Saturday Fun

Well, John decided that he wanted to go out on the boat. I didn't want to go, so I suggested that he take the boys and our neighbor and his boys, and continue with their "boy time". Hailey decided she wanted to go too, but there was a girl or 2 that ended up going, so she wasn't the only one. Brooklyn and Amelia wanted to stay with me. So I sent John out with the 4 big kids and my camera, and Brooklyn and I headed out to Oh Sweet Sadie! I was so excited to go to that. Even though I didn't end up getting anything, I got a lot of business cards and a lot of ideas. I also finally got to go to Rod Works, over by Thanksgiving Point. They had a lot of great stuff and I know I will be going back there in the near future! I also went to a few stores looking for a new dress or skirt or something for church. No luck there. Everything was too short. I thought with fall coming that they would start having longer items out, but apparently not. Oh well, thank goodness for Chadwick's and other online sites with cute, long clothing!
The kids had a blast out on the boat and going tubing. I'm glad they had fun and that I was able to do everything I wanted to do, and have some Brooklyn and Amelia time. As for the pictures, clearly my husband needed some direction from me before he went like, "Tell the kids to smile like they are having fun, not dying" or "Get pictures of the other people with you and the scenery.) Oh well. I guess I should be happy I got any at all.

Father/Son Camp Out

Yesterday John took Tyler, Austin and Camren on the father son camp out up the canyon. They left Friday early evening and came home today, late morning. John said it was beautiful out there and the boys had a blast running around and getting dirty and doing boy things. They must have, because when they came home, they were filthy!! The only downer, was at one point they found out that some dumb teenage boys had started a fire in the parking lot near the entrance. They had brought a bunch of wood pallets and set them on fire. I guess they were trying to have a bonfire or something. Real smart. Especially at the entrance to the canyon. So John went with our across the street neighbor (who is a swat member of a gang taskforce) and they went to deal with them. They held them there til the police got there. Then the officer gave them all tickets, and told them that if they didn't pick up every last scrap of wood and nail, that he would cite them for littering and that if there was any damage to the asphalt, he would cite them for vandalism. I hope it was worth it. Pretty dumb. But other than that, it was a fun time for all.

Girls Night In

Tonight the boys are off on their Father/ Son camp out, so we are hanging out having girls night. At first I was going to send the girls to my ex's parents house for an overnight, thinking of all the cleaning and cooking I could get done with an empty house to myself. But then I thought about how since John and I got married, I don't really ever get any one on one time with Hailey and Brooklyn anymore, cause I have all the other kids. So I decided to keep them home. We started out the night runnnig errands. First we had to go to Checker, so I could pick up a portable charger for the boat (hmm, don't know why I would need one of those. . . ) and then headed to Wal-Mart for some grocery shopping. I got a bunch of stuff for freezer meals and some tupperware containers (since when my renter moved out, I think she took most of mine since most of them are missing now). Then we stopped by McDonalds and the Redbox on the way home, so we could enjoy chicken wraps and Hannah Montana in concert. The girls already saw the movie (we saw it in 3D in the theatre) but I knew they would want to see it again, and the boys wouldn't. So, while they sang and danced along to the movie, I was able to make 7 freezer meals. Yay! Plus my kitchen and dining room are open to the family room, so we were still able to all be together. After rocking out to Hannah Montana, the girls crashed at about 11. They were excited that they got to stay up so late. I am ready to crash too. I will be back with an update on the boys' camp out tomorrow.

Fall Fair

Today was the fall fair at the kids' school. It is kinda like a boutique. The gym and back parking lot by the portables was full of stuff people had made. There was also food, games and face painting for the kids. The main purpose of the fall fair was to only have one fundraiser. They are hoping to earn enough from it that they won't be doing any more fundraisers for the rest of the year. Like those annoying magazine or wrapping paper sales. I say, yay for that! I have 5 kids that go to that school. When they have a fundraiser (like the coupon books they did at the beginning of the year) my kids don't participate. Why? Because all my neighbors kids go to the same school too, and all the kids at church. So who are my kids supposed to sell to? Family. Right. So when grandma is the only one that wants one, how am I supposed to decide what one kid gets a sale? What one kid gets to turn theirs in and get a prize. So I told my kids this and had them return the packets.

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Anyway, back to the fair. I was there at 3, setting up for my friend Christina. She had a booth there, but had a meeting she had to be at. So I went to her house, got all her stuff and her 8 year old twins. Then I took them, plus my 6 and went to set it up for her. The kids were excited about this, 'cause we ended up being on the blacktop in the back. Which meant they got to play on the playground while I set up and waited for her to get there. Which was fine with me. I could see them, and they weren't at the table wrecking everything.

