I'm Thankful For . . .

Yesterday Lamon gave a talk in church, and he mentioned Jim. Throughout the rest of the day I kept on thinking about him. I miss Jim. I am so grateful that he is my brother, and that I could have the time with him that I did on this Earth.

Sometimes I think it will make it easier to just not think about him, and for a long time I almost got mad when Lamon would bring him up. But I have since found that the times I am most comforted are the times that I just let myself remember him, and laugh and share memories with others about him. Yesterday, as I was thinking about him, I just had an overwhelming feeling that I want to be better and live better than I am right now because I know Jim wants me to! I can't wait until I see him again.

On a different note . . . a bit less sentimental . . .

I am very grateful for Flatirons! :) Who wouldn't be if they had the thick monstrous hair that I do?

What a fabulous invention!!

Happy Birthday Hayden and Ada!!

It was Hayden and Ada's birthday this last week.Their birthdays are one day apart. We celebrated Lamon and Mary style . . . we texted everyone the day of the party inviting them to come over for some cake and ice-cream. And because our family is so wonderful . . . they all came even though it was last minute. But we did at least mention it to Mom and Dad Mack the Sunday before . . . that's improvement isn't it?
I love these two kids. They are so sweet.

I can't believe Ada is already one! She climbs around better than a lot of two year olds. She is so funny. She always wants to find something to climb on, like a box, a chair, a tote, tupperware, etc. and she will climb up on it and then just has to stand up. She makes me laugh. She is pretty smart too. If you show her something, she usually is pretty quick to mimick you. She loves to try to wipe my nose after she gets her nose wiped. And she is always wanting to feed people. It's just fun to have a little girl around the house. And the boys love it too. Hayden is always going up to Ada and hugging her saying things like, "Oh sweetie . . . Your my best friend" etc. in Hayden language which makes it even cuter. Not that the boys are always sweet. . . Ada is also pretty tough due to the boys wrestling around with her. She loves them though, and is always trying to participate in whatever they are doing . . . which generates a response from the boys that I am coming to know well. . . "Mom! Get Ada!" Hayden is three and I just love that little boy.

He is full of mischief, but can win you over pretty quick with his eyes, smile, his size, and his speech! Hayden is such a great addition to our family! He is so sweet. Sometimes I am just amazed at how happy he is. He is always dancing around the house, and his newest thing is singing. He doesn't make a bit of sense when he sings, but he will go off jibber jabbering and then he will come put his arm around me and say, "Did you like that song?" Before church started today he was sitting there with the hymn book open just singing a made up song with made up words, and it was so funny. It generated some laughs from the bishops wife sitting in front of us too. Hayden loves to say prayers, and wants to say every prayer in our house. I finally told him that if he says 'amen' after someone else says a prayer, it's like he said it too . . . and that has helped tremendously!
I sure do love my kids.

The cakes were Lamon's creations. He is the cake decorater in our household. This train cake is my favorite yet!

Anyway, I'm sure I have lost all of the readers , if there were any, by now . . . but oh well! I am cool okay! And everything I write is entertaining too. So if you aren't reading this anymore, it is because you are boring . . . not me! :)

Have No Fear, Lamon is Here

Okay, I'm cheesy, I know it. But if you're reading my blog you probably already know that I'm cheesy so I will just continue, alright?!

Lamon is so wonderful. I had a pretty stinky day. I NEVER get sick, so when I am sick I'm a little bit of a baby, and I am quite the sicky right now. It was a long day of kids whining, the house in desperate need of attention, and me sort of staring into the void. Well when Lamon came home the kids were so excited. He started rolling around playing on the floor with them and making them giggle and laugh. And then he helped them all get their shoes and coats on and he took them with him to go run errands and he sent me to bed. It was so nice to be able to just lay in bed and be surrounded by total silence. That doesn't happen very often. He came back like three hours later with some Fast Food, and then after dinner he helped all of the kids get in their pajamas and helped put them all to bed.

Lamon is pretty much the hottest guy ever, but it's moments like this that I just look at him and think, "How in the world did I get this guy?" I love him so much. I'm thankful for all that he does for me. I know he is not perfect . . . but if letting it rip occasionally (okay a lot) and leaving his shoes all over the house are the two biggest things I get mad at him for. . . that's a pretty amazing guy.

Ever wonder what Lamon would look like with Christopher Reeves Super Man Hair?

Well there you go.

Does anyone else have weird kids? Okay, I guess that "healthy" and "weird" are not exactly synonymous. But I just find it so funny that my kids love foods that I would automatically assume they would hate. Ada won't eat anything sweet. If I try to feed her applesauce or any other sweet baby foods, she won't touch it. But if I give her some peas or green beans she will eat them up in no time! And although Hayden and Drew love candy a deal more than they should, they take a liking to certain healthy foods. My kids love salad. I can load their plates full of it, and they will lick their plates clean. Today I got myself a grapefruit and as usual Hayden came running over to eat it with me. He even wanted to drink the leftover juice that I squoze out of it. Of course I am wondering a little bit if Hayden might have a problem with his taste. I am almost convinced that his taste buds don't work. The other day he came up to me whining leading me to the pantry pointing to the big canister of oats saying, "I want that!" in Hayden language. I was like, "You want me to cook you some oatmeal?" . . . More whining . . . "No! I want that!" I explained to him, "Hayden, you don't want that I promise." I took the lid off and showed it to him . . . "It's yucky unless you cook it!" . . . More wailing. "Here Hayden look . . . " I grabbed a bunch of Oats in my hand . . . "Here . . . taste it. I promise it's yucky." So Hayden grabbed the handful and stuck it in his mouth. He had the funniest look on his face, but he kept chewing . . . I of course expected him to immediately spit it out and cry. I said, "is that yummy?" He nodded his head up and down and finished eating the entire handful. I was like, "You liked that Hayden?" I was beginning to feel bad for doubting him, and starting to wonder if plain oats might be Hayden's new favorite snack food. Again he nodded his head and said, "Uh huh." . . . "Do you want some more?" . . . "Uh . . . No." :)

I guess we will stick to grapefruit and salad.

