Saving.

Me & Dubes, courtesy of Grace.

The universe tells me to coupon. At least once a day. I feel the pressure! Someone, once a day, tells me I should coupon. I really don't think I have the brain for it.

Can I hire someone to coupon for me? I think I could pay someone to do that and STILL save money.

Really, this lady at the grocery told me today she had a coupon in her hand for the Raisin Bran I was buying and that she could give it to me. Then she said she felt impressed to give me a few websites to get me started on couponing. Wow, now that's probably the most clear sign I have gotten thus far-- spiritual lady in the store.

Maybe I should pick up on this?

Sometimes I glance down at an ad for a dollar off Huggies diapers. I look at the ad, think about bringing it to the store, then feel fear. Fear that I'll lose it, or forget it at the checkout, it won't be included, and I'll screw it all up... or that I'll read the date wrong and it won't work.

Anyway, I'll probably go to bed tonight not having made any more progress... and then I'll do the same tomorrow.

Sigh, double sigh.

Right.

Till was looking gorgeous in her white onesie today. Her skin was all hot and loveable so I took her outside with me and we watered the garden together. She blinked the entire time, I don't think she could see a thing because it was so sunny.

But I had my new baby and we tended the garden. Picked a few of this and a few of that.

I talked to her in Super-Nonsense like I usually do. Something like,

"Wanna do duh gahden which yuh maaaamaaa?"

She didn't respond.

I kissed her between the peppers and the tomatoes.

Thought about the earth and birth.

Glanced over to my other girls eating popsicles in the grass on a quilt that Jake's mother made when she was around my age.

Things are just right today.

Me n Mine

((Thanks for the photos, Hannah.))

Sunday Photos

Sometimes I have those days when I just know I'm living my dream. I feel it so heavy on my chest. The chaos, the mess, the noise, the children and their constance. It's what I've craved for so long and now here I am. The mother of a family with endless potential.

Taking the kids in and out of Sacrament Meeting, glancing at Jake and us shaking our heads in disbelief.

Watching them follow me like little baby birds.

It's what I've always wanted. I love it so much. These little ones are all mine, and I watch them become something every day.

I rocked Lillie to sleep tonight which I haven't done in a long time. She watched me and placed her hand lightly on my neck, right at the spot where my throat meets my collar bone. She rested her fingers there gently. I breathed in and out and pretty soon she was breathing just as heavy, a solid childish mass in my arms.

Tomorrow brings, well, tomorrow. Another week of ins and outs and highs and lows.

I want to spread out what we have. Take our love and happiness and put it in a bushel, put it on an airplane and sprinkle it across our continent, flakes and crumbs spreading out past the pacific and to what lies beyond.

It's the least we could do.

For the first time.

Being parents. We still don't know what the H we're doing.

Jake took the girls to "go get ice cream" tonight and came back with about $30 worth of stuff. Ice cream and candy and gummy bears and cookies. To make their own shakes they said in their high pitched voices.

I was annoyed at first but after their shakes I put them to bed and ate oreo cookies and watched Losing it with Jillian. Not bad, I say!

Man, we've got some major messes at our place. I cleaned out our van with a shop vac. That is extremely extreme. There's cracker and chip crumbs everywhere, and when the girls feel fancy, there's even shredded wheat under our living room rug. Along the edge. Creating a small crunchy hill. I promise, I do tell them to eat at the table at least twenty times a day.

Today I walked in the bathroom to find Lillie repeatedly attempting to flush a large Tinkerbell doll down the toilet. Good thing she was large (the doll).

I washed her with soap and then let Ruby know about the goings on. She didn't seem at all concerned or amused. Something in between, like a smirk mixed with a shrug.

While the girls were out with their daddy on the 8 o'clock sugar run, I stayed home with my baby and gurgled sweet nothings in her ear. I am not kidding, as soon as they were out the door, I grabbed her little body, took long strides down the hall, laid on my bed and talked to my baby. It's what I craved. She obliged and smiled all the way 'til 8:30.

And on this windy Wednesday evening, when temporary calm still blanketed our tiny little house, I started to tickle her neck and do you know what she did?

Do you???

She laughed. For the first time. From her ribs to her chest to her throat and then back down again, she laughed.  It truly, truly, truly, never gets old. My Matada.

So many girls.

Some of my sisters and me spent Friday night and Saturday in Rexburg, Idaho, visiting my sister Naomi (far left) that goes to school there. All of us girls are married and at different stages of starting our own families. We left our kids and husbands behind (except my Matilda).

We talked late into the night, woke up and took a nature walk, hit some garage sales, listened to Naomi play her cello, had a picnic on the grass with our cousin and spent almost two hours at D.I.

There were conversations spoken in the car and amongst each other that were like a glance, a breeze, a whisper. Magical and sacred, rich and genuine. Never to be repeated the same way.

I have all the extravagance I ever need in my sisters. They are exquisite.

They are what my girls will have in each other forever and ever.

Sunday Photos

This is a little something my mom wrote to me in response to my last post. I had to include it here, it is just so beautiful:

Lillie, unfreckled and unsteady as to her place in the world.

Those lingering eyes gulping the possibilities unfolding before them--

Hungry yet patient

Searching yet waiting

While the voice, the fist, the brows trick you into thinking she is undefined.

Oh no, she is right on schedule.

And she, like a thrashing babe in a cocoon,

will emerge one day.

And what will we say to the beauty we see?

We shall say we saw it before, as we are...

In those irresistable eyes.

Those windows.

Black and white

And still they are two beauties with different hair

different eyes, different lips.

