Pics and Videos

Here's some various stuff over the past while.

Amy sleeping

Amy told me tonight "I want to sleep like Papa does kind of." Then she put the blue blanket over her eyes.(I don't know where she heard it, but Papa (Bonnie's dad) does sleep with an eye cover.) When we checked back later, this is how she looked!

Insert from Bonnie. Amy and I were just talking the other day about how Papa sleeps. She already knew, and then we talked about it further. They did live with us for 4 months in the last year.

Funny cute Ames!

Eliza Milestones

Without recording them here, I have no chance of remembering when my kids did what. All I remember is when they walk; even then I was asked if the age I told someone was when Noel took her first steps or when she really walked. I couldn't be quite sure. So I have to record these milestones.

Eliza is very busy lately and wants to be very mobile. She's been army crawling for a long time. A few weeks ago she learned to pull herself up with someone's fingers. Now she can pull herself up on other stuff. Yesterday she cruised without outside help for the first time. She was walking alongside Amy's bed. She also stood all the way up in her crib for the first time.

Friday night Eliza took her first crawling steps on hands and knees. Matt is convinced that Eliza did it because she saw another baby (1 week younger) do it. To give a little context, Eliza is 9 months old tomorrow.

She pretty much thinks she should be able to do anything. She's having a great time and learning fast.

Eliza still loves to grunt and growl and can be rather loud - especially during Relief Society. She also LOVES to blow raspberries just with her tongue. (She started doing it right as I was typing that she does it. lol) She still loves to smile at anyone who smiles at her first. We love that Eliza!

Getting Things Done

It's hard to believe it's been an entire year since I implemented the system from the book "Getting Things Done". There have been times I adhered to it closely and times I have left it unkept. However, I've loved it and I still do. More than anything it has given me a bit of peace about which projects I'm doing and which I'm not.

In the past year I have completed 59 projects using this system! And truth be told, I have done a number of projects completely outside of this system. That usually happened during the "unkept" times. Some projects were small and some were large, but I'm happy with my record.

One thing this has made me see is how many little projects pop up in life that you didn't really plan on doing. They're the ones that you have to do just going day to day, like renewing your drivers license, switch Internet providers, researching and buying a new baby monitor when your existing one breaks, researching and buying a new phone after losing the previous one, or just filing your taxes! These are ones with which I have an uneasy relationship. Some are required to obey the law and others are required to continue your current standard of living,  but none of them are things you would put on a list and say "someday I want to go/do/learn that." None of them are really building your dreams.

Anyway, that's my report that I had no need to give but that I wanted to because it feels good. :-)

Seminar

I officially like going to interesting seminars. The boring ones are for the birds. The problem with interesting seminars, however, is that afterwords you need a week or so vacation just to process and do all the things you were inspired to do during the seminar!

So where is this coming from? Well, a while ago Deanna (a friend of ours who also is our financial planner and who we highly recommend to anyone interested) commented to us about a body language seminar she recently went to and how it is helping her see things in her kids she had never noticed before. A month or two later she invited us to a 90 minute presentation about it. I don't remember the details, but I went whilst Bonnie stayed home with the kids.

Now there's something you need to know about me: I'm left brained. I know, shocking. I like math and other hard sciences. The soft sciences, well, I struggle with, and let me tell you, Body Language is a soft science. While Bonnie is also fairly left-brained, she seems to do better with soft science stuff. So, when I went to the presentation, I wasn't particularly drawn in. In all honesty I did find it pretty interesting, but I didn't exactly buy into it. As one would expect there was an invitation at the end to sign up and yes, pay money, to go to a 3-day seminar about body language. It was a low-pressure-type sale (not like the stories I've heard of Lia Sophia parties; no 1-on-1 "consultation" stuff, ugh!). I was pretty sure Bonnie would love this and, at the time, was looking for a good Christmas present for her. Voila!... if it was a reasonable price. Well, I don't know if you are familiar with costs of seminars, but for three days the price was excellent! So, I signed us both up.

For the Parks family, going to a three day seminar without kids isn't exactly an easy thing to pull off. Two maybe, but three...? There were a couple times to choose from, one in February and one in May, so we decided we'd take turns. As nursing babies aren't allowed, I got to go first. I've already mentioned my natural skepticism, but tried to have a good attitude anyway. (Hey, I was off work! I may as well enjoy myself!) I must admit that I was exceptionally impressed. I found it fascinating, and it was much more than just a body language seminar. It was part body language, part motivational speaker, part interactive practice, part mental health training, part inspirational, part relationship building, and part who-knows-what-else sprinkled with plenty of comedy throughout. Oh, and lots of giveaways and lots of up-selling other seminars that this man (and his company) do, but these sales again were very low pressure. I never felt bad or guilty in the least for doing nothing about them (there were over 500 people there, by the way). In fact, a couple of them pique my interest (like improving one's presenting skills), but that's for another time.

