liam quote

Noah came home from school about a month ago and told a joke, which Liam repeated and then they kept repeating back and forth to each other all evening, until bedtime, when Daniel was putting them to sleep. Right before Daniel walked out of their room this conversation happened:

N: Daddy, look under there!

D: under where?

N: hahahahahaha! You said underwear!

D: OK guys goodnight.

Liam: Daddy!

D: Yes?

Liam: Look und-uh weh-uh (underwear)

Oh man. I laughed for days when Daniel recited this to me. I’ve forgotten to blog about it for a month, but had to get it down.

noah quote

We were sitting at the dinner table a few nights ago … maybe Friday night?? Anyway and Noah tells us the following:

N: There were some girl scouts that came into my class today to ask for donations. They said we needed to donate money to poor people.

Me: Really? huh.

N: But wait! We don’t need to donate money! Obama is already taking care of that!

Me: (laughing) yeah? What do you mean?

N: Well, Obama is taking money from the rich people and giving it to the poor people, so we don’t need to give any more money to them!

Noah has it all figured out. At such a young age.

best. monday. ever.

I’m not gonna lie, I usually crash and burn on Mondays. They are not my forte. I’m usually overwhelmed by it and I miss Daniel Cakes after having had him with me every waking moment over the weekend. So Mondays usually suck. But not today and I’ll tell you why: I prayed.

I don’t always share spiritual experiences, but I felt like I needed to document this. I want to remember it.

I was asked to give a talk on the 24th on “increasing your faith”. It sounded totally ambiguous to me and nothing came to mind when I heard the topic. I even did a half hour of looking around on lds.org to help find other talks for inspiration. And I was coming up empty. So then it was Monday morning, this morning, and I had all three boys home because of midwinter break and a talk to write and a house to clean, laundry (of course) hanging over my head and blah, blah, blah, I was stressed before I even got out of my bed.

The morning was a little foggy and weird because I was up off and on starting at 5 am because of Ray, but I did get to sleep in a little because I didn’t have to rush out the door to get boys to school. I was going about my business, making breakfast, feeding Ray, putting in a load of laundry and wondering when I could find a few minutes to dedicate to study for my talk. I finally got Ray down for a morning nap and stopped and knelt by my bed. I very realistically prayed. I told the Lord that I didn’t know how I was going to do this because I could never carve out more than 15 minute increments to dedicate to anything during the day and that I needed help. I asked for the Lord to help me write this talk …. and fast. Really. I know everything is supposed to be on the Lord’s time table and I should submit to Him, but I was very seriously just telling him what I needed help with and asking for Him to bless me.

I sat down on my bed with the laptop on my legs and searched and read for about 15 minutes and I was so frustrated. I was not finding what I was looking for. I had to stop and change the loads, make lunch for the boys and go potty. I did those things and came back to the laptop. And then it worked. I found a great talk by Dallin H. Oaks that really got the ball rolling and that was it. Everything clicked. I don’t even know how it all worked out, but I wrote the whole talk, the whole thing and did so much around the house too. I got it all done and more. It made me think of this talk I heard about mothers and how they would be blessed and “made more than you are”. Today I felt like that was true.

I looked around at 4:30 pm and realized I had accomplished more than I have been able to do in over a week. Here’s the list of accomplishments:

  • washed and folded three loads of clothes
  •  wrote my whole talk
  • rearranged Ray’s nursery
  • made breakfast, lunch and dinner before 4:30 pm (had all day beef stew going in the oven all day and ready to eat at dinnertime)
  • picked up the front room, my room, the kitchen and bathroom
  • gave Liam a bath
  • got the boys to do their chores
  • swept the kitchen floor
  • cleaned my craft area downstairs
  • fed Ray 4 separate times
  • cleared off the dresser in my room
  • called Eddie Bauer about my ruined coat, then fixed my coat and washed it.
  • saved the bouquet of dying flowers Daniel brought home for me a week ago
  • checked and sent emails
  • helped Noah read a chapter and a half of the Book of Mormon

Maybe that doesn’t sound like a lot to others, but for me, that was miraculous. I felt such an overwhelming feeling of love and gratitude by the end of the day that I had to kneel and thank my Father in heaven for hearing and answering my prayer so obviously and immediately. I didn’t think it could get better …. then Daniel called me at 4:45 pm and told me he was coming home early. I seriously almost burst into tears of joy. My cup runneth over … really. best. Monday. ever.

ombre cupcakes

It’s a new thing. I made it up. I originally wanted these cupcakes to end up looking like layers of pink, but they melded together and ended up kinda cool! I call them “ombre cupcakes” because they fade from dark pink to light pink. It was a successful process, and man I needed today to be successful because yesterday was awful! So yeah for today:

This is the varied colorful batter. I used strawberry cake mix and added red food coloring for the darkest pink, then white cake mix to make the lightest pink batter.

Then plopped the colors by spoonfuls, starting with the darkest pink first, into my cupcake pans.

And this is what we got.

Super cool right??

A dollop of icing and a decorative candy on top and there you have it – Valentine’s Day cupcakes for Noah’s class. I love them.