I just felt like posting tonight.  I have some pictures that I will post from our recent trip to Chicago, but I will talk about that more later.  (I will hopefully to it tomorrow...Sundays are a good day to update the blog.)

Anyway, life is going pretty well for me right now. I still have a lot of stress and things on my plate, but I feel very happy. I think a lot of that has to do with Morgan.

I am very blessed to have him as my husband. We are a good fit and very rarely argue. We have had some arguments and miscommunications this past week and we were able to work through them, talk about them and get past it.

My hardest part about getting upset is that I tend to dwell on the situation afterwards and I don't allow myself to get past it. I think it is my creative side thinking of my life as part of a story and how to make it better. Unfortunately I don't want to think of other things that I should have said in an argument, that is not helpful.
But I have realized that this week and when I started to dwell on an issue that was already resolved I told myself that I didn't need to think about that anymore. I try to forget our arguments. I don't want to know immediately what our last 'tiff' was about. I want to remember the last time we hugged and told each other that we love each other.

Tonight we went to a wedding for one of Morgan's coworkers. The DJ had all of the married couples come onto the dance floor to see who had been married the longest. At 11 years we were out of the running rather quickly.

However, I really enjoyed dancing with Morgan, even if Noelle was on my hip. He is a wonderful spouse and I feel so lucky to have him.

Funnies

Last night I told Morgan that I bought some new salad plates.  (We're trying to eat smaller portions, so smaller plates = smaller portions.)

Morgan asked how many I bought and I answered 5.

Eli then declared that we could now have five more kids in our family.

We talked about it and told the kids that we would probably have one more, but we weren't sure about any more after that. We asked them if they wanted another brother or another sister. Eli wanted a sister and Josh wanted a brother.

We needed to stop the conversation for a prayer on dinner and Morgan asked Josh to pray.  Josh started his prayer as he usually would. But then in the middle he asked Heavenly Father to send two more kids to our family, and a pogo stick.

Hopefully they will not all be sent at the same time.





When Noelle is done eating her food she usually drops it on the floor. I will clean up most of the mess on the floor and throw it away before I get her out of her seat.

Today I got her out before I cleaned up her bread pieces. Sometimes she will eat the food off the floor. Anyway, I set her down and she picked up all of her bread pieces. I thought she was going to eat them until I saw her carry them into the kitchen, open the cupboard and throw the pieces into the garbage.

I will take a cleaning kid any day of the week!

Noelle's 15 Months

Noelle had her 15 month doctors appointment last week.  I know that she is nearly 16 months now, but that is just how things go.

Anyway here are her stats:

Weight: 18.4 pounds (less than 5%)
Height:  31 inches  (61%)
Head:    18 inches  (41%)


So she is still a skinny little girl, but her height and head keep growing, so she is doing fine. Here are some recent pictures of my curly-haired girl.

Playing in the toy box.

Falling down after dancing.  She has also learned to say "Cheese!"

While we were redecorating she thought it was fun to climb through the entertainment center.  Unfortunately she also go stuck many times. 

We figured that Noelle was finally big/strong enough for her own bike helmet.
She LOVES it!

Noelle loves riding bikes to take her brothers to school.  When I had to take them in the car one morning because I wasn't feeling well she threw a major fit.  She knew that wasn't part of the regular schedule. 

Updated Living Room

The time came for us to change up our living room.  Morgan has been wanting to pull up the carpet in the living room since we moved in and found hardwood underneath the dining room.  I told him we needed to wait until we could buy the big rug we (I) wanted.

This summer I decided to save up money from our 'fun job' to do this project. We wanted to paint the walls, tear up the carpet and add a rug.

We actually bought the rug first and ended up just getting a smaller, inexpensive one. Maybe someday I'll get a really big nice rug, but I am happy with where we are right now.


The Before Shots:

We moved the bookshelf, couch and chair into the porch and the other couch into the dinging room while we painted.  We left the TV stand and Piano in the middle of the room.

After the First Coat of Paint

Pulling up carpet

Morgan had to tie this vent up so it wouldn't fall down into the basement.

SURPRISE - we pulled up the floor by the stairs and found old black glue over the hardwood.  We decided tiling over that area would be best.

The Finished Project

Sorry for the dark shot

Furniture is Back

We rearranged our living room.  We moved the TV over so that both couches were facing it and moved the bookshelf from Piano Bay into the living room