Sunday Musings

Ok, so there is nothing real note worthy to post. Just some jumbled thoughts that I've been entertaining over the weekend.

Well, first off...yesterday was a busy but productive day. We bought new front & back doors. The ones we had were so crappy. I bought this greenish color and painted the outsides of all of them and my shutters. It looks pretty good if I dare say so myself. I will try to remember to take pictures and post them. So I spent all day working on that. I was exhausted by the time it was all said and done, but a good exhausted.

I must be honest. I only watched about 15 minutes of Conference, but I do have all the sessions recorded so I will get to it. During the whole whopping 15 minutes, there were a few songs that the Primary kids were singing and both my girls stopped and sat and listened. It was so cute. And my dear little Kambri has started when it's dinner time, that she'll bow her head and fold her arms for the prayer. In fact, on a couple different occasions after we've already said the prayer, she'll keep doing it and I just tell her that we've already said the prayer. She doesn't talk much (we do have her in Speech Therapy) but it seemed to me tonight after the prayer that she said something that resembled 'Amen'! It was so stinking cute. It is the neatest thing to see/hear my kids doing things as a result of going to church. Last week when Hollie was playing at my mother-in-law's with my niece they were playing Primary. It's a struggle a lot of weeks taking the kids to church by myself, but these particular moments show me that it's worth it in the end.

On that note I am working to go through the Temple to take out my own endowments. I have chosen the Logan Temple to go through my 1st time. I can't wait! I need to finalize everything, but I am aiming for November 14th. That is exactly one year since my Grandpa Hansen died and it is also my great-grandma's birthday.

My cute lil' Grandpa Hansen! I miss him so much!

I went over to my sister Lindsay's house tonight. We had a good little visit and did our weekly coupon cutting ritual. And, I've come to a decision. I must get going on my scrapbooking, but I've decided to look more seriously into the digital scrapbooking as I have a BAZILLION and one pictures and I'm incredibly far behind. So, if any of you out there have any information on the digital end of it, I'd LOVE any help I can get to get me started.

In addition, I'm beginning to feel a little uneasy about all of this financial bailout talk and what not. (It doesn't help that I don't really understand 99% of it.) But, I'm going to start focusing on building our food storage and the like. I ran across some printouts from Relief Society that have it broken down by the month as to what specific products you work on that month, and then weekly. So, that's my goal. To jump on board and start building more of a storage and our emergency fund as well. Thanks to PYP I do have quite a bit of storage items, but let's face it, we are going to need more than just cereal, canned veggies/fruits and granola bars. (In truth I do have more than just those things...but I do need to get serious.)

What else? Oh yes. Lindsay and I went to Quilted Bear on Friday and spent a few hours in there looking for cute crafty ideas to make for Christmas gifts. I do believe we've come up with a few great potentials. We're trying to become more Martha Stewart'ish. Haha!

Ok, well that's enough for now. As I said at the beginning, some jumbled thoughts but it catches things up for the last several days none-the-less.

My dear hubby!

So, I ran across this on a friends blog and decided this would be a good one, and I've also included some random pictures of him! (Note to self: you must do better at getting pictures of the family.)

What is his name? Shaun Bess
How long have you been married? Almost 7.5 Years
How long did you date? Off and on for 2 years
Who eats more sweets? Probably me. He's more of a salty guy!

Who said I love you first? He did.

How old is he? 28
Who is taller? Definitely him.
Who can sing better? Ohhh definately me!
Who is smarter? I like to think I am! :)
Who does the laundry? I do! He is color-blind and it has made for some scary batches of laundry when he has tried helping. Mostly he just likes to throw in one pair of pants or something and calls it a 'batch'.
Who pays the bills? I do! He's wonderful at a lot of things, but keeping track of the finances has never been one of 'em.
Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? He does currently, but what ever side is against the wall is the side he sleeps on.
Who mows the lawn? We both do. I help him out with it when he's busy.
Who cooks dinner? Haha. Well, usually me unless it's cooking something on the grill. But more often than not, it's the fast food joint!
Who drives? Shaun does.
Who is more stubborn? Wow, we're pretty equal on that one. But I confidently say that I am usually the one who will back down.
Who kissed who first? Shaun kissed me the first night we hung out.
Who asked who out? Shaun asked me. That's a story to tell.
Who proposed? Shaun
Who has more siblings? I do. I have 2 sisters and 1 brother. Shaun has 1 sister and 1 brother.
Who wears the pants? Shaun does, I just tell him which ones he can wear. In all seriousness, it depends on the issue/topic. We share them! :)

