pj's love affair

paige has really discovered her love of snow this winter. she loves sledding, making snow angels, going for walks, and just playing in the snow. however, her most favourite thing about snow is making snowballs. and no, she hasn't yet learnt the projectile nature of the snowball. paige's deep love of snowballs stems not from a passion for snowball fights but from her desire to eat them. as long as paige has a snowball in her hand to carry around for almost the entire time she is outside sledding, making snow angels, walking around, and playing, she is happy.

normally the snowballs paige carries around are MUCH smaller than this one. but when her dad made this one for her, paige was in heaven.

she makes me smile:).

my Christmas baby

our family was truly blessed with a beautiful bundle of boy on Christmas day 8 years ago. and that beautiful boy has grown in to my handsome, kind, caring, sensitive, intelligent, intuitive, often wild 8 year old burton.

today was a special day in our family as burton was baptized. we had almost out entire extended family come to cranbrook for the weekend to support burton in his decision to be baptized and to celebrate the new year with us. i felt the spirit of our Heavenly Father touch my heart as i sat with those i love most and watched my burty burt enter the waters of baptism. how i love my family. how blessed i feel to have parents, brothers, sisters, nieces, and nephews, both mine and brent's, that i love so much and who love me and my family too. what a blessing it was to be able to join together today and let burton know how much we all love him. and how much more sweet and special it was to have my little brother, andrew, baptize burton.

and as i sat loving my burton, i felt a glimpse of how much our Heavenly Father loves him too. burton is a special little boy. as crazy as he can be at times, maddeningly so even, he is also very sensitive to the things of the spirit. he has a testimony of the gospel. he knows that Jesus Christ is the Savior. he is a brilliant not so little boy with so much potential for good.

when i had burton 8 years ago, i was grateful for the strong and healthy addition to our family. i felt that instant, heart filling love that all mothers feel after they labor so hard to have their babies. little did i know, as with each of my children, how much i would love that little boy as he joined our family. i was reminded today as i watched burton of how blessed i am to have the opportunity to love as a mother loves. to have the all encompassing love that begins as your baby grows inside of you and carries on in to forever.

what a good day this last day of 2011 was.

from the mouths of babes

our boys had the chance to act out the nativity scene at our ward Christmas party last weekend. jensen was joseph and burton and evan were 2 of the 3 wise men. a few days after the party, we were talking with our boys about the true meaning of Christmas, etc., and asked them to think of how it might have felt to actually have been in bethlehem to see the Savior after He was born; we asked jensen how he thought joseph might have felt to be the earthly father of the Savior of the world. we then asked burton and evan how they thought the wise men might have felt after travelling so far to kneel before Jesus. evan thought for a second or two and then said, in all seriousness, "tired."

well, not quite the answer we were looking for, but still true, i am sure!!

the big 3-0

so, it has been a long while since i have last posted. not much has happened and i really haven't had much to say. but a few things have come and gone and i thought they were worth mentioning.

i turned 30 at the beginning of the month. the big 3-0. i remember being in high school, thinking that 30 was so old and so far away and now, bam, here i am, living it. never has the old adage "you're only as old as you feel" meant more to me! the fact is that i have been married for 11 years and i have 4 children aged 9 to 2. so one must deduce that one is getting up there in age. although this "one" still feels 19:) i have decided that 30 is the new 20...that's the truth and i am sticking to it.

summer is by far my most favourite season. however, fall is a very close second. i love the fall! i have always found a great amount of joy in and appreciation for the world around me as i watch the trees change their faded summer clothes for more vibrant and varied fall frocks. what beauty surrounds us in the fall!! and what a beautiful fall we have had. the nice weather has allowed for many fall bike rides, walks, trips to the park, and lots of giant leaf piles to make and jump in.

fall is also my favourite time to take pictures. since brent and i started having our kids, we have taken a family picture every fall. anyone who knows me knows i LOVE to take pictures. i jokingly told brent the other day that by the time we are old and gray, we will have thousands of photo albums full of pictures...i think that is more truth than joke! here are some more of my faves from the last month.....

