Winter 2016

January Recap



1) The girls and I spend a lot of time in the playroom having tea parties, reading and playing school.  Darcie (about 15 months) gets brave and begins climbing on everything.
2) Daphne is always obsessed with some kind of stuffed animal.  In 2015 it was mostly turtles.  In January she went everywhere with her Christmas Beanie Boos - Fantasia the Unicorn and Owliver the Owl.
3) We find Darcie "reading" all over the house.
4) Daphne and Darcie start playing together as Darcie becomes a more interactive little sis rather than just the baby.  Sometimes Daphne forgets how little she still is and is too rough in their play.  Darcie wants to do everything Daphne is doing.
5) Me and the girlies right before we found out I was preggo and I became an invalid.
6) Daphne loves to draw and gets more adventurous in her creations.
7) Darcie's first trip to the dentist - major melt down.
8) Daphne holding up the newspaper article about Grandpa Alan being voted onto the Parowan City Council for another term.  She was so proud of him and thought he was SO famous because he was in the paper.


9 & 10) Burke FINALLY cut up two of the deer legs that have been in garbage sacks in our deep freeze for over a year!  So gross.  But the finished jerky product was amazing and well worth the wait!
11 & 12) Went to Star Wars: The Force Awakens twice - once with the Murphy's and once with Burke's parents and Chev and Nellie.  Looooved it!  Totally would have gone a third time.


13) We always knew Daphne was advanced, but as she is our first, we weren't sure what plans to make for kindergarten in the fall.  One day in January we had our friend Michelle Hillyard, the reading specialist at Three Peaks Elementary assess her reading skills.  She said Daphne was reading at about a second grade reading level and would probably be about a third grade level once she started school.  Burke brought her home some balloons and her favorite gum to let her know how proud we have been of all her hard work in learning to read this last year.  She was so pleased!
14 & 15) Planned another Relief Society Activity - a hot chocolate bar where we discussed "warming our sisters up" and being sincerely engaged in Visiting Teaching.  Great turn out and uplifting evening.
16) Played soccer at the church on a Saturday morning.  Burke and the girls came to watch as he had never seen me play before and it had been at least 6 years since I had put on my gear.  So weird that something that was once an all consuming part of my life has become a distant memory.
17) The farm got a pony for the kids to ride around on and the girls loooove her!


Finally got to meet precious baby London when Gabe and Ellen came for a quick 2 day visit down south.  Never enough time, but it was so nice to see them, explore the new cactus gardens in St. George and chill at the Ridings.




Dad and Daphne decided to take the road less traveled and rock climbed up on top of the red stone cliffs nearby.  I nearly had a heart attack watching them from below, especially when they would get too close to the edge.  Dad admitted when they finally got back down that Daphne was quite a bit more daring than he had anticipated and even made him nervous a few times.  This girl has no fear, which is something I admire and love about her, but also makes me anxious!


In January, Cassie and I launched "My Motherhood Matters".  This is a whole post in and of itself.  Due to this insane year, the project was put on pause in May, but I hope to resume it sometime in the future.  Our first Gathering Group with other mothers was January 21 and I for one was thoroughly uplifted by our discussion and time together.  Cassie was so fantastic to work with and we learned a lot from this process.




The last couple of days in January, the girls and I got to join Burke at the Young Farmer and Rancher Convention at Ruby's Inn outside of Bryce Canyon National Park.  I felt very out of place as the only person within my sight (in a room of a couple hundred) not wearing cowboy boots!  Such a good group of down to earth young families and such a good excuse for the girls and I to tag along with Burkie and learn a bit more about the kind of people he gets to work with each day.


Burke teaching Daphne to country swing was one of the cutest things I have ever seen.  Can you tell how smitten this girl is with her Daddy?

February Recap


On February 2, Iron County had its first snow day in 61 years!  While Burke shoveled away (until our wonderful neighbor Kurt came over with his snow blower and Dave Staheli came with his tractor/snow plow) I spent forever getting the girls bundled up to go play in the snow and they lasted all of 15 minutes before they were both bawling.  Darcie is in a borrowed snowsuit from her cousin Collin and pink boots from Aubrey and we were dying at how bad she clashed as well as the marshmallow waddle affect it had!


1) Burke began telling the adventures of Bucklehead (a character who's brain is so big and smart that he has to keep a belt buckled around his head to keep his brains from falling out!) stories for Daphne's nightly bedtime story sometime in 2015.  In February I made a bunch of "Bucklehead Bucks" as a reward system to help encourage Daphne towards more desirable behavior.  For every buck she earned throughout the day, it equated to a minute of Bucklehead stories.  If she lost her bucks, then she would lose story time for that night which was absolutely devastating to her!
2) On the snow day mentioned above, our hilarious 15-year-old neighbor, Stetson, was out with a friend trying to look cool by spinning doughnuts in a side-by-side.  Daphne was watching them out the window when Stetson tried to jump a snow bank and got himself thoroughly stuck.  Daphne was such a sweetheart and ran outside with a shovel to try and dig them out.  Eventually, Burke and Kurt managed to get the boys out, but not after Stetson's Mom showed up with serious fire in her eyes!  Busted.
3) Darcie discovers my makeup drawer.  Keeping her out of the lipstick turns into a daily battle!
4) Lots of bubbles at lunchtime with Daddy on the sunny days.
5) The girls become better friends all the time.
6) Sally (Mike and LeeAnn's dog) has her final batch of puppies!


7, 8 & 9) Marie's yearly children's concert with the Orchestra of Southern Utah was wonderful.  This year there was an island theme and the SUU Polynesian Club came and performed several cultural dances along with the beautiful orchestra music.  Daphne loved the hula dancers.  Following the performance, there were all sorts of activities for kids around the heritage center, including the SUU Animal Ambassadors where Daphne got to hold all sorts of cool creatures - her favorite of which was a hissing cockroach in honor of Melvin and Flo (beloved fake cockroaches from Grandpa Bush given to her over a year ago!).
10) Grandma Elaine's 97th Birthday Celebration!
11) Dinner with the Gonzalezes - I want to arrange a marriage between Daphne and one of their darling sons, Levi or Ezra.  Either will do! :)
12) Darcie becomes obsessed with hanging from the pull-up bar and makes Burke put her up there all the time!


On a cranky Saturday morning, we spontaneously decided to get out of the house and make the day more adventurous and fun.  Somehow I had written down the wrong date for free national park day, so we drove all the way down to Zion National Park and found out at the gate that it was NOT a free day.  Stubbornly, we flipped a U-turn, found a park in Springville where we ate our picnic lunch and hiked around just outside of the park before driving home.  To say that Burke was a little frustrated with me is an understatement.


Burke goes to the World Ag Expo in California for 3 days with his boss, brother and some friends.  He was in farmer/cowboy/redneck heaven!


Valentine's Sunday we did our traditional heart breakfast, dolled up the girlies in red and pink for church and gifted them with a little pop-up teepee.  They love that thing!  That night Marie hosted Valentine's themed minute-to-win-it contests at her house after Sunday dinner.


At the end of January I began to feel exhausted and sick from sunup to sundown.  A pregnancy test explained why!  I was sick as a dog for over 3 months and spent a lot of time snuggling in bed with my little ladies reading books and watching Fixer Upper on the Ipad.  Burke was Superman during this time and did all of his tasks plus mine while we were in survival mode.


Early in February, after a few weeks of feeling like garbage, I decided I had no desire to keep our pregnancy a secret, so we sent our families this picture to announce our third pregnancy.  Little did we know that our clever rhyme wouldn't add up once we had our first appointment!

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