I'm such a big girl!

I went and had a complete physical last Friday. After the dr. had done some of the basic stuff (listening to my heart, checking my reflexes, etc....), Logan said, "You're doing great, Mom!" It made me chuckle and then I asked him if I was brave for my shots if he would take me for ice-cream. He looked at me with a cocked smile and shook his head and said, "Mmmm, no."

Coincidentally, one of the shots that I got was a tetanus shot and that night I happened to be using a razor blade and full on jabbed my leg with it. It was brand new so it wasn't rusty or anything.....but if it had been, I would've been covered!

Help! I need some input!

I've been seriously considering redesigning and renaming my blog lately. I LOVE the gerber daisies in the corner (they're my favorite flowers!) and I actually really like the black. But I've just been looking for ways in my life to "lighten up" (like having Lisa do highlights in my hair!), and I think that maybe my BLACK blog could use a lightening up makeover. I also want to rename it to incorporate more of a "family" flair, instead of sounding so personal. (Not that it would make the content any different.....it's already all about my family. That IS my life after all!) So I've been playing around with some fun alliterations, which is funny because I get bugged when other people do this because it's so "typical Mormon mom blog", but I did it for this blog and now I find myself doing the same thing trying to come up with a family name! A pretty obvious one I came up with is "Cluff Clan" and I couldn't help but think of the similarity to the Ku Klux Klan. I absolutely do NOT condone the actions of the KKK, but I started thinking it would be pretty funny to name my blog the "Cu Cluff Clan". So my question is.....is that funny/clever or offensive? I personally think it's pretty funny, but I can see how it could be construed as offensive and I absolutely do NOT want to offend anyone. What do ya'll think? Also, what sites do you recommend for blog templates? HELP!!!

Happy Birthday to ME! :)

I officially entered my final year in my twenties yesterday. Yikes! We kind of ended up celebrating all weekend. I like to think of my birthday as kind of a kickoff to Spring and so for it I always want to do basically the same thing.....have a picnic lunch at the park as a family and play tennis after. We've tried to do this the past couple years and it has never worked out very well because of the weather, and I knew it was going to be yucky weather on my birthday again this year.....BUT, it was supposed to be beautiful on Saturday so we planned to do my park thing then. It was a little windy, but all in all it was a gorgeous Spring day! My plan finally worked. We had so much fun at the park. Lisa and Kyle went and bought a football and a couple frisbees to play with, which came in handy because we had to wait our turn quite a while for the tennis courts. It turns out I'm not very good at frisbee and twice ended up throwing it into a backyard. Oops!

I love this picture of Peyton because you can see she ditched her bottle and ran off.

Kya enjoyed holding Kylee so the adults could play some frisbee. I think she would hold her 24-7 if she could.

On Sunday we celebrated with Matthew's side of the family. My in-laws cooked one of my favorite meals.....roast beef, mashed potatoes, and ASPARAGUS! My mother-in-law even tried out a new recipe and made an asparagus soup. She originally planned on making it an entirely asparagus themed meal, but my sensible father-in-law reminded her that there would be others eating that don't necessarily like asparagus. :) It was all so good and my stinky pee afterwards was worth all the delicious asparagus I had. (For those of you who don't know, asparagus makes your pee smell extremely horrible!)


I started my actual birthday with a nice back rub/scratch (heaven!) from Matthew and ended it the same way. And then Matthew helped the children make me breakfast in bed. The kids all presented me with their cute little home-made cards. Even Logan had written his name and drawn me a picture. And thank goodness we ended up doing my picnic at the park, etc... on Saturday. Yesterday we woke up to SNOW!!! I knew it was going to be a yucky day but I had not predicted snow! It seemed like an otherwise reasonable day, just a little chilly. I really thought it would all melt pretty quickly and be gone and done. Nope! It only got yuckier and yuckier as the day went on. Blech!!! BUT, Matthew had taken the day off, and so in spite of the stupid ol' weather I had a really fun day. We did get a chance to go out to lunch (at JCW's....my favorite!), but other than that we mostly just ran errands and even had Logan and Peyton with us most of the time, but it was still so much fun just being with him. I just love spending time with him. For dinner we went to Pier 49 (another one of my fave's) with Kalun and Kristi and then they came over afterwards and we all played Rockband and had banana splits/ice-cream sundaes. Yum!


