Cecily is three!

Cecily turned 3 on Monday. It's weird for my baby to be three. Three seems very old when I've had little ones around for nearly 8 years.

To celebrate, we went to the dollar store and picked out a toy and got three helium balloons. That night we went the library and then the Cocoa Bean. She got a sugar cookie and decided after three bites she didn't like it. I guess we should have gone for ice cream. ;) After Cocoa Bean, we went to the park. Emilia wanted to sit in the car and read and I was cold, but Steve and the younger two played for quite a while.

There is a girl in front of each pillar if you look close enough.

The cat keeps bringing home "presents" for us. Three birds and a snake this week. The kids were all fascinated by the snake. None of us appreciate the dead birds so much.

Emilia's last day of school was Friday. We're both excited for her to be home over the summer. What she doesn't know is that I'm going to institute a chore routine over the summer. I hope it works (meaning I hope it gets them to help out more without an equal increase in complaining and fighting). What she does know is that we've signed them up for two straight sessions of swim lessons (only one for Cecily) and each of them got to pick one sport/class to try. Emilia chose horseback riding. Soccer came in a close second, but she'll get to do that in the fall. Mira chose hip-hop dancing. And we chose tumbling for Cecily. I hope it doesn't wear us all out!

I also chose to do summer camps for the school I taught Creative Writing Club at. I'm going to do two art projects and a "get published" sort of camp. They are only two days a week for three weeks, so I'm hoping it won't be too stressful.

I got to go to the temple on Friday. It was a cloudy day and it made for a beautiful picture.

On Saturday, we invited the Nelsons to come have a BBQ with us so the girls could play with their cousins. An extra cousin (second cousing Andee Hill) came too and all the girls had a blast together. This is ALL of them. They got the dogs on the hill howling with all the noise they made forming this slide train. And they did it like 50 times. Cousins are awesome.

One thing at a time

I don't usually swerve into the spiritual on my blog, mostly because I know that the people who read it are of all different faiths. But there's something I want to share that is dear to me, so I hope you won't mind if I share it. It's not so much about my religion as it is about my relationship with God, so you can decide if you want to read or not. If you don't, skip down until you see this font again. That's where the weekly synopsis begins.

A little over a year ago, I started keeping a "scripture journal." I try to read out of the scriptures every day. And that's been a habit, for the most part, since high school. But what I'd been doing, generally, is reading the books of scripture from cover to cover, one chapter a day. It was a good habit. And I'm glad I did it, but in the Book of Mormon, it talks about "feasting" upon the words of Christ, and I wanted to learn to do that. I wanted to learn to truly feed my spirit through the word of God. But I wasn't sure how to go about it.

Then, a little over a year ago, someone gave a lesson at church and mentioned that they'd read a blog where someone talked about not only reading the scriptures, but then writing down any thoughts that came to them while they read. When they looked back over the thoughts that came to them during scripture study, they could see the general direction God was guiding them to go. That struck me as logical, and since I'm all about logic (Steve would totally disagree with that statement), I decided to try it out.

This last year of doing this has profoundly changed my life.

Sometimes I wrote down thoughts about the scriptures. Sometimes I wrote down random thoughts about my family or friends or life. Sometimes I wrote down the scriptures themselves, or quotes from conference talks. As I wrote, I learned. As I went about my day, I learned because the scripture I wrote about in the morning would be on my mind at another time during the day. There were times that the scripture I read in the morning didn't spark anything profound at the time, but would help me help someone else during the day.

Throughout the year, Heavenly Father taught me about myself, life, charity, obedience, courage, self-confidence, the Atonement, and so much more. I feel closer to Him than I have ever felt before. Before, I spoke to Him through my prayers, but by taking the time to write down the impressions that came to me, I opened a line of communication for God to speak to me.

I don't feel like this is an experience exclusive to me, which is why I share it. If you want to feel God's love for you more strongly, if you want to be guided more in the important questions of life, if you want to be a more steadfast disciple of Jesus Christ, this will help you. Open the door by keeping a scripture journal. God will speak to you through it. I know he will.

Thanks for letting me share. :) Now back to the regularly scheduled program.

I had a great week! It started out with me feeling overwhelmed, but on Wednesday, I threw my list out the window (not literally), and did the thing that had been nagging me all week--I wrote! Over 1700 words in one day. I know that's writer-speak, but my goal is 500 words/day and I'd been getting behind more and more, so it brought so much peace to get caught up. I tried to do that the rest of the week--pick the thing that was most bothering me and focus on that during the day. If other things got done, great! But mostly I just cared if that one big thing got done. I felt so much more relaxed and so much less harried. I'm going to have to keep that in mind again this week.

The girls have been playing so well together lately. Mira taught Cecily how to do thumbs up and then they all wanted pictures of it and Cecily decided she didn't want to do thumbs up when it came to her turn for a picture. She's still pretty awesome anyway. :)

All of my pictures are pretty random this week, so I'll just give a quick run-down here. I planted more of my garden this week, which required digging up the volunteer plants that were in the way. There were a TON of them and I didn't want to kill them, so I asked my neighbor if she wanted them. She did, so I brought them to her and helped her plant her garden that day, too.