i could go on and on with the pictures, but i will only add a few more. we went to my mom and dad's farm for thanksgiving, as we do every year. it was a beautiful weekend and we had a lot of fun playing and visiting. perhaps the funnest thing we did was something that i have never done before. my dad called it his version of cow tipping. we pushed round bales down a hill in one of the fields by my parents' house. it was awesome. the kids loved it and i am so very glad we have that memory. here are a few pictures of cow tipping, dad/papa/big steve style.

my wish

raising a daughter in today's world sometimes seems frightening to me. will i be able to safeguard paige from the onslaught of what the world's view of beauty is? will i be able to foster in my daughter a love for herself? a positive self image? will paige love herself because she knows that she is a daughter of God? or will she wonder where her value is and define herself by other's standards?

my wish for paige is that she will always know how beautiful she is. that she will never doubt her self worth. that she will love herself as much as i do. that she will be comfortable in her own skin and know that the beauty of her spirit is what matters most.

being the mother of a daughter has opened my eyes to the importance of loving myself too. of setting an example for paige of what is important. of learning to love my own body and self image. of being aware of what i say in relation to my body so that my daughter doesn't learn to worry about those few extra pounds or whether or not she exercised today or how many calories she has eaten or whether or not she should be dieting.

because in the end does it really matter? does my sense of worth rely on what i look like? and if it does, should it? or should i be more focused on what my Father in Heaven thinks of me? i am certain that when i see Him again, He won't notice if my hair is perfect or if i am a bit flabby or a few pounds heavier than i would like to be. he won't notice if my eyelashes are long enough or if i chew my fingernails. He will love me for me...He does love me for me.

and i want to teach my paigey that simple truth too.

hope

it has been a long while since i have blogged. can i say that we have been busy!? because summer in our house means lots of busy! traveling, boating, beaching, more traveling, more boating, and more beaching! at least the house has stayed fairly clean as we have not been inside much to mess it up! we have been having a lot of great fun with family and friends. click here if you want to see some pictures.

it has been almost 2 months since my brother and his wife had a stillborn baby boy. they named him stephen james swainson, jr. he was named after my brother. he was to be the 3rd stephen in our family - my dad and brother being the first 2. they were going to call him little steve, my brother would be big steve, and my dad would become old steve. my brother and dad were called little steve and big steve when we were growing up.

my sister in law, andrea, went in to labor a few days before her due date. she had a normal and healthy pregnancy. little steve died during labor because of placental abruption, which means that the placenta detached too soon. how my heart has ached for this little nephew that we never had the chance to meet. how my heart has ached for steve and andrea and for the sadness and grief that they feel over the death of their son. i won't say loss because he is not lost to them, or to us. he is still part of our family and i know that we will have the opportunity to be with him again. as sad as this has been for our family, we have all felt some measure of peace and hope that we will be with little steve again; that he is with our Father in Heaven, waiting for us to come home to him. and when we see him, i feel as if we will know him and it will be almost as if he was here with us all along. i look forward to that day.

that gives me hope.

i also wanted to write about one of my most dearest friends who has been bravely battling breast cancer since march. she is almost done with her chemo and then will be doing some radiation and taking oral medications for awhile. i know that i embarrass her when i tell her how much i admire her in person so i thought i would write about it here. my friend has gone through the difficult chemo process with such grace, dignity, and strength. she has lost all of her hair and almost all of her eyelashes. her eyebrows have thinned. her skin is dry and red. her face is swollen and puffy. and yet i see such beauty in her when i look at her. she is beautiful because she is strong. she is beautiful because she is brave. she is beautiful because of the strength of her spirit. she is beautiful because of her faith.

she is beautiful in all the ways that matter. and i love her.

i love her sense of humor. i love her sarcasm and wit. i love that she understands my struggles and comforts me even when mine pale in comparison to hers. i love that we don't have to talk every day to know that we care about each other and are thinking of one another. i love her smile. i love her laugh. i love the light that she shines. i love her for the hope that she gives me, knowing that we can be strong in trials and that we can do all things in Christ.

i am so grateful for a loving Heavenly Father and the plan that He has for us, His children. i know that there is always peace in sadness and hope in hard times because He loves us. and He has sent His Son to help us along our way.

