Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to all you moms out there! Especially to my own Mom! (Loved talking with ya tonight, mom. Told you I wouldn't go to bed even though it was late!)

Today was a really nice day. Our little baby Alex was blessed today at church! Isn't he just adorable? He's wearing the same suit Jacob wore when he was blessed (minus the bow tie, which I decided to skip this year...I'm getting more practical and less fancy by the minute!). Jesse, as much as I dearly love him, has never been a very eloquent man. So Alex's blessing was short and to the point, as have been all our children's, but it was still nice and included all the important stuff! He was blessed to grow well and grow strong, have health and happiness, grow well in the church, have great faith and a strong testimony, and go the temple and be sealed there. And I don't know why, but I'm always nervous Jesse's going to say a different name at the start of the blessing, but nope, it's still Alexander Boden. ;)

Since we had no family who could attend the blessing, and also because Bishop Paul challenged us to think about inviting people we normally wouldn't, we had some friends visit us at church today. Cara and Russ (our good friends from our early days in Maryland, who have since moved to Pennsylvania) and their kids, Anna, Leah and Bethany, came down to share the day with us. It's always nice to get a chance to visit them, and Melinda enjoyed having Leah in her Primary class, and Jesse and I got Anna in our Primary class! Also, because of the Bishop's challenge, I invited some friends from my parenting/playgroup. My friend Johanna and her family accepted the invitation, and it was so fun to have them. I was nervous... I've never invited a friend to church before, but they were happy to see so many kids in Sacrament meeting (since as is typical with most other Christian churches, the churches they have attended in the past all have nurseries for young kids, and she would end up spending the whole sermon out in the hall with her kids instead).

Both families joined us for lunch at our apartment after church was over, and it was so nice to have enjoyable company for Mother's Day! Johanna and her husband asked a lot of questions about how the church works (What's a ward? Are there a lot of mid-week activities? Was that pretty typical for a Sunday service? etc.), and I was grateful for Jesse and also for Russ, who, as past missionaries (and in Russ's case, a previous ward missionary leader), knew how to answer questions easily and keep it fun at the same time. (Like... "How does someone become a Prophet?" "Well, first, you hope and pray that it's never you!") Meanwhile, all the kids had a fun time playing, minus Jacob, who had passed out on the drive home, and slept soundly through it all, poor guy. Missed out on all the fun. (That's the problem with not falling asleep till almost 11pm... Listen to your mother when she tells you to GO TO SLEEP!!!)

After we had the house back to ourselves, I was dead tired, since Alex greeted me this morning with a "Happy Mother's Day! I'm going to wake up at 6am and not fall back asleep until 10 minutes before your alarm goes off!" (And yeah, I hadn't gone to bed until midnight, of course.) So I headed back to the bed to try to get some sleep, and hopefully get Alex to sleep, too. Jacob was still there asleep. And this picture was the result of my efforts. Squishy-faced, still-asleep Jacob, wide-eyed and wiggly Alex. I eventually had Jesse take Alex out, where he spit up a bunch, pooped a bunch, and got the hiccups. During this time, Jacob woke up and started bugging daddy for food and diaper changes. I finally called for Jesse to bring Alex back to have mercy on the poor kid (and freeing him up for Jacob sure helped, too). Nursing cures his hiccups in 2 seconds flat, every single time. And it worked like a charm again. Unfortunately, even though he fell asleep nicely at that point, it was getting late in the afternoon and my window for a nap had passed. Still, I did manage to lay there long enough to doze off a couple times and drool all over my pillow. (Yeah, so, I thought that was only a pregnancy thing for me, but like the last 15 or so pounds of this pregnancy, it's being stubborn and not going away! *sob*)

Melinda and Jacob (with Jesse's help) made me cards. They were so excited to give them to me!

Jacob drew three happy faces, complete with hair and noses!
Melinda drew herself on the front of the card (Daddy drew the heart)....
And wrote a note on the inside. (She needed a little bit of help spelling, but did great! The last M in Mom is upside down, but "it's okay like that!" according to Melinda!)

Of course, Jesse made me dinner (usually I request steak, but felt like something different and got "Big Daddies", my Grandma Crockett's recreation of a restaurant dish: Fried tortilla with a meat/salsa/refried bean topping, with other typical taco toppings like lettuce, tomato, etc., all piled up on a plate). After dinner, since Jacob had napped so long, Jesse conducted some Newson Olympics in our house, which was basically just trying to get the kids to run as much as possible to expend some energy and get them tired again. Lots of running up and down the hall, jumping over wooden spoons like hurdles, climbing over and under chairs, that sort of thing. (It would have been super to have a sunny day for running outside, instead of a super wet stay-inside type of Sunday. Oh well.) Afterwards, we called our own moms and talked to them.

And Alex gave me a nice video performance for Mother's Day! He's just started smiling regularly, it's so cute! And he was also cooing a tiny bit for the video. It wasn't until halfway through that I realized, HEY! He's not talking to me, he's talking to the little red blinking light on the camera!! LOL! But here's some baby goodness for you to enjoy with me! Alex is almost 6 weeks old!


And now, I really must go to bed. *Yawn* 12:30am, yikes! Time flies when you're sharing every detail of a long day...