2012

I remember being a kid and thinking I was to young to be the oldest child.  I always wanted to be 10, then 12, then 14, 16, 18... see a pattern?  Time seemed to take forever and I just wanted to be an adult.  Now that I am an adult I LOVE it!  Of course there are things that aren't so fun...bills... but I would much rather take that on then be a kid again.  And like they say, time flies when you are having fun.  It seems like time just goes faster and faster the older you get, and I think I have narrowed it down to when I got married time has gone faster.  We just celebrated our 6 year anniversary on Dec 30.  I can't believe it has been 6 years already, yet I can't believe it has only been 6 years....  Like many people you can't help but reflect on the last day of the year what the year has brought and 2012 did not disappoint.  Some of the highlights of what happened:

*Kyle and I took our first vacation alone (we didn't even have a honeymoon so this was a big deal)! We went to San Diego for Lynda's (Kyle's sister) wedding.  My sister Melanie came and watched our kids.  We got to go to Universal, Sea World, horse back riding on the beach, walking in downtown LA, and tons more super fun things, just the two of us

*Found out I was pregnant

*Moved from a townhouse to a house

*Found out Joshua has Autism

*Conner and Joshua started preschool (YEAH!!!)

*Had baby Kevin:)

*Saw my whole side of my family (except my brother who is on a mission in Singapore)

*Ben (Kyle's brother) came home from his mission to Mexico

*of course all the holidays: Halloween (everybody were superheros, Thanksgiving, Christmas) 

*6th Anniversary (Kyle planned the entire event.  He took me to a great Mexican place we have never tried, saw Les Mes, went to TGIF for brownie obsessions, and surprised me by taking me to a hotel so we could actually sleep through the night among other things...:))

Yep, a very busy year, and like I mentioned, time has FLOWN by.  

I have never been one to do resolutions.  Like most it would last for like a month and then I would stop, so I just never would do them.  However I really felt this year there are some things I really need to be better about doing.  But I don't want to do yearly, but I'm going to focus on Daily.  Then those dailies will add up to monthlies and then that will add up a the year.  But if you look at just the year it is way to much to handle, so again, I'm focusing on what I need to be doing daily for myself for me to be a better person, woman, wife, and mother.  Some things I am doing are: personal daily prayers twice a day (Kyle and I are really good at couple prayers, but not single), daily personal scripture readying for at least 15 min a day, I really want to run a 5K, I have never done it before...I'm not a runner, but this is something I really want to do in the year 2013, so I will! also, practicing the piano 30 min a day, and writing in my gratitude journal 5 things I'm grateful for every night.  I found a really great journal on Amazon that has every day listed with 5 lines to write things you are grateful for.  It's called "the Simple Abundance Journal of Gratitude" if you want to look it up.  I also found on the Sugar Doodle website a calendar check list thing that happened to have all the goals I want to do, so the entire calendar fits on half sheet of paper and you mark it different ways to show what you did that day.  I really like stuff like that so I want to do it faithfully for the entire month and January and see how I feel, if I have noticed a difference in who I am for the better (I'm sure I will).   So, I will do my best to be better at blogging so the 3 people who read this will know if it is working:) 

As a family we chose our theme for 2013 to be "I can chose to be happy today"  We figured it was simple enough for the kids to understand and it is something we can all work on, to have a positive attitude no matter what happens.  Our family scripture for the year comes from Psalms 118:24  I can't quote it yet exactly but it is the verse that says, "This is the day the Lord has made.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it."  So again, being grateful and happy in each day that the Lord has blessed us with.  

All in all, a great 2012 and I'm so excited for what 2013 will be bringing the Hercules Family:)

Christmas Eve

Christmas this year has been so much fun!  It's the first year that I think the kids have actually understood Santa and that just makes it magical. We started the month doing some advents.  And now that I am a Pinterest addict, I had so many great ideas to choose from.  Both the turkey and Santa in the picture are ideas from Pinterest, so if you can go to my board "Holiday Ideas" sorry I'm not putting a link with the word "here" but I just don't know how:)  The Santa had no beard so everyday we put a cotton ball on to fill it up.  The kids really enjoyed it.  Conner is wearing an apron because we were making cookies for Santa after church.

