Kidpik Review

For about a year now I have gotten tons of emails from various stores and such, one that stuck out to me was "Kidpik". If you don't know what Kidpik is, to quote my child "It's like getting your kid a stylist" literally I basically did that. I am the worst at planning outfits, literally one of the reasons we became minimalists was so I was forced to make sure things matched. So anyway, Kidpik is pretty awesome. It lets you select what your kids enjoy wearing, what size they wear, and everything in between. Brooke was beyond excited to get a box and once I found out that it's free shipping, free returns, and the stylist fee is also free I was hooked. I went ahead and ordered her a box, you can sign up for any amount of boxes per year we chose once a month because Brooke is picky about her clothes and I knew she wouldn't keep a lot. As a person who doesn't drive, it's nice to have door delivery for things like this, I'm always afraid to order clothes online in case they don't fit or don't look as nice as they did online. Luckily we didn't have those issues with these and they worked out perfectly. It was actually a little hard for me to have her pick out just one or two items to keep because everything was so cute. Luckily my child did that for me and chose a really nice flowing shirt that is perfect for summer, a pair of black sandals, and a blue bracelet. It was a perfect amount of things and the prices weren't terrible. My biggest fear was the clothes would be super expensive, luckily the prices were around the same price as Target or Children's Place. The return process is super easy as well, they send you a prepaid package and all you have to do is put the items inside that you want to return and send it on out. You have seven days to pick what you want to keep, so don't feel too rushed, but you only pay for the items you keep. I am a tad in love with this company right now and really hope that they continue to be so amazing. I've included some pictures of the box, I tried to get to it before she ripped into it, but failed! She was too excited.

Our Rules on Clothing

For some reason my one coworker and I got on the topic of raising modest kids and how to go about it. It got my thinking, how do Jason and I tackle the clothing rules in our family. We try our hardest to make sure every child is dressed modestly, but also comfortably because honestly that's my biggest concern. Right now with them being so young I feel like it's most important to teach them what you expect and what others expect, we obviously don't allow our children to wear anything inappropriate, but unlike the Duggars we don't make them wear things down to their knees at all times. The biggest issue we've run into recently is shorts, if you have a girl or have ever even seen a girl you know shorts are SHORT! Like I said before, I want my girls to be comfortable so obviously during the hot months they need shorts, but dang! We settled on the "finger tip" rule that most schools have-shorts much reach the persons finger tips to be deemed appropriate. So far it's working and I pray they never learn the "slight shrug" thing I did in high school to make my arms shorter. Besides our very lenient rules about modest clothing, we do have rules about how much clothes they can own. Because I'm crazy and want to become a minimalist-I know a lot of people think I'm kidding but I have donated more stuff than I have kept-we have made some rules about how much clothing they can keep, we aren't super strict about it because that's just insane, but we try to keep things extremely limited. Right now every kid has ten shirts, ten pairs of paints(five shorts, five long pants), the girls have five dresses each, and the boys have a handful of dress clothes. I know, it sounds crazy and we sound like terrible parents, but it has helped us get ready easier in the mornings. There are no longer hours of yelling "MOM I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO WEAR!" now it's just grab the shirt, grab the pants-GO! Also, shockingly there is less fighting between our girls on who gets to wear what! I was expecting them to fight more because of having less to choose from, but they are actually taking turns wearing certain items. I think it helped that they were involved in the process of picking what stays and what goes. I hope the toy purge goes as well as this did!

Mom needs a break!

