What Mothers Do...

Linzy had this story posted on her blog, and I thought it was great:

and one of my favorite parts so far in this book
talks about a husband who came home to find total mayhem in his house.
(i have to type this part because it is awesome) :)
"His children were outside, still in their pajamas, wrestling in the mud, with empty food boxes and wrappers strewn all around the front yard. The door of his wife's car was open, as was the front door to the house. Inside, he found an even larger mess. A lamp had been knocked over, and the throw rug was wadded against one wall. In the family room the dog who always stayed outside was curled up on the sofa watching cartoons. The front room (the home teaching room, which was always spotless) was littered with toys and various items of clothing. In the kitchen, dishes filled the sink, breakfast food was spilled on the counter, dog food was spilled on the floor, a broken glass lay under the table, and a small pile of sand was spread by the back door. He quickly headed up the stairs, stepping over toys and more piles of clothes, looking for his wife. He was worried she may be ill, or that something serious had happened. He found her lounging in the bedroom, still curled in the bed in her pajamas, reading a novel. She looked up at him, smiled and asked how his day went. He looked at here, bewildered, and asked, "What happened here today?"
She again smiled and answered, "You know every day when you come home from work and ask me what in the world I did today?"
"Yes," was his incredulous reply.
She answered, "Well, today I didn't do it."

Don't you just love being appreciated for what you do as a "stay at home mom?" It is hard to know that your daily tasks are always going to need to be done again the next day. It can be difficult to find meaning in that, but I just try to remember that it is all about relationships and not about having a perfect home (although it is difficult to have a meaningful relationship when there is no food on the table and you can't find anything in all the mayhem of dirt of clutter!).

Family Pictures

Mom and Mariah! We sure love each other. I love Mariah's company and great personality. She loves to be involved in whatever we are doing and to play along. And she always wants both parents to participate!Isn't she precious?Mariah loves, "Daddy"! He loves getting down and playing with her after work! I appreciate the time to wrap up dinner!Our little Winter Princess!Our happy family in 2010. We happily await a baby boy to join us in March!

A Full Week at Priest Lake Idaho

Heber's whole family was able to gather this summer for a full week in PL ID! We had a super fun time, and as you can see, Heber really enjoyed himself as well!
It is hard to capture everything in a single blog post, but to summarize our week, we were in the water almost the whole time! Mariah was in heaven. She is not afraid of water at all! (which was a little scary, but fun)!
We got to go tubing, water skiing, you name it! We even had an intense game of King of the Water Trampoline!
We went on a short hike with everyone to a gorgeous water fall (can't remember the name).
The hardest part was coming home to reality! Living right on the water has it's benefits!

Washing the Cars

With all our travels, car upkeep was a must! We got the tires replace on our travel car and the oil changed. But Mariah especially enjoyed the Car Washing! Anything wet, she loves! Isn't she a hard worker? You will also notice that we have been cutting back on her meals lately : )!

A Weekend in CO

We had a family reunion in CO, and had a lot of fun. My Dad even hosted a Pampered Chef Party for me while I was up there!
This is a picture of the adults all dressed up for our Murder Mystery Dinner. We had sooo much fun. I was Mad Rose, and my role was to flirt with the Commodore the whole time. I was really good at this because it was Heber : ) funny how that worked out!
We spent a day at the Sand Dunes and the Alligator Farm, and enjoyed a picnic lunch there! We had a lot of fun, and of course, Mariah enjoyed the water!
We did a ton more stuff, but one thing I really enjoyed was hitching up the wagon to the 4-wheeler and giving all my nieces and nephews rides! Mariah wanted to drive (without help), of course! We had a really good time. Thanks Mom and Dad in CO!

A Week in Illinois

This summer, I think I have been on vacation for a total of 3 full weeks! It has been crazy, tiring, but fun (other than the traveling part)! First of all, I took Mariah and a babysitter, Kylie, to Chicago for 4 days, and she watched Mariah while I went to a Pampered Chef Conference! Luckily, Kylie's sister lives in Chicago, so we had free lodging! Unfortunately, she lived in the suburbs, so I had to figure out the transit system and take it into downtown Chicago daily. Fortunately, I have feet and I just walked a lot when I wasn't brave enough to get on busses or trains! The flight over there and back was difficult for Mariah, who does not like to sit on laps and is very active, but we survived. Then, on Thursday, Heber flew out and we all drove to Nauvoo for the weekend. We had a ton of fun and really enjoyed ourselves. We went to Carthage, the temple, and saw all performances that were offered! We really enjoyed ourselves!

