me and also made me feel like I need to take my role as a mother even more seriously. So many things were said about the importance of mothers and their influence in the world today - raising the next generation to be good people in a world overflowing with war, pornography, dishonesty, incivility, selfishness... Yikes. I need to do better, but I feel up to the challenge because I know I will get inspiration along the way.

For this conference, I challenged Sarah to write at least three sentences about each of the apostles and first presidency messages. (That's 15 talks!) She did awesome and even listened to the other general authorities too. That's the first time she listened to the whole thing. She did puzzles and matching games on the Friend website on my laptop and listened quite well - it worked out great! I was proud of her. I did tell her there was a reward for meeting this challenge. She earned a new card game. Some of her reports on the talks were pretty funny and some sweet so I have to highlight them here . . .

Elder L. Tom Perry talked about how to make your home better. He talked about how Family Home Evening is a good way to make your family closer. I think that would work in our family if we stop being silly during it.

Elder Robert D. Hales talked a lot about his grandson. Mr. Hales (this cracked me up - Mr.?) talked about a lot of things so I'm not quite sure what the main thing was about. From what I heard his grandson is pretty funny. (Okay, so she was stretching it on this one, but she still got credit for being so funny.)

Elder Quentin L. Cook kind of talked about the plan of salvation. He told a long story about a Samoan state that had a tsunami. Many people died, but Mr. Cook (o: told them they could be with them again in heaven.

Elder Neil L. Anderson's talk was based on the primary song, "Tell Me the Stories of Jesus". He talked about how moms and dads take care of children. He told a couple sad stories.

President Monson encouraged us to read the Friend, Ensign and New Era magazines. President Monson says that the Lord DOES love us, and he DOES answer our prayers. He says he loves us and prays for us.

Easter Sunday

The girls always get fun packages from their grandmas on holidays!

The Easter bunny brought each of the girls some candy and a book and stickers.
Eating candy in the fashion show tent.

The Easter egg hunt. We always do a more spiritual Easter egg hunt with little items that represent different parts of the story of the Savior's crucifixion and atonement in the bible. It's a nice way to remember the most important part of Easter.

It was especially neat having Easter Sunday fall on General Conference weekend - the music was stunning and the talks were so inspirational. The focus in general conference is always on the Savior, but it was extra special having it on Easter.

I don't remember why she was making this face - she makes it a lot though! That's my Loo. (o:

Sarah with the deviled eggs and her new card game.

Happy Easter cat. Doesn't she look so happy?