Laura's Loopy Life

What I'm going to do this summer...

2010-05-28T09:08:00.007-06:00

Today is the last day of school and it's such a bittersweet day. I'm looking forward to not having such a structured schedule, not having to worry about getting the kids out the door by a certain time, allowing late nights every now and then, etc.... BUT, it seems like every summer I get more and more stressed about how I'm going to keep the kids entertained! So I've been sitting here stressing about it and then I remembered this list that I found in Kya's room the other day....

What I'm going to do this summer

By Kya Cluff

1. Crystal Springs (I have no idea where she got this idea!)

2. Play outside
3. Play board games
4. Make stuff out of paper
5. Have a campout on the trampoline
6. Do manacures and pedacures (only things she misspelled on the entire list)
7. Water balloon fight
8. Play in our pool
9. Spy on Ember (ha ha, she cracks me up!)
10. Movie
11. Sing primary songs
12. Have a party on the trampoline
13. Go on a treasure hunt
14. Play with the family
15. Play basketball
16. Play baseball
17. Go to the park
18. Play on the trampoline together (Together with WHO?)
19. Play with Q-Tip (our cat)

(and yes, it was color-coded just like this!)

This list made me feel so much better! I love how simple it is and how easily entertained kids can prove to be. They don't need costly outings or expensive vacations. Sometimes I think as adults we go to too much of an extreme to make sure our kids are entertained, when it's really just life's simple pleasures that they want. I mean, sure it's great to do those things every once in a while if we have the time and money to do so. But don't rule out the simple and easy things.

I think with the exception of Crystal Springs (and hey, maybe even that!), I could help her accomplish everything on this list!

Here's to a fun and simple summer!!!

Summer fun brings.....March babies!

2010-05-24T13:31:00.009-06:00

The month of March brought THREE new babies to our circle of family and friends. All three couples wanted the sex of the baby to be a surprise. I could never do that! But it did make it very exciting to find out what each one of them had. We were guessing they'd all be girls, but we were only right with one.

On March 1st our close friends, Kalun and Kristi Merrill, welcomed a baby GIRL they named Addison Emma. She was 7 lbs. 6 oz. and 20 inches. Such a beautiful baby! Here she is at 2 days old:

Then Matthew's brother Dave and his wife Kenia welcomed a baby BOY on March 12th. They named him Joaquin K after both of the grandpa's middle names. He was 9 lbs. 2 oz. and 22 inches!!! What a big boy! He already started out big, but for one reason after another we didn't get to see him until he was 16 days old, so he hardly even looked like a newborn by then!

And finally, my brother Chuck and his wife Ginger welcomed a baby BOY on March 18th. He was 7 lbs. 1 oz. and 20 inches. Ginger had him naturally. I think she's crazy, but to each his own! ;) About 2 days after he was born they finally came up with a name for him....Zaxton Kalan. Of course they had to go with another Z name! (Their other two are Zailey and Zenick.) We had a fun time guessing what crazy name they'd come up with! If names were allowed in Scrabble, his name would be worth a lot! His middle name is a combination of both of the grandpa's middle names, Kay and Alan.

We drove all the way up to Bear Lake to see him a couple days after he was born and planned to spend the weekend so we could help out with their other two children and make meals, etc... Well, after the first day of being there I got really sick and we had to leave early so we didn't get to spend nearly as much time with them as hoped, but they came down a month later for Kya's baptism and we got to see him again. He was still tiny, but didn't quite have that newborn look anymore!

Welcome to the world Addison, Joaquin, and Zaxton!!!

Itty Bitty Ball

2010-05-24T12:13:00.006-06:00

Logan played Itty Bitty Ball again this year. Same as last year it was the one that has a little of everything.....baseball, basketball, soccer, volleyball, and football. The name of their team was Team Batman! His coach this year was much better! I found out later that it was a girl from Kalun & Kristi's ward. She was great! Being a whole year older made a HUGE difference. He participated a LOT more and actually did pretty well all things considered. Although, he did still: get easily distracted, do a lot of weird dancing, act aloof every once in a while and....play with his shirt....A LOT!!! I've found this to be a common theme for kids his age. I'd look around the room at the other kids to see if they were doing it too. Logan was definitely not alone!

He and his teammates also thought it was cool to show off their muscles!

And there was always candy at the end of each day of course. One of the best parts!

Logan had pretty good form during volleyball. He did surprisingly well!

Logan was one of the biggest kids on his team which meant he got one of the biggest shirts. This picture just doesn't give you that great of an idea, but it was pretty darn big!

This picture gives you a little perspective. It was big enough for ME for heavens sake!

Peyton had a lot of fun as a spectator!

Logan being the goalie on Soccer Day

Lined up ready to play some football...

Catching the football - apparently Logan thought he was going to make a hoop for it to go through!

Getting ready to kick the football...

Practicing throwing it through targets. Logan was actually pretty darn good at this one!

