Still deciding...

I don't know why I'm having such a hard time deciding whether to go private or not. I guess most of it is not really understanding, so I'm asking for some help understanding: Tell me why you have decided to or not to have a private blog. Thanks for your help!

Going Private

Hey everyone! After some consideration of the whole internet that I don't feel like I really understand anyway, I've decided to go to a private blog, but I don't want anyone who's been reading my blog to be left without an invitation to read, so I thought I would post this and tell anyone who wants to send me an e-mail in the next couple of weeks I will invite you: if your obviously someone I know or someone who isn't crazy or anything. Ha-ha! Like I said, I don't really know anything about the internet and when my friend left me her e-mail address the other day on my comments, she did it all tricky so that's what I'm going to do, so hopefully you can understand my psycho babble from this post: My e-mail address is jnloftus and it's a hotmail e-mail dot com. Got that? I really want to hear from all of you, especially the ones that don't leave comments, because I know that not all of you do...PLEASE E-mail me!!!!

My One Time of Being a Creative Mom

I'm not a very creative mom and especially when it comes to doing any sort of crafts with my kids, so I just never really do any. But one day I had this great idea that we were going to do a craft. I got my idea out of this fabulous book I have called: "Unplugged Play" by Bobbi Conner which is a wonderful book for uncreative moms like me...Anyway they had this idea in there to make hats out of paper plates and then let the kids decorate them. Well, Katelyn decided if we were doing a craft then she wanted to paint, so I was a really brave mom and decided to let them paint too. Of course, we decided to do this wonderful project right "after" they got out of the bathtub. Not the best idea but they did pretty well...I think we only got paint on their hands and the counter (which was easy to wipe up), but the bath also explains why their hair is pretty crazy. But I wasn't letting their messy hair get in my way of documenting my first creative mom moment. Ha-ha! If anyone else enjoys reading self-help books (if that's what you want to call them) I have a few favorites that I just wanted to throw a shout-out for: The House That Cleans Itself" by Mindy Starns Clark This is a great book for the house-cleaning impaired (like me) "The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands" by Dr. Laura Schlessinger And my all-time favorite "The Book of Mormon: Another Testament of Jesus Christ" And I also love hearing advice from other people. I love to hear little random tricks that other people know too, so I thought I'd share some tricks with you: * If you get deodorant on your shirt a nylon works great to get it out * If you want to sharpen a pair of scissors then cut a piece of tin foil with them * Clothes, towels, sheets, and blankets fold much flatter if you fold them on something hard, rather than in the air Some people might think all this is useless knowledge, but I LOVE little tips that will help me be a better person and do my "jobs" better. I hope everyone reading this leaves me at least one little tip...thanks!

Let it Snow!!

We got soooo much snow over the holidays. It was pretty crazy! My girls had a ton of fun playing in it. Here's a couple of pictures of them: So, I've been trying to do a little bit of facebooking lately, but it seems like I need to check it more often than every couple of days to be able to keep up...Any tips on facebooking? I've been even worse at blogging than facebook. Sorry! I was also wondering if anyone had any good web-sites on hairdos. One of my blogging friends (Becki) decided to get an invitation only blog and didn't invite me, so now I can't get all of her cute hairdo blogs. (This is just a hint for Becki to invite me on her blog. ha-ha! She's probably getting ready to have her baby any day and won't even read this.) My goal is to update my blog about once a week. I'm definitely trying to find balance this new year too, Amber. Have you ever heard the quote: "Too much of a good thing is wonderful"? I don't think that's true. I think that we need to find balance and remember that our family is "the most important". I love my family and I'm going to find a good balance this new year for them! Here are some of my goals: 1. Remember that my husband is and always will be my best friend and needs extra attention that I sometimes forget to give him when the day gets so stressful and busy 2. Remember that my kids are going to grow up faster than I think and I need to make sure and spend time with them now 3. Go to bed by 10 every night and up by 6 every morning (getting enough sleep truly does affect everything about us)(isn't it true that you can get done in one hour without your kids, what would take you all day with kids, so my goal is to wake up and spend one hour every morning doing the things that are easier to do without kids) 4. I'm going to go to the temple at least once a month, hopefully two...We had a good reminder lesson on Sunday about attending the temple. Someone made the comment that even if we don't feel like we have enough time to do a session we can still do other things there or even just go feel of the spirit. 5. Remember that my Heavenly Father loves me and wants the best for me and my family Now that's it's past 10 and I'm already starting to break my goals, I better stop now. I hope everyone has a great new year and finds a good balance in everything!!!