Sledding

We went sledding with Lamon's family and some friends the other day, and it was a blast! As you can seel from the look on the boys faces (including Lamon's) it was a lot of fun! I love seeing smiles that big!!

Christmas

Oh how I love Christmas! I thank my mother for that. I love it when Santa comes to town. You see, Santa always waits until the children are in bed and then fills their stockings full of fun presents and candy and leaves out their biggest present right in front of the tree, and then he leaves. And every year (as expected) all the young children . . . and older children . . . wake up around 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning and creep downstairs to see what Santa has left. Every year growing up we would wake up early and would quietly go downstairs and get our stockings and creep upstairs and open up the gifts from our stockings together showing each other the fun things that we received and then wait until morning time to wake up our parents to open the rest of our gifts. It was always so exciting. And Santa did this until we left the house or got married! Yes, it's true . . . the last Christmas I was home, while engaged to Lamon, I remember waking up in the early morning hours with my sisters and creeping downstairs to see what Santa had brought. So of course now with kids it is even more fun, only they aren't old enough to want to wake up early and go see what Santa has brought them, so I of course woke them up as soon as I woke up because "I " was so excited!! There are so many fun years ahead!

Some of the highlights of this Christmas were:

5. On Christmas Eve we went to the Barksdales house where John and Dave are residing while Grandma and Grandpa Barksdale are on a mission, and we had a party. John was determined to make Ada walk, and by the end of the night . . .

John has some type of magical touch because she hasn't done it since!

4. Of course it was wonderful to watch the kids open their presents on Christmas morning! After every present Drew would say, "My 'every' own . . . this" or "my 'every' own that." We kept telling him, "No Drew. It's my 'very' own this." But of course Drew knows everything, and it was so cute anyway we just left him alone. So you can blame us for his improper use of the English language!


3. For the gift exchange on the Mack side of the family, they decided to give meaningful gifts this year that took thought and not so much "money." Somehow we missed this memo . . . and we came with a couple games bought at the last minute, but it was so neat watching everyone else give their gifts. They were so sweet! I was loving watching the love between each family member as they gave their gifts. It was so wonderful, when they told us we hadn't received our gift I didn't even realize it because I was enjoying the exchange between everyone so much. It made me want to do better, and put more thought into my gift giving next year. Todd had our name and he drew us a picture of Mount Timpanogos. It was so awesome.
How cool is that?










2. The night before Christmas Eve we aked Drew, "Drew . . . who is going to come tomorrow night? . . . ) Drew turned to us and raised his eyebrows and said, " . . . Jesus?" It was a sweet moment where we realized that he had more spiritual things on his mind! It is wonderful how kids can put your mind in focus sometimes!

1. I was pretty sad that on Christmas Eve we didn't get to sing, because anyone in my family "should" know that this is the most important part of Christmas! I love it when my family gathers around the piano and sings every Christmas song in the hymn book and then just for the pure enjoyment of it starts to sing just about "every" song in the hymn book after we're done. It is kind of hard though when the amount of babies in the family now outnumbers the adults! So I made my siblings promise to sing with me on Christmas night after my kids were in bed. Sue, Dave and their significant others, Dustin and Ariel, were nice enough to help me with my Christmas wish, and came over and sang. We sang the Christmas hymns and then started making requests on different hymns. We were kind of being silly and laughing a lot while singing the songs, and I wasn't feeling like we were really singing praises like we should. I made the request to sing "I believe in Christ" wanting to really think about the words and I made it about half way through the first verse and balled my eyes out throughout the rest of it. Oh how I love that song! This was the best part of Christmas for me. I have a strong testimony in my Savior. And of course my siblings have lived with me long enough to know how I am, and they are way past the point of getting embarrassed by me when I get emotional!

Let it Snow!!!!

It's been a few years since we have lived somewhere where it snows, and we are loving living here right now with all of this snow on the ground! It is awesome. I was a little worried that I would miss St. George in the Winter, but not so! I love the snow. It has been so much fun, and the kids have been having a blast! I have even been driving around in it, and I am doing pretty good so far. I got caught in a pretty white knuckle storm about a week ago, and I did pretty good. I was pretty proud of myself. But the funnest part of the snow is playing in our big backyard in it. The other day Lamon shoveled a ton of snow on top of our slide in the backyard, and made a big snowslide for the kids to slide down. We also played Fox and Geese which is a game that my Dad would play with us in the snow when we were kids. It was so fun. We were laughing pretty hard while chasing eachother around. It's fun to laugh and play like a kid sometimes. I'm glad Lamon will do it with me!!