Come What May and Love It

Two big companies in West Plains are shutting down. It is affecting so many families and it is humbling to see the experiences they are having to go through. The teacher at church today shared how her husband is being laid off and has received rejection after rejection of job interviews and they have no clue what they are going to do once the companies close. Two other families in our ward are leaving because of the same reason. These are families with tons of kids who have lived here there whole lives. I was humbled today to see how strong people can be when their foundation is in the right place. I was also reminded that life will never be easy and curve balls will hit us at all stages in life. I still remember how lost and scared we felt right before coming to West Plains but we kept kneeling down every night and pushing along. Now here we are and looking back we can see how it all played a part in shaping who we have become. We still don't have it all figured out but what I learned in church today from watching these families is that you never have it all figured out. You just have to learn to put your trust in God and keep doing the best you can. On Saturday we were at MacDonalds getting Stephen a Sprite and for some reason it took them like 20 minutes to give the car in front of us there order. Usually my reaction would be to get annoyed and complain but instead I turned on the radio and we lip sang for Isabella "Your Man" as we threw around an imaginary microphone. We all laughed and had a great time. I could see Stephen looking at me from the corner of his eye so happy/relieved that I was having fun instead of my usual "this sucks" reaction. Oh what a party pooper I can be! I was reminded how much my attitude and mood choices affect my little family. Like Stephen likes to say "happy wife, happy life!"

Mammoth Springs, Arkansas

The weather has been treating us nicely this week so we decided to go road tripping today to Arkansas which is only half an hour away. Nothing better than those long country roads while we listen to Dixie Chicks and Brad Paisley. I still have this old CD my college friend, Kaori, made for me alonggg time ago (which is a miracle considering it's had gum, food, and who knows what on it )and every time our internet service goes out (90% of the time on long roads) we listen to it, so we know the lyrics by heart now which makes it even funner cause we can belt them out easy. Isabella loved looking out the window and mooing and neighing every time we passed a farm full of cows and horses.  No understandable talking yet from this one but she can make any animal sound you ask her. I say understandable because the girl can talk, we just have no clue what she's saying. EVERYONE here has dogs,cows, horses and one or two ponds full of trout. aka Isabella's idea of paradise. So car rides are now pure bliss. The trails we found were amazing and so worth the drive. We walked by the springs, hiked in the woods  and ate the best oranges we have ever had while we watched the birds and ducks. The bathrooms did smell like someone had ten been burritos and exploded in them but I sucked it up and used them because the other day I asked Stephen if I could pee in the woods instead and he told me a story of a guy who peed outside and the cops caught him and he ended up in the pedophile list. At the end we passed by Dairy Queen getting blizzards and enjoyed a quiet ride home.

Thoughts on Me

A long time ago I decided I hated January because it is the coldest month, Christmas is over, family is gone, and all I remember my parent's doing in January was complaining about how broke they were and saying no to everything because we had no money. Well this year I have changed my mind. It hit me the other day that January is the coolest. It's a chance for a fresh start, for goal setting, for forgiving ourselves for old mistakes and starting again. As I was deciding what changes I wanted to make in my life this year I remembered something Elder Jorg Klebingat said this past conference:

"Whatever you do, whatever you pray for, whatever hopes for a miracle you may have, there will always be just enough self-doubt chipping away at your faith—not only your faith in God but also your confidence in yourself. The decision to change is yours—and yours alone."

The thing about being a mom is so often you forget you are still an individual. I sometimes feel so "Woe is me!"because I lose myself (and not in a good way) between all the taking care of everyone but myself. My favorite mom writer calls it the "Martyr Syndrome" and I sooo agree with that. I need to add things in my life to help me remember that I'm still Valeria. That I am young and beautiful,that my people love me and life is great.

I want this year to be a year of cleansing both of body and of mind. I want to be strong both spiritually and physically for my husband, my children and for me. I want to show them and me that I can do hard things. 

JANUARY

These pictures describe our life lately. I remember struggling to find things to do when Isabella was younger so I am in love with this age because everyday is a new adventures. Winter can be tough cause of the cold but we have learned to love the indoors and the library is our best friend like always. Dance parties, cooking lessons, bubble bathes, and eating a lot are our current interests. Isabella is getting older and older and she is growing so much into her own little person that sometimes I am overwhelmed by all the parenting that needs to happen. Like discipline or the lack of it around here. I am really good about making her life fun and filling our day with activities but I really need to work on time outs and teaching her that tantrums are not ok or throwing stuff when she's mad or screaming her head off during sacrament. I am both excited and terrified to dive into this stuff. I've been reading an amazing parenting book called "I didn't plan to be a witch." Here are a couple of lessons I have learned: 

1-Having 9 children is an insane amount of work but it also seems insanely fun

2-Disciplining children and teaching them good principles takes a lot of work and it's a slow process 

3-One day I want to build a log cabin from scratch with my kids to teach them real hard work

4-My mistakes as a mom should not be rocks that crush me but stepping stones towards my goals

I've been repeating that last one in my head a lot lately and it has really helps.

