My New Diary...

I think about my little blog quite often - at least once a day. Whenever I have a spare moment I think, oooooh maybe I could go write a post right now! But then I think of all the other things I could do around the house or with the boys and the blog always gets shoved on the back-burner. Then the evening comes and the wee-ones are tucked it, but alas my brain is fried at the end of the day, making it so difficult to get my words out.

I've thought a lot about the blog and it's purpose in my life. I read many blogs and so I have this mental image of what a blog is supposed to be and how often I should post. But I don't really want to have a "big" blog. I don't like thinking about total strangers reading about our personal lives. Yet, I do want to stay connected with my family and friends (and Facebook doesn't cut it all the time), and I do want to keep records of the details in our lives and the boys growing up so I can look back on it in the future - like a diary. 

So I will attempt to trudge forth and do my posts whenever time and inspiration allow. However, I do want to share with you something that has really made memory-keeping easy. I got the idea off of Pinterest:

"It's a daily calendar that is reused each year and gets better the longer you use it. Each day you write the year and something that happened that day like, "(Child's name) took her first steps." Imagine how neat it would be in 10 years."

I took this idea and decided to make it even easier by making it digital. I made a Word Document and titled it "On this day..." then I type the month and day, then the year - with one or two sentences about what happened that day. I've been doing this for over a month now and it is really easy to keep up with. And trust me, this Mama likes easy! I also like it because I'm not planning on sharing it with the world, so it doesn't matter if I'm eloquent, I just want to give my future self a few thoughts to jog my memory. Here is a sample of what I've written over the last few days:

April 5 

2013 - Friday, No mothers’ group. Went grocery shopping then to Grandma’s for a visit. We went out to Puerto Vallarta for dinner as a family and some people having a birthday thought the boys were cute and gave them each a balloon! 

April 6 

2013 - Saturday, Andrew and I both exercised! We are trying to get in shape and starting the journey! 

April 7 

2013 - Sunday, We arrived early to mass today and sat near the front!! Came home and cleaned the house. Had the Herrings over for dinner, the kids ran around like crazy!  

April 8 

2013 - Monday, Warm overcast day. We played outside and removed the fountain in the front and filled it in with dirt. John found a “sam-ann-ter” (salamander) and had fun torturing it playing with it. He was very intrigued.

My plan is to write future years under the same Month/Day. So for example, in three years, April 6th might look something like this:

April 6

2013 - Saturday, Andrew and I both exercised! We are trying to get in shape and starting the journey!

2014 - Sunday, Went to Mass and had a vision of our Blessed Mother.

2015 - Monday, Andrew let me sleep in and made breakfast for me in bed. PJ and JV cleaned the house for me.

2016 - Wednesday, Juniper Willow St.Hilaire was born this morning. She was born at 9:30am after a long restful night of sleep. Quick and easy labor and delivery with no complications. I'm already back in my pre-pregnancy clothes!

Yah, now let's wait and see if that all really happens!! ;) But it's cool, because you can look at any one day and see all the things you've done on that day. It will be really neat for the holidays because I can never remember all the details after a few years have gone by.

Anyway, I thought it was a good idea that I wanted to share with all you busy people out there who want to remember the simple day-to-day life that slips away so quickly.

Ta-ta for now!

Holiday Highlights

Well, hello! Yes, I'm still alive! I have a lot to share about the past few months. My last post was on November 15th, and now it's almost February!! That is cra-zy!

So welcome to my holiday catch-up post. I just went through all the pictures we took recently and it's going to be hard to not over-share! I'll try to keep it brief...

*****

We celebrated Andrew's 26th birthday:
We had a party with my parents and even busted out some huckleberry pie! I got him some nice gifts, but it's hard to compare with what I did for him last year - not sure how I will ever compete with that!

Thanksgiving:
We kept with our usual tradition of going to Bellingham. We had a lovely time with Andrew's family and even celebrated Mom's birthday while we were up there!

Bellingham Tree Cutting:
This is one of my treasured traditions. I have helped Andrew's parents select, cut, and decorate their Christmas tree every single year that we've known each other. Now it is a joy to see John and Peter helping with the decorating!

Funeral for Andrew's Uncle John:
Uncle John was Andrew's godfather and one of the men we named our John after. He passed away in mid-December and we decided to pack the car and head over the mountains to Kennewick for the funeral. It was so nice seeing a lot of extended family members and, most of all, celebrating the life of a great man! Andrew had the honor and privilege of being a pallbearer at the burial. Rest in peace, Uncle John!

My birthday/tree decorating:
I had a lovely birthday this year! Andrew took the boys out in the morning and I invited some of my friends over for a spa day. We all did pedicures and ate yummy food. It was a lot of fun! Then in the evening we had a family party and decorated our tree.

