What Child is This ...

I know I have posted a lot of videos this year but for me this Christmas has had a soundtrack filled with songs about Mary and her baby. I think it might have something to do with my being a mother. Either way, these songs have touched me and have brought the Spirit into my home so much. The feeling of love and peace that has been in our home is wonderful. I hope that by sharing these songs, it helps bring that same spirit into your homes. Merry Christmas!

Our Smilebox Christmas Card

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

New Christmas Morman Message

SNOW!!!!

Last week it snowed for about 3 hours and we got about 1/2 inch of snow. It was really fun watching the girls watch the snow fall. I REALLY didn't want to wrap everyone up and go out in the rapidly warming wet snow so I took a page from my preschool days and went out and filled a jelly roll pan full of snow and let the girls play with it at the table. we had a blast! We made handprints in the snow, tiny snowmen and splashed until the snow melted. I went out and got some more when the first batch melted and we played until our fingers were a lovely shade of red!!!  Fun memories!!!

Sorry the picture is fuzzy. The camera was left in the car and fogged up when we brought it in the house.

Bella trying to eat the snow!

This is Bella's face when she tried to throw a snowball at me. We had a nice talk about not throwing snow in the house!!

Iyla was super sxcited about the snow. This is the girls making handprints in the snow!!

The Dangers of watching too many Christmas Cartoons!!

You turn into a baby zombie!!!

I think these pictures are so darling!!! They are ACTUALLY sharing the blanket!! It's amazing how much atention they pay to Frosty the snow man but when I ask them to pick up toys... nothing!!

Gingerbread Houses

We made Gingerbread houses on Monday night. It was a lot of fun! The girls did a great job.  Since they are both still so young I didn't want to make things too complicated so I iced the graham crackers onto quart milk cartons. I stuck them in the fridge to quick set during our family night lesson.

This is the candy we used. We have Jelly beans, assorted hard candies and ju ju fish, which turned out to be Iyla's FAVORITE!! The trays are from tv dinners. I saved then for lunches and stuff. I know they are not Tupperware but they can go in the microwave which is just fine for me!

The artists... ready to assemble a masterpiece!!!! we took their table and stuck it in the kitchen for easy clean up. It's so cute to see them both sitting there! I still can't get over the fact that Iyla is big enough to sit in a chair by herself! Where has the time gone???

Iyla was WAY excited about the candy. I could barely get her to put on any candy. She kept putting it in her mouth!

Meanwhile Isabella was working very hard on her house. we used her Silk Soy Nog carton so her house had a chimeny!

Here is Bella with her completed house! Posing as usual!

Here is Iyla trying to eat candy off her house! I think this is a great picture of her. You can really see her long eyelashes. We were having very dry waether that day and Iyla's hair felt it. You can always tell the humidity outside by looking at her hair. She is going to hate it when she grows up!!

We had a great time that night and we are really enjoying this Christmas season!

FlyLady.Net

     My friend Esther introduced me to a great website... http://www.flylady.net/ I am loving it! It's all about reclaiming you home from clutter and getting into a routine. I'm not saying that my house is a complete mess but I think everyone could use a little encougement when it comes to house work.
     They have a 31 day baby step program and I have started that. So far I am really liking it. It all starts with a shiny sink.

       Here is my shiny sink! I don't think it has been this clean in a long time. I will be sharing with you all this new journey I am on. My up's and downs. I think it will be fun to kind of refocus on my house and my own well being as well. I challange you all to shine up you sinks, tie up your shoes and get to work!!

One baby step at a time.

100 Posts!!

YAY!! We have reached our 100th post on our blog! And to celebrate I am going to list 100 wonderful things about my life... Just kidding!!

I am really enjoying sharing what's on my mind and what's up with my family. We are really enjoying our Christmas and Thanks for reading!

Scripture Advent

This year for Christmas time instead of eating a piece of candy or doing an activity every night we are doing a scripture advent. It is really a lot of fun and has really helped us stay "on task" if you will with the true meaning of Christmas. I thought I would share a copy of it with you all so you can use it if you want. Enjoy!