Steve had LOTR game night one night and went to the temple another night, so those days I mostly just tried to still be kind to my kids by the end of the day.

We had another fun date night on Friday night. We went to the BYU Museum of Art, which is free. Then we went to Pop N Sweets and tried a new flavor of soda: Sipp brand Ginger Blossom. It was super gingery, but once I got used to that, it was pretty good. We also got a Swamp Pop Praline Cream soda, which is what we got last time, because it was SO so so good. Then we came home and watched the Martian, which I thought was very well done.

On Saturday, Nick and Wilda wanted to take Cecily shopping for her birthday and the other two were feeling left out, so I took the older two to the Bean Museum. For those of you who don't know what that is, its a free museum that has a bunch of taxidermied animals to go look at. While we were there, they had a life animal show, though, (which only included a snake, a turtle, and a frog) so that was fun. The girls both got picked as a volunteer to open a "clue box."

my fingernails were super long and I felt like documenting it before I cut them all off so I could type again.

Mira dressed up her tigers as fairies. Love her imagination.

The sky across from my neighbor's house the day I helped her with her garden. Beautiful.

Steve's game night.

I love flowers that I can cut and bring in the house. The peonies are in bloom right now and they smell wonderful.

I wish peonies bloomed all summer.

outside the BYU MOA

Inside the MOA by the LOVE sign. :)

The girls outside the Bean Museum.

Watching the animal show.

Playing with magnetic ants.

Caught up

This was my to-do list for this week. I've started making a to-do list on Monday morning of everything I can think of that I might want/have to get done that week. It's helpful to see all the tasks at a glance so I can decide what's reasonable to try to get done. This week, I didn't have a bunch of pre-planned events, so I filled up my week the way I wanted to. And I got a lot done, as you can see.

One of the things I wanted to do was check on the hardware I ordered for our bathroom cabinet. I ordered it two months ago and still hadn't gotten it. So we stopped at the "rocketship store" as Cecily calls it. The kids play area there is pretty cool. They did a good job welding this rocketship for kids to play in while their parents shop. They didn't have my hardware, but they promised it would be soon. It actually came in on Friday, but I haven't picked it up yet. I guess that can go on my to-do list for this week.

Static electricity at its best.

I did do quite a bit of shopping. We needed some new shoes for Ces and a new dress for Emilia to wear to church. Our subscription to the Ensign (church magazine) ran out and we didn't get the May issue, which is the issue that they print all of the talks from General Conference in, so I went to the distribution center to get a couple copies. Steve and I both wanted to read through them and be able to mark them up. I also bought scriptures for Emilia while I was there, since she'll be getting baptized in a couple of months and we want to give her a set then. I also picked up a couple of gifts while I was there. This was the sunset on the way home that night. The sunsets over Utah Lake are often stunning.

I had a podiatrist appointment, too. My left foot hurts most of the time and he says its because my arch is falling. So he made me some really expensive inserts for my shoes and gave me some exercises to do to strengthen my feet. Modern medicine is amazing. The girls were entertaining themselves in the waiting room. Cecily was super cute, finding all the items in a look and find book. She's ridiculously good at them.

Mira's a great colorer, too.

It was warm this week for the first time since February. The bees were out and the roses were blooming at the park. So pretty.

Mira's last day of preschool is this coming Wednesday, but she had her preschool graduation party on Thursday for some reason. She had fun and felt special and it only lasted about a 1/2 hour. Perfect.

We went to the park afterward. There are a ton of fun parks nearby, so we have variety until it gets super hot. I sincerely can't understand why cities build parks with no trees in them. That means my kids can use them in June and September. The rest of the year, it's too hot. Without shade trees, we're sweating 1/2 our body weight out in 20 minutes of playing or little legs and hands get burnt on the sun-hot plastic.

Steve and I went on a date Friday night that was so much fun. I wish I'd taken pictures. We bought some frisbee golf disks at Walmart (3 for $10 and they were actually decent disks) and took the two I had from years ago and went up Hobble Creek Canyon to play some frisbee golf. I didn't know until later that Steve had never played before! We were 20 over par on an 18-hole course, but it was really a lot of fun. We were outdoors and in the woods and walking and talking. One of the best dates we've had in a long time, even if I was afraid of getting bitten by a snake a number of times. :) Then afterwards we went for ice cream at coldstone since we had a gift card.

Saturday morning we went as a family to play tennis. The girls had never gone before and were NOT excited about trying it out. But, thankfully, once they got to hold the racket and hit a ball, they thought it was super fun and want to do it again. Yay! I would love for my kids to like tennis. Steve and I hit around for a while when they were done. We need practice! Hopefully we can make it a habit to go every Saturday to teach the kids and get back into the *swing* of things. (See what I did there. Haha!)

After dinner we took the kids to feed the ducks, which is always fun. Mira was brave enough to try to let it eat out of her hand and got bitten twice. She wasn't too fazed by it. Brave kid. :)

I also cut Steve's hair, processed all the pictures of the Coombs family I did when we went down to St. George, bought more stuff for my garden, fed the missionaries last minute, cut all the wood for the bathroom, went to Creative Writing Club twice (no one came either time), went to the library, did laundry, wrote, exercised, made calls, went grocery shopping, bathed kids, and made dinners.

