So after our last gum fiasco, I had to give up my favorite flavor of gum. The flashbacks were more than I could bear. I'm pretty sure Olivia is trying to make it her mission for me to never chew gum again. . There was one lowly pack of gum that had escaped my new routine of gum lock down. It was sandwiched between a stack of cookbooks, forgotten after a mad dash to get all of my gear into the house from the car. Somehow, someway, Olivia sniffed out that little lonely pack, pushed a chair to the counter and again feasted like it was her last meal. All the evidence she left behind was an empty container. She trickily concealed all the wrappers by throwing them in the trash. . My first tip off was not the empty pack. It was the overwhelming smell of spearmint every time she got within 5 feet of me. The poop attacks have already commenced their assault on my sanity. I can hear her stomach gurgling and churning for the next wave. Heaven help me. I am seriously considering strapping down her tricksy little self to her mini potty for the next little while to save me the torture of changing those crazy gum overload diapers.
That's my view of Mt. Baker from the living room. I didn't feel like busting out the camera to take pictures of it today, plus the sky is all cloudy.
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We were gone all day yesterday and when we pulled into our driveway I saw the for sale sign. It was weird and exciting all at the same time. It's weird to think of the total strangers who will (some have already) walk through my house, look at my things, judge a place I helped to build with my own two hands. A lot of my nick nacks are either boxed away, or off to goodwill (which that is a good thing, I collect FAR too much stuff). It is also exciting because this is the first step in the new direction our life is heading. But I can't help but think, will whoever buys this place feel the same way about it that I do? What will it look like when someone else makes this their home? Will it be weird to go and visit my Mom when it sells and look across the field to see a car that is not mine parked in the driveway? Do other people have all this jumble of emotion when they are trying to sell their houses?
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I take comfort in the fact that I know Heavenly Father wants us to move forward in this direction, that our home is always where our family is together, not the roof and walls that we reside in. That someplace new will eventually feel familiar to us, that we will get to the point where Olivia will exclaim "Yea, we made it... We're HOME!". I will have the chance to make an imprint in someplace new and foreign and I will be a better person for it. It's just so weird to look out my window and see that for sale sign by the driveway.
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You can check out our home at Wynden's website HERE
Marcus took a nap yesterday and I left the bedroom door a little cracked. When Olivia woke up she saw he was sleeping and shut the door all the way. Then she came and found me and this was our converstation:" "Mommy, Daddy is sleeping, he taking a nap. Sssssshhhhh. I shut the door". " Oh really, he's sleeping?". " Yeah. He has owies". " Oh really? He has owies? Oh that's too bad". " Yeah. He has owies in his eyebrownsss". pointing to her eyebrows. "On his eyeBROWS?" "NO no no no no, his eyeBROWNSSSS". "Oh okay". . Honestly some of the stuff she is coming up with is so hilarious! I love it!
... clean up, clean up, everybody do your share! Olivia's picture taking as of late only consists of pictures of me in my "cleaning clothes" while I am cleaning and tidying up. I was making the bed in this one.
I always loved that song from primary! I have been a cleaning maniac over the last few days. Our house goes on the market TODAY! Kinda nervous about it, this is the first house we have owned, ergo the first house we have tried to sell (well if we are being technical here we only own .002% of the house, whilst our lovely bank owns the other 99.998% of it).
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Some people wanted to come and get an early viewing of it on Friday, so all of our cleaning extravaganza for the weekend had to be pushed up considerably. They liked the property, but really wanted a place with a garage already to go. But it was lovely to have the house in tip top shape over the weekend, it made for a very relaxing Sunday!
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It is so much easier to keep things cleaned once they are already cleaned, so I have been re wiping down everything to help keep it looking pristine. Not to mention all the odds and ends that are getting taken care of (you know those things that every week you say, oh I'll get to it next week... and before you know it, it's three years later!). This week I plan more of a de-clutter and de-junk. Getting things ready for a garage sale and/or goodwill.
