Blast from the past

One of these phones is my first cell phone I ever had, the other one is the cell phone I currently have. Can you believe how far technology has come? I found the old one in my Granny's attic. Apparently I had a hard time parting with it. We had matching phones the first year of our marriage. I still remember texting Brett on it while I was at BYU. :)

Give it a TRY... a little harder!

HERE is a clever article to read. Read it!

I would love it if stores stopped using disposable bags. People would have to buy bags

to get their groceries home, until they stopped forgetting their reusable bags.

Ahahahaha!

Dehydrated

Corby just got 4 more teeth, a total of 8 now.

With sweating, lactating and crying... I can't drink enough water to keep myself hydrated!

Summer is finally here, with almost constant sweating day and night, unless I escape to an air conditioned location. If you didn't know yet, I'm cheep!

My baby is 11 months old, walking, jabbering, nursing 3 a days. He loves it!

Crying?There is no easyway to say it. I keep waking up to a nightmare that I'm having a hard time accepting as reality. 9 days ago, my 16 year old cousin passed away suddenly, without warning. I love him! I love all my Lawrence cousins like my own brothers and sisters. It was hardest for me yesterday as I looked at his precious belongings, watched the pictures of his life playing to his favorite music, wept at the body he left behind for now, and listened to the amazing stories shared by those closest to him! I was overwhelmed in the hall and while entering the chapel, the boy scouts were saluting on both sides all the way to our seats in the front. Sam's heart failed while he was running. He was competing in the running leg of a triathlon at Scout camp. He was perfectly healthy, he had some heart abnormalities is all they could determine as of now. He was life flighted out, but hisheart failed before they reached the hospital. I'mbewildered by it all. I am so sad for my cousins who will feel the loss even more than me. The service was beautiful! Thededication to the grave was comforting. I feel for their loss and wish I could do more! I know Sam's memory will never be forgotten. I love him still and will miss him! I know he is happy and I know he will be resurrected like our savior Jesus Christ, the morning of the First Resurrection. I know Jesus lives, and so I know that Sam will live again too!

My guilty pleasure?

There are moments when I grab my hair, close my eyes, scrunch up my face, and I want to scream! Those are the times I make myself a nice warm cup of cocoa and Roma (or Pero), I sit at the table with my feet on the chair, my knees to my chest, and I hold my mug, slowly sip, and breath. I love this time of day! I try to just relax and BREATH! Power to the mama with small children, mounds of dishes, loads of laundry, and pee on the walls of the bathroom!

Credit Cards

Who ever said that status comes with the number of credit cards you have open, or your credit line? Why is your credit score better by having a credit card open with zero balance, what does that prove? I want to share my story of credit cards SO badly but I'm afraid that you will say, "Oh, that will never happen to me. I won't let that ever happen to me." If you have a credit card it very well could, because I once thought that it could never happen to me. You think drunk drivers plan on driving drunk and killing someone? It may seem harmless, especially if you can't buy food and your only resort is to use a credit card to feed your family. I would much rather buy you food than pay for your food later, plus interest. The idea of a credit card might seem nice, but in fact, they are one of the stupidest things invented, except for those who invented them of course, they are set. You might like the benefits you could have from them, but the people in serious interest debt are the ones paying for your flight, money back or vacation. Nice! Credit cards help us to become more prideful. You need help? Use a credit card, then you don't need to ask for help. What's wrong with asking for help? Isn't that why we are here on earth? To help one another? To love one another? So close your credit card accounts and live within your means. And when you can't, then ask for help. Quick and sweet words of wisdom, live right.

New Hair and Body Care

A while back I used vinegar and baking soda on my hair, and it didn't work... I leave the vinegar to cleaning my bathrooms, it has no business in my hair! I've discovered from my amazing Indian friend a new way to clean my hair and body. She only uses it now for a weekly mask, but she grew up with it and her mom still uses it.

Chick pea flour, mixed with regular cow milk,

to a consistency of pourable yogurt.

You have to mix it right before your shower, and only make enough for one shower. 1/4 cup? It doesn't save. You have to make sure to rinse it out thoroughly too. It made my hair feel so good, it was easy to brush, and my skin felt and smelled very clean. I'm going to do it a few more times, then I will update how I continue to like it. I'm very excited about this!

Arm Pits

My arm pits need a break. I don't like deodorant and I found a new solution. I have a dish with a lid in my bathroom that contains my powder deodorant that I apply with a cloth. It consists of

3 Tbsp cornstarch and 1 Tbsp baking soda.

I love it, I don't smell bad and I really love it. Where have you been all my life?

My Corb

You probably couldn't tell here, but my baby is so sick. He has a nasty cough and is losing his voice. My baby is 6 months old. He has two teeth, and mostly nurses, especially since being sick, he doesn't like his food and prefers to nurse. He sits up perfectly by himself, and can spin himself around in circles. Nix thinks it's funny that he does push ups when he is on his tummy. He can put himself on his hands and knees and rock. He pushes himself backwards, the backward unintentional crawl. He has slept through the night since he was 2 months old, but again, since being sick he started waking up in the night last week and wants to nurse once. I love having a baby, but I tend to push my other 2 away at times when the baby needs to eat and the baby needs to sleep. It's hard to juggle everything, but the boys all love each other and play together really well most of the time. If it was supposed to be easy then it would be.

