Character Counts

Sophie just received a "Character Counts" award from her school.  She got a certificate to get a free kids cone from Baskin and Robbins.  She was nominated for her trustworthiness which is just one of the many wonderful characteristics she has!

Enjoying her reward!

NICU Revisited

Last Saturday, our family was able to go back to John Muir Hospital for a fun occasion!  Every year the hospital puts on a reunion for all the families who have had babies stay in their NICU.  It was a wonderful event!  The NICU nurses were there as well as Dr. Mikus who is the head of Neonatal services and was Riley's doctor.  Even the families of the hospital staff were there as volunteers at all the booths.

Riley was actually a little too young to really enjoy the festivities, but she entertained herself with chocolate chip cookies while Sophie and Avery had a great time doing all the activities.  Below are pictures of just a few of the booths.  And even though I have no actual proof, Lance was actually there!

The giant slide was a hit!

Coloring and decorating pumpkins in the heat! 

Face painting

It was nice to come full circle.  Not only because we got to take our healthy little baby back to the place that caused us so many tears, but we also saw other babies who had been in the NICU with her who were now healthy and happy little ones.  In a way it took some of the sting away from the time she spent there. It was wonderfully obvious how blessed she and all the other babies are to have had such amazing care that made life possible.

Girls Getaway

For some reason every time I go away for a girl's getaway it involves getting up early to an alarm. This trip was no exception.  At least it didn't involve a grueling run as well which is usually the case.  This trip was to go to Time Out For Women.  It's like Women's Conference at BYU only they come to you and it's put on by Deseret Book.  It was in Sacramento. Just far enough away to justify getting a hotel room!

My friend Leslie and went together. We left early Friday morning to go shopping in Roseville (known to Leslie as Mecca ) at the Galleria. :)  My cousin Chelsea who lives in Elk Grove met us there in the afternoon to spend a couple of hours shopping too.  I spent way too much money, got a fun makeover at the Dior Makeup Counter and had a blast!

Unfortunately we couldn't shop until we dropped because for some reason we felt like we actually should to go to Time Out For Women that night!  It started with excellent talks from Dean Hughes and Heidi Swinton, the author of President Thomas S. Monson's Biography as well as an amazing musical performer, Dallyn Vail Bayles.

The next morning we had to get up and get breakfast and be back to The Sacramento Convention Center by 8:45am for day two of the event.  There were more great speakers including one of my favorite authors Merrilee Boyack who I just happened to see walking down the hall and was nice enough to take a picture with me.

After TOFW ended, Leslie and I decided to take advantage of our kid free afternoon and stop by Arden Fair Mall and do a little more shopping. Honestly, I was a little afraid to be unarmed at that mall but they did have great stores so I dug deep and mustered all my courage in order to find a few more treasures!

It was a really fun little getaway. Next year we are thinking of going to a TOFW a little farther away than Sacramento.  Do they have them in Honolulu?

We Have A Walker!

Creativity

I love the things that little minds come up with.  For instance, Sophie is told me not to give her jelly beans because she is "allergic".  She doesn't like them so apparently in her mind that makes her allergic.  But Avery is very creative when it comes to reasons she should or should not do things  For instance she couldn't have a lot of blueberries one morning because too many blueberries make her "tummy too juicy."  She says she can't sleep with someone else because it "makes her itchy". And today, Avery told Sophie it was OK if her hands were dirty because it was clean dirt!

I can't wait to hear what they come up with next!

Summer Wrap Up

With summer wrapping up in just a few short weeks, I thought I'd post about all the fun travels and experiences we had this summer with lots and lots of pictures! :) 

First was Breckenridge, Colorado in June for a Haight Family get-together.

Lance "had to" (and I use that term loosely) go to Boston for work for three weeks in July.

The Boston skyline is beautiful in the day...

And night!

Apparently, it's good luck to touch Mr. Harvard's foot! 

Getting paid to watch a game at Fenway Park! 

So, while Lance was gone the girls and I went to Utah !

There's so much we did that I didn't take pictures of, but one of the big attractions for my girls was Hang Time inside the XSI factory in Lehi.  It's just a bunch of trampolines and foam pits!  

It's very hard to get out of the foam pit!

 We also went fishing at a little lake in Timpanogas Canyon. Sophie wanted to go so bad so we went and got her a little Barbie fishing pole.  She was bored pretty fast and decided fishing wasn't as fun as she'd imagined!  

That's my mom in the background

We also had a chance to visit the Church History Museum to explore the children's exhibit about the Book of Mormon in South America.  It was amazing! 

Hours of free entertainment for all ages! 

Playing in Nephi's ship

Learning a Mexican Dance

If you haven't been to the This Is The Place Monument in a while you should go!  They have this amazing pioneer village you can explore.  People are dressed in period costume and there is so much to do.

Pony Rides 

Animals (I'd never seen oxen up close before)

Strange animals (a very wierd looking cow in back...not my dad!) :)

A really amazing petting zoo.

With a friendly goat

And a not so friendly goose!  It chased Avery and bit her several times on her back!  

