Happy Thanksgiving!

And here follows the obligatory gratitude post. ;)

But seriously, I have a lot to be thankful for. If you're friends with me on Facebook, you'll notice that I don't do the daily gratitude thing in November because, well, why try to do something I know I'll forget to do two days in?

So here follows some things that I am grateful for this year.

1. My family. Daniel is the most amazing husband and father ever. My boys are gems (most of the time). I'm so lucky that I live near my sisters and that my parents are able to come visit us, as well as being not too terribly far from Daniel's family. Oh, and Happy, I love my dog. :)
2. My job. I'm so grateful that I get to be a stay at home mom. As hard as it can be sometimes, I love being home with William and Jacob. Also, I love being able to spend a whole day in my PJ's. ;)
3. Writing. I love to write and create new worlds and characters to populate those worlds. I love coming up with stories. Again, it's not always easy, but it's worth it.
4. All the material things I take for granted. I live in a nice place. We have a good car. I'm able to buy food, clothes and other, less essential things. I love the internet and the TV. And books, so many books!
5. My religion. I'm grateful to be a member of The Church of Jesus Christ and Latter-Day Saints. It gives me peace and direction in my life, as well as connecting me to good people and new friends.

Well, I think that about covers it. I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving (if you celebrate it) and try not to over eat.

Oh, a programming note: Starting next week I'm going to start a series of writing tips over at Kricket Writes. I've been thinking about doing this for a while and I finally figured out a plan. So look forward to that. :)

And Happy Thursday! Thanks for reading!

Kricket's Happy Korner: Volunteering

Let's talk about volunteering and how awesome it is. :) If you didn't know already, I volunteer for Foothills Animal Shelter. I go in on Saturday's and walk dogs for 2 hours, and then spot clean the kennels. It's pretty much the best thing ever.

Not me, but you get the idea. 

My previous volunteering experiences have not been as good. As a teenager, the youth organizations of my church gave us a lot of "opportunities" to serve, and most of them I did not like. Going and singing to old people at a nursing home always scared me (thanks traumatizing experience, Brownies). And going to other people's home to clean it, worst idea ever. "Service Projects" always made me cringe because it generally involved helping other people. I'm not really a people person.

Don't get me wrong, I love people. I'm also pretty good in social situations and I'm even comfortable standing up and giving talks or teaching a class. It's just, given a choice between helping people or picking up dog poop... Hand me the pooper scooper please.

So what made me think of spending my Saturday afternoons volunteering? Well, for a while now I've dreamed of the time when the kids would all be in school and I'd have entire afternoons to my self and the idea of volunteering at an animal shelter always appealed to me. Then, one day it dawned on me that I didn't have to wait that long.

I'll admit, my reasoning for starting were 100% selfish, and that's okay. I wanted to get some time away from the kids and I wanted to play with animals. All of these desires are totally self serving. But yesterday, as I was walking dogs and seeing how happy they were, with their cute little puppy smiles and the way their tails wag, I realized that I'm helping them more then they're helping me and it made me feel really good.

You're smiling because he's smiling. :)

And who doesn't want to feel good?

So, if you're looking for something good and productive to do on the weekends, a good place to start is JustServe.org . There you can find projects in your area. Also, if you're interested in helping animals, look up your local animal shelter or humane society to see if they are in need of help (trust me, they are).

Well, thanks for reading and I hope you have a Magnificent Monday!

Kricket's Happy Korner: Happy Animals

I can't believe I totally forgot to do a post Friday. And I had something to Krank about too. But, it's a new day now, and a Monday at that, so let's think happy thoughts.

This past Saturday I started to do volunteer work at Foothills Animal Shelter. It was all orientation stuff and training, but I'm super excited. I've always wanted to work with animals. When I was little I wanted to be a veterinarian, but as I got older and realized how much school that required, I gave that up.

I've always loved animals and growing up we hardly ever went without some kind of pet. Mostly dogs and countless hamsters, but we also had parakeets, and a cat, once. My dad is allergic to cats. And I am much more an animal person than a people person.

Once Daniel and I got married we went through two hamsters and now have a dog.

We got Happy from Foothills Animal Shelter two years ago and I love him to death. He's a great little dog. He loves to cuddle and play and he's as his name implies, happy.

So here in a couple weeks I'll start really working at the shelter. Part of this is to just get me out of the house and away from the kids once a week. And nothing is more relaxing and happy than hanging out with animals.

