My Collin

This kid blows me away. Before becoming a Mom, I thought and worried so much about the "how to" stuff and I guess my mind was always on the nurture aspect of the nature/nurture debate. Now more and more, I am realizing that each spirit is different and while, as a parent, I have to nurture and teach things like obedience, self control, and life skills in general, each child is so amazingly unique and there are some things about each child over which I have only a slight influence. I will never have another Collin, neither will anyone else. Why am I so blessed?

It is daunting sometimes to think that as a mom I have a part (a huge part) in shaping this kid's personality, sense of humor, and overall functionality in society. Not to mention the monumental responsibility of teaching him the Gospel and helping him gain a testimony. I'm up for the challenge, though, I've never known anything more difficult but I have also never known anything more rewarding. Just yesterday I sat across the dinner table from Collin while we were eating and out of no where, Collin gets down from his chair and says, "I'm gonna give you a hug". Talk about rewarding. This mom-job is strange like that, I never know when pay day is, but honestly if I'm paying attention, pay day is every day. I could have used this perspective/reminder last week, but anyhoo...

Motivation

I'm always going crazy trying to keep up with baby books, blogging, scrapbooks, journals, and logging the cute stuff the kids do and always falling short. Now I hear tell that these here blogs can be put into book form, or something like that, and I'm thinkin' this may be a good way to kill a few birds with one blog stone. Good news for me and for the few of you that would like to hear/read more (I'm thinkin' probably the Moms, Jesse, and a few select others) for the rest of you that casually check in, it may get boring. Sorry, but I'm thinking about myself here and this just may work for me. We'll see...

There's also the consideration of going private--don't know how annoying that will make things, do you have to log in every time to view our blog? I'm thinking I might try because then I can actually write and not worry about the info. I'm passing on to the world. For example, I was starting to write more details about our current move/work switch for Jesse/living situation, etc. to keep everyone updated, but I didn't like having so much out there for just anyone to read and I hate having to filter through all that I'm writing. It's bad enough that I'm having to think about my poor grammar and sentence structure and how entertaining or boring my ramblings are to my family/friend audience, let alone worry about all the weirdos that stumble along our measly little internet space and read about our life. See what I mean about bad sentence structure? Anyway, might sound a little paranoid but Jesse (and life experience) have taught me well. Besides that, my personal info. is already floating around in the world with my treasured red leather purse that was stolen last March, people know enough about me already. But I'm not bitter.

Group date: Steak and siblings

It has been a dream come true to live in the same town as most of my siblings (all but one, actually). We have regular Sunday dinner get-togethers at each other's house, swap babysitting, go tag-team errand running, and celebrate birthdays and most holidays together. It is the best set up! The other weekend while we sat in Cliff and Lisa's garage eating popsicles and watching over our precious yard sale items that weren't selling we started calendaring. Among other things, we planned our first group date. Like I said earlier, we usually just swap babysitting for our dates. We decided Outback was the place and all found babysitters. You can't imagine how excited I was for the date--great food, the best company, and NO KIDS!!!!!! When we showed up and were being seated, the hostess asked if we'd be needing high-chairs or kids menus and we practically burst out laughing from glee. It's not that we don't love our kids, but when we ALL get together, an uninterrupted conversation is not possible--there's just too many little people with all kinds of different needs. A break every now-and-then is the most refreshing and wonderful thing.
So here we all are at Outback in early August. Sunni, Josh, Lisa, Cliff, Samia (Joe had to work), Me and Jesse.

Guess who's walkin' now?

15 Month old Lucas !
You can see my hand in the pic with a toy trying to coax the little guy to walk over so I could snap a pic. Jesse wasn't around for the very first steps and I wanted to document every little bit for him. Lucas was a good little boy and waited until he saw his "Papi" to take more than two steps together. In fact, he took his longest walk across the room in Artesia when we were up to visit Jesse over the weekend.


He is a 'late walker' compared to most, except Collin who waited until 16 months to start. Fine with me--I don't mind my kids waiting a while to get mobile. And to me, there's nothing cuter than the wagging diaper behind of a crawling baby. Although, the first clumsy steps are a close second to that.

The 4th of July

Hey, not bad, only a month late on this one. :) We took a trip down to Carlsbad for the 4th, there was a big Williams shin-dig reunion sort of thing and we booked a hotel and were totally excited to see everyone. For some reason, I was particularly looking forward to a road trip with my little fam. I always forget the annoyances of handing toys to boys who've dropped them, singing songs till I'm hoarse, and answering a bazillion questions of what this or that is that we're passing. Collin got a little sick on the day we were planning to leave and we thought our trip was going to be no-go, but the next day he perked up a bit and we hit the road.