Whenever our church builds a new temple they have an open house before it is dedicated. During this time it is open to the public to take a guided tour through it and ask questions. We were able to make it up there this afternoon and it was such a treat. . It is in Langley right across the border, which is so nice because up til now we have had to drive all the way to Bellvue to attend the temple. This new one is only 24 miles from our house! You can read more about it here. . We were explaining to Olivia on the car ride up what a special place we were going to, how it is "Heavenly Father's" house and how we need to be reverent while we are there. She was being so cute. As we were getting close she saw a big office building and exclaimed "look Mommy, the TEMPLE!". I had to explain that it was a Doctor's office, not the temple. . She was so cute on the tour. She would say Wowevery time we went into a new room. When we got into the Celestial room she looked up at the beautiful chandelier and said "Wow Mommy, pretty lights. It's so... It's so.... AWESOME!". I about died it was so precious! Awesome is a new word for her this week (courtesy of DJ Lance of Yo GabbaGabba, her latest favorite show). It was so beautiful to her that she was trying to find the right word to tell me and the first thing to come to her head was awesome. She was even saying it in her "inside voice". . We were waiting to take pictures until after the tour, and low and behold it started raining cats and dogs, so no pictures. I even had the girls in their first matching dresses, it would have been nice to get a family picture there. Bianca was really anxious to crawl around so she kept wriggling around in our arms the whole time. We eventually released the girl and now her white pristine tights are all dirty. . After the tour we ate some cookies, said hi to people we recognized and got ready to head home. There was a line by the door to leave, so as we were waiting for a break in the flow of people, I was giving Olivia a run down of events to keep her occupied (no naps=no patience). How we were going bye bye, how we were going to take the shuttle bus back to our car. There was a white porcelain figurine of Jesus holding a little child on a shelf right beside us. I had stopped talking and Olivia was looking at the figurine. Then she said : "Bye, Bye Jesus Christ". I couldn't believe it. It was such a precious moment. She is getting into such a fun age where she is able to express so much and understand so much more than before. It was so neat when she said that because we don't have that figurine in our house, she had just seen enough pictures of him at church and at our house to recognize him. In her perfect childlike innocence she understood the spirit that she felt there. It just reinforced to me that even though it was quite the production to load us all up, wait at the border forever and be in a sea of people that it was important for us to go. Important for our family to have these kind of experiences together. I know living the gospel blesses my life, but now I am seeing how much it is blessing my family's life, my children's lives. It was such a wonderful day!
Olivia's baby of the day today was one of her Teddy's. While I was nursing Bianca, Olivia was getting her 'baby' ready for bed. She changed it's stinkies and even pretended to put cream on it's bum to make it's owies feel better. . Then I asked her if it was time for her baby to go to bed. She said "No Mommy, pway!". I had thought she had changed her mind and wanted to play with her baby instead. But then she got more and more upset and kept saying "Pway Mommy, PWAY!!". "Olivia do you mean PRAY?". "YES, PWAY!" . There are a lot of things that I don't do as I should, but one thing that we always stay consistent on is saying prayers before she takes a nap and family prayers before she goes to bed at night. Even while she was playing pretend at putting her baby to sleep, it just didn't feel right to lay it down until we had said prayers. She was being completely serious and then told me to fold my arms and I helped her say a prayer. . When she was done she said "thank you Mommy" and then tucked her baby in with a blanket and laid it to sleep. I had started out the day feeling very frustrated with her because she woke up on the cranky side (quite frankly, so did I). Us saying that simple prayer together changed the feeling in our home and both of us changed from our grumpy moods into decidedly calmer moods. It never ceases to amaze me the sweet and simple things that this little girl teaches me. And it gave me great comfort to know that as much as I screw up, there are still important principles that are being taught to her and still a few things that I am doing right as a parent.
I let Bianca play with toys on my floor in my room when I am checking emails or blogstalking people. I set her down in the middle of the room ....
... and before I knew it....
....she was right beside me...
That's right! This baby is crawling ALL OVER THE PLACE!
