Gratitude (Day 6)

Day 6-

Today I'm grateful to be pregnant with baby number four which in May...maybe June will turn our family into a family of six. Family of six...day 6, I thought it was fitting.

I have a little confession, if you are interested. If not, you know what I'm grateful for and you can be done reading. :)

I'm SUPER impatient. I bet most of my family knows that about me. I'm the type of person that gets an idea into my head and am totally dead set on that idea until I either get it or finish what I had planned.

Finding out whether or not I'm pregnant when I "think" I might be is no different.

I may or may not have taken 5 or 6 tests BEFORE it would technically have been the time when you for sure can get a positive test. Who does that? I mean seriously. ;)

It's just so frustrating to have to wait TWO WHOLE WEEKS to know for sure. That's like forever in Brandy time.

Besides, not that you really want to know but I kept getting "maybe" positives (when the line is almost not visible unless practically under a microscope) and then I would get a negative. Frustrating. :) Luckily I have a patient husband who lovingly would just remind that me if I didn't want to be frustrated I could just wait until the right time and then I would know for sure.

Well of course I didn't listen to those words of wisdom and on Sadie's birthday (one day BEFORE the right time) we found out that for sure we were pregnant!

Of course we were so excited! It was kind of a fun day to find out, one at least we won't forget.

On my birthday I had an ultrasound and got to see the baby and hear its little heartbeat. I consider that to be a pretty great birthday present.

And that is all. Between moments of wondering how I am going to handle being a mom of four children and extreme fatigue, I have felt very grateful to have this opportunity.

Gratitude (Day 5)

Day 5-

So I have about a minute before my little girl is going to kick me off the computer so she can play Disney games.

So here it is, I'm grateful for a full sized washer and dryer. I'm sure you can guess why.

It is a new thing in this household and changes the things from a "laundry day" where I do laundry all day long to three to four loads.

You have to be grateful for that!

Gratitude (Day 4)

Day 4-

Today since it is Friday, I'm grateful for paydays.

And not because of what you may be thinking, that I look forward to them because then I get to go and spend a ton of money, though that can be fun too. :)

I am grateful for paydays because they are relatively new in our household. Since Wesley has only been done with school since May and started working the first week in July we haven't had many. (Can I add that we are both super grateful that he has a job? We are, it is a huge blessing and I wouldn't want to leave that out.)

I really, really like them because they remind me that my husband is awesome! That he is super consistent and usually when he decides to do something he is very focused and sticks to it. Gratefully that includes optometry school and being a provider for our family.

Payday also reminds me of what a hard worker he is. I love that he gets up everyday, rain or shine, sick or healthy and gets to work. Even on his days off, he still likes to be busy with projects. He's a good man.

I am also grateful for payday because I am actually one of those sick people that like to balance our accounts and figure out how much money can go where and I LOVE paying the bills, so payday gives me a chance to do that. :)

That's all, now you know what I will be doing with the rest of my morning...

Gratitude (Day 3)

Day 3-

I'm grateful for my can opener.

I'm being serious. All the things I have chosen for this month I have given serious thought about. They are all things that I am grateful for on a regular basis.

Here's a little bit of a sad story.

When I was single and the mother of two very adorable children I was pretty poor. I was a full time student living off of student loans. I didn't have much but I was very grateful that I had the opportunity to go to school (mostly online) and still afford to stay home with my little ones and watch them grow and change everyday. I was and am very grateful that I didn't have to go to work and put my kids in daycare.

Anyways, back to the story, I was pretty poor. We still had all our basic needs met and some extras for fun but not much for luxuries.

One of those luxuries I did without was a can opener that actually worked.

At the beginning I had one but it eventually got old and wouldn't spin anymore (who knew a little household oil probably would have solved that) so I threw it away. And because I really couldn't justify spending almost $10! on a can opener I bought one at the Dollar Store. (I know, you get what you pay for).

Well it broke, almost right away. Probably after the third can. (It wouldn't rotate around the can anymore.) But I couldn't afford to spend more money on another one so I made do. I would just clamp it down on the can rim which does break through the can and I would open it up, move it a little and clamp down again, over and over until the lid broke off. Sad right? It kind of made cooking take longer but it worked.

Looking back I'm sure I probably could have asked my mom if I could borrow $10 and get one but it never occurred to me. I probably even had a spare $10 at points but I probably always spent it on things I felt were more important. Basically I just justified that I had something that did the job and I could make do.

I did eventually remember that I had an old one in my camping gear and pulled it out but it was super hard to cut with and spin. I generally hurt my hand or finger every time I used it.

When Wes and I got married someone WONDERFUL (I'm honestly not sure who but they are loved) got us a gift card to Bed Bath and Beyond! I totally knew what I was going to do with it!

