Sperry's Speeches: 2008

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Nativity & Noel

So our stake puts on a community concert and Nativity display every year called
Nativity & Noel.

It features choirs and groups from the area, such as performance groups, and even some spectacular High school groups, and even work choirs (the walmart choir was fantastic :) ) as well as "The Ozark Mormon Chorale" including members from all over the area. I didn't get to stay and listen to all of them this year just a short sampling of some.
But hey maybe next year I'll be in it. :)
For this year I participated in the Nativity display.

It's called an International Nativity Display and includes Nativities from all over and a live Nativity performed every few minutes.
This year Alex and I and baby Jack got to be Mary, Joseph, and Baby Jesus.
I've done it once before when we had Allyson and I looked like the young teenage Mary. They were willing to over look that this year since we had a brand new baby boy who was absolutely perfect in the manger.
He just lay there and looked around all wrapped in swaddling clothes... He did need a pacifier on the last few times. Jack was 9 days old when we did this so I ended up trying my best to sit normally in between performances but it seems every time I sat down the music would be on to cue us for another round. It probably didn't help that we always ended up stopping to talk to people who wanted to see the baby and ask questions on our way out. :)

Oh well, oh, I'd started to say that having done this once before I have to say I am truly grateful to have had this experience. As wonderful as it is to watch a Nativity scene taking place before your eyes. It's fantastic to be apart of one. To sit there listening to the narration (it doesn't really matter to me what exactly it is, they all tell the same story) and knowing you are representing the earthly family of the Christ child let's me feel so much closer to the experience and there is nothing I can think of that helps me more to remember the true meaning of Christmas.

Merry Christmas to everyone. We love you all.

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

It's a boy!!!

It's a boy!

OK, so I'm here and ready to go! If you want to see what I did for thanksgiving you'll have to check out my sisters blogs but really I think we're all past that now :) Please every one know that I am thankful for many things. :) I am now in the Christmas spirit and after birth pain! So here's the official announcement...

Jackson Alexander Sperry

was Born

December Fourth Two Thousand Eight

At Three Thirty Three in the Afternoon

Weighing Seven pounds Nine ounces

At a Length of

Twenty and one Half inches

Quintin Alexander Sperry

And

Hillary Ann Sperry

hehe. Yeah, we are pretty excited! We have been so blessed by the love of friends and family too! From the shower and the meals and offers of childcare and personal care and visits, you have all been so wonderful. Alex just asked if I thought I would still know how to cook after this is over... my response... Well you know I can still make cheesecake so we're good. *Ahhhh, to live on cheesecake.* Sorry slight distraction, Anyway, Jackson has been well welcomed into this world. Now if we can just keep him awake to see it then maybe Alex and I can stay awake too. Can't wait for a good sleep pattern to kick in. At the right time of day. :)

Friday, November 7, 2008

Mothers who know by Julie B. Beck

My friend Jolynn sent this out on facebook and it made me think alot :) and cry. Ok, so I know I'm all pregnant and emotional but yes this made me cry this morning... Perspective is a horrible thing to have some times... It makes my vision blurry... or maybe it clears it, but the tears make it very confusing to decide which one it is.

I know in this talk there is a lot of we must do this, and do this, and this. And part way through the tears gave way to being overwhelmed... The tears returned shortly after... We need to remember that there have also been many talks that speak about not being overwhelmed and not comparing ourselves to the talents & abilities of others, and the things we think... we know others are doing, but it's also important to remember what we are shooting for. The compilation of clips is from a talk by Julie Beck titled Mothers who know, I've linked it here. And while there are inspirational talks out there for women in every walk of life this one is specifically for mothers, as the title indicates, however there are many instances where Mother could easily be exchanged simply for Women. These are things that we as women should be doing and striving for not only in our families but in our lives. To help those around us and ourselves. Think of how you could improve yourself if we nurture our own minds with the gospel and time. If we pattern our homes after the Lord's will it only be beneficial if you have children? No, it blesses everyone who enters it. It would certainly be wonderful in the lives of our children though to have such peace and order around them... I think it will even help if *ahem* we (this one is definitely for me ladies) even just strive to have that.

