At the end of January, Ryan was flying to Ohio for his dad's birthday, so I decided to drive up to St. George for the weekend to see my brother's family and their new house. It ended up being their anniversary, so my brother took his wife to Vegas for a getaway weekend and my parents came down to watch their boys, so we had a fun weekend with grandparents and cousins but missed Curtis and Jenn. The girls had a blast. The house was so beautiful and the area was perfect. I think St. George would be a very nice place to live.

The house has a little putting green.

And a pickle ball court!

Cousin love at the dinosaur museum

More cousin shenanigans

The girls love their Grandpa Knoles. June especially follows him around and then climbs up next to him on the couch to snuggle. Whenever we Skype with my mom or pretend to call her on a fake phone, June always asks for grandpa.

We are so happy to have more family living nearer to us and can't wait to go back for another visit. With my brother down here, half the grandchildren are now further south, so we get a lot more grandparent visits, which is always very, very, very fun for us. As the girls are getting older, they constantly want to be visiting grandma's house or have grandma visit them. There has been a lot of construction of new houses around here, and one of Willa's friends is moving to Utah so we've had discussions with her about what it means to move, etc. She asked this week if we could move to a house by grandma's house so that we could live close. It was so cute. I tried to explain that daddy's work is here.

Willa starts dance

Willa has been talking about dance lessons for a while now. I'm not sure where she got the idea from, maybe Katerina Kitty Cat? I finally got my laziness onto the computer to sign her up for a ballet/tap combo class at the Rec center. One thing I really disliked about Houston was that there were no local Rec centers. If you didn't have a neighborhood pool, you had to pay big bucks to join a gym in order to have a place to swim. (By the way, should Rec center be capitalized? Probably not, but it looks so strange and insignificant as "rec center".) Or, if you wanted to do dance or anything fun like that it was through a private and expensive studio. Luckily, Las Vegas has plenty of Rec centers that offer lots of classes and fun things (I'm even planning to do preschool next year at one).

For the cool price of $30, I signed Willa up for six weeks of dance class. Here is a little video of the day her tap shoes came in the mail. She was SO excited!

First day of class, SO excited!

The class is worth about the $30 we paid. They do a little ballet history, a minute or two going through the positions, and then a few minutes stretching. Then they follow the teacher as she dances in different styles to different music: classical, hip hop, etc. The teacher is a mystery and I'm not quite sure that she actually knows how to dance. She's not great with kids and left Willa high and dry once when she broke a nail and rushed to get a band-aid to try and save it, but all the girls in there are having a blast. I figure that it more of a body awareness class. Usually they try a grande jette and some other tricks each class and it's hilarious watching the girls try to figure out how to get their little bodies to move. It's tricky to run and then jump in the middle, or to jump and twirl and land on the other foot. It's a whole hour and Willa has a blast every time and June follows the teacher with her eyes and tries to imitate all the movements as she stays by me.

It's perfect for now and if Willa shows any special affinity or promise, then we can kick it up a notch and find something a little more professional. I doubt that will ever happen because I'm pretty sure she inherited my problems with spatial awareness and Ryan's unflexibility (the other girls are almost doing the splits and Willa's poor legs are totally bent to 90 degrees even with the teacher trying to stretch them out). So, we're just enjoying having some girly, no-pressure dancing going on!

Here's an unrelated photo of Willa with some new glasses on! She got her new prescription and Costco had some really cute frames. I love Costco and I'm excited they have an optical department, but as you see Willa holding our ticket in line, you can imagine that I also love the intimacy and service of a great stand-alone optical shop where you go in and immediately have two or three people assessing your needs and serving you. That definitely beats pulling a ticket and waiting with two rowdy girls in a shopping cart until your number comes up.

I've been scarce on the blog lately, I know. I was going to pick right on back up, but I decided to share what's been going on. A few weeks ago, I had a panic attack. At least, that's what I'm assuming it was. It was a combination of factors, but I think what happened is that I came off of a great visit with friends and feeling so happy and uplifted, then I got a little bit of a shock of not as great news from another friend that kind of put me in a tailspin. I think the combination of the high and the low concerning people who I love and care about just really set me off. When I went up to bed that night, my mind was just spinning and spinning and I could not get off the merry-go-round. I felt physically ill, I was nauseated, I was back and forth to the bathroom all night. It was pretty miserable and I hope I never, ever, ever feel it that badly again and I would never wish that feeling on my worst enemy.

