We're Not Perfect Mothers

A Blog Post from October 27, 2012 - From a blog I had but have since deleted 

I recently reorganized our pictures on the computer (I LOVE organizing) and I was looking at old pictures and videos of the kids from when they were born up until now. I was kind of emotional, how could I forget them in those first months of their lives, when they are so innocent and helpless and beautiful, so quickly. And how much time we spent just looking at them! And it wasn't even that long ago for Ginger. Now it seems like I am just looking at the tops of their heads all day long and telling them 'no!' or 'stop!'. And then feeling awful when Tipo gets this defeated look in his eyes and says "oh, sorry mom" and turns and walks away. Or Ginger scrunches up her face and cries and puts her arms out to me for a hug. Breaks my heart every time. So why do I keep doing it?
How quickly we forget!
We will all fail our children in one way or another, no mother is perfect! I hope that doesn't sound negative, it's not meant to be. I just mean that we can't beat ourselves up for not doing everything perfectly. I know I struggle with feeling like a failure a lot of times because I am not acting like the mother I always thought I would be.
A current LDS leader and Apostle Elder M Russell Ballard said:

"There s no one perfect way to be a good mother. Each situation is unique. Each mother has different challenges, different skills and abilities, and certainly different children. The choice is different and unique for each mother and each family....What matters is that a mother lovers her children deeply and, in keeping with the devotion she has for God and her husband, prioritizes them above all else." {Daughters of God}

Being a mother is being in a relationship with your child.
Being a mother is not a set of tasks to accomplish and we aren't graded on how well we do compared to other mothers. (Erickson, 135)  

Erickson, Janet J. "Mothers as Nurturers." Successful Marriages and Families: Proclamation Principles and Research Perspective. (2012): 128-139. Print.

The Little Things

A blog post from November 13, 2012 - on another blog I had but have since deleted. 

"We must look carefully, therefore, not only at life’s large defining moments but also at the seemingly small moments. Even small acts and brief conversations count, if only incrementally, in the constant shaping of souls." Neal A Maxwell

Yesterday I took the kids outside to the playground. Sometimes it's hard for me to just be out there watching them with not enough energy to get up and play and I couldn't seem to stop yawning either! But on that day my kids noticed a bug on the playground wall. On closer inspection it looked like a very old (and large!) ladybug with no spots at all. It even had a limp, or at least that's what it looked like. The kids were so enthralled by this one tiny little bug  Whenever the kids would get too close the ladybug would stop and pull it's legs in, and after awhile get up and start moving again. After awhile Joseph decided to give the ladybug some obstacles he grabbed sticks and put them in the ladybug's way. Sometimes she would climb over them and sometimes she would go down around the side of the wall and back up on top. After sometime you could see a string of sticks evenly placed on the wall and all of a sudden it looked like Bug Olympics and Joseph was the coach.
For some reason that very insignificant event seemed very not insignificant. It was a moment of just seeing the world as my kids do and finding joy in simple things, something I haven't done in a long time. I'm really grateful for my kids, and their unique perspective on life. I'm grateful for small moments of sharing an experience with them.

“Grand drama and ecstatic moments do not make a life good. Life is an everyday affair, and the sum total of unremarkable, daily happenings define its quality. In the prosaic novel, heroes and heroines who live for extreme moments misunderstand what life is... Many can perform heroic actions in the sight of all, but few posses the courage to do small things right without recognition” ~ Gary Saul Morson 

Louise is 11 Months

Aquarium and Robles Family

Nathan and Nina and  kids came to visit a week and a half ago. I was very bad and didn't take a lot of pictures.
We were so glad to have them come though, We love it when family comes to visit...*nudge nudge - to anyone who wants to come* I know we aren't the most energetic and busy kind but we still love to see our family...since we are so deprived of family living near us! (Seriously, though, someone needs to move here....and soon!) Anyways back to Robles Ruckus!
We let all the kids sleep in one room, which I am seriously wondering what made us so crazy to think that would work! No, the kids had a lot of fun... maybe too much fun, they had a hard time going to sleep. SO much so that both Joseph and Rylee fell asleep in their classes on Sunday! Rylee curled up in a corner in Nursery and Joesph asleep in Primary exercises with only half of his body on the chair  The primary president said she took a picture...I need to get it from her! I digress again.
We adults had a good time while the kids were shut away at night just talking (my favorite) and watching silliness on the computer and eating too much junk food while trying to keep it a secret from the kids so we wouldn't have to share.
The highlight for sure was the Aquarium (check off a summer bucket list!). This is actually the only time I took pictures. We got to the aquarium and realized we couldn't take in outside food or drink. It was a cold day so we took Nathan and Nina's van to a corner of the parking lot and took out all the chairs and ate inside the van! Fun memory!
I'm am super excited for next year too because the Aquarium will be moving to a new location and a better building that was actually made for an aquarium (Where it's at now used to be a grocery store) But it was still really nice actually.
The first thing we saw was the sharks... the boys loved that. And we got to pet some fish. The penguins were cute! And I got a kick out of the eel tank... they had two silver balls that if you touch them you would get an idea of what it was like to be shocked by an eel. or you could also hold hands with someone and make a circuit of electricity.
We also shot balloons with a sling shot and we took family pictures on Sunday morning before they left.
Cody is in the process of editing them. It wasn't the best time to take pictures. We were all squinting in the sun. And I'm not sure we found the greatest spot to take pictures. Although Nathan and Nina's family pictures turned out cute and Nathan and Nina took couples pictures and they are just so darn cute together they must have practice at getting their pictures together because they turned out so cute! Ours..not so much. Not because of Nathan (who took our pictures) but because of the sun and I really didn't like what we were wearing. lame I know. But so it is. We were sad to see them leave (You didn't even say goodbye!:() it's okay we forgive you. And we hope we can get together again soon

Look out!