When I opened the first can with my new can opener I'm pretty sure I did a little dance and laughed out loud. The thing was so dang smooth! And easy to use and the handles didn't dig into my hand because they were soft and I didn't have to use all my strength to keep the can rotating!

It was the BEST day ever! I even had Wes come out and give it a try! It was so, so, so wonderful!

And that is all. My sad little story had a very happy ending and I'm pleased to say that my awesome can opener still works and is wonderful and fills me with happiness every time I use it.

Too bad I didn't take a picture of it. It is pretty amazing and I'm grateful for it! :)

I promise tomorrow won't be about kitchen stuff.

Gratitude is a Good Attitude (Day 2)

Day 2

I am grateful for my frying pans.

You might be thinking really, pans?

But I am.

Our three smaller frying pans have been in seriously sad, SAD shape for a long time.

They were all warped and so when I needed to cook with them (every night) I had to prop them up with something under their handle so that they would actually get warm in more than one place.

Also they originally were non-stick but after years of use they seemed to need almost half a can (little bit exaggerated) of cooking spray on every use.

Did I mention that the handles were loose on some of them and the screws were warped so they didn't actually truly tighten anymore? Yep. They were fancy.

With meals burning (because of the sticking issue not entirely because I'm a poor cook) and growing fear of the handles breaking off and the pans teetering on the hot elements they were starting to become almost unusable.

Anyways, this year for my birthday I used some of my birthday money and bought myself seriously needed new pans.

When I told my cooking guru of a sister that I got new pans she said, "There's nothing like QUALITY cookware."

I'm not sure my pans from Ross are "Quality" but they do sit flat on the heating elements and they are still non-sticking, non-stick pans!

Check out these beauties! Yes, they aren't even matching.

(See the two off white candles in the background that's what I used to use for props for the old pans. They can be retired now.) :)

Gratitude is a Good Attitude (Day 1)

I'm kind of excited that it is officially November!

I've been thinking about blogging about this for a while and now can finally start.

"Gratitude is a Good Attitude" is a saying we say all the time in our house to the kids. We want them to grow up being grateful for even the small things and not feel like they are entitled to things.

We say that phrase to them so often that I too should probably show some gratitude for all the things I've been blessed with.

So for each day of this month I'm going to write about something I'm grateful for.

This is going to be a good exercise for me, hopefully I can think of thirty things I am grateful for.

As a warning, some (okay most) of the things are going to be materialistic.

I'm not a ponderer by nature and honestly I'm probably not the deepest person you've ever met.

I like life, I like each day, I like to laugh and have fun but I don't really think too much about it. I just like to go and do and be done.

Basically I'm trying to explain that I probably won't be writing about being grateful for an amazing and profound thought I had and the different layers it had and how they somehow all connect to my life and mean something amazing and spectacular to me. :)

Hopefully that makes sense. If you know me this is probably not anything new to you. :)

Also these aren't in any particular order.

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Day 1

Since today is the first day of this little exercise I thought I would just get out of the way something that ranks high on my gratitude list.


I'm grateful for my family.

This one.


And these ones.


I'm grateful that we are all semi-normal and mostly drama free. I'm grateful that we like to get together and laugh and recall the silly things we did when we were younger. I am grateful for my new family that came with my sweet husband. I am beyond grateful that Wes and I both like our in-laws.

Yay for family!

Halloween Fun

Two weeks ago Wes and I decided we should try and branch out more and go participate in our ward Trunk or Treat.

But then we kind of struggled with costume ideas. We really wanted to dress up as Phineas and Ferb (sadly probably our favorite TV show) but we couldn't figure out how to make their heads so then we thought maybe we could be Dr. Doofensmirtz and Perry the Platypus but I vetoed it for two reasons, one it would be lame if no one recognized us for the Doctor and Perry, how many grown ups really watch that show? and two, I thought it would be pretty uncomfortable to be Perry all night. :)

So we decided to get back to our grass roots and we went as hippies!

Can I say that except for the drugs, partying and open love, oh and the no bra thing, I could probably be a hippy everyday. It was pretty fun for me.

For Wes' costume I picked out the brightest, rainbowiest material ever and laughed like an evil scientist the whole time I was making his costume just thinking about how far out it was going to be.
Frankly I'm surprised that he agreed to wear it.


But he did say that next year he gets to pick out the costumes...

Dear little Sadie was the cutest bunny EVER!



I kind of got her costume way before coming up with the hippie idea.

You can't really tell by this picture but we decked out Wes' truck to look like a Shag (Wes says I shouldn't call it that but I mean shag as in the carpet) mobile. It was pretty cool, we even made a groovin soundtrack to match our theme and played it in the truck.



I'm not sure what our ward members thought about us but we thought we were totally radical.