I love and appreciate Shaun very much. He is such a hard worker and he is always willing to help others. He works hard to provide for us and I'm so thankful that he's made it possible for me to be a (mostly) stay at home mom. Thanks for all you do and for the wonderful father and husband that you are!

Still the proud Dad on Kambri- #3!

This is one of those pictures that shows Shaun's fun loving side! I never know what to expect out of him.

Our very own self-portrait while at Anniversary Inn earlier this year.

I Love You Shaun!!!

Our craziness...

Why does it seem so hard to be good at keeping up my own blog, but I have no reserves of spending hours looking at everyone else's?

Well, here's the Bess household update. (This is another reason why I don't like posting, is because when I FINALLY get around to doing so, I have a lot to catch up on.)

So, on that note!

Taylor- he's back in school and is in the 5th grade. It's hard to believe he'll turn 11 in November. I remember so many things with him as a baby, like it was yesterday. He's such a smart kid, I really am proud of him. The first day of school, I have no pictures of him. I asked him if he wanted me to walk him into his class and he gave me this ridiculous look and said "Nooo!" and kind of laughs at me. I'm afraid, gone are the days of him needing me like I want him to. However, independence is a good place to be. :) He was just chosen to be on the Student Council, so he's pretty excited about that. I really hope to find positive influences for my kids, most especially as they get older. It's a scary world out there.

We've started on the road with him and orthodontics. He got a space maintainer put in several months ago, and will end up needing at least a few braces on bottom. Time will tell exactly what will become of all of that.

As you'll notice, I don't have much in the way of pictures of him. I need to try harder with that, but he does his own thing so much of the time that he's never around upstairs. He's very content to be by himself downstairs in his 'apartment' (we joke and call it that because if there was food down there, he wouldn't need to come upstairs), playing his various video games, reading, or something to that nature. But I do love him very much and he is a great helper to me and especially with Kambri.

Doing what he loves...

(Crappy picture quality of a cell phone anyways. We're getting ready to buy a new digital camera, that'll be nice!)

Hollie just started 1st grade and has proven to be a bit of an emotional thing for her. We've had a few difficult mornings with her being absolutely hysterical and crying about going to school. I'm not sure what the cause is. Best we can tell, she's just adjusting to full day school and misses mom. (That does make me feel good, I confess.)

1st day of First Grade (at least she needed me, and I did get to walk her into her class)

She is learning to read and that is so exciting to see how that comes together. Bless those teachers that teach our children because #1, I don't have the patience, and #2, it's amazing the strategies they use.

She's starting to seem more grown up and is slowly moving out of her constant 'fit' stage that we've been playing in for the last 4 years. She loves to sing as you'll notice in her concert performance...aka her bedroom, as well as her creative side of self-decorating her room!

Watch out Hannah Montana, here's your biggest competition!

Kambri will be turning 2 next month and it makes me very sad. I've been holding on to every stage as she's been going through it, knowing that she's our last.

We have her in speech therapy, as she's not really talking much. She does say a lot of names of family members, and a few odd and end things, but nothing definitive that helps us in communicating with each other. Consequently, it makes for a lot of frustration on her end and ours. I just keep praying that it will come soon for her.

We have put her on the potty a few times just more for the practice, and we have been successful quite a few times. When I can have 5 minutes for life to slow down and not have to be running some where during the day, we're really going to try tackling the potty training thing. How nice it will be when I buy my last package of diapers EVER!

Such a proud girl! First time on the toilet was a success.

She is a lot of fun and I am really enjoying my 1-on-1 time with her when kids are in school. She was very distraught when they first started back and would walk through the house calling their names and looking at me questioningly, but she's getting in the swing of it all better.

