iRecommend

 It worked out kind of funny that the first month I started doing my blog this way actually has 5 Thursdays instead of 4. On the occasional month where there is a 5th Thursday, I'll be posting things that I recommend.

So here goes...

I loved this stuff for a (very) temporary color in your hair. I put purple in my bangs over the weekend, and I loved it.

I love, love, love these Staedtler pens. I bought both sets with some of my Christmas money. I use them every day and they are awesome. More expensive than most pens, but definitely worth the money.

Beef Barley Soup, which can be found here on my Pinterest. It was a big hit with every member of our family, which doesn't happen very often.

We also really liked this Crockpot Lasagna Soup, another Pinterest find. It's Ty's favourite soup, and he's my super super picky eater.

The boys got some Sands Alive for Christmas. For my kids who have some Sensory Processing tendencies, this stuff is amazing! It doesn't dry out, it doesn't get stuck in carpets, it's organic and non-toxic. All 3 of the boys love it and it is an amazing product for them.

John loves Spotify, especially for work. It has been a great way for him to try out new music and helped us to figure out which music we want to purchase on iTunes. I like it a lot as well :)

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So there are my recommendations for the time being. All things that we really like!

L and What She Means to Me

I'm 2 days late. It's been a really off week in our house. I think the kids got spring fever early this year, no one has been sleeping properly and I was about ready to pull my hair out (so I just cut most of it off instead, ha ha).

So for the 4th Thursday of each month, it will be about something that's been going through my mind recently. I call it the Musings & Soapbox Moments week.

This month I decided to talk about how L is really the best thing that's ever happened to me. So just in case you've been living under a rock or are new to my blog, here's who L is. Just over 11 years ago I found out that I was pregnant. I was not married at the time. Nor was I a member of my church at the time, that happened about 2/3 of the way through my pregnancy. When L was born, I placed her with the people who were meant to be her family. At the time, it was her mom, her dad and her older brother. She now has 2 younger brothers as well. L is the only girl I've given birth to and she holds a very special place in my heart. It's probably a good thing that my husband and I have all boys, it makes her that much more special.

So I realized that it may sound odd to say that she's the best thing that ever happened to me, above my conversion and baptism, my marriage, and my sons. But here's why. I would have had NONE of those things if I hadn't been pregnant with L. It is because I was pregnant with her, that my heart was softened and I was ready to gain a testimony and join the church. Because of joining the church, that is how I met my husband and was able to be blessed with our boys.

I remember a quote from somewhere about Heavenly Father permitting hard/bad things to happen to us because He can see how much good will come out of them. Being pregnant with L was hard. Going through the emotional stress of the pregnancy was super hard. Making the decision to place her was beyond hard. Yet every good thing that I have in my life, I have because I was blessed enough to carry that girl for 9 months and help to bring her into this world. It's why I have always had the peace that I do about making the decision to place her. Because she gave me everything that she was meant to give me, but she was never meant to be mine. But I will be eternally grateful for her, because of all of the amazing things I have in my life that she helped to prepare me for.

There is so much beauty in adoption, and I'm so grateful for everything that my small part in it has given to me.

My 'Crafty' Side

I will be the first to admit that my mum kept all of her crafty talent and shared none of it with me while I was still in utero. I severely lack an imagination (I couldn't even read the first chapter of Harry Potter until I had the visual from the movie) and it took years to be able to draw a straight line with a ruler. However, I decided over Christmas holidays that I need to start being a bit creative just to have an outlet. Being a stay-at-home mum who doesn't drive, I kind of lose my mind in the winter. And summer... Pretty much any time, ha ha. So I bought Caleb's desk from him that he wasn't using for the price of a Skylanders trap (so, about $7). I used a fair chunk of my Christmas money from my parents to buy things for my desk like 2 new pen sets (huzzah for Staedtler pens), highlighters, organizers and so forth. Thus, my creative space was born.

So the 3rd Thursday of the month is about getting to share what I've been working on.

