Nine Years

Nine years ago, I said yes to a crazy guy who thought we'd have a great life together. Boy, was he wrong!!! Kidding, of course. We have a really great life together. I've been reflecting more than I ever have before. We were teasing the other night about what we lovingly call "the single years," as in, the years before kids. Brandon called them the good years the other day, and while it was different, it definitely wasn't better. Yes, we could go out to eat whenever we wanted, we slept through church once, we slept all night every night, but there is a depth to our relationship now there wasn't before.

The good and the bad, ups and downs, laughter and tears, have made us get to know each other. Even the ugly parts that only your parents know about, and maybe not even them. Those are the things that have kept us together.

Sometimes it feels like it has been a long, winding road, and then other days it feels like last week I was curling my hair to pick him up from the airport the day he got home from his mission. I'm so glad I still get that excited feeling when he comes home. I love my husband more than I could have ever thought possible, and I can't imagine our life will get better, but somehow I know it will.

And we lived happily ever after.

O Christmas Tree

Jonah was admiring the tree the other day. Of course he couldn't just stand right next to it and look, he had to climb up on the trunks to look! (I tried to take it without the flash...)
As soon as he noticed me with the camera, the grin came out. He has figured out when someone gets the camera, you smile and say cheese. He can't quite say "cheese" so he says "eeee!" Then, of course, you run to mom to see the picture.
On another cute but random note, I was out checking the chickens this morning, and this is what Hyrum came wondering through the yard in.

The Dora backpack was his Donatello bag. Don't you know anything purple belongs to Donatello? He's very much to comedy relief here.

The other day he and Sterling came in to ask me a few questions about a map they were looking at. It was a big world map and they found Washington. For some reason, the makers of this map found that Walla Walla was an important city in Washington to highlight, who knows why, and Sterling was telling me how there is a state called Walla Walla. I explained that it is a city and it is even in Washington! Hyrum, in his cutest Hyrum I-can't-quite-pronounce-w-and-r voice, asked, "Mom, when can we go to Wawa Wawa?"

I just about died.

Lots of nothing

I'm too tired to post much today, even though I feel like I need to do something. I have a few things waiting in the queue, like pics from the craft fair, and Christmas decorating, but right now I have a question.

How can kids be up sick half the night and then be their normal, boisterous, rambunctious selves the next morning??? Hyrum was up with a stomach bug Sunday night from about 1am till 8am, and then Jonah was up last night for about the same amount of time with the same thing. Could I have a little bit of that resilience? Please? I'm pretty tired...