Thinking a little towards fly lady principles a little is better than nothing, and we can bless our families and our lives simply by making the effort. (Even housework done incorrectly still blesses our families... that's such a freeing principle.) Anyway I could go on... I suppose the end rant was partly brought on because I read a few comments that were left to the video. Oh well I suppose in the end we just need to remember a couple of things, One - what good is anything if we don't have a goal to reach for, and Two - that whoever we are there is always room for improvement.
And thus the tears and blurry vision.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Yes we did have Pumpkins!

So about a week before Halloween we bought pumpkins...

A few days later we dove into the gooey nastiness. The girls loved it! Ally is starting to show some pumpkin carving understanding and Livvy is doing great as well. Honestly it was nice to circle the table helping people and actually be helping some of them, because they were actually making good progress on there own! So good job to them!

Layna and Phoebe both had a blast! Layna got right into her pumpkin designing it and cleaning out guts! Woo Hoo Layna! Phoebe didn't get into the pumpkin but was very excited whenever dad pulled anything out... she eventually tried going after seeds :) She was fun to watch!

Phoebe eventually decided the coolest part was sculpturing the guts after they were out and on the table! Thankfully there was no eating it just playing with it like it was an awesome gooey sand pile!

Livvy liked it too... a little bit :) hehe

Our lit up pumpkins! Yes success!

And last here is some Pumpkin Joy from Phoebe.... For Everyone!!!

My sister in law Misty mentioned this on her blog so my family has all seen it but I thought I'd post it for all my Bella Vista friends because it is so perfect, and appropriate to how we should be feeling and acting The links above will take you to a blog titled Shark Bait by a woman called Tiburon/Tib & Misty's blog... I'm so glad Tib & Misty found this, Now here's the text of her quoted post: I think Bob Lonsberry summed it up well:

Barack Obama was not my choice, but he is my president. That is true of all Americans. For the last eight years, there has been an ongoing campaign of destruction meant to handicap and hobble the last president. I refuse to be part of an effort to do the same to the next president. Those who didn't vote for Barack Obama must set a higher standard of civility and citizenship than those who didn't vote for George W. Bush. In defeat, there must still be nobility. The last eight years have taught us what happens when you set out to destroy a presidency for political gain. You help your candidate, but you hurt your country. That pattern must not be followed with this new president. America must treat Barack Obama better than he treated George W. Bush.

While the candidate that I voted for did not win - I will make this pledge. I pledge to be kinder to Obama than his party was to Bush. Cause that is how I roll.

Me again. The scariest thing about this election to me has not been the candidates or the house, though all are intimidating subjects, the scariest thing to me is how the American people have reacted. There has been more violence and acting out and growing to hate than I can remember seeing in our country. And it is wrong. Respect for me will be a hard thing to muster for someone who has not earned it from me but I can reject the hate that has begun to surround this subject, and I can be kind... and hopeful. Cause that is how I roll.

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Just started going through pics of Halloween and our quick but wonderful trip to be with Sarah and her family when they were blessed to have Jason sealed to them this last weekend. I found and edited this one of Phoebe. I'm trying to find one of her to put on the wall because at this point we have one of everyone (even though they are seriously out of date) except her up. I don't know that this is it but I thought it was cute and thought I'd share! Happy Fall!

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Fun blogs for fun people!

OK so I saw this and loved it it's a little political humor

By the way I've been meaning to point out to my sisters that they should check out Meg's blog too. It's way fun and you would love it. It's a hilarious blog by an LDS stay at home mom who always seems to find the humor in things. You guys should definitely search out her blogs about time out for women and the later jean dress karma post.

Warning: Sarcasm to be found there!

hehe sarcasm makes life fun.

Updates without pictures

So I was going to take a picture of my pregnant self but I am somehow between yesterday and today missing the memory card from our camera.

But I'll update anyway.

We are approx. 6 weeks from D day and I have finally gotten myself some maternity fall/winter pants.

In fact Saturday was quite a good day as I got home from the Primary Program practice at church and had received a box in the mail.... new underwear!! hehe no not pants yet... but seriously, Hurray for new garments. Actually, my favorites came shortly after I found that box, when the mail came and I had 2 more boxes consisting of 2 pairs of maternity Jeans, 1 pair of seriously long... and cuffed gray pants... sigh... so nice, 1 pair fantastic khakis, and 3 new shirts/sweaters. Hurray again!! I felt like I'd been on a shopping spree so I spent the next little while trying everything on.

So Fun!

