Love, love, love her.

My brother could not have picked a better mate. This is my new sister-in-law Jessica (Jones) Beynon. They came down to visit this last weekend. My girls love her as much as I do. So much that Eden with heavy eyes, crawled up on her lap and feel asleep, Jessica followed shortly.

A fun mom

Every mom has different things she wants to be, and usually lots of different things she wants to be. On my list of what I want to be as a mom is FUN. Some days I do better then others. I don't even dare want to ask my kids if they think I am fun, because lately all I hear Eden say to me is "Mom, you are a crazy, mom." I'm not offended, I interpret that as she is 3 and doesn't really know what she is talking about. Now when she is 10 and still saying I'm crazy we may have a problem.
During Spring Break, we decided to have some fun. 2 other moms and I loaded up our 4-wheelers with kids and hit the trails. We went cave explorer and just 4-wheeled around.
This picture cracks me up, there you have little Eden in her winter coat (I thought it would be colder), rain boots and bike helmet - safety first.
This little girl was my personal cave guide, she took me through the caves later, because I watched all the little kids, while the big kids and other moms went in.

While the boys are away the girls will play

It's our annual tradition to have a spa night while Darrin goes to Priesthood session for conference. This year, was even more special because Grandma Case got to join us. We painted fingernails and toenails. I think that I ended the night with 1 yellow toe, 4 orange, and then Eden got bored. After nails we did facials. The girls were so clean and shiny Darrin asked several times if they had had baths when he got home. Am I revealing too much by admitting that Darrin was shocked that they looked clean? After the facials they said "now we get haircuts". So just in time for Easter I gave each girl a trim.

Can I just say, I love having girls? I love that for the next 15+ years we will be doing facials and nails twice a year, and enjoying being little ladies!

One year older...but is she wiser?

Jaya celebrated her 7th birthday this year. As her birthday came and went, I was slow to do a party (by party I mean a friends party). I actually asked her if we could just skip the whole friend thing this year, and go out as a family. She thought long and hard, and finally said "what do you want me to pick mom?" After my spill about how I am really tired, she said she would pick a family party. I was relieved. Later that week Darrin found out about our plans and conversation and said "Darcy, she is 7, let her have a birthday party." I find it interesting he ended up suggesting it be on a day and time, he would be at work, but that's not the point of the story. So 3 weeks after her birthday we had a party.

Because Jaya was in charge of helping me plan she came up with the idea of a Journaling Party. It turned out to be so fun. I love that she picked such a creative theme. We decorated these cute little journal jars. A Journal jar is filled with pieces of paper that have questions to help prompt you on what to write in your journal.

We also did those Mad Libs and came up with crazy stories.

Now you may be wondering why my 7 year old has ice cream on her face in the above picture, and that's where my question of, is she wiser comes in. After she blew out the candles, she thought it would be funny to stick her face in the cake. I tried to coax her not too, I was pretty embarrassed that the guest of honor was going to willingly subject herself to this sort of humiliation, but I guess it's not humiliating if you want to do it. I asked her right before, "why?" which she replied "because they want me to!" the timeless phrase popped into my mind...would you jump of a bridge because your friends want you to? And the resounding answer for my Jaya at age 7 is YES!

To kill some time we played Red Rover, which Eden was invited to join in. She did awesome, she didn't say anything, but she ran like a steam engine and actually broke through. I love this picture where Jaya is helping her sister run across the field.

Happy 7th birthday Jaya! It's going to be a great year.