Our Tree!

This is our Christmas Tree! We cut it down from the forest at Rachel and Brandon's farm. We had a great time walking aroud looking for just the right one.

The tree is decorated with all homemade decorations. The garland is made out of Cherrios!! We are doing a homemade Christmas this year and have really taken on the theme... even in our tree!

This is our Kitchen tree. The tree is the artifical one we used last year for our main tree. It is fun to have a tree in our Kitchen!!

I hope you all have fun with your trees too! Post some pictures too. I would love to see them!

Labor of Love

I found this song today and I fell in love with it. It's not your traditional Christmas song but to me, as a mom who had given birth myself, it is very powerful. I hope you love it as much as I do.

A Baby Changes Everything

This is my favorite song at the moment and I thought I would share it with you. Makes me cry every time I hear it. Merry Christmas!

Happy Thanksgiving

It's that time of year again. Time to take a step back and think about how blessed we are. And let me tell you, I have a lot to be grateful for this Thanksgiving.

Leahona's Thankful List 2009

• The Gospel and how it has blessed my life
• My husband, what a rock he has been these past few months
• Isabella and Iyla, they bring so much joy to my life
• My mother for her loving guidance and support
• My extended family. I just love all of my in-laws. They are such a constant reminder of my eternal family and what I have to look forward too in the rest of forever!
• Our home. It may not be much but it's where we can be a family and keep our children safe and warm and teach them all they need to know
• My education. Getting education is so important. I am so glad I went into early childhood education and development. It has been such a blessing to have that knowledge and use it to be the best mom I can be for our girls
• having transoprtation. Every time I see a mom puching a stroller filled with bundled up kids and loaded down with groceries I say a prayer of thankfulness that I can transport my family and goods in warmth and comfort.
• Empolyment!!! Even though these are lean times and everyone, including employers, are cutting back, Jacob and I are still able to provide for our girls.
• My AMAZING friends. I can not express my love and graditude for my loving friends. With everything that has happened, they have been there. Even something as simple as a phone call when I was down has been so helpful. It's nice to know you are not alone during adverity.
• All of my doctors who helped me get through the miscarriage and surgery with love and concern. I was taken care of so well and thanks to there skill, we are still able to have more babies someday.
• The St. Joeseph Medical Center Burn Unit and Iyla's doctors and nurses. All of the medical staff at the burn center were amazing with our baby. Iyla is healed now but we will never forget our time with those amazing angels who works so hard to help burned children.

As I sat at Thanksgiving dinner, these and many other things came to my memory. I have been so richly blessed this past year. I really love taking the time to count my blessings. It makes it easier to bear the hard times.

Our Thanksgiving dinner this year was really yummy. I did all the cooking myself this year and boy was I tired when we were done. The menu was...

• Roasted Turkey
• Stuffing (I made 2 kinds)
• Mashed potatoes
• Gravy
• Brussel sprouts
• Steamed carrots
• cranberry sauce (3 kinds)
• baked yams
• candied yams
• rolls
• pumpkin pie (3)
• Cheery Pie
  

Wheew! Even reading tht list makes me tired!! It was an amazing day and I am so glad I was able to spend it with those I love.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!!

A One, Two Punch!

So, BOTH girls are sick right now. I know that's not breaking news in a house full of small children but what is interesting is they are NOT sick with the same thing! I know! That sounds CRAZY!! Usually when a sickness goes thorugh a family they all take turns having the same illness then eventually everyone is back to normal again. Well, we are not so lucky around here (not that anyone is lucky when they get sick. It's not like people say, YAY the flu picked ME!!!).

Iyla woke up on sunday morning not feeling well at all. She had a fever and her eye was kinda red. We kept her home from church and let her just hang out around the house for the day. Towards the end of the day I noticed she was getting "boogers" in her eye. I kept wiping them out of her eye and washing my hand alot. I thought she might be getting conguntivitius. That is a VERY contagious bacteria and I really did not want two kid with that let alone one so I was ceaning like crazy and Iyla was hand sanitized about a million times that night. As I put her to bed I was dreading what she was going to look like when she woke up. I knew her eye would be sealed shut and I was really concerned that she would spread it to her other eye.