Matthew downloaded the entire No Doubt greatest hits album for me on Rockband and Lisa and I had a great time singing our butts off. We have both been a little hoarse lately, and after singing we were hardly able to talk. But it was fun!! And Lisa got me the most wonderful gift.....some super cute flip-flops! What a nice hint that soon it will be flip-flop weather! I can NOT wait!!! And to top it all off, at the end of the day my friend Angela brought over the most BEAUTIFUL bouquet of flowers for me. I had "won" the bid for them in our service auction at our Enrichment activity last week and had told her that if she was able to bring them on my birthday, it would be perfect. And she did, and they were absolutely the icing on the cake. I LOVE flowers any time, but especially on a bleak, yucky weathered day.


Thank you to everyone who called me, texted me, wrote on my Facebook wall, hung out with me or did anything else to make my birthday so wonderful!!!

It's getting there.....

Our basement was supposed to be done last week, but things have taken a little longer not only because well, that happens, but also because we tweaked a couple things and added a couple things. After being so stressed out and realizing we don't have the time to do some of the finish stuff we planned on doing to save money, we decided to add it to our contractor's work load. And he has been so generous and wonderful that some of the stuff he added for next to nothing or, in some cases, nothing. He has been absolutely wonderful. We feel very blessed that we found this guy because he's been so willing to work with us and has gone above and beyond what we were expecting. We would recommend him to anyone. So if anyone out there needs a good contractor, let us know!

So by the end of the week we should be done and moving the Corbett's in to their temporary home! :)

Ahhhh.....Spring!!!

Spring is finally making its debut and I am LOVING IT!!! I was walking Logan to preschool the other day and saw a couple flower buds coming up in the neighbors yard. It made me so happy! Spring is my absolute favorite time of year. The weather is beautiful (o.k. except when it RAINS! I actually hate rain worse than snow if you can believe it), and it means that winter is over and that we have many months of good weather ahead before we have to deal with stupid ol' winter again. And my mood is so much better. I've already noticed such a difference. Don't get me wrong, I've still had my moments lately, but that has more to do with all of the stressful things going on in my life than it has to do with the weather. The kids have been able to play outside instead of being cooped up inside. The other night we went out as a family and jumped on the trampoline. What a blast! We've gotten out the bikes, scooters, etc.... Peyton has become fond of Logan's little 4-wheeler. She was a little apprehensive at first, but now that she knows how to drive it she's fearless. This video shows a range of those feelings. She has major anxiety in the beginning because she just ended up on the grass. But then she gets going again and pretty much drives off the edge.

One more great thing I'm loving about Spring.....Matthew is able to ride his scooter to work. He filled it up with gas yesterday......for a whopping $1.27!!!!! And that should last him a week! Love it!!

It's not just there for decor....

A special thank you to Kyle for "murdering" my little hand mixer. A few weeks ago he was using it to mix something and.....it died! We got it as a wedding present so it has lasted almost 10 years, and it was actually not even giving us any problems, so it was kind of surprising that it just died like that. But I was actually quite happy because now I could maybe justify buying a Kitchenaid Mixer like I've been wanting. (I promise I didn't secretly pay Kyle to kill my hand mixer!) We had just gotten our tax return and had a little extra money and I found an AMAZING deal on it (it's the Professional 6 quart one that normally retails for $499 and I got it for $176 + tax BRAND NEW!!!). I'll admit it, I had been afraid that I'd finally get one and not use it as much as I swore I would. But that has NOT been the case. I have been little miss Betty Crocker....and have gained 5 lbs. in the process. No joke! But hey, I've had fun doing it. I find myself just looking for ways to use it and things to make. I absolutely LOVE this mixer!!!!!

Girls Night Out!

Last Friday I had the opportunity to take September and Kya to a U of U gymnastics meet. My mom had given me a voucher that was good for up to 6 people for any meet. We invited the girls best friends, Ariel and Courtney, and their mom, Michelle. Besides the fact that these four girls are practically inseparable and we thought it would be fun for all of them, Michelle just got diagnosed a couple months ago with cancer and I thought it might be nice for her to have a nice Girls Night Out.