Logan in his football stance I guess. We made it all the way through the game of flag football this year without Logan throwing punches when people tried to steal his flag thing. ;)

This lady made me laugh. Seriously? Check out that camera! She looked like paparazzi! I half expected to find my kid on the front of a tabloid!

Final day - They played a bunch of silly games, played with the parachute (one of the highlights!) and then Lenny the Lion came!

Way to go, Logan!

Logan's warming up to Lenny. He agreed to take a picture with him as long as he could stay this far away from him!

Peyton is still very unsure about Lenny the Lion. She would NOT go near him!

It was another great year! Go Team Batman!!!

Seriously???

2010-05-24T09:47:00.005-06:00

The only thought that came to mind when I looked out the window this morning was, "SERIOUSLY?!?!?"

I had been waiting to put out my new summery welcome mat until I was SURE it was done snowing. I finally put it out last Monday because SURELY it had to be done, right? Wrong! It looks a little silly and out of place. Come on, I've lived in Utah all my life.....I really should've expected this.

My poor plants and lilies that we planted on Saturday! Why oh why didn't I procrastinate....again?!

September came down this morning wearing a cute little spring outfit. I told her to look outside. She did. She still wanted to wear it. Then she asked me where her black boots were. I had put them away already seeing as how we shouldn't have needed them anymore! I told her it would look kind of silly, but the more I thought about it, it just seemed to fit with the weather! So we went and scrounged up her boots. She left the house looking like a perfect combination of winter and spring, just like it did outside!

I guess it will be a pajama day for us. And now maybe I'll finally have a chance to catch up on all my blogging!!! Maybe it will be a good day after all! :)

ROLLERCOASTER!!!

2010-05-11T13:31:00.006-06:00

I know, I know, it's been a while since I've blogged. I've been meaning to and wanting to. It's been a nagging thought in the back of my head for weeks and weeks. And not in a bad way. I LOVE to blog! I love having something to look back on and remind me of special occasions or random silly happenings. My blog is my journal and without it I'd probably forget so much detail about all of the events and things in my life. Life just gets so busy sometimes, which is exactly WHY I haven't gotten any blogging done the past couple months.

Take a look at this calendar:

Why am I complaining about being so busy when the one and only thing on my calendar for last month was Kya's birthday?! I had to laugh when we went to turn the calendar to May and realized that that was the only thing that ever got written down for the entire month of April. In reality we were SO busy that we didn't even have time to ever write anything down!

Not only have the past couple months been busy, but they have been such an emotional rollercoaster! I've spent a LOT of time crying the past few weeks, but thank goodness not ALL of it was for bad/sad reasons. There were quite a few really great, happy moments too. It's funny how just when you think things are going great (not perfect, but great) and you're finally on top of things....life has a way of throwing a curve ball at you. I'm trying to do better at rolling with the punches. Many days I just feel punched!

So, before I let any more time pass and forget too much, I need to hurry and blog about all of those moments. But just to avoid an anxiety attack from feeling completely overwhelmed (which has been a pretty constant theme lately), I think I'll ease back into things and try to do just a couple posts a day. One of these days I'll be back on top of it. Or, maybe not! And if not, I'll TRY not to guilt myself over it. Because after all, there are more important things in life. Like MAKING the memories that are blog-worthy, but may or may not ever actually make it onto the blog!

New National Holiday: Crazy Outfit Day

2010-02-26T12:53:00.005-07:00

I don't remember exactly what it was for, but today at the girls school they had "Crazy Outfit Day". They have been so excited about this day and have had their outfits picked out for a while. This is how they looked when they left this morning:

I love watching my kids get so excited about stuff like this and see how creative they are. They make me laugh!!

Note: It's still a little wet outside from the snow yesterday so they actually wore real shoes (mismatched of course), but they took their slippers to change into at school.

Happy Valentine's Day!

2010-02-14T19:31:00.004-07:00

Valentine's Day in the Cluff household is not complete without:

and

A new tradition that apparently started though was this:

I think it's a Valentine's love fort!

We had a fun day celebrating Valentine's Day today. This day is an extra special day for Matthew and I. For Valentine's Day back in 1999 my sister and I invited our boyfriends over for dinner at our apartment. Later that night Matthew actually proposed to me. It was a complete shock.....to him and to me. It was not something that he planned. It just felt right and he seized the moment! We had only been dating for 2 weeks! So Valentine's has always been a day that has been that much more special for us. Every year we re-create the meal that I made for Matthew that Valentine's Day 11 years earlier. Over the years the day has evolved into a fun "family" holiday. I love all FIVE of my valentines!

One last thing I wanted to share....
Among the candy that September came home with from her school Valentine party on Friday was one of those typical Necco hearts that said:

The world sure is a different place than when I was bringing home Necco hearts from school Valentine's parties!

I hope you all had a fun Valentine's Day and you got to spend it with at least one person you love!!

