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Wednesday, June 27, 2018

september: loads of church-y things


Some of my favorite quotes come from Marvin J. Ashton. This was an excellent one for me in September - I think there's the potential for friendships to be tricky in this aspect. Certainly a friend should have my back and support me... but I'm grateful for my friends who, usually by example, challenge me to step up and be better. 
I picked Chuck up from the airport and we went pretty much straight to ward temple night - we might have grabbed food first. It was really wonderful to spend the afternoon and evening with just him; we didn't talk tons while he was in Texas so this was a perfect way to catch up and connect. 

Chuck and Carma got to tag along on Will's Cub Scout fishing field trip. Chuck and I are so torn - we want our kids to have the quintessential childhood experiences of going fishing.... but we really want to not participate in it at all haha. We have plans for my dad to jump in and take them fishing; we just need to let him know that haha ;).
Also I feel like Chuck prefaced taking every picture by instructing Will to look ponderous. Cutest little fisherman!!

Our brand new eleven-year-old said sayonara to Cub Scouts! He received his Webelos award, for which I extracted a nice extra long hug from him haha:
and he (and his awesome leaders! We love Sister Arters and Sister Cooper!!) went above and beyond and he earned his Arrow of Light as well:
Brother Murphy makes these beautiful wooden arrow of light boards for boys in our ward who earn that award and Clyde was so thrilled to have qualified! Our family loves that man so.

Love this so much. Faith is a choice. Doubt and fear are loud and demand attention, but faith is always there as an option that leads to peace.

Begrudgingly love this too. Love it because it's absolutely true. Begrudgingly because it rings in my head like a slight call to repentance sooo I better work on that haha.

Karlina and I went to the temple!!! Insta caption: Yay for getting back to my 'going to the temple every week' groove! Would YOU like to be pictured next to me in a #templeselfie 🛐🤳🏻🙋🏻😂?! Karlina highly recommends it, I even use the picture where your hair looks better than mine! If you'd ever like to hit up a session with me, let me know OR if you aren't (yet 😏😂) a temple recommend holder and/or Mormon, let's go to the Meridian Temple Open House together! Tickets will be available online starting September 25th- and you know I'll remind y'all again before that 😎. The temple open house is a free, open to the general public, no-pressure-to-convert chance to see a building that holds a dear place in my heart and learn what we do there and why. It's going to be great! 🙌🏼

Cute Carma interrupting scripture time and also following her little path to Cookie Wednesday at Janell's. Also pictured: Willy boy getting an award... of some kind... at Pack Meeting and a fun baby shower courtesy of the endless energy and dedication of one Judy Marsh. She is just such a fun lady!!

Some Sundays Carma is all about modeling her clothes and accessories, some Sundays she plops on the picnic table and you know that's as good as it's going to get haha:
And some Sundays she just knows how dang cute she is! This is one of Chuck's favorite dresses that she has.

And some Sundays she hugs the possibly not recently cleaned flag pole whilst wearing a darling white dress, ahhhh! Goof. Also cute bike riding boys!

I loved this quote from Elder Andersen:

aaaaand this one from Elder Weatherford Clayton, not to be confused with his brother. Sister Volkert knows this one. (Right, Sister Volkert?? Or did I mix them up again??) This principle is so so basic and yet so so misunderstood and forgotten.  

Same principle here, said a different way by Elder Renlund. Redeemer of Israel is one of my favorite hymns and also one of Julia Otto's favorite hymns and if you get that reference you're awesome and I've probably lent you a book or two haha:

 Cue the 'okay, but I wish He didn't trust me quite so much' line ;).

Yayyyyy Paulina came with us!! Emily and I were so excited. Also, how amazing is our unplanned wardrobe coordination? Oh I love these girls.
Another temple jaunt with bae. Such a good guy.

Oh my gosh, best facebook post ever! I've legit never been credited with having will power before, so this was a pretty momentous occasion!!!

Another momentous occasion: sweet Addie getting baptized! Jackers and I represented the Izatt clan and it was such a beautiful thing to witness. We love the Walkers and we love Addie!