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After she got there, my husband got there just in time. I say just in time, because some little boy ran head on into Amelia and hit her so hard that she passed out. Well I picked her up and she started doing the weird breathing thing she does (this has happened a couple other times) and started passing out. Right when John walked up to me. So I was patting her face to keep her conscious, and trying to get her to drink some water, which she wouldn't. So I handed her to John. He held her and she cried for a while. Then she saw that the kids were getting tattoos at the face painting booth, and decided she wanted one too. After she was fine, we went and checked out the rest of the booths. They had some cute stuff, but I didn't end up getting anything. It is hard to enjoy looking at things when you have 6 sets of hands grabbing and touching everything. They did have some really cute hairbows, which reminded me that I have the directions on how to make them. So that is something that I am going to try out sometime soon. I could probably save a lot of money making my own hairbows, with all the bows I buy times 3. I will post pics when I get them made. :)

Adventures In Boating

Well, we were supposed to take the kids on the boat, and you will be wondering why there aren't any pics, but that would be because we only spent about 10 min. on the boat. We took forever getting everything together, borrowing extra life jackets from a neighbor (we still don't have adult ones yet) and brought our neighbor boy with us. When we got the boat in the water, first thing we noticed was that the battery was dead. Nice! Good thing we launched right next to the dock, so we were able to get it over and tie it up. Then my husband had to run back to the house to get something to charge it. We didn't have a portable charger, so he ended up bringing charging cables and the battery out of the Odyssey. Then once we got the boat all charged, I looked under the floor in the little cubby thing and noticed that the kids' life jackets weren't in the boat. I told my husband, who had taken them and the tube out when he had cleaned out the boat. So back to the house he went to get those. Good thing we only live 5 minutes from the boat launch! So he is on his way back, and I call him and tell him the wind has really picked up and he is not going to want to go out 'cause the water is going to be too choppy. He was sure it was going to be fine and we went out anyway. About 10 minutes later we were back at the dock, because - ta dah! - the water was too choppy! Then when we tried to load the boat back on the trailer, the wind really picked up and kept blowing the boat off the trailer. It took forever to get it on and John ended up slipping off the trailer and falling in at one point, while he was reeling in the strap at the nose of the boat. So I guess my husband learned a valuable lesson. When your wife says it's too windy, listen to her!

Amelia's 3rd Birthday Party

Today we celebrated Amelia's 3rd birthday. Her birthday is really tomorrow, but we are going to take the kids out on the boat tomorrow, so we're having her party tonight. Princess Amelia had a blast at her birthday. No surprise there, since she loves it when things are all about her. For her party, lots of people came. Including my sister and her family, my ex-husband's parents, 3 siblings, and grandparents. I made little baby meatloaves, a creamy cheese vegetable dish, and homemade spicy cinnamon applesauce. Everything was a huge hit. Good thing, cause I thought my hand was going to fall off peeling all those apples! Amelia was excited to have her Tinkerbell birthday, and of course got plenty of princess and girly presents. If there was ever a real girly girl, she is it! She loves everything that is pink, sparkly, princess and lip gloss. And everything she got fell into one or more of those categories. The cake was great (chocolate with cherry filling that my family loves) and she loved the trick sparkler candles.

That's A Wrap!

This is the best wrap ever, so I have to share the recipe for it. Once you taste it, you will want to eat it all the time. It is one of my favorite things for lunch.















You need the following ingredients:
1 - "Mission Wraps" Garden Spinach Herb
about 1 Tbsp Ranch (I prefer Kraft Free)
handfull of "Dole" Tender Garden salad in a bag (or whatever kind you want)
3 - 4 strips (they're small)"Tyson" fully cooked grilled chicken, diced
1 circle slice red bell pepper
1 circle slice orange bell pepper
1 circle slice yellow bell pepper
2 Tbsp fresh grated 3 cheese mix in a tub (any kind)
1/4 c. sunflower seeds

It's pretty easy to put together. Spread the ranch on the wrap and then add the ingredients in the order listed. Wrap it up and enjoy!

Hanging out With Robyn and Henry

Today Amelia and I went and hung out at my sister Robyn's new house after Brooklyn went to kindergarten. We had fun and I enjoyed every minute of snuggling with Henry. I also got some yummy recipes from Robyn that I can't wait to make for my family. I like that Robyn is so close so we can hang out while the kids are in school. It makes the day a lot less boring.

One of My Favorite Pictures

This is one of my favorite pictures of me and John. I know I have it on my sidebar, but it's so tiny you can hardly see it. Now you can click on this one and see just how cute we are. :)
Never mind that neither of us look like this anymore (I had bleached John's hair, and I was trying out bangs). It was taken after the Rascal Flatts concert in Salt Lake last spring. We won tickets through a radio station where we got a limo, dinner, and backstage passes along with our concert tickets. The food was great (Dodo's at the Gateway), we rocked out and had so much fun!! I lost my voice (bad when you're a singer) and we just look so happy here. One of these days I am going to print this out and frame it because it makes me happy every time I look at it. :)

It's Me!

