I've thought for a long time that I don't particularly like to cook. It takes so much time and it's hard when my kids are needy and fussy and just want to play and just want to be held. So the difficulty of trying to make dinner with kids around makes it... less fun. 

But over the past few months, I think I've changed my mind. It's still hard to cook with kids underfoot. But I think I actually rather enjoy cooking! I love that I can take a collection of ingredients and chop and slice and sautée and combine and stir and cook and bake and create something new and lovely and delicious. It's really rewarding. It satisfies my need to create something. I take raw materials and work and use my hands to create something else. 

I think I've also decided that I enjoy cooking more than baking. I like to bake just fine, and I certainly enjoy the end result of baking. But I don't enjoy the process as much as when I'm cooking. Funny how that works. 

It also helps that I just love food. And I don't understand people who don't love food, who simply eat to sustain life. Or even people who are picky! I can't understand them. It's a pleasure to read cookbooks, to plan menus and prepare food. It would be even better if I had more time to do it. 😬😅

My favorite moments of today: 

• Camille and I were cooking dinner together with music on, and Camille told me to look at her new dance move. It was very funny and silly and cute. But then the best part was when she said, "I'm getting ready to be a mom. I'm working on my silly dancing." 🤣
• This afternoon, Sawyer found an old crusty cookie from behind the couch, and walked into the kitchen totally just munching on it. Camille and Brooke and I were cracking up. 
• I couldn't handle how cute Sawyer was at the girls swim lessons. He's so used to going to them now, after the last 2 weeks when Jack had swim everyday. We walked in, and he just pulled himself up into a chair and sat down quietly and watched. His cute little legs just sticking straight out in front of him on the chair. So cute. He was so quiet and still nearly the whole time we were there.
• We got a kiwico box a few weeks ago with bread making experiments in it. Brooke busted it out today and read through the experiment book and did one of the experiments with yeast. She put yeast into 2 bottles, one with more sugar than the other, and then fixed balloons to the top of the bottles. The one with more sugar bubbles up more, making the balloon blow up. The kids, especially Brooke, were all thrilled with the results. They thought it was the coolest. 
• After Brooke and Camille finished their swim lesson, they played for a little while with some of their friends from class, a sister and brother. When I told them it was time to get out, they asked if they could just do their race and then get out. Their race cracked me up! The younger siblings got onto their older sister's backs, piggyback style, and the older girls sloshed through the pool as fast as they could with their sibling on their back. It was so cute and funny and I loved just the image of it.
• Sawyer, shaking his cute little booty to the music. I'll never get tired of that sight. 

Valentine's Day

 We had a great Valentine's Day weekend.

After church on yesterday, I made our special Valentine's dinner while Daniel took Jack to visit his Gramma. We had a tea party themed Valentine's dinner, so I made cucumber sandwiches, cookie dough truffles, fruit and fruit dip, and a cheese and cracker tray, and Brooke made blueberry scones. It was actually so fun. We went around the table saying things we love about each other, and then at one point one of the girls went to get a joke book from downstairs, and they started telling us jokes. There was so much food, I definitely over prepared; but it was also delicious, and definitely special and different. New tradition??

Today, I woke up and immediately started finding little notes all over the house from Daniel. Things like, "thanks for cleaning the house" and "I love your beautiful smile". Brooke and I had so much fun finding them and reading them. Daniel told me there were 32, so at the end of the day, I collected them all and counted them and had to go hunting for the last 7 or 8. 

Daniel also bought me a new houseplant and some beautiful, cheerful flowers. ❤

The kids went and delivered Valentines to all their friends this morning while I was getting ready. Cute little people. 

For the kids, my Valentine's Day surprise for them was that I got each of them a little wooden craft to paint. They loved it! After we got done with school, we had a little Valentine's party. We played Valentine's bingo and had a special treat and then painted. I didn't get anything for myself to paint, so I painted each of us a little bookmark with wide popsicle sticks. We had a lot of fun. But at some point Jack turned to me and said, "Mom, why are you painting sticks? That's just awkward." And then had the saddest face, like he was so sorry for me that I didn't have something more exciting to paint. It cracked me up. 

