New at the Meredith household...

1. Our first bit of news is that last Saturday, Liah lost her first top tooth! She was so excited! She can't handle the anxiety of having someone else pull it out for her, so she does her teeth pulling herself.

The toothfairy has had a little difficulty showing up to our house on time. (ah-hem) So after reading some other toothfairy stories, we decided that from now on, we leave the tooth in a little cup on the table. Liah was super excited that there was a quarter waiting in the cup when she got up. (she had, however, grown accustomed to the toothfairy leaving an extra coin for lateness... so she may or may not have been slightly disappointed in that regard. I'm sure she'll soon discover that it is way more fun for the toothfairy to be on time...)


2. My next big news is my birthday present from my mom! Yes, my birthday isn't until July, but when your mom calls and tells you about a smokin' hot deal in Walla Walla and offers to get you THIS for your birthday, you accept. (and maybe freak out a little!!!)

It's an embroidery machine!!! In the past, I have done any embroidering myself (putting names on little hats for example), but now this awesome machine does it all for me!

I made Addison this cute apron! All of my other kids have one already, but I made them before he was born. He is my little kitchen helper (and he is just cute), so clearly he needed one. Yet again, something else to make out of old jeans.

He picked the picture and the color. He was so excited. And he loved watching the picture appear (and so did I!).

Isn't he handsome?!?

Michael's has T-shirts on sale for 1.99 this week, so I let the kids each pick a color, and today we embroidered them. They each picked the picture and color for their name.

I'm having way too much fun with this. I've also added pictures to dish towels for no reason. I'm itching to put pictures on anything and everything!

Thanks, Mom!!!

Giddy-up yoo-hoo

Okay. So I was all set to do a post on Easter and my fabulous new birthday present, but I learned something last night and had to put the other post on hold. Clearly this is more important.

Let me start by telling a small background story. In Ridgecrest, CA where I grew up, every year on the 4th of July, our stake put on the production "Our Country 'Tis of Thee." Every primary-aged child was allowed to participate. It was a production with songs, dances, costumes, speaking parts, etc. that told the story of the foundation of our country and its history. It was pretty awesome. So these songs we learned, the director taught to us, and we never saw any words, we just learned them by hearing them.

Fast forward a few years. When you are no longer primary-aged, you can play in the 4th of July band. And of course I did. So I was sitting there as a teenager, following along in the music as the primary kids sang, looking at the actual lyrics, not just what I had been singing all my life, and lo and behold the lyrics are not what I thought. I was shocked! Specifically, I am referring to the song "Goin' West," which I danced in as a cute little 5 year old. All my life, I had sung the words like this:

Goin' west in a covered wagon. Giddy-up yoo-hoo! Giddy-up! Giddy-up!
Spied out the rangers. Goin' through Indy and a country.
We're gonna cross the Cumberland Gap.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the actual lyrics do not say "giddy-up yoo-hoo" but in fact read "giddyap MULE." Which clearly makes more sense, but still. And as though that wasn't enough, the next line actually reads "in spite of the danger," not "spied out the rangers" and "Indian country" not "Indy and a country." Needless to say, I felt like a big geek. (but I still laugh about it)

Fast forward to last night. I was sitting at my piano, teaching Liah how to play a song about a certain falling bridge in London. And I was reading the actual lyrics to this song and even as I read them, it made complete sense, yet all my nearly 29 years, I have been singing it a different way.

So here is what I want you to do right now. Think of the first THREE words of that song. Go ahead. Now be honest. Did you say "London bridges falling" or "London bridge is"? Turns out the real lyrics to that song say "London bridge is falling down, falling down..." and yes, that makes complete sense! There is only 1 bridge that was falling! Yet all my life I had sung "London bridges falling down."

So of course I felt the need to share my newly found knowledge with my family. But of course checking first to see if they were already smart enough to know the real lyrics. I called my mom, and she passed, but said my dad said he always thought it was "London bridges." So I called my brother Brandon, and he passed, stating that "it clearly needs a conjugated verb in the sentence for it to make any sense." LOL... while that is true, it's not like that ever entered my mind as a 5 year old. Jeremy and my sister both said "bridges." So far the score is 4 to 2.

So I have to know. And be completely honest! Were you a "London bridges" singer, or were you intellectual enough to have always known it was "London bridge is"???

Go vote for Heather!

My friend Chelsea is giving away a makeover to a lucky winner (I didn't know about it soon enough to enter... blast), but my friend Heather made it to the top 5! Go to makeyouover.blogspot.com and vote for Heather! Go to this link to see what she will win!!!

Good luck, Heather! I hope you win!!!


p.s. SPREAD THE WORD!!!

Sight or Sanity? It's a toss up.

