Bountiful Blessings

Yesterday was a very special day for our family. My faithful priesthood holder husband gave our baby girl a name and a blessing. Family from both sides were there and we had a rather large circle of loving priesthood holders helping Jared give Bonnie her blessing. I always take a voice recorder to church with me when we bless our children so that I can type their blessing and put it in a memory book, but Miss Bonnie cried all the way through her blessing, so I don't know if I will be able to hear any of it when I play it back. Here's hoping! I could see some people in the congregation smiling while Bonnie cried through her blessing, because for some reason, we all find it rather humorous when the baby cries during a blessing. I know I do! I won't find it so humorous when I am trying to listen to the recording though...

Bonnie's beautiful dress was made by my good friend Tashina Hunsaker. We have known each other for a long time, since high school, but were never close friends until recently, and I really treasure her friendship. She asked me if she could make Bonnie's dress because she wanted something to do to keep her busy, and I said, "Sure!" She did such a good job, the dress is gorgeous, and she only charged me what she paid for the fabric. I was SO happy to put it on Bonnie and see how beautiful she looked.

 Doesn't she look so pretty? I think so, but my opinion may be a little biased.

 I was so happy with how well the dress fit. When we blessed Jordyn, I bought her dress at a store and it was too big and looked really awkward on her. Bonnie's fit just right because it was specifically tailored just for her!

 She wouldn't stop wiggling and her headband was starting to fall off.

 By now she really wanted me to pick her up, but I wasn't done just yet...

 I hadn't had a chance to get a picture of all three of my babies together, and I knew this would be the perfect chance. After all, they were all dressed up in their Sunday best!

 Of course, I never got a picture of all three of them looking at the camera, the little stinkers cuties! My Uriah is such a handsome boy in this picture.

 It sure was fun to take these pictures though. I remembered that every time I say "smile" Jordyn squints because she is expecting a flash, so I had to start saying "Say cheese!" in order to get her to smile. I love this picture because you can see that Jordyn and Bonnie have the same eyes.

 I must have had the TV on or something...Jordyn just wouldn't look at me!

 I finally got her to say "cheese" in this picture, but she was still looking the other way and Bonnie was starting to get a little tired of it all. They are still cute, no matter which way they are looking!

After church, we all went and had a picnic at Alameda Park. It was such a nice day and there was a playground that the kids could run around.

 We got dinner and a show...there were some men in the park pretending to be knights/sword fighting/jousting/role playing/I'm not really sure what they were doing, but my sis-in-law thought it would be fun to get her picture taken with them. They look like nice guys, kind of!

We stayed at the park for about 3 hours just chatting and enjoying ourselves. The kids loved being able to see some of our extended family, and it felt so good to know we were loved and supported by so many.

All of Jared's siblings were able to make it to the blessing (with the exception of one bro-in-law), so we decided to have a family picture taken. It had probably been 5 years since the last McCurdy family picture had been taken, so we were in need of an update.

Saturday was a busy day also. My niece Kaiya won 3rd place in an Idaho Public Television story writing contest and they had an awards ceremony at Idaho State University. She wrote a story called "Aliens!" and it was about an Alien named Joseph who was different because he had two arms and two legs while all of the other aliens had four arms and four legs. It was fun hearing her read her story and show us the pictures she drew.

After that, I went to a wedding for one of my high school friends, Aaron. He was the last of our close group to get married, and we all thought it was about time, especially since we all have kids now and he still hadn't gotten married! I saw a lot of acquaintances from my childhood and some good friends and school teachers, and it was a very enjoyable time. It really has reminded me how people change over time, how we all grow up and live out our own lives, and how some people come and go but others will be with you forever. I am grateful to be reminded of that.

Forgetting Easter

I was reading through my friends' blogs and I realized that they all had a post about what they did for Easter. It has almost been a month since that sacred holiday had passed, and I thought to myself, "Surely I made my own Easter post...right?" Nope! Searching through my blog, I realized I had never made an Easter post, so I dug up the pictures from that day and slapped 'em on ye olde blog.

We had a dinner and egg hunt at my sister's house. She is moving to Colorado this summer and this was the last time she would get to hold a party for all of us.

Strategically placed eggs...kind of.

 Me and my nephew Jayson. He was born two days before Bonnie.

 Jordyn looked so cute in that bucket hat, her levi jacket and striped skirt. Thank goodness it was a warm day.

 Jordyn loves to dig. Even if she can't dig, she loves to hold a shovel.

 Bonnie was talking to grandma. I think she was sad that she couldn't eat any of the candy that was everywhere.

 We are waiting for someone to tell us we can go and grab the eggs.

 What a huge difference a year makes. Last Easter Jordyn needed help finding eggs. This year she was picking them up quickly and throwing them in her basket.

 We found an egg that had a $1 bill in it over here.

 Her basket couldn't hold all the eggs she was finding.

 It isn't Easter unless you get chocolate on your fingers!

 Jared was helping Uriah open his eggs to get all the candy. The kids also got a large bottle of bubbles, courtesy of aunt Lindsay.

 For some reason, kids are fascinated by hoses...

We had a great Easter. We were spiritually fed and the weather was so beautiful. It was the first real nice day we had had in a while.

For now, I am working on losing some weight. I realized that my bad habits of eating junk while I was pregnant didn't go away when I had Bonnie and that I wasn't losing the baby weight like I used to be able to. I have started counting my calories on everydayhealth.com and watching my portions during dinner and I am almost down to what I weighed before I got pregnant with Bonnie.

This is how I plan to lose more weight. Now that the kids are going to be home with daddy all summer, I am hoping to be able to get out and at least get about 30 minutes of some kind of exercise a day. I just need to remind myself to start small. Jared took a Health and Fitness class this semester and for his final he had to bring someone in to his class and have them do some fitness tests. Being a good wife, I volunteered. I learned that 40% of my body is fat and that I have pretty crappy upper body and abdominal strength. I was talking to Jared about my weight loss goals and his teacher said to me, "It took a lot of time to gain that weight, it's going to take a lot of time to lose it." I had never thought of it that way before. My biggest roadblock in losing weight was that I wouldn't see a difference in my weight in one week, so I'd quit. Now that I can look at it differently and see it as a long term commitment, hopefully I will be able to stick it out. Since I started counting my calories, I have limited myself to 2000 calories a day or less and I have lost 5 lbs already. My first goal is to get down to 200 lbs and I've got 20 lbs to go. If I can make it that far, I will make a bigger goal for myself to lose more weight. Baby steps...that's what I need to remember.