"Mom, where is Jesus?"

I wish I had a pen and paper on hand every single minute of the day, or a memory that could remember all the cute, funny, smart things my kids say. I'm always trying to keep a mental note of them for the purpose of writting them down later at the end of the day, but it never happens and then I forget. This is to precious I could not forget.

Today as we were driving around driving errands, we passed a pretty ugly car accident site. The girls, specially Naomi could not help but notice and naturally asking questions. First she asked: Mom, what happened? Why are the firefighters here? I explained the best I could for a 4 year old to understand and some of it sounded like "There's been an accident and sometimes people get hurt and the firefighters are here to help those people" kind of thing, and then she asked,  "Mom, where is Jesus?" and I answered "Jesus is in Heaven" and she said "Jesus can help those people. He can heal them! Why is he not coming down?" ...and my eyes got all watery as I tried to think of the right words to say. What do you say? This was the best I could come up with: "If you say a prayer for those people Jesus can help heal them. Do you want to say a prayer?" and then she said "No". I think she was a little dissapointed with my answer. What kind of answer is that for someone who believes Jesus is real as to come down from Heaven to heal someone on the spot. I wish I could have that kind of faith. I hope I didn't just destroy it.

A silly old witch.

Just a while ago the girls and I were sitting at the table eating lunch, and this is what happend:

Naomi: Jocie do you want to hear a story?
Jocie: uh-hu!
Naomi: Once upon a time, there was a silly old witch that didn't eat healthy snacks so she died, but then she ate Jocie and she lived happily ever after and  she went to heaven and sat in Jesus chair. The end! That was a silly old witch!

Life with this two little ones is never boring.

My new running blog

I just started a new running blog for myself. I will be able to keep track of my running progress and other health and fitness related stuff separate from our family's blog. Here's the link if you are interested in hearing about running stuff.

"Group Hug!"

The missionaries came over for dinner yesterday and at the end, as usual, they shared a scripture and a prayer with us. At the end of the prayer Naomi yelled out "Group Hug!" Which left the missionaries a bit confused. Aaron and I broke down laughing and then had to explain to them that is actually what we do after our family prayers. The girls yell out "Group Hug!" and Aaron scoops them up and squeezes them hard. They girls love this and they look forward to family prayer and "Group Hugs." The missionaries, in the other hand, were happy to pass on the group hug.

Naomi's dance recital

Naomi loves to dance. In fact, I think she is very in touch with her art/creative instincts. I signed her up for a morning parent -child dance class when she was two, it gave us something to do. When she turned three she was advanced to the creative dance class group. Then we took a break from dancing this past summer until she asked me to take her back to dance class in the fall. We signed her up , this time during the evening since she started preschool this year. A few months ago I took the girls to see Ballet West during a ring around the roses performance of the Sleeping Beauty. Naomi was able to go on stage to learn some tricks from the experts themselves. She was very excited then. She asked for ballerina shoes this for Christmas. Yesterday she performed in her first dance recital. She counted down the days and of course was very excited. The choreography was everywhere and nowhere at the same time, but I believe everyone in the audience was able to see past and I'm sure everyone had as big a smile as the one on my face the whole time. Naomi was the cutest thing out there. I love my little dancing girl and I am so very proud of her and her courage to be up in that stage dancing her little heart out.

She saw my family seating up on the front row and ran to them in the middle of the performance.

She was very excited to see grandma.

During class the teacher told them to swing the bear around. This is her adding her little touch to "swinging" the bear around.

They loved the bubbles. She actually tried to catch some with her tongue.

Good toe pointing!

Naomi feels the music.

During the finale she jumped in and improvised a solo of her own.

during her solo

and more solo...

Done.

Feliz Navidad!

The cross training isn't going good. I have practically not made any of them. I have been running and will be taking Christmas week off and then resume running the week after Christmas kicking off our Marathon training schedule!

I am hoping Santa will register me for the race (wink-wink, nudge-nudge), then I will be a happy girl Christmas morning.

Anyway, enough of that!

We are enjoying this season I think more this year than the previous years since we started our little family. We are at a place where things seem to be a little bit less chaotic in a sense, well at least it feels that way for me being an off pregnancy-baby-caring year, no potty training or caring a diaper bag and a stroller around with me every where I go, yes Jocie gets to walk a lot and if she gets tired I can carry her for a few minutes, I rather this than carrying a stroller. I like to keep things simple, so simple that when my make up bag went missing I decided not to buy anymore make up, one less thing for me to worry about! Maybe when Naomi is dressing herself I will take back make up....by then I might be pregnant again.... so never mind. Same thing with my cell phone, after it magically disappeared and didn't show up for weeks I opted not to buy a new one and connected our land line instead, no calls while driving and no frantic searches for the cell phone because baby miss placed it for the hundred time.

