She’s My Sister

(remember to click on the play button above

to listen to pretty music while you read this post!)

My sister got married in June. I got to help out the weekend I was there (a little – see, having kids and no husbands severely limits your abilities to serve with your own self – that is, without the kids).

Anyway, she just posted pictures of her wedding (which are gorgeous and can be found here – not sure if it’s a public album or not – so it may not work for you if you aren’t her friend. But if you aren’t, you seriously should be. Because she’s awesome.)

Well, looking at her pics made me realized just how blessed I am to be her sister. You know, she’s my only sister (although I did marry into an awesome family and now have 4 more really cool sisters – not to mention my fabulous sisters-in-law who have married my brothers. Okay, so in all, I have seven sisters now – but I’m talking about the only one who has been with me her whole life (practically my whole life, since we’re only 22 months apart).

I pretty much adore her. She’s funny, spiritual, smart, outgoing (but still kind of reserved – you know, like... she doesn’t go around announcing all of her personal stuff to the world like I do ;) ), she’s talented, beautiful, and just plain fun to be around.

I thought I would dedicate a little post to my fabulous sister, and remind her how much I admire her and want to be like her. And to show you some awesome pictures of our life together!

Christy – you are awesome, and I love your guts! I am so happy for you (and happy for Adam that he has you! Because you are awesome).

Love forever,

Your sister,

Becca

smithharper

My mom has been hard at work making a fancy-schmancy website for our extended family/family history website. You can find it here.

I made a logo/header for the website:

I’m getting pretty good at this photoshop thing, if I do say so myself ;) It’s not the best, and I’m sure someone else could do better, but I like it.

I’ll probably play around with it some more. Oh yeah, and now that I’ve figured out how to make png’s, you’ll probably see my header change again before the end of the summer. (I’ll also use my new found knowledge on your header – whoever wins the giveaway!) – speaking of which – don’t forget to enter! Find out details here.

UPDATE: I’ve been tweaking the header. We were going to go with a website template that had a kind of green theme, but we changed to a different one. So here are the revised headers (the last one is the one we’re using – it’s going to be on a really dark background, so it may not look good here on my blog, but it will look good on the website.)

first attempt at the green background:

the green background after some “spiffing” – I think the text color didn’t really workout –

it probably should have been a little lighter.

it’s okay, we didn’t end up using this one anyway.

the final header. we will most likely use this one.

In the Pursuit of Excellence – Starting Simple

I have been in serious need of goal-setting-reaching. Really. It’s been bad. Back in high school it was the Young Women’s personal progress program. I want to go through the program with Joseline when she turns twelve, and I’ll probably do the Faith in God program with Vincente (and then again with Joseline – and any other of our children who participate in the program). But until my kids are old enough to participate in their own goal setting programs, I needed something to get me there.

I can’t be stagnate in my own personal progression. Living the gospel is not checking things off a list. Just because we’re saying our personal prayers doesn’t not mean we get to check that off the list. We need to be consistently praying – improving our prayers – and using our prayers to more perfectly align our will with the Father’s.

I looked all over the Church’s website for a online version or pdf version of the Pursuit of Excellence pamphlet – to no avail. But my mom was finally able to locate a copy for me, so I’ve been off and running!

For  a little accountability, I’m going to start this Friday Pursuit of Excellence (PofE) posts. I’m going to focus on one goal each week, just to make things simple.

This week I will be focusing on a Spiritual Challenge – specifically, keeping a journal.

This week I will write in my journal every day. I also want to start recording my personal history. I know, I know – I’m too young to write a personal history! Never! You’re never too young to begin.

At one of our Relief Society meetings they handed out notebooks and a list of things to write about to start your personal history. I’ll just be following that list, and I’ll post it next week, along with an update of how things are going, and possibly a PDF version of the Pursuit of Excellence pamphlet, should you want to follow suit!

So there is it – journal keeping is my first goal! (I used to be really good at it – having kids has made it a lot harder).

Twins!

No, we are not expecting twins. We’re not even expecting for that matter! I’m talking about....

Our puppies!!

(click on the play button above to listen to some Led Zeppelin while you read/view!)

Me and Doc... I think. Or it might be Lucy. I’m pretty sure it’s Doc (I could have told you at the time, but I can’t tell them apart yet unless I can see  both of them! 8-o I’m a horrible puppy mama!)Vincente with Lucy and Doc. They loved him, and he loves them. I think this is going to be the start of a fabulous relationship!

  

Joseline not so in love with puppies. In fact, they freak her out for the most part. Ha ha, just wait until we pick them up and they are twice this size! Joseline’s favorite thing was to take the dog toy, put it on the floor, pick it up with her mouth and carry it around the room. Yeeeah. Just pretend that I’m a good mom and I don’t let my children chew on dog toys.