I'm guessing this coming week will not be that productive by far, but it was nice to accomplish a lot and feel more caught-up with life.

Writing conference, feeling blessed

This last week was crazy and amazing and uplifting. The beginning of the week was spent getting ready for my writing conference. Grocery shopping and cooking and taking the kids to the park, etc. Getting pitches and pages ready. And then Thursday through Saturday, I went to my conference. It was truly one of the most uplifting experiences I've had in a really long time. Not because anything about the conference was particularly extraordinary. There were classes and food and a couple keynotes, like any other conference. But everything ran smoothly. People connected with each other. I met people I'd been talking with online for the last year and felt like I'd known them for ages. It was the LDStorymakers conference, so we could share in our religious beliefs as well as our love of writing. We opened with a prayer, and blessed our meals and helped each other out. We worked through problems as a group. And above that, I could feel Heavenly Father blessing me. I prayed before the conference to be given an opportunity to talk to an agent. I got to talk to two. I hoped to find new critique partners, I found at least four. I hoped to have more hope that my writing would be wanted, that it would fill a need. I had a publishing company ask to have a look at it when its done because they are starting a new imprint that deals with exactly my genre. I made friends I wasn't expecting to make. And it made me feel so loved by my Father in heaven. He watches out for me and for all of us. Because he loves us. When I got home, my kids were excited to see me. I felt renewed and rejuvenated by my time away from them and I'm excited to spend the week with them. Thank you, Dad, and Anessa, and Steve, for babysitting the girls so I didn't have to worry about them. It was a wonderful experience.

• Some of my new friends. Just now, looking at this picture, I realized I have a rather small head. No wonder my kids have small heads. Haha!

There were 750 attendees.

Retreat in the mountains and everyday stuff

It's been a busy couple of weeks. Or maybe I should say it's been a normal couple of weeks. Busy is pretty normal for me.

I'll give you the highlights version and then caption the four hundred pictures.

Last weekend I got to go to a writing retreat up Ogden Canyon thanks to my marvelous mother and husband (who took care of the girls). It was beautiful and relaxing and there was no internet AT ALL, so despite feeling like one of my arms was cut off, I was incredibly productive. I got 12 days worth of writing done in roughly 28 hours (and that includes about 6 hours of sleep).

The American Night Writers Association LDS chapter sponsored the retreat, so it was 22 LDS women writers (many of which were super weird, but a few of which were totally cool and I would be friends with them) in a house they had rented. Imagine a house big enough to sleep 22 people -- all of them in their own beds. Isn't that crazy? Who can afford that? There was an excellent keynote address, some games, and some socializing. Plus meals were provided. I mostly went to be productive, so I didn't do much of the games and socializing, but I exceeded my goals and helped me relax, so it was perfect.

Jus' writin' with Jesus (and his golf tees). Gotta love the decor at rental homes. :)

Keynote in the living room.

I have had four meetings of the Creative Writing Club I got hired to advise and it's not going super well. Most of the time I have one attendee. But I am not complaining. I get paid and I get teaching hours for it, so it's the perfect job. Plus the girls are honing their art skilz.

The weather's been sort of nice, but mostly rainy. We had a few days warm enough to go to the park and blow bubbles. But mostly it's just rained. Stupid, gloomy, rain.

The closest thing to a merry-go-round since my childhood.

I got to go to the temple a couple of times, and my church stake has a Humanitarian Work Center where I went and helped sew things for ladies in Africa. The girls had dentist appointments and Mira had a well-check where the doctor and I decided Mira must have just had a growth spurt since her tallness percentage went up significantly. (She's still not tall.)

I always love the flowers at the temple.

There's lots of other every day things that went on. Shenanigans and housework, writing and game playing (Steve got a new game called The Castles of Mad King Ludwig and it's pretty fun), cleaning and reading and school.

Next weekend I get to go to the LDStorymakers writing conference and I'm super excited. La lala! I entered the first chapter contest and I'm pitching my book to a publisher, so wish me luck!

And . . . the rest of the pictures.
My kids are cute when they sleep. Well. All kids are cute when they sleep. But I love checking on them before I go to bed at night.

Cecily is not prejudiced. Winnie the Pooh sheets, My Little Pony blanket, Barbie book, Frozen microphone, plus stuffed animal roll call of Snoopy, Lamby (Doc McStuffins), Umbreon (Pokemon), and Toothless (How To Train Your Dragon).

Emilia looks so grown up in this picture.

Just call her Bright-Eyes.

Again with the grown-up look.

Marbles are picture-worthy.

The girls have taken to having church with their stuffed animals on Sunday. I love their creativity and devotion.

I made this chocolate cake for dessert tonight. If you don't hear from me, I overdosed on chocolate, sugar, and fat. Send help.

Ready for an afternoon at Grandma and Grandpa's.

I just thought this was funny. The difference between how Steve 'goes through the mail' and how I do.