Baylie Bug's Birthday

I'm way behind on this blog post, but I've had trouble with uploading photos. (Net Nanny is a great monitoring tool, but it screws up everything else.)

Baylie's birthday was Thursday, March 19. I ended seminary a little early so I could come home in time for her to open one present. She wanted to open more, but we told her she'd need to wait. She chose to open the present that Lauryn and Clara had sent her. It was an Easy Bake Oven cupcake decorating kit. She was very excited about it.

David, Jalen and I went to school to have lunch with her and to help her pass out Oreo Cookies to her classmates. I forgot to take pictures! We decided to surprise her and check her out a little bit early from school so she could come home and open her presents. 

She got several new outfits. (She has so much sass and personality.)

We did the old box in a box in a box trick for her final present. It was the movie Annie.

We didn't do a cake on her birthday because we had ordered one for her party. We were going to buy fancy cupcakes for her actual birthday, but once she got the decorating kit, she just wanted to decorate her own cupcakes. She got an Easy Bake Oven for her birthday, so she decided to make little cakes for each of us so we could frost them ourselves.

The decorator is battery operated and pretty cool to use. (Slow, but cool.)

She loved it.

Jalen loved it too.

We don't buy ice cream often, but when we do, we buy Blue Bell.

After all, our daddy's a Texan.

For her birthday dinner, Baylie chose popcorn (she's my daughter all right!). We finished the day by watching Annie and eating popcorn.

That Saturday we had Baylie's birthday party at Lake Murray Gymnastics. (We had won a free party there. Otherwise, Baylie wouldn't have had a party this year.) She invited everyone from her school and church class, plus a couple more friends. Everyone had fun and it was super easy for me.

Jalen kept doing a backwards free fall from the vault into the ball pit. It scared the heck out of me.

Even Daddy had fun playing around.

He was a great attraction.

Every year I have taken a picture of Baylie with her cake. This year her cake was beautiful and yummy and I completely forgot to get a picture. I also forgot to get a picture of everyone around the table. I can't believe I did that. She chose the plates, tablecloths, etc. They were zebra striped with pink. The party favors were water bottles filled with goodies.

Baylie's birthday always causes me a great deal of reflection because after nearly 40 years of waiting, her birth finally made me a mother. It is still the greatest gift God has given me. I am so grateful for this beautiful girl and the kind, sweet person she is becoming. She is truly special.

The One That Got Away

Baylie's feet

I had a miscarriage when David and I were first married. I was only eight weeks pregnant. (And I think we had only been married nine.) To date it is the hardest thing I've ever been through - physically or emotionally. My sister and two of my sisters-in-law were pregnant at the same time. We were all due within five weeks of each other. It was hard to watch them progress through their pregnancies after I was no longer pregnant.

It is not something I think about often. I know some women continue mourning their infertility even after they adopt, but that has not been the case with me. Once we adopted Baylie, I lost any desire to have a biological child. I don't mourn the fact that I never gave birth.

However, from time to time there is a milestone that brings the memory of this lost child to my mind. Today my niece, Molly, turned 12. In the next couple of weeks, my nephews Kolton and Cameron will follow. It's hard to believe they have grown up so fast. It's even harder to realize that had our baby lived he/she would be 12 as well. This is a milestone birthday in our religion. At 12, a young man receives the priesthood and a young woman leaves the Primary and joins the Young Women.

It doesn't make me sad to think about this. But it does cause me to reflect on what might have been.

Much Ado About Nothing

We've been busy doing a lot of ordinary stuff. I decided I should just do a catch up post with a lot of these little things. So here they are in no particular order.

The kids received gift cards for Christmas - $10 each. So I took them to Wal Mart to spend them. They were so excited. Baylie was quite the smart shopper and got a set of six princess dolls on clearance for $5 and a pony set for $3 plus two boxes of candy. Jalen just went straight for the super heroes. He didn't have a Thor action figure, so that's what he chose. Instead of candy, he chose a box of Cheez-It (my kind of kid!).

It was all great until I got to checkout and was advised that there was no money left on the gift cards. I couldn't figure out what was going on. When I got home, I looked them up only to remember that I had used them to buy headphones for the kids to use on the airplane for our flight to Utah for New Years. Whoops! (Why didn't I throw them away??) I was grateful it was only $20.