Okay, some of the leaders from the Relief Society and the Young Women did a cute photo shoot at the conference center and my testimony grew three sizes haha. Doesn't this look like exactly what I would do if given free reign in the conference center?? Loved it, love them.

... and miraculously, Chuck still loves me even after I accidentally volunteered myself for a really big job and made him hold my hand the entire time haha. Our stake did a dinner for the Women's general session of conference broadcast and Chuck and I did allllll of the grocery shopping for cafe rio style salads to feed 200+ people. (Minus the pork! Blessedly that wasn't on us!) There were like six separate components/recipes (the cake, the dressings, the beans, the rice, etc) and some ingredients were in multiple recipes and we had to keep converting measurements from teaspoons to ounces and things got pretty tense haha. 
But we did it! All the ingredients came home where I divvied them up according to recipe and then delivered them to ten women who made all of the actual finished products and then I showed up on Saturday to help dish and deliver the salads and it was so so fun! Shannon and Karlina joined me and we possibly had too much fun. Also no one ever let me sign up to do the shopping again for something like this. Ever. ;)

And then of course the broadcast itself was just perfect. Couple quick quotes:

I could legit listen to Sister Marriott all day... because of her wisdom AND her accent. She's the whole package.

Few pictures from the next day at church; I subbed in Clyde's class so I got a good view of my cute boys helping out in primary. Also Chuck being cute workin' in the clerks office and Clyde being cute reading to Carma and Sister Napier being cute letting me take a picture of her for the ward bulletin board:
 And my mama being cute and sneaking in to my primary class so we could take a selfie together since we neglected to do so the previous night when we sat together at the broadcast! I love my pretty pretty mom!!

Something else I love: finishing a blog post and going to bed haha. Peace!

Monday, June 25, 2018

Clyde is ELEVEN (and a bit...)


Clyde's main love language is sugar, so when I promised him an ICEE on our birthday date he preemptively declared it his best birthday ever. 
Also, the super nice Target lady comped him the ICEE when she found out it was his birthday. Just when I think I can't love Target any more than I do already...

Purple streamers for the cute 11 year old:
And creepily photographing him as he rides off to school to weird him out ;). 

We went a different direction for Clyde's birthday; the last couple years he's grabbed some buddies and gone to the bike park with Chuck. This year he opted for McDonalds with everyone followed by a date night with ME... driving him to Target to get Pokemon and Nerf haha.
 We ended up hitting up two different Treasure Valley Target stores to find the right Nerf gun for Clyde to spend his bday money on. It's cool, we saw Rey along the way and practiced our selfie skills in the self checkout video monitor ;). I was also treated to a live 'unboxing' as Clyde opened up his new Pokemon cards, so it was a win all the way around haha.

 In my head, this is Clyde. I'm so so glad that the 11 year old version is just as cute and mostly as snuggly. I always call Clyde our little guinea pig since he's the oldest and we legit have no idea what we're doing as parents hahaha. Pre-teen years and middle school are unchartered territory, but Clyde is jumping in with enthusiasm and a decent amount of maturity and a lot of sass so here we go! Love you Clyde Monster!

Wednesday, June 20, 2018

august: let's get rrrready to rrrrramble! (aka the everything else post)

Okay, let's do this thing. What awaits you is a mixture of random pictures from August and a million and three screenshots of funny things...

Turns out Chuck the spotter was unnecessary; Carma the wee monkey girl can climb into the truck on her own, no prob....

Yes. Except my threats are usually more obscure.

 Some last minute summer sibling bonding via duplos and legos: 

I might put this on my fridge as a more regular reminder...

Library... math workbooks at home... the coolest mom ever bugging Clyde while he's trying to read...

"Came crying" hahahahahaha. 

Bike-related moments, including new-ish purchases of a bike fixin' stand and a spare mountain bike for Clyde. Also enjoy Carma and Chuck taking a midnight (okay, 930pm) ride because Chuck is a sucker ;).

Ohhh man I love this. So much.

We found out about halfway through August that Dan the Man was having a pretty rough time in El Paso and it affected us a great deal. It's really hard to know someone you love so much is struggling and being 18 hours away and unable to hug them - so I opted for a cheesy instagram/fb post to send some e-love ;). 

