answered prayers

We took this fabulous vacation with the johnson so the tetons and yellowstone - which i will eventually post pictures about - but one of the days we took an extremely difficult long hike up the tetons starting in idaho and over the tetons ending in wyoming! - it was a long very fun hike-after it was over - anyhow part of hike did not have a trail we were leaving one trail and trying to connect with another trail - well it was snowy and steep and i was freaking out that we were going to be the idiot hikers that would be on the news the next day because we had died because we had left the trail- at one point we came to a ridge that dropped off - so we hiked over to another ridge - and as we were walking over to the other ridge i said a prayer just asking that please let us be able to go down safely and could i please just have a miracle- because i did not want to freeze on the mountain or die trying to go down something that wasn't safe - anyhow so i say my prayer and i look up and my brother in law is at the edge and it looks like he is waving at someone -

Well i come over to the edge and there is this old man coming up what we are trying to go down - anyhow i couldn't believe that my prayers were answered! and not just that we could go down but that someone had been sent to help us- tim - that was the mans name- had come from jennys lake - which is where we were trying to go - anyhow he told us he had been hiking this way for 20 years and had never seen anyone come this way before and that he must have be inspired to come today - which i totally agreed with

anyhow it may seem silly that i prayed for a miracle because really the shape or steepness of the trail wasn't going to change but i still just can't believe that Heavenly Father knew i would say that prayer and so he inspired someone to get out of bed, pack a backpack, and then go on a hike - just so that my prayers could be answered! it reminded me that we are all important and the smallest prayers -if they are important to us - can be answered

We have been trying to have a second child and it just doesn't look like it is in the stars for us and so sometimes it seems that my prayers are just hitting the ceiling - but i couldn't believe the love that i felt from above - that told me my prayers are being answered when they can - i loved our vacation and will always have good memories but this will always be something i remember and the best part of my trip - knowing that my simple prayer was answered in such a big way

it was quiet too long. . .

Yes - gracie tried to turn herself purple - luckily it was washable! - and yes when i gave her a bath it turned the water purple- funny kid

alphabet art

Thanks to my neighbor kim who found this cute book called alphabet art - gracie and i started doing it to try and help with learning her letters - anyhow it is super fun and she loves playing with paint and glue and all sorts of fun things - and hopefully in the end it will help her learn her letters! this picture above wasn't a letter but they were brazil carnival masks which we made in honor of alex living in brazil for two years! This was the letter E and it looks more like a butterfly than an elephant but that is what it is suppose to be - it was also fun because we crushed up egg shells and glued them to our letter E - which gracie loved being destructive and ben couldn't figure out why there were egg shells all over the house that day!

D as in duck - this one kind of turned out - gracie is actually pretty good and does most of the cutting herself!

This is a cat for the letter C and gracie was so funny - she named it suzy and would make it do tricks and make me pet it and give it food - to her suzy was a real pet!

This was suppose to be a butterfly - and i never got a picture of the end result because i couldn't believe it but gracie called me in later and anyhow she had drawn a picture of mom- as featured below - it was so cute - and i didn't know she was old enough to draw people! i love it! i think this will be one of my favorite pictures ever - her first picture of mom :)

you can tell we do this in the morning - because gracie is always in her pajamas and her hair is crazy - maybe i should start getting ready first and then doing the crafts so that we get some better looking pictures hahahah

scissors & markers

Gracie loves scissors- what kid doesn't - anyhow her favorite thing to do is cut paper into teeny tiny bits and then scatter them all over the house - it is great fun trying to pick it up - i was nervous at first about letting her use scissors but i threatened her life and gave her examples of all the horrible things that would fall upon her if she should ever cut anything other than the paper i gave her - luckily she has listened quite well - so that is nice -

Markers - another item that moms are afraid of and kids can't get enough of! anyhow i just loved that i came into the kitchen and gracie is laying on the table with her legs on the window just hanging out

Firepit

We love going to the Johnsons and playing around the firepit- there is always stuff to make smores, hotdogs and this time layne made everyone banana boat things - which looked good! anyhow we love it - ben gets to play with fire, gracie gets sugar, and i get to smell like campfire smoke - which are all fun things! anyhow so thank you Johnsons!

This is as close as i let gracie get to the fire to roast her marshmellows - if you notice you can't even see the fire - i always laugh because so far she hasn't really picked up on the fact that everyone else has hot marshmellows and she doesn't

Father & Sons

Well yes Ben took gracie to father and sons - because really if he had to wait until he a son to go - it would be a really long wait - anyhow gracie loved it - it helps that all of her friends are boys so it was so cute watching friday afternoon as all the boys are out running around like crazy so excited and the dads are making trip after trip to the car and the moms just have this look of joy on their face because finally they will get a break! it made me laugh! but i was productive- while they were gone i stayed up all night and painted the kitchen yellow and then slept in- it was pure joy- anyhow ben said gracie just loved every second of it - they slept in cabins so she got to sleep on the top bunk next to her friend gabe - which was very exciting - in fact i don't really know if her and gabe did anything by themselves - when i was going through the pictures it was hard to find ones with just gracie in it!

Gracie was helping to collect wood for the fire

MUD

Mud- it was a day of mud - it started out as a no dirt day- there is a place that the grass doesn't grow and so all the neighborhood kids dig and play in the dirt day - well the moms decided to have a no dirt day after many days of dirt being brought into the house - and so we got out the water- well dirt and water make mud - and once those kids realized that there was not a lot anyone could do about it - so it because a mud day and boy did these kids get dirty! Gracie loves the boys - uriah and gabe- gabe is the one hugging her and he always tells everyone he is going to marry gracie - and some days gracie agrees and some days she doesn't - it is pretty funny - but i do love that she has friends - it relieves some of the guilt i feel about not having a sibling for her to play with

It just made me laugh to see them dig a hole and then fill it up with water and they kept saying they were having a mud bath- which was basically correct - it was a mud bath- gracie was so dirty - before we went in the house i stripped her down and hosed her off - which lent itself to alot of hollering and running around the yard and me trying to chase with the hose and spray occassionally - and this was just a few days after my surgery so i wasn't very quick and so the boys dad came over and had to help me catch her and hold her down! well then i drug a naked sort of clean princess across the yard and up the stairs and she is sobbing for gabe and dumped her into the tub- luckily ben came home then because her hair was so caked with mud that it was going to take a lot of scrubbing and i couldn't bend over very long without hurting my incision and so ben got the fun job of scrubbing her down - which made for a lot more screaming - but since i wasn't involved really anymore i was laughing like crazy in the living room - trying to make myself stop because everytime i laughed it hurt me - anyhow it was a fun afternoon