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!

Haircuts!

2010-02-12T10:30:00.004-07:00

September was in DESPERATE need of a haircut (she had been trying to grow it out, but it wasn't working too well - it was just looking "stringy"), and both Kya and Peyton could use a trim. My friend Katie's daughter, Annie (who is a good friend of Kya's) was wanting her hair cut too. They were out of school last Friday, so we decided to make a GIRLS DAY of it and took them all to get their hair cut. Then we went home and did manicures. What a fun, girly day! I forgot to take before pictures, but here are the afters:

The girl that did Kya's hair was done before anyone else, so she decided to curl it. I LOVED IT! I wish I could figure out how to do it because it really just gave so much volume to her face. She looked like a completely different person! But alas, I lack skills in the hair department. I've tried and tried to recreate this look with no success. :(

September's was a little shorter than I requested.....but as long as there isn't anything big coming up (and there's not), I'd always rather have them go too short then leave it too long. It's that much longer we get to wait until a haircut is needed! She looks so cute! I've always loved her hair short.

This was Peyton's first REAL haircut. It kind of made me sad! I think we cut off the majority of what she had left of her curls. :( All of the girls at the salon thought she was so stinkin cute. I would have to agree! She is so stinkin cute, but man is she hard to get a good picture of! She is one of my favorite subjects to photograph because she is STUNNINGLY beautiful, but I can never get a good shot of her because she's also a complete character!!! I couldn't get her to sit still to get a good shot that would show off her haircut....but as she was running away from me I hurried and snapped one that kind of gives you an idea.

Guess who got glasses???

2010-02-03T20:19:00.000-07:00

Doesn't she look so cute and smart?!

We've known for a few months now that September needed glasses because she would squint to see EVERYTHING! But we had to wait until open enrollment with our insurances....and then we still had to wait for January when her coverage would start. This girl was counting down the days til her appointment. She was so excited to get glasses! We found out at the appointment just how desperately this girl needed them. Her vision is 20/200!!! For those who don't understand what that means (I didn't), it means that things the average person can see at 200 feet away September would have to be 20 feet away! Holy crap! The dr. joked that he wasn't sure how she'd made it so far in life. ;) She has had them for two weeks now and still just loves them! Being able to see is really an amazing thing!

Christgiving Thankmas!

2010-02-03T19:35:00.008-07:00

We started a tradition with my family last year of celebrating Christmas and Thanksgiving together. We call it "Christgiving Thankmas". We do all the gift giving and the big feast all in one get-together. It's the best of both worlds! Last year we did it in between the two holidays, but because of scheduling conflicts this year we ended up doing it early January. Plus, we have 4 birthdays in my family ranging from 12/28 - 1/26, so we celebrated them too! We did it in Bear Lake again in one of Chuck's and Ginger's cabins just like last year.

My camera went missing during all of the gift opening so I didn't get any pics of that, darn it! But here a few fun, random snapshots I took:

Joey, what are you doing???

Kya, Kaylee, and September enjoying looking at the photo books my Mom made.

My Dad wearing the new hoodie and pj bottoms we got him.

Emily showing off her drawing skills.

Why is Zenick not happy? Maybe his Dad just gave him VINEGAR to drink! Chuck played a mean trick on him and gave him a cup with vinegar in it that he thought was just water. Poor kid!!

Peyton showing off the mess she just made of herself. Who left the red marker out?!?

Nick brought up his girlfriend, Sami. Last year Joey brought up Emily and 5 months later they got married. We'll see.... :)

Zenick is obsessed with tags!

Peyton can touch the ceiling!

Nick too! ;)

Bonnie making her famous and delicious egg nog! Yum yum!!!

I don't remember what was going on here, but apparently Peyton thought it was TOO LOUD and thought she'd help protect the ears of the innocent!

We brought up our Wii and the new Super Mario Bro's game, which is kind of a throwback to the Super Mario Bros. on the original Nintendo gaming system. It was so much fun to see the little kid come out in everyone......ahhh, childhood memories!

I LOVE everybody's faces! We're all so serious!!

Well, except Chuckie....

Wow, this must have been a really tense moment....

Not for long...

The whole trip was sooooo much fun! Great food, great company, and so many great memories made! Thanks Fam! Can't wait til next year!!

Christmas!

2010-02-03T19:18:00.000-07:00

For Christmas this year we did things a little differently. We put in a request with the big guy and he came through. Each member of the family got 4 different gifts: something they WANT, something they NEED, something to WEAR, something to READ. Plus, they got a few things in their stocking....some fun, some traditional. I definitely think we've found ourselves a tradition!

The whole day was great. The kids actually let us sleep in til about 7:30. We opened gifts and took our time. Then we made a big pancake breakfast....another tradition. We all stayed in our pj's all day and just had a nice, laid back day playing with all of the new things we got and spending time as a family. As usual, Matthew's parents came over later in the afternoon and spent time with the kids and let them show off all their new things.

