In my head this past week was just full of being sick. But we actually only had one real sick day, and looking back at the pictures I took this week I see that we actually did have some fun, too. So that is good and encouraging!

On Monday for family party Josh had a surprise for everyone. He gave a lesson on asking Heavenly Father when we have questions, then we had the assignment of asking Josh questions about what the surprise in the bag was. The kids loved it! And I hope the message stuck, too.  The surprise ended up being mini MnMs, then Josh had some fun games to play with them. One game was to blow the MnMs across the bench with a straw. It was cute, but got a little spitty after awhile. 🙂

We went to the library one day. The kids always love the library and so do I! They had their fun photo ops set up again, so naturally we had to take pictures!

Another day, we went to the playplace at the mall. It is a pretty basic sort of play area, but the kids get really excited about it. Here they are waiting for me to get to the mall entrance doors and being adorable.

But we also were sick. I kept Fay home from school on Wednesday and Carter stayed on home on Thursday. Then on Friday I came down with a cough. I thought things were getting a little better yesterday, but then I had a really hard time sleeping last night and woke up this morning feeling like a train-wreck. Josh has taken care of me and the house and the kids all day today! I am so grateful for him and his goodness!

 

This weekend has been such fun! It snowed like crazy Friday night and half of Saturday, so we kind of hunkered down at home on Saturday. Josh said it kind of felt like we were on Christmas vacation and I agreed. We could go somewhere if we really wanted to, but we didn’t have any obligations, so we mostly just played together alternating between the snow and the warm house.

Today church was a little bit hilarious as far as Portia was concerned. She refused to fall asleep until after 9:00 last night and so was super tired. Plus church now interrupts her nap-time perfectly. PLUS, she has recently decided that she hates nursery. So, right as I was starting singing time in primary, Josh showed up to tell me she had just thrown up twice because of how angry she was to be in nursery. What he didn’t tell me then was that she threw up all over her nursery leader. He was BEYOND a good sport about it, telling us he just felt bad for her. I’m pretty sure we owe him something big…

After church Josh had a fun idea to build a city out of a bunch of our building toys and drive cars around it. It turned out to be really cool.

Also, we did pedicures for the kids tonight. They all loved soaking their feet in the water! And they were all so cute getting their feet lotioned. I didn’t think to take any pictures until we were on the last one. But here’s what I have.

I promise I really was here for all of this; I just always ended up behind the camera this time.

Also, for your viewing pleasure, here is my New Year’s mantel. My favorite part is the black board-sign. I made it using stickers Josh got me for Christmas. I feel like it looks so professional thanks to the perfect letters!

This year has gotten off to a lovely little start. We’ve done a lot of the usual sort of stuff–school, work, ignoring dirty dishes, etc.–and some less usual stuff.

The one extra unusual thing we did was take a break from the kids last weekend. My parents (mostly Mother) watched the cuties while Josh and I had a little staycation! We stayed at a hotel downtown, went out to eat, played games in our room, and enjoyed the downtown scene for the evening. After we checked out of our room the next morning, we still had some time to spend together before we had to go get the kids and we didn’t want to waste it. But we have found that we have a hard time knowing what to do with free time. We decided to get pedicures, (Josh was totally on board, which I thought was studly!) but we didn’t think about reservations and they were packed, so that idea fell through. We went back to our house to brainstorm and finally came up with the perfect thing! It was something both of us enjoy and can’t be done very well with the kids. We decided to build something!  Josh drew up plans and we headed to Home Depot, and though we didn’t finish that day, we made some decent progress before we went to retrieve our cuties.

The project is something I have been dreaming of for a good number of months. It is a entryway table with cabinet doors (I call it a hutch, but I don’t know if it fully qualifies as such). I wanted it so there would be a place for Josh, Fay, and I to put our backpacks out of sight but still highly accessibly. And, it gives me another surface to decorate!  And it is an extra special project because Josh and I really did do it together! We put in approximately the same number of hours on it and Josh made sure I used all the power tools! So now I have at least some experience with the table saw, miter saw, band saw, circular saw, drill, impact driver, and nail gun. Not bad for a single project!

We have used any evening time we’ve had this past week to work on it, and we used WAY too much of what should have been family time yesterday, and now it is done! The kids helped with the painting which they loved and Josh and I survived. 🙂 But it is up and in use now! I am really excited about it! Check it out!

Anyway, that was the out-of-the-ordinary bit. Now for the ordinary parts of our life. They are also sweet and delightful.

 

As I mentioned earlier, I have been super excited about a new theme for 2018. I felt like Delight was just what I needed in 2017! And even though I know a single word can’t reasonably receive credit for the miracles I saw in my life in 2017, I think it was still a good springboard for them. If nothing else, it put me in a good mindset to allow the miracles to occur. And so now I have the opportunity to have a new theme. My hope was to choose a word that would help me retain what I gained from Delight, but to take it a step further.

Delight really was all about feeling. I wanted to feel peace, contentment, and joy in the life I have and also feel hope for the future. But this year, I want to use those feelings I am working to establish to do good. I want to act on the hope I have for the future to create that future one step at a time. It took me a long time to find a word that I felt really captured those things, but I believe this word does: Engage.

Let me introduce you!

Some of Merriam-Webster’s definitions for the word engage include

• to do or take part in something
• to give attention to something 

Here is how I want to embrace Engage this year:

I want to Engage more with my children. I want to spend more quality time with them on a daily basis making more good memories together. I have found that when I am really engaged in what my children are doing I feel way better about my job. It is a lot easier to just let them go play by themselves while I try to figure out my own agenda; but at the end of that kind of day I feel guilt and regret. Not delightful. But when I am working hard to be part of their play, their learning, their agenda I feel like maybe my occupation really is a mighty partnership with God.

I want to Engage more in my own interests. This might sound like it goes contrary to what I said in the last paragraph; but I think the proper engagement in my own personal development will dramatically increase my ability to do the first. Like I said, being engaged with my kids takes a lot of effort, and if that was all I did, I would definitely burn out (aka: have burnt out many times previously). So my hope is to balance that extra effort for them with extra focus on the things I really want to be doing. When I end a day that feels like it was drudgery, I don’t have motivation to pursue my actual interests. I just veg on pinterest or something similarly useless. But if I plan in advance for things that I really want to be learning and doing, I have more energy during the day for my cuties and at the end of the day for that thing I wanted to do. So, I am signed up for a class I’m really excited about and have other plans to make sure I have the opportunity to feel like a real-live adult on a regular basis.

Another way I want to Engage this year is by engaging in changes. When I see an area of my life I want to improve, I want to do something to act on that desire straight away instead of shelving it as something that just has to wait until my kids are bigger. I am a big hoper in the idea that “some change is better than no change.” So even if I only get one week’s laundry folded and put away because of my effort to engage in that change, that is still better than no weeks.

I am really excited to see how an effort to engage more in my current life can increase my delight therein and also pave the way for future delight. I feel like being able to look back and feel like I really gave each stage of life everything I had will help me to better enjoy the next stage of life and have no regret.