A Tale of Two Cities

Chris loves water, he always has. As a kiddo he would go to the Stansbury pool in good ol' Tooele county a couple times a week. He would flip and fly off the diving board, loving every minute of it.

I, on the other hand, am not the biggest fan of swimming. I just don't understand it. I never have. I don't necessarily hate it but I definitely don't love it. Indifferent to the splashing around and such. But can you blame me? When I was little I had horrible ear infections all the time and I had extremely sensitive skin. The combination makes for a bad time at the pool.

The process to just get into the pool was just that, a process. While everyone else was running and diving gracefully into the the pool, I was getting in uniform. First my mom had to shove silly putty in my ears so water wouldn't get into them. Do you know what silly putty does in 90 degree weather? Melts, yep, melts right into my hair. Sticking pretty good to my strawberry blonde strands. Water always seeped in some how and without fail, I would get an ear infection.

Next, The sun screen. Being the only fair skinned child in a very nicely tanned Italian family, I was the only one of my siblings that had to be slathered in sun screen and still, my pasty pale skin always managed to get extremely sunburned. Awesome. To this day, sun screen stings my sensitive skin. My skin gets red and burned just from the sun screen and then I get an awesome sun burn on top of that. Swimming is so fun.

What are Nory's feelings on the matter?

 

 

  This brave little child had so much fun in the water. We couldn't keep her off the water slide. She kept running to the big huge, twisty water slide. Crazy baby.

 

 

Swimming, Swings, Smores, tents, and campfire smelling hair for weeks after the trip...oh yes, let the camping season begin!!!



Birthday Baby

 

March 28, 2011, this beautiful baby came into our lives, forever altering our world. I was so terrified to bring this sweet spirit home. Hoping and praying I wouldn't screw up parenting too much.

Here she is 2 years old, still just as spunky and just as perfect

 

(Styling her own hair)

The first 3 months of her life she cried and cried (the voodoo Dr. fixed her right up). Once we took care of the colic and acid reflux my little Babyface never stopped smiling! Here is where I get to brag, right? 1, 2, 3 go... my baby is the happiest thing in the world. She hardly ever cries, mostly when she gets hurt. She has thrown 3 fits in her life(knock on wood). The first one, Chris and I laughed because we hadn't ever seen her do anything like that, it was so funny. She goes to bed singing, wakes up singing and sings all day in between.

Not only is she happy but this wild child is so smart! I know, I know, I am her mom but just indulge me. By January she could identify all her letters. She could spell her name months before that. The other day she wrote an 'E' on her chalk board. She knows most her shapes and all her colors. She can identify her numbers  1-10 and counts to 15. The other day we were watching the news and she pointed to the TV and said "President Obama" and sure enough, he was on the news. We don't shove flashcards in her face making her repeat what is on them, she just picks this stuff up. Crazy baby!

(The letter E and her smiley faces she loves to draw. Notice the top smiley even has hair)

The most awesome thing is she is potty trained (with the occasional accident here and there. The accidents always seem to happen when she is playing with her little friend SJ. She walks in their door and oops :))

 

a couple of weeks ago at church, Chris went to pick Nory Bug up from nursery and when he got up the stairs he saw our wild child with a construction hat on yelling "I'm an astronaut, I'm an astronaut."

 

 

Chris and I are so blessed to have this wild, whip of a girlie in our lives. She brings so much joy to our home. Seven years was worth the wait. We love this 2 year old so much!

 

 

 





Milestones

 

We added an addition to the good ol' fam. I know what you're thinking but no we did not get a new pet. Although I saw some awesomely cute little goats the other day and have been working on warming Chris up to the idea. Lets just say he is still ice cold :(
The Brown's hit a new milestone in their crazy, little adventure. That milestone just happens to be of the worldly persuasion none the less.
I have never been caught up in material items. I don't need things to make me feel validated. Which is lucky because while putting Chris through school, we had a lot less of things and more dreams. Maybe goals is a better word. We went without because we knew where we wanted to be and we were not going to sacrifice our goals for monetary delights.
Now that Chris is finished with school and we are a little more steady on our sea legs (and the fact that our old car was starting to slow way down helped), we needed a car and wanted something that could hold all my horse equipment, Elanora's equipment, would last, and we were hoping for something we liked. We ended up with this

How we negotiated with the salesman to get a good deal is a long story, full of me having to pat Chris's leg to get him to stop talking about how much he liked the car and me and my cold heart not playing any of the salesman ridiculous games. Tiring, it was all tiring. The poor guy was glad to see me go, I am sure. Sometimes having no heart works out okay.

And in true Murphy's law fashion right after we got the new car, our other car died on us. So now, we just happen to be in the market for a new ( and by new I mean a clunker that gets us from point A to point B) car...again.



