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Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Life is a Gift

Lately I've been thinking about what really matters.

Like the cherry blossoms, I always think of my mission at Temple Square, where I enjoyed two Springs.  If you've never seen the Cherry Blossoms well they are gloriously beautiful but dissapear within a weeks time, usually by some snow or a gust of wind.  They really help me see the importance of this life.  Life is so temporary!  This pic really does not do it justice. 













 So I stole these form this blog, thanks Sister Beller!

I am able to choose to do whatever I want with my minutes, hours, years, my life.  My life, that was given to me by God.  I want to meet Him face to face at the end of my life with a clear conscience, I know I will fail and that's why it's so important to rely on Christ, but man we have to try our hardest to learn, to grow, to really mean it!

The biggest things I really want out of life:
my family
to know God better than I did before I left His presence to come to Earth, feeling pretty far as of late
to love and serve all mankind

I think that's it, pretty simple but not so simple at the same time.

I think it's interesting how little things in our lives can become all consuming and block out what really matters.  Part of me does this on purpose because if I were to overcome this thing that I rather enjoy and isn't really bad(it's just not taking me to my goals), I'm afraid of what I might be hit with.

I want to live the "picture perfect" life, have a beautiful family, life in a beautiful home, have our kids bring their families to see us, serve more missions.   I'm afraid of what I will face, but I know if God brings you to it, He will get you through it.  I feel like our greatest trials are never what you expect though.  They usually sneak up on you until you realize what you are being tempted with or doing is not what you want to be doing!  Anyway I'm glad I've had some time to reevaluate. 


Yep that's me as a missionary!

Saturday, April 14, 2012

9 months/Easter

Hudson turned the big 9 months a few weeks ago.  We took him in for his 9 month check up and he has dropped from the 95% to the 85% in everything but his head.  He has become a very proficient crawler and I blame this and his bout with a virus (it was RSV but it never got serious) to his decline in growth.  Hudson figured out his gag reflex during his battle with the virus, and we found that he indeed inherited his dad's throwing up gene.  They both make a loud yelling sound before they toss their cookies.  After that Hudson only nursed for 2 weeks. 

He now pulls himself up on EVERYTHING and even lets go sometimes.  He uses his truck as a walker and anything else he can slide along with him like hampers and chairs.  He says Dada a lot and we are pretty sure he knows who it is.  He's even said up a couple times in order to get up on the couch with us.  That's about it though.  He also loves to hold things while he crawls, he always has, however he found some cylinder blocks and tried to crawl on the hardwood floor.  Whenever he crawled with the pressure on his fingers from the blocks he would make this panicked cry and just couldn't figure out what was causing the pain but wanted me to remove it.  Finally before bedtime he figured it out and now holds them another way while he crawls.  He also was flapping some hangers yesterday and hitting himself in the face and doing the same panicked cry.  However, when I took them away he cried even harder.  They disappeared during nap time.

Hudson is back to eating with full force, he really loves eating what we are eating, so I always try to  give him a pancake or piece of bread.  Still no teeth but I think I see one barely poking through on the bottom.  We discovered Hudson LOVES dogs.  He laughs his head off whenever he sees one.  He particularly loves big dogs and will crawl right over to them and grab their ears and paws.  It is so tempting to get him one.  The above photo was his first encounter with dogs, Bella.

While on our trip out to Utah for Easter we discovered Hudson can go up and down stairs (first attempt ever), however sometimes he tries to go face first down so watch out!

This is what our roadtrip looked like


yes TJ is wearing my sunglasses shhh!



This is what Springville looks like this time of year
 Some cousin time, yes Hudson is 10 months younger than his cousin Vince an weighs about 2 pounds less.  Vince who was a good sharer did not take this well and proceeded to take away all of Hudson's toys!

 The woman of the hour Lydia Liberty was blessed in a dress that was my moms.


Next we headed up to Salt Lake to see TJ's side of the fam
 we checked out the new city creek center, (I was so looking forward to living there when that finished:-()  You  may remember me posting this video, I couldn't find my post about it, it may have been on an older blog, that's how long I've been waiting, since my single days.  It was super nice!!  I ended up with 3 new shirts so exciting!
 I missed photos of most of our fam whoops!
 The morning we were packing up I found this:
Oh yes I neglected to mention that if there weren't other children around Hudson developed separation anxiety and shyeness, it was cute but so unlike Mr Socialpants (normally I have strangers trying to hold my child as Hudson draws them in with his captivating smile and his twinkling eye contact).  When we walked into TJ's childhood home it started.  However the day we left he was chasing TJ's dad around everywhere, it was so cute!

