Photos

Our last family photo shoot with my sister worked out so well, that I thought we'd go for it again now that we really need a current pic.  We had quite a time this time, and not so many pics that I was so in love with.  We even had my sister there to help corral the little people and cart stuff.  Oh well, c'est la vie.  I think if we can stand it, I want to try again soon... Here are a few that we salvaged from the ruins.

Count Your Many Blessings

I am so grateful for many things, here is my list of one that struck me each day this month.

1- Healthy babies. I'm especially grateful for this now, as Carson is not only my first child after a miscarriage, but also endured my stomach flus, colds, pink eye, roller coasters, hot tubs and car accident all in utero.  But you'd never know it looking at him.
2- I know everyone thinks their kids are the cuteset, but seriously... I have beautiful children.
3- A loving, generous husband who is able to bless our children
4- So much support and help from friends and family
5- Carson's personality and easy-going nature. He is such a good baby!
6- This amazing country that we live in (even though Mitt Romney didn't win, ugh!)
7- My selfless grandmother, turned 80 this year!
8- Vaaaaaacations!
9- Snow.  Not very often, but sometimes I am. :)
10- Amelie's sweet (sometimes bossy) nature, she is always helping her mom and trying to make everyone happy.
11- My mom van. Despite its numerous repairs.
12- The internet.  I sometimes think about life before the internet and cell phones, and it seems like life was much harder. (Who remembers card catalogs?!) I do think there are many detrimental effects of this, but if used appropriately, can enhance our lives so greatly!
13- Alisa's spunk and happy attitude.  She runs around smiling and laughing and always puts a smile on my face.
14- Not only having to be "stuck" home everyday - a very flexible job.
15- Bills, bills, bills.  OK, I won't pretend that I actually feel grateful when my bills start rolling in each month, but having them means many things.  It means we are able to support ourselves in this lovely country, it means we are blessed enough to provide experiences (like dance or gymnastics) to our children, that we make enough to enjoy a basic TV package... We are very blessed.
16- Cameras! Helping me capture cuteness and memories that I might otherwise forget.
17- Christmas music - it just puts you in a good mood.
18- Handel's Messiah. Amazing music, and it's a priviledge to sing it.
19- Weight loss success! (Too bad it started right before Thanksgiving... gone now!)
20- Cooking.  I love to cook.  I love serving my family in this way, I love creating a masterpiece from random individual pieces, I love the calm I get from doing it (...most of the time.) Plus, then you get to enjoy:
21- Good food.  I know, this might label me as a pig, but seriously, I love eating good food.  Such a blessing to have that privilege.
22- Thanksgiving!  I am really grateful for a chance to sit back and look at all my blessings, and realize just how blessed I am.
23- Spending time with family!  Seriously, we love hanging out.
24- The most amazing advancements in modern medicine.
25- My calling in Young Women!  I love, love, love working with youth - always have - and they not only teach me so much and require me to get outside of myself, but they are just fun and they keep me young in my aging years. ;)
26- Downtime.
27- Good friends
28- This might seem redundant but, family that is always so willing to help!  They really save us sometimes.
29- The ability to stay at home with my children and a hard working husband that makes that possible.
30- Growing self-discipline.  I am getting better!

MTMMS, 4?

Amelie: Lisie, if you're not whitening, you're yellowing!  (have you seen that toothpaste commercial?)

Nikki: It's the one from the window... to the wall...

Alisa: Oh, mommy, that was a good job!

Amie: Jack is sooooooo handsome. (classmate)
Amie: Mom, I was gonna marry Jack, but I also want to marry Kail (cousin) and I just don't know what to do!

Amie: Mom, I want to marry Carson when we're big.
(It's looking like we'll need to have a little clarification discussion when it comes to marriage.)
Lisie: (pointing to her mouth) Mom, candy wants this.

Amelie: I just can't stop loving you guys!!

Alisa: (waking up in the morning, after taking off her jammies) Bodies, bodies! My bodies came back!! (hugging herself)

Blessing Day

On Sunday the 4th, we gave Carson his blessing at church, followed by brunch at my house. It was very well attended by our families, extended families, and many friends. So well, in fact, that we kinda ran out of food right at the end there. Sorry guys! (After Lisie's, we had a potato bar - and I forgot to turn on the oven... One day we'll get it right.)

