Giving Thanks

I am grateful for....

This guy.


He's funny, happy, and downright good. He works hard for our family, and has a lot on his shoulders being a student with all the worries of providing for three others. He loves each of us, and we all know it. He loves getting our babies from their beds to play, loves giving shoulder rides, squeezes, and playing pretend. He loves slow dancing with me in the living room after the kids go to bed, reliving songs from back when we were first dating. I love that we still consider ourselves "dating," largely because of him.

He truly deeply loves taking his little girl on dates. They've been on bus rides, out for ice cream, McDonald's (per Rachie request), out for on tap root beer, and now her first time bowling. These pictures are from their last date a few weeks ago.

I am grateful for this little girl.


She brings so much spice to my life. She brings out the more fun side of me. She is also the person who made me a mother, and I will always be thankful for her because of that. What a privilege it is to raise and learn from someone with so much empathy and passion.


(Practicing cutting and gluing.)

(A new favorite activity...play dough.)

I'm grateful for this little boy.


He is my littlest sweetie, my baby. Before I had him I wondered how I could fit more room into loving another child the way I love Rachel, and it is truly a remarkable thing how it is done. It's especially easy to love someone like Alden, who gives THE best hugs in all the world. Since Alden was just a new baby I've always felt that he has something really important to do in his life. It's been a rough going babyhood for him with particularly hard challenges from near constant teething pain from cysts, ear infections, sleep problems, and just general fussiness. But when this kid is rested and healthy, I feel like I see the true him. Happy and goofy. He has helped me become a more flexible, resilient person. He has taught me to let things go and prioritize my life so I'm doing the most important things (because that's all he gave me time for!). I love him for it.


I'm grateful to be part of a supportive, wonderful extended family. My parents and in-laws, brothers and sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and little nephew are all reasons to be grateful for life.

I'm grateful to be an American. Jason and I have been watching Ken Burn's WWII documentary and other WWII movies lately and I have felt an intense gratitude for those many families who gave their fathers, sons, and brothers, and those men and women who gave theirs lives in that war and many others who sacrifice so much defending our country today. I'm proud to be from a family with a heritage of military service.

I'm grateful for a home, clothes, food, roads and transportation, cameras, telephones, and so many hundreds of things that make our lives so much easier and comfortable.

And finally, I'm grateful to know their is a God. I'm grateful for the things I understand about religion, because they put all of the other things I'm grateful for into perspective. I can catch glimpses of the end from the beginning, and see the point of this thing called life. And having that perspective really does change everything.

"Fangled Eggs," Car Noises, Sleeping (ah sleeping), and Growth

So I took the kids on a little photo shoot the other day at New Quarter Park. Some of them turned out cute, but most turned out like this:

And this...
And this...
But some turned out like this:
And this...
And this...
Not exactly frame-able, but still worth the frolic through the fall air. Poor Rachel was just disappointed towards the end when she found out this was just a walking park, with no slides and no swings (the audacity!).

And for good measure, a Halloween picture to record the event. My little blue-haired babies. They are really so much like Thing 1 and Thing 2.


To start off, last post I said I'd record some things about each of the kids and what they are doing and saying lately.

Rachel is constantly making us laugh. One funny thing she says a lot is "it's/that's/you're/he's buggering me," instead of "bugging" me. She says it whenever something's annoying her, and you just can't help but smile when it comes out. Another saying of hers is, "fangled eggs." One morning Jase was making her scrambled eggs and she was sitting at the table waiting and she said to him, "Are you going to ask me, (quoting in her mock Jason voice) "You want some fangled eggs or some-ping (something)?" Jason asked her if fangled eggs meant scrambled eggs, and she said, no, those were the bad eggs. She wanted good eggs (which turned out to be scrambled eggs). Who knows. That silly girl. One funny story that happened awhile ago was when we were driving in the car and Jase stopped at a red light. Promptly from the back seat we heard a mumbled "dang it!" Both Jase and I looked at each other and I asked her where she learned to say that. She replied with the utmost honesty, "Well that's what you say at a red light!" Oops....parenting fail? I guess it could have been something worse. We still had a good laugh about it later.