In the morning my fears were confirmed! Her eyes were sealed shut and just caked with nastiness. Also her nose was caked over and she was having a hard time breathing. So I went to action and got her all cleaned up. It was 7:30am and the DR office did not open until 8 (of course!) so I decided to check my comments on facebook. I had posted that Iyla was sick and I was going to give her some breastmilk I had in the deep freeze in the hope of her getting better quicker, One of Jacob's friends said that putting the breastmilk into her eye would clear up any infection. I thought that was really strange but I was desperate so I googled topical uses for breast milk and found several supporting articles. So I decided to try it. I called a friend who is still nursing her baby and she brought over some breastmilk for us. I put some in a medicine dropper and put one drop in each eye and then squirted the rest in her mouth for good measure and crossed my fingers.

Not 30 minutes later her eye was clear an looking back to normal! I was stunned! I could not believe it worked! I still called the DR to get meds to completly clear it up. Whe we got the the DR wo found out she had a double ear infection!! The infaection we so fast moving that it was effecting her eyes too. We started her right away on the antibiotic and in a day or so she was starting to feel better.

Things were just fine on Tuesday but by Wednesday Iyla had developed a cough. I was worried the infection had gone to her lungs and was worried about her getting pnumionia. Isabella had woken up that morning with some goop in her eye and was not feeling well. So back to the DR we went. Iyla was indeed getting better. The meds were thinning out the mucus and that was irritating her and causing her to cough. The DR looked Isabella over and didn't see anything wrong. She did give us antibiotic eye drops to clear up whatever was in her eye.

We were satisified with that and everyone seemed ok... until thrusday afternoon. Isabella woke up from her nap complaining that her throat hurt and she was not swallowing. She was just drooling all over the place. I went to give her a hug and she as really warm. I took her temp and it was almost 103!!  We gave her some tylonel and tried to get her to drink anything! It didn't work to well.

In the morning she was throwing up, well it was more like drty heaving since she didn't eat anything the night before. I called the Dr and they had us come in right away. Jacob came home from work for support. Turned out Isabella has Strep Throat and the start of an ear infection! So both girls are on antibiotics. Both are diferent and for diferent reasons!

 We are going to stay home from church again today just to give the girls more time to rest and to make sure Isabella does not get half the nursrey sick right before Thanksgiving!

So, that had been our week! I have been playing nurse and Jacob has been our #1 bottle washer and all around back up guy! Thank goodness I have Jacob! He is the best husband and father EVER!! I am so grateful for him and how supportive and loving he is. He always knows just when to sweep us up and cuddle us and make us feel better. I love that guy!!

Fun on Blustery Day!

These past few days we have had some rough weather! The wind has been blowing, it has been raining, and the girls are slowly getting cabin fever! We have had to come up woth fun activities to keep them entertained! One of our favorites is playing in cornmeal! It is a great sensory activity and it encourges imiganation. Today was Iyla's first chance to play in the cornmeal. She had a blast so I thought I would post some pictures.

She had a lot of fun draging the fork in the cornmeal and scooping it up with the spoon.

She only ate a little of it. We knew she was done when all the cornmeal was landing all over the floor!

After we cleaned that mess up we got out some music and did some serious dancing! Iyla loves dancing on the stool. Look at her little face!

Iyla loves the camera. She likes poking at the flash when I am trying to take pictures.

Isabella was a million places all at once like any other self respecting 3 year old so I didn't get to many pictures of her but let me tell you she was having a blast!

We do all sorts of fun things during our days and I hope I keep remembering to take pictures to share with all of you!