See if you can guess how old I am...

First tree in our new home!

Christmas:
We went to mass on Christmas Eve. Then my parents took the boys out to look at Christmas lights while Andrew and I went out to dinner. We tucked the boys in bed and finished setting up for Christmas morning. We had a cozy morning together in our jammies. Then we got ready and continued the celebration at my parents' home with Great-Grandpa and Uncle Aaron.

Family party at our house:
Around New Years, we hosted a "St.Hilaire" party. This was our biggest sit-down dinner so far in our new home. It worked out well and I'm glad the dining room is connected to the living room - so we can   use that space too if needed. We can't wait to host more parties!!

*****

Now that I'm caught up with the past, I'll soon be writing about what we are up to now! ;)

God Bless!

Halloween

Halloween was fun this year. John got to be St. Michael and Peter was St. Anthony (one of John's old costumes). We trick-or-treated to one of our neighbors houses but then went to the party at our church and "trunk-or-treating". Andrew won a huge jar of M&Ms for guessing the closest amount. Woohoo!

St. Michael and St. Anthony

All the loot!

So excited about the lollipop!

So big!

Peter at 1 year old

It was so hard to keep him still for this picture. He is a man on the move!!

Peter's Birthday Party!

Hard to believe Peter is already a year old!! The year went by so fast! I still think of him as my little baby, although he is pretty good at walking now so that makes him seem older. 

We waited a week to celebrate his birthday, so my parents would be back from their trip to Italy. It was a great party! I chose the theme "Very Hungry Caterpillar" because this little boy loves to eat! He is always asking for food and grazing for crumbs that drop on the floor. This is a change for me because John always has to be torn away from is toys to eat a meal.

Thanks to everyone who came to the celebration!

Haha, John looks funny here :)

The spread

Banana chocolate cupcakes with buttercream frosting.
Legs and antennas are pretzel bits.

With Great-Grandpa

Sugar coma 

Thanks everyone!!

Bellingham in October

In mid-October we took a trip up to Bellingham to see Andrew's folks and go to a Brian Regan comedy show. Andrew surprised me with tickets to the show on our anniversary in August. It worked out well since we had some grandparents to babysit!

We always have a great time on our visits to Bellingham. Can't wait to go back for Thanksgiving in a couple weeks!!

We also had fun at the neighborhood park. Although, John did get a bloody nose, as you'll see below...

BONK!

 John is such a good kid! I instructed him to hold on to Peter on the slide. He sure did, even when they spun around backward. He took one for the team!!

Apparently Peter has a hard head!

At the show with my handsome date!

On Heaven... with a 3 year-old

This is a conversation that took place a couple weeks ago:

We were just about to sit down to breakfast when John got a really sad look on his face and, out of no where, managed to mumble, "I don't want to die!" We didn't quite hear him right: "You don't want to what??"

"I don't want to die!" He repeated. He had a look of sadness and terror in his eyes.

My heart went out to him! We sat at the table and started to eat while Andrew and I talked it over with him. We told him that everyone dies at sometime but if he is a really good person and loves Jesus, then he will go to heaven when he dies.

He told us he didn't want to be a good person - I think he was thinking that if he was a bad person then he wouldn't have to die. We explained that even bad people die, but if he is a good person then he will have eternal happiness with Jesus.

I could tell this gave him some consolation, but he was still concerned. "You need to have another boy, Mama," he told me.

"What, why?" I was confused.

"And name him John, OK?"

*Melting heart* I ran to him and sat him on my lap. "Awe honey! When you go to heaven, we will all be there together! We won't need another John because YOU are our John and we will be together with Jesus! And heaven is going to be such a happy place!"

I was surprised how long the conversation went on. We talked about a lot of different aspects of death and I don't remember all the details. But I do remember that we were talking about being buried when we die and that Jesus will raise us up. John told us that he wanted to put a door on his grave so that Jesus could open it. =)

I'm continually amazed that John already seems to understand that this life is not our destination...

Camping at Lake Easton

This is my last summer-catch-up-post, I promise!  So the end of August was packed with a camp-out, huckleberry picking, the fair... and then we signed some official documents for closing on the house the same day we left for yet another camping trip! We spent the weekend camping with some dear friends at Lake Easton. The nights were slightly cold and there was a burn ban, which didn't help. On the camp website, they called it a "bun ban" which we thought was pretty funny. Aside from the cold, we had so much fun! We even got to take a dip in Lake Easton!  On Sunday we left early and went to my cousins wedding. The next day we closed on our house and began our three-weeks of packing and fixing up the house.

Here are some highlights from the trip:

Breakfast of campions (haha, I'm so bad!)

Throwing rocks =)

Babies!

He went out pretty deep!

It was COLD - The daddys were brave and took a swim!