COMIC RELIEF

There's nothing better than a little comic relief from a 3-year old.

Not only can dinner-time be fun but, this one's got his own sense of humor .

I was cleaning up dinner yesterday and said to Braden "Get your little butt over here." so that he could take his medicine.

He said"OK, I'll get my little butt over there." as he turned around and stuck is butt out and walked backwards, aroung the counter and over to where I was standing.

We were all laughing so hard that he made it a game for the rest of the night.

THREE YEAR OLD BOY FOR SALE-ASKING $1.00, O.B.O. (Just Kidding)

One darling 3-year old for sale. He is very cute, his father thinks that he is just adorable. However, he is capable of destroying a house in a single morning. For example. Yesterday, I was upstairs getting Caleb in the bathtub, when who should show up. His older brothe-yes, the 3-year old, Braden. "Mom, I want to take a bath with Caleb, can we have bubbles too?" I didn't think that would be a problem. So there they are playing in the bathtub and having a great time. I decide to hurry and put a few things away in my bedroom. I hear a thud, and go running into the bathroom only to find Caleb crawling out of the bathroom with Braden spraying him and the walls and floor with cold water. Well if I'm being sprayed with cold water you can bet I'm out of there too.
Later in the day I put Caleb down for a nap and I was balancing the checkbook downstairs on the computer. Braden-the 3-year old that is for sale, comes down and is playing in the office behind me. He gets up and goes over to the piano and plays around there for a while. I finish what I am doing and decide to run out back to get the chicken eggs-believing that Braden would continue to play at the piano. I come back into the house to find him bending over the piano with a mechanical pencil in hand as he uses all of the strength he has to "CARVE" lines onto the wood cover that goes over the keyboard of the piano.
Hence, the decision to see if anyone would consider paying for someone to come in and destroy their home. I told Corey that I do not believe that parents are meant to have anything nice in the home until all of the kids are grown and moved away. Since 3-year old little boys can and will find every way possible to destroy a home.

School's In

August 24th. The first day of school for Blake. He was up by 5:45 am. Asking his dad if it was time to get ready for school yet. No, the bus does not come for another two hours and fifteen minutes-Please go back to bed. Well, Blake is really liking 2nd grade. His favorite subject this year is math. He did not have any of his good friends from last year in his class but he does see them at recess so it's not so bad.

In may of last year when Kaitlyn went to her Kindergarten testing there was a question on the page, "Would you like your child to attend all-day kindergarten?" I was so excited to think that I could have her attend all day kindergarten. Wow, I could get so much accomplished if I did not have to worry about being home in the middle of the day to get a Kindergartener off the bus. So of course I put yes. Then I asked what the requirements were. I was told it was for students that needed extra help. I thought there would be no way that she would need that, after all she was pretty well prepared to start kindergarten. She recognized and could write almost all of her letters and she was also able to count to 100. Well, the week before school was to start I received a call from the school. They asked if I was still interested in having Kaitlyn go to all-day Kindergarten. Well who wouldn't want that, they wanted her to be in the class as a model student. And so Here she is on her first day, August 27th. She is bursting at the seems with excitement. Not only is she starting Kindergarten but she gets to go all day and even eat lunch at school like the big kids.The first day ended and she arrived home. Her dad asked how it was? All she could say was "TOTALLY AWESOME" He asked how was lunch and again got the same answer, "TOTALLY AWESOME." I hope that that attitude will carry with her for the next 13 years and she will continue to love learning.

Where did he come from?

Well this week I decided I would try to work on cleaning the windows and blinds. Before I could finish though I needed to wash down the 3 barn sparrow nests that are in the eves of the house outside my bedroom window. I finished getting those down and decided to try to get down the wasp nest from last year. As I was trying to squirt down the nest out came our new resident, and I call him that beause of his size.

I decided to try find out what kind of spider he is and got down the binoculars when I saw this. I then had to take a picture of him to share him with everyone else.......

....I don't think that I need to worry about putting up any Halloween decorations. I think he has done a fine job.

This summer we have been a bit busy and I have not updated this very well nor has Corey. Oh well time to get to it. June flew by with all that happened. We had a great time visiting with Micheal and Shantel... thanks for not telling us sooner!!
On the 4th of July we got to go to St. George and stay at the condo. I didn't think I would ever get my kids out of the pool they had a blast and yes again I forgot to take a camera.