Mmmm...how did I go off about that when I inteded for this to be a recap of our holiday season? I think I need to blog more often.

Anyway here's what we have been up to:



The girls get so excited to see snow fall and they can hardly wait to go outside and play. It takes for ever to dress them up , but it's worth it at the end they love it and have so much fun in it, makes me wish I was a kid again.



We set up our Christmas tree the morning after thansgiving. I wish I had taken more picture, but I was busy helping the girls, this was the part when Aaron stepped in.

We spent Thanksgiving with both our families. In the morning we went over to my parents and helped with the cooking and then headed over to Aaron's family's to help with the eating :)

This is Aaron's twin brother Joel. Jocie loved going around the room taking picture with everyone. She is such a poser. CHEESE!

This is Aaron's older brother. Jocie insited to take a picture with him too.

Here we are, the night after Thanksgiving at Temple Square for the lighting on of the Christmas lights. We rode trax and got there late and did not see them all go on at the same time, but it was nice anyway. The girls loved all the lights. Jocie kept pointing and saying "I see more, I see more!" that is lights.

And last but not least I took the girls for a visit with Santa. Naomi is so excited about the whole Santa deal this year. Aaron has taken advantage of that and has been bribing her with the whole naughty and nice list. He tells her he has his number and is going to call him when she is acting up, she cries uncontrollably. Aaron thinks it's funny, I think it's cruel. Anyway, we got there and Naomi went off about her Christmas list, Jocie did not know what to do, she wasn't so sure about sitting on his lap. I think she would have cried have I not jumped in to tell her he was going to bring her a new tea party set for Christmas. Still she wasn't sure. You can tell in this picture.

The girls are excited about Christmas morning. Naomi wants to bake cookies to leave for Santa. Aaron and I are excited about the tamales we get to make and eat! Haha! and of course ecxited to get to see our little ones on Christmas morning. I think Christmas gains it's magic back from when you were a kid after having your own children.

Hope you are all having a wonderful Season. Feliz Navidad!

Still working on it

Today for cross-training I walked, pushed the stroller with two very chunky babies in it. We walked for about 15 to our friend's house and then back for another 15 mins. There! Walking is a form of exercise and valid as cross-training. YAY!

Ran 4 miles on Thursday and tomorrow we'll be running 6 miles. Three more weeks and we start our Marathon training!

Motivation tactic

So I'm trying something new to stay commited and motivated to cross train on my days off from running. When I trained for my first 5K last year it helped me blogging about it here. It was kind of having virtual running buddies to be accountable to. This helped me get over the hump of making running into a habit, now I think I am passed that point and can say that waking up early on certain days out of the week to go running has turned into a routine. However, this is not the case when it comes to crosstraining. I've had a hard time stablishing a routine to do any type of exercise that is not running. Why? I don't know. Why would running in the dark and cold weather be more appealing to me than working out in the warmth and convinience of my own living room? I don't know. Well to make a long story short. I going to start blogging about it, this time on my own blog, and hopefully it will help me now like it did then.

Today is Monday, a crosstraining day and I did nothing. It would be nice to write off grocery shoping, cleaning and vaccuming, making dinner and a total of about 1 hr and 45 mins worth of driving as crosstraining. That's not to mention the melt down Jocie had today because she did not want to go down for a nap. I wonder how many calories I burned just there. Well all of those went down the drain when I ate that piece of brownie Aaron made for after FHE. Good news are I get to burn some of those tomorrow morning!

Anyway, Beth and I are getting closer to kicking off our Marathon trainning in just a few weeks! I'm excited!

What do you do to stay motivated on reaching your health/fitness goals?

Mama’s Holiday Wish List Meme

Mama’s Holiday Wish List Meme

TodaysMama and Provo Craft are giving away a sleighful of gifts this holiday season and to enter I’m sharing this meme with you.

1. What 5 items are on your holiday wish list this year?
-running gear
-treadmill
-a maid to clean my house
-new carpet
-new furniture
2. What is your favorite handmade gift you have received?
-pottery from my little brother
3. What handmade gift have you always wanted to tackle?
-anything that involves a sewing machine, because that would mean I'd have to learn how to use one and I always wanted to learn how to use one
4. What was the best Christmas gift you received as a child?
-a rainbow bright doll, I loved it!
5. What items are on your kid’s wish list this year?
-a barbie
-a bike
-and everything she sees in Nickelodeon's commercials
6. What is your favorite holiday food?
-tamales!
7. What will you be hand-crafting for the holidays?
-mmm...probably nothing
8. What is your favorite holiday movie?
-anything we can go see on Christmas day
9. Favorite holiday song?
- Oh Holy night
10. Favorite holiday pastime?
-sledding and just being with the family

To enter to win all these cool prizes below simply answer the questions in this meme, make sure to post links back to TodaysMama.com and Provo Craft (use this link: http://bit.ly/4ikY3c ) and tag your friends!

