Growing up

It's weird that I am so young, and yet feel so old . . . . . or maybe it's weird that I am old, and yet feel so young . . . .

It seems strange to me to experience life altering events, or have friends experiencing life-altering events. I just keep thinking "We are all too young for this. These things happen to old people, to ADULTS."

I guess I am finally an adult.

My heart breaks for my two friends who have lost babies. I can't imagine what they are going through but reading stories about their lives literally puts me to tears. Twenty-two year olds are not supposed to lose babies. Only adults have to struggle through that trial. These are good people, they aren't supposed to be faced with these trials.

And then I see how they are handling their loses - with strength and dignity, and a growth in love for our Heavenly Father and his plan for us, and I am blown away again and think, no twenty-two year old can think like that.

I have found myself drawn to one of them in particular - I haven't asked her if I can share her name, or her story, or even a link to her blog, so I won't - but I read it all the time. She and I have had so many of the same experiences and we have bonded over them. And it's funny that even though we meant under the most random and strange circumstances (think polygamy date with my future husband :) I truly love her, and pray for her always. She has been such a strength to me, and her grace under the face of her trials, is awe inspiring. There has not been a time since reading her story where when I go to yell at my kids because I am so frustrated with them that I don't stop and think "At least I have them, I need to remember what it would be like to lose them."

Another of my friends was reunited with her husband this week after he was gone for a year serving our country in Iraq - he returned to a baby boy that he had never met. I can't imagine not having your husband be there for the birth of your son, and I can't imagine what it would be like to be unable to be present at the birth of your son either. The pictures of their reunion are amazing and beautiful and you can truly see their joy at finally being together again as a family!

And amidst all this happiness, his father was taken from them in an accident on Wednesday before the father and son got to see each other again.

Once again, I cannot imagine what this would be like.

It scares me. I can't help but sit there and think that it seems like every family is dealing with distress, and it worries me that some tragedy is waiting to happen in ours. Because of that fear, I am slowly finding strength to live better, and be a better person. To judge a little less, smile a little more, and always tell people that I care about them. I guess you truly never know when they will be gone.

It makes me happy to know that we will all be together again. And yet, I still can't help but think that we are all too young to be dealing with these tragedies. I guess it's true, I really am growing up.

Christmas Time at the Marshalls!

Yes, yes, yes . . . . I have heard it all before! It is not even Thanksgiving yet and we have the Christmas tree up. Christmas gets earlier every year. Yes I know it is only the second week of November, and we are probably the only people in the world with our Christmas tree up already (except for the hicks down the street who have snow globes in their yard and Christmas lights hung all over their house to rival the Griswold's) but I can't help it! I LOVE CHRISTMAS! Especially now that we have kids. I love seeing the Christmas tree up with presents underneath it, and I love seeing Parker excited for the presents.

Their are ulterior motives too I guess. We tend to work for MONTHS at getting Christmas presents together. It's usually like we are walking around a store somewhere and see somethig we want to get Parker and there's a timeline - if it's after his birthday in August, we justify buying it by saying it's for Christmas. And then it gets set in our closet and soon the closet gets full and makes it hard to fit all other items in it, so to regain the space I wrap the presents.

And then after wrapping the presents I realize I really don't have any more space in the closet than I did before. So I start placing random Christmas decorations around the house, until Eric is brainwashed into thinking it is time to put up the tree. The I say something like "I think you should clean out the closet under the stairs" and when Eric takes out the tree box, I grab it and run off with it. Then the tree is up, with lights on it (which is fairly easy seeing as how the tree is pre-lit) with trimmings, ornaments, and star on top, before Eric even knows what hit him.

Usually Parker has become enamored with the tree by this point (and this year Preslie has liked it too) that Parker gets hysterical when Eric says "It's too early to have that up, take it down" and I say, "But your son will be so sad" and then it stays.

Ulterior motive number two: it keeps us in line for how many presents we buy. Purchasing presents two to three months beforehand, and not having them out on a counter somewhere to show us that indeed we do already have forty-five presents for Preslie, we really don't need that My Little Pony for Preslie, no matter how cute it is - it would become very easy to OVER BUY for Christmas.

