Holiday Post

This post will not include any pictures but I feel impressed to write! I have always absolutely loved the holiday season. Yes, as we all know, I love shopping! But even bigger than that is the feeling of this time of year. This year more than ever I have been able to reflect on the true meaning of these holidays (possibly because I cannot go shopping!) But I am thankful for it. I feel closer to my little family, and I feel a love from my savior more than every before. I feel a warmth in my heart that I have not allowed myself to feel for quite sometime.

I am not sure if any of you have felt this way before, but for probably the last six months I have felt a little bit shut down. Not that I haven't been happy, but I don't feel emotions that I am used to feeling. You know that I am quite an emotional gal, but that has been gone. I never thought that I would miss that feeling but I realized that I was blessed with that tenderness for a reason. I believe it is a blessing that allows me to truly care for others and there happiness. Just 1.5 weeks ago I was able to sing with Brittany at her Relief Society Christmas program and we watched a slide show called "Reflections of Jesus Christ." In that moment I was able to feel the spirit more strongly than I have felt for a long time, and since then I have been overwhelmed with emotion and I am glad to have it back.

I feel as though I can "feel" again! I love you all and hope that you have a wonderful holiday and that you are able to spend time reflecting on the true meaning.

Merry Christmas,

Sarah

LATE HALLOWEEN!

I am finally putting my girls halloween pictures up! Taylor wanted to be a rock star so then we all decided to be rock stars! Here we are Rockin out on Halloween!

As you can see in this picture, piglet has a costume on too! That was Taylor's doing!!!
And yes....Macie walks now! like crazy! She is still a generally happy baby as long as we are home! I think she is going to be a home body cause the minute we go anywhere else, she is not quite the same! But CUTE as ever!!!

Taylor and I had fake eyelashes and she looked awesome with them! People kept asking if she was supposed to be Hannah Montana and I guess she is on her shirt but she just went along with it! So now she always asks about Hannah Montana as if they are best friends!! Awesome!

Taylor and her cousin Lexi ended up combining costumes by the end of the night and playing with eachothers stuff and this is what we ended up with! A RockStar tinkerbell and A Violent tinkerbell!

My Sister Allison was a Barrel or Monkeys! I loved it and the kids loved it! And Lindsay and mark and brinley were the Flinstones. Yes, I do get to take credit for there costumes! I made them! I thought they turned out very cute!

A DAY AT THE PUMPKIN PATCH!

This week, we took a neighborhood fieldtrip to the pumpkin patch out by our house! The kids had a blast! Taylor and her cousins got to pick there very own pumpkin, see animals, go on a hay ride, and play...play...play! While Macie ate Dirt and rocks and everything else!

We are really loving our new area and hope that we will be here for a while! It is nice and peaceful out here! Close enough, yet far enough away...if you know what I mean! Taylor and Macie are finally making some friends out here and so are we! It is fun to learn how many people we know that live out here! It is a small world!

For those of you who don't know (because I never update my Blog anymore!) Macie is now 1! She turned 1 on October 1 and we had a fun birthday for her! I don't have all the pictures with me so I will, yet again, have to post them later, but she definately got into her birthday cake and had a great time!

Babies, Babies, Babies!

So this week is baby week! My sweet friend Windy had her baby boy this week and named him Landon Curtis! Precious little thing!

Then my cousin Rachel had her baby on Tuedsay and named him Jackson Dean...

And today my brother Steve and his wife Shelley had a baby boy! He was 6 13 and 20 inches long! They named him Tevin James! He was born a little bit early and may spend a few days in the NICU, but he is a healthly baby boy and so precious!

Also, Jaime's cousin Bruna is blessing her sweet baby girl Sophia tomorrow! She is about 1 month old!

I love all these babies but it sure doesn't tempt me to have another one real soon!

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL OF YOU!

WE'RE HERE!

Well, we are officially moved in to our home in Syracuse! I will admit I did shed a few tears before leaving my friends and young women in Provo. However, I am excited for a fresh start! Our lawn is about half-way green now and things are pretty clean so I feel much better about the place! It is starting to slowly feel like home!

