Christmas times a coming!!!

It is so hard to believe it is December 12th....LITERALLY!!! For instance, we have NO SNOW! And also, at 8am this morning it was 51 degrees outside? WTHeck is up with this? Either this is another signs of the 2nd coming because we will have a serious drought this summer....or the STORM OF THE CENTURY is on its way and we are going to get POUNDED with feet of SNOW?!! We have so much to be thankful for. I reflect back on the months since last Christmas and we have so many positive blessings come our way. Brandon has a GREAT job with Chesapeake Energy. He LOVES it and he works for an amazing company. They have been in the top 100 companies to work for in the world (according to forbes magazine) for 10 years now. They really do take care of their employees too. It is a HUGE blessing and I am so thankful we have this job! Brandon works so hard for us every day. Last night we had the "Old Fashioned Christmas in Glenrock" celebration. It was fun. OakLeigh and Memphis got to sit on Santa's lap. It was cute. They were so excited! Savanna had her Christmas concert/play this week also. She was the lead in the play part. She was so excited and worked really hard on her parts. She stayed after school almost every day for a month! It was so extremely cute and I grinned from ear to ear through the whole thing. And OakLeigh couldn't describe it better, she said, " That was the best play I have ever seen and Savanna was the best Galeena ever!" We decorated our Christmas tree after Thanksgiving break. And as usual it was fun...the kids had fun and of course, Brandon went all out on the lights again. I believe we ended up using 11 strands. And he wrapped each branch. Those puppies are on this tree for life. There is NO WAY I am removing them! haha And of course there is never a dull moment at our home! Here are some pics from the past month! And here is something I laughed my head off about last night...so Memphis got a pack of fire hot cinnamon gum at the light parade. He was sucking on a piece and it was too hot so he spit it out in our sink. Well so half of the square piece of gum was white, the other half red. Brandon goes into the bathroom to get a drink and he just leaned under the sink. He looks down and sees this piece of chiclet gum, that looked a lot like a bloody tooth. He feels in his mouth. And calls for me to see where he lost a tooth at. I about died laughing. BECAUSE IT IS HUGE! I couldn't even get it out that it was gum not a tooth. So then I held it up to his front teeth and show him how huge it was compared to a tooth. LOL Anyway, here is the pic of the gum. You can decide if you would have thought you lost your tooth too?

Just another day at the Mitchell home!

Well I forgot to post pictures about Weylon's flag football team. He is funny because he really wants to get in there and play hard, but he just gets so DISTRACTED! One play went into action and his whole team was running around doing a specific play.....and here was Weylon, still standing in the starting position staring at the millers flying around in the field lights~ I was yelling at him to RUN RUN RUN...he looks at me and did like a scooby doo run in place thing and then took off. That is how the whole game goes every time! Its actually really humorous to watch!~

On a NOT so fun note, Brandon woke me up around 11:30 last night. I could hear him moaning in pain in the bathroom. I tried to block it out, (sorry honey, I thought I was dreaming...) and then I realized he really was hurting. So I go in the bathroom to find him in a ball. After about 30 minutes the pain subsided enough to get him in bed. This went off and on all night long. Around 2 or 3 in the morning other things were happening and he was bleeding in places you really shouldn't bleed from. So around 645ish I finally convinced him to go to the ER. They admitted him. And they did a CT scan and he has a very inflamed colon...a case of colitis. So he is hooked to IV's and getting lots of antibiotics to kill the bacteria and they are monitoring the bleeding. So I took the kids to see him this afternoon. Pain meds had kicked in and hopefully he is feeling good enough to get some sleep tonight!