Here's the annual "right before we open gifts" picture!

The kids with their stockings.

Q got so excited about all of the wrapping paper! It was like, well....Christmas morning! ;)

Logan had a very Wii Christmas. All of his gifts had something to do with the Wii and more specifically the new Super Mario Bros. game. The nunchuk was a bit of a stretch....it fit into his "need" category, but technically he did need one since the first one we had Logan decided to cut in two with a pair of scissors. In his defense, he was only 2 at the time, but we were still very upset.

September and Kya wearing their new puffer vests.

Rock out, Kya!

My new camcorder/camera.....but somehow Matthew spent the majority of the day "playing" with it. Hmmmm......

We thought Pey was just snuggling under the tree with Q.....

Nope! The little thief had taken Logan's hot tamales and was trying to hide somewhere so we couldn't see her!

Q loved getting in on all the action.

Here's the fam playing the new Super Mario Bros. game. It is sooo much fun!

While the rest of the family was playing, Peyton was in the kitchen with me helping to make breakfast. She was so cute!

What a great day! We felt so blessed!!

Christmas Eve

2010-01-05T21:57:00.004-07:00

On Christmas Eve we always go over to my in-laws and do the big gift exchange with all of his siblings and their families. We were missing Dave and Kenia this year because they were in Miami visiting her parents

This year it was I who made the "birthday cake" for Jesus. White cake with homemade peppermint cream cheese frosting.....YUM!!! I love this tradition! And speaking of tradition, my in-laws also gave all of the kids some new pj's (they get double because we always get some for them too), and then we went home and had the traditional "sleepy" hot chocolate. What a fun Christmas Eve!

Peyton Claus

Peyton opening her Tinkerbell coloring set

Wow, could he be any giddier?

My gift was in a very oversized package. I totally thought it was a gag gift and that it was going to turn out to be a gift card inside. Turns out I was wrong. It was a very cute metal wall hanging. Now I just need to figure out where to put it....

Here are the kids being very goofy posing in their new pj's from Gma and Gpa Cluff

The kids enjoyed their "sleepy" hot chocolate....although it looks like it originally had an adverse effect on Logan.

Peyton REALLY enjoyed hers!!!

Sledding

2010-01-05T21:40:00.006-07:00

I'm not really a huge fan of sledding (unless I'm bundled to the extreme!), but my kids LOVE it and are always begging us to take them. So we took them this year. We went up to the golf course right above my parents house and they had the absolute BEST hills! We met my brother, Nick, and his girlfriend, Sami, up there. The kids had a BLAST and did not want to leave. We pretty much had to drag them off the mountain after it started getting dark.

They were even able to get ME up the mountain with my bum foot. We "waterproofed" it with some grocery bags, and then they hauled me up the mountain on a sled! Originally I didn't want to go up at all, but I really wanted pictures and knew there was no way it would work if I stayed in the car. I would have been too far away. So this worked quite well.

Here's my "square" child! She's my own little "Ralphie" from "A Christmas Story"! LOL :)

Here's Nick sporting his Santa snowsuit. He really is St. Nick! ;) Last year he went skiing in this outfit....complete with beard. No beard this year.....snow sticks to it and freezes his face!

Logan's cheeks were BRIGHT RED and he looked SOOOOO freezing, but he just kept going and going and going.....

Could my square child be any cuter?!?

Peyton and "St. Nick"

This was one of the views from the area we went to. It was absolutely breathtaking! I don't often find snow beautiful, so this was a big moment for me. ;)

Choir concerts

2009-12-31T11:34:00.003-07:00

At the beginning of the school year a friend of mine passed on some information about a gospel-oriented youth choir that her daughter had been a part of the year before and was planning on being in during the upcoming year. September and Kya LOVE to sing and it sounded like a great opportunity and it was quite inexpensive compared to most extracurricular things. But money was really tight at the time and I just didn't think we could do it. But they had scholarships available and so I applied for one. They granted us a partial one with the agreement that I would be the "roll taker" for class every week. So we decided to do it and we passed the word around to other friends and September's best friend, Ariel, ended up wanting to do it as well. But they didn't end up getting to be together after all. When I originally called the director to see if it would even be possible for Kya to be in it because she was only 7 and the age requirement was 8, he said he wanted them both to come in and audition so he could hear them and help make the decision whether or not he felt she would be "mature" enough to be a part of it. There are two different choirs: a "prep" choir for kids 8-12, and an auditioned "concert" choir for kids 8-18. Well, their auditions went so well that not only did they make an exception for Kya, but September was invited to be in the concert choir! She was actually a little bummed originally because she wasn't going to be able to be with Ariel, but after reminding her that this wasn't going to be anything that they were really going to be able to interact at anyway and it was such a great opportunity, she was o.k. with it.....nervous but o.k. The first day we went September felt really out of place. She wasn't the youngest, but she was the smallest, especially considering the director had placed her in the Alto section as well which was pretty much entirely teenage girls. At first I didn't know how I felt about this and either did September. Sure, she has a pretty low voice, but just because you sing lower doesn't necessarily mean you're an Alto. But then my mother-in-law had a talk with September about it and suddenly her attitude was, "ANYONE can sing the melody!" Ha ha, I loved it. But it really is true, anyone can pick out the melody, but if you can learn alto then you can obviously sing both parts. So in the end it actually turned out to be something she was very excited about.

