Tight Pants.

Wicked Moves.

Lovin’ on Uncle Robbie.

I love me a good play. So when The Complete Works of Shakespeare Abridged was playing the same weekend we would be in yakima I knew we had to go.

If you ever have the opportunity to see this play, jump on it. It is two hours of nonstop slapstick comedy.

This was our last hoorah before we clamp the budget shut. It was a good way to spend the evening.

Thanks to my mom for babysitting.

Where do you see yourself in 5 years? 10? 20?

As a stay-at-home-mom I have a lot of reflection time, sometimes too much. I think a lot about the future. What life will be like when Kyle is done with school and where we will decide to settle or will we settle? Maybe we will wander, traveling the globe with our kids, exposining them to all the world has to offer…

I think about how my home will look and what we will do as a family each night (board games.)

Then I started thinking about how I will think. Mind boggling I know.

How do I want to view my world?

It’s so easy to get caught up in the material things we want out of life. We are a visual people and usually the easiest target in visuals are material possessions. But I want to change how I view my life, I want to change the focus from possessions to feelings.

The conclusion I came to with how I want my life to feel when I am older.

Simple.

I want a simple life. I don’t want to get caught up in to-do lists and the latest fashion trends. Yes, I want to look and feel beautiful but I want to do it simply. I want my memories to be filled not with exotic trips to Costa Rica or lavish parties but with moments of my family laughing. I want so many laughter filled moments that they blur together in my mind and I can’t separate them. I don’t want to care about fancy things. I want to enjoy the world God created and relish in the simplicity of a summer hike. A winter hike too for that matter!

I want to enjoy the meals that I make and not get upset over mistakes or strive to use exotic ingredients.

I want to expand my worldview but I want to do it in a way that overcomes the materialism that too easily comes with life.

How did I get to this conclusion?

Well it started with looking at our budget in life currently and at first being devastatingly sad about. The reality is that we cannot afford a caramel apple spice from starbucks, even if I feel like I deserve it. The reality is that even shopping at Goodwill is too expensive. Then I had the thought. Why do I have to be sad about having a strict budget?

I don’t.

If there is one thing my women studies minor taught me is that we have a right to claim how we feel and to divert from the norm of how society says we should feel.

Society tells me I should be awfully sad about having such a strict budget and that I should just find ways around it, to cheat the system and go into a little debt.

Well to the norm I say:

“TOO BAD!”

I’m going to live simply and I am going to learn to love it (besides I’ve never really been normal anyways)

Kyle goes by papa in our home. I don’t know how it happened but I just started calling him that. He goes by dad sometimes, but it’s mostly papa here.

I looove the relationship they have. At the end of the day max only wants papa. He will be crying and fussing and as soon as I pass him over max will be smiling and cooing.

It makes me very happy.

It seems with cold weather comes stuffy noses and head colds. I haven’t been hit yet but poor baby Max has.

It seriously affects my ability to sleep at night since Max is constantly coughing and waking up because he can’t breath out of his nose. Poor bubba.

So I’m doing what I like to do when I have a stuffy nose. Take a warm shower, turn on the heat and be extremely lazy promoting as much healing sleep as possible. Of course I always enjoy soup but Max is on a strict diet of breastmilk. I don’t think he minds though.

Hopefully this cold will pass soon. In the meantime I will continue singing silly songs about being a monkey at the zoo (unscripted).

When I saw this yoda costume on sale at Walgreens I knew our fate was set for a very nerdy Halloween. Plus it gave us an excuse to watch some Star Wars movies.

I woke up today and had the urge to make a collective to-do list of all the thoughts floating in my head.

It was a big list. Thankfully the sun was shining and it gave me the energy to barrel into the list full force!

Laundry, meal plan, grocery shopping and all with the beautiful blue sky saying “I AM FALL!!” (said like that sparticus dude)

And I would like to send a jealous shoutout to my uncle patrick who is leaving for a holy land tour tonight. I hope he stays safe and buys some cute Israeli baby clothes for max (hint hint)

At the end of this month I will have been a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for 5 years.

It seems like such a short amount of time for all the growth that I have felt in my life. But still I feel like I have so much further to go.

I was thinking this week about the scriptures and about how I am continually struggling to grasp their many stories. I grew up with a general knowledge of Adam and Eve and Noah and some of the Savior’s parables but that was as far as my knowledge went. I certainly didn’t comprehend the stories for the lessons within.

Over the past five years I have gained access to more and more scripture stories and have gained the ability to actually study them versus just reading them. But I want to KNOW them. I want Max to ask me about Ruth or Captain Moroni and I want to be able to tell him all about God’s servants and the examples they set.

So long story short I have decided to start now. Every day I have been choosing a story from the scriptures to tell to Max. He sits on my lap with those gorgeous navy eyes looking up at me and I tell him as much as I can about Noah and Nephi and Queen Esther.

There is always so much learning to take place and I am grateful that my Heavenly Father has placed in me a desire to learn and expand my knowledge. Not just for the sake of knowing but for the sake of understanding.