Conference

Lately I have felt like I haven't been living. I know a lot of moms might understand this. I have felt like I am just going on through the day to day tasks but not LIVING! And I have felt like things in my home and my personal goals are out of control! I haven't felt the peace I have needed so desperately in my life. Don't get me wrong, I am happy. I LOVE my life. I love my children. I love my husband. But I just feel almost robotic in my day to day tasks. I wake up. I get the kids off to school. I clean house. I make dinner. I do the dishes. I go to bed and start over. But not only that, but it seems that the spirit has not been in my home lately. It seems that my kids fight and yell every second that they are home. And therefore, I fight and yell more. I haven't done anything for me lately. I am a mom. I LIVE for my children. I live to make sure they are happy and taken care of. However, I have noticed if I am not taken care of and feed myself spiritually, emotionally and physically I am missing a huge aspect that will help me to take better care of my family. Then General Conference came this past weekend. I am not one of those people who jumps for joy and gets all excited because of it. Most people LOVE general conference. Its not that I hate it, but its SO LONG. And 8 hours of watching church with my loud kids is not a tea party. Its like a war zone. No one sits still. No one listens. No one lets me feel the spirit. Its a fight for 8 hours broken up in 2 days. Not my kind of joy! But I am usually determined to make them sit through at least one session on Sunday. But I am up and down and don't get to sit and listen and feel of the spirit for myself. This time around was no different. Savanna is older she will sit and do her thing quietly. Weylon will almost sit and listen. OakLeigh and Memphis would rather be put in a strait jacket in a padded room to bounce around than have to sit through anything quietly for more than 2 minutes let alone a whole session! However they did pretty good this time! And I was able to hear some of the first session. The 2nd session came around. The kids were all playing nicely in the bedroom. So I laid down on the couch and enjoyed 2 full hours of conference. And I felt so spiritually fed and uplifted. I really needed that. I feel it was definitely a tender mercy of my Father in Heaven. He knew I needed this. He knew I was doing less than and feeling less than. A couple talks hit me like a ton of bricks. I don't remember the speaker but he talked about getting our priorities in line. We randomly read our scriptures. Not good enough! We do pray every night but sometimes I wonder how sincere it really is. There is NO excuse to not read your scriptures daily! There is no excuse to not kneel down every night as a family and talk to your Father in Heaven. NO EXCUSE! If facebook, youtube and TV are more of a priority than prayer and scripture study and family time then something is wrong in your family! And BAM! That is whats wrong with me! I pray every night before I fall asleep.....or should I say I fall asleep saying my prayers as I lay in bed every night. How sincere is that talk with Heavenly Father if I am in dreamland for 86% of my prayer? I read my scriptures maybe 1x a week. I do NOTHING for myself physically. NOTHING. I clean house. I watch TV. I used to LOVE LOVE LOVE going to the gym when I was in college. I hate doing aerobics, but I LOVE the feeling of lifting weights and working muscles. After conference I felt so rejuvenated. I set a goal for my family. We have been reading our scriptures every night. We only do one chapter. That's good for us who have 2 of the loudest, not sit down and read scriptures kind of children! And we talked about prayer. About how it needs to be more sincere. And I feel like its getting better. Its not a race to see how fast we can get it done. I have read my scriptures at night. I have knelt by my bed and prayed. I have LITERALLY talked about all my feelings, worries, accomplishments and thanks to my Heavenly Father. And I feel so REFRESHED! I also have started going back to the gym. Every day after school. I go after homework and after daycare kids leave. And yes, it has only been 5 times I can go, but holy cow I feel so good physically! I feel like I have been given a NEW START! I have needed to go to the gym anyways, and this is a good time. Savanna is old enough to watch kids for me. I bring Weylon. He feels like he is getting tough already and he pushes me to go because he LOVES going with me. I know my problem as a mother is because I had moved away from my Heavenly Father in a way. Yes, I have a testimony. Yes, we go to church every Sunday. Yes, I go to the temple. Yes, I pay my tithing. Yes, I believe! However, I wasn't doing any of those things with conviction. I was just doing those things. I think you can live the gospel of Jesus Christ without LIVING THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST. If you don't push yourself to your full potential, and just go day to day with no real and sincere conviction, then its as if you don't really feel it and live it. Ever since last week, I feel more at peace. I feel like I am yelling a little bit less. I feel like we are nicer a little bit more. I can't wait to see what a full year of LIVING does, if I feel this much difference in just a few days! I am so thankful that my Heavenly Father doesn't move away from me. I know He still hears me. I know He still loves me. I know He still pushes for me. Because HE loves ME! He wants me to achieve my full potential as a mother, as a wife and as an individual! I am so thankful I felt that peace and push to live again!

Where have I been since January?