The rest of our trip

This is us at a children's museum. It was soooo much fun! I wish we had one closer to us. (Do you think Nate or the kids had more fun? He's such a kid at heart. He had a blast!)

This is us hanging out at Jenny and Blake's house. This is a two-bedroom 1920s house, but they've almost completely updated everything and it is beautiful. But it couldn't probably survive one more day with 11 people living there. We had so much fun, as you can tell by the pictures.

The rest of these pictures are of Kirtland, Niagara Falls (where we stayed in a hotel with an indoor water park), and Palmyra.

Kids and Cameras

My kids got ahold of the camera one morning... Nate's dad was over visiting and we had just got done showing him some pictures of our trip. The kids had taken the camera into the other room and were taking their own pictures. Luckily, it looks like Nikosha took most of the pictures, so our camera wasn't damaged or anything...I think Nikosha is quite the good photographer, though. These are the pictures she took: (Kyler didn't look all that excited to be a part of the girls' photography session. He's actually really good about just letting them play with him like a little doll.)

Return from Ohio

I first just want to tell everyone thank you for all of your advice. It helped me not only know what to plan for, but also to know that other people had gone through it and survived so I would probably be okay! Ha-ha! The girls didn't like their ears popping on the airplane and Kyler cried a lot when he got tired, but besides that the plane rides weren't too bad. I would strongly advise people flying with kids to fly in the evening, though. Our flight back left at about 7:00 p.m. and it seemed much easier traveling at night, when it was dark on the plane. I was so excited to get home and post a whole slide show of our trip! But then I realized we had left our memory card for our camera in Ohio. We borrowed another memory card from my sister that we made it home with, but it only has the last quarter of our trip, so you'll have to wait and see all the pictures, but I posted a couple of the highlights of the final leg of the trip: This is Nate, Nikosha, and Katelyn in the Sacred Grove in Palmyra, New York. The Sacred Grove is the place Joseph Smith went to pray about which church he should join when Heavenly Father and Jesus appeared to him. We had the opportunity to visit some great church history sites, but the Sacred Grove was definitely the most peaceful (even with all our kids there). If anyone wants to know more about our church, there is a great informative web-site you can visit: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints This is Nikosha in front of Niagra Falls on the Canada side. I've only been out of the country one other time and that was to Tijuana, Mexico for a couple of hours. It was so fun to go to the Canadian side of Niagra Falls. We stayed in a hotel that had an indoor water park. That was fun for all ages!! It was really cold outside so we only did a beautiful drive-by of the falls all lit up at night and then a quick 15-minute stop where we jumped out and took pictures. (We would have had to park and pay $20 and then walk about a mile with all the kids, so we opted for the quick view.) This is Nate, me, and Kyler's little head sticking out of my jacket. We're standing on the road in between Joseph Smith's two houses and behind us you can see the Palmyra temple. I don't know if you can see the temple when there are leaves on the trees or not, but we were glad we got to see it because we were there on Sunday, so the temple gates were closed. This is quite the crew at Burger King! This is my family, Jenny (my sister), Blake (her husband), and their 3 kids, and Trent Buttars (Nate's good friend growing up, who is also going to dental school), Amanda (his wife), and their 2 boys. I think with this crazy crew we ran everyone else out of Burger King, so we got the place to ourselves. We had so much fun getting to see the Jones' and Buttars'! This is a little bit smaller crew at the Hill Cumorah visitor's center in front of the Christ statue. (The Hill Cumorah is where Joseph Smith got the gold plates that he translated into the Book of Mormon.) We were gone for 9 days and had such an awesome time, but we were also very glad to get back home! As soon as Jenny sends me my memory card, I'll get some more pictures posted of our trip. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!