My Mother's Day

 I feel so loved!  I love being a mother and my children bring me great joy.  They made me breakfast in bed (toast and yogurt) and homemade cards, which I just love!

Amara's card is made out of a large piece of thin craft foam and it says: "Do you belev in ferys?  mom I love you.  ceep this forever.  fram amara"  Then a big heart below says "write here with pen," which I did.  She made this card for me a month before mother's day because she was so excited for it being the next holiday.  Her and her sister love "fairies" a lot!

Lily painted a place mat for me.

And in school she made me some flower coupons that turned out so cute.

Then she made a card for everyone to sign:

I love my children and I feel so blessed to be their mother.

Sweet Cedar City Silliness with a Sister and a Mom

Back in May, I was lucky to be able to go with my mom and April to Cedar City for a few days.  We stayed with Jake and Kelli and got to go to Jake's graduation and Brooklyn's baby blessing.  We also took an afternoon and showed off our golfing skills (and golf cart driving skills) at Cedar Breaks Golf course.

First off, SUU Graduation...

This was an inspiring picture in the hall of the big arena where Jake's graduation was.

I think that's a picture of Jake walking across the stage.

Live action video from the graduation scene...

Jake had lots of support there.

April had the better camera.

Love birds.

Random shot, but the only one I have with mom in it.

There's Grandma Rich talking to Mandy and Rex.  Jake talks about her all the time and I'm glad I got to finally meet her.  She's a wonderful woman.

Hayley's braid looked so cool that I had to have a picture.

  Kelli worked so hard and made such a yummy dinner for everyone!  We ate like royalty.  Sweet and sour meatballs and rice!  Fruit salad!  5 food group salad!  Chicken Queliguin salad!  Jello Cake!  I was in heaven.  She even custom-carved a watermelon and filled it with the fruit, which really deserves a blog post in and of itself, but for the sake of time and lack of my photography, here's what I do have...

Family togetherness carving the watermelon.  LOVE THAT!

The glorious creation.

Some of the food... YUMMY!

Getting ready to picnic outside Jake's apartment.

My gift to the 3 graduates: April, Jake, and Micah

 The next day April, Mom and I went "golfing."  Mom actually just rented a cart and tagged along with us since her arm was hurting.  We had so much fun!

Join in some of our fun for 2 minutes and watch this smilebox video starring April and her pink-handled driver. 

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To top our trip off, we got to see sweet Brooklyn get blessed by her daddy.  She is so precious to us and we loved getting to spend time with her and Parker.

Gettin' all clean for her pictures.

 I recognized her sweet little blessing dress!  That's the same dress that Lily and Amara were blessed in!  The dress is special not just because of the special spirits that wore it, but because of how it came to us.  My mom was living in Arizona and wanted to sew a blessing dress for Lily, so we counted on that.  But time flew by and she was under a lot of stress, and before she knew it, there wasn't much time left and she still hadn't sewn the dress.  She didn't have much money to buy a dress, which added to her stress.  One or two days before she was going to leave to Utah for the blessing, she went visiting teaching and mentioned her predicament to the sister that she visits.  She didn't know how it was all going to come together, but she felt God would bless her for going visiting teaching.  The next day, there was a knock at her front door, which was unusual.  She opened it and there stood the sister she visited with the day before with a little white gown in her hands.  She gave it to my mom as a gift with a smile and then they parted.  My mom later noticed the price tag was tucked inside and still attached to the dress, revealing that the dress cost much more than my mom could have spent.  So the gown was a gift given with love and that sweet sister delivered God's blessing that day.

Getting all ready for the blessing.

Parker is a proud brother.  And so handsome!

Kelli's dad was photographing.

Too many pictures!

Such a great family!

Parker smiled for me!

Parker and Brooklyn brought us so much joy!

Parker proved to me that he was a good eater!

I loved his method with the jello cup.

HAND DIVE!

April was burping Brooklyn

 On our way home, we passed the Payson temple being built in the distance.  I snapped a picture as we were hurdling down the freeway at 70 miles per hour.  Little did I know that Jake and Kelli would call Payson their new home in only a month.  They live there now, right by the temple being built. 

Payson temple construction in the distance.

Our Everyday Life (Some Photos from May 2013)

 Amara wanted to surprise me and Steve, so she made our bed and added more of her love by writing  4 homemade signs and carefully placed them on our bedspread.

I think this sign made me smile the biggest.

It's nice to be recognized.

 
We like to facetime with Aunty April often.  Below you will see that she is tackling a project with Devon of scraping the old paint off the shed in back of my dad's house.  She bought safety goggles for both her and Devon and some paint scrapers.  So cute.  I believe this project had to be abandoned before too long because it wasn't as easy as it looked.

Look in the corner an you'll see Amara making a funny face for April.

April showed me that she still has the binder I made her with her favorite recipes.  It looks so funny, I still crack up looking at it.

Devon fell asleep on April.  So cute.

Lily draws everyday sometimes for several hours at a time.  Below you'll see one of her very heart-felt letters to me.  She is so thoughtful.

sorry it's sideways.

Amara likes to garden and care for plants.  She found a bud of some weed growing outside and she picked it and planted it in one of my old planter cups that she filled with soil and kept it watered.  She put it in the windowsill and kept a cup nearby so she could water it each day and she even kept a book next to it, so she could read to it.  Not pictured is a sign she made and hung by her bed that has a checklist of things to do when she wakes up and it includes watering and reading to her plant.  Unfortunately, the bud never did anything but eventually dry up, but by that time, Amara had plenty of other distractions, that she didn't notice when it was just gone one day.

And lastly, a fortune I got at Pho Noodle House.  At the start of our journey to Cedar City for Jake's graduation, my mom, April and I had dinner there and I dare say that my fortune trumped any fortune I have ever received.  Behold...