The Lee Family Blog

Vivian's Birthday (finally!)

2011-10-06T13:56:00.001-06:00

So, I figured it was about time to actually post about my birthing experience (3 months late!) On June 22nd I had been having contractions on and off all day long~ nothing consistent or too painful so it just went on like a normal day. However, at 7pm they were suddenly 3 minutes apart and strong enough to make me stop what I was doing and focus on getting through them. By the time we got our other 3 kids to our cousins house and up to the hospital it was 8:30pm. They checked us into a room~ I was dilated to about a 4 and 70% effaced. At about 10pm they came to check me again to see how I had progressed and I was at a 7 and 90%. So, they decided to officially admit me. By the time they finished the administrative stuff my midwife came to check me one more time at 10:40 and then they were going to leave me alone and let me labor in peace and quite. As soon as my midwife started to check me, my water broke. Korby was on the phone with his mom letting her know that we were in the hospital when my midwife started to frantically run across the room once she realized that my water broke because the baby was crowning! I had to tell Korby to get off the phone and 4 minutes later little Miss Vivian was born!

Korby and I had taken a hypnobirthing class and that is how I was able to have a completely natural birth. I had no pain killers before, during or after giving birth. That's right~ even after giving birth they kept asking me what my pain level was and if I needed anything. They seemed a little skeptical, but I seriously didn't need anything! It was wonderful!!! I loved every single thing about my birth, especially my labor being less than 4 hours total! Of course the very best part is having such a beautiful little girl added to our family!

Here's a picture of me 2 hours before Vivian was born

And here is a picture of Vivian, Korby and myself the next morning!

Lost in the Crowd

2011-09-13T12:21:00.000-06:00

We are getting in a better routine after school~ but it is still pretty hectic. Here is everything that happens on a daily basis at our house from 3:15-5:00~

Shayden:

-Snack

-Piano lesson or practice

-Singing lesson or practice

-Language worksheet

-Math worksheet

-Practice spelling words

-Reading time

Tanner:

-Snack

-Piano lesson or practice

-Karate lesson or practice

-Worksheet

-Practice spelling

-Practice dictation

-Handwritting worksheet

-Reading time

Jackson:

-Snack

-Karate lesson or practice

-Reading time

I also spend time with each kid talking about their day, looking through their folders, signing planners, cleaning out lunch boxes, on top of getting dinner ready~ so you can see how it is easy for Vivian to get lost in all the mayhem. Good thing she is such a great baby and is okay to just go with the craziness that is our house after school!

Kindergarten

2011-08-29T18:23:00.000-06:00

Well, it is official~ I now have 3 children in public school!!! Jackson had his 1st day of kindergarten today. He goes in the morning so that he can walk with Shayden and Tanner. By the time I nursed Vivian and got myself ready to go I had time to go to Old Navy and then had to go pick Jackson up. It isn't much time, but I will have almost 2 hours every morning with just Vivian!

When I picked him up I asked him if he loved it. His reply "It was just okay." He was not very excited about it and didn't seem too impressed. But he did say that "maybe once I'm more used to it, then I will like it better." He is such a funny kid.

Jackson has been my baby for 5 years now~ I will miss him, but he will do so well in school. I just hope he "gets used to it" so that he can start enjoying it more :)

Here is Jackson trying to do a "K" in sign language.

Random note: The other day Jackson had spilled water on his shirt just as we were getting ready to leave somewhere and I told him "don't worry Jackson, it will dry." He replied~ "No, mom~ it will evaporate."

Ahhhhh.... sleep!

2011-08-25T13:49:00.000-06:00

Vivian slept last night from 9pm until 4am, woke up and ate, then went back to sleep until 8:30! Was it a fluke or a glimpse of what is to come?!? I am really hoping it is the start of some great sleeping (for both of us!)

Since I haven't blogged in quite a while, I thought I would randomly post pictures from the last couple of months at the end of each post instead of trying to do a big catch up post with a couple dozen pictures and captions.

Over the summer the kids went to an art class twice a week at a park by our house. One of the days they made their own tye-dye t-shirts. They had a great time with friends and it was a nice break for me to have all 3 of them out of the house for a couple of hours a week.

I love Peanuts

2011-08-23T16:45:00.000-06:00

It's official~ we have got a little peanut in our family. Vivian just had her 2 month check up today and she is in the 10th percentile for weight and 8th percentile for height. She got 1 shot today~ she fussed for about 3 seconds and then fell asleep! Everything about her is perfect (of course!). The best things about being 2 monts old~ sleeping longer at night and smiling!!!!

1st Day of School

2011-08-22T08:24:00.006-06:00

Where did the time go?!?!? I can't believe summer is already over! Shayden starts 5th grade today and Tanner starts 2nd grade. Jackson is starting kindergarden, but he won't start until next week. This morning wasn't as crazy as I thought it was going to be (mainly because Vivian is still asleep!!!) And I even got a quick post in!!!!!

Stuck in a bathroom

2011-03-17T12:48:00.002-06:00

A riddle that Jackson gave me as he was eating lunch today:

J: "Okay. Mom, you are stuck in a bathroom. You have a pogo stick, a brick and a wire. How do you get out?"

M: "I would open the door."

J: "There is no door."

M: "Oh, well then I think I would just stay stuck in a bathroom. How would you get out?"

J: "I would connect the wire to the pogo stick and the other end of the wire to brick. Then I would bounce on the pogo stick and then a door would appear. Then I would open the door and not be stuck in a bathroom anymore."

I just thought I would share that with all of you just in case you ever get stuck in a bathroom (that has no door) with a pogo stick, a brick and a wire!

Go Cougars!

2011-03-07T13:33:00.003-07:00

A couple of weekends ago Korby and I took the kids down to a BYU men's volleyball game. It was super low key, not too crowded and since BYU is awesome they swept their opponent and the game was over fairly quickly~ a great combination for kids!

Go Cougars!

I like Jackson's smirky smile in this picture!

Even though we were pretty close to the action I was glad we though to bring binoculars. They kept the kids very entertained (watching everything but the game!)

The family with Cosmo!

The best part of the evening (according to the kids)~ going to get ice cream after the game!

I know....

2011-02-24T08:26:00.001-07:00

I know, I know..... I need a new post. It's on my to-do list.

Tanner's Nightmare

2011-02-10T12:08:00.002-07:00

The other night I was downstairs watching TV when Tanner woke up and came down to tell me that he had a nightmare. I gave him a hug and asked him what it was about. His answer: "Mom, I had a really bad dream that it was Monday and you made my lunch." That might not seem too scary, but at Tanner's school every Monday is pizza day. Apparently to a 6 year old, missing pizza day can be very upsetting!

I'm thankful that the worst thing my child is scared of is missing pizza day!

Bieber Fever

2011-01-31T09:26:00.002-07:00

Lest you think that Tanner is the only funny one in our family~ Jackson does his fair share of making sure we all get plenty of laughs. Last night we were watching America's Funny Videos (a Sunday night tradition for our family) and there was a commercial on where they announced Justin Bieber's name, followed by a bunch of screaming girls. Jackson just turned to Korby and asked "Who's chuck a beaver?" Obviously Bieber Fever hasn't hit the Lee household yet!

Yesterday afternoon the kids were all playing Parcheesi together and this is what I caught on video (I'm new at this, so I don't know how to rotate it yet... sorry). They were calling it the Parcheesi Shake and it kept getting progressively more and more silly.

Oh yea... some other news

2011-01-26T21:15:00.003-07:00

By the way..... this little one will be joining our family the end of June!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

And here's the proof! 18 weeks and counting!

Wonderful, Amazing, Great News

2011-01-24T09:50:00.002-07:00

My Pittsburgh Steeler's are going to the Superbowl!!!!!!!!

Here is Jackson and me Christmas morning with our new Steeler's gear!

Much Ado About Nothing

2011-01-17T14:37:00.003-07:00

The past few weeks have literally been FREEZING! We have been hunkered down inside doing a bunch of nothing~ which leads to no pictures~ which leads to boring blog posts! But I am going to blog anyway!

Since nothing exciting has been going on (a nice change after the holidays) I really don't have anything to talk about. But instead of ramble on I will give you a couple of classic Tanner quotes. That kid comes up with the funniest things to say~ I love the way his little mind works.

September '10~ After Tanner's first day of piano practice
"I feel so tingly inside now that I've been playing the piano so nicely."

October '10~ A conversation that took place between Tanner and Jackson about Jackson's new Airwalk Skywalk shoes
Jackson: "It's called that so that you can walk in the sky with them!"
Tanner: " You can't really walk in the sky with them, Jackson. They just call them that so that kids will be really happy when they get them."

November '10~ At the dinner table as we were eating cookies and milk for dessert
"I really want to see Santa. I want to find out if he dips his cookies in milk or if he eats them plain."

What a funny kid! I love you Tanner!

PS. Said this evening~
Korby: "Tanner, isn't your mom the prettiest girl in the world?"
Tanner: "Maybe"

Surprise!

2011-01-07T09:44:00.003-07:00

Bet you thought I wasn't going to really start blogging again since it is already 1 week into the new year~ but I did it!!!!!!

The holidays were so much fun~ as they always are. We got to spend so much time with our kids, with extended family and enjoying the wonderful spirit of the holidays. But now the presents are all opened, the yummy food is all eaten and we are back to school and just "regular" life (whatever that is!).

On New Year's day our family went to the BYU basketball game with grandma and grandpa Southwick, grandma Lee and aunt Marisa. They creamed the other team, so that always makes the game more enjoyable!

Jackson with his grandpa Southwick

Here's the family with everyone smiling~ shocking!

Tanner was turned around facing away from the game almost the entire time playing a card game that grandma Lee had brought. Then with 4 minutes left and BYU up by 20 we were going to leave early to avoid some of the traffic and Tanner of all people was pleading with us that he wanted to see the end of the game~ what a funny guy!

"THE" Decision

2010-12-22T13:26:00.002-07:00

Well......... I would like to say that I have been giving a lot of thought as to whether I should continue to blog or not. I would like to say that I have made up lists with pros and cons and that I have spent endless hours pondering over this decision. However, the truth is that I have kind of forgotten about it all together.

That being said, I am going to make a more committed attempt to blog. However, it will not be until the new year. I know that sounds cliche~ my New Year's resolution is going to keep up with my blogging/journaling better (who hasn't heard that before~ along with not as much sweets, more exercise, weight loss, etc.). But I think I would feel instantly overwhelmed with trying to keep up with the holidays. So, I will start back up when things wind down. I am hoping that will give me a better chance of actually sticking to it.

So to all~ I wish you a healthy, safe, happy and enjoyable holiday!

See you in 2011!
(hopefully!)

I'm debating.......

2010-10-26T09:13:00.001-06:00

whether to just let my blog die a slow and uneventful death or to try to nurse it back to health.

Jackson Update

2010-06-14T16:14:00.002-06:00

Jackson went to the doctors on Tuesday and they put a cast on his arm. It was so stressful hoovering over him while his arm was just in a splint the past few days so that he wouldn't move it too much or bump it on anything. It is so much easier now. But, much to Jackson's dismay the pins have to stay in another 3 weeks and he could not get a waterproof cast. He was very brave during the appointment especially since almost the entire time I was sitting down with my head between my legs trying not to pass out! Yes~ just the sight of 2 small pins sticking out of Jackson's arm was enough to make the blood drain out of my face, my fingers to go numb, my head to get completely dizzy and light headed. The nurse had to spend more time giving instructions about me than she did about Jackson's arm! I am such a wuss!

Since then it feels like Jackson has more energy than ever! The cast is not slowing him down one bit. He is all over the place, doing everything he was before.

The boys also got their hair cut this week. Tanner's is just a trim, so nothing too exciting. With Jackson we decided to try a buzz cut. He says that he doesn't like it very much, but he is

loving all the attention he is getting from it (I can't stop rubbing it!)

What a way to start summer!

2010-06-06T14:12:00.004-06:00

Thursday was the kids last day of school! I can hardly believe how fast this year went by. We celebrated by playing at Thanksgiving Point's childrens water garden. The kids had a blast playing the in water with all their friends. Then it was home for dinner and baths and I was off to Bunco. In the middle of Bunco there was a knock at the door and it was my dad coming to tell me that Korby was on his way to Primary Children's Hospital because Jackson had broken his arm! Korby assured me that Jackson was fine and told me to finish out my game before I headed up since they were just going to be sitting in the waiting room for a while. So, I finished playing Bunco (I won the top prize!) and then headed straight up to the hospital. They had just barely gotten in a room and x-rays taken when I got there about 9:30, so I didn't miss much~ it was a VERY busy night in the ER. (By the way~ thank goodness my parents are living with us so that Korby and I were both able to be with Jackson and not have to worry about our other kids!)