Brooke went and heart attacked the Christensens door this afternoon, and then they went and played with the Christensens after the boys came home from school. And some of their other friends brought them some cute Valentines. 

Daniel took me to an Indian restaurant for dinner (we spent the first 25 minutes driving around to see what we could find for dinner) and then we went to Blox for dessert. It's this brownie and bars dessert place, and it was delicious. I for sure ate way too much today. We had to watch part of a movie when we got home, so we could let our food settle. 😅

It was a very nice Valentine's day. 

• Sawyer is so cute when we say prayers. He folds his little hands and bows his head over them and starts mumble-whispering along with whoever is saying the prayer. We all find it absolutely adorable. 
• We had our friends the Tanners over for games and snacks last night. We played splendor and 7s and had a great time with them. 
• Jack finished his swim class this week and didn't pass. 😂 His teacher wants him to redo that level... but considering we put him straight into level 2 without doing level 1, it makes sense. Maybe I'll go back and put him in level 1. The girls and I are excited to go back to a somewhat normal school schedule again this week. 
• I know I probably say this all the time but Brooke is the best big sister. She's so good at being there for her siblings, playing with them when they need a friend, making sure they don't get hurt, and so on. It makes my heart so happy. She's becoming such a big responsible girl. 
• Camille and Jack have been playing together more lately. I think as Brooke is getting older, she has wanted to play with toys less and less (I know that kind of contradicts what I just wrote, she does often play with them, but she's also approaching that age where her interests are taking her elsewhere). And so Camille has had to turn to her little brother for a playmate the last couple of months. I like that they are playing together, and, hopefully becoming friends. 
• The girls had a late night with their friends on Friday night. Lily and Claire and Corinne came over, and we played Life together. With that many little girls, the game took forever, and we had to stop before we finished it because it was getting too late. But they all had fun I think. 
• I spent and time on Friday trying to plan out school for next year. Maybe a separate entry would be better for this topic, because I have a lot on my mind concerning homeschooling. 
• On Wednesday of this week, we skipped the rest of school, went to the store after swim lessons to pick up supplies, and did a big Valentine's project. We made dozens and dozens of cake mix cookies and delivered them to a whole bunch of our neighbors and friends. It literally took all afternoon to do it! But my girls loved being able to make some of the batches by themselves, and we made such interesting flavors: strawberry, red velvet, dark chocolate, lemon, yellow. We had a good time, but I got nothing else done that whole day, and we did eggs and toast for dinner because I didn't have time to make a real dinner. 😅 

*Brooke, Camille, and Jack put on a tea party for us this week. I helped Brooke make blueberry scones for it. It was one of those times when I had so much to do and we were done with school, and I had plans to get some things done around the house. But I thought to myself, "These kids are growing up too fast. Someday too soon, they'll stop planning these tea parties, and you will have missed these moments because you were too busy 'getting stuff done around the house'." So, I stopped. And i liked up a recipe for scones, and I made scones, and I had a tea party. I'm glad I stopped and played with my kids this time. We had a good time.*

One day this week, Camille made this waterfall and jungle out of Legos, and I love it. It's so creative and cute! I love the way her mind works sometimes. 

• Daniel gave an amazing testimony yesterday in sacrament meeting about how God calls those who are willing to give their lives over to Him and do His will, rather than those who are qualified for the work. I wish I could do him justice, but he's just so wise and awesome. 
• Jack has started saying, "right this evil second?!" Anytime I ask him to do something. "Jack, you need to go get dressed." "Right this evil second?!" It's hilarious. 
• Jack is playing "food truck" today. He drew a picture of his food truck, and now he's dressed up as a chef and pretending to make and deliver food to us. 😍
• Every day, I notice cute things Sawyer does that I want to write down. And every time I go to write, I forget that specific cute thing. Suffice it to say, every single thing he does is cute, and basically not a day goes by that Daniel doesn't turn to me and say, "he's just so cute. I'm loving this stage." He's not wrong, and we're all pretty obsessed with him. 

 Well. They released me from my calling last weekend. I sat in the bishop's office, feeling fairly confident that I wouldn't be released when he said those words. And I cried. 