I have to admit, I am not one who necessarily "loves" listening to choirs and after enrolling them and looking at their schedule and all of the dates they'd be performing, I suddenly wasn't so excited anymore of having to attend concert after concert. But my mind was quickly changed as soon as I heard them singing. From the very first rehearsal I was absolutely blown away! Not only did they just jump right in with some pretty difficult songs (within the first 10 minutes of being there they were singing Handel's "Messiah"!), but they also sounded amazing! Even the prep choir sounded great. I was actually looking forward to their concerts!

The first opportunity the Concert Choir had to perform was at an Interfaith Celebration at a church here in Lehi. They did really well and afterward the kids enjoyed interacting with the LIVE nativity they had set up outside. I've never seen a live nativity before and at first we didn't think it WAS real, but suddenly the animals started moving! The kids had a blast getting to touch the animals!

Their next performance (and the one and only one for the prep choir) was held at the Alpine Tabernacle. For their grand entrance they all came walking up through the aisles and from the sides of the stage carrying these fake little candle things. It looked so cool. Logan and Peyton were being very obnoxious and hard to deal with (it had been a long day and Pey had not had a nap), but you could still feel the spirit very strongly from these sweet little spirits!

Here's Kya!

Here's September.....and proof of our "oops"! She got a little confused about what they were supposed to wear. She told me that they were supposed to wear red or black or white. I asked her if she was sure and that it wasn't just for the prep choir who didn't have uniform attire like the concert choir. She was pretty insistent that it was everyone. So she wore her black dress and we arrived to find the rest of the concert choir in their uniform blue skirts and white shirts! Oops! No big deal, right? We didn't think so until the very end when the director had them all stay up on the stage to take a few pictures......that they were going to use to promote their "tour" in the Spring. So now as if she didn't already stand out enough because of how tiny she is, she'll stand out even more. What do you do? ;)

The final opportunity we had to watch September perform (for the season) was at a benefit concert with Michael Ballam as the main performer! I completely forgot my camera and was so bummed!! The choir rehearsals are at the American Heritage school, which is a private LDS school (it's across the street from the Mt. Timp temple). Because it's a private school they do different things throughout the year to raise money for the school. Every Christmas they do a big concert thing as one of the means of raising money and for the past couple years they have been fortunate enough to have Michael Ballam come and be the main performer. The choir is an extracurricular thing and is separate from the one at the school, but they were invited to join the school choir, as well as the orchestra, in being a part of this event. Originally we didn't plan on going because it was pretty expensive, but then their director announced that they were going to be going on "tour" in the Spring and would need to raise money for it. The kids were given the opportunity to sell tickets to the concert to raise money and all but $5 of the tickets was going to go straight into their account. So we figured that we were going to either have to pay later or pay the extra $5 per ticket and go to the concert. I'm so glad we ended up going! It was an amazing night!! Basically, Michael Ballam gave the history behind many well-known, yet little known about (as far as the meanings and stories behind them), Christmas songs. It was incredible to hear the stories and it gave me a completely different respect and understanding for these beautiful Christmas songs that we nonchalantly sing every year without having a clue what they're about or where they came from. Stephen R. Covey also did some narration throughout the night, and President Uchtdorf and Elder Oaks and their wives were in attendance! The orchestra and the combined choirs sang some songs separately, and some right along with Michael Ballam. So now I can say that my daughter has performed WITH Michael Ballam!!

One more cool thing.....at one point during the night the choir had left for a while and would be back at the end. When they came back though, September was missing! I was so scared that something had happened and that she was either sick or hurt. I almost got up to go find out what had happened. But then they did some presentations of some special thank you gifts to the key performers and participants. Suddenly there was MY tiny little daughter up on the stage handing out some of the gifts!

The spirit was so strong that night and it is a night I won't soon forget! It definitely put me in the Christmas spirit!!

Riding in a one-horse open sleigh....

2009-12-31T09:49:00.000-07:00

My kids love the part of Jingle Bells where it talks about riding in a one-horse open sleigh and have thought it would be a fun thing to do. And this year they got to do just that! There's a bunch of shops up near my parents house that puts on this event every year where some of the shops have little stands out front with goodies that you can go around and snack on. A few of the shops have different special deals going. Some were giving away freebies. Plus, there was Santa.....and even more exciting than Santa.....a horse drawn carriage ride!!! That was the single most thing the kids were looking forward to and indeed it ended up being the highlight of their night! It was a pretty chilly night (it was one of the first big snowfalls of the season), but we all bundled up and had a great time! I think it may be a new tradition!