He kept eating his collar.

He always gives the best smiles!

 The whole outfit, complete with the shoes Jeff wore on his blessing day!

Yes, we girls are all in polka dots.

Jeff gave a lovely blessing, and as with our other 2, this amazing woman in our ward copied it down in shorthand and typed it up for us. I absoluely love having this - I wish I had mine! We took a minute to look through all3 kids' blessings last night, and now that the girls are a little older, it was incredibly interesting to me to see each child's personality related to their blessing.  See for yourself:

Amelie
Our dear Heavenly Father, by the power and authority of the Melchizedek Priesthood which we hold, we take this baby in our arms to give her a name and a blessing. The name we have chosen for her and by which she shall be known upon the records of the church is Amelie Josephine North.

Amelie, we would like to give you a blessing. We bless you to be happy and to know of the love your family and extended family have for you. We bless you that you can return that love and show that love to others.
We bless you with a love of your Heavenly Father. Stay close to Him throughout your life. We bless you to become strong in the church and that one day you will marry a worthy priesthood holder who will take you to the temple.
We bless you with a bright mind and a keen intellect. We bless you to be able to get an education.
We bless you to have joy in your family and one day to have children of your own.

Alisa
Our dear Heavenly Father, by the power of the Holy Melchizedek Priesthood which we hold, we take this baby in our arms to give her a name and a blessing. Father, the name we have chosen for her and by which she shall be known throughout her life and upon the records of the church is Alisa Danielle North.

At this time we would like to bless her with health and strength. We bless her with a testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and of her Heavenly Father and with a love for Him.
Alisa, we bless you with the ability to be an example to those around you.
We bless you to someday be able to find a worthy priesthood holder, to be married in the temple, and to have children of your own.
Alisa, we want to let you know how much we in your family love you, including your extended family.
We bless you to be able to get an education and to appreciate the good things of life. We bless you to appreciate the good times in life and to be able to learn from the bad.

Carson
Our dear Heavenly Father, by the power and authority of the Holy Melchizedek Priesthood which we hold, we take this infant in our arms to give him a name and a blessing. The name which we have chosen and by which he shall be known throughout his life is Carson Radcliffe North.

Carson, at this time we wish to give you a blessing. We bless you to know that your family loves you and that we are very happy that you are here with us. Carson, we bless you to be healthy and strong, both in body and in mind, and also in spirit, that you can grow and make good choices in your life.
Carson, we bless you with a strong character that you can be honest and upright in your dealings with your fellowmen and with Heavenly Father.
We bless you to be able to gain an education and to know the value of hard work.
We bless you to someday find a worthy daughter of God and to take her to the temple and be sealed for eternity.
We bless you to be able to have a testimony of the church, to stay strong and to one day gain the priesthood and magnify it in your life.

We bless you to know the love of your Heavenly Father and to know all He does for you.

The 12 days of Halloween

OK, so maybe not quite 12, but this is one holiday that really gets dragged out around here.  We had many occasions to dress up, AND it so happens that my kids decided to have a different costume for almost every one of them. (Thanks to our well-stocked dress up box, or that definitely would not have happened!)

Witches night out:

Pink Witchies

Boo at the Zoo:

Daisy Duck, giraffe, Minnie Mouse

Twinners with our zoo's brand new baby giraffe! It's so dark, but the stranger had already taken like 5.

Poynor family party:

Rapunzel and Minnie didn't want to be part of our family costume

Muahahaha!

Costume parade at Challenger School:

Draculaura

We went to lunch with Dayna and grandma afterward.
Halloween day:

Jack o lantern pancakes (I made theirs with the candy corn inside, but it melted and looked kinda scary!)

Trick or treating at daddy's work! So fun (they had the good/big stuff there!)
 They went with princess and fairy this time.

 

 Mal became our replacement cop while dad was at work - you can't see it, but she had a police badge on.

River Song and the Dr.

Apparently I missed it, but the girls' final costumes for actual Halloween trick or treating, were fairy(Lisie) and Draculaura(Amie.) We always ToT at my mom's cause it's a very kid-friendly neighborhood.  (We missed our cousins being there with us this year!)