This popped up on my facebook memories and I almost cried. Look at my little four-year-old Willy boy! I miiiiiss him!!

More mother/daughter Target trips while the boys were at school. Our little half girly girl/half tomboy Carma was equally enthralled with R2-D2 and Rapuzel haha:
But seriously, yes.

Random Carma. She recently began arranging her own headbands and it's fantastic.

Oh man. Literally so me.

More random stuff around the house including gigantic otter pops and gigantic Clyde feet. 
Holla.

Oh man, my amazingly talented friend Lorraine does SeneGence (LipSense) and offered to work her magic on my visage and it was so so fun! Here are my after shots... ignore Carma; she was QUITE put out that she didn't also get a makeover haha:

I love this so so so so much hahahaha.

 Caption via instagram: Chuck and I sat through a riveting film entitled "Captain Underpants" with these four yahoos this morning and its only redeeming feature was listening to the boys' incessant giggling (especially Will's) 😜😬😂(PS don't mind the overposting, I skimmed Clyde's and Will's mandatory summer journals and read harrowing tales of lengthy chore lists and a mom prone to angry rants so I'm attempting to counter with my own revisionist history: this summer has been Non Stop Fun and Adventures! 🙌🏼😃🎉😂)

This. Except both of us are thinking the thing about the hex wrench...

Clyde hit up two different nerf places two days in a row for two different buddies' birthday parties... and still didn't learn how to put his vest on right ;).

 I BEAT QUINN AT WORDS WITH FRIENDS. BY A LOT! BECAUSE I'M THE QUEEN!!!

 Annual check-up with my favorite, Dr. Klomp. Quick selfie in the mirror picture as an homage to the millions of these I took during my pregnancies ;). 

I'm a chaotic neutral. I'll also allow lawful good, and lawful neutral. Everyone else better stay the hale away from my bread.

 Caption via instagram: 
"Dad, can I teach you about Pokémon?"
"Sure, can I have my eyes closed?"

Jana Izatt! Love it.

Total chees-mo caption via instagram because I love my big brother and I love this picture of my kids: Okkkkay it's about to get cheesy: I took this picture this morning of Carma and one of her brothers- the one that is two years, four months, and thirteen days older than her (aka Jack). Coincidentally, one of my brothers is two years, four months, and twenty-two days older than me (aka Sam) and today is his birthday! Carma looking up to Jack = Jana looking up to Sam basically our whole lives 😍🤗. Sam is probably the funniest person I've ever met and always responds to my texts shamelessly asking for free medical advice and set up my very first email account for me and consistently had VERY cute friends for me to have unrequited schoolgirl crushes on - which all adds up to a stellar older brother 🙌🏼. Happy birthday Sammy! I hope this made you smile and I'm sure it made you roll your eyes 🙄😂. (PS If anyone's making a paper chain til my birthday, there's your starting number- four months, twenty two days! 🎉🎊💃🏻)

Caption via instagram: Always sobering to be reminded that your child's disease was fatal like 130 years ago. We are so so grateful for medical developments and incredible doctors. Hirschsprungs sucks... a lot. It affects our lives every day and so many of our decisions as a family (activities, food, travel, etc) but we are well aware that we are dealing with a less severe case than many others and we have a great deal of hope that things will continue to improve as they have over the last few years. Also it makes me laugh that I ended up with a kid VERY sensitive to inappropriate language (aka I'm reprimanded on a fairly regular basis 😳🤐) and he ended up with a disease that swears in its main awareness slogan - 'Sh!t Happens' 😂😂😂 Guess we won't be buying him a t-shirt!

Caption via instagram: Chuck and I recently recommitted to saying prayer together every night and it's had a profoundly positive impact on our relationship ❤️.... so much so that missing a night prompted this text exchange the other day 😂. I wish we'd been more consistent at this over the last 13+ years but we're on board now, sooooo better late than never, right?? 🙌🏼💑🙏🏼 

Found this on the wall of the middle school during Clyde's open house there and I loved it - it's how I approach church, workout class, life in general some days, blogging haha. Life is hard and complicated and messy but def worth the effort. Just like reading this long post, riiiiight? ;) Good news: that's the end!!!!