Well, I was thinking that I haven't seen you guys that read my blog in a while, and 99% of the pics I post don't have me in it (cause let's face it, I'm waay better looking BEHIND the camera). But I thought I would make an attempt at taking my own picture so you could see what I look like now. Then you will know why I rarely post pictures of myself. LOL! This is the best I could do, considering I took it sitting on the toilet in the bathroom so I could see the screen on my camera in the mirror. I know I am a freak. I tried getting Brooklyn to take my picture for me, but you don't even want to see those!

St. George Trip

Ok, so we headed down to St. George this morning. The drive was beautiful! I love driving down there cause it is so pretty with the red dirt and everything. It took us about 4 hours. We all had a fun time singing along to my ipod in the car and my kids are great travelers.

We went over to the guy's house to check out the boat, and then decided to take it out on the water. After all, I wouldn't buy a car without test driving it, why would a boat be any different? So we took it over to Quail Creek State Park. The boat came with enough life jackets for the kids (albeit the lame flimsy orange kind) and Josh (the boat guy) and his wife gave Amelia a really cute little sea horse one they had bought for a niece that had never been used. We were only actually on the water for about 20 min. or so. Just enough to try it out and make sure we knew how to get the boat on and off the trailer and all that. The kids had a blast and thought they were so cool out on the boat.

(Pictures: 1. Tyler & Austin getting ready to head out 2. Me & Amelia 3. Pretty view while on the lake 4. Our boat 5. Brooklyn 6. Camren & Brooklyn 7. John driving us around the lake 8. Hailey)

Then we went back to the guys house where we deliberated and wheeled and dealed until we were satisfied, and then we took the boat home with us. Yes you read that right. I let my husband have the boat. Why? Because I always say no to everything my husband wants because big purchases freak me out. I felt that it's not fair that he usually lets me have whatever I want, but for some reason I don't do the same for him. (Probably cause whatever he wants seems to cost way more than anything I ever want - Suburban and house excluded) So I prayed about it, and I felt that this is something that will bring our family closer together and provide the opportunity for us to get out and spend more time as a family hanging out having fun together. After all, I do live 5 minutes from a boat launch onto Utah Lake. :) Plus we got a great deal cause the guy just needed to get rid of it because of money issues, so we are just taking over his loan. Which means that we got a great price (blue booked it and called some dealers) and we got a great interest rate. He even threw in a pair of childs water skis and a tube and a bunch of other stuff for free. So last night we cleaned out the garage and made a home for it. That way we don't have to pay to store it and we won't have to winterize it because it will be indoors.

The plus side to having a 25 foot boat in the garage? Suddenly my husband is way more motivated to finish the basement so we can get all the stuff that goes down there out of the garage.

Makeover

Yay! I made my blog all pretty and added music. But I am too tired to do the post with pics I promised. (Lame I know since it is only 9:30) That's what happens when you get up early. But I will be back tomorrow for sure. :)

What to Write About or Having All These Kids is Killing My Brain Cells

Well I don't know what to say. I haven't posted lately, because every time I sit down to type, whatever topic I had been thinking about during the day has eluded me by the time I get a chance to sit down here and write about it. I told John that if we have any more kids I will have to be committed because I won't have any brain cells left! I swear I get blonder with every child! But I don't like that it has been a week with no posts, so I will have to think of something.

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Hmmm......

I could write about the kids. They are doing great and enjoying school. Amelia feels so left out cause she wants to go with the kids so bad. Brooklyn has pm kindergarten, so every day when she gets ready for school, Amelia gets her stuff to try and go with her. She is just dying to ride the bus. Poor thing still has 3 years. She will start kindergarten when Brooklyn is in 3rd grade.

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Speaking of Amelia, she was really funny yesterday. We were at Wal-Mart picking up a few things and every item we walked past (even stuff that wasn't toys, like say, a car seat or a fall wreath) she would go "Oooh! That's nice. I'm going to get that for my birthday!" All through the store I was cracking up as she said that to everything we passed. Her birthday is coming up on the 20th, and after watching the 3 boys have their birthdays this summer, she is more than ready for her turn for, as she says "My candles, and my cake, and my birthday, and my candles." Apparently candles are an integral part of the birthday, because that seems to be one of the things she is fixated on the most when talking about it.

