Purging Our Clutter (the beginning)

I have started my purging and decluttering and so far it's been SO great! I have organized out holiday décor into buckets for each month/holiday. I got rid of things we didn't need and each month I've got areas I want decorations so I plan to go through these boxes each month and make sure I have what I need. If I don't, I'll get what I need to make sure our house looks so festive and homey!

I've spot cleaned our laminate flooring. I separated it into 3 sections and did one each night. Larry kept the kids distracted while I did this. I was down on my knees (with my knee pads...those were a HUGE lifesaver) with a microfiber rag and some cleaner and just scrubbed every inch. It didn't end up cleaning it as much as I had hoped, but it was still good to get it cleaned and at least try.

Cleaning the house isn't always easy.
Hopefully this room will get a makeover this year

I have cleaned out most of our basement, I went through our bulk shopping section, our travel/tools/camping stuff, our movies, and measuring everything out for when we finish the basement. I still have to do the home décor area, but I've been able to clear out a bunch of stuff in this area so that's been nice.

Sometimes hidden "gems" are found when
You clean out areas you were hiding them haha

I've cleaned under the bathroom sinks and some rust that was on our master shower. Those were nice areas to clean up as well!.

Overall we've got a nice pile of stuff we're getting rid of. I'm also slowly getting a place for everything and everything in it's place, which I've wanted to do for years now! I'll be happy to report how much more I get decluttered and organized as I go. It's been SUCH a nice stress reliever.

January Date Days

 So I'm getting back into making sure we have family date days and 1:1 dates with the kids. This month was my choice for the family date day and Lucy's 1:1 date.

For the family date day, I chose the Butterfly Biosphere. We went once when it opened back when Gwen was a little baby, but I knew it would be a great winter activity since it's so warm there. Also, one of Cara's school friend's mom's was antsy to get out of the house so I invited them along. We had a lot of fun with them AND she was able to get us in to it for free (plus the Dinosaur Museum as well). Cara even got to hold a butterfly for a second (I do wish we had spent a little more time there, so we will definitely have to do this one again). 

Since the activities were free I decided we should try the new Olive Garden by our house for dinner. I don't love Olive Garden, but it actually ended up being really delicious. The only issues is the kids were crazy so being OUT at dinner was a bit insane. Plus it took a while for our food to get to us. I told Larry I was okay with that being out last actual dinner out for a while haha.

For Lucy's 1:1 date I took her to Build-A-Bear. I was SO excited for this. My mom wanted to do some mall walking so I invited her along (which I do feel kind of bad about, but since Lucy is so young and she LOVES her Nana I knew it would be okay). I let her pick her own bear, we filled it up and then picked out an outfit. She was SO happy with it and kept cuddling it and then untying the shoes and pretending to put them back on haha. We had lunch at the Panda Express in the mall, which she gobbled up. I had wanted to get her a cookie as well. I was going to just grab one at the Corner Bakery at the mall, but decided picking up Crumbl on the way home would be even better (they had great flavors for the week).

Overall I love doing family activities and I LOVE doing 1:1 dates, I always feel like it really helps the bond with that kid. The other girls saw her bear and became obsessed and now want one of their own as well haha. I'm looking forward to more of these this year!

Pierce is NINE Months

  I am NINE months old!

I like: walking and being up standing, getting my teeth brushed, when we pretend to drop him or throw him in the air a little bit, bath time, having raspberries blown on his skin, playing peek-a-boo

I dislike: being hungry, tired, or left alone when I want to be in the middle of all the action. This boy just can't wait to be on the move and be with us all. 

I am now: at his 9 month checkup he was 23 lbs 6.5 oz (94th percentile) and 29.3 (83rd percentile) inches long so he's getting quite large haha. He's wearing 12 month clothes and size 4 diapers. 

A Typical Day looks like: 

 

Wake up around 7:30. Whether he's already awake and chatting or trying to sleep, we get him up at this time.

7:40: He gets a squeeze pouch of fruit food, which he usually gobbles up.

8:00 get a 6-7 ounce bottle

8:30 - 9:30 wiggle & giggle time. He crawls around, plays with toys, tries to catch up to his sisters, tries to get away from them. He's just a mover. Usually he might get fussy because he's not as fast as them and wants to just walk around.

9:30 - 11:00 nap time

11:00 next 6 oz bottle

11:30 - 12:30 He gets another pouch of fruit and veggie baby food for lunch. Then it's wiggle & giggle / hang out while we clean up time. He likes to feed himself stuff so I give him some puffs or crunchies or whatever to snack on.

1:00 - 2:30: nap time.

2:30 next 7 oz bottle

3:00 -3:30 play/hang out time

3:30 - 5:00 hang out with dad while he works out. Most of the time he hates this because he can't be walking around with us, he has to entertain himself or have his sisters entertain him.