We do not have internet yet and may not for a few more weeks so bare with me friends! I will become a blogger again soon!

Taylor loves our new house and says very frequently, "But mom, I will just miss our old house so much!" She had many little friends in Provo that she mentions all of the time and we will hopefully get to see them from time to time!

It has been fun seeing some of you who live up North already and hope to see more of you! Love you all and I will blog to you soon!

Chow!

SO IT'S OFFICIAL

Well.............we are making the leap! (Erica sorry if this is the first time you hear this!!!) We are moving into our house in Syracuse! If you are wondering, YES, this was a very sudden decision but we are extremely excited! It will be a little bit of a process! I went there the other day to clean it up from the renters, who apparently forgot that someone owns that house! Our lawn is dead and full of dog poop, I don't think they vacuumed once in the 6 months that they lived their! I have filled the vacuum many times with dog hair and I haven't even gotten to downstairs yet!

Anyway, we are getting it all cleaned up and will be moving in 1-2 weeks! Super excited to be close to family and friends. We are also very sad to leave the great friends we have made in Provo! It has been a truly wonderful experience! We have learned a lot and have loved living so close to my brother Roger and his cute family!

Jaime and I have had many spritual and growing experiences in the last few months and are very grateful for them! I will definately post pictures when we get all of our stuff moved in!

Stay tuned........

Long time-No write!

Hey ya'll! Just wanted to give you an update! Things have been pretty crazy for a while! We are trying to prepare our house here in Provo to put it on the market. (excited and sad at the same time!) The hard part is that all of the homes around us have been for sale for over 1 year, so it is hard to get too excited about it! Also we really love our friends and ward here in Provo! However, we are excited to eventually make our way to O-Town!

I have been working doing computer network stuff for Jaime's Dad's law office! And Jaime has been working in Ogden a few days a week as well so we have been back and forth quite a bit!

I have also been super busy with young women's! We just had girls camp about 1 1/2 weeks ago and it went really well! It just took a lot of preparation, but it is all over!

I also competed in the Provo Vocal competition, and didn't do very well, but it was a great experience! Between that and the Jenny Phillips workshop, I realize how much work I have cut out for me if I want to be in the music business! But it won't stop me, I will keep moving forward!

Macie is almost 10 months old now and she is probably the cutest, biggest chunk you have ever seen! She weights 23 pounds and that is more than taylor weighed when she turned 1! I always say, as long as they come out small, I don't care how big they get after that! Plus she is just so fun to squeez so I love it!

Taylor is still definately 3! Still asking why and argues with everything I say............ and I mean everything! But she is very sweet to her baby sister and sometimes to me so that makes up for it!

ANYWAY...LONG STORY LONG! Life has been a little crazy so sorry if I have been a bad friend to anyone, but I don't mean to be! Just need to focus a little more on our little family at the moment!

Well, now that we are up to speed, I will see what I can do about being better at this Blogging thing! Love you all and I will post pictures soon!

NEW MUSIC POST

I finally have a new post on my music blog! I finally got to record in a professional studio! Check it out! sarahjaynesmusic.blogspot.com

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TAYLOR!

My beautiful Taylor had a birthday on Saturday and she is now 3 years old! It is very apparent because like one week before her birthday she started asking WHY about everything!

For her birthday party with my family, we went to an awesome park in Salt Lake and had a picnic! It is fun because Taylor and her cousin Sydni have their birthdays 10 days apart so they always get to celebrate together!

I found a fun idea for decorating! You take the foam swimming noodles which are typically shaped like a flower. You cut them with a bread knife into pieces about 1 to 1.5 inches thick and you end up with a bunch of flowers! So I strung them and hung them from the trees! Turned out really cute! Also, because there is already a hole in the middle you can use them for napkin holders or candle stick holders! Super cute! Total decorating cost for her birthday party, $3.50!!! Not too shabby!

With Jaime's family, we also did a party at his parents house and had a great time! She got so many new outfits that I probably won't have to go shopping all summer! And boy were they the cutest outfits I have ever seen! She had so much fun opening all of her presents that she forgot to look what was in them! As soon as she got done, she would just move right on to the next one!!!

