Birthday Post (I'm having title-block today, guys.)

Okay, I'm gonna be straight with you. I don't have any pictures this week. So if you're one of those readers who's just looking for pictures of Katie, sorry. You'll have to come back next time.

That DOES NOT mean it was a bad week. Quite the contrary (unless you're my weight loss thermometer OF SCIENCE!) Wanna know why? Well, I bet you all already know. But still, it was my BIRTHDAY!! Woohoo! as Katie would say. (Though it usually applies to bubbles, chalk, and nursery in her case.)

Here's how it went: I unfortunately had my birthday on Tuesday. Yeah, lame, right? Well, maybe not! First, Mike woke me up ABSURDLY early because he made me breakfast in bed. It was a pancake shaped like a B with chocolate chips in the holes. Go ahead, say it. "Awwwwwww . . . "

Unfortunately, Katie has taken to waking up at ridiculous hours of the morning and then NOT SNUGGLING ME BACK TO SLEEP. Can you tell I'm offended?

Side note: sorry for all the caps lock this week. There are days when I'm just overly emotive, okay?

Anyways, it was okay that Katie didn't go back to sleep because I got all sugared up from the pancake. So then, Mike went to work, and my day was . . . the same. Until approx. 3:45 pm, when my mom came to man the fort while Katie took her nap and I went to the movies with the sibs. We saw Pirates: Band of Misfits in 3D. It was, well, eh. There were a couple really funny parts, and of course the animation was good (it was the Wallace and Gromit people). But really, not exactly top form. But still, I wasn't cleaning up or changing diapers, was I?

So after the movie, I find that there has been a changing of the guard and I have to drive the children and the giant suburban back to their house, where Mike will come pick me up. This turns out to be favorable because Mike dropped Katie off with my mom again so that we could go to Carino's. (Yummy.)

We then retrieved our child and went home for birthday cake and presents, then stayed up late watching Mirror Mirror because I got it for my birthday. (What? I'm a sucker for fairy tales, all right?)

Overall, a good day. Katie wasn't even that much of a booger. But I did learn a few lessons from this:

• Birthdays once you're the mommy just aren't the same. But I hear it gets better when you have over-affectionate school-age kids instead of just toddlers.
• My days of sleeping in ever are officially gone for good.
• You can't have high expectations just because of a filmmaker's past. Pirates: Band of Misfits wasn't that great a movie. 
• Katie is nuts for birthday cake. Between the cake we had last time we had dinner at my parents', the GIANT cupcake my visiting teachers brought me (I took a picture but I'm too lazy to go get my camera), and the birthday cake Mike made me (thank heaven I bought cake mixes), Katie has really gotten a taste for them. The first thing she said when she woke me up this morning was "Happy Birthday! Happy birthday cake?" As if telling me happy birthday meant she got more cake. Geez, how old is this kid?

So, a very successful day, I think. But now I have to be super super productive. See, we're going out of town tomorrow to visit Mike's family for a WHOLE WEEK! We're so excited we're like little hyperactive puppies. Especially Katie. (But for her it's quite literal, as she spends a significant amount of the day on hands and knees, panting and saying "mommy? Play puppies?") (Except for when she wants to play cows and moo and pretend to chew grass.) (Whose kid is this anyhow?)

But I have discovered that if I want to have the kind of vacation where we don't have a plan or stress about anything, my house has to be absolutely, meticulously, obsessive-compulsively clean. So I've spent this whole week (except Tuesday) cleaning. And today I have to do laundry, pack, clean out the fridge, and vacuum right before Katie goes to bed. If I vacuum before that, she'll mess it up, and if I wait until after, I'll wake her up. Tricky, eh? 

Oh man, I'm excited for tomorrow. I'll probably sleep in the car. A lot. Happy birthday, everybody!

Families Can Be Together Forever

I had a bunch of (what I thought was) witty front matter, but I'm going to skip it and just start posting about our trip. It was too amazing. (And don't be fooled by all these words. There are pictures at the bottom.)

Here's the story: Mike's sister and her husband have had a little girl in their family for almost a year and a half (she's four weeks younger than Katie) but she was only their foster child. Happily for all of us, she officially joined the family about a week and a half ago. (That was very exciting, but Mike and I were still driving because he only got one day off of work. So we weren't there for that part of the story.) But the really exciting part happened the next day (when we were there.)

I realize that most of you who read my blog (or all, because you probably consist of my mom, Mike's mom, and several other relatives who are just looking for pictures of Katie) are LDS. Just in case some of you aren't, I'm going to explain.

In our church, we believe that the family is an eternal principle. It is the foundation of the church, of society even. It's so important that in 1995, the leaders of our church came out with The Family: A Proclamation to the World, explaining exactly what we believe the family means and why it is so important to us. And even though that was 17 years ago, it remains one of the most widely referenced pieces of literature used by church members because we hold the family so sacred. And if families are so important, how can they end when we die? That just seems wrong, doesn't it?

Luckily, that's why we have the temple. In the temples, worthy members of the church can come to learn about the Lord and participate in ordinances, both for themselves and for those who have gone before, such as baptism for our ancestors who have died without the gospel. The highest of these ordinances is the sealing ordinance, in which families are sealed together for time and for all eternity. Many couples are married in the temple, and the children that are born later to them are automatically sealed to them. The real miracle, though, is what happens when children come to the family who weren't born in the covenant.

So yes, we may have missed the adoption in the court house. But we were able to go the next day to the Portland Temple with Abby and her parents and brother to see her sealed to them. Her big brother, Spencer, even got to come into the temple for the ceremony. It was beautiful. Now Abby is part of their family just as if she had been born into it originally, and is sealed to them eternally.


Enough talk! Here are some pictures at the temple after the sealing and at the party we had the rest of the day. (Amy, if you want any of the ones that are (slightly) edited, let me know.) And yes, I will add a couple comments. Don't get antsy.

This first one just made me chuckle. "Mommy! I don't want to hold still and smile any more! I wanna run around! Aaaaaahhh!"

This one may or may not be that cute. It's just the only one where all the cousins were facing my direction at the same time. Also, apparently I'm related to a not-so-discreet Spiderman.

Here's Mike and his dad. I TOTALLY should have gotten Mike's grandpa in the picture with them. Three generations!

Sumo hug!

Welcome to the family, Abby!