Her whole motivation for crawling to me in the first place was because she was getting tired and wanted to me pay attention to her. So she wasn't too thrilled when I moved to a different spot in the room to get pictures of her first day of crawling.
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I can't believe how much of a wiggle worm that she is. She does not sit still for two seconds unless she is passed out asleep. She also loves to take her bath on her tummy, which is new for me as Olivia NEVER liked to be on her tummy. I'm still working on calming down for her bath times because I get so nervous she is going to drown or something, but she WILL NOT sit upright while in that tub! Plus she also has no fear of the water so she will use her feet to kick off from one side of the tub and slide on her belly to the other side of the tub to get to a toy. And I mean using all of her strength to launch herself through the water. Do you see why her bath times keep me on edge?
We love it when we have an excuse to get together with Marcus' family. It is always so much fun! I checked my camera after the weekend and found a ton of pictures that Olivia took from Saturday. This weekend we had two great excuses. Auntie Michelle was in town (Olivia's namesake) and Aunt Sheila, Uncle Darrin and Wilson! Double the reasons to party!
Olivia had a blast playing with cousin Vienna, these two were getting into all kinds of highjinx!
Olivia thought it extra picture worthy to take a picture of her Uncle Steve looking through a calendar. Um Steve, that wouldn't happen to be Richard's "special" calendar, now would it?
Group shot! There was so much yummy food, pulled pork sandwiches, yummy salad, apple pie, ice cream sandwiches. I about went into a food coma ;)
Great Grandma Virginia was watching the Wii game of bowling going on.
Everyone was such great sports at posing for pictures for Olivia, I guess I should always put her in charge of the picture taking at family events. I'm pretty sure Olivia was saying "cheese" before each picture. This is Grandpa and Aunt Sheila.
Aunti Candice!
Olivia has been talking about Auntie Shelly since she left, and also asking when we can go to more parties. Apparently she really loves parties! Or maybe it was all the ice cream sandwiches that she hoovered on Saturday?
Daddy! I just love this guy, he is so handsome (hubba hubba!).
Vienna and Olivia had a fashion show with their shades, they were so cute!
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One party wasn't enough for us so on Sunday we had everyone over to our house for a waffle breakfast before Sheila and her family and Michelle had to head back. It was honestly so much fun to get together with everyone. Our house is so perfect for things like that too so I had better get crackin at planning some more family get togethers while we are still living here. It was such a perfect weekend!
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For some reason I didn't get any pictures with my camera of all the group shots on Sunday. Can someone please email me some?? I'm very interested in getting a picture of all the guys with flowers in their hair ;)
When I was at my heaviest, after having Bianca, I could understand why I felt bad about the way my body looked. I was unhealthy, eating really horribly and I looked it AND I felt it. I had no energy and all the food I was hoovering down really weighed me down, literally, mentally and emotionally.
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Call me crazy, but I always had this thought that when I got down to that magical number that I would finally start to feel great about how my body looks. Most of the time I do feel really good. I think that it has a lot to do with the way I eat now. More fruits and veggies, less fat and grease, it really improves my mood and gives me a lot of energy.
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I was getting into the shower the other day and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and thought "my stomach is so flabby, I feel so chubby right now". SERIOUSLY?!?! It wasn't until a few hours later that I had to tell myself that I do not look the way the I feel and to be happy with my accomplishments. Why are we so quick to be down on ourselves, no matter what shape or size we are currently in? Is this something that I will struggle with for my whole life?
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I'm not saying I feel this way all the time, but it sure sucks when I do. Now don't get me wrong, I am not writing this to tell everyone what hot stuff I am (or to fish for compliments), it just honestly blew my mind when I realized how hard I was being on myself. There are things about my body that no amount of exercise or healthy eating will change, and that is okay. My body is changed because it housed two beautiful little girls. For a short while I was their home until they were strong and big enough to be born into this world. That is such a gift and a blessing to me, that I could do that and provide that for my babes.