       

No, I didn’t put my children in the dog kennel... Joseline hid in there first (Me: “Where’d Joseline go?” Vince: “In the cage!” I love how I always have to ask other people where my kids went... again, let’s pretend I’m a good mom). Then Vince wanted to get in and I thought (as every good mother does) “photo op!” So I stuck the puppies in there, too. Turns out it was a little too crowded, and Vince was shoving Joseline, who was nearly sitting on the poor little puppies. I’ll try to think twice about the photo op thing.

Here are a few videos of the puppies – the first is the puppies and Joseline all trying to get on my lap at once. The second is Vince holding Doc.

 

If you’re wondering where their names come from, I’ll tell you -

Lucy is named after her mother. Her full name is Lucy Junior, but we’ll call her Lucy (or maybe Lucy J).

Doc is named after Julius Erving, the NBA player, who was nicknamed “Dr. J” – hence Doc. Or “Doctor J.”

So we have Lucy Junior, and Julius Erving (or Lucy and Doc, for short).

We’ll be bringing them home in about a week and a half. If I suddenly stop posting, you’ll know why.

The House -- an update

(Image credit: Gary L Walters @ activerain.com)

Well, the seller’s agent finally got back to us about the house. She says that the file has been escalated, and they are hoping to hear soon from the bank about the first offer. After the first offer fails (it probably will – it’s a pretty low offer) they will submit our offer as a back-up. We feel pretty confident that the bank will like our offer better.

From the look of things, we’ll be hearing by the end of August (hopefully earlier!) if our offer will be submitted. Then it will probably be another 2 months before we hear if they’ve accepted our offer, then another 1.5-2 months before we close (VA Loans tend to take a while)... so we’ll probably end up moving in around the first of the year, rather than October :( But that’s okay. Maybe it’ll go faster and we’ll be pleasantly surprised. (ha ha ha ha)

Wednesday Wanderings –- The Wonder Place, Little Rock, AR

This is the start of a new feature I’m doing on my blog – Wednesday Wanderings. Each Wednesday I will post (complete with pictures!) about a place that I have been that was great. It won’t necessarily be a place to take kids (if I find a romantic getaway with Papai, I’ll definitely let you know about it!).

This week’s wanderings took us to

The Wonder Place

in Little Rock.

The Wonder Place is basically like a great big play-based preschool... minus the ECE teachers. It’s limited to children 8 and under, so you don’t have to worry about big kids being bullies or too rowdy. They have a designated place for little tykes, too (or “little wonders” I think they call them) – i.e. toddlers, 2 and under.

There is a big sand trough, and multi-leveled water basins, complete with fun toys to explore with. They have a replica “River Market” complete with shopping and a cafe! There are blocks, balls, cars, trains, trucks, dolls with houses, a vet station, a theater with all manner of dress up and puppets. Tables with crayons and paper (I think the craft is different each day, though), a loft, tunnels, pipes that vacuum up scarves and balls and spit them out random directions.

We stayed for nearly four hours, and we plan on returning! I think that you could save your money and take your kids here for preschool. But then, I’m a believer in play-based preschool.

Vincente being a vet – he was obsessed with giving all the animals their shots. Funny, because he’s never had a shot...

The cost isn’t too bad – and you can get a year pass for an adult and a child for $250 – and add additional children for $50/each. When you think about what you’d be paying to send your child to preschool, I think that’s a pretty good bargain! They even have a snack area and you can bring your own snacks/sack lunches (or buy a health snack from their vending machines – 100% juice, bottled water, animal crackers, goldfish – that type of thing).

We bought a 20 visit punch card for $100 (which we got to use between my mom, my SIL and her twins, and me and my two kids). That makes it out to be $5 a visit. Pretty decent, if you ask me. Not to mention it’s inside. We actually decided to go here because there was a heat advisory for Friday (temps in the 100’s with the heat index around 110 – yikes!). So instead of hitting up Garvin Gardens in Hot Springs, we checked out The Wonder Place – with much success!

Hopefully we’ll get down to Garvin Gardens, and I’ll do a feature on them as well!

Ratings:

Value -

At $7/visit ($5 with a punch card) it’s a pretty great value for a fun indoor place for the kids (especially in the summer!). The only reason I’m not giving it 5 stars is because I thought it would be neat to have little plaques by the toys giving parents ideas of how to have “play-based” learning experience with their child. Just in case they don’t know how to encourage learning in play.

Location -

It gets three stars because it’s kind of hidden behind a lot of stuff. You have to know it’s there if you want to go. Nothing you can see from the road, you know what I mean? But I guess that’s good – it keeps it pretty quiet. I’d just hate for a place like this to go out of business due to lack of customers because no one knows they are there!

Fun Factor -

Five stars because if I had a big playroom, it would have all this stuff in it. Well designed and just lots of fun. We are definitely going back.