Funny E-Mail

A man was being tailgated by a woman in a car on a busy boulevard. Suddenly, the light turned yellow, just in front of him. He did the right thing, stopping his car at the crosswalk, even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection. The woman slammed on her brakes and leaned on the horn. She opened her window, stuck her hand out and made a gesture, all the while screaming in frustration as she missed her chance to get through the intersection. As she was still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her car window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands up. He took her to the police station where she was searched, fingerprinted, photographed, and placed in a cell. After a couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door. This woman was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal belongings. He said, "I'm very sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, giving a hand gesture, and cussing a blue streak at the man in front of you. "I noticed the 'Choose the Right' license plate holder, the 'Families are Forever' bumper sticker, the 'Follow Me to Sunday School' bumper sticker, and the chrome-plated Angel Moroni emblem on the trunk---Naturally, I assumed you had stolen the car!"(Stories and Jokes for Mormon Folks, p. 1-2)


Thanks for the e-mail mom!

Finishing up Fall

This fall has been a whirlwind for our family. Some much fun, so much heart, so much happiness, so much wondering. From Halloween to harvesting the garden to my medical stuff it has been crazy! We have been taking it all in stride and trying to make the best out of every situation we have found ourselves in. I love my little family and am so grateful for every second I have with them.



I had surgery about 2 weeks ago to have something removed from my uterus. We were on pins and needles until we found out that it was not cancer! WHEW!! Big relief!! The best news was we are still able to have more children if we want to. I can't tell you just how excited I am about that. I don't know if we will be rushing to have another but the fact that we can is very comforting.



Halloween was very fun in our house. I think I had more fun this year then the past few years. Holidays with Isabella are twice as fun as before that little girl was in my life! Watching her have so much fun and start to share that joy with her sister brings me so much joy.



We are now in the process of getting our hearts and minds prepared for the Christmas season. I think the best way to do that is by counting our VERY many blessings. I think that celebrating our blessings and taking time to show gratitude and thankfulness before a season of giving makes so much sense. Taking an inward inventory of all that we have and all that we are makes us more open and willing to give. We have been trying to teach Isabella the joy of giving. For a 3 year old it is a very hard concept to grasp but I am hopeful that she will learn from mine and her father's example.



Our little family may have been down these past few months but we are not out! We are in it to win it, as they say, and are up for anything. It is so hard to see where the future will take us; but knowing that we are a forever family helps us to know we can conquer ANTHING together! I love my family and can't wait to spend forever with them.

PUMPKIN TIME!

Sorry I have been slow on posting our fall pictures! Things have been pretty crazy around here lately!

Our annul trip to Lattin's Country Apple Cider Mill and Farm was delayed this year. But the good news is we were able to go with my beloved sister, Brynn and her little boy. They don't do online pictures so I won't be posting any of them but let me tell you, they are both dang cute!  

The girls had a blast running aroud all the pumpkins is the pumpkin patch! I got some fun pictures too!

Ever the posing girl!!!

Iyla right before she fell on her bum!!

Which pumpkin to choose?

Sister love!!

We didn't get too many pictures of our fall decorations but her is what the top of our organ looks like. I think it turned our pretty cute! I love the sunflowers.

Iyla got to pain her first pumpkin this year! We got some crayola finger paint and let her go to town. She had a blast!

Isabella started out with a really great face on her pumpkin. She even made yellow eyebrows. But after I took the picture she decided that it would be fun the go paint crazy! When she was done, the pumpkin was a mess. But when you are 3 it is the process that is fun not the end result!

A few days later on halloween Bella and daddy carved the pumpkin.

I think it turned out cute.

We forgot to take pictures of the girls in there costumes so when we find some time we will dress them back up and get a few snapshots! Happy Fall everyone!!!

Near and Dear to my Heart

I shared this video on Facebook and thought I would put it up on my blog too. I have many casuses/issues that I feel very passionate about. One is Rear Facing toddlers. As some of you know, we kept Isabella rear facing until this past summer and Iyla is still rear facing and will be for the forseeable future. It gives me piece of mind and comfort that my girls are as safe as I can make them. Stephanie showed me this video and it completly changed my mind on the subject.