At 10:30 pm the nurses came in to start an IV in Jackson's hand because it turns out he has broken his humerus bone down at the elbow joint and it has to be surgically fixed with pins.

At 11:00 pm I went home to change (I was still dressed up from Bunco) and grab some other stuff since I was going to be there over night and then drove right back up

At 1:30 am they came in to start the paperwork and process of getting him ready for the OR

At 2:00 am they were ready to take him back. We were at that horrible point where the parents are supposed to stay in their spot while they watch strangers wheel their precious baby away through some double doors. At this point the doctor gave Jackson something to "take the edge off of the separation." Literally 5 seconds later while we were talking to the doctors Jackson started cracking up laughing. It was so funny, but too stressful to really laugh about. It was a strange moment. And then he was gone......

At 2:03 am we are taken to the OR waiting room where there is one other family waiting.

At 2:40 am after the longest 37 minutes ever the doctor came in to tell us that the surgery went well and that Jackson did great.

At 3:00 am after another LONG 20 minutes we are finally allowed to see our little boy again.

At 3:15 am Korby went home to get some sleep so he could get up in the morning, get Shayden and Tanner to a friends house for the day and head into work.

Jackson and I had a LONG night. He was pretty drugged up so he wasn't really aware of what was going on around him. He kept complaining about all the things he was "plugged into." He would go into fits about "getting the plugs out of him." They came to check his vitals every hour, so neither of us got much rest.

Around 9 am they woke Jackson up and tried to get him to eat or drink something. Well, he may not have been feeling well, but his appetite certainly wasn't effected~ he ate and drank everything they brought him and even most of my food.

Around 9:30 am they took out all his "plugs"~ his IV, heart rate monitor and blood pressure cuff and he got to ride in a wagon down to the car.

At 9:50 am we left the hospital

At 9:53 am Jackson informs me that he has to go the bathroom right now

At 9:55 am we stop at a gas station to use the bathroom and as we are walking in Jackson tells me "mom, since I was so brave at the hospital I think I should get a treat." Obviously the meds weren't effecting his mind too much and of course I let him pick something. His treat of choice~ a blow pop.

At 10:30 am we got his prescription filled

At 11:00 am we were finally home!

Here we are in the empty waiting room at 2 in the morning.

Jackson right after surgery

Jackson giving me a pretty drugged "thumbs up"

All of Jackson's "plugs"

Jackson's IV

Jackson getting ready to leave the hospital and plug free

Jackson's wagon ride to the car

Jackson with a much happier thumbs up with his sucker

It is never a good thing to have to spend any amount of time at the hospital with your children, but we feel so blessed that we had such a minor injury compared to most of the people that we saw there. Broken bones heal and Jackson will be just fine. He has 4 pins and his arm is in a splint. We go in this week to have more x-rays. If all goes well, the pins will come out and he will be put in a cast for 3-4 more weeks.

It isn't the best way to start our summer vacation, but at least it won't last all summer!

PS In case you are wondering~ we are glad he broke his right arm because he's a lefty!

Swagger Wagon

2010-06-01T13:58:00.001-06:00

Ok, so I don't have the actual swagger wagon, but my Honda Odyssey is still pretty cool!

PS Two posts in one day!!! Unheard of!

Rated R

2010-06-01T09:15:00.002-06:00

So my mom got Tanner and Jackson these walkie talkies for Christmas last year. My boys love the idea of them, but still haven't quite mastered how they are supposed to work. Usually they just stand in the same room shouting into them asking the other person if they can hear them (which of course they can because they are yelling at each other from 5 feet away).

Well, this morning Jackson and one of his friends had turned them on and we picked up another frequency (I am very technically challenged, so I am sure I'm not using the correct terms) where we could hear other people talking. The kids thought it was pretty cool and started listening. Turns out it is the frequency that the construction crews by our house are using as they are working on the roads. It was pretty fun to listen to for a little while~ they were talking about dumping asphalt, picking up rocks, you could hear tractors backing up and then someone got upset about something and they all started using quite a bit of REALLY bad language. I don't think that the kids picked up on any of the specific words, but I quickly grabbed the walkie talkies and they are now hiding in my closet (where they will probably stay for the next couple of months until the construction is done just to be safe).

I never would have guessed that a G rated toy could pick up on R rated language!

Leading the Way

2010-05-17T16:53:00.002-06:00

In the last 2 weeks both Shayden and Tanner have been nominated by their teachers to receive the "Lead the Way" award from their school. As another school year is all to quickly coming to an end I am so proud of both of them for all their hard work.

Shay received her award the same week as her best friend.

I just love this picture of Tanner looking up at his principal with his hands in his pockets.

Tanner with his award giving me the typical "Tanner" smile. It is so hard to get a picture of him with his "real" smile. Maybe next time....

Piano Recital

2010-05-12T15:25:00.003-06:00

Last week Shayden had her end of the year piano recital. She did a wonderful job.

Something that I love about her piano teacher is that she also takes time to teach them about different musicians, music periods, etc and tests them on it. Shayden passed her test and got some rice krispy treats shaped like music notes dipped in chocolate!

This is just before her recital. Just in case anyone is wondering.... half the time I take pictures of Shay she is not wearing her glasses. That is because she has transition lenses and I want to be able to see her eyes when I take her picture.

What happened to my little girl?!? She is growing up way too fast!

I love you princess!

Don't Hold Your Breath

2010-05-10T09:50:00.003-06:00

There probably isn't anyone left who even checks this blog anymore since I haven't done anything with it in almost 3 months. But that's okay since I am not convinced that I will keep it up anyway. I want to get back in the habit of it because I feel like I can document the little things that happen in our lives that won't get written down in journals or even remembered unless I put then here, so for posterity's sake I am going to try my best, but like I said don't hold your breath!

Perfect example of something I want to remember~
Yesterday afternoon as I was outside reading and the boys were playing in the dirt.

Jackson: Look mom I see a yellow jacket
Me: I know. It's okay. If you leave it alone then it will leave you alone.
Jackson: There it goes.
Me: See. It didn't bother you. It must have had some work to do.
Tanner: I think it had to go make honey.
Me: I don't think yellow jackets make honey.
Tanner: Oh yea. Just bees make honey.
Jackson: I think yellow jackets make jam.

I love this kid!!!!!!!!

Who's kid is this?

2010-02-19T12:12:00.001-07:00

In an attempt to be healthier this year I have started choking down a glass of V-8 juice every morning. It isn't horrible, but definitely not a favorite beverage of mine. However, I have learned that Jackson LOVES V-8! Every time I get it out he asks for a glass of tomato juice.

I have the biggest sweet tooth around and eating healthy is something that I really have to try hard to do. Jackson on the other hand could eat fruits and vegetables all day long and be in heaven. After all the struggles we have had (and still have) with Tanner eating Jackson gets the gold star in the food department. Now if I could just do something about his dramatic meltdowns ;)

Hard Lesson to Learn

2010-01-25T12:58:00.003-07:00

This weekend was a little crazy. I finally got Christmas put away just in time for a disaster to hit my house. Korby's project for the weekend was to add insulation to our attic. He got the insulation for a great price (one of those rebate deals) with the option of paying extra for someone to install it or renting the machine from Home Depot and doing it yourself. For anyone who knows my husband, you will know that if there is ever any option to do it cheaper he is all over it. Can you tell where this story is going yet?!?

I'm not even quite sure where to start. The concept was simple enough..... rent a machine from Home Depot, dump the insulation into the machine and pump it up into your attic. Easy~ right? Should only take about 2 hours~ right? The hose seals off to prevent too much insulation from getting in the house~ right? If you answered yes to any of those questions then you didn't guess correctly where the story was going!

The professionals have hoses long enough to have the machine (I have no idea what it is called) outside the house~ Home Depot did not. Korby's plan B~ put the machine in the upstairs bathroom and run the hose from there. Now my my upstairs bathroom is decent size, but there definitely wasn't room for the machine, 30 bags of insulation and a person to dump bags of insulation into the machine. So they (Korby and my dad) had to pile the bags at the top of the stairs instead. So much for cleaning my house. Obviously they needed access to the attic, so there was a ladder in the middle of my upstairs hallway blocking both the boys bedroom door and my bedroom door. Korby tried to prepare for the mess by laying down tarps, blankets and taping off the bathroom door~ it didn't help.

Then of course the machine wasn't working. What was supposed to be a quick morning project quickly turned into an all day mess. Korby had to make multiple trips back to Home Depot and make multiple phone calls to Home Depot as well. It took them about 5 hours just to get the machine to work. Since no one was expecting it to take longer than a couple of hours I didn't think twice about not having access to my room or the boys room. My mistake! The boys ended up having a tv day downstairs since all their toys were nicely cleaned up (in their room), Jackson didn't get a nap (making for an extra long day!), and I had to spend the day in my grimy work out clothes with no access to any of my toiletries or even my purse! Needless to say it was a pretty frustrating day for everyone.

By the end of the day everyone was tired, frustrated and my entire upstairs had a layer of dust, dirt, insulation on it. The pictures below really don't do it justice as to just how dirty everything was. When my mom saw the bathroom her mouth dropped open and she was speechless. It looked worse than when we were in the middle of our remodel~ which was pretty bad.

I was feeling a little like the fish from "The Cat in the Hat" when he gets mad at the cat for the mess he made and tells him to leave. No~ I did not tell Korby to leave, but I was pretty upset about the mess he had made. However~ just like the cat~ my husband it the BEST at cleaning up the messes that he makes. He worked longer and harder than any of us to clean everything up. And he had a good attitude about it.

Korby and I might not always agree on how to get things done, but he is amazing at following through with whatever he starts and he always puts 110% into everything he does. I'm still not sure if it was worth it. It was one miserable messy Saturday, but it did save us quite a bit of money and hopefully it will be beneficial in the long run to have this done. I love my hard working, determined, reliable, helpful and amazing husband!

The moral of the story~ NEVER let your husband blow in insulation himself unless he is a licensed contractor or you are going to be out of town!

Now I'm off to dust! (again)

Nothing...

2010-01-18T14:00:00.002-07:00

I made a goal that I was going to blog once a week and I already missed last week. I'm not off to a good start. But it wasn't for a lack of thinking about it. Almost every single day last week I thought to myself... "okay, I didn't blog yesterday so I need to post something today." Obviously that never worked out since I didn't post anything last week.

So, here I am at the beginning of a new week and I still don't have anything to write about. Is my life really that boring?!? Do I really not do anything? Of course that's not true, I am busy all the time. I guess I just don't think that very much of it is blog worthy. I am pretty sure no one wants to take time out of their busy day to read about all the loads of laundry I did, how many times I had to unload the dishwasher, bills I paid, what I made for lunch and how many toys I picked up~ because that isn't very different from what your days are like as well.

Which leaves me with my dilemma of what to write about........ (5 minute pause as I stare absent minded out my window). Still nothing......

Well, at least I wrote about how I have nothing to write about. Which you can't complain about since my goal was just to post something every week, I didn't say it was going to be good! Now I have 6 more days to come up with something to write about next week~ I better get started!

Excuses, Excuses

2010-01-06T13:36:00.002-07:00

Well, it's the new year and along with that comes New Year's Resolutions. I am a little behind in making my resolutions, but I am really trying to take time to come up with ones that are realistic, ones that are important to me and ones that will help make me, my family and our lives better in 2010.

One of my goals, which will benefit all my loyal readers (haa haa!), will be to post once a week! I have definitely gotten out of the habit of blogging and I am hoping this goal will get me back on track. As with all goals, there are obstacles to overcome. One of the obstacles I must conquer in order to blog more often (besides my laziness, lack of picture taking as of late and leading a pretty humdrum life) is sugar!

Although real sugar is a problem for me (which is why every year I have some goal centered around not eating as much of it), when it comes to blogging my obstacle is Sugar~ my cat. I love my kitty very much and he is my baby. But for whatever reason, he assumes that when I sit down at the computer that my intent is not to actually type anything or look at anything on line, but to be completely focused on him. He likes to sit down right in front of the keyboard and block 3/4 of the computer screen so that I can not get anything done.

