A day for family

Our weekends have become so important.
Mitchell is SOOOO busy. I am not trying to brag or exaggerate. He works from 7 to 6:15-6:30 each day, because he teaches extra classes during his prep (so he gave up his prep basically) and because of his responsibilities as Attendance dean, he has long days with no break, poor guy.  He then has 2 hours min, each night he is required to do for his online professorship job through BYUI. On Thursdays he has Night class for his masters and get home at 9:30 or so, depending, some Saturdays all day for his masters. On Wednesday night he has meetings for church calling. Some Tuesdays he has things in the evenings and starting today he will have BBall on thursday nights after his class (when he can get there in time). And he always has papers and homework to do for school.
I am SO grateful but it is hard! I am not feeling very good so it makes for long days. We have meal times together everynight from 6:30 to 7:30, then it time for the boys to get ready for bed, Mitch usually gets homework of online job stuff started while the boys have a bath adn then will log off at bedtime so the family can have prayer and scripture study together. Then i go to bed (i really dont feel good) and he works another few hours coming to bed around 11, he usually wakes me up to pray together.
whew.
So the weekends when he doesn't have class and we don't have a billion things going on we really like to spend our time together . This last weekend we did a picnic and then played at the park and Big Als, that night it was homemade pizza and brownies with a movie!
It was so nice.

What i have been thinking about a lot is, first, this is all good. My aunt when she heard Mitchell was in a masters program she said "it will be a long couple years of you not seeing much of him, but, it will be for the betterment of your family." -She is a favorite aunt of mine and for some reason when she said that is seemed really profound and i repeat it to myself sometimes as kind of a mantra.
I have also been thinking about how, this is not something to whine about. The Lord has sent us an outpouring of blessings and it requires much of our time and energy but, really that is a blessing too. We now are more selective with what we fill our family time with. We are reaching our goals!

Playing in the leaves-2015

As everyone who knows me knows, I like traditions a lot. I like celebrating things! One of our traditions is to play in the leaves at grandmas subdivision every year. This year was no different we had a great time!
Thank you Grandma for being the sweetest and best! It would not the the same without you!

A day of Shopping

Shopping for me is a love-hate relationship.

I either love it because its fun and I find a thing or two at a great price

Or I hate it because I can’t find ANYTHING

Or I hate it because I find too many things and can’t buy all of them

or I love it because I can get all the things I found, but then a few hours later I hate it because spending lots of money at once always makes my insides hurt.

BUT
we have a very good day shopping with my mom and sister. We went out to the outlet mall a while ago to find shirts and ties for the men for my sisters wedding- we spent a lot of time shopping for my kids too! I got much needed clothes for the kids and the Mr, and I got to get the kids a specialty treat.
Thanks for letting us tag along grandma and aunt jessie!

Our weekend

For Mitchell’s birthday I got him movie tickets. SO on Friday we went and saw the new avenger’s movie. We went on Friday. It was a good movie I really enjoyed it.

We picked the family theme for the next months until October conference.

We had a fabulous time as a family. All weekend we ate late dinners at home. I filled our fridge with tons of homemade food to enjoy as we relaxed, and we let the kids stay up with us. We watched the back to the future movies together.

Good times.

Thanksgiving week Monday-tuesday

we spent thanksgiving with my in-laws in Utah. It was a long and fabulously fun week.
So without further ado i will begin.
Monday was spent primarily in the car. We rented a really nice one to travel and it was fun for Mitch to drive.
Anyways we got to Nana and Papas house around 3:30 and made dinner for my mother in law. We went shopping and talked. That's pretty much it.
 Also while we where out shopping Mitchell and the boys got a bouquet of flowers for Nana- they are such sweet awesome boys!

Tuesday was BUSY. we stated the day pretty relaxed and then we headed out to Lehi to visit Grandpa Durrant and Grandma Linda. We visited with them for an hour or so but headed out around ten because grandpa had to go to dialysis.
 Then we headed to American Fork and spent the day with Uncle Darrel and aunt Marla's family. They treated us to a trip to the museum of Natural curiosity and lunch at Thanksgiving Point.
That museum is AWESOME. we where there for several hours but we only saw 1/2 of the things there. It was so much fun. The kids and adults loved it.
The kids also loved playing with their cousin (who is my cousins daughter).
after all of that fun the boys went to see the new Disney hero movie and my cousins and I went to Provo to see the art Exhibits and my cousins art studio.