Mondays are set aside for personal writing, which is just that. It's personal.

Tuesdays are for learning about whatever I feel like learning about. Lately it has been Sensory Processing Disorder. There are a lot of traits from it that my kids have, so I have been learning about lots of fun activities to do with them. One that I think all 3 of them are going to enjoy this summer is 'painting' the fence in our back yard with water. We're also going to make them calm down bottles (if you're on Pinterest, I'm sure you've seen them). I've got a whole list, but it would probably just be a lot easier to check it out on Pinterest. There are so many fun activities that just about any kid would like.

Wednesdays are to build up our collection of geeky Christmas ornaments, aka Perler Beads Day. Here are the latest 5 that I've made.



The Batman is for John, Wonder Woman is for me, Green Lantern is for Caleb, Superman is for Ty and The Flash is for Brettley. They also match our geeky Christmas stockings that my mum made for us in 2013. I've also made 1 other ornament each for us, but they made it on the tree last month and are put away now.

Thursdays are my blogging day and, if I'm up to it, doing a decluttering chore. With my back out right now, though, it's not been happening.

Fridays I am finding floor plans for houses that I like on Pinterest and putting them onto graph paper, making a few changes as I see fit. This is actually one of my most favourite things to do. John keeps telling me to become an architect and then he will stay at home with the kids. I keep reminding him that I sucked at high school math and barely scraped a passing grade in Physics 20.

My side project recently has been assembling Busy Bag activities for the boys for church.


This one is part of Brettley's school stuff to help him learn the Alphabet, but it's being transferred to the Busy bag.



Here's part of the Colour Sudoku kit I made. I'm actually pretty excited about this one, since I love Sudoku and am pretty dang decent at it (right Amber?).



From the reactions I got while making this, the kids are probably going to be fighting after this Build a Pizza kit. They all thought it was so awesome.

So that's what I've been up to this past month in my efforts to be a little more creative.

Also, thanks again to Amber for my awesome new blog header :D

Proper Blog Header

I'll be doing my planned post tomorrow, but this deserved its very own post. My amazing friend Amber used her mad photoshop skills to make me a header for my blog after seeing my lamenting on facebook. I was super bummed that I was trying to put more effort into this blog but have ZERO skills when it comes to creating a header, and Amber very kindly volunteered to help me out. So a HUGE HUGE thank you to her. I LOVE it!

Spiritual Thought

So for my second Thursday of each month, I decided to devote it to something spiritual that's currently on my mind. This month my new thing is doing the Book of Mormon 365 (by LDS Living) on Instagram.

Each day it tells you how far to read that day (starting at 1 Nephi 1:1 on the first day) and gives you a question to ponder as you read it. I am finding this to be completely invaluable! For so long I've been able to read regularly (when I'm focusing on it), but have a hard time actually getting something out of it. It's been a struggle for me the whole time since I've joined the church. Having the section set out for me with a specific thing to ponder as I read it has helped me get more out of reading the scriptures these past 8 days that I did in all of last year, I'm sure. I would highly recommend it to anyone and I'm really grateful that a friend of mine recommended it on her Instagram. It's amazing to finally have a way to study the scriptures with a purpose!

If you're interested, here are some links:

Instagram

http://instagram.com/bofm365

Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/bofm365

Twitter

https://twitter.com/bofm365

Check it out!

What's Up With Us?

As I mentioned yesterday, I'll be doing things differently on here. So the first Thursday of each month will be about what we've been up to as a family and individuals.

As a family we spent December doing some fun activities leading up to Christmas. We read books, watched movies, made a few things like the gingerbread house. We stayed home again for Christmas. I am officially a fan of Christmas at home! Brettley had been really sick the week of Christmas and John and I were not doing great either, so we had a very relaxed day. We opened presents, had breakfast and then pretty much did nothing for the rest of the day. We're all mostly healthy now, thankfully.

