General Conference Weekend and a Temple Walk

I can't decide if I'm getting worse at taking pictures or if the subjects I frequently find myself trying to snap pictures of are getting worse at staying put long enough for me to get a good shot. Either way, my blog worthy pictures have been limited lately. 

I guess my lack of pictures can be blamed on me, because here's subject #1, perfectly still, and this is the best picture I got of him. I can blame this bad picture on the fact that I had spent the entire morning puking my guts up though, so perhaps my arms were a little unsteady from my dehydration.

Can I just tell you that miracles do happen? I woke up so sick on this day. Jeff felt sorry for me and stayed home in the morning until 10:00 when Eli had a playdate. He dropped Eli off, and then I woozily went to get Eli at 12. We came home and I fed the boys whatever I could fish out of the cupboard with the least aroma between bouts of nausea. As I was slumped on the couch, I realized it had been a while since I heard Eli. I went upstairs to find that he had put himself down for a nap! Hence the picture to document this glorious moment that allowed me to continue to rest amid my day of sickness.

This little bugger has been nothing but trouble lately. When this kid is bored, he lets everyone know it. Play-dough has been our lifesaver to keep those little hands busy and out of mischief!

Between potty training and switching him over to a bunk bed, we're back to many wakeful nights and bedtime battles with Carson Boy. Any time his routine gets changed, it takes months to retrain him and get him on a somewhat normal sleep schedule again. We'll probably get his sleep back to normal just in time for daylight savings to hit...

We went to my parents' house for General Conference Weekend. Spencer and Eli have become pretty good friends. Especially because they both find it hilarious to exclude Carson from their games because "he's a baby." Never mind that Carson is quite possibly taller than Spencer, and never mind that Eli has no problem playing with "Baby Carson" when he's not trying to impress certain cousins or friends.

Don't worry Carson, you won't be the baby for too much longer.

The second miracle of the last two weeks happened when we got six cousins all in one place at one time, almost all looking at the camera and somewhat smiling.

The kids had their own mini theater going on in the basement while the adults watched conference upstairs. I went down to peek on them once and found Brooke and Eli "roasting marshmallows" by sticking marshmallows on the end of a pretzel stick and holding them up to the fire. I never did stick around long enough to see if they bronzed up.

I've mentioned before that Carson habitually requests pancakes every. Single. Morning. For a while I was out of pancake mix and was too lazy to make some more, but one morning when we didn't have too much to do, I finally decided to make a batch of pancake mix so Carson could once again have his favorite breakfast.

I decided to cook double what I usually do so that I could have a bag full of already made pancakes in the fridge to quickly whip out at Carson's every early morning pancake request. I laid them out on the counter to cool while I ran upstairs to finish my makeup.

As I was unsuspectingly applying my mascara, I heard giggling in the kitchen area, but it didn't sound like mischievous giggling. And it wasn't eerily quiet. I kept applying my makeup, glad the boys had found something to keep themselves busy.

Then Eli came upstairs with a grin on his face. It was the kind of grin that said, "someone's in trouble, and I'm glad it's not me." Eli gave me a moment to brace myself before saying, "I don't want you to see the kitchen. Carson made a big mess."

Sure that he was dramatizing the situation, I made my way downstairs to find pancake remnants scattered all about the kitchen. There was half a crumpled pancake on the oven, sprinkles of crumbs dusting the floor, chunks of pancake stuck to the walls, chocolate chips smeared on the floor, parts of the pancakes mashed into the carpet. It was not dramatized.

"CARSON! WHY did you DO THIS???" I immediately questioned.
Without any thought, he replied, "I was trying to feed the spiders."

I looked on the wall to a big pancake smear and saw a teeny, tiny spider right next to it. After taking a moment to appreciate the humor in the situation, I banished the boys to the backyard for the next 30 minutes so I could do a complete kitchen scrub down. Luckily they sensed their lives would be in jeopardy if they interfered with the cleaning process and stayed happily and quietly outside until a certain spider was killed and order was restored to our kitchen.

Just yesterday we had a big activity with the Young Women. We walked 12 miles to the Ogden Temple! I was put in charge of the activity and put together this invitation for the girls:

I had been so worried about the logistics of the walk that it wasn't until the Thursday before we were to start our journey that I started getting nervous about the reality of walking 12 miles. 

The biggest mistake we made was putting me in charge of the directions. I knew all the general areas of where we were supposed to turn, but I am admittedly the worst navigator of the entire group so every time a turn was approaching, I could sense the group get nervous about my lack of confidence in exactly where to go. There were at least a couple times we feared we had missed a turn and would have to add extra mileage to our trip by backtracking and renavigating, but I'm happy to say we made it to the temple without a single wrong turn!

Okay, there was that one time on that one trail when we walked 10 steps past the right turn, but other than that we were pretty spot on. It was a neat experience and the most beautiful day for that kind of activity!