Emi's 8th birthday

Emi turned 8 last week! Can't even believe it. She asked me for weeks before her birthday if I was going to buy her any presents. As if she has ever had a birthday when I didn't buy her presents! She had a great day and loved being the center of attention.

Great Wolf Lodge

A couple of weeks ago we traveled up to Dallas and met our great friends the Barh's at the Great Wolf logde. The Great Wolf Lodge is a hotel with a water park inside. The trip was way too short but the kids and I had a great time playing with our friends.

Jaike's B-day

I know, I know! Try not to pass out. I am finally doing a new blog post. Today was Jaike's 3rd birthday! He is just so darn cute I couldn't help but post these pictures.

Trip to Utah

I was fortunate enough to be able to go to Utah at the end of March for the blessing of my sister Katie's new twins. Almost my whole family was going to be there and I just didn't want to miss out. Nobody but my Mom and Dad knew that I was coming so it was fun to surprise everyone. It was such a great time and I am so glad that I was able to go.

Spring Break in Altus Oklahoma

Mike was supposed to have spring break off this year and we were going to spend that time camping and hanging out as a family. But.........leave it to the Air Force to mess up our plans. Mike ended up having to go to Virginia that week for an Anatomy class. I didn't want to stay at home all spring break doing nothing so I packed up the kids and headed to Altus Oklahoma. If you don't remember, I lived there a couple of years ago and my GREAT friend Julie and her family still live there. We just hung out and let the kids play. They had a great time and so did I.

Blowing Bubbles

Jaike was blowing bubbles in the back yard and I just thought his little lips were so cute. It's March 3rd and today was a perfect 80 degrees. I guess we should enjoy a little time outside before it's too hot.

Rollin' with the homies

We just got this "bad boy" yesterday and now I'm rollin' with the homies. The surburban that I have been driving for the last 7 years has been giving us quite a few problems lately. I have replaced the transmission, fuel pump and put on new tires this last year. We decided it was time for something a little more reliable.

Church Bench

My parents gave Mike and I this church pew several years ago when they moved from their house on Florence out to the orchard. This pew was in the chapel that my Dad gew up attending in Idaho Falls. Sometime after his mission they remodeled the chapel and sold off these old pews for dirt cheap. My Dad acquired two of them. They are a great memory for me. There is a slot on the back side for a hymn book. I remember that the Easter Bunny always hid an egg there. I can see exactly where they sat in that house on Florence street. Anyway, we have been very happy to have this one in our home. It has been in desperate need of a refinishing job though. I took it out of the house in August and started to sand it down but quickly lost interest. It was harder than I thought it was going to be. There were many layers of old varnish. A couple of weeks ago my friend Becca encouraged me to get it done. I decided I was going to have it done in a week. Why the heck was I being so lazy? Well, it took me two weeks but it's done and I am quite happy with the finished project.

Butterfly

I have been meaning to put up a post about all of the fun things that I got for Christmas. Christmas seems like it was so long ago now but I still wanted to show Y'all my favorite Christmas gift from my husband. I have wanted this ring for a couple of months. I knew that he had already spend too much money on a gift for me (Bosch mixer) so I wasn't expecting anything else. This was a fun surprise. I know it's a little wild but hey, so am I.

Naked Piano Playing

I have no idea why my son was naked when we had our friends the Ramptons over. But, He and Eliza were playing the piano and it was adorable, even if he was naked.

Chocolate Dipping

When I was a kid my mom always had a bunch of her friends over at Christmas time to dip chocolates. I remember this being such a fun event. Last year I had my first chocolate dipping party and my Mom was there to help train me in the ways of chocolate dipping. I wasn't going to do it this year but kind of last minute my friend Becca encouraged me to do it again. We had a great time and walked away with more chocolates than any one human being should eat. Thanks for coming ladies!

A Christmas tree from Oregon

You may remember that last year I was complaining to my Dad that I just couldn't find a decent tree in Texas. He decided to experiment and see if he could ship one to me. The experiment was a success. Well, he's done it again! Yesterday we got our Christmas tree in the mail all the way from Oregon! I think I have decided that this probably isn't the cheapest was to obtain a tree but, the kids think it's super cool that Grandpa sends them a tree. Tyler was so excited when he saw the box sitting on the porch. Of coarse, he knew what it was and he said, "Mom, our tree is here! Oh, I just love Grandpa Bell."



Actually, the box held up a little better this year than it did last year. I was worried that the top might be broken off because that part of the box was in the worst shape but, it wasnt!. It had a definate lean to the right but I don't think it's permanant. The tree looks and smells great. Thanks Dad!

Pies, Pies BEAUTIFUL Pies!