My Nix

This is my awesome Nix. He is so much fun. He is a wild one. He loves to get hurt and hurt people. He also loves to laugh and make others laugh. He was doing something to make me laugh one day and he did it for a good hour, just to hear me laugh. He will run and play for hours. He is really fun to talk with and it's interesting to listen to his stories, and help him write stories, I'm so lucky to be his mom because otherwise I wouldn't have the opportunity to get to know this amazing boy. He is serious, inventive, creative. He wants to be a Scientist. I wish I had his memory! He will go to sleep thinking about something and wake up with the same thing on the brain, FOCUSED! He wants to know the TRUTH about everything. He knows I will always tell him the truth, so he will check in with me about things he doesn't believe. Don't worry, I won't spoil his childhood by telling him some things, but a part of me still believes in Santa and the Easter Bunny, so it's the truth as far as I'm concerned. He acts as grown up as he can, but still wants me nearby, and wants my help with things that he knows he can do. He has a very big, kind heart.

I. Love. This. Boy!

My Tino

This is my little Tino. He is so sweet.

Lately he has been giving me lots of hugs and kisses and telling me, "Love you mom." He loves to be held, he loves to snuggle, he loves. I love it! When we play together, he laughs and laughs and laughs, then he gets a little hostile when I need to do something for Corbs or Nix. When I put him in time out he will stay there till he has ahold of himself, then he comes out and says in a sweet voice, "Stop crying mom." When he poops his pants he turns on the sweet voice again and says, "poop pants mom." His pants mostly never match cuz he has a lot of accidents. I'm trying to potty train, he is mostly pee trained, and I put him in diapers sometimes, but he will only poop in the diaper, he still uses the potty to pee, so we use 1 or 2 diapers a day, not too bad! Oh, something else he says that makes me smile. I say, "Come here." and he says, "Coming. Coming." He says, "O.K. mom" a lot too, and he says it with the tone of and respectful but irritated teenager. He talks a lot, he isn't crying as much lately, even though he cries a lot still! He has learned to do a lot of things himself, like get the Hershey Syrup out of the fridge, get the milk out of the fridge, get a spoon out of the drawer and get a cup out of the cupboard. Hmmmmm. He also gets his books down from the shelf in the closet. Today the shelf was empty and his bedroom floor was covered in books. I went up there and he showed me a book he found. He was so excited about it that I didn't say a word about the mess. He went back to the mess on the floor and was trying to uncover a bunch of cars he buried.

I. Love. This. Boy!

Grateful

There are so many Mormon Messages, and as a mother I felt so much love from heaven in the message- Motherhood: An Eternal Partnership with God. Have fun searching for your favorite!

Wear your seat belt... not because it's the LAW.

Embrace Life

Nice!

This isn't the sort of headlines I'm looking for right now! Really? Dangerous to have a baby in California? I'm sure everything will be fine, but CRAZY!

If you haven't noticed

Brett has become a very active poster on our blog. This is fun for me, cuz I get to see the videos he is working on and the pictures he has in his phone. I'm so grateful for his active roll here and hope it continues forever! Thanks hunny! I love you! Maybe I need to change it to Our Story, Our Joy. What do you think? Should I give it some time to make sure it sticks?

Very Surprising

With how much rain we received last week, I didn't expect the trails to be open yet, but this morning I looked online and there was a special alert. Trails were open today! So we hurried outside and went to the Nix Nature Center to get an annual pass to the OC parks and did a little hiking and checked out all the wonderful things in the center. They have fossil digging, live snakes, a sand box with animal feet that you can make fake tracks, stuffed real animals that are common in the area, robot bats, a telescope and a few interesting native american indian artifacts. We stayed longer than I expected but when we were within a few feet of our car to leave it started to sprinkle. Now it is raining, and we are so happy we were about to get out and explore a little before the rain came back. The trails are most likely closed again. :)

Give Thanks for Everything

In January "The Friend" they suggest you take your little one on a Thankful Hunt. And to make a list of the things you are grateful for in the 5 Sense areas.

Here is Nix's list:

See- birds, trees, cars

Hear- cars driving on the street, rockets blasting off, pop-its popping

Smell- lemons, cookies, chicken

Taste- chicken, ice-cream, marshmallows

Touch- blankie, hugging Daddy, dirt

A New, Used Dining Table

I have a table!! This is great news! I haven't had a table for 2 years, and tonight we sat at our new, used table for dinner, as a family, at a table... do you realize how happy this makes me! You will love it when you see a picture of it. Oh, I do love it! Seats 6 so I can feed the missionaries at a table instead of me standing at the counter as they sit at the counter with broken barstools, and the boys in their high chairs. We will give the borrowed high chairs back and find a booster seat for Tino. This is so fun!

My Artist

Here is a sample of Nix's paintings. Let him know what you think.

We moved!

This picture of Tino was taken the last morning living in our last home. We moved at the end of October '09. If you don't have our new address just let me know and I'll email it to you!

9th Time World Champion

Here is the infamous Valentino Rossi. He won the MotoGP World Championship last week for the 9th time. He placed 2nd today.