Abigail’s Special Day

Micali was ready to celebrate Abigail’s birthday with in minutes of her waking up. First things first her present that came in the mail the day before. The poor girl had just woke up and she had a present in front of her and the flash going crazy. She was thrilled with her present though, A cute baby doll and bath toys. She also got a new sippy cup from her very caring family but used it before her birthday so there aren’t any pictures of it.

  

Since Abigail is too small to choose what she wants for her birthday dinner mommy and daddy chose for her. BREAKFAST!!! She loves pancakes and eggs so we went with that, and added bacon for the ones with teeth. She loved it and ate it right up (the sprinkles were cute for the picture but a BAD idea she kept gagging on them---we scraped them off and added syrup instead).

 

She ended the night taking a fun-filled bath with her new bath toys.

Happy Birthday to you princess!

I could not stop LAUGHING!

This funny story to follow happened yesterday morning. Micali, Eli, and I were just having an innocent conversation. They were completely confused at why I started laughing.

Eli was going to the bathroom and was asking me about his "peanuts" (we have told him the real word many times--he has just changed it a little recently) He was saying does Uncle Austin have a peanuts? Does Uncle Derrick have a peanuts? Do you have a peanuts mommy? I told him No, I don't have a peanuts. Micali said Eli girls don't have peanuts only some boys do. Some boys do some boys don't. I said actually Micali all boys do have one. She was like oh ok,  Eli, all boys have a peanuts.

Then a little alert went off in her brain  and  she was like UH OH!!!! Elephants like peanuts---Eli if an elephant comes after your peanuts I will get a gun and try to shoot it and protect you so he doesn't eat your peanuts. That would HURT!

Happy 1st Birthday Abigail!

 

 

 

 

We LOVE you little Abby-gail, Abs, Abigails, Splits! Looking forward to many more to come!

Blessings

I am a lucky girl. I get to stay home everyday with my little youngins and learn from them. I haven’t always thought of staying home and doing mommy duty as being lucky.  The thought actually scared me after I finished my second year of teaching and was awaiting the arrival of Micali. Those first few days by myself after Luke went back to work were lonely, repetitious, and left me jealous of my husband as he was able to leave and make a difference in the world. Now I feel comfortable in my place as a stay at home mom and enjoy being the CEO of the Peless home.

In church on Sunday my friend got up and bore her testimony on prayer. She explained how God hears and answers our prayers, even with just little things. She had prayed and was able to find a few things she had lost. I had been missing my wallet for about 3 weeks. I checked our accounts to make sure there weren’t any charges on my card and really thought my wallet was somewhere that it could be found. I prayed starting on Sunday to be able to find it. I told Luke that I would probably find it after I had taken the time to go through everything in the house and cleaned and organized. The past few days I have let the kids watch more TV and really taken time to go through everything in bedrooms and closets in hopes of finding it. Today I took a break from that and decided to take the kids to story time. We made valentines there and stopped to drop them off to Daddy at work. As I was waiting I looked in the door of the van---a place Luke and I had looked many times and found it slipped right inside next to a canister of wipes. I was so happy to have finally found my wallet but even more happy to have my prayers answered and my testimony of prayer strengthened.

 

Micali

has recently crowned me as “THE BEST MOMMY EVER!” When I do most anything she will say “Thank you Mommy you are the BEST MOMMY EVER.” It melts my heart and I get the biggest hug. She is quite the helper and loves helping in the kitchen, feeding Abigail, and sorting things. She loves the job of matching shoes in the entry way. She is also getting pretty good at making her own bed. She loves to pretend that she is a puppy and will often put a leash on and have me tie it to my belt loop so she can follow me around or just be close to me if I am sitting down. She also loves listening to books and really enjoys her alone time with me while the two little ones nap.  

Elijah-

Is adding many new words to his vocabulary everyday. When he wakes up in the morning instead of crying at his door he will say “I said GOOD MORNING, MOM??? I said GOOD MORNING!” He loves putting all sorts of things in his bed at night, DVDs, random toys, balls, stuffed animals and a flashlight. He is learning his boundaries and doesn’t aimlessly wander off in public places now. It is nice but, if he does decide to leave my side he does it to be ornery and really likes it if I run after him so I try not to do that. He loves playing Candy Land, he can recognize his letters, knows all the letter sounds, and also his shapes. I gave him a cookie that hadn’t turned out quite right today and he said I don’t want a square cookie—give me a circle one.  He loves singings songs especially the wheels on the bus. He sometimes is a mommy’s boy!

(Conversation between Eli and his daddy while I was in the middle of writing this post and and ignored Eli’s requests to come back to his room for at least 15 minutes. Daddy comes home from class and goes to his rescue only to hear:

E: Where’s mommy?

Daddy: She is in the livingroom.

E: Why are you home? You go work?

D: I just got back from class. I don’t have to go to work until the morning.

E: (all sad) No snuggle me WANT mommy snuggle me!)