My Mom carrying around my little Eskimo! Too cute!!

Here we are on the carriage ride. I wish we could have gotten a picture with all of us in it, but we had to take a picture of one side and then have them take a picture of our side.

Does my face look a bit tan? O.k. it's freakishly tan! There was a salon offering free spray tans for your face. I couldn't pass that one up! It looked ridiculous that night, but it actually looked pretty great the rest of the week. I would totally consider doing it again if it didn't cost an arm and a leg.

Here are the kids standing in front of the "our" horse. (There were 2 different carriages.)

They had these cool little portable fire pits set up every few feet. It gave the place a really cool look and helped keep us warm.

We went over to the boutique shop that my Mom has some items in. Peyton settled right in to this little rocking chair and found this stuffed animal.

Goodbye Pilot.....Hello Armada!!!

2009-12-31T09:16:00.001-07:00

Can YOU tell the difference between the top picture and the bottom picture. Because apparently most people can't! :) We replaced the Pilot with an Armada three and half weeks ago....and only a handful of friends and family have even noticed. I guess most people just don't notice cars or deal with them as much as we do. Or maybe people have just lost track of what vehicle we currently have. (After all, this is #16 for us!) And sure, they're both SUV's and they're both silver, but come on people! They're totally different. It's not that I really care that people haven't noticed, I actually think it's kind of funny. It just shows me how different people are. I am just someone who notices things like that pretty easily. Oh well, what other people haven't noticed yet, we certainly have. Like how much more ROOM it has! Don't get me wrong, we LOVED our Pilot. Best car we'd ever had. It was great for hauling kids all over town. But going on vacation....ha! It just did not have much cargo space. And I think the kids were sick of holding all of their own luggage on their laps with them. I'm only half joking. But the Armada has SOOO much more room!!! I was a little nervous that it would feel too big and I'd be scared to drive it, but I actually feel VERY comfortable. It's actually great for little people like me because the foot pedals adjust and come up higher so I don't have to sit really close in order to reach them.

It was kind of sad to say goodbye to the Pilot. After all, we'd had it for 3 1/2 years, which is a LONG time for us! We'd been back and forth for a while between getting a bigger car (we'd had an Armada in mind for over a year) or just getting a car top carrier to use for vacations. Big problem though, the Pilot didn't have a luggage rack. We've been traveling quite a bit lately and plan on doing a lot more in the coming years, so we started looking more seriously at Armadas. We thought it would be at least another year away before we could afford to do it, but then we saw the beauty in the picture below at an unbelievable price that we just could not pass up. AND it had pretty much everything we were looking for.....not necessarily fancy bells and whistles, but things that were important to us. So even though it's been in the plans for quite a while now, it was still a pretty spontaneous decision. And one that I don't regret one bit!!

A boy and his tree :)

2009-12-22T16:02:00.001-07:00

When we started decorating for Christmas a few weeks ago we had a little tree that the girls have always used to put in their room. Logan was a little sad that HE didn't have a tree to put in his room, so when we were out shopping a couple days later we saw a tiny little tree that would go perfectly in his room and it was very inexpensive so we bought it. He was SOOOO excited for his very own tree!! Right away he told us that this was a "boy" tree and he felt like it should have a name. So he thought of the best boy name he could think of. He named it "Matthew"! How cute is he?!? A few days later we were reading scriptures and Ember was thumbing through the Bible and asked, "Where's Matthew?".....to which Peyton quickly replied, "He's in Logan's room!"

Birthday getaway to Midway

2009-12-22T15:50:00.000-07:00

For Matthew's birthday this year we decided to go on a quick one-night getaway up to Midway as a family. Our timeshare has a place up there and the kids have been wanting to go up there since we got the timeshare a little over a year ago. It's great because it's so close to home, and yet you still feel like you're "getting away". Plus, it has a pool.....which is one of the main reasons that the kids have been dying to go! It was a total treat for Ember and Kya because we even pulled them out of school to go. They're both doing so well in school, we figured one day couldn't hurt. We went up to Park City the next day and did a little shopping at the outlets. It was a fun, relaxing day!

Here's a picture of the place we stayed. Nothing fancy, but it was nice. I love the whole "Swiss" look of Midway. Even the churches have that "look" to them.

Matthew LOVES Hot Tamales. It's tradition for the kids to always buy them for him for his birthday. This year we went one step further and we bought one for him from EACH of us! They lasted about 3 days! :)

Piano recitals

2009-12-22T15:35:00.000-07:00

First of all I would like to say that my mother-in-law is a saint! A few years ago for Christmas my in-laws gave us a keyboard for Christmas as our family gift. Shortly after, my mother-in-law started giving September piano lessons. (As soon as she was reading well enough.) Originally she told us that she could only do it for a short while (just the basics) and then we'd need to find her a real teacher. Well, here we are 4 years later and she is still doing them....along with Kya who started a couple years later. She has done it all for no charge and she has even always provided all of their books as well. AND, most of the time she comes to OUR house for their lessons! Could it get any better??? What an amazing woman she is and I am very lucky to have her as my mother-in-law! September and Kya both are very musically talented and this has really helped cultivate that talent.