Oh my goodness, I seriously feel like last week never happened. I feel like I slept through an entire week(or rather worked through an entire week). I don't know how it's the end of April, I don't know how my youngest baby is almost two! I really don't know how we got here, it was just April 10th a few days ago in my mind. It was then that I realized, it's time to take a step back and just be a mom(no I'm not quitting the blog) but I do think I stress too much about getting it up on time. Lately it seems like my kids have taken the back seat so I could get the blog up and I'm not okay with that. I don't want to be the mom who tells them "one second mom has to finish this post" and I don't want to miss anymore time with them than I'm already missing due to work. At the end of the day it's about these kids here, I don't want to sit down on Sunday night again and ask my husband how Easter was a week ago and have to ask him if I gave our kids their baskets! I've never in my life felt like a worst mom than I do right now, I feel like I failed at being a mom. Our kids have been troopers lately, with Jason losing his job, me picking up extra shifts to make up for lost money, the struggle with addiction, they have literally witnessed more than most six year olds have. The deserve some special activities going on in their lives, activities mom and dad can actually participate in. I'm really hoping that a bit of a "mommy break" does the trick to this whole little funk I've been in for the passed week(or more my memory is SHOT!) Please forgive me for this terrible blog post, but I really just want to get back to playing "trucks" with my toddler. I will see you guys later!

Mom, do dogs go to Heaven?

It's official, April 20th is the worst day ever. Seriously, a year ago my grandma passed away and then yesterday my other grandma's dog passed away. I know what you're thinking, they aren't comparable but seriously that dog has been in my family longer than my daughter has. She had him for 15 years and he was without a doubt her best friend, dogs seriously take up a big part of our hearts and it's so clear that he did. I always told the dog I hated him, he was very yippy and really only liked my grandma(and occasionally other people if they had food). For whatever reason though, his last few months I began liking him, probably because he lost the will to bark but I really loved watching him waddle and felt so bad when he would limp. He was seriously like any other member of the family, we bought him gifts on holidays, got cards signed from him for my grandma he was truly her baby. It wasn't until I told my five year old daughter he had passed that I realized his life affected us all, she said with tears in her eyes "What happens now?" and I told her he would always be with us, since we are religious I did say God had him now. Then the questions I think all kids ask at one point was asked "Mama, do dogs go to Heaven?". I had to think on that one, there is no proof in the Bible or Book of Mormon that they go to Heaven, but I feel like they do. I told my very upset child, that yes dogs go to Heaven and he was running around up there pain free. Right now we are just hoping and praying that my grandma is okay with out her buddy, our dog has been super sad since the whole thing happened. I know, you are all probably thinking I'm crazy but he really is sad! Dogs pick up on a lot and I think he knows his buddy is gone. So, here's to attempting a new day! A new no death day and please, no one else die on April 20th again!

We're having.....

So the results of the genders of our babies was the "tie breaker" for our family. The girls would keep the lead if we had girls(or even one girl and one boy), but the boys would take a lead if we had two boys. There was a lot of excitement surrounding this reveal and I am happy to announce we are having two little boys. If you saw the post on Instagram you already know the names so I'm not going to hold back now-baby a or "Farkel" as he went by until now will be name Finnley Kieran. Finnley was inspired by Glee I'm not going to lie,I love Finn as a character and Cory as a human, so I was more than happy to use it. Kieran was my nephew's name and he passed away about three years ago, so it was a no brainer to use that as his middle name. Baby b "Minkus" will be named Graham Thomas, we have received some words on this name so if you hate it, oh well when you have a kid name it whatever you want, we like this name. Jason's brother in law who passed away at the beginning of this year had the middle name of "Graham" and we pretty much immediately knew we wanted to use that name. We had never met a "Graham" so it was pretty awesome to use a name like that. Thomas is actually my cousin's name, he is very much alive and lives on the other side of the country, but using family names is really important to us and both of our dads are named "Joseph" so that was out of the question as it's already Zayden's middle name. I am so glad we finally get to address the boys by names now, I am still praying for them everyday because this is such a hard pregnancy so we could use so many prayers. Also, if anyone knows where to buy cute boy clothes please let me know, the stores we've been to are like 90% girl clothes and like one rack of boys! Starting over when you're having twins is no joke!

Babylist Registry Review!

