Dear Eden,

 

Happy Birthday, Edie girl! What a year. You are full of personality, that’s for sure. And we love it. As I said before, I’m glad I have a daughter, and I’m happy it’s you. Let’s get to it.  

This year I may not have been the most patient, but you are so lovey dovey. You always tell me you love me. You ask me to play with you every day. But boy you are stub-born! Not the best at taking turns or letting others touch your things, but I hope this will get better especially as you are starting preschool really soon. You haven’t been in very many settings with children your age (probably my fault), so I feel this will be very good for us! You are excited for it, that’s all you wanted to do for your birthday and was sad we couldn’t go to preschool yet.   

You still love music, and I’m amazed at your little skills. You can match my pitch when we sing (something your brothers still work on), and I heard you playing the piano just tonight and hit all the correct keys for “D Doggy D” and “F Fishy F”. You also love to dance, so much that we decided to put you in a ballet class! It’s perfect because it happens at the same place at the same time as Eli’s Kung Fu classes. You absolutely love the class and enjoy bringing your “yoga map” to the park and learning to pirouette and chasse. I love seeing you be a girly girl.  

Don’t know your height or weight, but I know you are a taller girl. Maybe 75th percentile? A miracle you seem so healthy with how little you eat. The things you will eat seem to narrow by the day. Unless it’s candy. I have hope, your brothers have gotten less picky as they have gotten older. As I said earlier, you are pretty stubborn. Hopefully it’s just the age. Hopefully. I will mention you have potty trained this year. There have been hiccups, but I’m proud of you (and myself) for accomplishing this goal. Now to get you to remember to flush and wash your hands…  

The thing you are most obsessed about are dragons. Specifically water dragons. That’s due to the movie Raya and the Last Dragon and the fact that I once played dragons with you and showed you the stuffed dragon we had at the time. Now your collection has extended by a bit. You have several stuffed dragons, like 6 or seven. You still love unicorns, and now made up an animal called a fonix (phonix). I think it’s a mix between a fox and a dog, but those animals are almost the same thing to begin with. You and your siblings will play fonixes at the park a lot.   

Another budding talent of yours is your art. You can draw really well…and all the while holding your pencil in a fist. I try to fix that but you seem to control it fine (I’ll let your teachers work on that, haha!). But seriously, I can’t get over how cute your drawings are. You will write down random letters next to them to “name them” and ask me to read it to you. The result is quite funny. You use a whole lot of paper but it’s hard not to let you when you produce real works of art.  

I’m excited to see what this year has in hold for you. Although you might not be the “little mother” I hoped to have in a daughter, it does not take away from the amazing qualities you do have. I hope this year you can learn to get along with all your brothers, especially your little brother. Keep working on all your talents, be the wonderful little girl you are, and make new friends! You are beloved daughter of your Heavenly Parents and your earthly parents. We love you so much, Eden!  

Love,

Mama

The Big Move to California

Be proud of me, I'm tackling the mountain of posts I haven't done. After this I should be only a year behind...

The move went as well as we could have hoped. My parents came in to help and did a fantastic job! Moving would have been a total nightmare without them and I'm so so grateful. I was slowly packing up throughout the last few weeks in Texas, so it was actually pretty quick in terms of moving them to the 26 foot rental truck. We were going to have help come in the evening, but my dad and Sam did it by noon! So we decided to just leave that afternoon instead of the next day. My mom and I cleaned what we could (I did pay for a cleaning service, so that made it a lot less stressful). I took pictures just in case we needed to find new renters in a year, but our renters told us they are staying for another year, so the pictures are just for this blog instead. Here's our back porch:

I forgot that little girl cut her bangs. She's still super cute!

Love this house!..even though we had to do so much for our renters in a year (roof, painting cabinets, new dishwasher, freon for AC, new facia in the back, new water heater...) Be good house!! No more breaking down on us!

No pictures really of the actual trip, but Sam drove the big truck (huge kudos to him, that was so scary!), my dad drove Sam's Kia, and my mom and I drove the van filled with little goblins I mean children. Instead of two long days, we did two short days and a long day. Did I mention that the whole trip was solely on I 10? That made it easy! We stayed in the middle of nowhere Texas the first night. Then we drove just past Phoenix the next night, then ended in good ol' Lala Land. I don't recall any major incidents so we were very lucky. The only picture we took of that exodus was Sam's:

Really, I can't imagine driving this thing!

We had three ward members come and help us move (Rex, David, and Alex) and they were super nice. Sadly we couldn't fit our nice couches through the door of our house, so they became the garage couches. The garage became a cool hangout space, with many toys, pull out bed, fridge and microwave. If only it had a bathroom it would be complete!

My parents stayed a few more days to hang out with us and babysit for our TEN YEAR ANNIVERSARY! We couldn't do anything fancy or too long (I was still nursing) and I was in the "this place is soooo expensive" mode, so it was a dinner and movie kind of anniversary date. 

Checked out the beach. 

Sand fortress.

Look at these lovebirds. I didn't realize Sam
was wearing crocks. Bahaha!

Best decision of my life! 

We could still use some practice with dipping...

We downloaded gift cards from our AE rewards and treated ourselves to Ruth's Chris. All amazing except the house dressing on their salad. That has to go back to the drawing board.

Now to be like an Instagammer and post a picture of our food.

We had time to spare so we went to Redondo beach to take a romantic walk.

Had the place to ourselves! (Almost. Some people walked in after this shot)

We went to see Cruella, and I thought it was well done. 

My mom sent a picture of this while we were gone:
Don't worry, it was cherries. Or was it...?

Sam had a few days to spare before he started so I requested he make a swing set. As most projects are it costed us more than I thought but the finished product was really nice and perfect for our needs!

We are definitely going to try to take it back with us.

Noah's seat came in and Eli was the first to try it out.

This is what I envisioned!

Another thing we did before Sam started was head to Leo Carillo State Park. Joseph was really into tide pools and this is what he was really looking forward to. There aren't any good tide pools near us so we went an hour north up to Malibu. The north part of the park was closed, but where we ended up was super nice! It's always an adventure taking four young kids (including a young baby) wherever we go, so Sam and the boys did a lot of exploring while I looked for wild life in between the rocks.

Cold morning looking out for new creatures.

Look at this anemone!

Look at this crab!

Explorations start.

Elijah always has a zest for life.

Look at this sea cave!

*swoon*

Time to go through the cave.

Turns out the north part of the park was closed
because they were filming there. Whoops!

Time to go back through!

Look at this little guy! He's grown so much
since this picture was taken a year ago.

Crabs, crabs, everywhere.

Dead lobster head.

So many sea anemones. 

Then it was time to relax and play in the sand.

These kids can get along so well when they want to.

I guess Eli was our favorite to take pictures of this trip.

I know I posted pictures of this little guy during his monthly updates, but I mean, look how little he was!

I forgot to put sunblock on Noah at the beach and part of his face was pretty burnt. 😬😬

Now for the fourth. It was on a Sunday, so other than going to church, we went to see fireworks at the temple. It's on a hill (as they tend to be) so we could see fireworks across the city. Very beautiful.

Look at his little outfit!

Eli's outfit.

Eden's too.

Look at this temple at night!

Our view.

Even the temple was celebrating.

We have been very blessed to have this temple so close to us.

I'll end the blog post here because next was a visit from Sam's parents and sister (with her daughters). That deserves its own post.