Once a year or so she even has them do a recital. We just got to enjoy one a few weeks ago. They both did a wonderful job!

Here's Kya doing a duet with my mother-in-law.

September performing one of her pieces.

September and Keely (my niece, who she also gives lessons to) doing a duet together. These girls LOVE to play the piano together!

Halloween!

2009-12-22T15:14:00.002-07:00

Halloween turned out a lot different than planned this year. I had such big plans to do a full "Peter Pan" theme. Peyton is a huge Tinkerbell fan and my Mom happened to find a cute little Tinkerbell costume at a garage sale, so I thought it would be a great idea to kind of build around that. September was going to be Wendy, Kya was going to be Peter Pan (we talked her into being a boy by telling her that in most stage productions it's a girl who plays him), and Logan was going to be Captain Hook. (He's been a pirate twice before and he makes a very cute one!) But I didn't start thinking about everyone elses costumes soon enough, on top of the fact that I ended up with swine flu a week before Halloween, so those plans all had to change at the last minute! My mom to the rescue....again!! She had found a ladybug costume that would fit September (which she actually had already planned on wearing for school since "Wendy" without the rest of the Peter Pan crew would not really look like much of anything). The costume came with its own little tutu thing, but September wanted to wear the one my Mom had made her this summer since it coincidentally was a ladybug themed one. She had even made some cute little ladybug hair things to go with it that would be perfect. Then, that gave me the idea just to have Kya wear the tutu that my Mom had made her and just have her wear her dance leotard underneath paired with her old ballet slippers that actually still fit her and voila....she was a dancer! Then, I borrowed a football player costume from my sweet neighbor friend, Katie, for Logan to wear. It would have been fun for my original idea to have come to fruition....but this was a LOT less work!!

Everybody had been sick to one degree or another that week and I had kept September and Kya home from school for a few days. They were very happy to only have slight coughs by Friday because that was the day their school was going to be doing their costume parade and parties. So I let them go....even though I wanted to be selfish and keep my "helpers" home!

Peyton was still feeling a little sick. You can see it in her eyes. I can't believe I actually got a picture with a happy face and even a smile because she was GRUMPY that day! I completely forgot to have her wear her wings until I saw them in my room the next day. Oops! But she is complete with eyes watering, boogers running down her face, and a nice red mark on her forehead from running into something!

While I was taking the picture I just knew something was missing. Duh, I had forgotten the black marks under his eyes! The only thing I really had to use was make-up, which Logan was a little leery of letting me put on him. Really? He chose that moment to be a "man". He wears tutus and leotards and plays girl things all the time....but suddenly NOW he decides he's too cool for that? I guess being in a football uniform made him feel very manly!!

Peyton getting candy out of her teeth. We were only going to let her have one piece that night since she was sick, but she kept sneaking into the treat bucket while we weren't looking!

Logan and Peyton were very sad when they saw September and Kya heading out the door with their friends to go trick-or-treating. We hadn't been planning on taking them out because they were sick, but it broke Matthew's heart to see them all dressed up but not able to go anywhere so he talked me into letting him put their coats on and take them to 2 houses. They ended up going to 4 or 5. They were absolutely thrilled!

Can you get any cuter than this???

Even though it was a little disappointing not doing the original costumes I wanted, and not getting to do some of the usual Halloween activities (carving pumpkins, going to the trunk-or-treat, watching the kids costume parade at school), it still turned out to be a fun Halloween for the kids and not much work for me!

Bear Lake with Merrill's

2009-12-22T14:48:00.000-07:00

During Fall Break back in October we went up to my brothers cabin in Bear Lake and spent a few days. The main purpose for the trip was to do a deep cleaning of both of his cabins as a thank you for always letting us come stay in them. We hurried and got most of the cleaning done early on in the trip because Merrill's were going to be coming up and joining us a couple days later.

Chuck and Ginger stopped by to see us the first night and had just come from a ward Halloween party. Here's Zenick and Zailey dressed up as gnomes! At first I thought they were Hansel and Gretel. Either way they were adorable and hilarious! I couldn't stop looking at them....and laughing. They are too cute!!

Here's a shot of the sunrise one of the mornings. It is so amazing to see it just coming up over the lake like that.

Tate started eating before we said the blessing on the food. It was too much trouble to put the food down so he just left it in his mouth and folded his arms. We all had a good laugh!