Other updates

Ally and Livvy are doing great in school.
My next Doctor visit is Nov. 6th
It finally froze and my tomato plant is melting in the front yard.... :) I finally get to take it down and look a little less white trash.
Of course now my counter is covered in the tomato bounty... About 41 tomatoes and half are already red... hmm, not enough to can but too many to eat... We'll see, Alex has been managing so far but he even mentioned it yesterday :)
I hear strange drip/creak type noises coming from the bathroom but nothing is wet I don't want to go look.
And we have yet to figure out how to efficiently and cost effectively work our screwed up heating system, any electrician's who want to come visit feel free!

I think that's all for now, thanks for reading and let's everyone have a round of, "Thank you very much.... For the underwear! I always wanted.... underwear. Tell Uncle Harry to have a Merry Christmas Love and Kisses...." Yeah, you know the rest and if you don't you probably don't want to. Who wants underwear songs stuck in there head anyway.

Love and Kisses, Stevie

Tuesday, October 14, 2008

HEHE!

And we like all munched and Oh! I know how to eat like a Chipmunk mom! HAHA I just found this in my posts as a draft from October! During my pregnant and trying but not succeeding to post days :) I think this was a quote from Layna. She was just going a mile a minute that morning telling me about who knows what but she concluded a long paragraph with this and it made me laugh! So I started a post and ofcourse didn't get a chance to finish it! Love those pregnancy days... blegh!

Monday, October 13, 2008

OK Ladies, on the 15th of October Handbag Planet is giving away 24 purses in 24 hours all you have to do is sign up to win, and you increase your entries by blogging about it! So go...CLICK HERE, and maybe one of us will get lucky! Thanks Misty, Laura, & Natalie for the heads up! Yeah, a lot of you know but let's spread it around a little more :)

So you've got one day left to pick out your purse and tell us all!

Wednesday, October 8, 2008

A homework moment!

I loved this! It made me giggle :)

So, this is Livvy's, when I first picked it up I read, "This is a beautiful day." My first thoughts were that this was a random poem from Ally... she likes to right poetry... and I wondered what she was thinking about today. Moving on I read, "this is a beautiful day. Will you all be quiet! Come here." A moment of shock, wow, this poem changed quickly! Oh wait it's not a poem... third line, "Dog!" weird. Oh, wait this was Livvy's homework... Oh yeah, I helped her with this.... imagine much laughing at yourself at this point.

She was making sentences from sight words, This, Will, and Come. On the last one I told her Come here wasn't a full sentence so she added the dog part... oh yeah that fixes everything:) Anyway, it made me laugh when I started reading it like a poem instead of Homework and I'm loving anything that makes me laugh right now!

This one at least Mom will get... and yes I know you probably can't read it but it's the effect of all the added lines you need to see anyway :) You can just trust me that it's imaginative writers prompt stories about a substitute teacher and catching an iguana... heehee...

... So, I was home-schooled pretty much from 2nd grade to high school graduation despite a year or two of high school relapsing and trying out the public school system again. Anyhow one of my favorite activities was writing stories from a prompt... The problem I had is that we'd get 5 minutes and by that time I only had the first chapter or so of my story lined out and always had some kind of to be continued thing. So seeing Ally's extended paragraphs made me smile again... I could almost see her scribbling frantically and going "Oh, I just need a few more lines! Hurry, hurry! Dang, how do I end this quick...."

I love seeing my girls learn and grow. They're so smart, it's awesome :) I hope they always love to learn.

Monday, September 22, 2008

Happy Happy Birthday Misty!We love you and love having you in the family!!! Have a great day!

Ally's Birthday

Well I'm a few days late but I wanted to wish Ally a happy birthday.

Allyson Josephine Sperry turned 9 on the 18th of September 2008

I would like to invite you to enjoy the festivities with us...... unfortunately it's over.

However,

for your listening enjoyment turn on a Hannah Montana CD and read on and you'll get the full experience anyway :)

Close your eyes..... close em! Sorry you can't read that way can you... OK... next sense.... Smell the cake! Yes we love that one! Ally was having Chocolate Chocolate Chocolate cake, chocolate cake, chocolate frosting, and chocolate curls (...from Sam's club might I add. Great fun for her... rather unusual for me :) ) So, Ally was having very chocolate cake for her Littlest Petshop sleepover birthday party. She had 2 good friends over and they played and ran circles through the house while hitting eachother with balloons to the tune of the current Hannah Montana CD.

