Shamless Plug

I am part of the group Mothers For Freedom. We had our first meeting today and i started a new blog for the group. I am really excited about it! I have wanted to do something with the knowledge i am gaining and Mothers For Freedom is facilitating that. We discuss books, current events all with the view that mothers are critical to  national security and peace. We would love have you come! If you have questions, i would love to chat about it!


Check us out here:
Mothers For Freedom blog

Happy Birthday

Today is coltons birthday. we had fries and frosties for lunch. I am flying by the seat of my pants since i didn't plan anything big for today. He is one. I think it is a fun day more for me that him. Afterall, he has no clue why the house is decorated or caleb and i sang to him at lunch. Caleb is having fun and is enjoying choosing what colton wants to do.

 

 i am so glad this little man is here safe, sound, healthy and happy. He truly has brought me a unique sense of peace, purpose and helped me learn about sacrifice in a way that has brought out a better Mother in me.

I also think he is adorable and a wonderful brother. He will be a great counterbalance to caleb. 

thank heaven for little boys

robbed

**Preface**

i love ross! The syles, prices and options all suite my taste but friday i lost some faith in humanity while at Ross.

I made caleb a superman bag--the kind that cinch up at the top--with my new sewing machine. It was the first thing i made. He loved it and went around saying "i'm a man!" while wearing it (adorable!). He hasn't ever been a kid be so attached to something he would it around but this was different. It has gone around everywhere with him.

We went to get a gift for my niece at Ross. We shopped around and ended up taking a potty break. Caleb took off his backpack  and put it in our cart to go potty. I carried colton in--potty breaks at public places are so hard! We got done, reloaded and kept shopping around and when it was time to go check out we looked for the superman bag to prepare to leave. It wasn't there. We walked all over the store--it wasn't there. I asked the check-out girl and nobody had turned it in. 

Caleb kept asking me about it and i had to tell my beautiful, innocent curious boy someone had stolen from him. Honestly--an obviously homemade spiderman backpack--that was starting to fall apart?! It had candy, a waterbottle and some childrens sunglasses in it. 

Why...why?!!! i mean seriously people why?!

I was so frustrated. I have a strong momma bear streak in me. I have been trying to be cautious but kind and loving to strangers rather than rude and protective. I want my children to be kind  to others and so i have tried to model that behavior. It is against how i want to be; most of the time i prefer to hole up and watch others as if they are going to take my children from me.  So here i am trying to be a friendly, kind, trusting person and we get robbed...in ross...the store with the most obvious show of anti-thievery i shop at

My first reaction was to stop being kind and friendly and go back to my mean ways but then i thought of the Savior and His teaching of turning the other cheek. so even though i don't want to turn the other cheek--especially since it involves my son--i will continue to be kind to others and watchful. I want to be like Him and this is an opportunity as good as any other to rise above myself.

watch your stuff friends.

 

weekends

I don't have many pictures so i will let your imaginations suffice  Ü

~friday night we went grocery shopping. Even my husband who hates grocery shopping came!
~Rob played football (a newer saturday morning tradition).
~I got to go running on one of my favorite routes
~i got to teach my church class (4 and 5 year old kids)
~Rob didn't have meetings on sunday morning so we had waffles
~I made a spider man pillow case and mini-backpack for caleb
~I made a princess pillow case and small bag for my neice
~Rob worked on finish work on our wall
~we watched football
~my brother shattered his ankles.
yes, you read that right--shattered. He went off a motorcycle jump in too high of a gear and landed with his feed on the pegs shattering his ankles. He has been in the hospital in park city ( the track was up there) and is going to my moms to recover. He can't walk for two to three months.

My brother is full of energy and has had numerous motorcycle induced injuries but this is by far the worst!! Of course i am totally worried not only for his physical health but his mental health also. Sitting around for two months is going to take a toll on my active brother.

So if you have any advice or helps for a bedridden man or helping the family of a bedridden man i would love to hear them!!
I am so grateful for the snow and cold wind!

My new favorite pictures

 My newest sister-in-law maddie is amazing with a camera. I had no idea. My brother got her a new camera for christmas and these are only a portion of the pictures she took (see here). I love these pictures of the boys! 

Thanks maddie.

I must be the luckiest mother ever to get these two yayhoos in my life.

Saturday brought happy changes

I have a ton of pictures from december to catch up on but saturday we made huge improvements to our house. I have been wanting them for quite a while. Next step is to decide what color to paint my family room. We were going to do blue but now we have a clear view of my red cabinets so that may change the plan.