Eventually I get frustrated trying to type with 2 fingers or only being able to read portions of an article that I scoot him off. Which of course leads to me feeling guilty for being mean him, which in turn leads to me giving him a kitty treat (which might explain why he is such a big boy).

In any case, I am not going to let Sugar be an excuse for why I am not blogging anymore!

Here's to new beginnings and more blogging in 2010! Wish me luck!

THE Kitchen

2009-12-04T16:19:00.003-07:00

Finally..... here are a couple of pictures of our new kitchen! It is amazing and exactly what I wanted. With so much added space our table now fits easily (with the leaf in even), I have a ton of counter space, room to buy a buffet and so many half full and even empty cupboards! It is heavenly! The counter top is a white quartz~ there is actually depth to it. You can look down into the pieces that have been cut. It is beautiful. If you are in the area, you are always welcomed to come by and take a look. I can't guarantee that it will always be this clean, but you are still welcomed!

Shocking.... I know!

2009-11-03T12:50:00.003-07:00

After about 3 months I am actually back to blogging. Wow! I wonder how many people have given up on me....... Anyway, things have been CRAZY in so many different ways that I am not going to count them all. And I don't even have any pictures to post because as I went to download pictures the other day (after finally finding my camera cords) I discovered a formatting issue that made my 1,002 pictures unrecoverable!!!! I am not quite sure what to do with that, but at least I don't have to do 10 posts in a row with a million pictures (or more correctly, a thousand pictures). So, here is a verbal recap of our lives...

Shayden~ started the year in the ALPS program at the same school she went to last year, but about 2 weeks ago we switched her back to our school. She loves being back with so many of her friends, riding her scooter to school and especially loves not having even a 10th of the homework she had before. After taking the summer off, she is back into piano lessons and is already practicing her song for their Christmas program. She is also in a musical program called "Up with Kids." With the addition on our house done, she now has her "own" room and she is absolutely LOVING it! There is also a new bathroom downstairs right next to her room that we have had to explain that even though her stuff is in it, that doesn't make it "her" bathroom. She loves reading, singing, playing with friends and helping in the kitchen.

Tanner~ started kindergarten!!!!! It is still hard for me to believe that my little boy is old enough to be at school 5 days a week. The year started out a little rocky for him. For about the first week every day when I picked him up I would ask enthusiastically how school was. He would get a mopey look on his face and say "so boring, all we had to do all day was sit in our seats." Luckily, he has made some great friends and now LOVES going to school. He is learning to read and it is so fun to watch him discover that there are words all around us and that he can actually know what some of them are. Another big step for him is not taking naps anymore. Yup, Shayden napped until she went to kindergarten, so we told Tanner the same thing. There have been a couple of times where he could have seriously used some extra sleep, but he is determined to never take a nap again. Ohhh.... how I wish someone would make me take a nap!

Jackson~ our little guy has started preschool! Yikes! I am doing Joy School with him (the same program I did with Tanner). Where a group of moms get together and alternate weeks teaching. He absolutely loves going! It is 5 girls and only 2 boys (and both boys are the very youngest of the group). But that doesn't bother him one bit. He thinks he is so grown up and loves having a backpack just like Tanner. We are in the midst of potty training and having issues with #2. I'm on my third~ you think I would have figured it out by now. We'll see how it goes....

House stuff~ well, they finished the house the end of September, about a month later than they thought (but we were expecting that). They had it written out in the contract that they are not a cleaning crew and would not be cleaning our house when they were done. So, I knew not to expect a homecoming like on Extreme Home Makeover where they hand over the keys to a pristine, clean, organized, decorated house. But it was still very anticlimactic and depressing when all of the sudden one day they stopped coming and I was left with a garage full of boxes to unpack, a backyard in shambles, and a completely filthy, dirty house in chaos. There are still some projects that we are doing on our own and a LOT of unpacking and organizing to do. But it is slowly coming all together.

Part of the reason for the addition on the house was that my parents have now moved in with us. They have both found jobs up here, which is amazing and everything is going well. It is nice to have 2 more sets of hands keeping kids quiet at church, cleaning bathrooms, making dinner, etc. It is working out great and we hope they stay for quite a while.

On to me... Well, the end of August I found out that I was expecting (don't get too excited) and was overly tired and sick. Everyday life was hard enough, on top of all the house stuff I had to do. I went for my first appointment the beginning of October to discover that I had a "molar pregnancy." I had a d&c about a week later and am still dealing with some of the issues that come with this type of pregnancy. It has been so long since my life has felt normal, that I think I am beginning to forget what it is like. I haven't given up hope though.... one of these days I will get everything under control again. One of these days.....

In the meantime, this weekend I am going to dress my kids up in their Halloween costumes and take pictures again (since I can't get the first ones). So, hopefully I will have some pictures to post next time.

Progress...

2009-07-28T19:10:00.002-06:00

For the past week and a half we have been staying at Korby's mom's house and this is why:

Here is what has become of our master bedroom. Not pictured is the non existent wall that now opens up directly into the hallway and directly into the bathroom (minus the sink that is now currently residing in our bedroom).

Here is our combination laundry room and storage room with no access to the dryer. Notice the hanging blue light switch~ my kids think that is the coolest thing in the world! Oh.... to be 5 years old again and impressed by a light switch!!!

You might think we didn't really need to go through all the hassle of moving out for just that. No master bedroom, that's okay we still have 2 other bedrooms not being touched. No washer and dryer, that's okay too. I hang dry most of our clothes anyway. But here is what is left of our kitchen..... not much but a lose sink pipe that is so old and rusted that it doesn't shut off all the way. The solution~ shut off the water to the house until the new sink is in. As it turns our running water is something that is very inconvenient to live without these days!

Out the doors you can see the framing for the new outside kitchen walls!

Here is what it looks like from the outside right now~ a compound! I promise that we are putting in lots of beautiful windows and new French doors.

What do you get when you are "living" in Lehi (about 20 minutes away from our house) but have swimming lessons, karate lessons, singing lessons, art classes, gym classes, baseball games, doctor appointments, swimming, soccer games, dentist appointments all in Sandy?

Three completely exhausted kids and one equally exhausted mom!

I hope your summer has NOT been as crazy as ours :)

Start Framing

2009-07-09T13:40:00.002-06:00

Today they started the framing. You can see where the bedroom window is going to go along the new back wall.

Yesterday they came and back filled the dirt around the foundation. As the bobcat started pushing the dirt in I thought the kids would be as excited as they were when the dirt was being dug out. However, this was Tanner's response....

"Ahhhhhhh (with a sigh and a shoulder slump). There goes Mt. Everest."

They also took out the wall between the laundry room and storage room downstairs.

Let there be Light

2009-07-07T23:57:00.004-06:00

I don't know if I will be able to explain this correctly (I have already typed/deleted/retyped this a couple of times and I don't even understand what I am talking about) so good luck!

With our downstairs addition we had the existing foundation walls to deal with. Since concrete is so heavy it is very expensive to break up and haul away. So, instead of dealing with all of that, our contractor cut out the area of the existing foundation wall that would be the door ways to the new rooms and pushed it outside. They are then going to pour the foundation flooring on top of the slab (essentially burying the slab under the new foundation). I don't know if that made sense, but here are a couple of pictures that hopefully help......

There is the slab of existing foundation wall laying flat in the ground with a big piece of plywood covering up the hole in our house.

Here is the view when you walk into my laundry room now. Since they only needed to take out the concrete part, the top half of wall is still in tact.

It sure does let it a LOT more light! I am afraid that it is also going to let in a lot more bugs, dirt and let out a lot more children and cats! So, thank goodness they put up the plywood to cover the hole. It is going to stay like that for at least 2 more weeks I think.

Foundation Walls

2009-07-03T15:39:00.002-06:00

We now have the foundation walls! They came this morning at 6:30!!!!!! Sorry to anyone within the sound of all the hammering, sawing, nailing~ not to mention the cement truck with its diesel engine. Korby had the day off and was going to take the kids to let me sleep in. So much for that plan......
I just have to keep telling myself it will all be worth it in the end~ that is going to be my new mantra!

Day 2 of Construction

2009-07-01T14:22:00.003-06:00

I don't think that anything will be able to top Monday's excitement for my kids! Tuesday we dealt with power issues and they got it ready to pour the footings.

Here is what is left of our deck~ a pile of rubble.

I had no idea that rebarb (sp?) was so colorful!

We'll see what tomorrow brings.....

Let it Begin

2009-07-01T14:09:00.003-06:00

We started bright and early Monday morning! Jackson wouldn't even let me finish getting him dressed he was too excited about watching the tractors :) I think they were more excited about this then they were about Christmas!!!

Our kitchen proved to be a perfect spot to watch the whole show. It began by excavating our backyard for the addition. Notice the soggy bowl of cereal on the counter~ they were too excited to even eat breakfast!
By the end of the day we no longer had a covered deck. The kids got such a kick out of watching the workers cut, rip, pound, and tear up the deck piece by piece.

Here is our yard at the end of day 1. A giant hole, mounds of dirt, hammers, nails, ladders, wood scattered randomly around~ a backyard that is no longer kid friendly!

Let the fun begin!!!!!! We are really excited to be doing this. We know it will be a long and frustrating process at times, but the end product will be so worth it!!!! We are just about doubling the size of our kitchen and we are adding another bedroom and full bathroom down stairs.

A New Beginning

2009-07-01T14:03:00.002-06:00

For the last couple of months we have been meeting with architects, talking with general contractors, getting bids, going to Parade of Homes, checking out Lowes and Home Depot more frequently as we finally made the decision to add on to our house!!!!!!

How did your day start?

2009-05-21T09:17:00.003-06:00

As I was taking Shayden to school and Jackson to my friends house, and trying to hurry back so I could get ready for 6 kids to come over for preschool, from the very back of the car I hear the small voice of Tanner......

"Mom, I threw up."

I hope your day started better than mine :)

I'm Baaaaaaaack!

2009-05-14T23:32:00.006-06:00

Okay, so I took a little computer break for almost a month! It was actually really nice, but I am excited to get back into blogging! I have a lot of pictures from the last month, but instead of posting 40 pictures and boring everyone out of their minds I am just going to do a quick recap and move forward from here...

For Shayden's spring break the kids and I went down to California for about 5 days, then we spent Easter weekend in Cedar City with Korby and his dad and then we went to St George with Korby for a conference he had down there for a couple of days. It was a lot of traveling, but it was also a lot of fun!

For Tanner's 5th Birthday we took advantage of Disney's gracious gift of a free ticket on your birthday and the kids and I went to Disneyland with my mom, dad and sister Holly. It was insanely busy, but the kids still had a great time!
Here's my family waiting for our tour of the Brigham Young house in St George. Notice Tanner's "smile."

So the pictures aren't in order, but here is Jackson giving me a kiss at the beach in Carlsbad. It was a beautiful day to walk on the beach and there was a tractor moving sand so my boys were in Heaven!

In between Cedar City and St George is Zions National Park where we spent a day hiking and riding the tram around the park. Is it just me, or does Shayden look too grown up in this picture?

I took this the night before we came home~ kind of like the end of our travels. It was a really fun trip and really looong. It seems like the longer the vacation the longer it takes to get over it.

Tanner Does it Again

2009-04-07T10:11:00.003-06:00

Well, Tanner has done it again! He never ceases to come up with new things to say that just crack me up! We are leaving today to visit my parents in California and my mom's awesome neighbor scored us free tickets to Disneyland!!!! So, we are going to celebrate Tanner's 5th birthday :) We told Tanner about it last night and as I was putting him to bed last night I asked him if he was excited and this was his reply~ "I'm so excited I can't control my mind!"

I LOVE THIS KID!!!!

My New Best Friend

2009-03-17T13:11:00.002-06:00

For anyone who has not tried this product~ it is AMAZING!!!!! I don't know the secret, but it really is magical. Mr Clean~ I love you!

Snow Day

2009-03-09T20:12:00.002-06:00

We haven't seen snow for quite a while now, but in the last couple of days it has started to come back. And since I haven't really had anything to blog about lately I decided to take out my camera and actually take some pictures!

One of our cherry trees in the back yard.

This is looking out on the west side of the valley.

Korby and the kids built a snowman tonight. Shayden came in after about 10 minutes, but the boys were lovin it! Tanner loves playing in the snow, and smiling for the camera!

Jackson stood there holding that snowball for about 3 minutes. He didn't really have anything to do with it, but he was excited to have it!

