first snow!

my first broncos game!

honey got tickets to the first broncos game of the year.  it was my first NFL game ever.  we invited the cottles and it was fun to have Sarah with me because she'd never been to a game either.  so we got to experience that first together.  the weather was amazing, the game was close at the end, and the broncos pulled off the win.  it was perfect.

on a funny side note... I found out our babysitter is even younger than I thought she was.  so I left my three children plus new baby at my house for six hours with just a ten year old babysitter.  HA!  don't worry.  Elizabeth and Andrew slept the entire time and Brady and Abigail were asleep within the hour.  but even if there'd been problems, I have full confidence, it all would have worked out just great.

driving home

a snowstorm decided to blow through the rockies on sunday/monday, so our drive home took several hours longer than anticipated.  but have no fear, there was never a dull moment.  

we'd been on the road about four minutes before everyone decided they needed to break out their zollinger fruit leather.  you can only see jon and sara's.  but you better believe daniel and i had ours out too.

i'd forgotten about the primary kids singing a mother's day song.  my first time ever to see a kid sing to me in sacrament meeting and i missed it!  glad christopher snuck this shot.  i love it.

we knew that colorado would be bad (i mean, it was snowing when we drove through silverthorne on friday so of course it would be terrible driving back during a snowstorm.  but we thought utah would be free and clear.  it was not.

the pictures weren't capturing how bad the weather was so i thought i'd take a little video.  but then the commentary in the car was just it's typical entertaining mess so i kept recording.  and no one knew it because they all had to keep their eyes on the road (even though we ended up being completely stopped for a full 45 minutes with just that one accident).  we'd been trying to scope out cars that would be helpful to us if we all got stranded.  we didn't have warm blankets but we had a lot of food that would come in handy if we needed to barter.

roads were really bad and semi's weren't handling it well at all.  especially because the wind was also really bad.

this wreck was insane.  two crazy long semis were somehow entangled together and both on their sides.

have you ever seen the underside of an enormous tractor trailer?  i hadn't.

look how long it was!

despite the accidents, the views were spectacular.

and the entertainment was top notch.  since everyone had to look at the road, we all relied on conversation and occasionally some jim gaffigan, brian regan, jeff foxworthy, and jerry seinfeld.  the running commentary about nothing in particular?  that's a little slice of heaven for me.

and then we dropped in elevation and got to drive the speed limit for a while through the no snow areas.  somewhere along our drive we got taco bell... and then later got subway.  both were delicious and neither had beef products smelling like fish... which is more than we can say for the wendy's in beaver that we stopped at on our drive down.

back to the snow.  we'd been checking weather and news and facebook and anything we could get ahold of to try to guess the weather before we actually hit it.  vail pass was closed for five or so hours earlier in the day but opened up by the time we stopped to get gas.  great news!  except that we were terrified it would close again and that we'd be stranded in vail all night.

luckily, the temperature in vail hovered right above freezing and the roads stayed open.

silverthorne, not so much.  the conditions were bad but jon did an excellent job driving and we all laughed and made speculations about the little sports cars that zoomed past us that we would find later down the road going a very humbled 30 sometime mph.

sara and i... happy to have arrived!

and then i drove home.  it took me an hour because the weather and roads kept getting worse as i drove south and parker was way worse than the city.  and i was driving chris's car which is terrible in the snow.  i texted chris when i pulled into the neighborhood.  he texted me five or so minutes later and asked if i'd turned around.

after at least 10 attempts to get up the driveway, i'd had to give up.  the snow on the driveway was so slick that my wheels would skid and then my car would slide back down.  i was soooo close.

but alas.  i had to park on the street and carry my rolling suitcase as i tiptoed up our driveway in my flipflops.

after 15 hours, i was home!  it was a great weekend.