Settlin'

Just before Carson was born, it was the start of the school year - the year where Amie just happened to begin school. She also returned to another season of dance class, and Alisa began gymnastics.  It was also when Jeff switched to the graveyard shift.  You might guess how this made for a lot of changes all at once, and life got kind of crazy.  Luckily, thanks to a natural delivery and it being the third time, I was up and at 'em MUCH more quickly and able to take over when Jeff went back to work.  I feel like it's taken us these last weeks to really find our groove, but we are finally settling in.  It is nice to have a regular schedule working, with weekday activities and Jeff off on the weekends... we haven't had that for years! Unfortunately, our schedule has us driving a lot... which puts Carson to sleep a lot... so, he's still waking up pretty much every two hours at night, but he almost always goes right back to sleep after he eats, so I can't complain too much.  (Plus with Jeff's night schedule, I usually get one night a week where I just get to sleep most all night and recover from zombietude.)

The many faces of Carson

 Check out these money shots!  He's a great smiler!!

Vacationish

In order to keep up my license and certification as a recreation therapist, I have to attend/get continuing education units.  I was taking a look at the hours I had and realized I was probably not going to make it, so I had to attend this year's national conference, which was in Phoenix.  We had been wanting to get out of town (as always) and thought I'd still be nursing Carson, so we made a family trip of it.  We took off early in the morning (about 5) and rolled into Pheonix right about the time the first session started. (It totally snowed in the middle of the drive down!) The girls were surprisingly great on the 11.5 hr drive there.

Look at the crazy weather that weekend!
We have a couple of condos in AZ, so of course we stayed at one, since it cost us less than a single night at the hotel.  The only prob was that the closest one was an hour and 45 away.  The conference was great, I enjoyed pretty much everything I attended, and got lots of CE hours.  I feel like I only spent the rest of the time in the van, though.  Jeff troopered it out with the kids at the condo, but luckily they had a pool, kiddie pool, playground, etc. and they all enjoyed themselves.

We pulled back into home at maybe 5 or 6 am on Tuesday and had to get up a few hours later for preschool and gymnastics!  That was super fun....

Amelie - 4 years!

My oldest, Amelie, turned 4 this month.  It's so unbelievable how quickly time goes by, and yet it feels like she has always been a part of our family. (Seriously, Jeff and I can't remember life without kids.)

Amelie is back in her dance class and started preschool this year (at Challenger School,) and she is very into it.  She plays school a lot, practices writing and sounding out letters/words.  She's learning much and loving every second of it.  She is a great help to me with the chaos that is 3 kids.  Usually, she is very happy to help and put herself in the category of older, more able people, though every now and then she won't want to help but does it anyway.  She and Lisie are turning into the best of friends.  They still have sister fights, of course, but they seem to love being together more and more, and it's a good thing, because they are almost always together. :)

On the actual birthday, we always spend the day together as a family, letting the person of honor choose where we go and what we do.  Amelie had school in the morning, where I came in for her birthday spotlight, that was fun (although I felt kinda silly doing it.) 

From school, we went to McDonald's for lunch, then the Living Planet Aquarium.  We all enjoyed that.  From there, we picked up Jeff (who was sleeping off the grave shift from the night before.)  She had mentioned she wanted to go to the Church History Museum after that, but when we asked her that day, she said we should get a pizza and go to grandma's.



For her party, she decided she wanted a tea party, so I made my first foray into the world of true little kid birthday party.  We found a pink and yellow flower tea set, homemade tissue paper balls, and had lots of tea party worthy food (heart- and teddy bear-shaped sandwiches, jam cookies, chocolate covered strawberries, and cherry-flavored jello.)  And our "tea" was strawberry watermelon crystal light, Amie's choice.  They decorated little lace hats beforehand so everyone could be fancy for tea.  We had teapot cupcakes, sang happy birthday and opened presents (she got lots of dolls!)  I had a few games and dress ups planned for after that, but the girls were all playing happily in the bedroom together, so I just let them be!  It seemed to go well, though everyone was SILENT at tea time - can you imagine 8 silent little girls? (Playtime was NOT so silent.)

Here are some pics:

Since it was just a kid party, we had cake (she picked red velvet with purple icing and blue polka dots) and ice cream with Jeff's family after the party, then celebrated with the Radcliffe's at that week's family dinner.