Quite frankly, Thanksgiving dinner is not my favorite thing. I could do without the Turkey, the stuffing, the mashed potatoes, and the yams. I do like the jello though. My favorite thing about Thanksgiving is all the food before and after the meal. The Chex mix, cheese ball with crackers, relish tray and PIES. I really am not in love with pie either but at Thanksgiving I always indulge. We actually went over to some friends house for dinner this year and our assignement was green bean casserole and pies. Everyone was asked to bring something to contribute to the main meal and then a couple of pies. There were 19 pies in all!! I didn't think the green bean casserole was "picture worthy" but these pies? These pies would make my Momma proud. I asked Mike to take a picture of them and he takes this ugly picture of them sitting on my stove top. I said "I don't really like that background, lets take another one of them on the counter." Next thing I know, he has this Thanksgiving sign of mine as a backdrop to the picture. I laughed out loud. What a nerd. These were delicious pies!

A nice surprise

When I got home from the "twilight night" the house was dark and quiet. I turned on the kitchen light and found these beautiful roses on the kitchen counter from my sweet husband. Thanks honey!

TWILIGHT NIGHT

Tonight me and a bunch of my girlfriends went out to dinner at Olive Garden and then to the Twilight movie. We had some shirts made that said "bite me" in honor of the occasion. The line for the movie was crazy and the screaming 16 year olds were hilarious. We had such a good time!

Could it be?

I often wonder if anything I am saying to my kids actually registers. Don't you do that too? Today Grace got home from school, cleaned the windows, swept the patio, picked up dog poop, and watered the garden. I didn't ask her to do any of these things. Could what I have been saying and trying to teach all of these years actually be sinking in? Oh please, please, please!!!

BLOG STRIKE!!

I have decided that I am on a total blog strike. Quite honestly there are plenty of things that I could talk about. Like my sister Beth coming to visit, that was fun. Or, going to Time Out For Women, uplifting. I could post pictures of Halloween or even talk about planting a winter garden. But, I just haven't had the energy. By the end of the day, I just wanna sit in front of the T.V. and do nothing for awhile. Sorry friends. I am still here and I even have lots of fun pictures that I will get around to posting sometime. TTFN

Mother of the year!

Every other Tuesday Grace attends a "Faith in God" activity at the church. It's for the girls ages 8-11. They get together and make goals and have activities. She really enjoys it. This week they got done with their activity early so the girls were just running around in the gym. Appearantly, Grace was racing some of the other girls from one end of the gym to the other and slipped because she was wearing flip flops. She reach out for the wall to stop herself from hitting it and bent her wrist back. My friend LaRae brought her home and explained what happened. Grace could wiggle her fingers and roll her wrist without too much problems so we (Mike, me, Julie and Micah) felt that it was probably bruised or sprained. I sent her to school the next day and the next day and the next (count 'em....that's three days). I even made her do a cartwheel the day that she was supposed to have gymnastics to make sure that she really couldn't participate. She was still really "babying" her arm after THREE days so both Mike and Micah (he is our friend who is a flight doctor) said that I should probably take her into the doctor for an x-ray. So, on Friday after school I took her in. They took the film and WHAT???? A buckle fracture of the radius and ulna. I am probably the best mom on the planet! I made the poor girl walk around with a broken arm for three days. She was super excited to get a cast though.

What am I gonna do with that kid?

Oh my sweet, mischievious Tyler! That's who I'm talkin' about, who else? My dear friend Julie Bahr is coming to visit next week and I really wanted the upstairs bathroom to be all painted and cute when she got here. But, Mike is out of town enjoying some "man" time. So, I decided to paint the bathroom myself. Jaike was down for a nap and the kids were all in quiet time. Well, of coarse by the time I was about done, all the kids were out of quiet time and Jaike was awake. I was finishing up the second coat of paint on the last wall and Emi says, "Mom, Tyler poured red juice all over Indiana (the dog). I took a deep breath and went downstairs hoping that the red juice incident took place outside. Lucky for Tyler, it did! But, my poor dog was all red as well as Tyler and my back porch. I couldn't really let Tyler in the house because his feet were all red and I couldn't clean him off because I had 75 seconds of painting left. I guess I could have stopped and cleaned him off but I didn't. Anyway, I locked him outside until I could deal with him, which was probably about 5 mintues. He stood at the back window and cried the whole time. I wish I had a picture of the red mess but I was too mad to stop and find the camera. Seriously, Tyler gets into these kinds of messes all of the time, huh Julie (purple glitter glue)? What the heck do I do with this kid? So basically, I have decided that this is all Julie's fault. Don't you think? If she wasn't coming to town and I wasn't so worried about having a cute house for her, none of this would have happened.

Close ups

I need new pictures of all my kids to hang on my family room wall. The one that's up there of Tyler right now is from when he was two and a half. The one's of the girls are from school the year that we lived in Oklahoma and the one of Jaike is from last summer. Mike took these ones for me last weekend. Now I just have to decide if they are "wall worthy." Here's the one problem that I see.....everybody is naked except for Grace. Can you tell? And what the heck is in Jaike's hair? It looks like a piece of rice. When Mike was taking these I didn't notice anything in his hair. I wonder if it's a reflection or something. Of coarse, I am NOT hanging the one of the dog on the wall. That's just dumb.