Also, since Taylor was born her Papa has been wanting to take her on a motor cycle ride! He used to theaten to strap her car seat to the motor cycle when she was like 6 months old!!! I always told him that he had to wait until she was 3 years old which always seemed so far away! Well here it is and she had a blast! When they got back she asked, "Papa, why are we back?" and the whole time they rode she would ask, "Papa, why are we going so slow!!!" She is quite the dare devil!

WHEEEEEEEEW! What a weekend!!!

Finally a new post!

We decided for family night to take a trip to the golf course! Let me start off by explaining that Jaime is lucky enough to have a free pass to this beautiful golf course Mondays through Thursdays and he can bring anyone along for free as well! So looks like our date nights this summer will consist of free golf and I am actually really excited! I am definately a work in progress but I really enjoy going! It was also really fun to bring Tay along because she just ran....and ran....and ran! Lots of grass! Needless to say, she slept like a baby that night!

Well... Do I at least look official?;) This is Jaime in his realm! There are not

many things he loves more than golf!

Josh Turner Live Performance

This is my new favorite country song! I pretty much am having a love affair with his voice! Check it out!

Taylor got a hair cut!

I decided to give Taylor a hair cut for the summer and I just love how it turned out! First of all her hair was always in her face because I have been growing out her bangs and second, I just wanted a change! Lets just say I should be a professional hair cutter!!! ;)

BEFORE

AFTER

Before I styled her hair she wanted me to take pictures of her haircut so here are some of the faces she pulled while she was "Smiling" for the camera!




















So Pretty much I can't tell her to smile for the camera any more because this is the result that I get!!! Every kid goes through that stage but it just seems to be funny every time!!!



Here is a shout out to Macie! For you ZOOLANDER fans out there here is BLUE STEEL!

QUICK BIT

Hey I had a couple of questions about that water table and the swim suits in my last post! So for your information, that water table is at Toys R Us for $29.99! And you can find those t-shirt swim suits at old navy for boys and girls and they are fabulous so that you dont have to worry so much about sunburn! I think they are even on sale right now for like $10.00! I know I have seen them at target too!

Apparently summer came and went!

SPLISH SPLASH! We had a fun day on Monday with Taylor's water table! She got it for her birthday last year and I was so excited to finally have a nice hot day she could go out and play! Since last year she went out for about 2 seconds with her cousin Sydni to get in the little pool and they both saw a bee and cried and cried and wouldn't go back out again! It's too bad I can't find the pictures from that incidence cause it was pretty freekin hilarious!

I told Taylor that she was too big to sit in the table and she said, "Well then we better put Macie in there before she gets too big!" She is such a concerned big sister! I love it!

By the way, World watch out because it is only a matter of days before this Macie chick is going to be crawling all over the place! She can pretty much already get accross the room in 2.2 seconds! You know that line they cross from when you can leave them in a room by themselves to when you can't! She pretty much crossed that line this week!

Indoor Soccer

So for those of you who know me pretty well, I consider myself somewhat of an athlete, except for when it comes to Golf and Soccer! I don't know what it is but, I just cant seem to feel confident when I play soccer! About 3.5 years ago I was playing co-ed Indoor Soccer and this guy knocked my good friend Ashley down and she landed on my knee just right! I tore my MCL so was out for a good 6 or 8 months. The next time I came back to play, it was my first game back and I rolled my ankle very hard and couldn't even walk on it for weeks! Needless to say I kind of quit for a long while!

I thought after having 2 kids I should be tougher right!! That's how it seems it should be!

Well, I got up the guts to play and started about 1 month ago with some friends from my ward (Erica and Brandon ;) on Saturdays and I have had a blast, but not so much luck. (Although Sarah C. you would be proud that I did score a goal a couple of weeks ago!!) Last week my stomach was hurting really bad at our 11:30 pm game so I played seriously like 10 minutes of the game. Today I came out with a pretty big bruise on my knee and a majorly sore nose from getting elbowed pretty dang hard by some dude! I guess just because you love something, doesn't mean that you will be good at it right! Maybe I should just stick to Volleyball! Or maybe try women's instead of co-ed! Who knows!