On to Alden...my favorite thing he does lately is give you this little squeeze. He goes to hug you and because his hands and arms don't make it all the way around you, he squeezes with his fingers. It is the cutest thing. He also shrugs his shoulders if you ask him to (he knows we think this so cute), and he swings his arms when he walks as if he's really got somewhere to go. He makes dinosaur noises (growling) on command, and makes car noises when he plays with his hot wheels. He knows so many words now! He can understand much more than these, but he consistently says car (his favorite thing), mama, dada, ada (Rachel, he also has a name sign for her), bath, duck, milk, shoes, dance, Jesus, water, all done, more, help me (the sign, mostly), and cracker. I think there are probably more, but I don't remember them all at the moment.

Alden's finally sleeping!!! I can't even believe it myself, but this boy has to go to bed early in order to sleep in until 6 (yes that is the absolute latest I can push my children). He goes down at 6:30 and wakes up at 6 (Rachel goes down at 7:30). It is a huge pain sometimes to make sure he gets down that early, but apparently he needs that much sleep because he does it without complaint. Before we switched him so early he was going to sleep between 7-8 and waking up around 4 (ouch). Not only that, but he was always so tired. I couldn't get him to take two naps anymore (he'd just scream through one of them), and so we switched him to one mid-day two hour nap plus the 6:30 bed time and within about a day it solved all of his sleep problems. The child doesn't scream all the time anymore!!! Oh happiness. I am a believer that a lot of my children's behavioral problems (at least crankiness related things) can be solved by taking a look at one thing: are they getting enough, consistent, quality sleep? I had no idea coming into motherhood how important sleep was, but wow. It's the truest thing I've learned lately.

As for Jase and I, we still do what we've done for awhile--school, home, work. It's really not a bad life. We're waiting on a few job prospects and preparing to apply to others. We still remain hopeful. Jason had an epiphany of sorts just before his last job interview. Previous to this, we've been working and praying constantly to have Heavenly Father help us find a job. Numerations to this also included helping us know where to apply, and after each job interview we've basically been asking to please just let us have the job. Jason's thought process that day was this: that all along we've basically just been asking God to change our circumstances, without really asking for help to change ourselves-to help us to have more patience through this time, to become more qualified, to be more in tune with the Spirit so we might know where and how to apply. That day he asked God to help him do better in the interview than he normally would of his own accord--and he believes he had help that day. From this we've learned that there are things we can control--our faith, our prayers, our own efforts, and there are things we can't--the economy, other people's decisions about jobs, etc.

I suppose the point of life isn't to ask God to change all of our circumstances, but rather to make us equal to them. If those with health problems or money problems or any other type of problem just asked for it to be removed, where would be the challenge? The growth?

Elder Hales in LDS General Conference talked a bit about this. In an answer to my thoughts above, he said, "Why such terrible tribulation? To what end? For what purpose? As we ask these questions, we realize that the purpose of our life on earth is the grow, develop, and be strengthened through our own experiences. How do we do this? ...we wait upon the Lord. Tests and trials are given to all of us. These mortal challenges allow us and our Heavenly Father to see whether we will exercise our agency to follow His son." There was so much wonderful guidance found in this talk (find it here), and I read it just when I needed it.

A Snapshot

So to start the posting, I thought I'd record just a bit of what our lives all look like right now...I suppose to provide a starting place for future blogs.

Jason is a 3rd year law student. He has done a remarkable job juggling all the stresses of law school. He came out with a great resume and great grades. In an economy such as this, our main stress as of late is finding that right job for us. We've got a few options we are hoping and praying for right now. We know that it will all turn out in the end, and that even 10 years from now we'll look back at this time and wonder to ourselves why we worried so much. In the moment, with two babies to take care of and debt to deal with, it's still a little disconcerting. But we are confident that we'll be taken care of as long as we keep doing all we can do.