After the balloons and music and other various pretend animal playing, we had pizza for dinner, presents, cake, and movies... the girls stayed up late enough to play and turn on another movie

after I had gone to bed.

I made donuts for the following morning, which we all enjoyed and shortly after girls were picked up.... it was fabulous! And I have 1 fabulous cake picture courtesy of Alex.

Oh wait, 2 pictures.... Look I was there!

Truly I am grateful for Allyson, She is a huge help and a blessing to my family. She tries so hard to make others happy and she is just sweet!

Allyson's favorite color right now is blue, green, or purple... I think purple is the main winner or any combo of the three :)

She loves school! And her teacher Ms. Laine :)

I believe her favorite subject is math... "It's just so easy!" she says

Allyson loves Animals... pretty much any sort of animal :) stuffed, live, jungle, or farm!

She is such a joy, I hope she continues in her friendly hard working ways throughout her life. They will serve her better than she knows.

We love you Ally!

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Zombies, and Screamers, and Stepford wives... oh my!

Ok so I've been following Stephanies self discovery blogs and started writing my own, on myself, and basically I started crying into my bowl of cereal and I'm thinking I'm too pregnant to be ready for self discovery. So, I think I'm going to settle for the zombie version of myself that I've become and forget for a while who I am and who I want to be.

So forgetting all that who am I stuff, what category do you fall under?

Zombies, screamers or Stepford wives? Or are you happy? I imagine there are plenty of you who are... most of the time I am, maybe only pregnant people feel like this... in fact I think I rotate through the stages regularly... Poor Alex. Great! I feel more self discovery coming on... dang, I forgot to put a crier category up there.

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Painting Practice

So ladies I need some opinions.... am I crazy for wanting to paint this all over my walls?

This is basically what I want to do... (though it was a first time practice that I knew I would be painting over) I'll have white/cream walls and paint aqua and brown vines all over just for fun. I have 2 windows on one wall, a door in the opposite wall, and a large walk through on the third wall, the fourth wall is plain. And I'd basically run the "vines" vertically through all the objects as if they weren't there to begin with... ???? It is a textured wall and even with more practice I highly doubt that the edges will be much more defined... so, ths is pretty close to it. thoughts?

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Scattergories... why not

Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following. They have to be real places, names, things.. nothing made up! Try to use different answers if the person in front of you had the same 1st initial. You CAN'T use your name for the boy/girl name question.

WHAT IS YOUR NAME? Hillary

4 LETTER WORD: High (as in High school, High notes, high bar, let's not get high, you know... high things.)

BOY NAME: Harry (this is what my name always had to be if I were a boy... I hate it.) (just so you know:) )

GIRL NAME: Harriet.... seriously H names... come on!

OCCUPATION: Hair stylist

A COLOR : Hot Pink.. is that cheating

SOMETHING YOU WEAR: Hat... Hot pants

BEVERAGE: Hot chocolate

FOOD: Hamburgers... w/ avacados :)

SOMETHING FOUND IN A BATHROOM: Hand cream

A PLACE IN ILLINOIS: Haunted town of Alton Illinois... thought that was better than some random H town... yeah so why Illinois?

REASON FOR BEING LATE: Hair emergency

SOME THING YOU SHOUT: Holy Cow!

Misty's comment - This was harder than I thought it would be...give it a try. This may be hard for some of you, for me all I really had to do was put Hot in front of a word to make it work :) I tried to be a little more creative on them... It was probably more fun doing this to than it will be for you to read it.... but enjoy it anyway and think of the giggles as we thought of the things that didn't make the list :) Happy Day everyone!

Phoebe's update

So I decided that Phoebe seems ready and hinting about potty training time... Anyway this is about par for the course at this point. Same as the other girls. This is a picture of Phoebe from this morning diaperless and happy...

