Things I Love...

Since I didn't get around to doing a Valentine's post this month, I thought I'd spend a little time thinking about the things I love. This list is by no means comprehensive, just what's going through my head right now...

• I love the smell of my children after a bath
• I love warm chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven (semi-sweet chips, thank you)
• I love laying in bed with my husband and talking about whatever
• I love to hear my son ask if he can have "panpakes"
• I love that my girls think I'm funny
• I love the smell of garlic and onions stir-frying
• I love the smell of rain
• I love free food
• I love my jobs (all four of them)
• I love the little sounds babies make
  
• I love that I feel happier now than I have ever felt in my life
• I love that I can still feel peace in the midst of such uncertainty around me
• I love that I live in a time when a woman can get an epidural
• I love my country
• I love reading to my children
  
• I love that I live in a neighborhood where people don't worry about impressing everyone else
• I love an empty kitchen sink
• I love trying new recipes
• I love that one of my son's bedtime rituals is to spend a couple of minutes cuddling with me
  
• I love singing
• I love that when I sit down and play the piano it relaxes me. Or, in the words of Lucy Honeychurch, "I generally forget my worries at the piano"
  
• I love to teach
• I love that I am a woman, and that I am blessed to be a mother
• I love that there's no one else in the world I'd rather talk to or spend time with than my husband
• I love my church, my Savior, and my Heavenly Father
  

A Haunting Video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFJ9xeYUTnQ

David sent this to me earlier today and I haven't stopped thinking about it since. What the crap are we doing, and how are we going to get out of this?

I was going to go off about how I feel about the current stimulus bill, but I'm so sick of thinking about it. I've been way less than impressed with Obama's scare tactics (ie. if we don't pass this tomorrow we're all going to be eating wallpaper paste). He's a hypocrite, because how are programs that we won't see the benefit from until 2-3 years from now supposed to help us now in 2009? I'm just disgusted with it all. I tried to have so much optimism three weeks ago, but it's gone now.

Christmas 2008

On Christmas Eve, after a living room picnic consisting of cheese, crackers, summer sausage, li'l smokies, and Martinelli's, the kids opened their new pajamas. I think Seth's worn his "Fiderman jammies" every night but four since Christmas. In fact, if you come over to our house on any random afternoon, you might see him ready for bed at 3:00.


Santa brought Seth a train set. When we asked him to sit with his train so we could take a picture, apparently he thought we said sit ON your train.

Grandma Emmett got the kids new binoculars. They are so nice, David and I are claiming them too.

Hadley was so excited that she got the entire set of A-Z Mysteries. She'd been asking for them for months.

I think this was the first Christmas where there were actually any pictures of me. I didn't even have to ask David, he just took the camera and took pictures! It was great!

This was by far the best Christmas morning for us. Not because of the presents. I just made the choice to be relaxed. I didn't worry about getting wrapping paper picked up and thrown away as we went or making sure things were staying organized. We just became surrounded by chaos as the morning went on, and it was really great. It only comes once a year, why stress?