Bridget

I had the incredible opportunity to go visit Catherine and Richard and their four kids for 5 days. What a sacred, special experience. Bridget, their 4th baby, was born with some unexpected health challenges and Cat needed some additional support. They have felt so strengthened by the power of prayer and the priesthood through this trial and I feel like some of that oozed over into my little family. I've never been able to leave my kids that long and have everyone do so well in my absence. It was miraculous. I left all three (first time leaving Bonnie!) with John and they all thrived.

I had to take this photo- I'm sharing my Coke with a "Champ" which Bridget certainly is

Halloween 2015

This has been my most low key Halloween ever. A big reason for that is because Baby Bridget was born earlier this month, and we have been concerned and focused on her. Her precious life is such a powerful reminder of what is most important. 

Recently, I have also been practicing to tame the FOMO beast (Fear of Missing Out) and feeling so much peace in doing so. We carved our one pumpkin on Halloween night. I didn't decorate the house other than that. I wore a very low key costume (stay at home mom Dorothy Gale) to only one event, and John didn't wear a costume at all! That doesn't sound that big of a deal, but almost every year of our marriage we have done a coordinating couple costume or family costume theme and decked our house out in decorations. 

We had plenty of Halloween outings- parties at school and preschool and playgroups and church- so I really didn't need to do anything other than those to show my kids a good time. 

I had a crazy busy day on Thursday with a dance class party for George at the same time as Charlie's school parade, plus Charlie and George's class parties at the exact same time. Charlie was also Star Student that day AND had show and tell. Luckily, I had help making it all happen- John took the morning off of work and my friend Jessica picked up George from dance (her little boy was his guest to the dance class party) and kept him all morning, fed him lunch and then took him to preschool. 

I had a lot of fun helping in Charlie's class, making an apple juice and dry ice witch's brew. When I asked Charlie if I could wear a costume to help at his class party, he looked at me horrified and said, "No!" One of the other moms let me borrow her witch hat so I was more legit. 

On the night of Halloween, we skipped the neighborhood parties and potluck and our kids opted to stay home and pass out candy instead of trick or treating. We went to our next door neighbor and that is it! Normally, I would have felt defeated and sad, and in the past sometimes we've missed out on things for kind of sad reasons, so it isn't only my FOMO that has made me feel down. But this year we are having such a lovely October, everyone is doing so well! So to choose to stay home just because we felt like it was really quite wonderful. 

We had such a fun night together. We watched The Princess Bride for the first time ever and all day today Charlie has been quoting lines and laughing at parts of the movie with me. He's even said, "Mom, as you wish" a few times with a little smile and gleam in his eye because he knows in the film it means, "I love you." Heart melter. 

Bonnie the Monkey (aka "Bonkey")

George the pirate (recycled costume from last year!) and his friend Sam Plumb

Charlie the robber (admittedly, I did stay up very late working on that t shirt (hand sewing together two other shirts we had) and assembling that LEGO Mixel for him for show and tell. So that part wasn't very low stress, but he was overjoyed by both surprises in the morning so it was definitely worth it).