Picture-a-Day (Weeks 1 and 2)

 I decided to challenge myself to take at least one picture-a-day, every single day this year.

I know you may be thinking that this isn't a challenge for me because I already take so many pictures.

But I don't take one everyday.

It's helps me always be on the lookout for picture taking opportunities.

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January 1st - Avery exhausted from staying up until about 11 pm on New Years Eve.

January 2nd - having a play date with Chloe. She's in Lexi's primary class.

January 3rd -  Celebrating my half birthday with brownies and ice cream.

January 4th - The view from our place at 8 am.

January 5th - Getting together with Sean's Orton side of the family.

January 6th - Lexi's half birthday. She wanted chocolate pudding pie.

January 7th - Eli and Jack eating lunch.

January 8th - The girls practicing for their first day of dance class since the holiday break.

Emmalee is now in Avery's dance class.

January 9th - Lexi and Avery talking to Lexi's friends Valentina and Madeline before kindergarten starts.

January 10th - The girls with their friend Ezra at his first birthday party.

January 11th - Me and my dear friend Hannah celebrating our belayed half birthday.

We share the same birthday July 3rd.

January 12th - I did a little award ceremony with just me and the girls were I presented them with these.

Avery won the best napper award and Lexi won the best cleaner award.

I just thought it would be a fun way to let them know that I appreciate them.

January 13th - Having dinner and Family Home Evening with the Pattersons and the Smiths.

We all had a blast. We are lucky to have such great friends living so close to us.

(The kids' hands are all green because Lindsay made play dough with them. 

She used corn starch and hair conditioner and food coloring. That's it. It smelled awesome.)

January 14th - My two little beauties all ready for school.

Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookies

I made these for the second time this past week.

They are AMAZING!!!

I found them from The Farm Girl's blog here.

Cream Cheese Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

6 ounces cream cheese, softened

12 tbsp. butter, melted and cooled

1 cup packed light brown sugar

1/2 cup granulated sugar

2 tsp. vanilla extract

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

2 cups plus 3 tbsp. all-purpose flour

1 1/2 cups semi-sweet or milk chocolate chips

Directions:

1.  Preheat the oven to 325°F and line baking sheets with parchment or silpat liners or spray with non-stick cooking spray. In bowl of an electric stand mixer, cream together the cream cheese, melted butter and sugars until light and fluffy, about 2-3 minutes. Mix in the vanilla. Add the dry ingredients and mix until mostly incorporated but a few dry streaks remain. Add the chocolate chips and mix until combined and no dry streaks remain.

2.  Roll the dough into 1 to 1 1/2-inch balls and place about 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets. Flatten each ball slightly with the palm of your hand (just barely press, it doesn't need to be completely flat). Bake the cookies for 12-14 minutes until the edges are just barely golden brown. Let the cookies cool for a few minutes on the baking sheet and then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.  Enjoy!

Make 2-3 dozen

5 Kids 5 and Under

 As of yesterday, I am now watching my friend Arielle's two kids.

Arielle is a middle school teacher and her husband Joel is going to school at BYU.

I now watch their kids Monday through Thursday from 7 am to 4:30 pm.

(Arielle's sister Jenny watches the kids on Friday.)

I'm happy to help out my friend and she's paying me so every body wins.

Emmalee is four and Jack is a few weeks older than Eli.

So now I get to experience life with five kids ages five and under!

My girls were so excited for Emmalee to start coming over.

These girls are in little girly heaven, especially Emmalee.

Before I watched her an older retired couple did and she didn't get to interact with other kids much.

Eli and Jack are big fans of each other.

Mostly because they always want to play with the same thing at the same time.

But it will be good for these babies to learn to share.

I know everyday won't be easy but yesterday I was able to bake homemade rolls, make a yummy dinner and dessert, plan a Family Home Evening lesson, do crafts with the girls, blog, take a ton of pictures,
go visit a friend and clean up and still have the energy to work out for an hour last night.
Before you think I'm wonder woman, know that I wore sweats all day and didn't do my hair or make up.

A House of God

In my last post, I shared a scripture (D&C 109:8). It is my theme/ goal for 2014.

Here are a few of things that we are doing to try to create the home we want to live in.

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Every night at  6:40 pm an alarm on my phone goes off

 reminding us to do family scripture study and family prayer.

