Raising Blessings

On the Friday before Valentines we had a girly Valentine’s party with several of Sariah and Rebekah’s friends. In all we had 9 little girls! Unfortunately my memory card that has the pictures from the party is damaged so I don’t know how to get the pictures off it. If you do, please let me know!

We made heart shaped sugar cookies and decorated them with pink frosting and an assorted variety of sprinkles. The sprinkles did not last long!

Then we played Valentine’s Bingo. I found really cute bingo cards at Simplyfreshdesigns.com

Thanks to Barbie Mega Bloks and MomSelect The prizes were the real highlight of the party. Each girl got to choose from one of these Barbie Mega Bloks Build n’ Style toys:

The girls were all really excited to get home and start building!

Sariah and Rebekah also got a Buid ‘n Style Pool Party kit and the Luxury Mansion. Lucky!!!!

At the time Sariah was learning about architecture in art so she was really exctied to be and architect and put these kits together.  She was able to put the smaller ones together all by herself and then she was really frustrated that she wasn’t able to do the bigger ones by herself. She eventually accepted help.

It makes me so sad to know that my baby is over a year old. I do love the one year old stage though. They just seem so busy all the time, it is adorable but sometimes inconvenient :)

In January we were all hit the seasonal flu, all of us except for Joshua! So while we were all laying down unable to do much Joshua was walking around with a laundry basket filling it up with stuff and dumping it on the floor. He just kept doing that over and over, I was thinking why can’t he just put everything from the floor back into his basket. Ha ha… Luckily Bekah has the amazing ability to still have a ton of energy when she’s sick so she cleaned up his mess.

Wow! The flu is sure something I do not want to get again.  At first I was thinking it was better than the stomach bug because at least we weren’t all throwing up (Sariah did though, not sure if she got something extra) but then I quickly learned that the flu is much worse.  I had no energy at all for almost a week. Gratefully Joshua is still nursing so that could be why he did not get sick.

Joshua is 27 inches and 21 lbs.  Short and chunky! He’s only at the 8th percentile for height and 20th percentile for weight.

Joshua loves food, he eats things that the rest of us won’t eat. He loves his cars that he got for Christmas and his birthday as well as his sisters ponies and baby dolls.

The picture above was taken in December by Stacia Klemas Photography.

JJ’s Dad’s birthday is on Christmas Eve and since Joshua’s is shortly after on New Years day we celebrated them together. Which was great because we got home on New Years eve and didn’t really do much for him on his actual birthday.

A bunch of us got together to come up with an idea for a cake for Papaw. He’s a Beatles fan so we made a Beatles Cake! I think it turned out great, especially for us amateurs.

I made the scultable frosting from this recipe that I found on pinterest. It tastes much better than fondant.  We tinted our chocolate frosting with black food colouring. JJ and my sister-in-law Amber cut out the letters, band members and instruments.

My sister-in-law, Kristina made gluten free cupcakes. I took one of the cupcakes and cut out a J to make a little cupcake for Joshua.

So cute!!!

Joshua loved it.  Up until then he had never had any cookies or cake.  He was so cute after a  little bit of licking the cupcake he just picked it up and chomped it down.

Here are the birthday boys!

He got this cute little outfit from Uncle Stephen and Aunt Kristina:

He also got an adorable little bear snowsuit from Aunt Amber, a little fire truck from Auntie Sara-Jayne and a yellow bus from Oma and Opa. You’ll see those in posts coming up.

Joshua is such a sociable little boy. He loves to give other baby hugs and kisses and most of them don’t like it. His sisters love hugs and kisses from him so that makes him happy. He began walking at 9 months so he is pretty steady on his feet now and he’s running! He is definitely at the toddler phase of getting into everything.

Christmas 2012 was great. We drove all the way to Alabama which took about 30 hours each way. My brother in law, Ryan and his wife Symone came along with us which helped so much. They helped drive and entertain the kids.  I am so grateful that we have 8 seat belts in our Van so that they could come with us.

Alabama was definitely warmer than Utah so it was nice to get some milder weather for a couple weeks.  Utah has been freezing this whole year, (all 10 days so far) much colder than any of the other 5 years we have lived here so far.

On our way to Alabama we stopped in Memphis, TN to visit with JJ’s grandparents. We were actually in Mempis on the 21st which was our 8th anniversary which was special because JJ’s grandfather performed our marriage (and sealing) ceremony.  He was called into the Memphis temple presidency shortly before we were married and received special permission from President Hinckley to marry us!

I love this picture. Three Generations of James’s. We have James, Jonathan James and Joshua James.

The drive from JJ’s grandparents house to his parents house was about 6 hours.  Just minutes after we arrived, JJ’s sisters family arrived from Virginia. My father-in-law made some pizza’s for us and we just relaxed that first night. Sariah and Rebekah went right to sleep but Miriam would not go to sleep. She said that there were monsters and dragons in the house.  Actually a couple of days later as I was getting her dressed she asked if she could say a prayer. So we folded our arms and Miriam prayed that Santa would take all the monsters and dragons away and she was actually fine for about 4 nights and then the rest of the nights she woke up at 3 each morning crying and my 10 year old niece would bring her up to us (sorry Victoria!). I should have had her say another prayer!

The kids sure did love spending time with their cousins. Hopefully its something they can do more often.  The next post will be Joshua’s and Papaw’s (JJ’s dad) birthday celebration.