It has been a little over 3 months since my eye surgery. It is by far the best money I have ever spent. I still can't believe I went through with it, and that I can see now! Every night I still feel like I need to take my contacts out. Only I don't. :)

A close second to title of the best money I have ever spent is our new play structure! My kids live outside now! It is basically awesome. Jeremy just got a bonus from work, and I saw this one in the ToysRus ad and jumped on it. My kids flipped.

Jeremy and I worked on it for 3 days (before and after work). It was a serious project, but well worth the time! We had fun building it together.

Liah flipped when she found out it had swings. Jeremy has been against swing sets since the beginning of time because he got hurt on one as a kid. "They're dangerous!" This coming from the man who thinks planes and motorcycles are perfectly acceptable, but still holds that swings are dangerous. LOL. He agreed I had a point. And I won. Kids are going to get hurt no matter what. Sorry.

It also has monkey bars...

...and a rock wall...

...and a slide...

...and a restaurant...

...and a "school."

Typical afternoon: Liah swinging to her heart's delight and Emily reading Sean a story in their "school."

The glider also doubles as a surfboard.

The playset also was supposed to come with stools for the café, but when we got to that step in the setup process, alas there were no stools. So we had to wait for them to be shipped. They just arrived and I installed them yesterday. The kids were so excited. Liah and Emily both had lunch at their café yesterday, and snack out there today.

My kids are in heaven, and I'm not going to lie, so am I!

Emily wrote uncle Justin an email (he is in Haiti right now):

"Hi Uncle Justin,

I hope you're safe in Haiti. I got a playhouse from Toy's R Us. My dad & mom are building the playhouse. It has a school. It even has a slide. It is going to have swings. And it even has a restaurant. It's going to have lots of playthings on it. That's the end.

Bye bye. I love you.

Love,
Emily"

He wrote back and said:

"Oh Emily. That's not a playhouse, silly! Your mom and dad are building you a hotel. You really pulled one over on them. Way to go Emily. I'm being safe. I'm eating right. I hope I get to come home in just a few more weeks.

I love you,

Uncle Justin"

I thought it was cute.

Emily has declared that we no longer need to go to the park because "we have one in our backyard!!!"

Playdate, anyone??

--------------------------------------------------

We also recently had a ward talent show. Liah and Emily both played a song on the piano. I was very proud of them. I taught them how to play, so that counts as my talent, right??

Here is Liah playing "Bluebird, Bluebird." She did great. She did mess up right at the end and scowled in her chair for the next 15 minutes. Other than that, a success.

Emily played "When the Saints Come Marching In." She had just learned this song 4 days before. It was so cute to watch her. During the week she was getting a little carried away with her chords, and I kept having to remind her to only play the chord 4 times. In the video, you can see her counting to 4 each time. It cracked me up.

Good job girls!

Seany

My little Sean is 4 today! Four?!? Really?!? Where has the time gone??

The weather has been so beautiful the last few weeks. So I had a brilliant idea. Have a party at the park, and there is no clean-up at home! Brilliant, right? Until the weather decided to turn nasty... today. It still hadn't actually started raining, so I decided to follow through with the plan. As we started driving over there, it started sprinkling a little bit. NO!!! We got to the park, said a quick prayer that the rain would hold off, and set up our little party. In my defense, it was still 60º outside.

Here are Emily, Sean and Addison waiting (and hoping) for Sean's friends to arrive.



Easiest party ever. I made homemade bread sticks, brought applesauce and Capri-suns... (notice the nasty clouds)

...the kids played on the play structure until Sean decided it was time to open presents...

Grandma MacGregor sent this present a couple weeks ago, and it has been sitting on my piano since it arrived. When I would ask Sean what he wanted to do for his birthday, all he would say is "open my animal present from Gramma!!!" (I didn't even realize it was animal print on there until he said that...)

He got UNO moo! Cutest game ever. We have had tons of fun playing it.

...and from aunt Lorie... Wall-E! As you can see, he was so excited.

Here he is hugging it. LOL.

He had the time of his life opening his presents and loved every single one.

...then we had cupcakes. Because of the wind, I could barely get one candle to stay lit. But he didn't care.

Playing with a new toy. It's a plane that shoots in the air. To quote Sean "Cool!" "Awesome!!!"

Addy was enjoying his cupcake too...

After we got home, Sean couldn't wait to take everything out of its packaging.

Daddy had to work today, so I made half of the cake mix into cupcakes for Sean's party, and half into a 6 inch round for when Daddy got home.

Candles stay lit much better indoors.

We asked Sean last night what he wants to be when he grows up. He said "a fire guy!" I thought it was so cute, but then the girls laughed at him and told him it is actually "fireman." I liked "fire guy."

The girls gave Sean a sword. He was sooo excited. He hasn't really put it down since.