Thanks Erica, this might have sounded like I don't like it, but that is not the case! I love it, I just feel very inadequate!

Out With Friends!

The other night, I had the opportunity to go to dinner with some friends from Ogden and a few of our kids! We went to the Pizza Factory and had a great time! It just so happened that Jaime couldn't watch the kids and neither could anyone else so I brought them along! As cute as they are, I sware I will never do it again if I can help it! Macie is fine, but my Taylor is one crazy chick! I guess I can't say never, but maybe just one child at a time!

Although there was something really cute about the craziness when Kaleb and Taylor were hugging and kissing and sharing suckers! I fear that she is already as boy crazy as I was and that could be bad news!

Yeah, who is kissing who here! I guess I better keep an eye on this one!!!

Crazy sleeping habits!

TAYLOR!!!

Okay...no, my 2 year old is not hung over by the toilet! She was really sick one day and kept throwing up! she would walk around and anything soft she saw she would lay her head on it, like a towel or a shirt....ANYTHING! After going potty she wanted to lay down on the rug and I said, "why don't we lay down on the couch, it will be more comfortable?" And she said, "Why don't I just lay right here!" And within about 2 minutes she had fallen asleep! Poor girl!

Then there is Macie...

First of all she sleeps with her eyes partially open half the time, plus she always pulls her bumpers away from the sides of the crib and winds up with them on top of her!

Both of my babies have been found sleeping like this!

This is Taylor when she was 7 months old and totally asleep, folded in half! I haven't gotten a picture of Macie doing this but she has done it too!

Mothers

So first of all, this is me at the end of every day! This is a magnet on my fridge from brazil! You can put it in whatever position that you want! Taylor was playing with it one day and it broke a little bit so I just stuck it on top of the fridge! Within a few days of opening and closing the fridge door, this is how it ended up! I just had to take a picture because it is so how I feel at the end of each day!

For all of us mothers out there that feel like this, let me tell you something! I went to Women's Conference a couple of weeks ago and there was a story told by a young mother! She was pregnant with her 4th child and went to her first appointment. Of course she went alone because by then they figured they knew what they were doing and her husband told her to give him a call to let him know how it went!

So she goes in and the doctor thought she was measuring a little bigger than she should have been and so he did an ultrasound. He looked at it for a long time and then finally turned to her and said, "You have three babies in there!" Immediately she started crying. Her forth child had just turned into her fifth and sixth child as well! She was bed ridden from 15 weeks on and was full term size by 20 weeks! She carried them all the way to 35 weeks, only being able to get out of bed to go to the bathroom and take a shower 1 or 2 times a week!

It humbeled me a lot to hear this story because I feel so unorganzied, impatient, and crazy enough with just 2 kids! I know that I will have more, but thank goodness so far they have only come one at a time!

I used to wonder how my mother did it with 7 but, now I know she did it with the help of the Lord! Which helps me to know that I can do it and so can you!!!

ANOTHER TAG!!

4 Things I was doing 10 years ago
1. High School Volleyball!
2. BOYS, BOYS, BOYS!!
3. Going to lots of parties!
4. Having lots of sleep overs with friends!

4 Things I am doing this year
1. Hopefully going on a road trip up the coast and to Seattle!
2. Golfing with my hubby
3. Writing music
4. Trying to minimize the junk in my house!!!

4 Shows I like
1. The Office
2. Grey's Anatomy
3. American Idol
4. Ellen DeGeneres

4 Biggest joys of the moment
1. My family. That includes my immediate and extended family! We are fortunate to see them very often.
2. Music
3. My calling as a Young Womens Leader
4. Playing the Guitar with Jaime

I TAG ERICA, CHANDI, JEN, JAMIE, KARA, AND SHARSTIN

Cinco De Mayo

So today is my little sis Emily's birthday, so I just wanted to give her a shout! She is now 24 years old! (It is wierd when your younger siblings get that old because it just means that you are older!!!) Anyway she is such a beautiful girl with such a cute little family and I just wanted to tell her I love her! Happy Birthday Sis!