We are very anxious for spring to come, but I guess we will make the most the winter that is still here. Hopefully we will have some more interesting things to blog about in the next couple of weeks :)

I can't belive I'm doing this.....

2009-02-23T16:03:00.004-07:00

For any of you who haven't been sucked into the world of Facebook~ this tag has been going around for a while. For the longest time I decided I wasn't going to do it just because every one else was. But when my sister's all started to do it for each other, I didn't want to let them down.

Since I haven't had much to blog about lately, I decided to post the tag on here just to cover all my bases. So, for what it's worth, here is a list of 25 Random Things About Me.....

1. I have not eaten red meat in almost 6 months. (Big for me because my favorite meal forever has been steak and potatoes).
2. I really want a stamp in my passport~ I was very disappointed that we didn't get any while on our cruise :(
3. I hang dry almost all of my laundry (I only machine dry sheets/towels/socks/undies).
4. I want to take a photography class.
5. I really like to be warm, but I don't like wearing a lot of layers~ right now I am wearing shorts and have bare feet with my space heater on... good thing Korby doesn't read this :)
6. I LOVE math!
7. I don't like English and history.
8. I would like to start gardening.
9. I love my reusable shopping bags~ I use them for so many different things.
10. I want to get involved in a humanitarian non-profit organization.
11. I have become very particular about my kitchen sink (I wipe it down at least 5-6 times a day).
12. I think the beach is the most beautiful and peaceful place in the world, but I HATE the ocean!
13. It makes me sick to watch my blood being drawn, but I still donate blood every 8-10 weeks (I just have to look away the whole time).
14. I would love to be a massage therapist.
15. I can't decide if I like being brunette or blond?
16. I have started learning a little bit about natural medicine and want to get much more into it.
17. I love cleaning my house, but I hate cleaning my room.
18. Favorite chore: floors (sweep, mop and vac) Least favorite: oven, shower
19. My mom is my best friend.
20. I bought a book at CostCo this weekend out of pity~ the author was there with a giant stack of books to sign and no one was buying any (so far it is actually pretty good).
21. I absolutely LOVE to work out~ pilates, spin, power pump, step aerobics, yoga, zumba, kick boxing, racquetball, running~ some days I wish I could work out for 4 or 5 hours!
22. One day I want to go back to school and get my MBA.
23. I am really excited that I have started working on our food storage.
24. I handle all of our finances, budgeting and taxes.
25. Next year I am going to run a marathon (Korby is training for 1/2 iron man and climbing Mt. Rainer this year, so next year it is my turn to train for something).

Diet Coke and Heaven

2009-02-16T23:11:00.002-07:00

So, Tanner continues to crack me up on just about a daily basis! Korby and Shayden were both out of town this past weekend, so it was just me, Tanner and Jackson hanging out. Well, one thing that I did to help get me through the weekend was buy some diet Coke (which I honestly don't drink very often). So, on Sunday as the boys were eating lunch before going to church I poured a large glass of it (to get me through the next three hours)! Jackson started asking for some and I had to explain to him that it was a drink for grown ups and not for kids. This is how the rest of the conversation went:

Tanner: Well, I've tried diet Coke before mom.

Me: That's okay Tanner. Kids just shouldn't drink it very much.

T: Well..... actually...... when I was up in heaven that is what Heavenly Father and Jesus like to drink.

Me: Oh really?!

T: Yea, that is their favorite drink. When it is snack time in heaven that is what Heavenly Father and Jesus drink and that's what they give the kids to drink too.

Me: Laughter...... more laughter....... started calling my mom to tell her that she didn't have to feel guilty for drinking diet Coke anymore since (according to Tanner) it is the beverage of choice up in heaven!

Cleaning House

2009-02-10T23:28:00.002-07:00

The last couple of months I have been working on going through and cleaning out our house. And coming to the realization that we have WAY too much stuff! So far I have cleaned out the kids clothes, toys, books (just the really messed up ones~ I don't think my kids could have enough books) and stuffed animals and part of our storage room. I still have a lot that I want to go through but cleaning out also means cleaning up/organizing what's left, so we'll see what I get done this month. I'm thankful that we have a thrift store close to our house that will accept our donations and hopefully it will help someone else out.

This picture was taken a couple of months ago (notice the leaves on the tree in the background). Since then I have taken two more loads.

Out of the Mouth of Babes

2009-02-06T13:35:00.003-07:00

January was not the best of months for me~ some small medical issues got a little crazy. But I am on the mend and I am hopeful that February will be a much better start to the year. One highlight of January was being able to go to the Draper Temple Open House. It was wonderful to be able to go with my kids. Shayden was pretty quiet but thought that everything was amazingly beautiful. Jackson was great just being held and was quite.

I walked through the entire time with Tanner! It was wonderful!!!!! As we were walking down a hallway (nothing really special about it)~ Tanner told me "I can feel the spirit here." What a sweetheart! A little later we were walking by the bridal room and there was a door partially opened. Tanner went over, opened it, walked in and said (in a not so quite voice) "Look mom! I found the Lord's bathroom!" The LDS temple's are called the House of the Lord. So in my little 4 year's old logic~ if this is the Lord's house, then that would be His bathroom!!!! What a funny little kid! At the end of the tour and as we walked out of the temple doors Tanner squeezed my hand and said "Mom, I felt the Holy Ghost the whole time." I knelt down to talk to him about how special the temple is, why they are so important and why he was able to feel the spirit there. I thought it was a very beautiful/special/journal worthy moment. His response "Yea, so can I have my fruit snacks now?" I LOVE this kid!!!!!

Draper Temple

New Look for the New Year

2009-01-16T11:48:00.003-07:00

So, to start off the new year I decided to go with a new look. Here is a before picture just in case. Korby thought I was a stranger when I walked in the door and Jackson said my hair looks like chocolate. It will take a little getting used to, but I was ready for something different.

Mission accomplished!

Blue Light Special

2009-01-11T16:07:00.005-07:00

Two things I wanted to work on in 2009 were building my food storage and saving money. My cousin introduced me to a grocery coupon program called Grocery Smarts and yesterday was my first shopping trip to Albertson's using coupons. I will preface it by saying it took me about 2 hours to prepare, but in the end it was well worth it.

Here is a list of what I got (my receipt was 5 feet long!):

*21 boxes of cereal
*4 bags of cereal
*24 boxes of Rice-a-Roni
*1 box of pancake mix
*1 box of muffin mix
*2 bottles of Pantene shampoo
*2 bottles of Pantene conditioner
*4 cans of Barbasol shaving cream
*2 Crest toothbrushes
*2 tubes of Crest toothpaste
*2 Loreal mascara
*1 Cover girl lip gloss
*1 Cover girl nail polish
*2 bottles of Vitamin E
*1 pineapple
*6 pounds of boneless/skinless chicken breasts (not pictured)
*8 cans of Progresso soup
*6 boxes of Puffs tissue
*2 bottles of liquid Tide
*6 boxes of Betty Crocker brownies
*6 boxes of Betty Crocker cake mix
*10 boxes of Betty Crocker potatoes

That is $400 worth of groceries~ I paid $178 and got $75 gift card to Albertson's. So, basically I bought 110 items worth $400 for $100!!!!!! Needless to say, I think I am off to a good start on my New Year's resolutions!!!! And for obvious reasons, I am pretty confident I will keep this one up! Now, if only I could be this successful with my journal writing.....

Christmas Recap

2009-01-06T16:46:00.006-07:00

We had a lot of fun over Christmas. We loved spending time with friends and family. Here are just a couple of things we did:

We spent Christmas Eve with our kids walking around Temple Square looking that the nativities they had set up and admiring the beauty of the temple. We then went home and read the Christmas story before bed. It was a great way to spend the evening~ helping our kids focus on the importance of the meaning of Christmas.

Something I have discovered about my husband~ he REALLY likes to make gingerbread houses. He and the kids (mostly he) spent about 3 hours making this.

Tanner's Joy School group went to a nursing home and they acted out the Nativity story. He got to be a wise man and really liked that he got to hold a present.

Of course, we opened a lot of presents. But our present opening began on Nov 26th and didn't end until Dec 29th. It helped to have it spread out, so the kids didn't get overwhelmed at any one time. They were also able to enjoy their presents a couple at a time!

Jackson got some walkie talkies that he calls "hawkie tawkies." He doesn't have a clue how they work~ but he sure thinks they are cool.

Tanner is in love with Lego's these days and was soooo... excited to get this new set. *Side note~ the kids were getting ready to go swimming when they were opening these presents which is why they are in their bathing suits!

Shayden is in heaven with her i-pod that Santa brought her. It is fun that she still has the complete belief in Santa and was very impressed that Santa had already loaded all of her favorite songs on there, even though she hadn't told him what songs she liked!

The best part of Christmas~ being with my family and seeing my smiling kids! They truly are the best present I could ever ask for!

Happy "Birth" day Max!

2008-12-30T13:59:00.003-07:00

My sister Mary had little Max at 12:03 this morning. He is 6 lbs 7 oz, 18.5 inches long and a miracle! When Mary and Spencer when in for the ultrasound at 20 weeks they were very excited to find out the gender of baby #2. Not long into the ultra sound the tech discovered an abnormality. Max has multiple problems with his little heart. Mary set up a blog to help explain and follow Max's progress. There have been multiple doctor appointments, ultra sounds, tests and a lot of tears and worries. There will still be multiple doctor appointments and tests, but many of the tears and worries have been calmed with how wonderful Max has been doing since he was born.

Spencer and Mary with little Max. What proud parents.

Max's initial check up right after birth~ what a beautiful baby.

I love my sister so much and I am so happy for the new addition to her family. I wish we lived closer so I could be around to help out with Morgen and to give this little angel extra hugs and kisses.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow

2008-12-26T13:36:00.003-07:00

On Christmas we had a lot of rain, mixed with a little bit of snow. But today we have already gotten 6 inches of snow and it is still coming down. Christmas was great, busy, fun, crazy and wonderful! I hope everyone had a great holiday!

PS On the news tonight they did a calculation~ shoveling a normal driveway with 6 inches of snow equals shoveling 2,000 pounds of snow! We are also on a long corner lot, so I also shovel a lot of sidewalk and to top it off I sweep/shovel all the snow off of our trampoline as well! Thanks for the work out Mother Nature!

A picture's worth a thousand words

2008-12-17T15:15:00.005-07:00

Okay~ I am feeling way too lazy and busy to spend a lot of time blogging about the rest of our trip to California. So, instead I am just going to post a bunch of pictures that will show our adventures. And just so you don't think I am biased towards my boys~ there will be a lot more pictures of them since the 3 of us stayed in California an extra week. Shayden and Korby had to get back to school and work. Enjoy!

One morning I got up early with my dad and went hiking. It was beautiful watching the sun rise over the mountains. It looks like we are hiking by a lake, but that is actually the cloud cover that hadn't burned off yet.

One day we walked out on the Oceanside pier. There were two pelicans there that were fighting each other. The kids thought it was awesome!

We went down to Balboa Park one day. The science center was free so we got to go in and play/discover. They have a great kids area where Tanner wrote his name all by him self. He was so excited!

Here is my dad and Tanner at Balboa Park looking in the fish pond.

We spent one morning at a cell phone store. There were 8 adults and 3 kids in one small store for 2 hours! At least they had display phones that kept the kids pretty entertained!

At Balboa Park they have a free trolley that drives you all around. The driver was really sweet~ she gave my boys each a hat and let them blow the whistle!

We spent an afternoon at La Jolla Cove. They boys had so much fun playing with their cousin Morgen. The three of them played peek-a-boo for about 10 minutes straight at one point!

Do you think Jackson is trying to tell me something~ stop taking my picture mom!

If you enlarge this picture you will be able to see that all those dark rocks are actually sea lions. It is always so fun to get to see these amazing animals and to watch how completely awkward they are on land!

One of the highlights of the trip was going to the San Diego Temple to be with my sister and her husband as they were sealed. Here is Jackson waiting outside for everyone.

Tanner is a pretty particular eater (and that's an understatement). Here is his Thanksgiving dinner~ green jello with marshmallows! Oh yea, he also ate a roll!

We went on a family hike. The kids were real troopers. It ended up being about 4 miles. I think Jackson walked about 30 steps of the entire thing!

Here is a sweet picture of Jackson from our Pilgrim and Indian photo shoot.

Right off the freeway in Temecula there is a big duck pond. The kids had a great time feeding all the ducks and taking a walk with grandpa.