We went on the best night because it was the final meet of the year so it was Senior Night and they had a special ceremony at the beginning honoring a couple of the girls who were Seniors and this was their last meet. One of them was Kristina Baskett (?) who is currently ranked #2 in the nation! The other one was Nina Kim who is ranked #9 in the nation AND who happens to be the best friend of Olympic gold-medalist, Nastia Liukin! And guess who happened to be there supporting her friend....Nastia! Too bad we didn't realize it until I read it in the paper a couple days later. She was standing right next to her during the ceremony and I thought it looked an awful lot like her, but I didn't think it was very likely. Man, I wish I would've taken a picture!!!

Kristina Baskett doing her floor routine. Check out those legs!!

Nina Kim and Kristina Baskett. They both did amazing that night. Kristina actually received a perfect 10 for her performance on the bars.

We broke records for attendance. I believe they said it was the biggest crowd they'd had since '93.

Anyway, the meet was awesome and it reminded me of how much I LOVE watching gymnastics. I took for about 6 years or so when I was little, but never had intentions of doing much more than have fun. But I still love to watch the sport. The girls all loved it too and even started making plans to be in the olympics someday. :) September has wanted to take gymnastics for a long time and I think she'd be a natural. She's just got a "gymnasts body" and is VERY flexible! I guess we'll have to look into it.

Itty Bitty Ball: Days 3-6

Day 3 - Football
Logan participated a little more than usual on this day, which was a little strange because out of the four main sports, football is the one he's played the least. Don't get me wrong, he still did a lot of dancing/walking around scatterbrained and/or lolly-gagging, but he was finally a little more involved. Perhaps his lack of knowledge though is to blame for the little incident I caught here on video.

I thought it was pretty funny, but when I showed it to Matthew he was a little mad at me that I would laugh at Logan for doing that. Come on, it's not like he was throwing punches to be a bully....the poor kid was just trying to defend his flag! ;) (Which if you watch closely you can see that he doesn't even realize it did get taken until much later.) O.k. apparently we need to teach him a bit more about how the game is meant to be played.


Day 4 - Soccer
Soccer is one of the main sports that Logan has had a bit of practice with, so I was really surprised to see him hardly even participate. He normally LOVES soccer! We got him a soccer ball for his birthday last year and when he opened it up he had to stop in the middle of opening his gifts to play an impromptu game of soccer. But apparently he doesn't understand the concept of the game on the level of team playing.

Peyton wandered out onto the court and I didn't even notice until I took this picture and suddenly realized that Peyton had made it into the picture. She just kept getting so excited about seeing Logan out there and kept wanting to go join him.

Sneaky, sneaky!!!

Day 5 - Volleyball
Really? Volleyball for 3-4 year olds? This was kind of a rough day for both the kids and the coaches. There just wasn't a whole lot to do with the kids, so they had to just play games or dance to music at some stations. Logan ironically did really well with the things they did do though. Which shouldn't really surprise me at this point since it seemed like he did really well and enjoyed the sports he's never really done, and showed hardly any interest in the sports he does typically do.

Here's Peyton sneaking into the action....again! I don't know how she avoided getting trampled! And I love how you can see Kalun in the background against the wall.....you know he's just waiting for the ball to come his way so he can have an excuse to "play". He's such a big kid!

Day 6 - Final Day
On the last day they just rotated between football, soccer and basketball doing scrimmages. In between station 1 and 2 they played duck-duck-goose. Logan turned out to be what seemed like the only kid that didn't get picked and he just kind of sat in an area by himself with looks on his face that broke my heart! Eventually the coach just kind of "pushed" him with his foot to the center where all the kids who had been picked were sitting. It kind of bothered me and I probably got more upset about it than I should've. I guess I had just been kind of bugged by his coach the whole time and this was sort of the final straw. He was not the type that should be with 3-4 year olds. I felt like he expected so much from the kids and only focused on the ones that could play. Hello! I thought I was paying for a program that was going to TEACH my kid some fundamentals of how to play these sports, not just to give them an opportunity to "play" a bunch of different sports while being supervised. Apparently I was wrong! I know I probably sound so ornery and I'm sure I'm making a bigger deal out of it than I should, but I've just kind of been in an easily irked mood lately anyway. I guess if I want my son to learn how to play sports I'm either going to have to fork out some major dough, or get out there myself. OR have his Dad teach him. Which after hearing my orneriness about it, and showing Matthew videos of Logan's lack of participation, Matthew has been even more motivated to teach him.