Although this is the choice we have made for our family, I don't judge those who choose to turn there babies around earlier. I just want to give all of my readers more information. My eyes were opened and I think your's will too.

Teething!

Our dear 13 month old daughter, Iyla, is FINALLY getting some more teeth, She has been working up to this for a while now. Since about 8 months of age she has not gotten any more teeth, just the 1st 4. It has been so frustrating for her since she wants to eat "big girl" food but has to gum it all.

Teething is no fun for anyone around here. Iyla is not sleeping well, and when the baby can't sleep... NO ONE SLEEPS! Iyla normally does not like cold things but when her gums are really hurting she loves it. Here are some pictures of her eating her 1st popcicle.

"it hurts right here mommy"

"oh soo good!!"

"What!! It's all gone!?!?!"

In this picture her eyes are all puffy because she was screaming. She dropped her beloved popcicle and was distrot until I gave her another one!

I am hoping this process does not take TOOO long, but I know from experiance it's just a painful waiting game! Wish us luck!

Real Answers!

So these past few months since I had the miscarriage, I have just not been myself. I have been tired and sluggish. MY hair has been falling out and I have had lots of "girly" issues. I didn't give much thought to any on this since I was WAY more focused with Iyla and her burns.




I went to a WIC Apt and they reclassified me as postpartum since I lost our baby. They did a regular iron finger poke test and the numbers were kind of high. I decided to check it out online and I learned that having high iron can cause the symptoms I was experiencing. So I called up my Dr. and scheduled an apt. They took a lot of blood and checked for everything. In the end they found out that my vitamin D levels are very low and I need to take a REALLY strong pill once a week for the next 3 months and hopefully that will get my levels back to normal and can start taking a MUCH smaller daily multivitamin.



As for my "girly" issues, it turned out to be an incomplete miscarriage. I am taking 2 birth control pills a day to try to jumpstart things and chemically clean it out so I don't have to have a DnC. I also had an ultrasound to see just what is going on in there. I should get the results of that soon.



I am so glad I have a reason why I am feeling this way and a way to fix it. I just want to get to feeling like myself and have the energy to do the things I want to. This coupled with me finishing up Physical therapy will help get me where I want to be. I am walking more and really focused on getting myself where I need to be to hopefully have another baby soon! I know there is a little spirit up there in heaven destined for our little family!

Iyla's 1st Hair Cut!

A few weeks ago I finally gave Iyla her first hair cut. She has these cute curls but also had thiss mohawk thing going on. The mohawk hair was srtait and it was about 4 times as long as the rest of her hair. So on ther day of our family pictures I decided I had had enough of the mohawk and we cut it off. The funny thig is she is 13 months old and the amount of hair we cut off was about the same as Bella's first cair cut! If you look back to lasty year, Bella did not get her 1st cut until she as 2 almost 2  1/2!! Here is the before and after...

That's one stylin' baby!!

2009 Fall Family Photo Shoot

A few days ago we went to the park and got our pictures taken. They are not anything fancy but we lkied that. We had a great time doing it too! Well, most of us. Iyla did not like sitting still long enough to get her picture taken.

Here are some of the better ones...

The seccond we got to the park both girls ran to the playground!

I got Isabella to take a few shots before she got back on the swings! They look great!

Iyla thought the stick was WAY more interesting to look at then the camara!

Iyla did not want to sit down!!

Even when Daddy joined in!

Isabella loved sitting on that rock

It's not a smile... but she's not screaming... I'll  take it!

I like to call this one the Gifford Totem Pole!!

This one is my famorite of t he bunch. I want to frame it and in the left center corner put a poem about fathers and daughters or something like that.

I can't stand getting my picture taken. But I know the girls love looking at pictures of me so I consented to getting my picture taken. I don't think it turned out too bad... although I forgot to smile!

Me and my Hubby! Ain't he dreamy!!!

I am trying to figure out when would be a good time to get "real" pictures done. But these will do for now! I hope you enjoyed them!