I stay at home with the babies. Keeping up with them and the house keeps me extremely busy. Other than the home and motherly duties (most of my news will be their news), I teach a class on Sundays to the Young Women (16-17 year old girls) and help out with Tuesday night youth group activities.

The best word to describe Rachel...passionate. That girl is truly passionate about being happy when she's happy, and passionately angry when she's angry. She's two (almost three), so this is I'm sure how many two year old's can be, but she's always added a little spice to our lives. She is so so so smart. She's always telling us funny things. Right now she loves watching movies, dancing, and going to Joy school. She and I get to do Joy school this year, where I teach 2 days per month. It's kind of a co-op preschool where 4 moms rotate weeks. We only do it two days per week, for just 2 1/2 hours per day, but it has been a good experience so far. Rachel really loves going and she's made some new friends. She's learning all about different types of "Joy," i.e. the joy of the body, the joy of the earth, the joy of being honest, etc. It gives me a great mindset and framework to talk about lots of different things in life with her. If nothing else, I think it's helped me be a more proactive mother in teaching her about the world.

Alden is my little sweetie. He is incredibly tender and his smile really can just melt your soul. I could gush over him all day. He has had a hard time teething (for what feels like his whole life), and already had to get two hematoma cysts in his gums lanced so the teeth could come in. But aside from those bumps in the road, he sleeps well at night (finally...this was a long time coming) and is healthy. I just stopped nursing him a few days ago (this has been wearing on me for a long time and I've wanted to stop but didn't know how-with Rachel it wasn't really a choice when to stop). It has been a little emotional for him, but I'm feeling great about it. He's eating a little better than before (getting this kid to eat is somewhat difficult).

Anyways, that's kind of an update of what we're like right now. I need to post more later about all the funny things Rachel says now and the words Alden knows.

Another thought on my mind today, it really is incredible how fragile life is. Our friends lost their little baby girl yesterday morning at just 11 days old. She was born with a heart problem. I've been thinking today about how I felt about my babies when they were 11 days old, and while I can't actually know how our friends must feel, I just hurt for them. It's times like these, when really sad, unexplainable things happen to good people, that I'm grateful I know about this. Knowing God's plan has helped me wrap my head around tough things. And while it doesn't make bad things good, it does bring peace, even through hard times.

A Fresh Start

As many of you know, I previously ran a blog a few years ago, mostly about Rachel. About the time I started getting sick during my pregnancy with Alden things just petered out and I never felt like I could get back into it. I've been wanting to blog again, but it just feels like so long since I've posted. I don't want to feel the need to catch up, because I definitely never could. So I decided to just start fresh.

I titled the blog "Not One Empty Chair" because that's how I feel about my children and my family. As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I believe that our time here in this life, while vitally important, is not the end of existence. I believe that we'll exist as a family with generations before and after. I want to sit down at our family table after this life, and I want all of my children there with me. I don't want any empty chairs because I didn't teach them to choose the right. I also believe that if my children and family members want to be there, they will be. We all have that choice.

So welcome to our new blog. I'm now sleeping regularly, so I feel a lot more energized and have as of late been feeling a real need to write things about the children down. If there is one thing I've learned about motherhood, it's that in the moment I think that I'll remember things forever...and then just a short while later I don't. No matter how hard I try, I can't replay that moment in my mind again. Some of that is probably attributable to constant sleep deprivation for 3 or so years, but I think I could remember more if I wrote things down immediately. And it's not too late. My babies are young...Miss Rach is only 2, and Alden boy is barely 1. As guilty as I feel for not recording every funny thing they've said or every tender moment, it's not all lost to me. I've still got time to record them! So that's why I'm starting over, and starting now.

I'm stealing this from my cousin's blog, but I think it's exactly the reason I want to record all of these memories:

"What could you do better for your children and your children’s children than to record the story of your life, your triumphs over adversity, your recovery after a fall, your progress when all seemed black, your rejoicing when you had finally achieved? Begin today and write your deepest thoughts, your achievements and your failures, your associations and your triumphs, your impressions and your testimonies and the angels may quote from it for eternity."
Spencer W. Kimball