I heart my brother's camera

I am borrowing my brother's camera for the weekend, and it is a HUGE difference. I want to marry the lense. Aren't my girls gorgeous?

Thoughts on Grace.

Today Gracie grinned at me and said, "Mom, I am NOT going to grow up". Not surprising, really, since I sit by her bedside at night and make her give me her promise, her WORD- that she will not grow again overnight like she did last night. It never works, but at least she tries.

The picture is of her two years ago. She was 2 years old and we were in Arcata at my Grandpa's. Her hair is curly because of the coastal air and that dimple in her elbow, I can't even begin to express how it tugs at those lines in my forehead. I love it. I love her. I didn't expect motherhood to be quite like this. Seriously, but look at that picture, who skateboards in a t-shirt that says "I love Mommy" (gotta love Old Navy), a hat that says "I love Mommy", a large belly from drinking so much milk, and flowing hair that hasn't been cut since birth? Well, the answer is she wasn't skateboarding. She was holding it waiting for one of her aunts or uncles to come and push her on it. What a rose.

A poem

My mom wrote the following poem just yesterday in a quick email to me. She meant it to be about my girls, but turned out to kind of be about me. I thought it was nothing short of the most beautiful thing I've heard in forever.

Time
steals procrastination's flotsam,
it sucks up the baby smells,
it sweeps away the innocent laughter,
it reveals the clumsy stalks growing on windswept hillsides,
it hides the emerging essence,
it draws forth unspeakable wonder,
it wraps gently all the memories I hold to in my deep room,
it opens my eyes after a blink to behold the very desire of my heart standing tall and graceful,
with young beauties of her own,
and it makes me weep
and wonder.
And my arms cannot hold the vision, my hearts fail to comprehend.
My voice stilled in the mist.
Love is a small word these days.

Fishing

Went fishing on Saturday up American Fork Canyon. It was lots of fun. Grace dipped the pole in the water a couple of times which was pretty cute-- a new approach on the sport. Fish were sparse- the guy fishing next to us caught one, but they were using live worms which I would not want to handle, so "good for them", but "ha ha, we don't have wormy slimy hands". Anything to make us feel better about ourselves...

Hope you all had a great weekend.

Blood Diamond

We watched Blood Diamond last night. My brother bought it and came over to watch it with us. It was SO excellent. I thought Leo would be a faker the whole time with his South African accent, but he turned out to be a really great character. and Djimon! He is my fave in the world. He's amazing. The whole thing made me so depressed. I can read about Africa, and read African news, and the whole continent is a little obsession of mine, but watching events dramatized on film is so hard. If it's hard for me to watch I can only imagine what it's like to be in the countries when civil war and genocide are taking place. It rips my heart out. Felt the same way about Hotel Rwanda, and Catch a Fire. Why is this happening? The story behind Blood Diamond is interesting, and the Zimbabwe insurgents killed for a different reason than those in Rwanda did. I guess both can be summed up as a struggle for money and power.
I need to do something about this.

Utah

I have sold my soul to... a creative mormon booklet of FHE ideas. Yes, I joined an FHE group and I feel so odd. Last night, all 5 of us met and the one girl had five sterilite containers full of file folders, all different colors, with the theme written on tabs with very Primary President handwriting. I felt pressured-- so I reluctantly said I would join, with a fake smile and all the energy deep inside that I could express, which came out as a small puff of smoke/air. Then I took a deep breath and pictured myself coloring pictures of people paying tithing and taking the sacrament, laminating them, and gluing them on popsicle sticks, then making up a game like "familopily", or "tithing twister". THEN attaching a story about "Timothy Tithing" and how he gave a tenth of his cookies to the "tithing tree", or something. As you can see, I'm not good at this!

Just when I thought it wouldn't get any worse, one of them said something about, "make sure you have an activity, lesson, and a game so we have all the components of FHE!" and it took me straight back to my attempt at joining a preschool group last spring and every activity had to be at least 15 minutes and no longer than 17 minutes with 90 seconds alotted for cleanup time. I just don't work well in these types of situations. I'm such a slacker. Whatever happened to the FHE where you walk to a grassy knoll and talk about the future as a family? Yes, my kids do think I'm boring.

I like to be a liquid and I like to pour myself at will, and I can just fit in wherever I end up, right? But in a situation like this, I feel like they are combs and I am a comb, and I need to fit right in with their FHE combs or I'm ousted. If I forget to pick a themed opening song, I will be broken in half. I mean my comb will.

Anyway, with every breath I breathe I am easing closer to adulthood and I can't understand why I resist it so much- Taking an FHE idea from lds.org is not difficult and my kids would love it, it just makes me sort of nauseous... maybe it makes me feel like, I FOR SURE, WITH NO DOUBT, AND WITH ABSOLUTE TRUTH, LIVE IN UTAH (not that there's anything wrong with that!). Not only Utah, but in a ward that has like, a million nurseries and primaries.

I have a month to get mine done. A month to have instestinal problems whenever I think about it. I need to shake this off. Any ideas from those more creative would be helpful.

Per Laurel's request

A photo of Ruby in her miniskirt. And she happened to draw on the wall the same day, so I took a picture of it. And her zipper's down. Had to cut the photo in half, couldn't get it all in one..

Questions

Today:

"I don't want the bread, I just want the water."
"But Gracie, the bread represents Jesus' body when he died, and the water represents Jesus' blood when he died... so we have to have both of them."
(10 seconds deep in thought)
"Who died, Mommy?"
"Jesus died for us."
"Jesus died for us?!"
"Ya, he did Gracie."
"Is he.... maj ... is he magical?"
(chuckle and a quick elbow to Jake who's sitting next to me)
"He is sort of magical, yes. He is spiritual."
"Oh......... Can I have marshmallows if I'm good?"

Mini Skirts

Today was a good day. Went to Costco, went to Salt Lake, saw a friend, just made dinner for my girls and two neighbor kids. Jake is not home until late tonight from work, so I offered to watch my neighbor's two kids while her and her husband went on a date. It is so fun watching Grace talk with this other four year old. The other girl is turning 5 in May, and somehow Grace can sense that Madison is older and does everything this other little one tells her to do! And just a few hours ago, I was at Jeni's (she will probably agree with me on this), and she was bossing poor little Vivi around, being that Vivi is just a bit younger than Grace. They just follow the older one and lose that bossy creativity that pours through every crevice of the house when it's just us. She turns into a different Grace... agreeable, adaptable, and she listens. And accepts the other girls' ideas (they seem a lot less crazy than her own mom's ideas. I guess I'm just not as preschoolerish as her friends are).
Ruby wore a mini skirt today. Ya. Deeeelicious Legs.

Birthdays

There are far more important things in life than kissing.. at least that's what I hear. But I tend to disagree. Grace is too strong for me to kiss her like I used to, but Ruby doesn't know any better. Ruby and I probably spend 5 seconds out of every 90 seconds kissing. Truly.
This is the day of their birthday (their birthdays are 10 days apart, so we celebrate them together until they get old enough to complain). In the middle is my sister's lovely, perfect little baby Kayla.

Then we have Ruby's exposed neck and shoulder. I don't think I've seen anything so beautiful since Grace was 2.

This is a photo taken at the Florida wedding in February. Ashley sent it to me, and I thought it was hilarious! Ruby was always a little wary of Reef, now we know why! Caught in the act.