I promise, we will be doing a gender reveal, but my poor manager was last to find out I was pregnant and I don't want her to be last to know the genders too! So for now, I wanted to talk about the registry we have set up. I had looked online to see where the best place to register is and there was actually one site that allowed us to put all our registries in one spot and have it nice and organized, plus it let me add things from Etsy-so it was my favorite thing ever. That site is "Babylist" and it has been such an awesome way of registering, for the reasons listed above and so many more. When you register with Babylist you actually get a consultant to help you set everything up. We have yet to actually ask ours anything, but it's nice to know that she's there if I need any help. The one thing we have used is their personalized quizzes, there was a quiz to tell us what we would need and I thought it sounded fun to try-I was right! It gave me some awesome suggestions and I was able to add everything we needed(and didn't need). Now that we know the genders we are able to add more fun items-because we totally didn't have enough before! It's just really nice knowing everything is in one spot and we can just tell people were registered with them and they have endless choices of what to get us-**hint hint wink wink**. If you are expecting I highly suggest using their site, it is so easy that even little old clueless me is able to navigate through it and you'll have fun for hours adding everything you could possibly imagine.

How You Can Help!

I've had a lot of people text me and ask how they can help with what we're doing with boost. The first I would say is donations, not just money, but anything really. We will accept gently used toys and kids clothes, gift cards, school supplies, party supplies. If it's something you feel like kids need we will gladly take it. Another way you can help is donating to our gofundme account, it's a kick starter to help us get started. In the US you need to pay the IRS a fee to get the certification of being considered a nonprofit. If I was finically able to just whip out my credit card and pay the fee I would do it, but that is not the case. We set up the gofundme just for some help getting everything started, you don't have to feel like you need to donate-though we would greatly appreciate any and all help! The other thing we have set up is an amazon wish list that you can use to see what kinds of things we're planning on giving, obviously those aren't the only ideas they're just the ones our kids thought were cool(we tried to involve them in any way possible). Of course though, the biggest way to help us is to send people who need help our way! We are more than happy to help anyone who needs it, but are focusing on kids and teens. This is truly all about the kids and I'm looking forward to helping as many as possible. **the link for the go fund me will be linked below**

Starting a Nonprofit?!

If you follow me on any social media you already know this, but I am in the process of starting a nonprofit organization. I am so beyond excited to be doing this and it's something I've felt passionately about for a very long time, but I wasn't sure how to go about it. Thanks to a lot of support from my awesome friends, I was able to find the resources I needed to get this started. I feel like you need a bit of a back story for this in order to truly understand what this nonprofit is and what we stand for you need to hear the back story. For those of you who don't know, I have a friend who until this December was homeless. Though he now has a place to call home, he still isn't able to afford simple things that we all take for granted-for example his almost six year old son has never had a birthday cake, let alone a party. If you know me, you know I love birthdays and pretty much any holiday where I can spoil the ones I love. The moment he told me this, I felt a pain in my heart that I couldn't describe. I searched and searched for organizations that help people, especially single parents-moms and dads- year round. I was able to find tons of Christmas time organizations, but none were for any other holiday or even back to school help. These are what I call "the forgotten times" when people forget that well, poor people are poor year round. To know someone who personally could benefit from an organization like this makes me want to help even more. So, now that you know the back story-the organization is called "Boost" because we plan on "boosting children up". We are still waiting for paper work to be finalized, but it looks pretty promising, in fact we already have one family we are helping out for Easter! I do plan on setting up a few different fundraisers if anyone is interested in helping with them. Please, let us know if you know a family who needs some help with anything. We really want to focus on the forgotten holidays for now, but maybe one day we can help even more. I can't wait to see where this organization goes.

Are We Pressuring Him?!