and that gives me hope.

life - a metaphor:)

my 3 boys participated in the wasa lake kids triathalon on saturday. this was jensen and burton's second time and evan's first time and, like last year, we had a great time. i wrote about it to my brother, robert, who is currently serving a mission in the scotland/ireland mission. because i did such a good job rehashing it for him, and even managed to make a "profound" (ha!) comparison to life, i am just going to share what i wrote to him....i don't think i could manage the same brilliance (again...ha!) that i managed a few nights ago, so here it is (it also happens to be rob and andrew's 20th birthday today. hence the birthday wishes):

hey rob -

first off, i hope you had a good week - the last one in your teens!! when you get this, you will be 20!! and a big HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!! to you:) any special plans for your birthday?

the 3 boys participated in ther second (ev's first) wasa lake triathalon yesterday. it was a great day! it was so much fun to watch the boys push themselves and do something hard. it was a decent day, but as the weather has not been stellar so far this spring, the water was still freezing!! evan's age group went first. now, as you know evan, he can some times be a bit of a boob. but did he let the freezing cold water stop him? no!! it was so awesome. when the race started, he was one of the first kids to just dive in the water. they weren't in very deep water but they still weren't supposed to run to complete the swim - they had to either swim or dolphin dive - and evan kept diving in the water the whole time. after 2 or 3 jumps in the water, he came up crying. but again, that didn't stop him. i had a moment of "oh crap!" when i saw him come up crying - again, you know what evan is like. once he gets upset it isn't easy to console him. so, when i saw him start to cry, i thought that that was it - he was done. but no. he powered through it, finished the swim, biked with ease, and did his run. it was so awesome to see my little evanator complete his race and be so proud of himself for doing it! he already can't wait until next year. you would've been so proud of him rob!!

burton and jensen were in the same age group this year. they swam 150 meters, biked 5 km, and then ran 1 km. jensen did it without too much difficulty but it was really quite hard for burton. last year the water level in the lake was quite a bit lower so it was much easier for him to complete the swim. and he was also at the head of the pack when the race started. he kind of got lost in the shuffle this time - he was more at the back and couldn't touch the bottom well enough to really push his way passed anyone. as i watched him try to start the swim, he looked so lost out in the freezing cold water - almost panicked. my heart, as his mother, hurt for him! he even tried doing the back stroke just to get things started. but every time he "came up" for air or turned around to see where he was headed, he still looked panicked. so i muscled my way through some of the parents so i was closer to where burton was on the shoreline and just started cheering as loud as i could - saying, "you can do it burton!!" once he heard my voice and saw me on the shore, he didn't look so lost anyomre - the look of tears and panic disappeared and he was able to dig deep and finish the swim. after the 5 k bike, the run was also tough. when i saw burton rounding the last corner, he looked close to tears - like ke was trying so hard to keep it together. so again, i ran back to where he was and started just cheering for him. i even ran beside him for a bit. again, once he saw me there with him, cheering him on, he was able to regroup and pour on a little bit of speed to finish the race.

it made me feel so much love for my boys to be on the sidelines, cheering them on, encouraging them to do their best and to see them visibly lifted by my cheering. writing this just now, to you, made me think that this is really what life is all about. we are running our own race, trying our best to run it well. it is really hard some times. at times we want to just curl up, cry, throw in the towel and quit - because the water is too cold or the run is too long and hard. but then we hear and see our family and friends, cheering us on from the sidelines and even running beside us some times - encouraging us and reminding us that we can do it. and then there is our Savior - who is our biggest fan, who wants us to finish the race and finish it well. and he is not only cheering us on but he is always there, running beside us. the whole way. he not only ran his own race but is running our race with us too.

so, rob, when you are over in scotland and ireland serving your mission and it gets hard, remember that we, your family, are there for you. look to the shoreline and you will see us there - cheering you on, encouraging you, and reminding you that you can do this. and we will be there, running beside you and helping you finish your race - always.

i love you my brother!! have a great birthday and know that i am thinking of you today and always!

love jen