Jamming out like her big sister!

As for Shaun and I, we're keeping busy with normal day things. Shaun has been working a lot of extra hours lately at work, so it seems there just aren't enough hours in a day to get done what we need to at home, but such is life! :) Hunting season is here, therefore, very shortly I will be a Deer Widow, a Goose Widow, and everything else imaginable. Haha! He enjoys it though, and that's what matters.

I've been released from my Primary calling so that I can work on getting Kambri transitioned into the nursery. She screams bloody murder when I leave her there and it's been awful. Hopefully it will be a quick transitioning period so I can get comfy again back in Relief Society. I will be setting a date within the next few weeks to go through and take out my endowments in the Logan Temple. I'm very excited for this, as it's been a long time coming. I pray that Shaun will follow suit and that our family will be sealed shortly.

Okay! Quite lengthy, but it's been a while. I would say that I'm going to be better, but I don't want to set the standard too high for my ambitions! LOL! I truly would like to do better, as I thoroughly enjoy reading blogs and keeping up to date with everyone else. It would be nice to be able to reciprocate though and leave something for others to read!

With that, have a wonderful week!

Just a quick update...

This will be a short post...but just wanted to keep myself in the habit of posting. Today was a pretty relaxing Sunday. The kids and I (minus Kambri who has been sick the last few days) all went to church and the rest of the day just pretty much hung out at home. Lindsay, Mark and Haddie did come over for dinner and then afterwards Taylor, Hollie and I started our quest of reading one chapter a night from the Book of Mormon. We'll have to do a bit of adjusting for the difference in age, but we'll get it! :)

Ok, I got my hair cut and colored today by my sister-in-law. And while I like the color, it got cut WAY too short! I HATE short haircuts that you don't like. Now I keep looking at pictures of peoples hair and wishing my hair were longer again. Grrr!! It's just hair, it'll grow out, right?! Blah. I'm really hoping it'll grow out a bit here in a few weeks so I'll like it a bit more.

I will try and post tomorrow and I have some cute pictures to include...be sure to check back! :)

Much to be grateful for!

Well, I'm trying to keep my word and keep up on this thing. I have not posted pictures however. I need to get this plug-in thing for my laptop to make it easy to transfer pictures from my camera. The other process takes me longer with getting on our desktop and what not. So, I will work on that.

For Family Home Evening on Monday we went to the Brigham Pool. The kids all had a great time. Last time we tried getting Kambri in the pool up at the condo, she didn't want anything to do with that. But this time, she had a blast. She went up and down the little kiddie slides and had an absolute blast. As she was coming down one particular time, I commented to Shaun that she's not a baby anymore. Kinda made me sad. It's amazing how you remember the day they were born like it was yesterday, but with the blink of the eye they're suddenly all grown up. So, we did have a great time and I took the camera so I could post pictures later, but left it out in the van. We'll be going again shortly though and I'll remember to bring it TO the pool with us.

Right now I feel very grateful for everything that Shaun and I have. We're dealing with a family member right now who has basically nothing. On a day to day basis he is looking for an apartment to get into, as he has no where right now. It's really sad. As I went home last night after work and looked at all the wonderful things I've been blessed with, I couldn't help thinking of how much greed and materialism there is in the world today. I find myself lusting after peoples' brand new homes, new vehicles, etc etc. I have a beautiful house that we've turned into a home. Decent enough vehicles, they don't have rust...they run...they look decent enough to see. I decided to make a list of the things Shaun and I have accomplished or been blessed with in the last 7 years since we were married.

1. Shaun adopted Taylor 1 year after we were married.
2. 2 additional healthy babies- Hollie & Kambri.
3. We bought our first home 18 months after being married.
4. I have been able to work very part-time since we got married.
5. Enough $$ to live half-comfortable
6. Good dependable jobs
7. Communication to juggle time with both sets of in-laws
8. Good health (aside from the normal colds/flu)
9. Supportive, loving in-laws
10. There's plenty more to list, but I'm limited with time right now.

I hope that I can always try to remember all that I've been blessed with. There's a lot of bad in our world today and it's easy to get tripped up on what we DON'T have.