No amount of dressing alike,

Talking, poetry can take the uniqueness from them.

And the divergent forms of the girls I see in the photo

Are merely a prelude to the worlds

That are within those lovely heads.

Thoughts, opinions, tolerances,

Passions, fears, faith.

Breathless they leave us each and every minute.

What did we do to have the honor

Of sharing our life paths with them?

Average Summer Day

Living with the beauties of the world.

First Tomato

There's lots of greenies out there, but this is the first red one from my garden.

It was delicious!

A Love Story

Jake went to Home Depot by himself last night after the kids went to bed. Just a short trip to return something.

Today I got in the car with the kids to head down to 7-11 for slurpees. We turned the car on and what came blasting through the speakers?

WHAT I ASK YOU?

Taylor Swift. Specifically Taylor Swift's "Love Story".

ROMEO TAKE ME SOMEWHERE WE CAN BE ALONE!!!!!

Ya. He was listening to it last night on the way back from Home Depot. Havin' a little guy time. He swears he was just spacing out and that it was a coincidence. I think not.

It's a catchy tune!

I love it and him.

So much!!!

Made me laugh out loud. And I still am.

I LOVE YOU AND THAT'S ALL I REALLY KNOW.

IT'S A LOVE STORY BABY JUST SAY YES.

Me and them, them and me.

Lately I've been thinking a lot. How before, maybe in past years or after I had the older girls, I had some guilty feelings. Like I can't be just a mom, I need to get going on something else. Back to school, or start a little business, or do more photography or piano lessons or real estate. It's always there, nagging, that feeling of needing to be something else, too, besides a mom.

Well I have to say that with my new baby Matada, I really don't feel that way. I know how fast this time goes, when they're babies. It zooms past me, it doesn't look back, it leaves a wake of dust that settles slowly on my shoulders. So I'm eating up every bit of it. I've dug down and found my treasured pool of crystal clear talent. It's in there. And it mothers well.

Something is brewing inside of me. A change. A desire to be better at this, this particularly hard and largely unrewarding job of motherhood. To give it a big hug and say, "it's good to see you motherhood, I've been trying to ignore you. Trying to pretend I won't lie with you, but I think I will". I've been making a menu, cooking new things. I've been staying more organized. I've been thinking about things like *gasp* starting to teach them to play the piano. I've been forcing myself to relax, to leave my chores behind and sit next to them and listen with my eyes glued to theirs. I've been kissing the baby's face off (but that's a given).

Every minute of this particular summer has had a little magic in it.

The girls play outside in their underwear. They turn on the hose and fill up buckets, and little pools, and camp chairs and cups and plates. They make mud. There's mud everywhere, on the patio, the carpet, even on the walls of my house. I shampooed the carpets on Friday and not two minutes later, Lillie came running in with mud caked all over her fingers and she'd slid her hand down the wall of the hallway on her way back to find me. On that same subject, she did pee three times on the carpet yesterday (she likes to take her diaper off) and she pooed on the girl's play chair. Apparently we're raising a puppy...

Grace and Ruby come in from playing outside and need to warm up, so they get in bed together with their drawing paper and pens and draw funny pictures. And they laugh hysterically. And Lillie bugs them half to death.

It's magical, I tell you!

Rarely do we have friends over, rarely do we venture out. Just me and my beautiful daughters, being young, hiding from the world in our tiny little home.

I keep telling myself, "You're so so lucky. Take it in. Feel it.". I know it may not always be this good, who knows what the future will bring. But for now, I know.

And just for now, I will be that mother. The one who doesn't shave her legs, can't remember how old she is, stands in the driveway looking hideous with a look on her face. That strung-out look. I'm a mother who wears flip flops to every occasion and always shows up with essential items missing from her diaper bag. Like her wallet.

Sigh.

But look at these girls. They deserve everything I can give them. Most of all, my time.

Bursting Beauty

Your Daddy gave you a blessing today. He took you in his arms, along with four of your uncles, and blessed you with many things. It is one of the simplest, most beautiful things afforded our family: that gift of blessing and ability to hold the priesthood and belonging to a church that holds these ordinances at a high priority.

Tads, my Til, my lovely little baby, my newborn one who holds the world's power in her hands...

You cried while your Dad spoke to you and blessed you. 

We all knew and felt and cried and loved you.

I made a little dress and headband for you on your special day. I spent hours and hours on it. I am not the best seamstress so it was a challenge to try and figure it all out but I thought of you the entire time. With every stitch, I had short flashes in my mind of the way your body looked, your short little neck, the way your legs would surely kick up under the skirt, your arms tucked tightly into the bodice. I stayed up through the middle of the night, sewing, each piece, fixing and tucking. I thought of the way your feathery hair would sweep against the collar.

I thought of the way your tiny body would be clothed in this little dress, only to grow into something even more wonderful and beautiful and powerful, someday a woman. My fourth daughter. With so much potential.

You make my heart sing a chorus of bursting beauty, sounds so wonderful they would be all the proof you ever need that I love you to the end of everything.

Evolution of a smile.

If you have never had a baby, then you may not know: it's hard to get a photo of her smiles. She only holds them for a few seconds. They're spontaneous. She smiles when she looks right at your face, not at the camera. So you may have to focus your lens, keep your camera locked against your right shoulder, crane your neck out so she can see your face, then click and coo and squeal until she smiles. Then you may have to hold your finger over the shutter button and click away, hoping she's still in focus, since you aren't looking through the viewfinder. You may have to do all this while your toddler swings on your pantleg and tugs at your elbow...

And you may have to try five different times throughout the day.

But it is so totally worth it.