And now, if you have a pet, give it a big hug and a treat. If you don't have one and want one, go to your local shelter. Some of them, like Foothills, even have small critters like birds and rodents or reptiles. Save a life, an animal's and your's. :)

Moving, Again

Sorry it's been so long since I've updated. I was going to do a post about ObamaCare but decided that the last thing the internet needed was one more opinion on something that can't be changed right now.

So, a life update! We're moving this month! Woohoo!

I've never liked the apartment we're in now. I only chose it because I had 2 weeks to move from Utah to Colorado and it was the first one to become available. I am never choosing an apartment via the internet again.

We never felt safe in this apartment and I was always ashamed to have people come over. The only thing that's better about our current place compared to the last place we lived in Utah is that the maintenance is slightly better, more square footage and our current residence allows dogs. But our new place is going to be awesome.

We're moving into a town home and for me anything with stairs in it makes it feel more like a house than an apartment. It's in a nicer area and the outside looks really nice. Technically, the town home has a little less square footage than our apartment, but I'm ok with that because a) lots of storage space b) two toilets! c) my laundry area won't be sharing space with the kitchen and d) private patio area outside the front door.

We'll be moving at the end of the month and I'm so excited. Of course I'm not overly excited for the moving cost but we're making it work. It is kind of ridiculous though with pet deposits. You get a dog from a shelter for like $100 but then pay $300 in pet deposits. I've been warning Happy this week that if he annoys me too much I'll decide he isn't worth the pet deposit. I'm totally joking of course, but it makes me feel better in the moment. :)

So once we move in I'll take pictures and post them and all that jazz. In the meantime, I put up another book review at the end of this week.

So Happy Independence Day tomorrow! Be safe with your fireworks and remember what this day is all about and what makes this country so great.

He has arrived!

This here is Jacob! He was born Monday, April 23, 2012 at 4:58pm. He weighed 6lbs 9oz and is 19.5 in. long. He's perfectly healthy and is a strong little boy.

I was induced Monday morning and the whole process was actually pleasant. I was nervous because I'd heard that being induced was hard/long but I was pretty relaxed most of the time.  Of course, my previous experience with giving birth was rather traumatic, so anything even marginally better would have been fine. But this was a complete 180. I can now finally see what women mean when they talk about how beautiful giving birth is; I never believed it last time.

So everyone is settling in fine. William is fascinated with "Baby!" and is still trying to get used to the new routine.  I'm already suffering from lack of sleep, but it's not that bad. Physically I'm doing a lot better now than I was this time after Will was born. I foresee things just continuing to improve from here on out and that gives me a lot of peace of mind.

Even Happy approves of our new addition. :)

My boys!

So there's the baby update!

As of now, I have no clue how often I'll be able to update this. I want to get back into a normal schedule, but my real life has to get in line first. So I guess I'll see y'all when I see ya!

Happy Thursday! and Thanks for reading!

I Return to You with Pictures!

So I really wanted to get some pictures of me and Will today but I can't find my camera, so I had to settle with my web cam.  Not the best pictures, but here you have it.

Aw, ain't I cute with flat hair and no make-up? Yay for lighting!

The necessary pregnant belly shot. I'm 20 weeks today. 

Will wanted to play with the camera too.

And the Happy Puppy

That's all I've got for today.  I'm working on a book review that I'll either post tomorrow or Monday.  I like doing book reviews, I'm thinking about doing more of them.  What think you?

Happy Friday y'all!

Happy Puppy!

Late blog post is only a few days late, right?

Anyway, still getting used to all the new things here. It's all finally becoming normal to me.

In other, more important, news, we got a dog! We've been waning one for awhile but the apartments we were in in Utah didn't allow dogs. So we went to a local animal shelter and picked out this little cutie.

His name is Happy (that was the name he had and he responds to it so we kept it) and he's a 5 year old chihuahua. He is the sweetest dog I've ever met. He's a total cuddle bug and he gets along pretty well with Will. Which really means he just ignores him. :) Plus, since he's more mature he's already house broken and knows basic commands. I don't know how we got so lucky. :) He also plays well with other dogs. Can you say perfect dog?

Anyway, that's all I've got. Look forward to next weeks post, I'm planing on making a big announcement that I've been holding in for a while.

Well thanks for reading!