The week of the 24th Corey was in a car accident-no one injured, and not his fault, but seems to be a yearly occurance anymore. Anyway we had the AC freeze up and needed to take his car into Tony's to have him look at it so we stayed in a hotel in Draper that night and the kids had another fun short trip, we would have stayed longer and swam but had to get back for the AC repair man to come and see what was wrong.

It is now fair time/single mom week and a 1/2. The kids always look forward to going to the fair though so they can ride on the rides and yes, get to see dad.

Blake will be going to 2nd grade. It will be a bit crowded this year since Grantsville Elem burned and they will be putting the 3rd and 4th grade back to Willow Elem for the Year. He love to play the Wii,and the Game cube. On rare occassions I can get him to call a friend, that has been harder since his best friend moved. He also likes to ride bikes and scooters with Kaitlyn and Braden.

Katie will be in Kindergarten, She asks everyday when shool is going to start. I'm sure that she will be the teacher's little helper.She loves to help around the house. She is always there to hold Caleb or play with him when I need to get things done.

Braden is such a ham these days. Yesterday, while I was in the shower he opened up the Oreo's and ate about a dozen of them for a mid-morning snack. Today as I was getting him dressed he said that he had a fever. I asked him if he had an earache. He said, "Yes, that Blake had squirtted the water in his ear and it went down his drain." His loves to play with his cars and be Darth Maul when playing witht he light sabors.

Caleb is growing like a weed and trying to stand by himself a bit. I don't think that it will be long before he is off walking on his own. When he was in for his 9 month visit he weighed as much and was only 3/4 of an inch shorter than his other 3 siblings at their 12 month visits. YIKES. He may grow up to be bigger than his older brothers.

Some of his favorite spots to play are under the table or in the shoe box at the front door. Then he usually finds the stairs and it's time to chase him up and bring him down again.

He loves to play with his siblings and they have had a lot of fun this summer playing with him. (All except Braden, who cries and does not want to share his cars toys.) Oh well, he will just have to learn to share.

It has been a fun summer, but we can't hardly wait for the fair to be over and school to start.

It's Almost Summertime-Where did all the time go?

Well it's good to have the internet back up. Last December while Corey was in Vegas for a week I threw a fit when our phone/internet was down for 3 days. So I drove to Salt Lake to mom's to use her phone and call the company to come take their equipment. Little did I know that neither Qwest nor Comcast had any intentions of coming out to service BFE. So I swallowed my pride and ordered back the crappy internet/phone service that I had had earlier.

Now that this is back it's time to catch up. Blake is almost finished with 1st grade. the things that he has enjoyed most are recess and chasing the girls. He has made a few friends along the way and is even learning to read and do some math. He says he wants to be a paleontologist or a scientist when he grows up. He is salso enjoying playing baseball-he has really improved here. Blake will be a "tumbilino" in the 1st grade circus. This is a 30 year tradition in Grantsville and the whole town gets involved. At the Easter Egg hunt in Grantsville Blake made a killing. We had sent him over to his age group as Corey went with Braden and I with Kaitlyn. Anyhow, when Corey went to find him he was sitting in a pile of candy loading it into his bag a fast as he could. All of the other kids just gathered the larger prizes like kites and hula hoops and left him and a few other kids to gather the candy.

Kaitlyn finally turned 5 and is really excited to start Kindergarten. She asks me everyday if today is the day she gets to go to school. She will be in thd gymnastics final program on Saturday. She has really loved going to gymnastics and cannot decide if she wants to continue with this or do dance in the fall. She had a great Easter holiday as well, especially when Nicole and Paul and their family came and roasted hot dogs and Peeps, and colored Easter eggs-that weren't raw this year.

Braden is growing up fast. He states that he is not a baby anymore. His favorite thing to do now is to play the WII, especially boxing and Star Wars. He is enthralled with Darth Maul and Darth Vader. He will be turning 3 in a few weeks.

Caleb is getting big fast as well. He was over 24 inches and 18 lbs at his 6 month visit. I would not be surprised to see him grow taller than his brothers and dad. He is always exercising-doing push-ups, as he is trying to learn to crawl.

Yes, Corey is still driving 100 miles a day to and from work. He still talks of that "million dollar check" arriving, I have yet to see it.

I started back to work as well and have enjoyed working with the family that I work for. I take care of two of their 20 children during the night. NO, that is not a missprint. They have adopted 19 children for a grand total of twenty. They are and amazing family.