I didn't expect to be so sad to be released from this calling. I was finally getting into a good groove with singing time, after the first year, where Toree and I were switching off and it was kinda hard and awkward; after that year of covid, when I did nothing; and after this last year that was so odd, slowly moving towards normal, full time church. I was honestly hoping for one more year; a year that would be somewhat normal, where I could finally just plan everything out that I wanted to do, where I could do my own thing and put a program together from start to finish. 

Plus, I just love being in there with all the kids. I love primary kids, and it's so fun to be with them and to feel their growing faith and their enthusiasm and hope for life. I loved doing singing time. Really loved it. So, I was sad when they released me. I cried quite a lot, and I felt so bad for bishop. I'm sure he felt bad about it. 

It does make sense. I've been in this calling since we moved here, so it's been almost 3 years. My new calling is girls camp. I'm in charge of putting girls camp together this year, along with DeAnna. We'll be working together, which will be really fun. But I'm quite intimidated by this calling. I have no experience in young women's, and my only experience with girls call is when I was a young woman attending. And that one year that I was a cabin leader in Medford. Plus, they have changed so much how they do things in the youth programs since I was a youth that I feel pretty lost. I'm going to have to do a lot of reading and research to catch up. 

My kids had a rough day on Friday. Everyone was grumpy, and I had planned to do a movie night that night, but didn't think they deserved one. They were fighting and bickering with each other, finding fault with tiny little things, blaming each other for things, talking back and being rude to me... it was pretty bad. I called Daniel at work to help me know what to do. I wasn't sure what would be best: to cancel movie night because they didn't deserve it, or to be the merciful mother and do it anyway, even though they didn't deserve it; to foster family unity and bonding and tradition. 

In the end, we had a long talk, I told them I didn't think we should do a movie night, we all felt bad, read scriptures and prayed. And then we did a partial movie night. We watched only some of a movie, and I put Jack to bed first and then the girls. And everyone went to bed at a fairly reasonable hour, so that we wouldn't wake up grumpy again. 

The house was such a mess. I spent 2 hours cleaning up after I put the kids to bed, and Daniel stayed and worked until 1 in the morning. 🙄🙄🙄

Yesterday was better. My kids were mostly delightful and played nicely together and did their chores. It was wonderful, and such a difference from Friday. 

*These 2 are my little kitchen helpers. They both love to be in the kitchen with me when I'm making dinner. Sawyer mostly just hangs around and does random stuff, tearing the kitchen up; but he does love to stir things. Camille loves to help in lots of ways. It was so cute to see them helping together. 😍 *

*We've had this decoration in our room for the past several years, and I wanted to change things up a bit. So this one ended up in the trash, but I had to take a picture. These dates are: 1) the day we first met; 2) the second day we first met; 3) the day we got back together; and 4) the day we got married. ❤️ *

*Sawyer snuggled up with me to watch Music and the Spoken Word this morning. 😍*

Sawyer took his blanket over to Tega's pen and laid down on it next to her. He hung out with her there for a while. It was adorable.*

 Been feeling down about myself these last few weeks. I don't know why. I decided when we moved here that I wasn't going to allow negative thoughts about myself or my friends to invade my thoughts. And normally, I've been pretty good at keeping to that. But the last month or so, it's been harder to keep those thoughts from taking over my mind. 

We've been busy the last few weeks since I got back from New Orleans: swim lessons for the kids, school, primary activities for the girls, birthday parties for Jack, play dates, lunches with my friends, game nights, movie nights and people for dinner. Also, stick service opportunities in there. It's been good. 

My kids are the sweetest. I've nothing particular to say on that score, no specific stories to tell. I'm just always amazed at the end of every day that they are forgiving and loving enough to still love and adore me so much, even if I haven't done the best that day. 

Trying to remember that Jesus loves me, even if no one else does (and yes, I know many other people do. Some days, it's just good to remember THIS). 

*Jack got his kiwico box the other day and it was all about bugs. He made this adorable "bug wing" cape, and headband, and I can't get over how cute he is.*

*Brooke is the best big sister ever. Here she is watching over and helping Sawyer while Jack has his swim class. He wanted to get right close to the pool, and she was nervous about it, so she sat next to him and made sure he didn't get too close. I love watching her be a responsible big sister. ❤*