Marriage

A retired Marriage and Family professor from BYU is serving as a Senior Missionary (with his wife) in our ward here in Fresno. His name is Douglas Brinley. My mom took some classes from him while she was at BYU. We found out that we have a connection with the wife of their grandson - her family was in our ward in Japan. The world is a very small place.

Anyways, we were invited over to dinner at their house last Sunday along with another Dewey couple. While they are here in Fresno, the Brinleys have been doing firesides on marriage. The problem is hat he usually speaks on Friday nights, and Bear works late. But it just so happened that he was doing a fireside especially for a certain ward the day they invited us over for dinner. Bear has Sundays off. I was so excited to go! I was ready to take all these notes.

But his message was simple. And once I heard it, I felt very silly because it was exactly what our Sealer had said on our wedding day. I don't know why I was looking for a deeper, more profound message. Elder Brinley said that we are told to be better listeners, communicators, etc by all these marriage self-help books. You won't be able to find any General Conference talks or modern revelation on the marriage advice we usually think of. Instead, all we have to do is pray and read scriptures every day together as a couple. This of course sounds very simple, but we always forget. It's hard to find time in our hectic schedules to remember to take the time for these two things. But it's all about priorities. And time management. Is it worth it to take a few minutes out of my Facebook and Pinterest time to strengthen my marriage every day? Definitely. 

I want the Lord to bless our marriage and I want to become a better person by taking the time to read and pray every day. But more importantly, I want the Spirit to be with us. That is the most important thing. That way I can become the best version of myself and be more sensitive to Bear's needs. I want to take the time to do the little things and have those build up. I want to be like the Brinleys, who practice what they preach. I want a happy marriage, one that lasts. 

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I try not to post political things on my blog, but because I am LDS (Mormon), my beliefs will slip out every once in a while. I'm also planning on doing a post about some other marriage advice that I've been reading about recently that is not religious, but I feel that this post was more important. I don't want to preach or have people think that I'm looking down on them. Or forcing my beliefs onto you. I just want to share things that I feel are important to me.

7 months

Lachlan turned 7 months on June 24th. Here is our photo shoot. All of his faces never cease to amuse me.


He can crawl and bear crawl. He tries to stand up from the Bear crawl position. He seems to recognize his name, and certain people's voices on the phone. He says "ga ga ga" a lot. He can clap, which usually means he wants to be picked up. We have yet to find a food that he doesn't like. He's tried a bunch of different fruits and vegetables and loves them all. His two bottom teeth are close to the surface, but haven't broken through yet. He loves chilling in the pool, and playing with everything except his toys. The word "chubby" makes him laugh and he wants to eat everything that we eat. I'm scared that he's going to be standing soon.

This is my favorite.

Swimming, Cookies, and Poop

With all of my tutorials, I got behind on updating about our life.

We rented a nice leather couch for the summer. It was a good decision.

Lachlan will eat anything we give him. We have yet to find a food that he doesn't like. And I can never spoon it fast enough into his mouth. He usually tries to grab my hand to go faster or just cries.

We go to the pool at our apartment a lot.

I added lots of low-lights to my hair.

Lachlan started eating cotton balls while I was doing my nails. I'm telling you, he eats anything.

I found a good pool toy that keep Lachlan in the shade without having to cover him in sun screen.

Lachlan loves to kick his feet out of his footie pajamas.

I have been called as a substitute Young Womens teacher for the summer. Leslie, another Dewey wife and I were in charge of Mutual this week. I talked about stress, and Leslie taught us yoga and meditation. Except I didn't get to try it because I was wrestling Lachlan the whole time.

I love it when it looks like he's deep in thought. These are my favorite jammies of his.

I had to take a couple of calls from work and so Lachlan was on his own for a few minutes. I forgot that I had left leftover cookies from a YW activity on the kitchen floor. But they were in a plastic case in a plastic bag! He opened both, and I find him with cookies in both hands, happily cooing and munching away. I don't know how he opened the case, but he's sitting in it. This kid just turned 7 months the other day...oh, and a white rug for a kitchen is not a good idea.

Like I said, we swim a lot. Our white skin doesn't make this very obvious though.

I tried a frap from Starbucks finally. I usually get their salted caramel hot chocolate, but it was over 100 degrees outside!

The weather has been very hot and will just keep getting hotter over the next few days. And the humidity doesn't help how hot it feels, but I actually love humidity. It's good for my skin. 

Yesterday it was the cookie mess, which was pretty cute, but today...the cookies came through Lachlan. He cried for a long time because his tummy hurt, and wouldn't let me comfort him. Again, I had to take a call, and he unloaded and unleashed so much poop while I was talking. It immediately started leaking down his leg and he started crawling, dragging a trail of poop through the carpet. That was a fun mess to clean up :(

Kansas Twister Tutorial Part 3

Here is how to join the mini blocks together into one big block. Each full block needs seven mini blocks of the same color. See what I mean about the pin wheels all going the same direction?

1. Grab two blocks and put them right side together. It's easiest if you start with the center mini block and go around in a circle. Make sure that you are sewing the right seams together, because there's 6 sides to each mini block remember.

2. You have to make sure to pin in the middle again this time so that the points of the little white triangles will match up. I'm kind of a perfectionist so this is important to me.

3. With the first two mini blocks, you'll only have to sew one side together. But for the rest, you'll have to sew two sides together. And then 3 sides on the last mini block. When you have to sew more than one side, don't tie a knot at the end of each seam. Just push the needle through to the next side. (Make sure the second side matches up).

4. Now you have a full block! See what I mean about the points of the little white triangles matching up?

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If you missed Parts 1 and 2 of the tutorial, here they are!

http://lexichan.blogspot.com/2013/06/kansas-twister-tutorial-part-1.html
http://lexichan.blogspot.com/2013/06/kansas-twister-tutorial-part-2.html

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Here's an real antique version of the Kansas Twister quilt if you wanted to arrange the pinwheels this way. Just an idea.

Click HERE

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Sister Mommies featured my blog post! Check it out!

http://sistermommies.wordpress.com/2013/06/26/mommies-that-inspire-alexa-price/