SHARKS!

I didn't realize that Emperors were so big!

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Oregon Coast Memories

I feel bad.
A year ago in August my family went to one of our favorite places on earth (and mine and Cody's honeymoon destination) Oregon Coast with my brother-in-law and his family. My brother-in-law and his high school sweetheart are only two months apart, i was in the grade under them (me and my date and them and some others went to a prom together, the best one I went to) and Cody was a grade older and we all went to the same high school. Unfortunately  Cody and I didn't really get to interact with each other much, although he tells me he knew who i was very well :) Luckily we met later and hit is off really well and the rest is history.
Anyways, I LOVE to take pictures so I documented our little family vacation pretty well I thought and got some fun pictures. Unfortunately  I lost almost ALL of the pictures, they just disappeared! *sniff* That has never happened to me, usually I am very careful with my pictures and make sure I have them. But this time they slipped through my grasp! Before that happened though I was able to get a few pictures onto Walmart.com so i could print some pictures.

Our oldest boys!

They just had their third boy. I'm betting on the chance that they will have all boys! And I think that they would be just fine with that! 

My crazy hair!

If you notice their picture says 'thank' and ours says 'you'. I printed these off as a "thank you" to Cody and Nathan's mom's cousin ( I think I got that right) one of the coolest people i know, Eunice, who graciously let us stay at her unbelievably beautiful home (which has an amazing view of Nahalem Bay). Both of us want to make a tradition of going to the Oregon Coast often. Cody and I were able to go see Cannon Beach (our honeymoon spot) and the great resort we stayed at. So many good memories for both of our families!

Highlights from the trip:

• Seeing Eunice's house again.
• going to Wheeler's antiques stores
• A Sneaker wave almost taking Ephraim and Joseph out to sea! (okay so they weren't in that much danger but it was still very scary to us.)
• Waking up early to see starfish
• pulling the boys around on the bogie board
• sand getting EVERYWERE! uhg. (not necessarily a highlight but definitely something I remember)
• Flattening a penny on a train track while a train went by ( which is now taped in Joseph's journal)

Surprise Trip Home!

We decided to go home to visit our families. We went a different way, by the Salt Flats. It was only supposed to be and hour out of the way, but it ended up being FOUR hours out of the way (lots of construction in Nevada)! But we'd never seen the flats so that was fun...and very pretty! It was a nice visit, although I felt so pooped the WHOLE time. That could be because it was was over 100 degrees most days! SO awful! We couldn't even open our windows at night. My sister Bailey also came into town for a school reunion so I was able to see her too. So me and two of my sisters went through the temple together it was very nice! Unfortunately my camera died half way through the trip, I took some pictures with my moms camera, so she has them. We gave Joseph a Hair cut while we were there. But I messed up so Cody cut it into a Mohawk. Jojo's hair only lasted like that for two days and then we buzzed it.

The Salt Flats

"The sun is in my eyes!"

That fixed that problem! What a Problem Solver!

Trying to keep entertained.

Dancing to music... he looks so enthusiastic...

Peek-a-boo

Four kids in a tub

Riding around on a plastic sheet is fun. 'Nuff said.

Papa and Ry looking at videos on Papa's new phone.

Notice Jojo's mohawk? 

Ry... with a tin can on her head....

Trip to Arizona

It was so warm in Arizona, Rylee's wearing no socks!

Cody's uncle passed away last Sunday. We decided to attend the funeral in Arizona on Friday. The services were beautiful... They made me think of Rochelle a lot. Cody really enjoyed seeing his cousins again after such a long time apart. He isn't necessarily very close with any of them but he was VERY happy that he got to interact with them a lot more than normal.

I have never been to Southern Utah, Nevada, or Arizona so I enjoyed it. I also enjoyed meeting Cody's family that I haven't met yet, even if it was through sad circumstances. We set home on Saturday and made some stops. We stopped at Hoover Dam! Cody had been when he was younger but it had been awhile. It was amazing and disorienting! Tipo enjoyed yelling down the one side and hearing his echo. We also stopped in St. George. I know that the end of my ancestors life, Levi Ward Hancock, was lived around St. George. So we stopped at the temple visitor center (the St. George Temple is SOOOO white especially against the red rock, amazing) They didn't know anything about Levi. So we took a walk around the temple. After we left St George we came across the town of Washington and I remembered that THIS is where Levi lived, so, with a wonderfully patient Cody and I turned off to try and find the graveyard, we couldn't find it but while looking we found the historical museum and a monument dedicated to the prominent early pioneers who helped settle Washington... Levi was among them. They had a relief of his face there so I showed Tipo and told him how he was named after this great man. The picture looks a lot more reverent and romantic then the moment was. ^_^ I was trying to snap a picture before he turned and ran off. ^_^ We left a good two hour before Nathan and Nina, but they got to our apartment long before us! I felt bad! But we made it home and we all were able to get some sleep... how very little it may have been.

Ginger and cousin loving each other

Surprise Visit

Nathan and Nine surprised us and came to Utah this last week!!!! It was like 8ish at night and they knocked on our door and when Cody opened it cousin E was in his carseat with a note that said "free to a good home"! ^_^ I was good to have them here! we did lots and Cody and Nathan went a saw a movie together while us girls got to watch a girly movie together (it's been so long since I've done that!) and we had yummy Italian Sodas that they brought!!! Fun Memories. thanks guys!

Jana and Steve

The first live sealing I've been to since Cody and I were married!! It was wonderful! The reception turned out wonderful and the dresses even better!!!