One track mind

First, it is so cold here it is unbelievable. Thank goodness for auto correct because I'm 28 and I still don't know how to spell unbelievable. Anyways, it's been -10 [give or take] and for those of you that struggle with math, that's over 40 degrees below freezing. Normally cold weather here doesn't really phase me. Negative temps?  Well, my face is just in extreme pain anytime I'm outside. And even if I just open the door to my garage to throw something in the recycling bin. Yikes.

Anyways, ever since I gloriously got released from being young women president, I feel like my mind has been cleared and I'm able to find direction and focus again. And I have only wanted to focus on what is happening within the walls of my own home. I feel like I've been really sucking at being a mom and that I have so much ground to cover until I get to be a good wife, and right now, that's really all I want.  I have this crazy urge to get my house in order. I want things simplified and organized. I want my food storage 100% done and be knowledgable with my emergency preparedness. I want to create the daily family traditions that will strengthen my kids enough that I can send them to school and not be quite so horrendously terrified. At other times in my life I've had other focuses like creating and building friendships, succeeding at my job, or being really involved with community service. Not now. Just my little family of four and what we do within the walls of our home. 

I'm systematically going through our entire house and organizing it. Kitchen cupboards, bathroom drawers, every closet in the house, the basement, and anything else I find. It is empowering and refreshing. Tuesday night I read an article (and then lots more from the same blog) that my friend Jamie posted on Facebook. The article was written by a mom that got rid of 75% of her kids toys. Not to be malicious, but to simplify. It struck a chord with me. So guess what I was doing all day on Wednesday...

Turning this...

Into this...

Into this...

Into this...

The biggest shocker to me was that I packed up soooooo much stuff (some stuff went to the basement but most stuff is just in that guest room closet) and there is still so so so much stuff left. 

My focus was to pack up stuff we didn't intentionally bring into our home. This includes a lot of random hand me down toys, things from pre-marriage (I was shocked at the random pillows and stuffed animals and whatever that are from 10+ years ago), and free things from various events (like chick fil a watches, golf tournament stuff, animal calendars, cards, trinkets, stress balls, etc) that are never really played with, only scattered around when it comes time to clean up. I'm a hoarder at heart (and we have plenty of room to store crap) so I threw very little away... But I can't imagine that a month from now I'm going to be dying for Abigail to play with those cleap plastic toy glasses that break into literally five pieces every time you touch them and constantly need to be snapped back together. 

This morning, Abigail went to put something away in the playroom. I worried that she would be upset that I took so many toys away (basically anything with parts... I just left the big stuff, like her doll stuff, and took away things with a million small pieces, like the golf set and necklaces and Minnie hair stuff - although I left her Minnie blow dryer... Because it goes right next to mine in my bathroom drawer so we can do our hair at the same time, how cute is that?!) but instead, she couldn't stop saying "wow" over and over again as she looked around the room. And she told me I did a really great job cleaning up in there. Then she brought me a toy (that had always been in there) and asked if she could please play with it. I think she forgot it existed because there was too much junk cluttering the good quality toys. It really was just like the lady in the article described. Today, Abigail was happier and content for longer periods of time playing with her toys than what she previously had been. Also, we got out previously neglected puzzles. And even though I didn't clean anything up all day long, the mess was so minimal, that it took me literally 60 seconds to pop everything back to their correct places. Her toys are more accessible so she is more inclined to play with them. And they are less overwhelming so I'm not stressing about the mess, and Abigail isn't faced with a cleaning task that is to difficult for her age. 

So even though I wasn't as hardcore as the lady in the article (I don't feel like that's really necessary right now), it inspired me enough to take some action. http://www.livingwellspendingless.com/2012/09/14/why-i-took-all-my-kids-toys-away-why-they-wont-get-them-back/

And maybe I read a bunch of her other posts and was inspired by those too. Sometimes add comes with hyper focus in some areas, and right now, this is mine. 

Anyone have any other [related] inspirational blogs/articles I need to be reading? 

Ps- these kids are great.