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John is doing well at his new job. He has switched from Labor and Delivery to working in the main OR. He likes it because he is learning all sorts of new cases like ortho , and plastics and open heart and stuff. He was really excited to be learning all that, since he has been in L&D for the last 4 years. I really hope that he decides to listen to me and the doctors he works with and go back to school to become a surgeon. He is extremely gifted in surgery and all the Dr.'s he works with say so and I really think that a lot of people could benefit from it. We have talked about it to some extent. He would like to do plastics, and we have talked about if he did, the medical missions we could go on and stuff like that. (Obviously my kids would be a lot older by then, medical school takes a long time - especially if you are specializing in something.) It has taken some adjusting to on my part since I went from him being home all the time to him being at the hospital all the time. His boss approved him to have overtime every day so that he could finish his orientation faster, so he has been staying late every day. I guess the plus to that is that he is getting 20 hours of overtime a week, but it gets kinda boring around here with just the kids to talk to. Not that they are boring, far from it, just that it would be nice to have another adult to talk to during the day.

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Well I guess I managed to get a somewhat decent post out after all. I will be back to do one with pics later tonight. For now I have a kindergartner to get off to school, nap time for the other one, and lots of laundry to catch up on. We're going down to St. George tomorrow to look at a boat. The guy is desperate to get rid of it because of money issues, so it's a really good deal, but I'm not too thrilled about it (money wise, not owning a boat wise) but whatever. I just don't like making big ticket purchases. (Although my husband would beg to differ on the basis of my Coach obsession, but that is still significantly less than a boat - and I use it every day.) My husband is obsessed about it since we live 5 minuted from a launch area on Utah Lake and we can see it from our porch every day. I don't know that we will end up bringing it home, but it will be nice to get out and do something fun for the day. We are going to go out on it to try it out, so that will be nice. Anyway, I will be sure to take the camera with me. I think we are going out on Lake Powell, but I'm not sure yet.

Off to the drudgery.....

Weekend Update

This weekend was nice. Saturday we drove out to Utah Lake to soak up some sun and check out the boats. It was a super hot day though, so we didn't spend a lot of time there. We spent the rest of the time driving around and looking at new houses (one of our favorite things to do) and then my husband decided we needed to take my suburban 4wheeling. Of course. He would think that. I totally did not want to, especially since he wanted to go up this huge (to me) hill and down again. But the kids were totally psyched about it, so it was 7 to 1. My stipulation was that afterwards, he had to drive over to the carwash cause I was totally not going to drive my truck to church with about 3 inches of dirt on it. So he drove around and the kids had a blast. I read my LDS Living and tried to pretend it wasn't happening. Then we went to the carwash, and the kids enjoyed that too.

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Sunday not a lot happened. We went to church. It was the 5th Sunday, so we had combined RS and EQ, which I always enjoy. The bishop and his 2 counselors each spoke. The one I enjoyed the most was the one about modesty. I already am strict about that in my house. My kids dress as if they have already been to the temple. Long shorts, no sleeveless, etc. It was hard when I went to the temple and I had to get rid of, like, half my clothes. So I felt like in addition to making it easier for them to value their bodies and behave, it would help to ingrain the modesty in dress from the beginning. I remember one of the ladies from my old Walnut Creek Stake talking about how she had always required her children to dress as if they had always been to the temple, and how as adults they had thanked her because they never had to struggle with making that decision because it was already made and that it had really positively impacted their lives. Anyway, one thing he talked about that caught my attention was talking about how part of dressing modestly was dressing appropriately for the occasion. I like that. Too often you see people wearing denim and flip flops to church or the temple, or you go to a play and there are people there in jerseys and shorts. I liked the idea of teaching our children to dress appropriately. My children know that they would never wear their every day clothes to church. They even have dresses that are every day dresses, but not dresses that they wear to church. My boys are in a full suit, complete with jacket and tie, and have been from the beginning. Anyway, we spent the rest of the day just hanging out as a family. Then John had to go to the church and I fell asleep on the couch in the family room. I woke up and the windows were open, and it was chilly ourside. Surprising, since lately it has been about 95. Then all of the sudden it started to pour like crazy outside out of nowhere! Majorly! That lasted about 5 minutes, then it just drizzled and was cold the rest of the afternoon/ evening. Then one of our home teachers came over to visit. He is really nice and really funny, so we had a good time talking. It rained all night and was raining this morning when I got up. It has been super windy too. I am enjoying the change of weather though, cause I am tired of it being so hot and fall is my favorite season.

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Today is Labor Day, so the kids didn't have school. We couldn't think of anything we really wanted to do with it being cold outside, so we decided to just veg out as a family. Something we haven't done in a long time. So we rented a couple movies, went to Wal-Mart and got some junk food and just hung out. My kids must have thought they died and went to heaven. One cause they finally got to watch Water Horse, which I have to say was really good. Two, because I never have junk food at my house and they were probably thrilled to get more in one day than they usually get in a whole month. I hope they enjoyed it because it was a one time thing.