Anyway, back to topic. In between station 2 and 3 they played with one of those parachutes that you play with in gym in elementary. You know what I'm talking about! I LOVED those as a kid! Logan seemed to enjoy himself.


Then at the very end they had "Larry" (or Lenny, or something....) the Legacy Lion mascot come and visit. Logan was a bit apprehensive about him and when I asked him later why he didn't go say hi he said, "I guess I'm too shy." I don't even know how he knows that word or what it means.



All in all it was fun and I'm glad we did it. But I have to admit that I'm kind of glad it's over.

A welcome break

I have been really struggling lately. Although I haven't ever technically been diagnosed, I'm pretty sure I suffer from SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder). I don't think many people would guess this about me. I do a pretty good job of "faking it" in public....when I actually make it into public that is. I get extremely depressed during the cold winter months and this year has been unusually hard. On top of these struggles, there have been a number of other things that have added extra stress to my plate......the kids have been sick sooooo much more this winter than they normally are, the house has been a mess ever since we started our basement project (which anybody who knows me well knows that I can't function in that sort of atmosphere), plus I'm still dealing with a sort of "loss of identity" from being released from Young Women's (yes, I still cry from time to time), and last but not least having three extra bodies living in our household. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE having the Corbett's here, but it definitely adds a whole lot of extra stress.

Things seemed to be getting a little better the last couple weeks. The sun started shining more, it was getting warmer outside......and then yesterday it snowed again! The past couple days have been HORRIBLE! I have spent a lot of time in my room the past couple days just crying. It's so hard to understand for those who have never dealt with depression. It frustrates me so much when I come across someone who has no empathy for depression. They think it's all in your head and it's just an issue of mind over matter. It's not! Trust me, I don't want to feel this way. I HATE feeling this way! Yesterday was the worst. The kids were out of school and I had all these plans of fun things I wanted to do with them. Besides the snow ruining a few plans, I woke up with an unsurmountable overwhelming feeling. Because of feeling this way I didn't end up doing ANY of the things I had planned with the kids, which gave me an enormous load of GUILT on top of the crappy way I was already feeling. And then the next thing I know I have what felt like the entire neighborhood at my house. I wanted just to send them all home, but the girls were having fun and I felt like letting them stay was a way I could make it up to the girls for not doing any of the things we had planned. The house was already a disaster and having all of them over certainly didn't help. I had to try so hard to be patient because I didn't want to yell at any children that weren't mine and have them go home and tell their parents how mean I am.

Today we had planned to be going to the Draper Temple open house and I really wanted to go with the right spirit. I went to sleep praying that I would wake up with all of the yucky feelings gone. But I was not so lucky. The morning seemed to instantly get off to a bad start. Again it just seemed like nothing was going right and everything just felt way too overwhelming and complicated. I wanted to crawl back into bed and not wake up. Finally I sat down and prayed and prayed and prayed. I poured my heart out to my Father in heaven begging for him to hear my pleas and send me some peace and comfort. Then I sat down and opened my scriptures and read exactly what I needed to hear. For a moment I finally felt a sense of comfort. I thought I had finally gotten out of my dark hole. But no. The next few hours were filled with a lot of self-loathing and frustration.....and more tears. But then we left to go to the Temple open house and as soon as we got there, the peace finally came. As soon as we got inside, I just had an overwhelming feeling of the spirit. It felt so nice to finally have a GOOD overwhelming feeling. Oh man, it is just so beautiful and peaceful! And best of all, ALL the children behaved. A couple months ago I went with Lisa and we took Logan and Peyton. They were both being such menaces that it was hard to focus and sink it all in. But this time I was able to. I almost didn't want to go because I didn't want that feeling to end. It was SUCH a nice, welcome break!


