Zane turned 6!

In the morning he woke up to balloon messages from each of the family. We took him to go laser tagging that evening with his cousins and I had one of the funnest times EVER. Found out I can be pretty competitive when it's in a fun environment. And the girls totally beat the boys!

Zane always draws pictures of me and him like this so I drew one back for him.

Ken drew this one

Vivian drew the difference between 5 yr old Zane (baby) and 6 yr old Zane, cute

Uncle Mike and Aunt Erin sent him Perry the Platyplus for his bday, just what he wanted!

Birthday crown from school!

about to go lasertagging!



Told you girls beat the boys big time!

Pacman decorations



Opening presents



Win a free portrait session

Because last time I won one too, why not try this time:

Go to this page TODAY and enter to win:

http://heatherannette.com/photoblog/?p=598

Hopefully you're not too late, and hopefully I win! (crossing fingers)

Words to live by

So last year I created this post:

http://islandgirlinutah.blogspot.com/2011/01/one-of-those-stupid-words.html

It was my word of the year I was going to work on, and that word was COMPLETE....

How'd it go? Alright? One of my goals was to get more out of my reading, and I've taken to writing notes about the books I've read, not being afraid to mark them up with my favorite passages, and writing in between the lines what I liked.  I was also going to try to complete my projects, and that sort of went ok. The last thing I was going to do was to be complete in my relationships. I've been working on that too. But, in hindsight, I probably should have reminded myself of this goal a little bit more.

That's why this New Year, I am going to be hanging up a reminder to myself of my new word, and guess what it is? I asked Keilani to guess what it was, and I was surprised that she knew it right away. I guess she's around me a lot to know what matters to me, and it is CLEAN!!!!

I want the following in my life:

1. A CLEAN home
2. A CLEAN heart
3. A CLEAN spirit
4. A CLEAN body
5. A CLEAN mind

That encompasses a way of life, a pathway of making the right choices to keep my body clean, to keep my mind clean, my heart, and my home. To be doing the things to keep my spirit clean. When I say clean, I mean pure and not contaminated with the worlds junk that gets in all of us. Clean and pure.

So, does anyone have any good quotes for me to use to remember my goal? I plan on putting it up as a wall quote once I find the perfect one that embodies all of this. What about you, what one word would you use to describe your goals for the New Year?

End of the Year book Report

Time for my recap of all the books I've read the second half of the year. I do this as much for myself as for you. I like to look back and reflect on what I've just read. I saw a recent post on Facebook today that I shared. It's a quote by W.H. Auden, "A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us." Those are my favorite books, ones that speak to my soul and heart.

Another big thing I noticed as I was typing this was, "You are what you read". In September I read two books about suicide. Dear Everybody and 13 Reasons Why. Both these books looked at it from an interesting perspective, from letters written from those that killed themselves for those still living.  I've always felt this drive to document my life and my stories for my posterity in case anything should happen to me, so this method sparked my interest. BUT, I found myself wondering if like the characters, I should write a letter to each of my family members and people in my life and not just in case anything should happen to me, but more as an insurance in case I decided I wanted to commit suicide myself. The choice would be all that much easier to make because you had prepared things in advance for your words to be left behind. I even told Ken I felt like I was being HAUNTED by the thought of suicide, and I didn't grasp and get over it until mid November, so it lasted about 6 weeks.

It's only looking back at this list now that I realized what I had done. By reading these books I had sparked the idea in my head, which grasped on to whatever weaknesses I had, and toyed around with them for weeks.  Luckily during that time I was also reading some positive psychology books and my favorite book of the year, Imagine a women in love with herself, with meditations for women. Now THAT book was pure poetry. I don't think I regret reading the two books on suicide, but from here on out I will make sure to watch the feelings I have after reading a book and make sure I am not being influenced for the negative by what I just read. (Another reason I stopped reading novels like The Pilots Wife with story lines of men who commit adultery. As if I needed to be mad at my husband because some OTHER fictitious man couldn't be faithful)

So here goes using the Goodreads rating system:

1star: Didn't like it
2 stars: It was ok
3 stars: Liked it
4 stars: Really liked it
5 stars: Loved it

August:
A Lover's Dictionary: A Novel by David Levithan   4 stars
Sum: 40 Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman   5 stars
Mother Wove the Morning: A One woman play by Carol Lynn Pearson   4 stars
Schooled by Michael Korman   4 stars

September:
Dear Everybody by Michael Kimball   4 stars
My Secret: A PostSecret Book by Frank Warren   2 stars
13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher 3 stars
The Power of a Woman's Words by Sharon Jaynes   4 stars
The Year of Fog  by Michelle Richmond 4 stars
The Reader by Bernhard Schlink   3 stars

October:
Secrets of the Heart by Khalil Gibran   4 stars
The Believing Brain by Michael Shermer   4 stars
Imagine a Woman in Love with herself by Patricia Lynn Reilly 5 stars

November:
The Space Between Us by Thrity Umrigar   5 stars
Authentic Happiness by Martin Seligman    5 stars
The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky   5 stars
The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels by Ree Drummond   5 stars
For Men Only: A Straightforward Guide to the Inner Lives of Women by Shaunti Feldhhan  5 stars

December
Why do Men Have Nipples by Mark Leyner   2 stars
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan by Lisa See   4 stars
Falling Leaves by Adeline Yen Mah   4 stars
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex   2 stars

Christmas Eve/Day

We always act out the nativity scene. Guess what Vivian is? An angel of course

 Let's see, Natasha is the donkey that Maeva is then riding on. Kalel was Joseph, Zane there in the brown shirt in the front is a camel, and Tane is his wise man. Keilani I think is a shepherdess???

The kids exchanged handmade white elephant gifts.

Grandma got them all the usual pj's plus some cute pillowcases

There was the cutest little note in there about how much their Grandma and Grandpa love them and even though they can't always see them, to look inside the pillow and look at the hearts to remind them they are loved each time they lay their heads down on their pillows.

Handstitched of course.

                                                                       

Me in all my glory.

and my baking skills, I made the crescent rolls this time.

My father requested there be Poisson Cru (raw fish) for dinner with our turkey.

Our tree full of gifts from aunts and uncles and family.

My handsome husband.

I love how the younger kids are, the easier they are to please with their gifts.

This was my favorite thing I made for Ken, it's a photo cube for him to take to work with each of the kids when they were babies and how they are now all grown up, this one's Natasha and Kalel

and Keilani and Vivian.

And Bugaboo!

Ken and his daddy love. I 'm not done with this gift, I need to trim the pages down, add their names and some sort of quote. Family is what matters in the long run, isn't it?

 I hope your family had a Merry Christmas too! and a Happy New Year to everyone!