Who'd Have Thought...

I'd find something I miss about Arizona??

Now, I don't mean to offend any of you native Arizonans, or even any of you non-natives who now love to call Arizona home. Arizona is a wonderful place for a myriad of reasons. But if you know me at all, you will already know that it wasn't my favorite place to live.

With that said, one of those reasons Arizona is a wonderful place is the amazing monsoons that come around each summer. That was a part of the year that I always thoroughly enjoyed. Eleven months and two days of waiting after leaving Arizona, we have finally had a rainstorm I am comfortable comparing to the Phoenix monsoon.

The temperature here is completely different, but the rest of the storm bares a striking resemblance. It makes for a happy ending to a typical stressful Sunday. Tomorrow being Labor Day and Jeff having it off also contribute to the unusual relaxed mood of the evening tonight. Enjoy the beauty of the storm from our deck.

And the patio chairs are pushed up against the side because the force of the wind blew them over there! Granted, they weren't placed nicely on all four edges of the table to begin with, but they definitely weren't there before the storm...

Audrey Love

This is the cutest, happiest, most content, and most stubborn baby in the whole world. Audrey has been testing out her legs since she was nine months old. She's been crawling since 6 1/2 months or so. She is a proficient cruiser, stander, bouncer, dancer, walker, and teaser. Yes... teaser. This girl absolutely refuses to walk on her own. She can. And she knows she can. But for some reason, she gets this delightful feeling of elation by pretending like she's about to take a few steps, then immediately dropping down to the ground and racing on all fours to wherever we're trying to get her to go. All while sporting a huge grin and a giggle. I really think she's just doing it because she can. She knows she can walk, and even will do it while holding on to one of our pinky fingers with one of her hands. She just refuses to give her parents any satisfaction by doing it on her own. I think she thinks it's a game. Oh well. We're in no hurry to be chasing her around the house keeping her out of trouble. She can be little as long as she pleases because she's just so cute at it. Here she is teasing Mama...

All American Evening

The weather was so incredibly nice last night. It's been nice all summer. Nothing like the Arizona heat. But last night was absolutely beautiful. I was making fresh peach pies yesterday afternoon, so we didn't get around to eating dinner until about 6pm. At that time of the evening, the back deck is beautifully shaded and the temperature was very comfortable. We decided to barbecue hot dogs and have an backyard picnic.

And here's our yummy dessert. It really turned out pretty good. I've not made a completely homemade peach pie before. I've only used canned peach pie filling. It was delicious.

Spit!

After much anticipation, and an incredibly long wait, Alex and Lucas are finally starting to communicate more. The frustration of misunderstood grunts, groans, screams and cries is finally coming to an end. With better verbal skills comes better understanding from Mama. A few of their favorite words right now are airplane, soap, hands, milk, juice, cheese (when asked to smile for the camera), cookie, Pop Tart, mine, no, poopy, Sarah, Audrey, Cosmoe, Mama and Papa. Being boys naturally brings a sense of pride and joy in the classic boy behaviors, such as passing gas, burping, spitting, growling and other animal noises, the "vroom vroom" of airplane or car imitations, and a general loudness that seems to radiate from most two year old little boys. These precious boy noises, although sometimes loud and irritating, often provide immediate knowledge of things unseen by me. For example: This evening, I reluctantly gave Alex and Lucas each a sippy cup of milk to drink. I have been avoiding doing that lately because they tend to play with the milk rather than drink it. They can often be found drooling it down the front of their shirts, spitting it at each other or on furniture or carpets, banging them on the ground to see how much can be forced out of the "no-spill" lids, all while laughing hysterically at each other. Laughing in itself is usually nothing to worry about. But before they boys started saying words, the cause was always a mystery until I actually walked over to look at what they were doing. Tonight, I heard the laughter start, and shortly thereafter I could hear "Spit! Spit!" I knew exactly what was happening without having to see it with my own eyes. To make a long story short, the boys were sent to bed a few minutes early tonight, and the mess was only a small one because I caught them early thanks to their inadvertent verbal warning. They sure are adorable. Even when they're causing mischief.

Here they are getting ready for bed after getting in trouble for spitting milk.

Stressful Sundays

Okay... if you're looking for an uplifting and edifying post about perfection, maybe you should skip this one.

You're still reading? Don't say I didn't warn you. Sundays are great. They really are. I always look forward to going to church and hearing about our most basic gospel principles and learning ever more about our Savior, Jesus Christ. I enjoy going to Relief Society and hearing uplifting lessons about the most important things in our lives. Sunday school is always a joy and the reiteration of the scripture stories and legendary heroes and villains from years past never fails to disappoint. Sacrament meeting is an amazing opportunity to renew our covenants through partaking in the Sacrament. And yes, I realize that I listed the meetings in reverse order from what most people find "normal" and commonplace. However, this is the order our ward and stake have chosen to schedule them. With the abundance of reasons our sunday church block of meetings provides support, education and spiritual enlightenment, how is it that by Sunday evening, I am ready to pull all my hair out? Why am I ready to put all the kids in bed at 6pm? How can I not be relaxed, refreshed and ready for a new week after a "restful" weekend?