I'm sure I will still continue to have my struggles (a lot of it is likely to depend on how long the yucky snow and bitter temperatures last!), but it was a nice reminder that whenever I am feeling like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders, I just need to go to the temple. I am so thankful for the temple and I am so thankful to be living in an area where I have 5 temples (soon to be 6) within 40 minutes of me. What an amazing blessing!

Logan's heartache....

O.k. this was part of Itty Bitty Ball, but it deserved a post of its own. This clip is the saddest thing I've ever seen! It absolutely breaks my heart!!! Let me set it up.

At the end of Day 1 they had a relay race. There were 6 teams competing against each other and all they had to do was to go from one end of the gym, down to the other end and touch the wall, and come back. Well, Logan was chosen to go very first for his team. I wasn't expecting him to be first so I didn't have the camera ready and didn't start recording until about one second before this little incident happened. He got a late start (probably distracted by something) and because of it was a little further behind the other kids. About halfway down he realizes he's in last place and it makes him so upset that he was unable to go on. Now tell me if this doesn't just break your heart and make you want to give him a hug? You almost have to watch it a few times before it all sinks in. You can hear me laugh at his initial reaction (you'll know what I'm talking about once you see it), but then I just get sad and concerned as soon as he gives me "the look".

Is this not the saddest thing you've ever seen?

Itty Bitty Ball - Days 1 and 2

Logan has never participated in any type of organized sporting event, but he is very into sports. So a few weeks ago when Kristi mentioned that she was going to be putting Tate into the next Itty Bitty Ball program that was going to be having 5 different sports as part of it, I decided that I really wanted to get Logan into it. Besides the fun aspect and learning more about how to actually play all of the different sports, I thought it would be nice for the social interaction and to add a little structured discipline. Logan can be somewhat of a loner and often likes to do his own thing. He is also a bit, um.....aloof. Would that be a good way to describe it? I was a little nervous to see how he'd do.

Well, one of the first things they do before they start playing is stretches. He just sat there looking at everybody like they were a bunch of fools! It cracked me up. They do one sport a day (5 different sports) and then the final day they do a bunch of relays incorporating skills from all of the sports (I think!).


Day 1 - Baseball
Once they were done with their oh-so-foolish stretching and started the actual playing, Logan kind of hung behind. He'd lean up against the wall, stand with his hands in his pockets, or just be off doing his own thing. Eventually he participated, but was easily distracted. When he did participate though, he was pretty good. But that's my biased opinion! That kid is a pretty decent little batter. He's got nice form. I have a little video clip I took from the batting "station". You be the judge.

Notice the whole "hands-in-the-pocket" as a running theme. How are you supposed to catch any balls when your hands are in your pockets???

Day 2 - Basketball
Since I've been so busy and distracted (hmmmm, I wonder where Logan gets it!) getting things prepped in the basement, I hadn't grabbed a calendar on the first day of class telling us that there were also pictures on the 2nd day. Of all days!! Logan was wearing pants that were complete floods, but it turned out all right because the single shots were taken from the waist up, and he was kneeling on the front row of the team picture.

He was a little less distracted for basketball. For one of the stations they had two teams actually playing a game against each other. But really it's just taking turns letting a kid from each team get to walk/run the ball down to the basket (notice I didn't say dribble), and then they'd dunk it. Or at least that's what most kids did. Logan went for the long shot. He has a little basketball hoop in his room that hangs over his door, so he's used to actually having to shoot, not dunking from head level. He's actually a pretty good shot, but I think he's a lot like me where he's better at shooting when he's on his own and not distracted by people around him. What is it with us getting distracted easily??? In fact, here's a video clip of him on the very last station where they were practicing their shooting. It was the end and the coach had called all the kids over to turn their balls in, but Logan just kept on shooting, completely oblivious to the fact that everyone else had stopped.

Distracted by something for the gazillionth time....

Finishing the basement!!!