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When those negative feelings start to creep in I need to remember to tell myself these things. To take a deep breath, know that I am beautiful and just the way Heavenly Father created me to be. To remember that those feelings could creep up on my girls too and to always encourage them and voice to them all the wonderful things that I see in them everyday. It might be one of those things that us girls will always be cursed with, but it doesn't mean I can let it get the best of me!
I would have to say that 95% of the time this is what I see when I go and get her from her crib in the morning or after naps. She is just so happy and smiley and ready to play. I love when she smiles how the left eyebrow points up a little higher. It's kinda spunky. I kinda love it. It's like she is smiling because she has some kind of trick up her sleeve, or like she knows something that you don't and she thinks it is so funny, it's a little saucy.
I never think about taking pictures until I have down time, which is usually when the babe is taking one of her naps, ergo not many pictures of Bianca. I am REALLY going to try and work on that more.
She makes me so happy with the joyful and easy nature that she radiates.
She is now eating three square meals a day. She starts squawking at me if I don't have it ready fast enough. She is a hoover. Eats every last drop. I have to slow her down with a dessert of some cheerios, how slower pace it takes for her to get each one to her mouth gives her stomach enough time to tell her brain she has had enough.
She is crawling-ish. She gets up on her hands and knees and then catapults herself forward and then gets up and does it again. She doesn't quite have consecutive crawls down yet.
Olivia loves to ham it up when they are eating (I feed them together at the same time for every meal). Olivia will make funny faces or noises and then Bianca starts cracking up then Olivia dissolves into a fit of laughter. This will go on for like 5 minutes. It is my goal to get a video clip of it this week.
They each get SO BORED when one is awake and the other is asleep. Bianca doesn't know what to do with herself if Olivia isn't in the same room. Olivia is the first to run into Bianca's room when she hears her waking up from a nap to say hello!
She is so perfect for our family, and I know everyone says this but it is so true, I don't know what we did before she came to us.
Because Easter weekend also happened to fall on General Conference weekend we didn't have church services per say (Conference is broadcasted and we can watch it from home on the BYU channel) so I didn't dress Olivia up in her fancy dress on Easter Sunday. I scored these duds from Gymboree in January during their red balloon sale (Kaitlyn helped me plan my attack for shopping). How I love Gymboree! This was at Great Grandma and Grandpa's house. Candice so wonderfully brought eggs for Olivia and Vienna to hunt for (honestly never even thought to do something like that, lame I know). We did the hunt a couple of times because they had so much fun finding the eggs. Olivia thought the silly putty toy in one of the eggs was a candy...she tried to eat it... I kinda barfed when I saw her doing that.
She thought collecting eggs was the coolest!
Before that hunt we had Brunch at Auntie Helen's house. Oh how we LOVE Auntie Helen! I realized when doing this post that I never took any pictures of Bianca on Easter, I really need to work on that, she is getting the shaft BIG TIME! (Um Helen if you have any can you email me... marcusvashti at verizon dot net, thanks!!).
Olivia really loves her shades, they were in her Easter basket of goodies!
How to keep a toddler busy whilst you bake? Give her a bowl and as you add ingredients to your bowl, add a little to hers. She ended up with a salty/oil/floury/watery mess and she loved EVERY MINUTE of it! Do you love her mini apron? I got it at our Family Reunion auction a few years back, we have matching ones, one is Mommy sized and one is kiddy sized.
I was telling her to say cheese and smile for the camera, mostly I just got a lot of her saying cheese pictures!
So my buns turned out pretty decent. My family devoured them before I could get any pictures to document for posterity. Also if you need a good sloppy joe recipe, the one that Pioneer Woman posted on her site a few days ago is TO DIE FOR!! So yummy!
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It never ceases to blow my mind that while Marcus and I have been together for 5+ years (well married for five, together for 6) that there are still new things to learn about him. Like yesterday I ended up making some peanut butter cookies. Normally when I do this (bake) when Marcus gets home the baked goods start to mysteriously vanish. When I got home at like 10 last night (ran some errands once the girls got to bed and Walmart checkers might be the slowest moving organisms on the planet) I noticed that the cookie plate was still piled high.