Our oldest son, Zayden, recently told us he wants to be on Broadway. It was pretty random considering he has never seen a Broadway play, but we decided to listen to him on this. As we were listening to all of his reasons why he wants to do this, he mentioned a show that our family had been watching for months on repeat- Glee. I asked how Glee affected his decision and he mentioned how all the characters represented someone. Because I'm a mom, I asked which one reminded him of himself, Jason and I were a little shocked when he said "Kurt". For those who live under a rock and have never seen Glee, Kurt is a gay character, who honestly is the most adorable human on the planet. Anyway, back to the point when he said that we wanted to know why and he rolled his eyes as if we should know already. Then he told something that not only shocked us, but kind of broke our hearts. "Because, Kurt just wanted to sing and not play sports but his dad thought he should play sports. You guys always say how important sports are but what about art?!" It was like a punch in the gut to know that despite how hard we tried to be good, well rounded parents we were failing. We were making our son feel like his dreams weren't worth something. I never realized that we were putting so much pressure on our kids to play sports, we always let them choose so we thought they enjoyed it. After a long apology, we decided singing lessons could replace his sport that he apparently hated anyway. We promised that after this moment he would no longer be forced to play sports, but we'd appreciate if he at least pretended to enjoy his siblings sporting events and in turn they would be forced to enjoy all his future events. I hope he follows his dreams and is never afraid of telling us what he wants to do with his life again.

She Didn't Choose This!

Well hello there! I hope everyone's April is off to as good of a start as our has been. I have had a lot of people asking for updates on Callie, because face it she is the reason we started this blog. The passed month and a half has been pretty uneventful for her to be honest, after her suicide attempt months ago she really hasn't done much. The only thing we've had an issue with is people thinking she chose her gender. This seems to be a very common misconception when it comes to transgender people, but hearing it more and more often is honestly aggravating. Let's just go back in time, you are about three years old and know your gender. How do you know it? Were you told? Were you pushed into gender roles? If you answered "Yes" to those, I am sad for you. To know that you really don't know your own life and are just living by what is expected by you, that's sad to me. Let me also ask you this, how old were you when you realized you were the gender you are? I know I was three, I knew I was a girl because I liked everything pink, I liked baby dolls, I liked boys(at three yes!), I was just fully a girl and knew it. My child is the same way, she knew at a very young age that she was a little girl, she realized she likes all the "girl" things and she was more like girls than she was boys, she didn't just decide "I'm going to be a girl today". She knew that she was different than the other little boys at preschool and that was perfectly fine with us. I didn't choose my gender, Jason didn't choose his, and we know that Callie didn't choose hers either. That's not how this transgender thing works and it's time to break the stigma of thinking it's okay to say things like this. Face it, even if someone did choose their gender rather than the one they were assigned at birth, that's none of your concern. If you aren't feeding, financing, or the other "f" someone, you don't get a say in how that person lives their life. At the end of the day we are all human and want the same thing, to be loved. I dream of a day where it is okay for a transgender person to live their life without fear or embarrassment or any other feeling my five year old daughter has felt because of people out there. I stand with transgender youth and will do anything to protect them, I'm hoping you will too.

We're Going to Disney World!

I am so excited to finally share the news, that we are taking the kids to Disney World! We have been saving up for almost two years to do this. It's a huge step and I can't wait to see their faces as they meet all their favorite Disney characters! Not only will this be most of our kids first time there, it will also be my first time there. Yup, I've never been to Disney in all my twenty-two years of life. My dad actually offered to take me once, but my mom said no-THANKS MOM! So I will be completely honest, this trip is more for me than them, I just use my kids as an excuse to do things like this. I could honestly go on and on about how excited we are for this trip, but I feel like there's a more important thing for me to say....APRIL FOOLS! Yea, I'm that mature, I play April Fool pranks on people. My five year old daughter was the one who got hit with this one, she didn't buy it though. I told her this morning "We're going to Disney this summer" and she said "uh huh, sure we are!" so to all my coworkers who knew about this prank and said it was too mean for a five year old-I told you she's been pranked for years! I hope you guys still love me after this post, I just really needed to do something fun! Happy April guys!!!