Finally morning came and when Ryan woke up, I was able to talk to him - sometimes it's just so helpful to have someone to talk to! He gave me a blessing and that helped. Still, for the next several weeks I just could not shake this anxiety. In the beginning, I was anxious about a specific thing, but then as time wore on, I was just anxious. I constantly felt on edge, like the feeling before a big trip or airplane flight when I've packed everything, and I hope the girls will behave, and I hope our timetable works out, and I just really need to get started on the trip and be doing something rather than fretting. Except, there was no trip. It was the worst feeling. Running helped, prayer and scripture study helped, fasting and the temple helped, but it was still there. The best thing was just going about life and not thinking. Getting to the park with the girls and being outside helped.

It was just a vicious circle, I'd think, "Wow, I'm feeling so good. What was I feeling bad about before?" And then all the memories and emotions would rush back and I'd be back in the never-ending loop and feeling sick to my stomach. I even lost my appetite for several weeks. ME! I love food, the thought of not wanting food or wanting to eat was a foreign concept, but when I sat down to eat I could only force a few bites before I wanted to throw up. The good news is that I lost almost ten pounds, the bad news is that every time I stepped on the scale and a lower number would pop up, I'd freak out again and remember what was causing it all. Don't worry, my weight is heading back up into normal range now :) thanks to Valentine's and Easter candy and let's not forget that it's Girl Scout cookie season.

Anyway, I just couldn't get on the blog during that time. I just couldn't do it. I've calmed down now and feel mostly like my old self. The feelings are still there but I'm able to ignore them and move on with my life. Honestly, I think my feelings were illogical, but I'm not even at the place where I can look at them to evaluate them right now. I just need to let them go so that they don't take over my life - which is a pretty darn good life. I started reading a book on Mindfulness and doing some daily meditation, which I also think is helping.

I'm not looking for pity or comments or anything. I just want this blog to stay an honest place. I don't want to present a picture that everything is perfect all the time, because it's not. I'm not always going to get into the nitty gritty details of everything, but I want to share when things are rough. I'm not sure if this whole thing was hormonal, or if it was because now that our life is pretty calm and there is nothing to worry about, then my psyche will make something up, by darn. I just know that I've always been a worrier and I'll just give one example. When I was about twelve I got the stomach flu - the first time I'd ever gotten it. Well, for almost a year afterwards, every single night around the same time I would start to feel sick to my stomach. I couldn't shake it and I would start to worry and worry that I was getting sick again, which would make me feel sicker. I could only calm down and relax if I drank an alka seltzer, which is so disgusting, but it was my magic pill. So, there you have my neuroses, and it seems like I'm still the same person even as an adult, and it's just that the magic pills are harder to find. Don't worry though, things are going well and I hope to be back to regularly blogging again starting now.

June is two!!

We are having a little party tomorrow, but I just had to post quickly to commemorate today. When June woke up this morning, I carried her downstairs and she laid her head on my shoulder and snuggled a little. I felt the Spirit and strong emotion. June made us a family of four. She is such a joy and delight in our family. Ryan, Willa, and I tend to be a little in the serious side and June balances us out with zaniness, high-jinks, and vocal determination. A month or two ago I went to get her up from her nap and she was just jumping up and down and being silly and I just thought, "Who is this little spirit that was sent to us?" Honestly, it was the first impression I have had with my children that they were individual spirits sent here with their own personalities. I mean, I believed it before, but this felt more like a spiritual confirmation of it (I'm a little dense sometimes).

June talks, talks, talks, talks, TALKS! She repeats the last word of everything you say to her. The last two months she has been working hard to string two and three words together. She surprises me always with what she has observed and picked up. For example, in preschool two days ago we talked about whales. Today, there was a whale on Sesame Street and she immediately called out to me its name. Yesterday Willa was riding bikes out front with some neighborhood boys. One of the boys got called home and June came up to me and said, "Where Naphan (Nathan) go?" I barely remembered his name, but she knew it!

June has become quite the couch potato and loves television now that her attention span is a little longer. Her favorites are Elmo, Bo on the Go, and Daniel Tiger. When I'm searching for the shows on Netflix she will call out, "Tiger, 'ere are you?" She will call out this phrase at the grocery store for whatever food we are looking for. "Yogurt, 'ere a you?"

June loves her big teddy and also demands to be spoon fed her breakfast/lunch/dinner from teddy while watching a show. She's the Queen of Sheba. I've put up with it because it was the only way, but now she is getting incrementally better with food so hopefully we can be back at the table soon. I should add that I don't mind her not eating, I'm not trying to force food into a child who isn't hungry. She is actually extremely hungry in these situations and just stubborn enough to have a major tantrum and go to bed hungry (and then wake me up in the middle of the night) rather than to eat what and where she doesn't want to. For my own sanity, I've just had to give in. Now that she is more vocal, it's a little amusing. I sat her down with us at the table for dinner, she looked down at what I had put on her plate and said, "No."

Here is a little photo from our trip to Utah last week. She's a joy to be around and a terror too. She's also still the prettiest little girl and her hair is halfway down her back.