In the end, I loved it. It was fun! I learned many things that I have, am, or will put into practice and I'm excited for Bonnie to go in May. I have been practicing noticing things in people's (especially my children's) body language and it's intriguing. Am I still skeptical? Well, yeah, a bit, of some of the things. But he seemed to recognize it as a soft science and I liked the way he handled it.

We met with Deanna yesterday morning for some financial stuff and we got talking about this seminar. She commented about how she's trying to share it with more people and we happily agreed to have her do a 90 minute show at our house. We would like to welcome any of you who would be interested to our home on Tuesday, March 27th. We're thinking we'll start about 7:30pm and yes, we'll have some refreshments. :) If you are interested in coming, please let us know (email, phone, comment, whatev). If you're interested and a slightly different time could make the difference of you coming or not, let us know and, if it's easy, we'll happily accommodate.

Doing Great

I was just thinking about what I would tell someone - my doctor for instance - if they asked how I was doing.

I have been feeling and doing great. I find myself generally to have enough energy to face a reasonable amount of stuff in a given day. (That hasn't always been the case especially when pregnant.) I have been going to bed early-ish for the most part for the last while and working out fairly often. I have been eating better than I used to, more good stuff and slightly less bad than I used to.

I am working on some self-improvement things as well as trying to strengthen relationships. That's always good. I have been striving to learn a new way of motivating and encouraging myself without guilt. It's truly a paradigm shift and has left me a little unsure of my footing and yet feeling more free and happy.

I have been very interested and motivated lately but rarely anxious. This is true even though the calendar has WAY too much black on it in my opinion. You know how sometimes a month just gets out of control without your meaning it to? So far so good though. I just want to keep working and working and working.

In case anyone's curious, some of my projects lately include:

• Homework. On fairly short notice almost a month ago I registered for a class and have had 2 class sessions and quite a few hours of homework since. We have class via conference call. The homework is interesting and stretching. I have no problem wanting to do it. It's a little difficult to make it really happen while not neglecting my home or family. One assignment for last Saturday was to read The Last Battle - book 7 in the Chronicles of Narnia. Matt and I have been wanting to read those together since before we got married. He had read some but not all; I don't think I ever read them, or maybe just The Lion, the Witch, and The Wardrobe. We both knew we wanted to and that it would be so fun to read them together. So we finally had a deadline. We read 6 books together in less than 2 weeks. (I read LW&W by myself since Matt remembered that story well.) We finished that Last Battle with 6 hours to go before class - and those were sleeping type hours. We loved it, had a blast, and did not sleep enough. We're glad to be done and glad to have finally read Narnia!
• Cataloging Books. In August I started the process of cataloging all our books. We have hundreds and hundreds of books (literally) because we have recently inherited large portions of the libraries of Matt's mom and dad and my parents. So this process is huge. I have less than a hundred books to go. I also still need to put together the new bookcases we bought. (I LOVE doing that. I don't know why it's so fun to me.) Then we put up all the books. This has been such a big project - so many hours spent on it. It has been really fun, and I will be very excited to have it done.
• Freezer Meals. The freezer meal bug bit my cousin recently, and her enthusiasm wore off on me. So I have made double of whatever I'm making a lot lately. I love having good meals ready in the freezer. This groove I'm in with cooking is awesome (and it doesn't really happen that often.) So I'm going to just keep going as long as it lasts. And when I get into another one of those funks - they're inevitable - I'll have a bunch of meals all ready.
• Babysitting. Somehow many opportunities have come up recently to babysit. Babysitting is my favorite form of service at this stage because it doesn't change much for me. I am going to be taking care of kids anyway; it's just the number that varies. And sometimes the kids coming over make so much fun for my kids. I'm not saying it's always easy and smooth sailing to babysit, but I'm happy to help when people need babysitters. (Many of you friends reading this are welcome to take advantage of that. Don't forget you can email me and ask when looking for babysitters. Not so many takers (thanks Launi - sorry more weren't interested!) on the babysitter exchange/ co-op idea, but we're often up for a trade or to just babysit for others.)

Anyway, I am so grateful for this current time when things feel great in my life.