So where to begin? So much to blog about and I only have about an hour before I really need to clean house...REALLY! It is now 9 months since my last blog post. I am terrible. Maybe I should count on one post a month? Ya right. I am so not a planner. haha We now live in Glenrock, Wyoming. It is a small AMAZING town just 25 miles from where we lived last year. The school is AMAZING, (the kids came to this school last year) and I LOVE our ward. Brandon seems to really love his job and he is happy! The kids are growing and learning so much. I am pretty dumb compared to how smart they are and I am so glad they didn't inherit my brains! I had another round of my iodine radiation in August. It was fun. (Can you sense the sincere sarcasm?) I had to do the iodine free diet for 18 days and I thought I would die. I know this is a LOT of TOO MUCH INFORMATION, but for anyone that has to do this diet, it is the word LITERALLY..DIE.....T! You basically have a certain amount of vegetables and some meats you can eat a day. It equals out to about 300 calories a day. And so much raw veggies and fruit that you feel like you are preparing for your colonoscopy every single day. If any of you had ever had a colonoscopy you know exactly what I am talking about. No more description is necessary. I had a really big worry about this round because in my scans they found 2 small spots on my lungs. With the iodine radiation, if something shows up on the scans it can be 2 things, remaining thyroid hormone or cancer. And cancer and my family don't really go well together. So I, of course, ran every worst case scenario through my mind, multiple times a day. And I was so afraid. I didn't want to be afraid. I want to be the kind of person that has so much faith, I can move mountains. Apparently my faith is lacking because I let fear rule at times. But only when I was alone in the shower and could have a good cry or when everyone was sleeping at night. I am sure if I could have just ate a good meal and got some extra calories in me, that I would have started thinking rationally. However, Brandon is my rock. He would tell me over and over that fear is not from Heavenly Father and that I had to have faith that it would all be ok. He and my mom always made me feel like it would all be what the will of Heavenly Father wants and that it would work out good. I finally did the radiation in August and our ward brought meals in for my family while I was too toxic to cook for them. It was really nice and I appreciated it more than words can say. And then the day before my full body scan results came. I was worried and scared. And we were sitting at home Sunday evening and my phone rings. It is my mom. She says, "where is your house?" And I am like, "huh"? And she asks me again and says, "I am by the middle school. Where is your house?" I was so blown away. My mom drove all the way from New Mexico to my house to be here for me. That meant and still means so much to me. I get teared up thinking about that. I was so excited to have here here. She came with me to town and sat in the car with the kids. And Brandon met me at the Oncology clinic. And I was so scared. I had been praying for it all to be ok. I had this prayer running through my heart and mind over and over for the past few months, but here I was going to find out my future basically. And the doctor came in and says the spots on my lungs were gone! HALLELUIAH! I got teary eyed right there. He said everything looked really good, except for one small area. However, to him it looks like at one time I might have cracked my ribcage. The iodine from the radiation had all centered and settled in, what he thinks is a crack. He didn't think that it looked like cancer. He did say I have to do the radiation one more time in February. And make sure that the scans came back clear for this wierd spot on my ribcage. But he is not worried. So one more time and then hopefully I am going to be listed as cancer free! I felt such gratitude to my Father in Heaven and such relief. I went outside and told my mom and she cried too. It was a really good day and the feeling of complete relief is not one I can adequately describe. I am in the Young Woman's in church. I am the 2nd counselor. And I LOVE IT! I can't wait till Savanna is there next year with me! It will be a great experience! I can't believe she will be 12 in a year. That is hard to wrap my head around. I cried last night thinking that is just 7 years she will be graduating and moving out! YIKES, this momma is going to be one sad lady when her babies all leave. Maybe we should have a few more? :) Savanna is in 6th grade. She is TALL. She wears a size 10 she (yes, she wants to borrow mine even though I am an 11). She is the smartest and most talented kiddo. She writes books and I am not kidding you, she WILL be the next JK Rowling. She has LONG beautiful strawberry red/blond hair and has a heart of gold. Weylon is in 3rd grade. He still is the hardest worker. He struggles with school, but he is working so very hard and doing so good this year! I am so proud of him. He is on the flag football team again. He loves it. It is funny to watch because he loves being there, but appears to not be too terribly competitive. His eyes wander to the moths flying in the lights, and he drifts over to the parents watching, or he stands and dreams as his team is running all around him. However, when his head is in the game he really does good! OakLeigh is a handfull. She is in 1st grade. I think her teacher wishes she was at the end of the school year. Oaks comes home with action plans weekly...(Action plans are not good. They are issued for kids who act up in class.) However, she is one smart cooky. I think she gets really bored. She can read extremely good and loves loves loves to draw. She draws horses, ponies, rainbows and unicorns. And of course her family. She is really good when she trys to be, but she is a ham most of the time! She is saving her money to buy her own pony soon. Memphis is 3 and ROTTEN. He definitely lives by the spoiled rotten last baby definition. But he is a sweetheart and LOVES to cuddle momma. And I LoVE that! He loves anything to do with firetrucks, buzz light year, and power rangers. He is hilarious. He just discovered power rangers last week and he even fights out scenes from the show. He loves nursery and singing. I have multiple pics to download to this. I have pics from Savanna, Weylon and Memphis birthdays! I have pics from the family reunion..from visting my parents in NM this summer. Trips to the park. School crazy hair days, crazy days at the library, swimming, playing in the mud. And pictures from having our best friends from Big Piney come visit...I hope it works! If not, until next time...hopefully that is before 9 months again!