Last Feb. we also adopted 8 of our own. That's chickens not children. We were feeling a bit left out when all of my family had dogs-we thought it might be better to have chickens so that when the hard times hit we will at least be able to eat eggs or the chickens, and what will the rest of them have? Chinese????

We hope you are all well and look forward to keeping this up again.

Taking the EIGHT challenge

I noticed this on Shantel's blog and since there isn't much to talk about lately, I will give this a try!

8 FAVORITE TV SHOWS

1. The Office
2. Life
3. Chuck
4. The Simpsons
5. Scrubs
6. Sportscenter
7. Lost (all though I missed a whole season, so I need to catch up)
8. The Cosby Show (got all 8 seasons for Christmas - very funny!)

8 Favorite Dishes

1. Shrimp alfredo over penne pasta (or tortillini or ravioli, etc.)
2. Pot Stickers and sweat and sour, lemon, seasome chicken
3. Prime Rib or a good medium rare steak
4. A well made subway sandwich with all of my favorite trimmings (Jason Deli's or Gandolfos make the ones I like)
5. Nachos (chicken nachos in particular)
6. Make your own taco night
7. Lasagna ( I have really grown found of Italian food lately. I don't know if there is a bad Italian dish at this point or at least one I wouldn't try)
8. Barbeque (Both Joe Morley's Barbeque and Burgers, dogs and brats on the barbeque grill)

8 Things that Happened yesterday

1. Went to PEC
2. Went to Church
3. Went to BYC with the Bishop
4. It was the fourth consecutive day that Braden went without an accident. He actually went to church with underpants one - scarry!
5. Had an amazing homemade toasted subway sandwich
6. Took a nap for the first time in close to 4 months
7. Ate Ice Cream for dinner!
8. Went to bed early to try and kick this cold that I have had for three days

8 Things I look Forward to

1. Summer
2. Days off
3. Spring
4. Spending time with my family
5. College Football Season
6. March Madness
7. Opening Day
8. A Better economy

8 Things I love about Winter

1. Driving in the snow
2. Crazy drivers in trucks and suv's in the snow
3. My 100 mile daily commute in the snow
4. The cold
5. Getting colds
6. Stir-crazy kids who fight all the time becasue they can't go outsige
7. shoveling snow
8. Hot Chocolate

8 Things on my Wish List

1. A yard that my kids can play in
2. That my kids always choose the right and get married in the temple
3. That if my kids don't accomplish number 2, that they will repent and know they are loved
4. Health for me and my entire family
5. If possible, A job closer to home
6. To golf more
7. Have a vacation house in St. George
8. Enduring to the end

One Step Forward and two steps back

Yesterday, I was going to post a blog stating how excited we were that Braden is finally pottie trained and how exciting it is only to have one kid in diapers and how nostalgic it is to have kids that are growing up (Although sometimes Blake and Kaitlyn act like they are two), but Braden was distracted by fishing on the Wii and had an accident {Skip this part if you don't want the details --- Both number 1 and number 2 in underpants (a small note here about how grateful I am for Rayma and the fact that I was at work) In Rayma's words it was "disgusting")}

Therefore we are starting over and trying to take one step forward without taking two steps back.

Caleb's Blessing

We were priveleged and blessed to bless Caleb on January 4,2009. We were grateful for all those who made the trip to participate with us and we missed those who couldn't make it.

UPDATING PICTURES

Just a few pictures to update since we are behind a little!

STILL WITHOUT INTERNET

We are still without internet at home and since I have been off from work for two weeks, I haven't had a chance to post.

We had a great Christmas. The kids are fun to watch at this age. (pictures are coming)Santa Clause was able to find us in Grantsville (Kaitlyn was worried)

Reflecting on 2008, brings many thoughts to my mind. All in all I think the best part of 2008 for us was the second that it turned to 2009. Goodbye and good riddance.

All and all it has been the toughest year of our married lives. In all seriousness as I reflect back on this year, it truely has been one full of faith promoting experiences and we have spent most of the year in the refiners fire - at least it feels like it. We have been greatly blessed through it all and most of those blessings have come from and on the behalf of family. 2008 for us will always be the year of the family, when we felt the most love and the most kindness and the most sincerity from our families and when we needed it the most. We can never say thank you enough for our families - NEVER! We do hope and pray that Heavenly Father will open up the windows of heavan and pour out His many blessings on all of the members of our families.

We wanted to list all of the many wonderful, kind and thoughtful things that our families have done for us, but it would be too long, so again - thank you to our families!