Why oh why!!!

I found this picture by Jill Greenberg searching the web for the perfect crying child picture that might somehow depict my week so far...yes I know its only Wednesday! I know every mother in the world has gone through a week like mine but I want to write about it so I remember how great "normal" days are. It started Sunday with Ashlyn telling us about her "chooters", that's her way of explaining the crackling noises in her ears. Well its typical for her to tell us about it, fast forward to Monday, she was fine all day and then the evening fell and as you all know how the saying goes; all "heck" broke loose. Sure lets have a raging ear infection that no numbing drops or Tylenol will solve at 11:30 at night. Ok so we worked with her until about 2:30. Back to Monday morning. Ryleigh's eye was goopy and a little swollen, so I called the doctor, the answer? Oh she probably just has allergies. Watch it and give us a call if she needs anything. Ok here we are again fast forwarding to Monday night. In between putting Ashlyn down we were helping a crying Ryeligh. Her eye now swollen shut and goop in both eyes at 1:00am. Fine we can handle 2 kids no problem. Wait whats this a screaming 3 month old, inconsolable, this isn't like Christian, something must be wrong! Fine! Lets try this, Tylenol, warm rice bag on tummy, gas drops and finally teething gel. YES!!! We finally lay down to sleep and have all three kids in bed with us one after the other. 3:30am sleep! Hallelujah...6:00am already we just closed our eyes. Well at least we can get to the doctor! Diagnosis, Ashlyn: Throat infection & Ear Infection, Ryleigh: a scratched eye turned into bacteria infection (we were told if it got anymore swollen we would have to go to the ER to have her on an iv or else she might loose sight in her eye...ahhhh WHAT!) Christian: Teething & Cutting in...his eye teeth...WHAT!!!! With prescriptions in hand, at least we can sleep tonight. Nope we pulled an all nighter again! Mad screaming in pain crying children. So I am tallying my hours of sleep 5 Total in 2 nights. I love my babies! With Stewart gone from 6:00am - 10:00pm he needs his rest, but i need my hair. I think i have just about pulled it all out!

When Life Hands You Skittles

So today Stewy starts school again to finish up before applying to Physical Therapy School this year end. As I'm sure many of you can sympathize, he was a little anxious to go back. Ashlyn had come in as we were talking about it and I asked her if she was scared on her first day of school. She said yes I was scared, so I asked her if she could tell Daddy what made her feel better and what he could do to help himself not be nervous. She said:

1. Raise your Hand!

2. Cross your legs like this!

(her preschool sits Indian-style for the morning song and hellos for the day)

3. Do your Homework and you will get a skittle!

Its okay!

Her excitement for Daddy to go to school and her innocence I think gave him a little boost of confidence. I thought it was so sweet how she bravely told him her fears and how she overcame them.

Heels

Pearls and boas, dressed to the nines,

Lipstick on pursed lips, trying hard to stay in the lines,

Big wobbly high heels on tiny, precious feet,

Little girls playing dress up - aren't they sweet!

-laura taylor mark

I love when my girls run around the house in my heels. One of the sweetest sounds are the giggles that accompany the click, click, click on the tile floor. Ryleigh is a seasoned pro in them and Ashlyn thinks she's big! I feel so honored to have my girls want to be in "my shoes"!

Jschomaker Photography Giveaway

Ok as almost everyone knows, I have a super close friend who is an amazing photographer. She has a prize up for grabs on her blog that I want! So, Please help me out and check out her blog: http://jschomaker.blogspot.com/ and please comment on the january 5th post. I know its selfish but trust me if you keep up to date on her site it will be worth the trip over to her blog. I am so grateful for her friendship, spunk, talent and the list goes on...She took this picture of our little Ashy, which of course I love. Jenny has made quite a few covers of magazines with her Photographs of the Kiaya Eve petti skirt. SO, of course I am selfishly asking for some traffic on her blog. So, basically if you are taking apeek at this blog because you are a friend, family member, or someone who is just blog hopping, check it out and tell her I sent you! I also have a link on my blog that will take you directly to her site where you can view all her work and a link to her blog. Enjoy! http://jschomaker.com/

New Years

We had a great time New Years Eve! We went to dinner at the new Laredo Cantina at the San Tan Village shops with our good friends Chris & Jenny Schomaker. The kids all have such a good time together and I'm not just talking about the little ones...hehe! It was freezing, but after dinner we decided to help the kids with their wiggles so we went over to the play area. It was great! It was just our families and we had a blast, we danced and sang and took countless pictures. Jenny sorry for the unfortunate picture taking by yours truly, I am afraid I have done no justice. But, besides that we had a great time laughing! Thanks for a great night guys! We hope this New Year will be the best yet!








