My brilliant sister

I just got back from listening to my sister, Erin Holmes, speak at Women's Conference. I am so impressed by her. First of all, who gets asked to speak at Women's Conference? Incredible women like Erin. Erin currently supports her family as a professor at BYU in the School of Family Life. She was asked to speak on "Finding Joy in Motherhood." As you can imagine, it was a very popular session at the conference. She did a beautiful job! She expressed the inadequacies we all too often feel as mothers and reminded each of us that our Heavenly Father will help increase our capacity to see the nobility of our efforts and help us feel joy. One of the points that really stuck out to me from Erin's message was that to find something we must look for it. We must SEEK joy. Often that means we must pray and trust that our Heavenly Father will help us. She shared a beautiful quote from Elder and Sister Hafen, "Our sorrows and sacrifices carve and stretch the caverns of feeling within our own hearts and as these caverns are enlarged they expand our soul's capacity for joy." It was such an incredible talk. You really should all watch it when it is rebroadcast on KBYU or find it on byutv.org later on. I'll end this post with another quote Erin shared from Elder Holland:

"Rely on Him. Rely on Him heavily. Rely on him forever. And "press forward with a steadfastness in Christ, having a perfect brightness of hope." You are doing God's work. You are doing it wonderfully well. He is blessing you and He will bless you, even-no, especially-when your days and your nights may be the most challenging. Like the woman who anonymously, meekly, perhaps even with hestation and some embarrassment, fought her way through the crowd just to touch the hem of the Master's garment, so Christ will say to the women who worry and wonder and sometimes weep over their responsibilities as mothers, "Daughter, be of good comfort; thy faith hath made thee whole." And it will make your children whole as well."

Ella update

Ella is such a cute little stink. She has her second top tooth coming in right now and it looks like at least 2 more are coming soon. I wish teething didn't bother her so much. Her newest discovery is the light switch by her crib. We'll be rearranging her room soon (I didn't think about that when I set up the nursery).

Ella loves spaghetti! She is still a very finicky eater. She used to love grapes and strawberries, but now she has decided not to even try them. Hopefully she gets over that soon. She likes peas, but those are the only vegetable she eats consistently. She signs that she wants crackers all day long. We try not to give her more than a few each day, except for during church (we use any tricks we can to keep her happy during those three long hours.) She loves yogurt, pears, cheese, mandarin oranges, wheat bread (she still refuses to eat white, but I don't mind), pasta, beans, and ANY kind of treat (she is definitely my daughter).

Ella is walking! It took her awhile, but within the past few days she's started walking most of the time. While transitioning into walking she started doing the bear walk- keeping her legs straight and sticking her bum up in the air. She still does this sometimes (especially while wearing dresses.) I can see more of her independent spirit coming out with this new milestone. I would usually categorize Ella as a clingy baby, but now she doesn't even want to hold my finger when she is walking. I'm sure this independence will continue to get stronger, but in most instances she's still a mama's girl who LOVES to give kisses and snuggle.

date night

GO JAZZ!

what works for you?

This year I've been really lucky that my job has given me great exercise. I didn't know if it would, but it has been awesome (I've actually lost almost 6 lbs. from my pre-pregnancy weight.) Now that I'm quitting, I'm trying to figure out what I should do to ensure that I get exercise. Before I had Ella I had a gym pass and loved it. I'm not sure if that would be the best option for me now though becasue I don't know when I would go. Gustavo leaves for work at about 5:30 in the morning so there is no way I can go before he leaves. I could go at night after putting Ella to bed, but I don't know if I really would because if I have time I know that I'd love to spend it with Gustavo. I thought about buying a jogging stroller, but Ella hates strollers. I also thought about buying an elliptical for the house because that is the machine I always use at the gym and I love running. We don't really have space, but we could make some right? Well, I've just been thinking about my options and want to know what works for you? How do you other mamas get your exercise? I know all of our schedules and responsibilities are different, but I'd love to hear how you do it so I have more ideas!

First Haircut

Over spring break we took Ella to get her first haircut.

We were worried Ella would be sad, but she did great!
In fact, she started to dance when the blow drier was on.
Bye bye mullet (and pig tails unfortunately).
Hello cute haircut!

latest project

We've wanted to finish our third bedroom for a long time. In February we finally did! This time we were lazy and decided to hire other people to do most of the work. We only painted and put in the baseboards.
I made this headboard (thanks for the tutorial Annie). As you can see, it isn't finished yet, but it will be soon.

Deployment

As most of you know Gustavo was deployed for 5 weeks and came home April 2nd. It has been SO nice having him home. Some of you may have imagined him in the middle east or in some depressing situation. I know that I don't typically think of paradise and deployment being simultanious, but in his case it was. He was deployed with Lance and Paul who are 2 of his good friends from work.

This is the view from right outside of his hotel room. The hotel has a private beach.

He went to the beach almost every day.

He got scuba certified before leaving and was able to go diving over 20 times while he was gone.

He saw all sorts of incredible fish. I'll post more pictures of what he saw later.

open house

We had an open house today. No one came. I feel bad for our realtor because he put a lot of work into advertising for it. I'm not sad though because our realtor owns a window cleaning business (who knew?) and cleaned our windows while he waited for people to come. They look great!

Plus, it just motivated me to clean out some closets and do some deeper cleaning.

funny stuff

As a teacher kids tell me funny things all of the time. I never remember to write things down though. One of these days I am going to post the funny things I can still remember my first graders saying, but for now I am just going to write the comments that stick out from this year.

Yesterday I was asking a class what they need to do to be healthy. Of course most students in other classes answered the way I expected: eat fruits and vegetables, drink lots of water, exercise, etc. This little first grader raised his hand excitedly and responded, "Avoid pornography." Not what I expected, but definitely a good thing.

The first day of school I asked students what PE is. One girl raised her hand and while smiling at me said, "The teacher is nice." I said thanks although I wasn't sure if she was referring to me and she wasn't answering my question. Sure enough 20 minutes later while I was teaching the students our warm up routine she raised her hand and in an aggravated voice asked, "Where is Mrs. Smith?" She was the PE teacher last year.

As a class of first graders was finishing up their PE session I overheard a student say in an exhausted tone, "I'm sweating worse than my dad."

While we were doing a simple basketball shooting drill one of the sixth graders said to me, "Let's face it Mrs. Gonzalez, I'm a video game kid not a sports kid."

bad news

The buyers fell through. We are back to square one.