Blessing & Birthday

Once upon a time a girl in her mid 20's (so I don't believe in rounding up, sue me) had her third baby. Everything was going quite swimmingly for the first six weeks. But the girl became tired. So very, very tired. All. The. Time. She rarely returned or answered phone calls, or emails, her family began to wear their laundry out of baskets instead of drawers, and according to her three year old, her hair was always in a ponytail. She became so exhausted she may or may not have cried over the purchase of cookies. Well it goes without saying that things like blogging and scrap booking ceased entirely. But the trouble was, lots of great things were still happening but tired girl just could not find the energy to document them. So although these events are long since over, lest they be forgotten, they shall here be recorded in haste, with love, made possible by a Diet Coke.

Anabelle turned four on September 12th. We celebrated her birthday the next weekend with family and friends who came for Maisey's blessing. She had a hard time deciding on what kind of cake she wanted. To my utter amazement, she settled on a snake cake (possible influence from recently visited cousin Payte's pet snake). There were hardly any children at her party, which was just fine with her. I'll have to admit that she was not her very best self that day; perhaps the combo birthday party and blessing and lots of traffic in our house was a bit much for her. Someone gave her an outfit and she looked at it and said, "Cute, but not fun". Super proud mothering moment for me. She is however a fabulous little person who has brought immeasurable amounts of laughter to my life and joy to my soul. I try hard to think back to my life before I had her and it's not easy. I feel like real happiness started when she was born, or at least a deeper joy than I had ever known. I am feeling so glad that she missed starting school by a week so that I could have another year to pal around with her all day. I know she would love to be in school but I can't bear the thought of being without my little sidekick all day.

We had quite a crowd here for Maisey's blessing (Darryl,Annie, Madison McDaniel,Skyler & Heather Tuttle, Gma & Gpa Reynolds, Reese & Payte, Ryan, Kari, Reese & Teagan Bailey, Jaime, Jocelyn, Caleb, & Chase Connor). We had a birthday breakfast before church and then Darryl and Dad spoke during the meeting. Braden and Reese sang and it was beautiful as always. I went to feed Maisey right before they blessed her. I was grateful for that quiet time I had alone with her. I was overcome with gratitude for this moment- that she was healthy and that we had had all been home together for the past few weeks falling in love with her sweetness. That Braden was worthy to give her a blessing and that we have the priesthood to guide our lives. And mostly, I just had a sense of her goodness and potential, as I have felt several times before with her. And so so lucky to be her Mom.

And it was sweet to see her in the same dress the other girls have worn. I decided not to put the bonnet on her because she has some wild hair and I feel like it should be celebrated.










A very late but sincere and gargantuan 'thank you' to all you made the trip to share the weekend with us!