It is pretty unusual to get a good smiling picture of Tanner. He usually has a much more serious smile. I love this little guy!

My sister Holly loves jewelry and has more than anyone I know. She was getting rid of some of her necklaces that she doesn't wear anymore, so she brought them over to my parents house and we played "Jewelry Store." All the items were spread out on a king size bed (and they covered the entire bed!), my sisters and I got to go through and pick out anything we wanted! It was so much fun and I came home with more jewelry then I owned before I came down to CA! Shayden was in heaven!!!!

Here's a shot from the loft in my parents house. We love their house!!!

Well, that about sums up our trip to CA. Now I can start posting Christmas pictures!!!

Happy Late Thanksgiving

2008-12-09T15:20:00.004-07:00

We spent Thanksgiving with my family in sunny California. It was wonderful and I have some fun pictures to share. First I will show pictures of my family from Thanksgiving Day. We made Indian and Pilgrim hats and took a picture of each family. It was pretty silly and fun. Enjoy!

My dad and mom

The Lee's

Holly and Fer

Mary, Morgen and Spencer

Katie

Megan and John

I hope everyone else had as much fun with their friends and family over the holidays! How truly blessed we are to have each other!

California Dreamin'

2008-11-24T19:42:00.002-07:00

We are leaving tomorrow for sunny California to celebrate Thanksgiving with my family. Right now I am stressing out (like I always do before we leave on a trip) and feel like I have a million things to do in the next 19 hours~ yes I am counting the hours. I hope that anyone reading this blog has a great Thanksgiving!!!

This is a picture of the Oceanside beach taken off of the pier. Although my parents don't live here anymore, this is still my beach.

Regular Stuff

2008-11-18T19:38:00.003-07:00

Nothing super exciting has been happening the last week or so, just a lot of regular stuff. Busy, but regular. Here we are at a UVU pre-season basketball game with Korby's dad. It was very empty which made it perfect for my boys to run around like crazy and not bug anyone.

We went up to Grandma Lee's house to help clean up all of her leaves. Shayden was a great helper~ the boys undid just about everything we tried to do. They ended up playing with grandpa instead.

Here is Tanner playing with his best friend Tanner O. The two of them together will sit and play trains for hours on end.

We are leaving for California next week, so I am sure we will have some much more exciting stories and pictures to post when we get back.

Autumn

2008-11-12T09:21:00.002-07:00

We have had one of the most mild and beautiful fall's that I can remember! The kids had so much fun playing outside, watching all the leaves change color and enjoying the wonderful weather while it lasted.

We have a small park at the end of our circle~ it is the perfect way to spend a nice afternoon with the boys while waiting for Shayden to get home from school.

We went to Gardner Village with some friends for the Witch Festival.

My dad came up to visit and we took the kids to the zoo. I love this picture because without knowing it, Jackson is making the same face as the eagle he is riding!

I am going to miss seeing this once it starts snowing! The past few months have been so wonderful~ Jackson is finally old enough to play outside with the "big kids" and they play so nicely together (for the most part)!

I am not quite ready for winter to be here~ but then again, if it was up to me winter would never get here and we would just go right into spring! A girl can wish....

Finally Halloween

2008-11-09T23:04:00.002-07:00

Okay, with all those cruise posts finally out of the way I can get back to posting the more important things~ like pictures of my kids at Halloween.

At the beginning of October I asked Shayden what she wanted to be for Halloween and she told me a vampire. I told her no because I didn't want anyone to think that I had anything to do with her wanting to be a vampire as a result of the whole Twilight phenomenon. However, she kept insisting that she wanted to be that, so I made sure that she looked like a "real" vampire and not like Bella :)

Once Tanner heard that Shayden wanted to be a vampire, Tanner didn't want to be anything but a vampire as well.
And what else would Jackson want to be besides exactly the same thing as his brother and sister?!

I dressed up as well, but didn't get a picture of myself and Korby didn't dress up at all (party pooper!) So we almost had a whole family of vampires. My mom made the awesome capes for my kids. You can't see the insides of all their capes, but it matched the bow on the top. They were awesome! Thanks mom!

Day 8- St Thomas

2008-11-03T14:04:00.008-07:00

Our last full day of the cruise was in port at St. Thomas. We rented scooters for the day to explore the island. They drive on the left hand side of the road~ it felt very strange and the fact that we were on tiny scooters, not knowing our way around made it a little more nerve racking. The girls spent the morning shopping while the guys took off on the scooters and explored. By this time the other 3 were snorkeled out and sun burned pretty bad (I was neither!) so we didn't intentionally get in the water this day.

I am so glad that Korby was driving~ although I was a pretty annoying back seat driver (especially since I was directly behind him, holding/gripping onto him and talking in his ear the whole time!) You can't see it in the picture, but my helmet had a HUGE dent in the side of it~ luckily not from me!

This was the only plain building I saw the entire time~ and it stood out so much!

We were stopped at this look out and we could see off to the right a storm coming in (it is hard to see in the picture). It rained every day of our cruise, but only a slight shower for a couple of minutes and then it would pass. This one was not like the others. When I said earlier that we didn't intentionally get in the water this day, I meant that we didn't get in the ocean to swim. Not 3 minutes after we got back on our scooters from this look out point it started POURING! We were drenched within a couple of minutes~ on a twisting road, up on the hillside, on scooters, in shorts and flip flops~ not really ideal conditions to get caught in a storm. So, we had to pull off to the side of the road and wait it out. It lasted for about 10 minutes, but it was long enough to completely soak us. It was an adventure and made for some fun memories!

We had read about a local art gallery that we wanted to visit. When we got there we saw that is was just a group of small local artist shops. Not what we were expecting, but very unique and fun. They even paint their bikes there!

I wish we would have found this sign earlier in the week. Our guys could have used a little sympathy while we were shopping.

This door was was incredible! The entire thing is sea shells~ it must have taken forever to make!

One of our last stops was a beach called Meagen's Bay. We read that it was one of the Top 10 small beaches in the world. It was breath taking!

There were some little boats just sitting on the shore by an old life guard tower. The water was so clear that we were in the water up to our knees and we could see every single grain of sand on the bottom!

As we were leaving the port, this was a resort that we passed by. Doesn't that look like the perfect place to just hang out for a week?!

After eight days of vacationing and 2 days of traveling, it was perfect! We loved every minute of it~ but were very excited to come home to our wonderful children!

Day 7- St Marteen

2008-11-02T14:29:00.005-07:00

St. Marteen was amazing! Our plans changed a little bit once we got off the boat. We had planned on doing a zip line tour, which included lunch and a hike. But when we got there, we learned that it was under construction and closed. So, we decided to rent a car and drive ourselves around the island.

If you look close, you can see someone washing the windows on the front of the boat!

Again, the beaches were just stunning!

While everyone else was snorkeling, this pelican hung out by me for about 20 minutes! I got to watch it fly, dive down in the water and come back up with a beak full of water and fish. It was a very large bird.

We were trying to find a beach with good snorkeling. At one stop, some guys showed us an island and for $20 per couple they would take us out there and pick us up 3 hours later. The ride out there and back were a little sketchy! The guys drove us out there on Sea-Doo's (Korby and I on one and our friends on the other Sea-Doo with the other driver). The two guys were as high as a kite! They were racing each other all the way there and on the way back as well~ and racing on 3 seated Sea-Doo's with impaired judgement made for a crazy ride for us! They were jumping each other's wakes and trying to swerve into one another, all at full speed. We were getting a couple feet of air on some of the jumps and there were a couple of times that Korby (sitting on the very back) almost fell off from bouncing so far off the seat. But we ended up with our own private beach! And I was told that the snorkeling was amazing~ Korby even got to swim with a sea turtle.

This is a picture from a cave on "our island" looking back at St Marteen. It was a fun island to explore. I found so much coral and a whole pile of conch shells. I brought one back for Shayden that was about a foot long! It is beautiful!

I started taking a photography class right before we left on vacation, and one of the accessories that our instructor talked about was a polarized filter. It is supposed to take away some of the light reflections. In this picture it is amazing to see what taking away the reflection of the sun off the water and clouds does to the color of the picture!
We ate lunch on the beach and this was the view from our table! I could really get used to this! There was a strip of shops along the beach and now I know what I want to do once Korby retires~ open up a little gift shop on the beach in the Caribbean!

At every port the ship just dominated the entire scene!

We ended the day with a little bit of shopping. A lot of it was either tourist junk or very high end merchandise. But we did find a linen shop that I could have spent hours in and way too much money~ so it's a good thing that we had a time limit to get back to the ship!

It was about this point where we realized that the week was going by way too fast. I also realized that although there were moments where we thought about our kids, we really weren't missing them at all! (Is that bad parenting, or just the effects of a really great vacation?!)

Day 6- Sea Day

2008-11-02T14:14:00.003-07:00

Our second day at sea was just as relaxing as the first. We slept in, ate, read, hung out by the pool, ate, worked out, played miniature golf, saw an ice-skating show, ate, played cards, went to see a comedian, sat in the hot tub. I carried my camera around all day and still didn't take any pictures until we got back to our room after dinner. Every day when your room gets cleaned they make an animal for you out of towels. The monkey is always the favorite~ it is hanging right over your bed and they always find a pair of your sunglasses to put on it!

Day 5- Curacao

2008-11-02T13:15:00.004-07:00

After our crazy busy day in Aruba, we had a very nice un-scheduled day in Curacao. We spent the first half of the day just walking around the city, going to an open market, and a museum.

Curacao was so incredibly colorful! We learned that one of their first leaders/founder (again a little vague on the details) passed a law stating that there could be no white buildings~ hence every single building being painted a different color. Later it came out that he owned a major portion of stock in the island's only paint company! I almost wish someone would do that here~ outlaw beige houses! This building was completed in 1708! It is so beautiful and in amazing condition considering how old it is!

This picture shows the row of shops that greeted us as we got off the boat, with the freeway overpass in the background.

The architecture combined with the colors made the entire city so beautiful! This is one of Korby's favorite pictures.

This is the back side of a floating market. All of those boats pulled up the the edge of the sidewalk and sold all kinds of fresh fish, produce, veggies and spices righ off their boat. It was nice to see what their normal market would look like instead of seeing all the tourist trash that most places sell.

On the side of one building they had painted a mural, but made it 3-dimensional. There were little squirrels, butterflies and grasshoppers all over the flowers and columns. Very unique.

This is awesome!!!

After walking around the city, we got some lunch and headed out to the beach. You had to pay to get onto the beaches and then pay to use the chairs they had, but it was so beautiful! The other 3 went snorkeling while I relaxed on beach. I finished 4 books in 10 days! It was wonderful!

The beaches were gorgeous! If you look to the far left you can see our ship in the background.

There really aren't any words to describe how amazing the beaches were! White sandy beaches, crystal clear blue water, palm trees and a good book~ perfect!

Day 4- Aruba

2008-10-27T13:44:00.011-06:00

Our first stop was Aruba! We had reserved a jeep tour of the island that included historical stops, lunch, an ostrich farm, and snorkeling~ all that would take us around the entire island (it isn't that big). When we made the reservations it said that we would be driving our own jeep and that there would be some four wheeling. Little did we know, it would be all four wheeling (except for being right in town- which wasn't much). It had poured all day long the day before we got there and it sprinkled a little bit while we were there. So, the dirt roads were full of puddles and pits. If any of you have been on the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland~ that is the best way I can describe it. Except instead of lasting for 4 minutes, it was all day long! I am so thankful that I was still on Dramamine (for motion sickness on the boat) so I didn't get sick. It was pretty intense, but so much fun!!!

The landscape was so diverse. Along the coast were beautiful beaches and palm trees, but then right next to it there were cactus EVERYWHERE! It was a strange sight.

At each stop they gave us some history of the island. Korby would stand with the group and listen intently while I wondered off and took pictures! All I remember about this lighthouse is that is was the first one on the island and it is really old.

The most famous tourist spot on Aruba was a natural bridge. However a year or so ago it collapsed. This is another, much smaller one, right next to it. It was pretty disappointing to just see a pile of rocks. But this was still beautiful.

This is the opposite side of the island from the port and it is not populated at all. It was beautiful to see that much coast undeveloped. You can see the road here, but it doesn't really do it justice as to just how uneven, un-groomed and overly bumpy it was!

This picture shows the wishing stones. Again~ I didn't hear too much of what the guide was saying, but what I did get was that people would write down a wish and then make a pile of 5-7 rocks on top of the wish to make it come true. The beach was literally covered with them.

