cardwell living

Well I'm finally starting a blog! I'm excited to do this, but I might be insane to try and keep this up. We'll see how it goes. Matthew and I love our two little rascals Nathan and Mary and I don't think life could have given me a better family than the one I have. Matthew is the most wonderful husband and Nathan and Mary are terrific kids...extremely imaginative and funny and keep me on my toes, or on my knees. However you want to look at it. Life has been kind of crazy the last few years you might say and we have done and been through a lot. One thing for sure though, someone is watching over us and loves us! We are so grateful for our blessings and feel that we have been poured out with blessings the last few years.

We moved to Utah last year and have been enjoying our time by family. I live by my two sisters, Laura and Melissa, and their families. We also live by Matthew's brother Jonathan and his wife Katy. Then we have a niece and nephew nearby too. We are loving the time we have to be by family! We know this won't last forever.

A brief update on each of us:
Matthew likes his job and is doing well. He goes swimming three times a week at 4:30 in the morning! He has been doing this now for eight months. He is kind of insane, but I admire him a lot for his dedication in keeping himself healthy and trying to improve his physical fitness. And yes, he looks GOOD! He is a wonderful father and the kids adore him. They are so excited when he comes home. They actually wait every day for when he comes home so they can hide! We started this tradition years ago and they still do it everyday. Most of the time he walks through the door and the kids are still running for a spot to hide. Matthew pretends he doesn't see them running and then goes and finds them. I usually sit back and watch this every day and find enjoyment seeing the kids and daddy get a long so well. Sometimes, I help hide the kids by putting pillows on them when they want to hide on the couch or by hiding with them.

I am doing great. I have been steadily getting better for months now and I owe everything to my Heavenly Father. He has a lot of patience with me! Much more than I have with myself sometimes, but I am learning. I am in school and only have a few more classes until I am done! This is really exciting news to me because I have been in school for eight years now. I have been in the bachelor of general studies program for two and a half years now. I think it's about time! But I am so happy to be almost done with considering the craziness of the last five years with moving a number of times, health problems, pregnancies and just being a mom and wife!
I have recently discovered I like to cook (thanks to a BYU cooking class). I also recently discovered I really enjoy family history as I wrote a family history for my family. That took a lot of work but something that was definitely worth all the effort. Besides that, I love being a mom to my kids and a wife to Matthew. That is really the best part of my life.

Nathan is 4 now and growing taller and older everyday. He still loves dinosaurs and growls like them everyday. I find myself losing patience sometimes after the "sharptooth" comes out from nowhere and tries to bite me. This happens a number of times each day. He also seems to like to growl at dinner a lot of the time. Nathan loves "lesson time" at home and loves movies, of course. He and Mary both love to read and Matthew and I take them to the library about once a week for new books.

Mary is 2 and is a princess. She loves pink, painting her nails and has opinions everyday about what she wears. Getting a dress for church is often a hassle because she is very particular about what she wants to wear. She also loves to have her hair fixed, but because her mommy isn't the best, she asks her aunts that live nearby to fix her hair almost every time she is at their house. She is almost potty-trained and was very excited to have pink pull-ups. She is very imaginative too like Nathan. She is also the daredevil of the family. She will climb anything and will swing on the poles at the park. She has about given Matthew and I both heart attacks. But she is a very good climber. I remember when we unpacked boxes in the apartment, there was a stack of boxes in her room. We went out of the room and when we came back she was at the top of the boxes just sitting there! We have no idea how she got up since she is so short and small and wasn't even two yet. She also talks really well and has spoken in complete sentences since she was eighteen months. She reasons with you very well and surprises me with how smart she is. (I am biased probably because I am her mommy!)