You may not want to know, but I really do need to express myself tonight. I love my family. I love my kids. I really really do. There are so many amazing, great qualities that each one possesses. They bring a joy and light to my life that I could never fully describe. However, they tend to make Sundays the most stressful and exasperating day of the week for me! The ages of my kids is partly to blame. The backwards schedule of our church block is partly to blame. Our awareness of our surroundings and the effects of our family chaos on others is partly to blame. I know it's hard for a child to sit through an entire hour of worship without having some kind of distraction. It's hard for an adult to sit through an entire hour sometimes. Having four little "friends" sitting in the same pew on Sunday doesn't help the cause much either. My lovely children thoroughly enjoy playing with each other most of the time. Sacrament meeting is no different. They also commonly participate in picking on each other, egging on and laughing at each other's bad behavior, and joining in on each other's noise making practices. Again, Sacrament meeting is no different. Having it last on our list of meetings completely messes up the spirit of our block of meetings for me. The first two hours are always nice and enjoyable with many opportunities for edification and feeling the Spirit. Then, we wrap it all up with a circus of noise and distractions for the last hour. We try our best to control our children and teach them the importance of reverence and respect. We like to think that we are instilling good principles and behavior in our children at an early age. We realize the importance of church attendance even when it would be so much easier to skip out on the hardest hour and go home for lunch and naps. But it really doesn't make it any easier to sit through backwards glances from elderly congregation members, the playful distracting from the kids in the row behind us when we've barely gotten control of our own kids' behavior, the Cheerios that almost always tend to find their way all over the bench and floor, and the screaming of one child in reaction to getting a book taken by another. Last Sunday, the couple sitting behind us actually got up and moved to another spot in the middle of the meeting. I mean, come on, people. We're doing the best we know how here! I realize that it is very important to expose our children to our weekly church routine now so they will eventually learn to appreciate the opportunity. I know it's crucial to instill good values in them while they are young. I have a testimony of the gospel, our Savior, Jesus Christ, and our heavenly parents. It's just hard to continually do the right thing when I come away feeling so frustrated and stressed out.

So. Not the most uplifting or happy of posts. But hey... it's been two weeks since my last post, and I really needed an outlet for some of the steam that's been building up today. Here's to a new week to come! And then it starts all over again...

On a brighter note: My friend, Nicole took this awesome picture of our family two weeks ago. We've since gotten it framed and hung it on our wall above our fireplace. Don't you think it just perfectly captures the substance of our family?

The Year That Disappeared!

That's right. It's been an entire year since our little Audrey made her debut into this world and into our family. Our youngest child turned one year old yesterday. Happy birthday little Audrey Bear!

Audrey is the sweetest little one year old I know. She has a smile that can just light up my world, and a personality that surprises me and makes me laugh every single day. She loves to try and keep up with her older siblings, and thinks she's so big. She is always trying new things, and often communicates her pride in accomplishment with a big grin and a squeal of delight. She's our little joy.

Productivity.

This last week has been quite the busy one at the Farnsworth house. Busy, but fun. Here's a rundown of the latest summer activities:

Audrey got some practice falling asleep while drinking milk. We've caught her drinking and dozing multiple times in her short life, but this week it was two days in a row! Interesting choices for resting places, though...

Here are three of the four kiddos having some fun after church while waiting for Mama to come home from Choir practice. They're such little goofballs!

Earlier in the week, they had a blast splashing around in the pool in our back yard, and flying make believe dragons around the grass.

Audrey even got in on the fun. Here she is playing with a ball that's bigger than she is.

And here she is chasing Mama through the grass.

The next day, it was Sarah who chose an interesting resting place. She's in front of the computer.

Then, Alex and Lucas practiced using the potty. Alex actually went pee for the first time this day! Yay Alex! Lucas enjoyed sitting there, and even praising his brother for going. But he has yet to actually do it himself. Which is kind of opposite from the way the boys have developed thus far. Lucas has usually been the one to try something first.

Later, they were more than happy and willing to help Papa sand down some washers to fix the rocking Durango driver seat. They sure love to "work" with Papa.

Later in the week, Sarah and the boys had friends over, and they all played outside again. Audrey practiced her driving skills. Doesn't she look so grown up?

And then tried to refine her trampoline bouncing skills.

On another day, I took on the task of turning something ugly in our house into something pretty. I haven't taken a picture of the pretty yet, but here's the ugly.

The next day, my legs were a little sore and I really couldn't figure out why. Then when I was looking at the pictures and came across this one, I figured it out. What a weird position to be sitting in...

Here's the cute little helper who took the pictures. She also helped sand down the handles before I spray painted them. It's Sarah's friend Katelin from down the street.

This was my other cute little helper. It's Katelin's sister, Ella. She found the balls that we bought for the boys at the store earlier that morning, and looked just so cute holding them in the bright green grass.

Then, today, Alex and Lucas thoroughly enjoyed helping me clean the couches.

Although this picture reflects more truly what they really enjoy doing on the couches...

So. As we all can see, it was definitely a busy week here. But it was the best kind of busy. Very productive, fun and enjoyable. I absolutely love creating things, and taking on the task of making my ugly gold hardware into something pretty was very exciting and rewarding for me. I'm not quite finished yet, but I plan to post pictures when I take some of the finished products. This post was long... but so was our week! Hope you enjoyed!

Were You Right?

Okay... It's been a week, and there's lots I could post about since last Wednesday. So I'm going to give you all the right name/face associations now. Drum Roll Please:

This little one is Jeff. Most people guessed that one correctly. Probably because of the older quality look of the photo.


This one is Lucas.

Sarah.

Alex. And if anyone noticed, that's some kind of prehistoric rhinoceros thing that Sarah put on his head while he was napping one day. Probably the purpose for my taking that particular picture of him sleeping.

Sarah again, only younger.

And adorable Audrey. She looks a lot like Sarah, don't you think?

There were no pictures of me. I would have included one, except I don't have any. If anyone does, I'd sure like to have some. (HINT HINT!) So far, I really don't even know what I looked like as a baby. I've never seen any pictures. Anyway... If you have any, send them my way please.