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Me: "So do you like the cookies??"
Him: "Um... I might not have tried any yet..."
Me: "What?!?! How is that possible? Don't you like peanut butter cookies?"
Him: "Um.... Not really.... I don't really like peanut butter... at all". (sheepish look on his face)
Me: "WHAT THE WHAT!??!??! How can I be married to you and not know this?!"
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Banana with a schmear of peanut butter is one of my favorite snacks and he said it grosses him out every time I eat it. So yesterday was learn something new about Marcus day. So to be on the safe side we went through one of my dessert books last night and I had him star the things he really likes. I usually only eat one or two cookies, I make them mostly for him (well and Olivia but I'm pretty sure she would eat brussel sprouts if they were in the form of a cookie). He isn't a fussy person so all this time he just kept eating things like that that had peanut butter in them so I wouldn't feel bad. FOR FIVE YEARS. So I figured that earned him a batch of cookies that he really would like. So today it was oatmeal nut with Humungous chunks of chocolate in them.
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Apparently he also LOVES banana bread, zucchini bread, anything like that. I have never made it for him thinking he wouldn't like it (let's face it, those types of bread are a little "granola" if you catch my drift). So that will also coming out of Maison de Radder soon!
... Betty Crocker, this momma is getting her bake on! (That picture is of Betty Crocker herself! Who knew she was such a foxy lady?)
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I always find that I am more productive/happy/homemakery when my house is clean and organized. I wish I would remember that more often, like the times when I let my house go to pot. Since my clean-tastic weekend I have been feeling the urge to get my apron on and go crazy in the kitchen.
Case in point: Today I will be attempt to bake bread. BREAD! As in actual honest to goodness bread (or rolls to be more precise). I'm talking blooming the yeast, kneading the crap out of it, rising the crap out of it, home made bread. Heaven help me.
The bread will be to accompany a yummy sloppy joe recipe I saw off The Pioneer Woman. So I guess if the rolls suck at least they can be drenched in meaty goodness.
Also coming out of my oven today?? Some oatmeal cookies, I have been dying to try a recipe that Rachel (Playing House) posted on her blog a while ago. Marcus loves his treats and I felt bad for him last night. He kept checking all of our cabinets looking for something yummy. He knew there wasn't anything in there so maybe he was hoping if he kept checking that the magical baking fairy would poof some in there? Or maybe it was his way of asking-but-not-asking for me to make some cookies??
Also coming out of Maison de Radder today... some cream of broccoli soup. So time to get off the computer and tie on my apron!
...to purge the crap out of my house. With the thought of moving in my future, and more and more moves after that, it is appealing to me immensly to downsize. Major spring cleaning over the weekend and more in my future for this week. It also occured to me that the less stuff I have laying around will be less stuff to clean when I have to keep my house "show ready". But what do I keep and what do I get rid of? Like the girl clothes... I am really good at saving my stuff (some might say too good), and we are not done having kids yet (although we won't be trying for a little while) what if I have more girls?? But do I really want to haul three totes of girl clothes all over the country side?? I loved that I had all of Olivia's old stuff for Bianca. Would having a garage sale at my house be worth the effort of orgazing it and setting everything out?? Would anyone else be interested in having a garage sale with me? (Hello multi-family garage sale!). Or do I just haul it all to goodwill?? Gotta come up with a game plan...
We love hanging out with Trevor and Kaitlyn (as if you hadn't already gathered as much from our blog). We especially love playing games (phase 10, Settlers of Catan, guess that tune). We do not let our growing broods detour us from still partying it up. Really the only time to play a game without harassment is after the girls are all asleep, we are too cheap to hire a babysitter, so our kids have gotten REAL used to going to sleep at the Holman's and waking up at our house.