My mom is here and it's been a blast. It's so nice to sleep in, have the dishes done, and not have to cook so much. One thing I love about my mom is how much she takes care of me. I forget sometimes that I am someone else's child. It's nice to take a break from being an adult all the time. And there is nothing better than my momma's cookin! 

This is one of my favorite pictures of Isabella. She was mooing like a cow when we took it hence the cute little lips. 

 This picture perfectly describes her current obsession with purses, nail polish, lip gloss and dressy shoes. She might love to get dirty, kick a ball around and wrestle with her dad but she is also really girly about certain things. 

I made this apron for Isabella for Christmas. Cooking lessons are my favorite thing we do together and she is so into it. Hopefully it will stay that way;)

These pics remind me of how big she is getting. bittersweet. 

She got that dog purse from Santa this year and oh man did Santa hit the spot.  She puts all here little treasures in it (lip gloss, sour ice breakers, bottle for bubbles) and takes it everywhere. If we leave the house without it she will run back yelling "wow wow!!" (what she calls dogs)

Crazy Navidad

Super late post about this past Christmas but oh what a Christmas! Lately I have been seeing over and over how sometimes you just got to go with the flow and expect the unexpected. Our Christmas plans were turned upside down this year when my little sister decided to get married with a one week notice (she was getting married in April so insane but not so insane). Everyone freaked out for 24 hours but then shifted to supportive family mode and started planning a memorable wedding for them. The first thing my awesome family did was buy plane tickets for my little family to fly back to Utah. Sadly, Stephen could not come. He barely started his job two weeks ago and is working pretty intensely at training. After crying all night and almost canceling my flight because I couldn't bare leaving him alone, he convinced me to go and dropped us off at St Louis and back to Utah we went. And what a trip it was. I feel like we packed a months worth of activities into one week. We would wake up early in the morning and go nonstop until late at night. We all had our doubts about the sudden wedding, but they were all erased by just looking at Raquel on her wedding day. She had that bride to be glow that made her look even more beautiful and precious than she already is. My little sister is one of the most humble sincere people I know and I am privileged to call her my sister. 

After playing the -I'm a mom by herself with a toddler who hates plane rides please give me the best seat possible- card, I got to sit on the front row with the A list members. I had this huge space in front of me were Isabella could play which gave me some free time so naturally I eavesdropped on the conversation of the two guys next to me. One of them was obviously very wealthy. He was so charming and intelligent he could have been running for congress for all I knew, lets name him rich guy. The other one was an older version of Stephen. Basketball shorts, Nikes and baseball cap, lets name him buff guy. I never imagined this two being able to talk so much but somehow they managed to talk about nuclear physics, molecular biology, why gas prices are so low right now, what type of car to use for a certain type of gas, and video games. At one point they started talking about money and rich guy went of about investing in the stock market and how to make tons of money and all the stuff you can buy and buff guy went really quiet. By now I liked buff guy better but here's were he takes the cake. He looks up and tells rich guy, "I don't know much but I've learned in life that no matter how much money you have, if you don't have friends and family you don't have crap" I almost high fived him but I wasn't supposed to be listening so.....well the sad thing is rich guy went all quiet and I felt bad for him. I don't know for sure but I imagine there are family relationships he wished he had or could fix.  The reason I told this story is because it explains exactly why I made this trip. I hated hated leaving Stephen behind but we will have many Christmas seasons together but Raquel will only have one wedding and I wanted to be there for her and the rest of my family. For this next year I want to discard all the worthless things in my life and focus on what matters most and to me that is family.  ALL my family. 

I cannot believed how much my little tyke has grown! She went from being a cute little baldy baby to a gorgeous blonde kid in just one year! 

Wedding day reminded me of Seattle. Rainy and cloudy which to me is kind of romantic. 

This picture describes Isabella's relationship with Raquel's new dog perfectly. By the end of

 the trip she new how to say Dexter and skypes with him atleast once a week. 

We threw Raquel a pretty cool bridal shower. This pic is from the after party when everone had left and we just wanted to keep dancing and use the stuff again but I just love it because it shows how much fun my mom and sisters are (Paola is technically my cousin but she is like my sister).

When we got home we celebrated Christmas again with Stephen and had a blast but took no pics. One of my favorite memories was laying on the living room floor surrounded by pillows and blankets with Stephen under one of my arms and Isabella under the other one while we watched a movie. At that moment I remember thinking " I have everything I want right here."