Here are Korby and I in front of an old gold refinery. It was incredible! I didn't hear how old it was, but it was really old! It was amazing to see how basic their building skills/materials were ~ but look at how precise their windows were! It was impressive.

Another stop was a cave. It was very different than being in the US. People were touching everything, gum was stuck on rocks, people had carved their names in the rocks~ it wasn't regulated at all. It was beautiful and a little creepy at the same time. They only took you in a little ways, but they flashed their lights to show where it kept going~ and it kept going for a long time. I was thankful we didn't have to go too far in.

And for some reason (we never really heard a straight answer) they had soldiers guarding the entrance to the cave?! We were told it was part of their training. What were they being trained to do~ sit around and do nothing next to something that doesn't need to be guarded?

This might be one of my favorite shots! This was one of the most beautiful beaches, but only if you looked at it from the right angle! Because the rest of the view is disturbed by the giant refinery about 100 yards away! What an interesting combination!

This was one of the beaches that we stopped at to snorkel. I promised Korby that I would try snorkeling again (I tried it for a second in Mexico, but didn't like it at all). I thought that it would be different in clear blue water with better fish. Korby was pretty excited for me to snorkel with him this time. I was all ready to go!

It didn't take me long to realize that I HATE snorkeling~ regardless of the location! I was in the water for about 30 seconds, saw about 5 fish and then booked it back to the beach! But I did try!
So, while everyone else went snorkeling, what else would I do besides take pictures?! I found this crab. I have never seen one in the "wild" this big before. You can't really tell from the picture, but when he was standing up on his legs, he was about the size of a cantaloupe! It was crazy! Since he was so big, it made it easy to see where the expression "crabby face" came from. He had the meanest scowl!

This is just a picture taken in town. There was a lot of poverty and everything was pretty old and run down. But everything was so colorful that it created a different kind of beauty than we usually associate with beautiful homes in the US.

This picture does not do it justice~ but this was the craziest part of the day. This hillside was sooo.... steep and sooo.... slippery and soooo.... uneven and soooo.... full of boulders it was sooo... scary! We watched the jeep in front of us slide down about 30 yards with the brakes on~ they couldn't stop! The driver behind us actually refused to drive down, so one of the guides had to drive his jeep down and then run up the hill to drive the other jeep down. I don't know what was worse~ driving down or driving back up?! On the way back up, the jeep in front of us went the wrong way on one section, got stuck and had to reverse back down. Everyone in the back was screaming, they came really close to rolling over (which they would have just kept rolling all the way down the hill into the ocean!), there were little girls in the jeep behind us crying because they were too scared to keep going, a couple of people got out of the jeeps and hiked up the hill because they didn't want to ride in the jeep! It really was INSANE!!!

I guess all the terror was worth it to see this beach! You couldn't really snorkel here~ it was very rocky but very beautiful!

Not pictured is the ostrich farm that we went to. We stopped there for lunch and then got a tour of the grounds. It was raining, so the camera stayed in my backpack. They let you feed them and pet them. The best part was seeing 5 baby ostriches! They were so "little"~ only about 18" tall, with soft, pretty feathers~looking nothing like the ugly grown ups.

The jeep tour was supposed to end at 5 and the ship was leaving at 6. We got back to the ship at 5:40 (and only because they made a detour to bring us back to the ship because I had a spa appointment to get to). We were getting kind of frustrated with our guide, because he wasn't really trying to hurry up. He just kept telling us that we were on "Caribbean time" and to go with the flow. But if we hadn't kept bugging him, we would have missed our ship! So thank goodness for my spa appointment!

So, my spa appointment... the day before, on the ship, I won a free scalp, neck and shoulder massage and 1/2 off of a seaweed wrap. The seaweed wrap was interesting~ it felt good, but I don't know if I would do it again. The scalp, neck and shoulder massage on the other hand was HEAVENLY!!!! My head was drenched in oil the rest of the night, but it was worth it!

After that, we ate dinner, sat in the hot tub and went to bed very tired, but very excited for the next day!

Day 3- Sea Day

2008-10-25T10:31:00.004-06:00

At this rate it will be December before I get though posting about this cruise. My goal is to be done with it before Halloween, or I am never going to be able to catch up on everything we have been doing since we got back.

Luckily, this is a quick one! Our first full day of the cruise was a sea day. I had every intention of bringing my camera around with me so that I could document what we did on the ship, but that just seemed to be the exact opposite of what I was supposed to be doing~ relaxing! I wanted to enjoy not having any responsibilities, any obligations, not knowing what day or even what time it was. We got to sleep in, work out, eat, play miniature golf, rock climb, eat, watch a volleyball tournament, play cards, eat, and see a couple of variety acts and comedians. That night was one of the formal dinner nights. We didn't go too formal~ but it was still fun to get all dressed up and not worry about if someone was going to pull on my necklace or get their dirty paws all over my dress. It was a great day to be at sea!

Day 2- San Juan

2008-10-18T15:47:00.010-06:00

On Sunday we opted for a change of scenery, rented a car and drove out to the rainforest. It was amazing how much the landscape could change over quite short distances. It was so lush and so green! Beautiful!

This is the view out of a look out tower in the middle of the rainforest. There was so much moisture in the air~ and here you can see the clouds coming down on the mountain top.

From that same look out tower you can see an isolated house built up off the ground on the bottom right of the picture and San Juan on the shore in the upper left corner. Like I said~ not much distance between the two, but a dramatic change in landscape.
We went on a hike down to a waterfall. At the start of the hike was this drinking fountain. I just like how they tried to make it look more natural.
All along the way there were small open air buildings. It took us a while to figure out what they were for~ there are very sudden down pours and they are meant to provide shelter during the rain. (We didn't experience it on this hike, but later in the week we got a taste of it!)
There was such a large variety of foliage! These trees were one of my favorites! The branches were soooo... thin and LONG. They were one of the tallest trees and their branches wove themselves all over the place~ it reminded me of an octopus! At some points you could see one of the branches but you couldn't see the tree anywhere because the branch had grown so far away from the trunk of the tree. It was bizarre! Here's one of the leaves from the tree above~ CRAZY!!!! They were the largest leaves I have ever seen! The stems were about 10-12 inches long. I carried one all the way out to bring it home to Shayden (she has been learning about leaves in her class right now and this would have been an AWESOME show and tell). After leaving the rainforest and driving for 10 minutes we got back out of the car and it was completely shrivelled up! It had so much moisture in it when we left the rainforest, and the air changed so much in that 10 minutes that it was dry as a bone and crumbled in your hands. At least I got a picture of it.

I was very thankful that this was the extent of "wildlife" that I encountered during the hike. I am not very keen of bugs/insects. So I was happy that this little lizard (about 4 inches from nose to tail) was all I saw!
The hike to the waterfall was beautiful. The water was FREEZING!!!! I don't know how these boys got in, I dipped my toes in and that was enough. Besides, who else would have taken the pictures of them in the water?!
Instead, I spent my time playing with the new filter I got for my camera and admiring the pedicure I got before leaving on vacation!

There were some gorgeous flowers! They ranged from very exotic and fragrant to inpatients! It was funny to see such a variety!

This was awesome! This guy was doing karaoke/ preaching from his car on the side of the road. He would sing a song (it's hard to see, but he's got a microphone in his hand) and then talk for a minute or so and then start singing again. I didn't understand one word of it, but it certainly was entertaining!
This was one of the buildings you could see from our hotel swimming pool. It caught my eye and it took me a while to figure out what it was that seemed off to me~ can you see it?! Almost every window in the building is different!
We spent most of the day in the rainforest. We did a little bit of shopping and had dinner, along with another gelato, before leaving to get on the boat. We took a taxi to the dock and as we were unloading our bags, paying the driver, getting the tags on our luggage, getting our passports and cruise documents out, we didn't notice that Korby's backpack didn't get taken out of the van! It only took us a second to realize, but the cab had already pulled out. The guy helping us with our luggage took off sprinting down the road and actually caught up with the cab! There wasn't anything irreplaceable in his bag, but needless to say that guy got a pretty good tip.

So begins our cruise.... We sailed on Royal Caribbean's Adventure of the Seas. There were about 3,100 passengers along with 1,500 staff! It was huge!!! We spent most of the night just walking around the boat, trying to get a bearings of where everything was, sitting in one of the 7 hot tubs and unpacking! It was a very full and very long day!

Day 1- San Juan

2008-10-15T14:29:00.007-06:00

Ready for an onslaught of pictures?! I thought you were. Don't worry~ I won't disappoint! Since I came back with just over 600 pictures on my camera I thought it would be best if I broke up our trip into 1 hour increments!!! Then I thought that might be a little too overwhelming, so I am going to just post 1 day at a time.

Late last Friday (October 3rd) we kissed our kids goodbye and sent them off to a variety of family and friend's houses, while Korby and I along with another couple set off for San Juan, Puerto Rico! We arrived Saturday early afternoon. We dumped our luggage at the hotel room and set off to explore old town. I didn't really pay attention to the historical details of everything (that is Korby's job) I just took pictures of things I thought looked cool.

Along the edge of big chunks of the island they had built forts to protect their city. It was amazing!

This was a very run down part of town, but if you look closely you will see a Dish TV on top of almost every house! I guess there are just some things you can't live without!

It was amazing to see how the city has just built around the fort (the stone wall in the background).

At the edge of the island, where the largest part of the fort was, there was a large green park where people were picnicking, flying kites, walking dogs, running, it was beautiful.

There were look out towers all along the fort walls and sections that used to be used for cannons.

Right in the middle of the big open area was this beautiful cemetery! We couldn't get down to it on foot, but we got some beautiful views of it from the top of the wall.

I caught a bird in flight and it validated my "special" artistic rendition of a bird in flight~ by drawing the letter "V!"
This monument probably had some important information and facts on it, but oh well, my lens didn't zoom in that far! One of the look out towers. You could walk down into them. It was an amazing view.
While walking through old town I was totally drawn to the balconies. They were beautiful! So many different colors and most of them so well maintained (which was impressive for how old and run down parts of the city were).

The stained glass in this door was beautiful. I wish you could see all the vibrant colors in it better.
All of the doors and windows on ground level had bars on them. But instead of the ugly, straight black bars that you would see in the US, they were all so ornate and decorative. In this picture you can see right into the person's house.
Most of the building were attached to each other. But each one was very unique. From the architecture, the window style, the balcony, the color, just about everything was different from one building to the next. I have never seen a more colorful city!
This is just a store front. I love the contrast of colors, the sharp lines and the shadows that add to the dimension of the picture.

After we explored the city, and as the sun was setting, we went to a nice dinner. Then went and got gelato (delish!!!!) and walked on the sandy beaches of San Juan. By our hotel, which was pretty close to the beach, they were having a cultural festival with singing and dancing, along with a string of street vendors! It felt so surreal to be there, but so wonderful at the same time. All this, and we still have 7 more days to go!!! Until then....

Bon Voyage

2008-10-03T18:58:00.002-06:00

Korby and I are leaving tonight for a 7 night Caribbean cruise!!! When we get back I am sure I will have more pictures than I will know what to do with. Until then.......

Messy but Cute

2008-09-29T11:32:00.003-06:00

These were taken a while ago, but I just had to post them. We had spaghetti one night for dinner and Jackson Loved it! As you can see from the pictures!

Check out the place mat, the cup, the table, the bib, the hands and how can you miss the mess on his face?!

How could someone this cute make this big of a mess? I thought we were past the messy baby stage?

Shayden Look-alike Meter

2008-09-25T13:57:00.001-06:00

MyHeritage: Family tree - Genealogy - Celebrity - Collage - Morph

Tanner Look-alike Meter

2008-09-25T13:53:00.001-06:00

MyHeritage: Look-alike Meter - Pedigree - Dynasty

Jackson Look-alike Meter

2008-09-25T13:41:00.001-06:00

MyHeritage: Family trees - Genealogy - Celebrities - Collage - Morph

Out of the mouth of babes

2008-09-18T15:52:00.003-06:00

Here is a conversation that I had with Tanner yesterday in the car while running errands:

T: Mom, I think my beard it starting to grow (while stroking his chin).
Me: Really! That's pretty neat. So, are you going to start shaving now with dad in the morning?
T: No! I don't want to shave like dad.
M: Oh, well 4 year olds can't have beards, so if yours is growing you are going to have to start shaving.
T: Well, actually mom, I think it's just my body that I feel, not my beard.
M: Okay, when your beard starts growing let me know.
T: Okay.