So here we are, November 13th, and we have the stockings hung, Christmas tree up, and all the presents are organized under the tree. We still have a few last minute gifts to buy for family, but it's almost completely done, which makes me extremely happy. I like making caramel hot chocolate and sitting on the couch with Eric with the tree lights on - it is AWESOME!

Our Christmas tree!

See how upset Eric is about the tree being up, he won't even smile!

Preslie has started crawling! Usualy it is an army crawl or a bear crawl where she tries to move around with her feet and hands on the ground, stabilized by her head. Sometimes she even chews on her clothes, it's like she doesn't know we already have a family dog to chew things for us!

Princess Preslie! 8 1/2 Months Old!

We've had requests for updated pictures of little miss Preslie - so I grabbed a bunch off the camera and downloaded them. Nothing too special, just some fun pictures - amazingly Parker took most of them, he LOVES playing with the camera.


Preslie is a total girl, she loves shoes and cell phones.



Not quite sure why this picture is here, don't look at the rest of the house I guess.

.

Halloween!

We had quite the Halloween week this year. Tuesday we had our usual Carpender Family dinner at my grandparents. Wednesday my mom asked us to go to their wards Trunk-or-Treat. Thursday was our ward's Trunk-or-Treat and chilli feed that we had to bring chilli to. Friday my sister threw an awesome Halloween party. Saturday we went out to dinner with our good friends, the Nicolaysen's, for Jen's birthday (it is on Halloween) and Sunday we decided to take Parker trick-or-treatng - we figured we were doing something as a family so it was okay. The kids got PLENTY of use out of their costumes.


Parker was a dragon - but he mostly called himself a dinosaur or a fly :)

My Grandma Carpender sewed my sister Brittany and I witch costumes when I was 13 months old and Brittany was two and a half. My mom has kept them for years, and recently found it and asked me if I wanted it. I thought it would be fun for Preslie to wear the same costume. I had to tack up the dress a little bit, and she can't wear the cape, but my Grandma was ecstatic when she saw Preslie in the outfit she sewed almost 24 years ago!

Bathtime Fun!

Adding to Parker's non-stop love for his little sister, he always wants to take a bath with "baby". We put them in together, cause they are young and we can still do that, almost every night and they splash together and have a good time. We hear them in there giggling forever, and Parker is always upset when we tell him it's time to get out and go to bed.

Parker once again posing for the camera.


Little babies having fun in the tub!

Preslie loves swimming with big brother


Some things just should not happen. But they usually end up being hilariously funny and hard to get upset about.

Eric was sitting at the vanity doing a crossword puzzle while Parker and Preslie were in the tub and I was cleaning up our closet the other night. I walked out into the bathroom and was immediately hit with a STRONG smell of poop.

"Eric, do you smell that?"

"Yes, I was just gonna say that it smells like death in here."

Immediately I think, dangit, Parker popped in the tub again. He has popped in the tub twice before, both times have been when he was sick, so I feel like we have doded a HUGE bullet since he doesn't go to the bathroom EVERY time he's in there like I have heard kids do. So I ask him.

"Parker, did you poop in the tub?"

"Nope!"

He said it happily and continued playing. It only took me approximately one-tenth of a second after looking at the tub to see it.

"All cleaned up Mommy!" He said.

Parker had most definitley pooped in the tub. But he also had picked up the poop and ligned it up neatly on the ledge of the tub for Eric and I to find.

Carving "Punkins"

Last year we took Parker to the Farmstead and pulled him in a wagon around rows and rows of "punkins" (as he calls them) until he found his perfect pumpkin. This year we ran out of time, so we let Parker pick out his pumpkin at . . . . . . Wal-mart! Lame, I know, but he still had fun finding it!



!Just starting to carve the pumpkins!


Preslie did not have fun carving pumpkins, she sat in her high chair and ate graham crackers the whole time instead.

Making Grape Juice!

We recently went to Shurtleff Vineyards in Payette, Idaho and picked our own grapes. I have always loved grapes straight off the vine, they taste NOTHING Like the grapes you get at the store. I was excited to eat them. But we heard that you could make your own grape juice, and since Parker drinks juice like it's going out of style, we thought it was a good idea.

By the time we made the one hour drive from our house to Shurtleff it was almost sunset, so we hurriedly pulled out our five gallon buckets and began picking bunches of grapes. I expected it to be hard, but it was SO EASY! I wish it had been light enough and that we had not been in such a hurry and we had gotten pictures at the vineyard. It was BEAUTIFUL and it smelled amazing!