Why Heber?

Can someone tell me why Heber didn't think to take off all Mariah's clothes for this spaghetti dish with sauce for Mariah? And no, he didn't put down a matt either.... Men! I know what Heber was thinking. He was thinking, "I am going to take such good care of Mariah and give her a big platter of yummy spaghetti!," and that is all! Well, she sure enjoyed it! And she is pretty cute, and I am thankful Heber fed her, even if it ruined her clothes and my rug.

What we are up to!

I realize we don't ever post, so I thought I would go ahead and tell you what we've been up to lately. We are staying super-busy as usual. I think I must be addicted to being busy, cuz I keep doing this to myself! I have been taking care of our cute, cute girl and working on my Pampered Chef business. I have been trying to get all the coolest stuff for my kitchen, and my mother's day gift to myself was a set of lifetime guarantee pots and pans! Now, I am saving up for the knives. In addition, I am signed up to go to the National PC Conference in Chicago this July, so I am excited about that. I am bringing a baby-sitter, Mariah, and Heber will join us on a Thursday so we can go spend the weekend in Nauvoo. We are all excited about that!

Mariah is getting to be quite the little adventurer. She takes off any chance she gets and goes on her way to discover her world. She walks and talks all the time, and she is slowly learning to use her hands, and that is scary! She is starting to throw quick little tantrums when she doesn't get her way, but I think this means she is just trying to be independent and to control her world, so we aren't worried about her! Of course, she is cute as a button, so who could worry?

Heber is doing fantastic with his work. He works at a company in AF doing iPhone game programming. In all his spare time, he recently finished up a game for the iPad called "Puppet Pals." He hopes to finish up the iPhone version soon as well. His work is sending him to the Apple Developers Conference in San Francisco next week, so we will really miss him. He is going to just soak it all up though! In the meantime, he is a wonderful Daddy and the best Hubby. We love and appreciate him so much. In fact, Mariah is a bit of a Daddy's Girl, despite my attempts to stop it!

We are all doing very well. The Lord is really blessing us!

Car Damage!

Last night, a guy knocked on Shelley's door to tell her he had wrecked into a car outside her house. Lucky us, it was our car. Of course, the odds were against us. While everyone else had 1 car outside, Heber and I had both our cars outside, so I learned this much in Statistics, we were at a higher probability of being hit! Now the fact that he wrecked into our new car (that we owe money on), was really just a fifty-fifty probability. Like the flip of the coin. Yeah, that stinks.

The guy who did it was curiously kind to come tell us, especially since he was drunk. He was arrested, and after being bailed out, he came over and apologized! We really appreciated his honesty because we really would've been in trouble. Of course, his car was suspiciously all over the place too. Now, we just hope that we are told that the car is totaled, so we don't have to deal with driving a "once wrecked" car! (He does have insurance--great relief). And we hope we will be given enough money to get us something equally as nice to drive. That was our security car! Hmmm, we will trust in the Lord. We have been doing our best to live right, so hopefully, everything will work out. We'll post pix when we have some. Say a "little" prayer for us if you would! We are especially thankful that no one was hurt. It sure shook Chantel up just hearing about it. Thanks, everyone.

Pampered Chef

I became a Pampered Chef consultant recently, and I decided that I should let everyone know! I am really excited about this because I love to cook, and I think it will be fun to do presentations and shows with these way cool products. Pampered Chef has the best quality products. I would love to be able to replace all my pans at some point in time because then Heber would know I really can cook, it's just that my pans are cheap (and that's why I burn stuff or it tastes funny sometimes)!

If anyone wants to host a show for me and earn free products and/or get great discounts on PC products, just let me know! Also, feel free to contact me if you want to learn about PC as a business opportunity or to buy anything. These products really do pamper you! I am way excited about this.