Spring

Spring and I have a love-hate relationship.

 

Who doesn't love a little sunshine, flowers (Chris hates flowers...what the? Who hates flowers), and baby animals. I like all of those things, especially the baby animals! But for me spring also means a very muddy pasture and the knowledge that in a month it will be way too hot for my body to function properly.

 

Luckily, the pasture has dried and I was able to brush away my big, blue horse's red winter coat, revealing his sleek, blue coat.

 

 

And what can beat flying a kite and watching Nory Bug repeatedly drop the kite string so Chris had to chase it across the field.

 

 

I will enjoy the spring until the temps reach a very uncomfortable 70 and after the red tickles that number on the thermometer, even though I will be enjoying my lazy summer days, I still will be counting the days down to beautiful fall weather :)



A Glimpse

    I watched this video earlier in the week. 

   It seems apropos that I wrapped up January with this video. In Young Womens, all of our lessons last month were centered around the Godhead. Naturally my thoughts have been center around Heavenly Father and my relationship with him.

Elder Faust, who just happens to be my favorite apostle said (as seen in the video) "Noble Fatherhood gives us a glimpse of the divine". I have indeed been blessed with many great examples of fathers in my life, all of which have helped me understand my relationship with Heavenly Father a little bit more.

 

Even though I'm somewhat of a responsible adult, I still find great comfort in the support my parents give me. When we had that crazy freezing rain, I was less than confident to drive myself in it and even less than confident to drive with Elanora in the car. At my parents house I was loading her in the car, nervous as all get out, knowing I was responsible to get this beautiful baby home safely. I looked at my dad (as my mom was loading a crock pot of food she had made for Chris and I into the car) and said "Can I do this?" My dads steady eyes locked on mine said "You are a great driver. You can do this, you can do this!" I did. We made it home slowly but surely.

 



Where would I be without this hunky, love of my life? His calm, reliable self brings true peace and happiness in my life. Not too many days ago I was feeling down and out about my lack of ability to produce offspring like a normally functioning woman, when he sent me a text at work that said, "Heavenly Father knows that we make perfect babies and the world can't handle that much perfect too close together. I love you."

Peace, he gives me so much peace.

 

Their love and support pales to that of my Heavenly Father and the love, support, and peace he gives to me. And one day, when the veil is lifted and the memories of the pre-mortal world come flooding back and I get to hug my Heavenly Father, it will be as if I never forgot.

This time on earth is short and sometimes hard. How blessed am I to have a Father to comfort and watch over me, giving me confidence, peace and happiness. 

 

 

 

  

Let's Hear It For The Snow!

Ahhhh, this is the Utah that I love. It doesn't get better than those beautiful, snow covered moutain tops at sunset. One of my favorite things in the world is feeding my big, blue horse (who is less blue and more of the red variety in winter) on a blustery, clear skied, wintery day. The 4 acre pasture enveloped in a sparkling, blanket of snow. The fluffy, white cover muffling the distracting noise of the world around. Ahhhh , my happy place!

 

Before our little Snow Angel, this is how Chris and I enjoyed Utahs' wintery goodness

 



Now that we have our beautiful, miracle snow angel, this is how we like to play in the snow

 

 

This is how Nory chillaxes in the cold, Utah winters. She rolls in Grampy Page's ice fishing sled

 

 

This is Grampy enjoying the fluffy white stuff, while teaching Nory how to make a snow angel. When we tried to get her to make one she said "no, no, all done, all done"

 

 

Sledding is tiring, nothing like a nap by the fire... ha, my wild child falling asleep on the floor like this, ya right. Not going to happen.

 

 

Yay, for the snow!!!

 

 



Synergy

Our Holiday season seemed half complete. But I assure you that it wasn't. It's my blogging time and skills that are half complete that's for sure. Thus, half our holiday has been  missing. We had many grand adventures in December. Each event of our family holiday puzzle coming together to make one big beautiful picture. Making the product of our holiday season greater then the sum of each individual celebratory event...that is synergy people, synergy!

 

We had fun at the closing ceremonies for 2012 which consisted of noise makers, food, The Walking Dead, food, zombies, more food, even more noise makers, and of course, the traditional firework blowing up in my brothers hand. So basically a typical, run of the mill Page Family get together

We also got to travel to the sleepy, snow covered town of Grantsville for our "make-up" Christmas party. The crazy big snow storm ruined our first try but the second try was a charm. Good food,  good presents, and great company...although Chris, Nory Bug, and I were all a little under the weather so we tried not to get too close to anyone but the family has so much fun that it is hard to stay too far away.

 

Because Babyface had a running nose, we were having a hard time keeping her finger out of the nose

 

It just so happened that it wasn't her nose