 

Abigail-

just went to her one year appointment and is appearing very healthy. She is 21lbs. We turned her around in her carseat a couple weeks ago and she thinks it is pretty great. Micali sits beside her and fills her full of snacks. She follows me around the house every where I go. She said “mama” for the first time about two weeks ago. She was outside the bathroom door and wasn’t happy that I had closed her out. It was so cute. It is fun to see all three of the kids play together. They will give her things or try to include her in their pretend play. She loves getting in the middle of the wrestling matches of Daddy vs. The Kids. She will growl and head-butt her daddy in the stomach like she is a really tough.

 

I am so grateful that Luke is able to provide for the family and is happy to let me be at home I really see it as one of my greatest blessings now.

A little craft project

It has been super cold here. It actually appears that it has been quite cold, snowy and icy a lot of places. But anyway, because the kids haven’t made it out of the house at all we decided to do something crafty.

I found this crayon melting craft and thought it might just be perfect for them. I imagined a long period of time with them just sitting at the table pulling paper off of the crayons—then putting them in the paper muffin liners. Eli sat down and held a crayon in his hand, he watched me peel a few and then asked for paper to draw a picture. After a few seconds of scribbling he was gone.

Micali was SO excited. She pulled the paper off a few crayons and, kept telling me that this was such a great idea and she couldn’t wait to show her daddy. After three or four crayons she decided that I would be the peeler and she would decide which cup to put them in. She took the role of a cheerleader and kept telling me I was doing a great job and to keep going…….only a couple more. She loved moving the crayons around until they were just right.

We put them in the oven and watched them melt,

then set them outside because it was just as cold as the freezer. While they were getting hard we brought out the paints to help entertain Micali while she waited for the new crayons to set up so she could use them.

We didn’t get pictures of the finished product but they turned out good and we had fun scribbling with them.

---Just as a side note—this doesn’t happen everyday. That is why I have to take so many pictures when I decide to be brave and try new things with the kids. Lucky for me the pictures don’t show the 4 loads of laundry on the couch waiting to be folded or the dishes in the sink waiting to be loaded. Sometimes it is better just to ignore that stuff and spend time being creative!

Our Friday Night Tradition

Since Luke is getting more and more busy in his doctorate program we have to make time to be together and just relax. We have started making Friday nights our pizza and movie night. Sometimes we make the pizza together, and other times we just pop in a frozen pizza. We also like to pop popcorn and sometimes even make a special treat. We pull out the sleeping bags, and lots of pillows and just hunker in together. We have really enjoyed this time with the kids and a change of pace.

Micali was getting the living room all set up for our special night:

Through Micali’s eyes

I never know what I am going to find when I plug in the camera. Micali has learned how to very carefully use my camera. She is just figuring out how to look through the view finder to see what she is taking a picture of so sometimes her aim is a little off.

She did tell me to say cheese!

sweet feet

Adorable!

Where is her other leg? Oh her other foot is somehow behind her.

OUR NEW OVEN!!

A weekend getaway

We had the opportunity to go up to Provo for a few days. Luke had a conference for Gifted students at the Provo Marriott. The school provided him with a hotel room so we all went along to keep him company! Because the principal had requested a roll away bed they actually just decided to upgrade us to a suite instead of taking the extra effort to bring in an extra bed. It was NICE!! We enjoyed swimming, sleeping in---YES!!! this actually happened, watching cartoons, ordering in pizza. Hotel life is actually pretty nice because it is so easy just to relax and enjoy things. There aren’t any closets waiting to be organized, papers to be filed, or shelves to dust.

We were able to spend some time with Austin, Kendra, Derrick and Dustin. Dustin has in his papers to go on a mission so besides the weekend of fun we just had with him and a weekend in April when Kayla is married we won’t see him before he leaves. It was nice of him to make the effort to come down from Rexburg even though he had a lot of homework. We watched Kendra play basketball, played the Kinect, played arcade games at a Fun Center, very much enjoyed ourselves eating at a Japanese steakhouse for the first time, taught Dustin the definition of invigorating, went swimming and just had fun talking and laughing.

We also spent some time with Beth and Kevin and their kiddos. It is always fun to get the kids together to play. They love being together. We helped James celebrate his 15th birthday and enjoyed some ice cream cake.

Of course the reason I have to write in all the details is because I forgot to grab the camera out and didn’t hardly take any pictures.

Although we didn’t get any of our errands accomplished we did manage to squeeze in a little family time into Luke’s full schedule.

Going to the eye doctor, coupon shopping, returning things to stores, and seeing friends will have to wait. When is the next trip?

So, the pictures I have of the weekend:

Abigail getting a last minute bath before we left. She made a terrible mess with her lunch.

Micali being so completely scared to death on a frog hopper ride. She just stared at her daddy as he told her it would be okay. When she got off she buried herself in his shoulder and cried for a little bit.

Daddy made it all better by taking her on a less bouncy ride.

Abigail in our suitcase when we were unpacking at home.