Wordless now — But just you wait until you hear the story behind it.
Ooooooooooh, man, is it a good one. So good, it’s hard to imagine doing justice to it in the written word. So good I can’t wait to try. So good it inspired this facebook group, although it’s too big to share just on the wall there. So good…
Nevermind. I’ll stop. This is supposed to be wordless, you know. (ha!)
PS: Facebook junkies – go join my group! And share something on it! You know you want to!
Guess who’s two!
We love our little man. Two is going to be a great age for this one.
It’s amazing to watch another “language boom” stage. He’s been piecing little sentences together lately, and getting more and more adventurous with words. “I yike toast” was the first of many surprising little phrases.
I digress. Today we invited all the family nearby to come on over for dinner, cake, and -sorry- no ice cream. With… let’s do a head count shall we? Our family + kids. Two of John’s siblings and their 4 kids each. My parents & Grams, his parents, my sister, brother & girlfriend… Yeah. It was a house full. I think the oldest of the 12 kids here was about 10, and most were under 6. (LOUD!) Man, I love it when we all get together. I love it even more, though, during the summer when the kids all play outside. 
The dragon cake was a big hit. (Family Fun has lovely birthday cake recipes, by the way.) I made it during Eagle’s nap today, was still decorating it with the big kids when he got up, and he was totally enamored. He kept saying, “My daggy fie!” (which of course means “My awesome dragon is going to fly!”) Doodle only sneezed right on it twice in the process of helping decorate it, and only some of those fruit snacks were taste-tested by the birthday boy.
I thought it would be awesome to set up Doodle’s playmobile knights around it, but Doodle would have nothing to do with it. You just never know with him what’s going to be fun and what’s going to be a no go. I had to sneak these here to satisfy my own creativity. (Shh! Don’t tell him!) Haha! I win!
Forgive me for making a big deal out of this cake. I haven’t made a birthday cake since Doodle’s pirate chest, when he turned (cough cough) three. Yyyyyyyyyeah. Slacker mom.
Well, John is doing the huge family dinner mess clean up all on his own… So… I should probably get my duff up off the couch and help, what do you think?
(not even half the group!)
(Your hair looked fab tonight, Mom, even if this picture did get shmeared.)
Thanks for coming to EveryoneWhoCame, and you were missed, AllWhoCouldNotBeHere.
Hey, Cinderella - I'm going to write about love on my blog today. What do you love?
Valentine's Day. I also like coloring. And my ring pop.
Doodle, what do you love?
My candy necklace, and my wing pop.
Valentine's Candy is so fun, isn't it! But I was thinking of *any* day, not just today. What do you love?
Oh. I love making Fweedom smile.
If Eagle wasn’t napping at the moment, I’m sure he’d tell us he loves his binkies – all 10 of them – taking naps, eating eggs, and being a big brother.
Freedom loves… Let me ask him. A full tummy, sleeping with mommy, learning to use his hands, and getting attention from his big siblings – or anyone else willing to smile big smiles and make silly sounds.
It’s fun having little kids around. I just love love love them, especially when they aren’t stretching me beyond my boundaries of patience and long-suffering. What would motherhood be if not for stretch-marks, though?
And.
I hope it almost goes without saying. I hope you and the rest of the world know it already. I hope the amazing guy I married would doubt the rising and setting of the sun and the come and go of the tides before he would doubt that
Thanks for kneeling in the mud to propose to me on the most romantic Valentine’s Day I’ve ever had. It was a *very* nice touch.
… and for not getting the least bit upset when I lost the ring two weeks later.
Oops.
(Note to self: Never take off your ring to wash your hands, even if the soap is the sandy, scrubby kind like they used in ancient of days elementary schools. If you do, don’t leave it on the counter of a restroom at a the restaurant Islands. If you do, be sure to tell the shifty-eyed customer who comes in after you, not to steal it. If you come back to said counter about 8 minutes later, and find the ring mysteriously gone… well… Better to lose the ring than the guy!)
He loves his family. I love that he acts like someone who loves his family.
He loves seeing great things happen in the lives of the folks at church. That’s his favorite thing about being Bishop.
He loves… Hm… the thoughtfulness of people in our ward. (2nd-favorite thing about being Bishop. Check out the Valentines the Young Women left on our door this week!)
And a clean, made bed. Lasagna. Outer Space. Going fast. Eagle saying, “‘nuggle!”
We’re a happy, loving bunch here in Smithtopia, and hope you have a Happy Valentine’s Day!
- Cinderella had another thing to add to her list.
And I love Sister Chafee.
(Giver of candy necklaces and ring-pops.)
Me too, Kid-o. Me too.
Hm. I wonder if forgetting to make this picture smaller is going to make it all squished and funny looking when it gets published.
Sorry, thinking out loud – or rather, into the keyboard – again.
Hi.
Welcome back.
Guess what we did tonight?
Can’t tell from the picture, can you?
Well, forgive me for putting you in suspense. I had to wait all week long to find out what we were doing this evening. It’s only fair that you get a few moments. We look happy though, don’t we? That’s my, “If I smile bigger I’ll probably look goofy and there’s a stranger taking the picture” face.
John loves to surprise me. Many long stories behind that, but I won’t bore you. Suffice it to say, I didn’t look at billboards or bus-sides, I didn’t check our credit card balances, and didn’t even listen to the radio during this last week after I found out he had something special planned for date night this week.
It worked. I was surprised. Delighted. Giddy, even.
We went and saw… drumroll, please!….
“The Importance of Being Earnest” at the Hale Theater. It’s been… wow, a long time since we’ve been to a play together, and that was a highschool production. Well done, very well done, but not quite the same fun as we had this evening. John knows I adore the movie of said play, so he figured this would go over well. Great job, Dearest!!!
Earnest/Algy & Cecily
The “redhead” reminded me a LOT of Cinderella, both in looks and personality, and one of the Earnests reminded John a lot of the men on my side o’ the family. (It took a while for me to see that, but I got there by the end.)
So I got their picture.
It was awkward. I hate taking pictures of/with strangers.
But I did it for you, Blogworld, just for you. (Can you tell I’m thinking, “Oh the embarrassment! Hurry, hurry, hurry…” Well, I was.)
This spectacular date was in honor of my birthday, which isn’t until Friday. (He would’ve planned it for then, but as luck would have it, they’re switching out between plays next weekend.
Anyway, the punchline is — What a swell, sweet, swonderful guy I married. <sigh>
I bet this is a ploy for another surprise next week, what do you bet? I won’t be expecting anything because he already surprised me.
Wait. If I think that out loud he’s liable to do nothing, so then the surprise is that there is no surprise.
Dang.
