Favorite Things and Not Favorite Things

•  Camille is taking ice skating lessons this winter, and she's loving them. It's all the way in Provo, so we won't continue after this session. But she's having fun with it for now. 

• The other day Brooke wrote a note on their bathroom mirror for Camille, which I thought was absolutely adorable. 

• Jack's imagination is still running full tilt. He still loves dressing up, and every time I truly think about it, it makes me love him more. 
• Sawyer and the dog still love bugging each other, which honestly isn't always the funnest thing. But it's fun that they like to play. It's a bit of a love hate relationship. 
• Sawyer recently stopped asking me for mommy time, and my heart is shattered. Then I start questioning all my decisions. Did I not play with him enough and he's just given up? Am I too distracted too much? Has he just moved on from needing my attention so constantly, like the other kids did? Am I a bad mom? It doesn't help that he's suddenly obsessed with Daniel and doesn't want anything to do with me anymore. Truth be told, I'm struggling. He's my baby! It's so hard when he hits milestones, because he's the last. And it's hard that he's moving away from me. 
• The other night, I physically hurt thinking about how my kids are growing up, and in a short number of years, they'll start pulling away and then leave. I know I don't need to be worrying about it quite yet. But it's hard not to think about and be devastated about. Maybe it's also just the mood I've been in lately. 
• Jack is taking a Snapology class this winter that he's loving! Yesterday he made the Mars rover. And it even moved! He is still such a Lego kid. We've been struggling lately about school, fighting and power-struggling a lot. It's been really hard. We were both in tears about it today. I said a very tearful prayer about what I should do, and the answer I feel I got was these words: "Fill his bucket." 
• I took a long break from social media during December and this month. It felt so nice. I had to delete the blasted app off my phone because it was becoming a problem. I noticed myself exhibiting very addictive behavior with it. It wasn't good. But after a week or 2, I felt so much more peaceful and less in my head all the time, and more able to connect with my kids and be there for them. I installed it last week when we were on vacation in California. But since we've been home I've hardly used it. I think I'm just tired of it playing with my head and my emotions. 
• Camille is reading this book series that uses the Greek gods as characters for the stories. She's loving it. I don't know if they're super quality books, but I do feel she's picking up some Greek mythology from them. 
• Brooke is my little star. She's so happy and cheerful and loving and helpful. She's getting so big and beautiful and independent. She's loving her music classes and learning to play piano and flute, and I'm proud of her great effort and progress. She also does the best job taking care of Tucker. She takes him on walks with Claire and Nala, she trains him and bathes him and feeds him. And she just loves him to death. He is definitely her dog. He loves being around me; but he only listens to Brooke. 
• A few weeks ago, we had a field trip to the police station. Jack was in absolute heaven! And really, it was almost shocking how much he already knew about police work and stations. He and the other kids asked some really good questions, and our guide, officer Allred, gave us the full tour and told us really cool stuff. He was really actually so great. We're going to send him some cards and pictures and a gift card to thank him. 

• Camille has been obsessed with making cupcakes from this cupcake recipe book we have. A couple of weeks ago, she made this super delicious chocolate peanut butter cupcake. She even made her own peanut butter cups, butter we didn't have any. She has all these plans to make every single cupcake in the book. 😂