A Sunbeam!

Josie started Sunbeams today. She's getting so big. Unlike the boys, she was ready to go with this change. She didn't resist going to Primary instead of Nursery at all. According to all reports, she did great!

Already practicing being reverent!

I love this little Sunbeam!

Sunday

Yesterday was such a great day! First of all, no one is sick anymore (hooray)! Fortunately we just had 24 hour bugs so they passed quickly. Here are a couple of other things that made yesterday such an amazing day:
It's always great to hear the leaders of our church speak. I always feel so uplifted and so determined to live my life better. One of my favorite talks was the one President Monson gave at the end of the first Sunday session. He said (and I'm paraphrasing) that one day the fingerprints everywhere will be gone, the toys will not be scattered all over the floor, and there won't be any more piles of laundry all over but that we will miss it. We need to enjoy the moment we are in, not anxiously looking ahead to what is to come and wishing it were already here. I felt like he was talking just to me! I look forward to the day when all my kids will be in school, the day Justin retires and we can travel, graduating med school and moving on, etc. While I still look forward to those things, I know that I need to enjoy this time with my family right now. Clayton and Noah are at such great ages and I don't want to look back at this time with them and think, "I wish I had enjoyed it more." It goes by too fast. I took many things away from this conference, but I think that this was the lesson that really hit me hard. I am really going to try to slow down and enjoy every 'today' so that my family and I will have great memories and no regrets when we look back on our times together.

The next thing that was great about yesterday was getting to spend the whole day with the Zinkes. They are so much fun and we love it when they come over! We had a delicious brunch with pumpkin waffles (mmm, it tasted like pumpkin pie in waffle form) and bacon (a personal favorite)! Then, in between conference sessions, we made Halloween gingerbread houses! Vanessa made all the gingerbread (thanks for that)! It was perfect. Clayton even got to make a graham cracker house! They turned out so cute. They are such fun (and delicious) Halloween decorations. Here are the final results of the decorating:
Here is Clayton's graham cracker house. He is so proud of it! I love that he is old enough to get into this kind of stuff now!
Here's what mine ended up looking like:
The front
The back
Side 1
Side 2 (I really love the golden graham roof shingles - easily my favorite part of the house!)
Vanessa is such a creative person. Her house ended up looking amazing (she claimed she wasn't finished with it when she left, but it still looked awesome)! I can't wait for her to post pics so I can see what her end result looks like.

Finally, Sunday marked another milestone for my baby boy. Noah was moved into a big boy bed (a.k.a. the bottom bunk)! Justin and I didn't want to move him. He's my baby and I am not at all anxious for him to grow up! We were hoping to wait until the new year to move him into Clayton's room, but Noah had other ideas. Over the past few weeks Noah has been jumping out of bed. Seriously, jumping. He perches on the side of the crib like a little gargoyle and then just jumps! It's scary - I kept waiting for him to break something. We kept moving the crib mattress down in hopes that he'd stop jumping ship, but no luck. When he wasn't jumping out of bed, he was kicking the bars so hard that I was certain he'd crack one! Since my dad hand-made our crib, I'd be devistated if it broke. So last night was the night. We had actually put Noah in his crib, but he was kicking so hard against the bars for so long that we finally just made the decision that he needed to be out of it - NOW! Clayton was so excited to have a bunk buddy! After we put them down (the first time) we stood outside the door and heard Clayton saying things like, "you're a big boy now Noah", "you have to go to sleep Noah", and "don't be sad Noah, it's fun to sleep in a big boy bed". To which Noah always responded, "okay keekiss". Cute! Well, sleep did not come easily to my boys last night. I had to go into their room many times and put them back in bed. One of the times (around 11:00 I think) I went in there and the light was on, the toys were out, and both boys were playing away! Eventually the noises died down and both boys went to sleep (around 11:45).
Noah looks so big to me here. I really wanted to keep him in the crib as long as I could. It was probably selfish on my part, but I feel like I was in too much of a hurry for Clayton to grow out of his baby stages and become a big kid. I think I am overcompensating by trying to keep Noah a baby forever. Fortunately (or not, depending on how you see it), he keeps reminding me that he's ready to grow up whether I'm ready for it or not!
So there you have it. Yesterday was such a great day it totally made up for the yucky week we just had! I love days like that, where everything just seems to go right and everyone is happy. I can definitely say that yesterday was one of those days that we lived in the moment and enjoyed every second of!