In addition to reading from the scriptures, 

the girls recite every night the scriptures and articles of faith they've memorized.

Across the living from our couch we have these posted on the wall.

Lexi has all of them memorized exception D&C 18:10 and she's still working on James 1:5.

Avery has the Golden Rule, John 14:15, the second article of faith and most of the first one memorized.

In addition to reading regular children's books 

we're reading the scripture stories for Lexi's homework reading time.

Right now we're focusing on the Old Testament.

We are always reviewing the stories and asking the girls questions.

Even Avery knows the stories.

They girls really enjoy learning about the prophets.

The other day, we went to the library and once we got home I asked Lexi if she wanted to read 

one of her new books, she told me that she wanted to read Jesus' words instead.

I've made a goal to clean up the living room, dinning room and kitchen every night before I go to bed. 

I make sure to load and start the dishwasher too.

It's so nice to wake up to a clean house.

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I've also started showering at nights so that it takes less time to get ready in the morning.

And I've started waking up before the kids so I can have time to get ready for the day.

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We are also working on making our apartment feel warm and inviting and feel like home.

We recently bought some shelves from IKEA for dinning room to help provide more storage.

I love how they look sandwiching our buffet.

We're also going to focus on getting new pictures up on our wall

 and putting  pictures of Christ and the temple in each room.

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On our to-do list is to put up curtains in the living room and in our master bedroom.

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We just got on the waiting list for a garage. Our complex has single car garages that you can rent.

Once we get one, we're gonna clean up our closets and  deck 

and put things in there that we don't use frequently.

I just want to clear up the clutter and make sure every thing has a place.

...

I don't expect our home to look clean and perfect all the time 

but I'd like to always feel comfortable having people in my home.

...

I have some other ideas and things that I want to work on.

Once we've made some read progress I'll report and share pictures.

Our Theme for 2014

Organize yourselves;

prepare every needful thing,

and establish a house,

even a house of prayer,

a house of fasting,

a house of faith,

a house of learning,

a house of glory,

a house of order,

a house of God.

Doctrine and Covenants 109:8

Memorable Moments from 2013

Here are my favorite memories (blog posts) from 2013:

Eli's baby blessing.

My parents visiting in January.

The kids lipstick photo shoot.

Me and Eli's trip to California for my uncle B's funeral.

My nephew Austin was born.

BYU football team spring scrimmage game.

Getting rid of our TV.

Avery's third birthday.

Sean's birthday in Vegas.

Lexi's preschool graduation.

Eli's first haircut.

Playing at the park with Uncle Josh.

Eli's first pickle.

Briggs family reunion.

Lexi's fifth birthday.

Getting together with Christensen cousins.

Deciding to not buy a house.

Moving to our new apartment.

Lexi's first day of kindergarten.

Avery's first day of preschool.

Avery's first soccer game.

Lexi's first soccer game.

Playing at the beach in Bear Lake.

My parents visiting in October.

12 months of Eli blog post.

Eli's first birthday photo shoot.

The girls Halloween costumes pictures.

Halloween.

Our new branch and Sean's calling.

Thanksgiving in Vegas.

Santa pictures.

The girls' first dance recital.

Cousin nativity picture.

Christmas Eve.

Christmas morning.

Man, I'm glad I try my hardest to take pictures and blog and document our lives.
Because whenever I look back at where we've been and what we've done,
 I'm so grateful for my family and our life together!
I'm excited to see what 2014 has in store for us.

New Years Eve

 On New Years Eve we went to Joel and Arielle's place.

They are some of our friends from the branch.

Arielle made us fancy drinks and delicious crab and shrimp stuffed avocados at that was just our appetizers!

It was all delicious!

Then the kids just played while us grown ups talked and play a board game.

I wanted to take a pictures of the babies together but they didn't want any part of that.

Eli loved their TV. Since we don't have one and since he could reach theirs.

He kept trying to grab the bouncing word on the screen.

At 9 pm we celebrated the new year.

We pooped balloons filled with confetti and little poppers that blow out streamers.

I love how Emmalee is covering her ears in the next picture.

 And then we headed outside to do Pop It's. 

  

Then it was back inside for Martinelli's and a group picture.

Lexi was so excited to have her own little bottle.

She downed it!

Cheers to a new year!

Jack wanted to drink out of the big bottle.