In more recent news:
Last night I slept for 12 hours it was AMAZING well I did wake up to brush my teeth and feed Hudson, but for once in the past year my brain doesn't feel foggy.  I think I am going to bed at 7:30 everynight!

I'm also the captain of my Ragnar Colorado team and running a 12 miler Mountain to Valley race here in June!
In reading news:
I read part of this memoir at my mother-in-laws:

Finally got this one from the library:
One of my besties lened me this one:
and my sister lended me this one:
because I seem to like books that are made into movies, I promise I have a list of deeper stuff but it will take me a few weeks to get to it!
WTYL!
❤Liz


Monday, March 26, 2012

Running Nirvana!


Today was a most perfect day! TJ, Hudson, and I ran over to the pool for some swimming, obviously, well actually mostly to play with Hudson in the water and let him kick his little legs around! After we rolled into the supposed best burger place Charcoal Burger, but the line was so long we decided to try tomorrow. I did a quick grocery run, sans baby, thank you dear husband.

When I got home he even had little Huds asleep, so I went for a 5 mile run, somewhere around mile 4 this euphoric tingling took over my body, every piece of negative energy released, I felt like throwing my hands up in the air and singing, this almost happened once before on the treadmill last month but it was more of a dizzy feeling, this was amazing. I have been a runner for 23 years if you count the mile run in elementary school and I feel like I hit running Nirvana!
I would like to thanks Saucony for their tanks that don't ride up and hold where they need to hold all while being cute, lululemon for preventing chafing, and also looking great, asics for shoes that feel like trampolines and squishy pillows. Most of all I would like to thank my husband for supporting me with hours of running every week and myself for always getting out there to run, through all weather conditions (including the heinous wind today) all body conditions (pregnancy, sickness, chubbiness, tiredness) and pushing myself to this point! Oh yes I can't forget my legs, I couldn't do it with out you two tough beauties!

The day was topped off with dinner with friends and seeing the stars clear and bright as well as some deer just trotting along because we live in their home, not the other way around.

In other family news, we butchered Hudson's hair, it's getting better, TJ worked on it a little more today. Hudson also found this golf ball in the bottom of TJ's closet, he tosses it around and giggles, cries when he can't get to where he batted it to, sucks on it, and never lets go of it, it's so cute!

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Momma!

Hudson is working really hard to say momma as can be noticed in the next couple videos, that is if I can get them to post. I don' t know if it's our internet connection or blogger. Be sure to watch his eyebrow for his first response!




I was just sitting down thinking, sigh, finally a moment of relaxation, when I hear a happy "dada" from you can guess who's (if you watched the video) room.

Big news of the hour, TJ got his promotion!!! We are so happy about this and feel so blessed. However, once he starts, no vacation for a year. Well got to go enjoy!

Sunday, March 11, 2012

one more vid

Feb 13th, 2011 Hudson crawling/playing drum

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Blah, blah, blah

Lately Hudson has been saying alot of this "Blah, blah, blah, Dada Dada ILuvDada, and Googoogaga. Yes I know he doesn't understand what he is saying but he is so proud of himself to be able to communicate with us, and we love to hear his opinion on things. He's also been eating pretty much everything, he loves peach yobaby yogurt, and meat ground up of course, he's not so sure about Cheerios, but he loves bread and his rice cereal and fruits and vegis of course. He can feed himself those portable applesauces and has a conniption of excitement whenever he finds one in his diaper bag, it's 100% apples but sometimes I wonder with the way he loves them.

TJ has about 2 months left till he gets his bachelors and is quickly becoming the next man in line for his promotion. We moved out here because the wait was short. They had 7 open positions, they filled 5, 1 has since decided to move, the next 1 down didn't accept, and TJ has been told he has a spot but they aren't sure when they will start training. It's actually working out quite nicely. TJ can do his homework, I can go running when it's above 10 degrees outside, we are happy.

I've been running up a storm, you probably already know that but it's something that I have been seeing success with and it motivates me to push harder everyday, it's only Tuesday and I've already run 20 miles in 2 days, tonight I went for a Zumba class with some friends, another friend teaches it, the treadmill upstairs was calling my name, I think I'm ADDICTED to running, gross I know, but it feels so good!!! I had to remind myself that I was there for social Zumba time, not running. Besides that I know just about every house on the market and it's current status and price in the valley, I should go into real estate, but really if I were to pick anything besides being a wife and mom right now, I think I would teach fitness classes. Like 1 night a week, or maybe a class a day, I'm not sure. Well my eyes are drooping shut!