We went to my niece Hannah's "Miss Northern Utah County Pageant".  That is an experience I'll never forget (as much as I might want to!).  Let's just say this is where the jokes about dumb blondes started!  My niece is a brunette by the way! :) 

She's second from the left

 I also attended the largest family reunion ever recorded.  We actually set a Guiness world record!  It was the Family of Henry Grow.  He came across the plains with the pioneers.  He was an engineer and so Brigham Young asked him to design the Tabernacle.  There is a plaque that tells all about him on Temple Square.  My mom's maiden name is Grow and we are direct descendants.  We met in the Tabernacle and got a special tour!  It was pretty cool!  Then we had a dinner in the Conference Center followed by a devotional by C. Scott Grow of the seventy.  

We started on the stand by the organ pipes.

But also got to see inside the roof!

Back home, we decided to do a few more fun things like Six Flags in Vallejo.

Good thing there was a glass wall there!  

Avery, Lance and Sophie having a blast on the rides! 

I'm a sucker for a good Groupon and this one was totally worth it ~ Bella Oaks Stables Animal Camp.  I drove Sophie and Avery to Martinez every day for a week to be able to learn how to take care of animals and do crafts!  They love, love, loved it!  

They got to do gymnastics on the back of this horse!

 And what would a summer be without a trip to Shadow Cliffs!  We went with Marlee, Meaghan and Jake so my girls were in heaven!  Even Riley warmed up to Meaghan and had fun in the water! 

Wow, we did a lot!  The worst was being away from Lance for three weeks. The best was spending so much time in Utah. My girls are cousin crazy and they got to see their Cisneros cousins every day for three weeks!

School is now in full swing and going smoothly, but what would life be without all that summer fun!

The Power of Thought

I've been having an issue for quite a while now, over a year in fact.  I won't go into the details because really for the purpose of this post it's not important. But you do need a little background information.

First of all you should know this issue is an emotional one and lest you get any creative ideas about things going on with me, I'll just go as far as to say it is an issue of faith.

Second you should know, I tend to be an emotional person, rational but emotional which pretty much means I feels things deeply, but I can recognize when those feelings aren't good or productive and am very good at burying them on the inside in order to appear on the outside as if nothing is wrong. You might not think that is a very healthy way to live, but I'm sure we've all known emotional irrational people who wear their emotions on their sleeve, their hat and any other place they can find as long as the world knows they are having an issue and can be there to participate in the drama!  I do not like drama.  I do not like to create drama and I do not want to be a part of it.  Now don't get me wrong... I'm not saying we shouldn't ask for help or share our feelings, our struggles and our challenges or stand up for ourselves.  I share.  I stand up for myself.  I share with my husband, my parents, my friends and they help me and counsel me and support me.  My husband has been a support to me this past year in dealing with my issue.  My parents have offered me great counsel and the other day my friend came over and cried with and for me and helped me change my heart.  I share appropriately.  And I stand up for myself when I need to.  But in all the sharing that has been going on in the past year I haven't really ever found an answer to this problem. And that's the third thing you should know.  I knew it wasn't good what I was feeling.  My faith had always been such a big part of who I was...something I didn't think I would ever question and I think because of that I was shocked by it and really had no idea how to deal with it.  It just kept spiraling downward and questions started getting harder and harder to answer.

Now for the point of why I'm telling you all of this.  Today while I was driving, I started thinking and the usual negative thoughts about my struggle started going through my mind.  And then it dawned on me how many times I allow negative thoughts to not only pop into my head, but fester there. Rationally, I knew that couldn't be good.  I decided I would, at that moment, actively change the thoughts I was having into positive ones.  I noticed the effect immediately.  A strength came to me that I hadn't felt in a long time.  I felt a burden lift and a sense of empowerment!  Could it really be so easy?  Could changing a single thought process make such a difference?  I really believe it can.

I remember vividly one night years ago when I was going through a period of severe panic attacks.  Every night I went to bed absolutely sure I was going to die that night.  I would even wear pajamas that would be appropriate for having to call 911 (obviously my rationality doesn't apply to this time in my life!).  But I really lived in terror as if that was a reality.  But one night when the usual thought coupled with panic crossed my mind that tonight would be the night I would die, I stopped immediately and said to myself..."What if it isn't?  What if I am going to be ok tonight?"  I felt an actual physical response to that.  The anxiety was weakened instead of exacerbated like it was with my usual thought process.  I felt a sense of calm and again a sense of empowerment.  That moment became a turning point in my struggle with panic and I believe that today my moment in the car might be one for me with this struggle.

I read an article this summer about Hilary Weeks, an LDS singer, and how she clicked her way past negative thoughts in her life.  You can listen to her tell her experience here, but basically she bought a clicker to count how many times a negative, judgmental, or uninspiring thought came to her mind each day.  She was astounded. In one day she had clicked 145 times and after a while it made her depressed.  She realized that by giving power to negativity it altered who she was and her emotional state.  She immediately changed her strategy and started using the clicker to make sure she was thinking good positive thoughts all day long. To her, the power of positive thought strengthened every aspect of her life.  She was able to push herself harder than ever before, she felt happier than she had in a long time, and she felt like she could accomplish anything.

I'm kind of having a little bit of the same experience.  I'm not going to get a clicker, but I do feel like a concentrated effort to change my habit of negative thoughts into positive ones can help me overcome this struggle.  I feel for the first time like there is an answer, one that makes sense to me.  One that brings with it the strength I need to face what I need to face and change what I need to change.

I think this solution is universally applicable to any issue.  I think the power of thought really is enabling, the power of positive thought that is. I'm going to try it.  Will I be able to move mountains? Run faster than I've ever run before? Of course I will!  (See it's working already)!