The Next day we woke up for Breakfast at IHOP...the breakfast of champions! Then we took the little ladies to the Movie Theater for the show enchanted. It was so cute and the girls loved it. My brother Reed & his wife Kamarie invited us over to their place for the final resting stop of the new year, where we had a great dinner with mood lighting, thanks to their new homes quirks! All in all it was a great time. I look forward to all the fun we will have over the next months until our time has come to celebrate another year!

This & That

With all the chaos this holiday season has brought I am just now taking a second to post. I had this great idea of a slide show with all the events but, thanks to my tag item number 2 in the post below, I forgot my camera charger at my mother-in-laws house and I was only able to capture a few pictures without them being fuzzy. Having said that, Christmas was really great this year. Uncle Tommy came home from his 2 year Mission in Milwaukee, WI ( I guess the natives call it M'waky...who knew! ) Anyhow, that started it off great, with seeing extended family. Then we went to the Crosser Family Christmas Eve party which is always an adventure! We participated in a "white elephant gift exchange" where we inherited Princess our "Kermit Crab" as the girls call "him". POOR Guy!

After that we had a great Christmas with Grandma & Grandpa Peterson and the Aunts and Uncles. It was very exciting to see how the little girls eyes lit up when they would open a gift.

Of course then it was off to Winslow for Tommy's Homecoming talk and again another great dinner with the family.

Then a quick surprise to Grandma & Grandpa Smiths house where we were all very educated. We took care of our body's inner chi and a little extra that I will only show you a picture of...the rest is up to your imagination!

Finally home again and ready to celebrate the new year! What a wild ride the past few weeks have been!

Double Time Tag

Ok, so Daneen a great friend of mine and my sister-in-law Shanda both tagged me one day after the other. So, does that mean I have to tell you 12 random things about me?...hehe...that would just get either way too boring or far too personal. Both of which are way too much information. Hahaha. Well, here it goes.



1.I have a real problem with asymmetry. For example, the new house needed to be landscaped so we hired a company to come do it, by the time it was all over with the Supervisor over the job could have read my mind like a book. I am sooo predictable. If I have three trees in a row I need to have another set of three's close by. If I have a hibiscus on one side I have to have a hibiscus on the other side. It just about drove me crazy when I saw that my landscape lights were not side by side but put at every other length of the walk path. Oh well I need to give a little right?
2.I have lost brain cells. I used to think I was a good multi-tasker, but with the past years endeavor, being pregnant, giving birth, a 4 year old daughter, an almost 3 year old daughter, a very busy husband, a very busy me. I have lost it. I remember when I was 21 thinking about how smart i felt when I was able to remember a clients profile for a year, memorize all the product info and specifications for both residential and commercial applications, help with Parade of Homes houses and deal with School. I thought I was a pretty capable individual. Not the case anymore, I can hardly remember what someone told me 5 minutes ago. Sorry Mom! I cant remember how many times she has asked me to email her information on something and I have completely forgotten about it. I am just going to give a shout out to all my mommy friends who know what I'm going through. This is just a phase...this is just a phase...this is just a...wait what was I saying.

3.I am addicted to white garlic pizza sauce, ham & pineapple Pizza. I have had to stop eating anything tomato, because it seems to be affecting Christian's tummy. So I either had to stop my love of Pizza cold turkey or improvise...and there was no way I was going to stop eating Pizza. Enter in, white pizza sauce. I really cant get enough of it.


4.Ok possibly my most embarrassing piece of information. I think I am going to buy maternity jeans from here on out. I purchased some jeans for this last pregnancy and decided to splurge a little on them so they would fit my size 36" inseam. They were so comfortable that I thought they would be nice transition jeans after the baby arrived. Notice I said transition. I might have just made the transition to stay in maternity jeans. Lets talk about this...No Annoying button to dig into your less then firm tummy and no zipper to have to yank down when you have 3 crying children starved for attention, when you have held it as long as you possibly could before you finally exploded and wet yourself. Up and down ladies...its so easy. I wonder what Stacey and Clinton from what not to wear would say.


5.I love to dance. Stew dies when I am in the car jammin' out to the music while we are stopped at a red light with cars on all four sides of us. I have thankfully passed the jean down to the girls. It is so fun to see them rock out to any song with a beat. Ashlyn's favorite place is the front of the abercrombie store. They really crank the music in that place. Get down get down...do do doot, do do doot!