At some point, we had snow. Yep, that's about the extent of it. It was cold though.

Baylie's first grade class collected cans for a local food bank and then they went to deliver them on a Saturday. It was really great that they were able to participate in the delivery and not just the collection. They got a little tour of the place and were better able to understand where their cans would go and who they would help.

Baylie's backpack was getting gross, so I washed it. It looked great. Then I dried it. It looked awful. I melted it! I was so bummed because I had hoped this backpack would last her throughout elementary school. It was a great bag. She was pretty disappointed when she saw it.

I posted about it on facebook and one of my sweet friends ordered her a new one and had it delivered. It's super cute and GLITTERY. Baylie was so happy. Not only that, she sent a backpack for Jalen. Spiderman! I made him save it for kindergarten.

We had two very happy kids around here.

We babysat a dog for a couple of days. It was a golden doodle - part golden retriever, part poodle. It was HUGE! But very gentle.

The kids were in heaven and loved the dog.

Jalen spent all day outside playing with him.

This gives you an idea of how big he is.

After he was gone, David and I looked at each other and realized that as much as we enjoyed him for a couple of days, we were not ready for a dog.

The first graders at Baylie's school did a great program for Black History Month. To see Baylie's parts of the program, go here (she is on the back row on the right side just at the edge of the display on the screen), and here and here (you can barely see her on the right side under the stage). It was a great little program. There was one class that did a very moving tribute to Ruby Bridges. I hadn't realized that she was only a first grader - the same age as Baylie. I can't imagine sending her to school with people throwing things at her and yelling ugly things at her, having her sit in a classroom all by herself. It really hit home and I found myself bawling.

Last week was Seuss week. The kids dressed up differently each day. On Friday, they dressed up as their favorite Seuss character. We chose Cat in the Hat.

I made stocking caps for David, Baylie and Jalen.

I am so super excited to have new couch pillows. The previous pillows were gross and I hated them.

Now I love walking into the room and seeing these pillows. They brighten up the whole room and are very comfy.

I took the stuffing from the old pillows and used them to make giant t.v. pillows out of flannel baby blankets I had made for the kids. The kids love them.

And I think that catches us up!

Happy Valentines Week

One of my favorite holiday traditions (introduced to me by my sister-in-law, Dianne) is to have pillowcases for the holidays. The first thing we do in a holiday month is to put on these cheerful cases. Even though we don't have many decorations here, the pillowcases together with holiday tablecloths always makes things cheerful.

We like to make our own Valentine cards, so this is the card we sent to family and friends this year.

For Baylie's classmates, we ordered these little bee bookmarks from Oriental Trader for Valentines. (Her school mascot is the bees.) She wrote "bee mine" on each one. They were really cute.

I wanted to do something fun for David and I for Valentine's Day, so I was excited to see that our local community was holding a Valentine's dinner/dance with live music for only $10 a couple. It sounded too good to be true! And actually, it was. When we got to the dance, we discovered that there was only one other couple that wasn't in their 50's or older, most were in their 60's. The live music was one guy with a sound system, although he was pretty good.

Much as I was looking forward to dancing with my new and improved body and actually being able to wrap my arms around David for a slow dance (and have him wrap his arms around me), it just wasn't our scene. We decided to head out and catch a movie instead. When we got to the movie, we were in between shows. I asked if we bought a 9:30 show, would they let us catch the end of a movie that was already started and they agreed. Good deal! So we watched the end of "Imitation Game" and all of "The Theory of Everything." Neither were ones I had been dying to see, but they were both pretty good. I slept through parts of both. I would have preferred to catch the new Hunger Games or Hobbit movies, but they're no longer playing. During the second movie, we were the only people in the theater. I love it when that happens.

I was glad Valentines was on a Saturday so I could be home for breakfast instead of at seminary. When we all came to the table, Baylie's place was still nice and neat. 

Jalen's place had already been raided. He is definitely a one-marshmallow kid.

Valentines cards from me and my parents (I got mine free through a Cherishables promotion).

We had pink, heart-shaped pancakes.

Made cupcakes with the sister missionaries.

And since it was a 3-day weekend, we camped in the living room. (We were going to set up the tent in the backyard, but I chickened out when I saw it was going to be 20+ degrees.)

Sleeping on the air mattress is a way better experience with my new body!

It's been a great weekend!