I'll post the pictures of me crying later... it can be a rough process :)

Phoebe has also upgraded to a big girl bed. Yes, it's still her crib we just removed the outside bars. you make do what can I say. :)

We tried it first during naptime almost a week ago now. She was up about 4 times before she actually went to sleep. That night she went down with no problem... but she apparently rolled out of bed about 4 times during the night as she would wake up crying in the dark and we'd find her standing in the doorway not understanding why she was awake. :) Long night :) Anyway the next couple nights she was only up once and now she's doing great! Atleast that's one Phoebe success on the books. We'll see what happens with the rest :) The girls are thrilled about Phoebe's big girl bed success because that means Phoebe will need a new bed before Jack comes and that also means someone is gettin' bunkbeds! Woohoo! Seriously, they're thrilled... I just laugh at their simple happiness:)

Well you guys have said you wanted to know what was going on with me... hehehe... Now you know :) Potty training and new beds exciting stuff huh :)

Monday, August 18, 2008

Back to School Time

It's that time again, and as ready as I was for summer to be over I was surprised that after the lunches were made, and the new clothes were on, and they had made it safely on the bus, I sat at the computer feeling sad that they were gone... of course that lasted till my other two woke up and started whining at me :) and then I was suddenly grateful to only be dealing with the two of them... well, not exactly grateful :) but you know what I mean :D
Anyway, here's my only picture of them before school today (I had to change camera batteries 3 times before I got it, they almost left me!) All pressed and clean :)
maybe I'll get some after shots too ;)

Nauvoo 2008

We made it out to Nauvoo this Summer... it was fantastic! The night of the pageant the girls got to play before hand and do all sorts of fun stuff!
They all watched a pioneer puppet show. It was fun they did it like a mellow drama, all the kids had sock puppets and they had to say certain things as certain puppets came up... such as barking at the dog or saying "I'm proud of you son!" when the dad came on or "Whew, that's hard work when the workers were on the set."
Definitely fun for the kids to be involved!

Livvy Just hung out with Grandma :) She wasn't to worried about the puppet show

They also had a great time learning some pioneer dances! The pageant actors & actresses actually went around and taught the dance to those who wanted to learn... This was the waltz...

I think Alex enjoyed being the one to try and teach the girls

I know Layna enjoyed it!

They played in a tug of war...

And then they did sack races...

of course shortly after that Layna fell and cut her knee and we headed to first aid and just hung out after that :) Colored pictures and played hand games and such ;)
Then it was time for the pageant. Because we came on our "Special Stake Day" we got to sit like 3 rows from the front. It was great! I hadn't seen the new pageant yet so that was fun, but nobody seemed to know what to say when I commented on how well they'd done and how I also loved theater... is that wrong... I just wanted to talk a little theater. :)

The next day we went to the visitors center... I don't know if this was appropriate... but we had fun :)

Anyway we all had a great time and plan to go again next year... hopefully as time passes the girls will get a good feel of what Nauvoo is and what it is about and eventually we'll get to do more than just look at the temple with them!
Won't that be amazing!

Phoebe's Growing up too fast!

So I came upstairs the other day, after I realized it was much too quiet, And this is what I found :) She is apparently thinking the big girl bed thing is pretty cool... she apparently didn't want to be discovered though :D

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Birthday Lovin' for Sarah :)

All the best from us too Sarah :) hehehe

We love you Sarah! We being your sisters your friends your kids your husband your in-laws your brothers your parents and even those random people you meet on the street today!

Happy Birthday!!!

Saturday, July 26, 2008

Breaking the girl streak!

So It's true... We are finally having a BOY!

as to the picture above I'm sure Alex already pictures him with a bike, so, there it is :)

We finally made it to the doctors last Monday and this is one of the pictures of our sweet baby boy :)

Alex is being very cute about it :) you can tell he's excited... he's often rubbing my belly and asking how his boy is doing, to which I usually don't have a response as I can't really feel him yet :)

Oh well, he'll get to meet him soon enough.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

A Twilight Moment :)

So anyone out there who is also enjoying the Twilight craziness and awaiting August second with bated breath but for some reason is unaware of the online Twilight love, if you will look briefly to the left of the screen and down a bit you will see that since July 12th I believe Stephenie Meyer has been submitting a quote of the day taken from the soon coming Breaking Dawn.

So just in case you were wondering what that was it is a little twilight excitement updated daily :)

It's Official

All right, it's official, baby number 5 is on it's way. I finally went to the doctor's while mom was here and I have a due date of somewhere between the the 5th and the 10th of December, so right on Sarah with your estimations. The heart beat was at 150 bpm (Mom said that sounds like a girl :) ) and I have a sonogram scheduled for next Monday. So we'll be finding out specifics on due date and gender if possible very soon :)