Update

I decided it's time for an update of our little family.

Let's start with Jocie.

Jocie is now 2! It's wonderful seeing her grow and having her little personality come out even more with each day that passes by. She is such a tender-sweet little girl. Saying thank you for every little thing and I love you for no reason goes to show what a beautiful-sweet little thing she is. We are enjoying some one on one time with each other now that big sister is off to preschool. I'm not sure where Jocie stands on this matter. Sometimes it seems like she needs her big sister in order to thrive, be confident and outgoing, which I'm not sure I like. I've also seen her more relaxed and better behaved when we go to the store for example, that I like. She continues to be my little helper, she is Tanks official feeder. During our visit to Mexico this summer she learned the value of a coin; you take your money to the store and exchange it for candy. Since then she is in the look out for money. I have taken advantage of her new discovery and have started to pay them for doing little things to help me. She is all about money right now. She loves it and walks around collecting every coin she finds to later put it in her little peanut butter container that I turned into a piggy bank. She is doing great adding new words to her growing vocabulary, but I'm afraid she is not right there with most of the kids her age, just like Naomi was. I have decided that learning two languages at the same has got to be the reason. I'm a little bit less worried this time, because I know she will pick up when I least expect it. Soon she will be rumbling away with all sort of words both in English and Spanish. Jocie loves fashion and everything girlie, among her favorite things are; lipstick and makeup, high hill shoes, tu-tus (can't forget the tu-tu) every accessory imaginable (purses, hats, sunglasses, bracelets, necklaces, you get the idea). She also has many dolls and stuffed animals which are all her babies, even an imaginary one that she carries around in her cupped hands. Her favorite game to play "Mami" and I'm her baby. She is happy if we call her "Mami" all day long, sometimes if we forget she will remind us "I'm not baby, I'm mami!" We love our sweet spirited little girl.

Naomi.

Naomi is now 4 years old! And started Preschool this year. She was so ready, that the first day of school when we pulled up to the curb she quickly unbuckled her seat belt and pushed the door open and said "OK mom I love you, bye!" funny thing. Of course I informed her that I would be walking her to the classroom. She came in eager to say hi to everyone and introducing herself, telling them that her name was Naomi and she was three years old (she was then). A kid started crying, for his mommy, and I was so moved, but not impressed, to see that Naomi grabbed a kleenex walked over to the little boy , put her hand on his shoulder and said "It's ok, here!" Apparently that little boy made a big impression on her since the first day of school, she comes home talking about him almost every day. I walked out of the classroom on my first born's first day of school thinking "That wasn't bad at all" and with the feeling that she would be OK, and I would too.
She learned to write her name within the first couple of weeks of school after noticing a few kids that would sign their own names in the sign in and out sheets. She showed interest in it and she quickly learned how to write her name almost by herself. She knew how to spell it and read it and I had tried to get her to write it before but she was simply not interested, until then.
One day she came home informing me that she could no longer eat peanut butter, because a kid at school was allergic to it and so was she. There's another kid who is allergic to chocolate but she won't say anything about that. Smart girl! Up until this day, she won't eat peanut butter. She'll get over it.

Aaron

Aaron is working hard to provide for his three girls. He took this semester off from school due to the overload of work at his workplace. Which turned out to be a good idea. I don't know how he would have been able to pull this semester and numerous all nighters at work at the same time. He also has been working in the room we recently added to expand our home. He has done a lot of it with the help of my dad. I think it should be ready by the end of this week. We'll moved the girls into their new roomie bedroom and he will have his own office at home, all along with a TV and XBOX! Lucky!

Me

I'm still running. Slowed down for a little bit and slowly coming back to it. I found a running buddy! Whom I am so thankful for and who is willing to be crazy with me and wake up at 6 am to go running in the cold and dark. We are both excited to start our first Marathon training with in the next few weeks! Yes, running a Marathon excites me! Go figure! I watched the New York Marathon women's winner cross the finish line on TV and I started crying, haha!
I'm also taking piano lessons from a Sweet Service Missionary at church. I think I am doing good. I have recently learned that a good idea for food poisoning anyone or cleansing your colon is making them a pie out of fallen apples. Yeah! What was I thinking!? Some were fresh from the tree, but so many had fallen that only a few were within reach, so I thought "What the heck! I'm going to cook them at 400 F. A little dirt never hurt anyone" I was wrong. Anyway, I learned a good lesson that took poisoning my family and my neighbor. Ha!

Life is good. Sometimes a little bumpy, but still good.