I love my little guy so much! He is such a sweetie and loves to snuggle! I don't think anyone can make me laugh as much as he can! His favorite thing to say right now is~ "I know everything" or "I already knew that, remember, I know everything already."

Thanks for always being able to put a smile on my face Tanner! I love you!

Random Holiday

2008-09-17T16:17:00.004-06:00

My calendar includes a lot the random/unknown holidays such as Early May Bank Holiday for the UK on May 5th, Canada Day on July 1st, and Grandparents Day on September 7th. Usually I just write over it with everything else I have going on that day. But my sister and I decided to actually do something to celebrate the day. My parents live in Temecula, CA while my sister lives in OR and we are here in UT~ which presented a little bit of a challenge. Here's how we handled it~

I printed out a bunch of pictures of my parents grandkids (including the ultra sound picture of baby Max), put them on colored paper cut into hearts, put sticks on them and mailed them to my moms sweet neighbor (who I love because they have kids the same age as mine). Then on Sunday she put them out all over my mom and dad's yard. So, when they walked out of their house to go to church they were greeted by their darling grandkids.

We are lucky enough to live fairly close to both Korby's mom and dad along with most of their great grandma's and grandpa's. We are so thankful for the wonderful influence and love that our children are blessed to enjoy from all of their grandparents! Happy Belated Grandparent's Day to all the grandparent's out there! We love you!

I don't have a picture of the finished product in my parents yard, but here are most of the hearts before they were mailed.

Rise and Shout.... the Cougars are out!!!

2008-09-13T23:39:00.005-06:00

My dad flew up this weekend just to go to the BYU vs UCLA football game. It was supposed to be my dad, Korby and my brother John going to the game. However, John and his wife were moving this weekend, so I had the horrible task of taking his ticket for him~ boo hoo for me :D For those who do not follow college football~ BYU demolished UCLA with a 59-0 win!!!!

One of the 8 touchdowns that BYU made during the game!

We got VERY familiar with the BYU fight song and had a great time singing it each time~ we'll see how well we can talk tomorrow!

Yet another BYU touchdown! Go Cougs!!!

My dad and me at the game! I am so glad I was able to go! All of the fans making the signal for yet another ~BYU 1st Down!
The game was awesome and we had a great time! Quite different from the game last week that my sister and her husband went to! BYU Rocks!!!!

One More Slide Show

2008-09-01T20:26:00.002-06:00

Here are some of the pictures from the rest of our trip to California. This should be the end of my slide show posts for a while. Enjoy...

How many pictures does it take to get 4 kids and 1 grandma smiling at the camera?

2008-08-27T15:54:00.003-06:00

Apparently more than 13 because that is how many times I tried and we never did get it!

While my sister Mary and I were in California we tried to get a nice picture of the 4 cousins with their great grandma Butler. They kids had just eaten a good lunch, a yummy dessert (Jackson wouldn't part with his for the picture) and they were getting ready to go swimming. You would think it would be pretty easy to get them to smile~ we were wrong!

Family trip to Lake Tahoe

2008-08-21T16:36:00.005-06:00

It's time to play catch up! And I have waaaaay too many pictures to catch up one at a time, so I am going the slide show route to share some of our wonderful memories with everyone. This is a small fraction of pictures from our Southwick family reunion at Lake Tahoe. We had a great time hiking, playing games, swimming/biking/kayaking/playing at the lake, hanging out in the hot tub, playing guitar hero, eating, celebrating birthdays and taking pictures!!!!! Enjoy! More to come.....

Trip to the Zoo

2008-07-29T07:44:00.007-06:00

Last week we took a trip to the zoo with Korby's dad. It was hot but the kids had a great time. One of their favorite things is the water feature outside of the zoo. Why bother going to see animals when you can look at a water feature with pennies in the bottom for free?!

While we were there, they were giving the elephants a bath! It was fun to watch them play in the water. They used the same type of hose that fire fighters use to put out a fire~ that is a pretty intense bath! Korby's sister came with us as well. Shayden really wanted to take a picture of her, Jackson and the cat~ she probably tried for 3-4 minutes. Between the cat pacing back and forth and Jackson being the squirmy boy he is I am not sure if Shayden ever got a picture.

The Hogle Zoo has a new carousal. The kids had a really fun time. So, in the background you can see Korby, Jackson and Shayden all excitedly waving at grandpa and aunt Marisa. While Tanner on the other hand it looking in the complete opposite direction!

Korby told me the name of this bird but I forgot~ I just liked the color of it!

Usually the tiger is sleeping in the bushes in the top corner of the enclosure so that if you strain your neck you can see the top of its right ear. This time we got to watch the tiger gnaw on a bone, get up and waked over to the water, take a drink and then climb into the water and lay down in it. It was neat to see such a beautiful animal up close and even more amazing to see it actually moving!

The giraffe was eating leaves right in front of us. I was trying to get a picture of its long purple tongue, but never got a good shot of it. What a cool animal!

Playing at the lake

2008-07-25T10:03:00.004-06:00

Every year Korby's grandma Lee reserves a campground spot at Pineview Reservoir for a week in July. Since Korby and I have always shared 1 car, we have only ever been able to go up for an afternoon (because Korby doesn't have enough extra vacation days for it.) But.... now that we are a 2 car family, the kids and I were able to spend the night and play a little longer.

There was a sand volleyball court right next to our camp that kept the kids entertained for hours and luckily for me kept them close as well.

This just goes to show that without enough sleep for Tanner even a soda and a piece of cake can't make everything better.

Jackson on the other hand was in 7th heaven the entire time!

I really wanted to get some good action shots with my camera while we were boating, but this is as brave as I got with taking it out while on the boat (we are still attached to the dock in this picture!) My kids absolutely loved riding on the boat and fought almost the entire time about who got to be the "flag holder" when someone fell behind the boat.

The kids absolutely loved playing in the sand. If you look closely in the background~ Shayden is smiling really cute and Tanner is making another one of his "special" faces. I was trying to take a picture of all 3 of them, but this is Jackson walking up the camera saying "see, see" to look at the picture I have just taken. Check out the blond curls on that kid!
~Side note~ we only packed enough stuff to stay until Thursday afternoon because if anyone knows me really well my yoga class is on Thursday nights and I really don't let anything interfere with yoga (family events, date night, you name it and I won't do it on a Thursday evening). So, the fact that we stayed at the lake until almost 10 pm on Thursday night must really say something about the sacrifices I am willing to make for my children (hee hee) or I guess it just shows how much fun we were having!

Quick Trip

2008-07-13T13:57:00.003-06:00

My brother's mission president's home coming was this weekend and my parents decided to drive up to meet him and his wife. They left Saturday morning at 1am and got to our house about noon. After lunch, my mom, Shayden and I decided to go to the fabric store while my boys napped and my dad rested. To my shock and surprise Korby said that he wanted to come with us! Well, after an hour of looking at fabric and being nowhere close to ready to leave, Korby finally asked for the keys to the car to listen to music and wait for us out there. We finally made up our minds and left with some beautiful fabric to make this Amy Bulter bag that we both LOVE! We then headed up to Salt Lake to meet John and Megan for dinner. Afterwards we ate ice cream in the park. It was a great day. Then, today we went up to Layton to meet President and Sister Muir. In the middle of the meeting they asked all the missionaries (about 60 of them) to get up and sing Called to Serve in Portuguese. It was beautiful! I had a chance to take a couple of pictures before and after the meeting, then my parents got in the car to drive home. They will have been gone for about 44 hours and about 20 hours of that will have been spent in the car! My parents are awesome!

Jackson and Grandpa

Shayden and Grandma

Close up of Shayden. Notice the gap in her teeth on her bottom right~ that is her 5th tooth to come out and she has 4 more loose ones.
Jackson sitting on the grass after church. Why is it that I could not get him to sit still for more than 30 seconds during church without doing everything minus putting on a circus to keep him contained, and after church all I said was "Jackson, go sit down on the grass" and he walked over and sat right down. He must be 2!
This is Tanner's newest "picture face." He makes an "L" with his fingers, tilts his head to the side, closes one eye and sticks out his tongue. I haven't been able to get many pictures of him because this is the only face he will make when I get my camera out. So, just so no one thinks I am ignoring Tanner or not posting any pictures of him~ here he is, silly face and all!

C is for....

2008-07-08T20:20:00.003-06:00

Cherries and my new camera!!!!! So, I was playing with the telephoto lens on my camera and decided to try taking some pictures of the cherries we have in our backyard. We have two mature cherry trees completely full of cherries right now. Here are the results.....

I just wanted to get a shot to show how many cherries there are up there (even after picking buckets full and sharing with friends and family)!

I loved the way the light was hitting just the single cherry.

I am amazed at the capabilities of this camera. These cherries were at least 15 feet up in the tree!

I absolutely LOVE this camera (if you couldn't tell!) I am sure I will have more pictures to post soon!

We're Back in Business

2008-07-06T16:52:00.003-06:00

YEA!!!!!! We are now the proud owners of a Nikon D40x camera! We have only had the camera for a few days now. I don't know how to do anything but have it on auto, point and shoot, but I am LOVING it! We have missed a couple of big, and not so big, events such as:

swimming lessons for Shayden and Tanner, including the kids going off the diving board by themselves on the last day of class
Shayden's last day of 1st grade and a fun party at a friends house
getting a new kitty (I will post a picture once I take one of him)
fun trip to Cedar City to visit Korby's dad
Jackson's birthday (sorry kid!)
4th of July neighborhood breakfast and bike parade

But..... that is all in the past. For the 4th of July we had a fun neighborhood breakfast and bike parade (as noted above), but later that day we went to the Sandy City parade and then went camping with some family. We had a great time and it is soooo... fun to have pictures to remember it by!

The kids loved waving their free flags at all the cars and floats~ especially the ones that were throwing out candy! We weren't by very many other little kids, so our kids cleaned up with all the free candy! Tanner had a bit of a rough day. He had a bloody nose on and off almost the entire day, and he threw up that morning. I think we changed his clothes at least 4 times that day. But he was a trooper and still had a lot of fun!

We went camping in the Spruces and the kids absolutely LOVED it! It was a LOT of work to only be up there for less than 24 hours, but worth it in the end. To bring back some memories of girls camp, I braided Shayden's hair. It was so nice to have it out of her face, and not a tangled dirty mess. Best of all, she liked the way it looked when we took them all out!
While all the kids and adults were involved in a game of kickball, Jackson was having so much fun looking at all the bugs and rocks! What a little boy!

Now that I am a mom, camping isn't my favorite thing to do. It is so much more work than I ever realized. But once we are there, it is always fun and we always have a great time together.

Name that Sound

2008-07-02T11:30:00.003-06:00

This morning I was laying in bed when I heard a little tinkling sound coming from the bathroom. Korby was at work, Shayden was watching cartoons and both of the boys were still in bed. From our bed we can see into the bathroom, so I checked that no one was using the bathroom. Any guesses what the noise was..........?!

It was actually our cat peeing in the shower!!!! Oh my goodness!!!! Apparently the litter box had gotten a little too full for his taste, so he decided to relieve himself down the shower drain. I guess we should have named him George! (Seinfeld reference anyone?! hee hee!)

*Needless to say~ cleaning the shower just moved to #1 on my list of things to do today!

So long, farewell....

2008-06-17T13:04:00.002-06:00

I haven't posted in a while (in case anyone hasn't noticed) and the reason is pretty sad...... Our camera has bit the dust and is no longer with us. I am not witty or creative enough to post without pictures to talk about, so I am hoping (cross your fingers for me) that we will be getting a new camera in the near future. Until then........

Tagged

2008-05-31T11:33:00.004-06:00

A to Z about me...