We have wanted to finish our basement for a long time now, but always knew we wanted to hire somebody to do it for us. We've seen too many friends and neighbors finish theirs themselves and it took months because they could only work on it here and there. We didn't want to live with a mess in our basement, or have our stuff stored in the garage for months on end, so our only option was to wait til we could afford to hire it out. Well, ever since Kyle and Lisa moved in with us things have seemed to fall into place for us in many ways, and one of those ways was financially. A couple months ago we found out that we'd be able to refi and pull some extra money out if we wanted.....money that could go right back into the house. Hmmmm...... Then, Lisa joked about us finishing it so they could move down there. But we still didn't have quite enough money. Then we did our taxes and voila! So we got a couple bids and found a guy (through a referral from another member on the couponing site that I frequent) that we felt comfortable with and was giving us a great deal and something we could afford. From there things just kept falling into place. I have spent the past few days organizing all of the junk in the basement into piles.....store in attic, DI, put somewhere else in the house, store in the garage, and last but not least....GARBAGE!!! I got rid of so much stuff and it felt so good! We got the final piles all moved out last night and this morning the contractor started hauling in his equipment and got started. It should be done in a couple weeks. Hallelujah! I'm SOOOO excited! Once it's finished, Lisa and Kyle (and Kylee of course) will be moving down there. And we'll be getting our toy room back! It has been great having Lisa and Kyle here, but we sure do miss having a toy room!

Here's some before pictures of the basement. They're not that great because I wasn't necessarily taking them with the intent of making them "before" pictures.

Peyton had fun playing down there while it was empty.

To help speed things up even faster, Kyle was enlisted to help today.

Here's Erik, our contractor.

Breakfast with "my girls"!

When I say "my girls" it could be referring to so many groups. I confuse my husband. I often refer to Ember & Kya as "the girls", and I used to (and still do) call my Young Women "my girls". But one other group that I always refer to as this is my high school friends. There were a variety of girls (and of course guys) that I was friends with in high school, but there are 3 girls I specifically call "my girls". The 4 of us try to get together as often as we can, but lately our get togethers are few and far between. Lyndsey lived out of state for a while, but has been back for a couple years. Angel has been living out of state for quite a few years and just recently moved back. And Anj works full time. Even though we're all finally back in Utah it's been hard to find a time when all of us can get together. But all of us, minus Anj, got together at my house last week for breakfast. I made them my specialty and my favorite meal IN THE WORLD....."Stuffed French Toast". There are many versions of this delicious meal, but don't be fooled. Not all Stuffed French Toast is created equal. Originally I fell in love with the kind that they used to serve at Village Inn many years ago. Anj and I would often ditch school to go to Village Inn for this tasty treat. Then they stopped serving it. About 6 years ago IHOP came up with their own version and introduced it just a few days before my birthday. So Matthew, knowing that I LOVED it, decided to take me there for my birthday. They sucked! They were nothing like the ones from Village Inn. So Matthew set out on a quest to find a good recipe. He found one and for Mother's Day he prepared it for me. It is absolute heaven and now it has become a tradition at our house to make it for my birthday breakfast and Mother's Day.

Anyway, enough about that deliciousness..... I had a great time with my girls and was sad to see them go because who knows when we'll actually get together again. We of course had to do our traditional picture taking, but since we didn't have another grown up around to take it, we enlisted Lyndsey's 4 year old to take it. Her first attempt looked like this:

Here's our cute little photographer.....

This one actually turned out pretty good all things considered.....

Thanks for the fun times, Angel and Lyndsey! We missed you Anj!!!

For any of you who would like to create heaven for yourself, here is the recipe for it plus the DELICIOUS syrup that goes on top:

Stuffed French Toast
1 loaf of French bread (I prefer the Walmart kind for this recipe)
8 oz. package of cream cheese (you may want to go with light - this recipe is loaded with calories)
1/4 - 1/3 cup of orange marmalade
3 eggs
1/3 cup milk

Prepare "stuffing" by mixing the cream cheese (softened) with the marmalade and set aside. Prepare the egg mixture by beating the eggs and milk together and set aside. Then cut the bread into 1 1/2" thick slices. Cut a slit into the top of each slice that allows you to put the stuffing inside the bread. Put the cream cheese mixture inside each slice then coat each side in the egg mixture and place on griddle. Brown each side.

Orange Syrup
1/2 C sugar
1/2 C butter
6 oz. concentrate orange juice

Mix all ingredients together in a saucepan on the stove. Cook over medium heat for about 10 minutes. (I put this together and let it be cooking while I make the SFT. It's usually perfectly done by the time the SFT is ready.)