Today 7 years ago I was 23 and  7 months pregnant with my first child, Sariah. JJ and I were in the kitchen eating lunch when my mom asked us how our first anniversary was which was the day before. I was talking about our dinner at Olive Garden and the Pride and Prejudice movie we watched at the dollar theater when the phone rang.

My mom answered it and said it was for me. The news was that one of my best friends, the person that was like a sister to me had been hit by a car and she did not make it.  Rachelle Elliott was only 25. She was certainly a true friend. She came to visit me just 2 weeks before JJ proposed and she helped JJ plan the proposal while I was at work.

I was shaking and crying and my mom just kept saying help her JJ.

It was really difficult to deal with however since I was home a lot of comfort was found in attending and speaking at her memorial service.

For over 2 years my hands would shake when ever the pone rang, thinking there would be news that a family member of mine had passed away. I was scared when JJ would go to work.

Up until recently I felt sorry for Rachelle. She was only 25, she had so much more to accomplish.

The thing that changed my outlook was a dream that I had several months ago. It felt so real.

I dreamt that I was at the White Rock, British columbia LDS chapel which I thought was strange becuase I never attended church there, however I just realized that it could be that location because that was where the memorial service was.

Anyways I was in a room reading some books when Rachelle came in with several other young women and asked if I could teach her friends the discussions (missionary lessons for those investigating the LDS church).  We all sat on the floor as I gave the lessons. When we were done I asked Rachelle if her and her friends needed a ride home and she said you can’t drive to where we are going. That was when I woke up.

A couple of years before Rachelle passed she asked if I would give her the new member discussions (I was a stake missionary at the time). She wanted it to be just me and her because she felt like she was loosing her testimony of the gospel and wanted to remind herself why she had joined the church several years before.

Rachelle was a wonderful example of Christlike service. She was always giving her time, talents and even the little money she had herself on others.

I no longer feel sorry for Rachelle, I know that she is busy sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with many people. I look forward to seeing her again one day.

On Saturday JJ turned 31.  To celebrate we decided to take advantage of  a historic event for Provo. The UTA  FrontRunner’s south line officially opened on Monday but on Saturday they were giving free rides with a food bank donation.  More than 32,000 people rode the train and over 25,000 lbs of food were donated! We rode down with a good friend of mine and her family.

I am not surprised at the number of people who rode the train that day because we had to wait for 3 trains before we got on.

The kids were so excited to ride the train since they see it go by our house many times a day. When we were heading to the van to drive to the station, Sariah and Rebekah were waiting for us to cross  the road with them. They were confused that we were driving to the station, they thought we could just cross the road and wait at the tracks to get on the train … ha ha!

It was freezing cold but our kids handled it very well. Their biggest worry was who had more window space on the train.

We rode  up to downtown Salt Lake. The first thing we did was eat at Tucanos, a Brazillian buffet where you get a free meal on your birthday and kids under 7 are free so it was a great deal for us.  It is also my friend’s birthday this month so out of a group of  10 people only two of us had to pay (Me and my friend’s husband).

Before we headed on the trax to take us to Temple Square we decided to check out the Planetarium where it is free to look around. It was pretty neat.

Here are to two JJ’s hanging out on Mars:

Joshua and Miriam walking on the moon:

When we went to get on the Trax it was pretty packed and JJ, Rebekah and Miriam ended up getting left behind. Luckily our friends have cell phones so Brian waited at our stop for JJ while Natalie and I took the kids over to the City Creek mall to wait for our husband and the other half of my kids. At the mall they were giving out Chick-fil-a sandwiches for free! I wasn’t hungry at all but I grabbed some for JJ and the kids, JJ was happy about getting a free sandwich. He worked at Chick-fil-a for several years so he’s a fan.

The mall was packed. A combination of it being a Saturday evening, Christmastime and a large portion of Utah county being in Downtown Salt Lake. We mainly just had the kids run around the play area.

Next we headed over to Temple Square to look at the Christmas lights.  I love seeing the lights on Temple Square. JJ and I were married in the Salt Lake Temple on December 21, 2004 and had some wedding pictures taken with the lights so it’s a fond memory

The train back home was not very full so we got to sit up on the top floor of the train.

It was fun to see our house from the train instead of always seeing the train from our house.

I made JJ’s birthday cake look like the frontrunner (well tried to).  The kids knew what it was right away, “That looks like the train we went on!”, however JJ could not guess what it was. After about 20 guesses (something to do with France?, a guitar?, a fish? ….) Sariah just told him what it was.

This year for Halloween we had a Greek theme which was fitting as Sariah’s current history unit is Ancient Greece.

JJ was a Spartan and the girls were Greek princesses. JJ made a helmet for himself and one for Joshua. Joshua, however ripped his apart when we tried to take a picture of him wearing it.

On the Friday before Halloween we went to the Provo Halloween Carnival which was a lot of fun. The themed rooms for trick or treating was really cute. They had The Hundred Acre Woods, Toy Story, The wizard of oz and others. The kids especially loved the magic show which they talked about for days.

On Halloween, JJ took the 3 girls trick or treating and I stayed home with Joshua and made our traditional Soup in a Pumpkin that we have each year. It almost did not happen, though because I waited for the last moment to buy a pumpkin and the grocery stores I checked were all out. Fortunately someone I knew was giving away her pumpkins.

We have a winner!

Congratulations Adrianne Coros! I will be sending you an email shortly. Sorry for the delay in drawing a name for a winner. I haven’t become a busy Chicago Realtor or anything. JJ had some family in town so we were busy having fun.