 Hallway all along

 Now we have open space!!!

Looking into the family room. (yes, christmas is still up)

i can't wait to paint.

posted elsewhere on the web

So my friend and neighbor invited me to be the friday feature on hey nonny. I was so excited i spent the week composing what to write in my head. Finally on thursday i got an email wondering if i had anything. I felt bad i had made her wait so long without saying anything.

thanks ashley for the opportunity!
find my post about my pantry here

i can't think what to make for dinner

i have no idea what to make for dinner.
it is 4:12 pm
my man will be home soon and will have yet another night when he asks "whats for dinner" and i have a vague blank stare come across my face and my senseless creativity comes to light.
usually these meals are edible but lack typical deliciousness i am so famous for in my house.

i am currently suffering from an aversion to meat. My uncle jokingly recommended therapy for such madness. I have  a total of six things i love that are low/lacking in meat:

tacos (bean, rice and cheese)
grilled cheese (homemade bread is best)
pancakes from scratch and fresh ground wheat
rob's famous hashbrowns and scrambled eggs
soup
homemade pizza

you can imagine we are all a little tired of these beloved dishes.

I am hungry.
my house smells like baking sweet potatoes, my favorite tuber

8 years

 

Today  marks eight years!! i have been officially blissfully wedded to my best friend. 

We met a few weeks before my 17th birthday at mulligans golf and game. That first summer working with Rob was a summer i could feel my life being marked. I remember those days with unusual clarity as somehow i knew, even as they happened, they would have long term significance.

We got married december 27th (and almost killed our mothers) because it was between  semesters and i  transferred schools to marry the man of my dreams.

He asked me this morning if it felt like eight years. 

i said "no". 

In some ways the time has flown by and in other ways it feels like it's always been this way...me and him takin' on the world. 

Now we have kids we take on our ride with us and we are 'grown-ups'. Complete with a mortgage, an SUV and a dog.

I had a hard time finding a recent picture of just the two of us.

Now we are a father and a mother, husband and wife.

But we will always be us--Rob and Jill.

I love him so much more than i ever thought i could. Love has come to have many more definitions than when it was flirting, holding hands & kissing. Having the chance to learn these definitions with and for him-Rob-is the greatest privileged of my life.

My dear superman, you make my dreams come true. 

~Jill

Ahh thanksgiving weekend

waiting for rob to get off early on wednesday. what did we do??? Cabellas of course. animals and fish galore = heaven for little boys. oh, and trying on the merchandise.

Yes, that is a wolf chasing a caribou. Ever since i went to yellowstone national park with Utah State College of Natural Resources looking for wolves i am sorta in love with the fearsome creatures. Truly, they are majestic. I am sure farmers would disagree with me but since i am a city girl, i enjoy the beauty they possess.

My mother is a master chef and created a wonderful thanksgiving for us all!!

The food was as amazing as everything looked. We missed my brother jake and his wife katie but we are looking forward to Jared and Maddie's wedding coming up in a week and a half!!

As i do every year, the day after thanksgiving we put up christmas. Caleb is getting into the magic of christmas and it is so fun to help create that magic here at home. 

This is my latest foray into creativity. My fireplace is not usable as a fireplace. It just fills our house up with smoke and does little in the way of warming. So i cleaned it out, nicely wadded up the extra Christmas lights we have, bought the cinnamon smelling pine cones, dug wood out of our fire pit in the backyard and whala my newest Christmas masterpiece. It is homey and festive looking. i might even keep the white ones year-round.

Wannabees

Rob's flag football team name is the wannabees. I suggested it because i thought the irony was hilarious. A bunch of guys wanting to play football. The team is made up of nine or ten guys i think. Five of those are family members. I can say for them, they just want to play football. They had nothing to prove. The season went OK. Mid-season they were losing a lot but as soon as the weather turned bad they started killing their opponents. This past Saturday was the semi-finals. They were so excited they made it and of all things, they won so they went to the final game. They played a team that killed them during the regular season. It was  fun to watch them play their hearts out. The last play, my newest brother in law (red hat) saved the game by jumping up in a pack of three opponents to bat the ball away and preserve the one point lead.

The wannabees won the championship for their division.

My sister in law (wife to the game-saving bat down player) was so proud and said it was like a movie or something.
Especially with the name: Wannabees.