6.I have a pretty high pain tolerance. Most people would probably assume that I would be a little whiney when it comes to pain, but in a proud and glorified posting moment, I would like to share a little boast about myself. Hahaha. I have proudly endured 2 natural childbirths. But maybe I should add I didn't want to. It was not self inflicted or maybe it was, whatever the case may be my body will not except epidurals. apparently, it doesn't like them. This last pregnancy as I went into triage the nurse said "I believe you when you say you are in labor, but you outwardly you aren't showing any signs." I asked her what she meant and she said well you aren't verbalizing how painful your contractions are. I finally asked if I needed to moan to be admitted into a room. As you all can probably imagine it didn't take long to get into one after that. Then boy o boy I really wanted and epi. but after I had the 12" needle stuck in my back it was time to push. WHAT? No pain relief again...fine! I think the anesthesiologist felt so bad he was just standing there in amazement that it didn't work. I looked over at him and said no offense but I am not paying for that...its not working. He kept apologizing, really I don't know what was happening all I could think about was getting the baby out and not having anymore pain. Well, it must have been a traumatizing experience for him because he never billed me for that epidural.

That in a nutshell is a few things about me. I pass this little tag on to (Stephanie, Kamarie, Leah, and Meg) P.s. Jenny if you even read this tag your it too!

O Christmas Tree

We finally finished our christmas tree. This year I am calling it the Dr. Suess Tree.

I am sure you can see why. Miss Ryleigh was the creative art director this year and it was about gathering all the same color and trying to see how many ornaments we could fit on to one branch.

As for Ashlyn...well she was just the director. I am sure visions of sugar plums were dancing in her head as she was carefully choosing each space to put an ornament. As she flitted around the room, in her ballerina outfit of course, she just kept proclaiming-- THIS IS THE BEST CHRISTMAS EVER!

I could not move any of the ornaments, like I had planned, after they had gone to bed. I felt so lucky and thankful that my little ones felt somewhat empowered to take ownership in this years Christmas Tree. I agree with Ashy, this is the best Christmas ever!

**Nice Honey**
Never a dull moment at the Smith household

OK, I know I have gotten a little Christian baby photo crazy but I have good reason to be sooo in love with this baby. There is always the part about how much "pain & suffering" he put me through and finally he his here...hehe. My grandparents serving a mission in Nauvoo (that's reason enough right there huh grandma. Grandparents not living near us to watch him grow. Well and of course the fact that he is way too cute. How can I not post these pictures. Ooooh I love those toes.

A letter to Santa...Love, Mom

A girlfriend of mine sent this to me via e-mail and I thought it depicted probably every mommy friend I know. So here is to all my lady friends who work so hard to keep their families running! Thanks Jennifer you know I need this kind of stuff! Love ya!


Dear Santa,

I've been a good mom all year. I've fed, cleaned and cuddled my
children on demand, visited the doctor's office more than my doctor
and sold sixty-two cases of candy bars to raise money to plant a
shade tree on the school playground. I was hoping you could spread my
list out over several Christmases, since I had to write this letter
with my son's red crayon, on the back of a receipt in the laundry
room between cycles, and who knows when I'll find anymore free time
in the next 18 years.

Here are my Christmas wishes:

I'd like a pair of legs that don't ache (in any color, except purple,
which I already have) and arms that don't hurt or flap in the breeze,
but are strong enough to pull my screaming child out of the candy
aisle in the grocery store.

I'd also like a waist, since I lost mine somewhere in the seventh
month of my last pregnancy.

If you're hauling big ticket items this year I'd like fingerprint
resistant windows and a radio that only plays adult music, a
television that doesn't broadcast any programs containing talking
animals, and a refrigerator with a secret compartment behind the
crisper where I can hide to talk on the phone.

On the practical side, I could use a talking doll that says, 'Yes,
Mommy' to boost my parental confidence, along with two kids who don't
fight and three pairs of jeans that will zip all the way up without
the use of power tools.

I could also use a recording of Tibetan monks chanting 'Don't eat in
the living room' and 'Take your hands off your brother,' because my
voice seems to be just out of my children's hearing range and can
only be heard by the dog.

If it's too late to find any of these products, I'd settle for enough
time to brush my teeth and comb my hair in the same morning, or the
luxury of eating food warmer than room temperature without it being
served in a Styrofoam container.

If you don't mind, I could also use a few Christmas miracles to
brighten the holiday season. Would it be too much trouble to declare
ketchup a vegetable? It will clear my conscience immensely. It would
be helpful if you could coerce my children to help around the house
without demanding payment as if they were the bosses of an organized
crime family.

Well, Santa, the buzzer on the dryer is calling and my son saw my
feet under the laundry room door. I think he wants his crayon back.
Have a safe trip and remember to leave your wet boots by the door and
come in and dry off so you don't catch cold.

Help yourself to cookies on the table but don't eat too many or leave
crumbs on the carpet. (you promised me last year you would lose some weight with me so next year you and I could be a cute size two blonde...ok, some requests go too far, but none the less.....

Yours Always,

MOM...

P.S. One more thing...you can cancel all my requests if you can keep
my children, healthy, safe and of course, young enough to always believe in Santa.