(Brettley was very sick that morning so this is the best picture I got)

Yesterday was our anniversary. The boys spent a couple of nights at my dad's, which was great. On Tuesday we went out for supper, courtesy of John's work. They gave us $100 in gift cards to Joey's. We both had good steak dinners. Yesterday we went out to St Albert, our home away from home. Checked out our favourite gaming store, as well as EB Games and grabbed a couple of things at Walmart. It was a really low key day, and we do well with that. We might do something a bit more planned out next year, since it will be our 10 year.

Over the past couple of months John had his annual performance review at work, It went so well that his supervisor said he almost felt that he needed to make up something bad just to add some variety to their meeting. And then he got a nice raise for the new year, so he is doing really great at work.

I had a big surprise on Sunday morning. I had been sick for days and was finally feeling a bit better, but my mental health was in horrible shape. At 7:30 that morning John told me to pack a bag and call my dad so that I could go to my brother's for dinner that night with the rest of my family. It was exactly what I needed and I had a great time with my dad, mum, step-dad, brother, sister-in-law, her dad and one of her brothers. I didn't tell my brother and sister-in-law that I was coming, and they loved the surprise. My brother in turn surprised me with my Christmas present from him. We had a tape of Christmas music that we listened to every year when we were younger. Years back my mum passed the tape along to me, but for quite a while now I've no longer had a cassette player, so I've missed getting to hear it. It has my favourite Christmas song on it which was an original song, so I couldn't just hear it on any other album, but you can't even get this album on iTunes. Anyway, for the past 4 years my brother has been searching for this album online. He finally found it and gave me the CD for Christmas. I cried because I was so happy, which pretty much never happens with me. It was one of the most thoughtful gifts I've ever received.

Caleb has been obsessed lately with all things spies. He has made a spy club at school and made up little badges for them all to earn and membership cards for each of them. He is having so much fun with it!

Caleb and Tyrell had their concert at school. Caleb did well. You can tell he enjoys singing and music in general. Ty was hilarious to watch! He is so animated, and I kept trying not to laugh as I was recording their song so that John could see it. There still ended up being a few shaky camera spots when I couldn't hold in a chuckle. He is such a happy guy, which I love having in my life.

                (Tyrell is the one in the vest)

Ty also went up a level in his reading, which is great. He loves school, and is thriving in grade 1.

Brettley has been attempting to play Minecraft lately. He loves the game, but is always digging himself into a deep pit and getting frustrated because he doesn't know how to get out. It's so cute watching him learn all of these things, though. It's helping him find more common ground with his brothers, which is really nice to see, and it makes him so happy to be able to play on the X-Box.

Revamp, Farewell and Celebration

If you're not on the mobile version of this, you've probably noticed that I'm making some changes to my blog. I just felt that it was time. I plan on using my blog differently in the new year (that's SO far away now), and I felt that the changes I'm making would work well with it. I got rid of some stuff, added some buttons and changed or edited a lot, including our bios. The change to how I'm using my blog will start tomorrow with the brand new year. Hopefully it will work better for me :) With that, I won't be doing the Thankful Thursdays anymore. They were feeling redundant, and it wasn't really motivating me on here.

So 2014 on to 2015, hey? I was right, 2014 was significantly better for me than 2013 was, so huzzah! It's been a big year. I got called back in to Young Women, we went on the rollarcoaster to find out what was going on with Caleb, ended up with a diagnosis, went back to Magrath for the first time since Dad passed away early in 2012, Caleb was baptized and I turned the big 3-0. C does this thing where she has a motivational word or phrase for the upcoming year. I've sort of been trying to adopt that, so my word for 2015 is... Reclaim . I'm hoping to reclaim my healthy body, a healthy mind and an even healthier and stronger testimony this coming year.

However, I can't let 2014 go just yet, because today celebrates 9 years since I married that amazing man that I call my husband in the Cardston Alberta Temple. Our marriage has survived so much in the past 9 years. I've seen so much with this amazing man by my side, and I'm looking forward to an eternity more. All of me loves all of you, John!