Good job guys

Good Times

I feel like i spend a lot of time on this blog whining. Sure my sons are a challenge but i am positive everyone's kids give them a run for their money. Mischief is our middle name here so that is why it gets included so much. Besides, it makes it funnier if i try to blog about it. Sometimes it takes too much energy to be mad.

The month of november tends to get overlooked so last year i started a new tradition.
I do a thanks box.
I text everyone who we are doing thanksgiving dinner with every day of the month and ask what they are thankful for--no explanations needed. Then i write all the individual answers on paper, put in a book and bring it to thanksgiving dinner. I love it last year and looked forward to it all year.

I think it is so helpful to work on being thankful. I find at the beginning of the month sometimes it is hard to come up with things i am grateful for but at this point in the month i have so many things-specific things i am thankful for that it makes me smile and leads into celebrating the gift and birth of the Lord Jesus Christ perfectly.

I love thanksgiving.

What is that???!!

We went to gygi's to get some stuff (love that store by the way) and caleb had been chewing gum. Caleb is a great gum chewer so it has never been an issue what to do with it.  Early in our shopping trip he told me "get the gum" i had no idea what he was talking about and was distracted by shopping so i ignored him. Apparently to colton's peril.As I was loading colton when i saw gum in his hair. Of course i don't carry scissors so i went inside and asked some nice guy if i could borrow some scissors. He gave me some dull kids safety scissors. I proceeded to try to hold my little mover still while i took scissors to his head. The guy graciously held coltons head (while i could feel the eyes of multiple customers and workers wondering what was going on.) And out came this blob. Ironically, i didn't get that mad at Caleb. I wanted to be mad but their was no anger in me. I told him i was dissappointed in this and as i was forumilating a brilliant punishment I realized then i am being worn down. And it probably was an accident.

This mess happened during a peaceful dinner. And i didn't freak out like i thought i would have. I just moved a few things around and sighed. Rob cleaned it up-thankfully it was washable.

Yes, i am being worn down.

Family Gathering

Sunday was my cousins farewell. He will be serving an lds mission in Hondouras. We are all so excited for him. We drove up to pocatello to listen to him speak and have fabulous food. I was terrified how my boys would do but they did great! It helped we could go 80 mph most of the way.

 Grandma Loland, Aunt Tanna, Aunt Toni

 Grandma Roma, Shane, Brooke, Brittannia

doesn't brooke look so feminine and graceful?! Brittania is 5 months pregnant. i swear. talk about unfair!

i have always envied and compared myself to these to women.i had no sisters-they were the next closest thing i had growing up.  I love them and think they are beautiful!

 My man and Braxton, the future missionary

 Uncle Mark has his hand in front of his face.

 Me, sleeping colton, and my mom who looks fabulously skinny!

Braxton and I

crud, i remember when this kid was a baby! 

time flies people. we better cherish what we have.

Weekend in Pictures

Another busy weekend. I will be having these until after christmas--i don't love being busy but i love being with family so it is worth it.

HALLOWEEN PARTY
Rob was in charge and he did a great job pulling our wards halloween party together. Our ward goes all out. nearly everybody dresses up and it is so much fun!!

 Colton the cow. I realized as i put on the 'hoofs' that they were tights. I don't know how mothers of girls put their daughters in tights faithfully every sunday. It sucked putting them on. I had one mother assure me it wasn't very bad at all. Maybe her daughter didn't move for the process.
Aren't his eyes to die for?!

 This man is taken! He looks like Tim McGraw (so someone told him)...he was shooting for indiana jones but then we just went for cowboy but no beltbuckle or overly tight jeans or cowboy boots so just a hot guy with a cowboy hat and a fabulous t-bar mustach. This man rocks my world and treats me like a queen. I am beyond lucky to be his.

Me and my little cow. I tried to be a 50's housewife. The hair took forever and it didnt' even seem that big. I ratted (backcombed?) it forever, tons of hairspray (both of which i never do/use on my hair). My arms got tired and i renewed my gratitude that i have low maintenence hair. I found these totally cute shoes too but no pic. I will likely wear them with other outfits--once i fix the heels.

like the fabulous mother i am, i didn't snap pictures of caleb. He is a monkey and i figured i coudl get awesome pictures at the trunk or treat instead. He had a blast at the party!








A BIG SURPRISE

 ever had dogfood in your syrup? 

well now we have. 

we found this while cleaning on saturday. good thing we weren't having pancakes.