We picked 36 gallons of grapes! My Grandma Carpender lent me her steamer/juicer, and we spent the next week picking grapes off the vine, cleaning them, steaming them and sealing the juice in jars. It was a lot of fun, and amazingly it takes JUST like the grape juice you buy at the store, maybe even better! I am very proud of Eric and I for becoming domestic and being so financially savvy. We spent $15 dollars on 36 gallons of grapes and $30 on jars and in turn we got over $200 worth of grape juice! DELISH!

TWO 18 Gallon buckets of grapes! These three LARGE bowls made up about 1/4 of one bucket!

The first round of jars for caning!

Pouring the grape juice into the jars

!

Our Crazy Kids

Eric and I have decied that we have the best looking kids ever ON TOP OF their amazing personalities. We have been very lucky that us two young kids haven't completely screwed up our children . . . . . at least not yet.

This sumer we had a lot of fun, including celebrating Parker's 3rd birthday! I can't believe how the time has flown - it seems just yesterday Eric and I were sitting at the hospital for 25 hours waiting for him to come!

Mostly these are just numberous pictures I like!


Apparently we don't feed Preslie enough - after eating her first dinner of spaghetti she decided to eat the high chair.


We have been greatly impressed (along with VERY HAPPY) at how well Parker gets along with Preslie. Everyone's heard teh horror stories of an older sibling pulling their younger baby sister/brother off the couch, or hitting them with toys, or feeding them plastic. But so far so good with Parker! He LOVES Preslie, is always worried about her, and always shares his toys.

Parker asked for a "tractor cake" for his birthday. Another thing to add to his ever growing list of "favorites" I guess. We had is party and Grandma and Papa Lewis' house and Parker had a million presents and a lot of fun with his cake!

DINO - SAUR!!!!!

For the 4th of July we went to Utah and spent the weekend with Eric's sister Katie and her family. It worked out well since Denny and Kellie (Eric's parents) were in Utah too, and we actually ended up trading in our cars and got a minivan (yes, I know, a van!) at the same time. It was quite an eventful trip!

Katie's in-laws invited us to go to their country club for dinner, a carnival, and fireworks on the fourth! We were entirely under-dressed I'm pretty sure (and probably made a good hundred thousand dollars a year less than ever other person there) but we had a GREAT time and are VERY greatful to the Murdock's for inviting us to come.

We stood in line and got Parker's face painted, and he decided to be different and not paint his face like a butterfly or spiderman as every other child there did. He told the lady himself what he wanted to be painted like. See if you can guess!

Just in case - he is a DINOSAUR! I am super glad that Parker has his individuality and was the only dinosaur there!

"Papa's Plane"

There is apark near our home that Parker loves to go and visit. We drive by it on our way home from work occasionally and he always yells at us to stop - though we usually are in a hurry to go somewhere and never do.

This has been months back (as you can see since the trees are still green and Preslie is very little - guess I'm not amazing at this whole blogging thing) but we finally took a family outing to the park on a Saturday and let Parker visit.

Here are some pictures from our visit

Parker is quite the little poser. When we whip out the camera, he pops a pose and Eric and I always laugh and think "Who taught him this stuff?" For about a year now Parker has been obsessed with trains. Grammy and Papa Marshall took us on a "Polar Express" train ride last Christmas, and ever since then, he wants TRAINS!

He also loves planes. It's amazes me he even remembers what they are, he's been on one a couple times, but he was very little. Every time he sees the "pencil" mark in the sky from a plane he says "Karker go on plane!" (for those of you who haven't already heard our son has a bit of a lisp, but only when involving his name. For instance, he can say "puppy" just fine, but it's always "Karker" when talking about himself.)

My Grandpa Carpender was a mechanic in the Air Force his entire life until he retired. So at a family party we had Parker tell him that he had gone and seen a plane. My Grandpa then proceeds to tell us that he has been in that plane. I'm thinking he means he has been in that model of plane or something - I don't really now anything about planes! But turns out his brother, my Uncle Don, actually flew that particular plane that is up for display at the park and my grandpa flew in it with him.

Parker's eyes got HUGE when "Papa Great" told him this and now every time we drive by Parker says, "Mommy, Daddy! That's Papa's plane!"