I just think Conner looks so funny in this picture, you really see his personality.  He is such the oldest child....bossy! And I can say that because I'm an oldest child too:)

Christmas Eve was a full and fun day.  We were able to clean up the house to be  ready for Santa, then after lunch the kiddos all went to Grandma and Grandpa Hercules so mommy and daddy could go on a "date."  Said date included coming back home and putting together a trampoline!  We also had the pjs on the fireplace with Texas the Elf sitting on them.  He wrote a note saying how much he loved being our elf and how proud he was to always tell Santa about the good choices we made.  After setting up the trampoline, Kyle and I braved Walmart....it was crazy busy, so happy we didn't have the kids with us!  By this time it was dark so we went to get the kids (we were counting on the darkness to help hide the trampoline.  The kids had a great time with some of their favorite people.  I love living 10 min away from them!!  We picked up the munchkins and headed over to some of our friends from church home, the Johnson family.  They always do like a Christmas Eve open house.  Shannan us an amazing chef and she had so much food, mostly tasty cookies and treats, there was no way you could have left hungry.  Their daughter Savannah us our go to babysitter.  The kids just LOVE her and were so excited to go to "Savannah's house."   She is only 12, but she is wonderful! Love her!! We were there for about an hour, but Kevin was hungry and somehow the formula was left at grandmas....so we took the long way home, again to avoid the trampoline and stopped in front of the house.  I had the boys help me check the mail since I "forgot" just so we could go in the front door.  They were so excited to get their pjs and look like Texas.  It may be the only year I could get them all exactly matching and I think they look so stinking cute!

We set out cookies and milk and did our normal bedtime routine and sent the kiddos off to sleep....

Well I started this post about a quarter to 5am while feeding Kevin and he is now back asleep so I'm going to go try and lay him down, and maybe  I will get to write about Christmas day soon.  Till then,,,,

Walking Zombies

Walking Zombies make good parents right?  Well I sure hope so because that is how I feel 99% of the time.  Kevin is still waking up every 2-2 1/2 hours ALL day and night.  He is about 10 weeks old now, and I really feel like my other kids were at least sleeping 5-6 hours at a time by now.  He is even on formula (I wasn't making hardly any milk) and aren't formula feed babies supposed to sleep better?  And we swaddle him in the "swaddle me" which he seems to really like being a baby burrito.  And he sleeps on his belly (sleeping on his back didn't even last 5 min.) I think partly the problem is the fact that he has a stuffy nose and has for the past 5 weeks.... but really?  I was trying to think back to the other kids and I don't really remember when they started sleeping through the night, but I know it wasn't still eating every two hours at 10 weeks old.  I think Heavenly Father blesses us to forget these types of things.  PS. if this post isn't really making sense that would be because I was up at 4:30 this morning with Kevin, I finally got him back to sleep just in time for the other kids to wake up.   That is probably another thing.  With him being number 4 it's not like you can just "sleep when the baby sleeps" not going to lie, that ends after the first one:) And with having a 3 bedroom house the older boys sleep in one room, Hannah is in the other, and because of how poor a sleeper Kevin is he sleeps in a crib in our room, so every snort, grunt, or movement he makes I wake up to.  So the few hours of sleep I get aren't consistant.  So any mama's out there who have any advice on getting baby to sleep better feel free to let me know.  You would think I would be a pro with having 4 kids in 5 years, but every child is SO SO SO SO SO different it is like becoming a first time mom again each time.  I must say make-up is a gift from God!  So at least when I'm out in public I don't look like a walking zombie, and it makes me feel so much better to get ready even on limited sleep.  When done right every woman looks better with make-up, it's true, don't argue:) and my shameless plug, Mary Kay is the best make-up/skin care around, check out my website to see for yourself  www.marykay.com/sarahhercules

Anyway, even though it sounds like I'm having a hard time because of a lack of sleep, I love having 4 kiddos.  It is so fun to see how they play and interact with each other.  We are 99.999999% Kevin is our last one and at first I was a little sad and wanting to enjoy every moment.  I still want to enjoy the moments, but I'm no longer sad.  Conner, Joshua, and Hannah are so much fun!  I love getting to hear what they are thinking, games they like to play, stories they like to read, etc.  It is also getting easier in some ways doing things with them, like we went on a walk through the woods and didn't have to worry about them running off and not being able to find them.  This is the best age for Christmas too!!  They are so excited for Santa to come tonight.  They have loved doing the advents, especially adding cotton balls to Santa's beard.  They love Texas the Elf and listening to Christmas music.

There are a few more things I have been wanting to blog about, but I'm out of time for now.  Till next time.