Addy gave Sean a car case.

Sean got a car from Daddy that you have to build. It even comes with a kid friendly power tool. Addison decided it was a hard hat situation.

How cool is that??

Happy Birthday, Sean!!!

6:57 PM

• Just finished a nice homemade Sunday dinner
• Seany snuggling with mom on the couch and reading "Where's Waldo", showing her the "funny parts" (as mom nearly falls asleep)
• Dad talking Scout stuff on the phone
• Liah and Emily sitting at the kitchen table reading "Barbie and the 3 Musketeers", Liah teaching Emily how to read the same way Mom taught Liah
• Sounds coming from Addy's room, sounds of Addison playing with his toys.

Could life get any better?

Some thoughts I've had

We were recently asked to prepare a talk on what we learned from stake conference. Even though I wasn't one of the "lucky" ones called on to share my thoughts in church, I still wanted to share them.

I attended the Saturday evening session of stake conference. I was so glad I went. Even though my brain nearly exploded during the entire astronomy lesson as I dusted away cobwebs from my brain at the scientific words I learn back in high school. When I consider that the worlds God has made are endless, and we are endless, my brain blows a gasket. I am blown away by all of the images of planets, stars and galaxies that we know nothing about yet. I just can’t comprehend it.

When they showed the picture of the “pale blue dot”, or the Earth caught in a sunbeam from far away and talked about how everyone we have ever known or heard of, every war that was ever fought, every king or empire that ever was, happened on that pale blue dot, it blew my mind. I had never thought of it that way before. God created this earth we live on and call home and worlds WITHOUT number. When you step back and think about it, He really does have “the bigger picture.” There is nothing he doesn’t understand. Clearly, it is HIM we should put our trust in.

Our level of understanding doesn't compare at all to God's. We are not physically capable of understanding what He knows. He knows what is best for us. Sometimes it is hard to comprehend that. Sometimes when you are struggling, you think that if things would just go back to the way they used to be, everything would be fine again. But then the experiences you had or suffered through would not have happened and you would not have learned the things Heavenly Father knew you needed to learn and experience.

There are some things I have been struggling with for a while. I’ve prayed and prayed that things would get better. And they HAVE improved. But recently, I attended the temple and as I was sitting in the Celestial room I was about to say a prayer that things would get better. But sometimes the answer is not that things will get better. At that moment I had the words enter my mind to “be at peace with the way things are.” Sometimes we get so caught up in trying to improve our situation that we just don’t realize that it already is better, and we are stronger because of it.

I truly believe that everything I have been through in my life, and everyone I have known or who has influenced me, both good AND bad, has been for a reason. Because of it, I am who I am today. Every pain and heartache has made me stronger. I’m stronger because I know I can get through things even when they are hard. Even when it feels like no one else cares. There is one person that is always there for me and has experienced much worse than I can ever imagine. And His love carries me and has carried me through every struggle in my life. So often it is easy to get caught up in feeling sorry for myself. But I am so blessed. It is easy to think about what you don’t have or have lost, and not realize what you DO have! So often I take my family for granted. But I HAVE a family! I have a husband and 4 beautiful children who love me no matter what.

Another thing Brother Dart mentioned in his talk is that when the top astronomers that have studied these things longer than anyone were asked after they figure out these mysteries of the universe, what is next? Their response was “to figure out who we are, why we’re here and where we’re going.” Our primary children know those answers!

I was impressed as I watched my daughter Emily stand up on her chair in Stake Conference and sing with the other primary children “I know He lives!” “I know that my Savior loves ME!” She knows those things! Those fundamental questions of life! She has that security! It is so easy to take that for granted! I was impressed that I need to be teaching my children NOW. That is an amazing foundation to have, and we have to nurture that. So often we get caught up in doing things for ourselves; I can't wait to get the kids to bed to have time to myself. I sometimes lose sight of what is really important: my family. We really do have such a short time with our children while they are still young. When we look back on the time we had with our children, I’m just guessing, but we aren’t going to wish that while they were young, we had gotten them to bed just a little earlier, or updated one more facebook status, or read one more blog. We are going to wish we had taken the time to read to them, or listen to them when they actually were willing to let us listen, or talked to them about their concerns or hopes instead of telling them “I’m busy right now!” or to “wait just a minute!” We’re going to wish we had taught them a little more about what we know about God and about life, and the lessons we have learned in our lives so they don’t make the same mistakes we did, or shared with them the struggles we had and how we got through them, so that they can also know how to get through things.

I know that as we put our trust in God, knowing that He truly knows what is best for us and how to guide us, that we will be blessed, and he will provide a way for us.


I know that many of you who will read this are not of my faith. Please be respectful if you choose to comment.