By leaving a day late we missed most of the reunion but got some good immediate-family chatting. We all went to Gaga's (Jesse's Grandma) and then to the river to watch fireworks. It was one of those experiences I'd like to create over and over again. To sit on the green grass with almost all the fam. together and watch a spectacular show. It was bliss. Perfect weather, perfect company, and it felt great to reflect on the amazing blessing of living in the good ole' USA and all that was sacrificed so that it would be such a great nation. I am blessed and grateful.

Another fun reflection of this trip was that it was the first time Jesse and our little family have stayed in a hotel. I liked to walk into our room as if I were housekeeping and notice that it must be a little family staying in the room--a pack-n-play in the corner by the bathroom, a little bed-pad on the floor made of beach towels and the parents on the bed. I may be sounding really silly, but I just loved our short stay and our little trip.

We got to look around Artesia some more and went to Jobe's (Jesse's cousin) house for a fish-fry and anniversary celebration for the grandparents. All I have to say is--GOOD PEOPLE. I love the Williams bunch. From the parents, the brothers and sisters, to the aunts and uncles, to the cousins. I just felt surrounded by wonderful folks.

After the party simmered down, we got in the pool with the boys and had a grand old time. I sure am feeling better about moving down to Artesia after such a pleasant time with all those Artesians--mostly Jesse's cousins and their families.





Tired little boys--we did a lot of driving.

Woops-a-daisy!

Has it really been over 2 months since I've blogged? Yikes! Lemme 'splain. My life turned upside down at the end of March--my purse was stolen and it has been the most insane mess. I cannot even begin to write all that I have had to deal with and how awful it's been. So, I won't even try. Besides that, it's depressing stuff to talk about and I don't need that right now. Maybe someday I'll feel like blogging it all out. Or I could just copy/paste from my journal. Anyhow, another reason I can't ever get around to blogging is that when I log on to update my blog, I have to look into all my friends and read about their lives and before I know it, my kids are done with their naps and it's dinner time. Frankly, I'd rather read about everyone else's life than write about mine. :) So, this time when I got on the computer to update this bad boy I just went straight to creating a new post, no checking in on my friends. I guess that's the secret to getting stuff blogged.

I think for now I'll just post some pics and let the old, "a picture is worth 1,000 words" addage do the talking for me. Here's our life for the past few months.

Collin and Lucas in their Easter get-ups

Then there was Mother's day, Jesse got me a new planner to replace the one that was stolen.

All I have to say is if you're watching all 7 boys (3 are Cliff's, 2 are Sunni's and 2 are mine) thank heaven for TV!

Collin's 3rd birthday, I love the expression on his sweet face.

One week later: Lucas's 1st birthday--he got one toy and boy does he LOVE it.

May 31st: Samia and Joe get married! (See Sunni's blog for more pics and details)

Jesse's birthday breakfast--neither Jesse nor I wanted to be in the pic. but the boys didn't mind showing off their bed heads.

A few weeks later: Father's day, more exuses for me to buy things for my Jesse and make big breakfasts--except this time we tried turkey bacon and I didn't like it so much.

So there you have it folks, a busy few months for us and it's only going to get worse, I'm afraid. I guess when I get the time and nerve I'll post again explaining our more recent happenings. So, over and out 10-4.

5 Wonderful Years!

For our anniversary trip this year we went to San Antonio, TX. Loads of fun. Before I go into the trip, I've got to give a shout out to my Sunni (and her Josh) for watching our boys. You folks are great--we love you and our kids love you, now that I think about it, is there anyone in this world that doesn't love you? Anyway, about the trip...I'm not going to go into details :) but I will say that we had a blast. We went to Six Flags, The Alamo, the River Walk, the San Antonio Temple, and did lots of shopping. During the whole year we are pretty frugal and tight with the money (eat Toasted Rice cereal instead of Chex, ya know what I mean?) but we set a little aside for our annual trip and have ourselves a shopping spree. It's actually pretty funny, we think we're huge spenders when we give ourselves $150 each and buy things like running shoes, earrings, t-shirts, and cooking gadgets. Yeah, we're wild.

It's only been five years of marriage, but I practically rely on these anniversary trips to keep me functioning. I remember our honeymoon and how amazing it was to leave everything behind and just enjoy my Jesse-time. There were times when I felt like we were the only people on earth--it was just bliss. And although you can only have one honeymoon, these trips sort of serve the same purpose for us--it's a chance to just be Anika and Jesse, we get to leave everything behind for a couple days. I'm a huge believer in doing whatever it takes to celebrate the milestones in a marriage, it keeps me sane. I hope we can keep up our tradition. Anyhow, here's some pics from our trip this past March:

It's too dark to see behind us but this is us at the River Walk

At Six Flags Fiesta Texas

In front of the beeeeee-autiful San Antonio Temple

It was a well rounded trip, we got in a little of everything. The River Walk was romantic, Six Flags was just plain fun (I forgot how much I love roller coaster rides), The Alamo was educational, and the Temple was rejuvenating. I can't wait until next year, it's Jesse's turn to plan the trip so we'll see...