A- Attached or Single? Attached to Korby. We just celebrated our 9 year anniversary on the 29th!
B-Best Friend? My mom
C-Cake or pie? Cake
D-Day of choice? Saturday
E-Essential Item? My car~ I would go nuts if I was stuck at home all day.
F-Favorite color? Blue and brown
G-Gummy bears or worms? Neither, I'm trying to be more selective about my choice of treats and neither of those make the cut!
H-Home town? Oceanside, CA
I-Ideal Vacation? Sitting on the beach doing absolutely nothing
J-January or July? July
K-Kids? Shayden, Tanner and Jackson
L-Life isn't complete without: My family, yoga at least once a week, a great ice-cream shake every once and a while
M-Marriage date? May 29, 1999
N-Number of brothers and sisters? 3 sisters and one brother
O-Oranges or Apples? Apples. I like the taste of oranges but not the texture. If orange juice has pulp in it I have to strain it before I will drink it.
P-Phobias? Heights. I am getting a little bit braver about spiders.
Q-Quote? "Everyday may not be good, but there's something good in every day." Anonymous
R-Reasons to smile? It is Saturday, Korby is home, the sun is shinning and the swimming pool is open.
S-Season of choice? Definitely summer.
T-Tag 3 people: Janelle, and the two Lisa L's
U-Unknown fact about me? I love math (that's pretty well known), but more unknown~ I love math so much that I buy used math books on eBay and complete all the assignments for fun! Does that spell nerd or what?!
V-Vegetable? Corn on the cob
W-Worst habit? Inconsistency.
X-Xray or Ultrasound? I've never had an x-ray and the only ultrasound's I have had were during pregnancy (all with good outcomes!), so I will go with ultrasound.
Y-Your favorite food? Steak and potatoes!
Z-Zodiac sign: Leo

Before and After

2008-05-20T20:22:00.005-06:00

When we bought our house almost 5 years ago, we knew that our windows would need to be replaced. But for anyone who saw our house when we bought it knows that we have spent the last 5 years working on the yard. Well, the yard is finally (almost) done and thanks to our generous government we were able to check one more thing off our list~ the windows.

Okay, seriously I guess I had just gotten used to it, but can you believe how BAD this window is?! It is obnoxious!

Ahhhhhhhh.... we can actually see our neighbor's house! It's a miracle

All day long I have been humming, singing and just smiling to myself about what a HUGE difference these windows have made! It was a very happy day!

Just to clarify~ not all of our windows were THAT bad. The seal inbetween the two panes broke and so it got filled with dirt and grime that couldn't be cleaned out.

Love You

2008-05-09T23:10:00.003-06:00

Jackson has started talking up a storm in the last month or so. It is so much fun to see his personality emerge more each day. The other night as I was putting him to bed I laid him down and said "I love you Jackson," to which he responded "love you!" Ahhhhhhhhh.... My heart just melted. There is nothing in the world as precious as the first time your child tells you that they love you!

The Haircut

2008-05-04T22:11:00.002-06:00

Tanner has always had the most awesome hair of any little boy I know (I am probably pretty biased). Anyway, it had gotten a little out of control and we finally decided it was time for a haircut...
He does a much better job of sitting still than I do of cutting it. And just to clarify that statement~ he doesn't really sit still at all..... so I will let you just imagine how bad my hair cutting skills are. In my defense, curly hair is VERY forgiving~ since you can't tell at all if it is cut straight or not, otherwise I would never even attempt to cut it. At this point I would be too mortified to take him into a salon to get it cut for fear of the stylist laughing and asking me if I let his sister cut his hair for him! Overall, I think it turned out pretty good~ it's a little shorter than I like it, but it always grows back! What a stud!

Sleepy Boy

2008-04-17T15:21:00.005-06:00

Yesterday my friend Lisa and her little girl Sophie came over to hang out with us. Sophie is just a month older than Jackson and they have had so much fun playing together in the past. But this time Jackson was being pretty fussy all morning and not really wanting to play. After the kids had a mid morning snack, Jackson didn't want to get down from the counter. He ended up with his blanket, pillow and paci and in about 10 minutes was fast asleep! Lisa and I were talking at the kitchen table while Tanner and Sophie played and ran in and out of the kitchen. Jackson slept through it all for about 20 minutes. It was so funny! And one of my first thoughts was~ "I have to blog about this!"

What a little sweetheart!

High Hopes

2008-04-08T16:04:00.010-06:00

Korby has been out of town for a couple of days and I started out the week with high hopes of all the things I was going to accomplish and all the special things the kids and I were going to do to pass the time~ on top of getting ready for Tanner's birthday later this week. However, things haven't quite gone as planned.

Tanner and I are both sick, Jackson may be starting to get sick, Shayden has had an ear infection, Jessie (our cat) threw up on the carpet, the laundry got about 90% done and the last load has been sitting in the dryer for 3 days now, we have had cereal or frozen waffles for dinner the last few nights, Tanner had to sleep in my bed because he was keeping Shayden up with his coughing, so I ended up sleeping on the couch because Tanner was also keeping me up with his coughing, the boys and I are still in our jammies at almost 5 pm.... thank goodness Korby is coming home tomorrow!!!!!

Face Lift

2008-03-30T21:58:00.003-06:00

So, I have been getting bored with the standard blog designs, but I am definitely not crafty, creative or computer savvy enough to do anything about it. Until now~ http://cutestblogontheblock.blogspot.com/ is awesome! There are so many cute designs and they are actually free! At one point I did try looking around a little on-line for different blog designs, but the only places I found you had to sign up and give them your email address first (so they could undoubtedly sell it to who knows how many different people/companies). Obviously I didn't look very hard or long because this blog is wonderful!

FYI~ I am waiting for my mom to upload the pictures she took of the kids at Easter so I can post them. And anyone who knows my mom, knows that I might not be posting them for a while! So here's a quick run down for anyone who can't handle the anticipation~ there were candy filled eggs, an Easter egg hunt to find the candy filled eggs and new Easter clothes to go on the Easter egg hunt to find the candy filled eggs! The kids had a blast and looked adorable!

What a funny kid!

2008-03-25T17:14:00.007-06:00

Tanner woke up from his nap this afternoon and this is how he came downstairs to say hi to me. He told me this was how he looks a like a dude! He is cracking me up lately with what comes out of his mouth these days! Here are a couple of his latest:

~After watching one of the Verizon commercials where they show the whole network walking behind the "can you hear me now" guy Tanner looks at me and says "Wow mom, that sure is a lot of workers for just two guys!"

~We were getting ready to go to the mall and Tanner was using the bathroom. I went in to ask him if he was ready to go and his response was, "Mom, this is going to take me a while. You should just go on without me."

I love my little guy so much!

Back from the dead, or at least the sick

2008-02-28T21:39:00.002-07:00

For the past couple of weeks we have all taken our turn being sick~ one at a time, so as to prolong the sickness as long as possible! I have managed to document a couple of events along the way. First of all was Valentine's Day. We had a pink candle light dinner with the kids. Pink scrambled eggs, pink pancakes in the shape of hearts, pink lemonade, and of course topped off with a pink heart shaped cake. The kids thought it was great!

A couple of days later Shayden finally lost her top tooth. I say finally because it had been loose for at least three weeks. She was very concerned about it falling out while she was sleeping, so we had the same conversation at bedtime at least a dozen times about the tooth fairy still bringing her something even if she swallowed it and it not causing any problems if she did happen to swallow it while sleeping.
Then just 2 days later she lost her second top tooth (that had only been loose for a couple of days)! Her new found wealth is sure burning a hole in her pocket!
Here are the kids in their Valentine pj's from great grandma B! I tried to get Tanner to smile, but he just kept telling me "Mom, I still like my jammies, but I just don't want to smile right now." What a funny little kid! With only one car, we all pack in to take Korby to work in the morning and we all pick him up in the evening. Here is Jackson reading a magazine while we wait for Korby to come out the other night. He was so interested in it and it just made him look so mature~ I couldn't resist.
Well, we are finally back on the up and up, getting back to normal (whatever that is), and starting the count down to spring!

It's finished..... or is it?

2008-02-19T09:39:00.004-07:00

Halleluiah! Last night I finished my last shirt!!!! Since it took me a week to get it all done I had to do laundry again and reiron some shirts. I ended up ironing a total of 63 shirts in 6 hours and 45 minutes!

My basket is officially empty! I'm done! Except that Korby already has one of the shirts on this morning, so it begins all over again!

Shayden told me our house looked like the store we go to get dad's suits cleaned (the dry cleaners!) I should be getting paid for this!

PS Heather made a comment on my last post about wrinkle free shirts. I love them, however, they are not wrinkle free and crisp enough for Korby's taste! They are significantly easier to iron than regular shirts though.

PSS How crazy am I? Last night we just bought Korby ANOTHER shirt! I guess that will make it an even 40.

I've got my work cut out for me

2008-02-11T13:37:00.000-07:00

Korby has to wear a shirt and tie to work everyday and for church meetings on Sunday and Tuesday. So, needless to say, he has a lot of shirts which requires a lot of ironing. I have been a total slacker and have not ironed a thing for quite a while. I don't pay a lot of attention to Korby's side of the closet, but yesterday I went in and noticed that this is what it looked like...

There was not a single shirt in there! Then I went to take a look at my ironing basket, which always has at least some clothes in it. But again, I quess I hadn't been paying much attention to it, because this is how big the mountain had gotten.....

I had just finished the laundry, so everything was clean. I dumped out the basket and counted the items~

Jackson: 5 shirts

Tanner: 6 shirts

Jenni: 1 shirt

Korby: 39 shirts.... that's right 39 shirts! So I made a deal with myself that I would work on the ironing for the next couple of days until my basket is empty. I also decided to start timing myself to see how long it was going to take me to iron it all. It seemed so daunting, that I did just about everything else I could find to do around the house before starting~ cleaned both toilets and bathroom sinks, did 2 loads of dishes, cleaned my room, made my bed (at 9:30 pm- that's how desperate I was not to have to start ironing), cleaned out my walet and purse, paid the bills, cleaned out the desk drawers. I would have done more, but my kids were in bed and I had to be quiet. So, I finally started ironing and here is what I accomplished in an hour and a half....

I still have quite a ways to go, so maybe I should go iron instead of playing on the computer!

Blogging Record

2008-02-11T00:05:00.000-07:00

With my last blog I have posted more times in 2008 than I did in all of 2007~ and it's only February! (Also notice that I only posted 4 times in 2007~ not very hard to pass up.) I think I am well on my way to becoming an official blogger. Most of you probably don't care about this, but my kids are very excited about it!

Catsup or Katsup?

2008-02-04T12:58:00.000-07:00

Jackson has a new favorite food~ catsup! It started innocently enough with french fries, but it has quickly escalated into dipping everything he can in it! Here are some pictures of Jackson eating lunch today. It started with hot dogs~ pretty normal. Then he dipped his fruit leather (like a fruit roll up), banana and his graham cracker in it as well. To each his own.....

We Thank Thee, Oh God, for a Prophet

2008-01-27T20:09:00.000-07:00

It is bitter sweet to hear of the passing of the prophet for the LDS church, President Gordon B. Hinckley. He was such an amazing man and touched countless lives through his love and service. He will be dearly missed, but what a sweet reunion for him to be with his beloved wife. I am so thankful for my testimony of the gospel and the knowledge I have of the plan of salvation. What peace it brings, especially when a loved one is lost, to know that life goes on and we can be together again. I will miss his contagious smile and his love for life.

Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow

2008-01-23T13:52:00.001-07:00

On Sunday we went to bed with a few small patches of snow on our lawn that hadn't melted yet. By Monday afternoon we had over 16 inches of snow! I went out and shoveled in the morning for over an hour and a half when there was 12 inches on the ground and still snowing and then had to go back again in the afternoon and do it all over again with 6 more inches covering all my hard work. By the time I was done shoveling the first time my hair had actually frozen! I tried to take a picture of it, but it didn't come out. It was a lot of work, but now it is so much fun! The kids have loved playing in it! Yesterday we went sledding in the front yard of my cousin's house on the mound of snow that the snow plow piled up in front of her house~ which is at the end of a cul-de-sac. It was a blast!

The Honeymoon's Over

2008-01-18T18:09:00.000-07:00

Just a few hours ago I was posting about my new beautiful table and not wanting the kids the touch it. Well, as we were finishing up dinner, Tanner threw up all over it! It's official~ it's a table for kids no matter how pretty and nice it is. Such is life.....

It's Dinner Time

2008-01-18T14:11:00.000-07:00

We are starting out the new year with a new dining table! Our previous table sat 4 and since we are a family of 5 the math wasn't adding up. We were planning on getting a new table later in the year, but thanks to the impulse buying power of CostCo, we got it last week. And I LOVE IT! I love it so much that I am having a hard time letting my kids actually sit at the table! They already eat breakfast and lunch at the counter usually, but dinner has become more stressful for me since I don't want them to drop or spill ANYTHING on the table. With 3 kids I am sure it won't take me long to get over that! Good thing it is dark and already distressed!