We have gotten real creative as to where to put kids to sleep, because technically they only have two bedrooms and we each have two kids. So Blaine is in her room, Isla is in her room/laundry room, Olivia is in Trevor and Kaitlyn's room and Bianca is in the cupboard under the stairs or formerly where Olivia would sleep when she was a baby. The first picture is from a couple of weeks ago with Bianca out cold and the second one is from a two and a half years ago with Olivia all bundled up in that closet.
I happened to be going through all my pictures and noticed I had two "sleeping in the closet Harry Potter style" photos of the girls. It's crazy to think it has been pushing three years of our game playing shenanigans. Good times!
We are very excited about some big changes happening in the Radder household. We have been giving it thought for quite some time. Marcus is making a career change. We are going to be an ARMY family. WE COULDN'T BE MORE EXCITED! I'm going to break it down in sections, so if you want ALL the details you can read it, but it will also be easy just to skim and get the highlights if you so desire. . . The Job: The job that Marcus is enlisting for is 35W Electronic Warfare/Signals Intelligence Specialist. This is a job that guarantees language training. Marcus tested pretty high on his ASVAB and DLAB (the defense language aptitude test). His scores qualified him to get this job. He won't know what language they will be teaching him until he is finished with basic training. .
This is a pretty dated video describing the job. . The Reasons: In no particular order... The money for schooling is amazing and will provide a lot of opportunities for us. Guaranteed steady job. The opportunity to take advantage of the best language training around. Knowing that what we are doing as a family is making a difference. The chance to move around and see different parts of the US and the world. That through the sacrifice of all involved we will be able to become closer and stronger as a family. THE MOST IMPORTANT REASON OF ALL: And quite frankly the only one that really matters, we have studied this out together, prayed about it, fasted about it, gone to the temple about it and we KNOW that this is the direction that Heavenly Father wants for our lives. . . The Schedule: Marcus will leave for Basic Training in September. It is a total of 10 weeks at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. Luckily the timing works out that his basic will end just before Christmas allowing him to come home for a little before the next phase of training. He will then head to Monterrey, CA to the Defense Language Institute. He will be training there for 52 weeks and a day (basically a year) and then after that he will be assigned to his first duty station.
Here is a video about the Defense Language Institute . Because his training is FOREVER, the girls and I have the option to go and live with him after the first 12 weeks. So I will be here (as in Whatcom County) for the next year or so, which hopefully gives us enough time to sell the house before I/we move away. Chances are that I would come back and live here during Marcus deployment(s), all the family and friends around will be wonderful for support and to keep me and the girls busy while Marcus is gone. . Marcus' contract is for 5 years, after which we would: A)Move back here and party with everyone B)Decide we really love being in the army and make a career out of it (but still visit regularly to party with everyone). . . News had been leaking out here and there, so I figured it was high time to bloggity blog about it. Feel free to call or email if you have any questions, or if you know anyone that would like to buy our house (it will be going on the market in the next week or two).
Migraine's are the worst. I hate how they can single handedly ruin my day. It affects my ability to parent, to run my household, to think clearly and to exercise. I woke up with one and that is never a good sign. They normally only go away if I can sleep it off, but you can't really tell that to a baby. When they come that early in the day it only gets worse. The light sensitivity, the nausea. I crapped out on going to my bootcamp class, which only compounds the feeling of yuckiness, but I wouldn't have been able to do the workout if I had tried to go. I'm not saying this to make you feel sorry for me. I have actually noticed that through eating more balance, healthy meals with some cardio thrown in, has made such a difference in how often those buggers visit me. I never really noticed it until I got one today and then in reflection realized it had been a few months since the last time I had one. That realization made me so happy! I knew eating and living healthier was making me skinny, but I had never stopped to realize all the other wonderful ways it was benefiting my life. Those thoughts gave me hope that I won't be having a visit from my nemesis for another REAL long spell. Those thoughts in turn helped me to focus and attend to the needs of my sweet babies.
So after our last gum fiasco, I had to give up my favorite flavor of gum. The flashbacks were more than I could bear. I'm pretty sure Olivia is trying to make it her mission for me to never chew gum again. 