5:00 he gets a 5 oz bottle. Most days he'll chug this, but once in a while he takes a LOOONG time to drink it.

5:30 dinner time. He'll eat about a half of a container of baby food at this point

6:00 - 7:15 play time, night activity, whatever we're doing.

7:15 7 oz bottle

7:40 start bedtime. Sundays and Thursdays start with a bath (around 7:30), then it's diaper change, pajamas, a little cuddle/rock while we read to him, and sleep by 8.

Enjoying his first Christmas!

This Month: Pierce became so happy and so stubborn this month haha. He started to dislike being around "strangers" this month (which he didn't love them before, but he never cried this much). But he constantly pulls himself up on the couch and just laughs. He LOVES holding our hands to walk around, and even more so loves being on his sit to stand to walk around the kitchen/dining room. His little excited giggle is the cutest thing to hear. 

We started doing peek-a-boo this month and he seems to really like that. Not to mention when we take him up for a bath the second ew turn on the water he gets a huge smile too. My most favorite thing ever is when he is looking around and then finally sees me looking at him and he gets a huge grin on his face, his little two bottom teeth always showing through!

We switched him from containers of food to pouches since there's a lot more mixes in the pouches and they are easier to feed them and he will just gobble those up. We're starting to switch him to smaller bottles, and more food for meals, little by little. 

We got to have his first Christmas with him and it was so much fun. He did get a little overwhelmed with the day and not having as much sole attention on himself, but he still got some good items and lots of clothes that he needed (because he is growing so rapidly!).

Update on last month's goals:

• Start brushing his teeth: he loves this time of night. The second we bring the tooth brush up he smiles and just grabs it from us. It's a fun part of our night routine.
  
  
• 9 month appointment: We got him in today for his 9 month appointment, so that one was easy haha.
  
  
• Pulling up and walking with our hands: this is his favorite game each day so he's definitely ready to start walking on his own already haha.
  
  
• Enjoy his first Christmas and New Years Eve! Christmas was SO much fun. He didn't love it as much, but he got lots of good things he needed.

Goals for next month:

• Start introducing our foods to his palate so he can try new things. He seems to be interested in our foods already and the doctor said it would be good for him to try our foods with his.
  
  
• Get him closer to walking. I swear he will be walking so soon so I want to work on it to help him
  learn balancing
  
  
• Keep doing whatever it takes to get smiles, laughs, and cuddles from him! I love those and the baby ones are so adorable!
• Get him to say "mama" or other words...I know this is a stretch. He says "dada" all the time and I know he can say mama, he just doesn't anymore haha.

Our First REAL snow

So in Eagle Mountain we hardly get any real snow. I will say you can't PLAN any snow activities here, if it snows, and you have free time, go do whatever it is right then. Do not think you can save it for the weekend! 

I think they miss playing outside haha

That being said, we got quite a bit of snow over the last couple days, I actually got out to shovel our driveway (in my new cute snow boots Larry got me for my birthday). While I was doing that, Larry put Pierce down for a nap and brought the girls out to play. They started to make a snowman, but they got tired of that pretty quickly.

Hard to see, but there he...would have been

I do have to say they did get a good start going with it. However, to the snowman that almost was, we hope you enjoyed the short time you had with us haha.

2023 Goals

So this time my first post of the year (or rather my goals for the year post) will be a bit different. See, I don't really feel I have any specific goals for the year set. Not like normal, at least. I really ended the year with wanting to me more in the moment and less constantly planning for the next moments (or, like, three moments) so trying to figure out exactly where I want to be in 12 months almost feels unnatural.

With that said, here are some immediate to-do's I would like to cross off:

• Purge the house of all the crap we don't need anymore. Pick an area that has been neglected or not really been looked at in past "purge moods" and get it cleaned out. Big ones on this include the bedroom closets and the basement. Every time I start this I get pregnant and too sick to finish or I feel good by the second trimester, but then get too big and exhausted or I have a new baby and just don't have time for quite a few months. This time nothing should stand in my way!
• Read all the books on my "I haven't read these ones yet" shelf so I can make room for new ones! I was really reading a lot before Pierce was born (granted I wasn't working out or doing other things so most of my nights so I got quite a few books done, but still had a good amount to still read. I feel good that I can get them all read by the end of the year.
• Clear off my movies to watch list. I have so many on my Netflix list and DVDs we bought that we haven't watched yet (we've seen the movies, yes, but haven't watched them to see that they are good copies). I've had these on my list or our bookshelf for a long time so it's about time we get them cleared out!
• I am going to start my coding learning again. I'm hoping to do more SQL learning, but I also love the idea of learning HTML and CSS and other ones. Larry got me a book about different coding languages so I can study that as well. I'm very excited to see what comes of this.
• I want to organize my recipes and put them in an actual cook book rather than just papers in a folder. I'm also implementing a new way to meal plan. Before I was assigning a meal and it's leftovers for specific days,  but numerous times we'd forget to pull out the meal we needed from the freezer to thaw out so we'd have to push a meal back or we'd end up going out or one meal would last longer/not as long as I planned so it threw things off and I'd have quite a few recipes that would roll over into the next month. Now I just write down about 6 meals (usually 3 chicken and 3 beef/turkey) and how long they take to make so we can decide what we want to do next with that information. Hopefully this gives me more times to try new recipes!
• I really want to find ways to have less waste as much as possible. We got a compost can for so we can put our scraps in that for our garden in the summer. We also plan to get switch to blocked cheese rather than already shredded and sliced cheese wrapped in so much plastic. Once we're out of what we already have, I'm going to order a slicer and shredder to make it easer. I'm pretty excited about this one.
• I am going to be implementing our 1:1 dates with the kids as well. Lucy is this month and I think I'm going to be taking her to Build-A-Bear and maybe get a Mrs. Field's cookie haha. I'm very excited to bring this back into things.
• Last year I wanted to be aware of my spending and save more. I loved that and felt it really gave me some good insight into spending. This year I've reconfigured my budget and I'm really excited to see how I feel about it by the end of the year.
• I'm going to keep doing  my puzzles, skin care, working out, reading, bath, game, and movie nights. I also would like to learn more about NFL rules, players, scoring, and everything else to help me understand more. I love football season, but I'd love to know as much as possible. I love my "me time" nights and doing things that make me happier and a happier wife & mom.
• I may throw in a few monthly challenges (I'm still a bit undecided on if I'll do these this year or focus on my other things, I'll just see how I feel each month). Some of these include doing a plant based diet, food tracking to limit my calories to 1,200 each day, intermittent fasting, try CBD, practice using my left hand, limiting my social media use to 1 hour a day.
• Really celebrate the holidays and start my new traditions that I've got set for each one. I'm very excited for this!!
• Have family vacations again! I'm so so so so excited for this and to bring this back into our yearly planning!

My list always ends up longer than I realize, makes me feel I'm always starting a year so ambitious, I hope I can keep the motivation. We'll see how it goes!

New Year's Eve and Day

Just like all holidays for 2022, New Years was a great one! I am trying to find ways to incorporate the celebrations for our kids to join in on, but without keeping them up so late. While I know Cara and Gwen could probably handle staying up a little later than normal, I'm just not ready to worry about that. 

My plan was to divide the night into half hour increments and do something for that time (so 5:30 would be dinner, 6 would be some sort of craft like making a noisemaker, 6:30 dessert, 7 game, 7:30 a "toast"/noise maker time, things like that). However, the day was my birthday celebration day so it kind of intruded on our night with the kids. We did end up playing a couple games and obviously doing dinner (our traditional pizza). But I didn't make a dessert or have a craft ready to make, I didn't have any special drinks for a toast, so basically we had dinner, played a couple games, let the kids go crazy while we tidied a bit, and then got them ready for bed. 

Luckily, Larry and I were able to stick with our game night while having the Rockin' Eve on in the background. I will say I think I've outgrown the ball drop show, we may just put movies on in the future and just set an alarm for 11:59 haha. Game night also had a bit of a change. For one, we normally only play like 2, maybe 3 games (Larry always chooses Monopoly that takes forever), but this time we decided to cut off games after so long and declare a winner and move on to the next one. Might sound like we rushed things, but we actually had a lot more fun this way. Second, normally Larry wins ALL the games, I might win 1, but this time it was actually 50/50 on winners haha. It was so nice to actually win more, or any haha.

We also did our usual discussion cards where we ask each other the conversation question on the card and talk about it for a bit. I love that part. We always learn a little more about each other and it's fun. Once we saw the ball was dropping we did our New Years kiss. I knew I had to go to bed at that point, I was so tired and with 4 young kids I knew they'd have us up early (the girls love to get up early and play in each others rooms and they are NOT quiet). I ended up staying up until 1:30 talking with Larry about all sorts of things. So needless to say I have been pretty tired today (luckily, the girls gave me until 6:45 before starting their morning raucous).

I do have a lot I'd like to get done today and I'm so happy to have today and tomorrow off. I have plans to really get our house purged and cleaned out over the next few months. This wasn't a New Years goal or anything, just timing was right, but I'm excited to get it done finally!

Anyways, I feel we had a great 2022 and I'm looking forward to an even better year for 2023. We've got some fun plans for this year so I look forward to all that, while enjoying all the little moments in between.