Tate and Logan INSISTED on sleeping together on the top bunk (which is only twin size) even though no one was on the bottom (and it's full size). We tried to convince one of them to sleep on the bottom, but everyone knows that the top bunk is the coolest! So we let them. We went in a couple hours later to check on them and found them like this:

We let the kids get in the hot tub.....and they stayed in there for about 3 hours!

Kalun enjoying time coloring with the kids. He's just one of the kids! :)

Girls weekend!

2009-12-22T14:16:00.004-07:00

It was Kristi's big 3-0 a couple months ago and for it she wanted to do a "Girls Weekend Getaway" in Park City. Kalun had rented a condo for Friday night and we had planned on doing some shopping and whatever other fun girl things we could think of. I think I was looking forward to her birthday just as much as she was! Besides the two of us there were three other girls and they were all from her ward. I know Vennessa really well, but I didn't know the other two. You'd think this might have made things a little awkward, but not at all. I actually clicked right away with both of these other girls and together we all had such a fun weekend. Turns out that all FOUR of them were pregnant (all in different stages), but we went the entire weekend without one drop of throw up! Lots of nausea and extreme exhaustion, sure.....but no throw up! Friday night we went to a fun restaurant whose name I have totally spaced otherwise I'd give it a plug because it was great food! We went back to the condo and watched a movie and munched on treats. We brought so many treats, we probably could have gone without dinner and just gone straight to the condo and snacked the night away! As we were settling in to watch the movie we noticed that there was dog hair all over the couch! This was great considering that 3 out of the 5 of us were allergic to dogs! We found this lovely framed piece of info explaining that one of the owners of the condo is a dog trainer and we assume that they occasionally must bring some of the dogs with them when they stay. The dog hair was not funny, but we got quite a laugh at this "custom framed" bit of info:

We only made it to midnight til Vennessa and Michelle couldn't hold their eyes open any longer. So Kristi, Brenda, and I took our conversation into one of the bedrooms and continued it til 3 am. We were interrupted at about 1:30 by this.....

We were sitting there on the bed when suddenly I thought I felt something crawling on my arm and looked down and sure enough there was a spider crawling along the pillow! All three of us completely overreacted and started screaming. Sorry Vennessa and Michelle! Brenda smashed it on the pillow with a shoe and scooted it into the garbage, but apparently smooshing it on a soft surface didn't kill it completely. We were scared that it would crawl out of the garbage can so brave Brenda tied the top of it and then we pounded it again. It sounds so dumb now, but it was quite dramatic at 1:30 a.m. ;)

There were pictures of dogs ALL OVER the condo! There were literally about 20-30 pictures! This particular one kept freaking Brenda out! And yet, she ended up being the one to sleep right under it!

Vennessa being silly.

Group picture: Back - Kristi, Venessa, Michelle, Brenda - Me in the front holding the tissues we all got a laugh out of. You can't see too well in the picture, but the cleaning people had done something "fancy" with them, but it really just looked like someone had wadded them up and stuck them in there. So much for fancy!

Brenda had made a delicious trifle. We had eaten some on Friday night but there was still quite a bit left so as we were driving to the outlets to go shopping we all got a craving for more and whipped it out and dug in!

Shopping was fun and I actually even found a pair of pants that I loved enough to buy! This is a huge accomplishment for me because I hadn't bought new jeans in over a year, and it's been about three years since I've bought some that I absolutely love.

It was such a fun weekend and a great break from the kids! I think every Mom needs one of these every other month or so! Thanks for having a birthday Kristi and giving us a reason to do it!

My early Christmas present.

2009-12-21T12:22:00.003-07:00

Here I am 1 1/2 months behind on my blogging again! Day after day I feel guilty that I haven't done better. Then yesterday I was (fortunately and unfortunately) given an opportunity to catch up.

Yesterday morning we were racing around (as usual) to get ready for church. We were in an even bigger rush than usual because Matthew and I had forgotten that we had agreed to sub for September's primary class and we didn't have a lesson prepared. In my hurry I ran up the stairs and tripped, coming down on my foot in a very awkward way. I immediately knew this was an injury that I wasn't going to be walking away from. After waiting it out for an hour we decided it would be best to go to the Instacare to get it x-rayed. We called the Primary President and let her know that we weren't going to be able to sub anymore. Bless her heart, she's only been in for about a month and this time of year there are lots of people out of town or sick and I'm sure she already had people calling left and right at the last minute saying they couldn't make it. September and Kya wanted to go to church so we took Logan and Peyton over to my in-laws while we went to the Instacare. The verdict as of yesterday was that it probably wasn't broken and that it was just a really bad sprain or a torn ligament. So they wrapped it and put one of those special cast shoes on. They almost had to use a "pediatric" sized one because of my freakishly small feet! They also gave me crutches and man oh man, do I have sympathy on anyone who has to use those on an extended basis. I've used them for a total of 5 minutes probably and my armpits HURT!!! Then the Instacare called back today and the actual radiologist had taken a look at the x-rays and thinks it's possible that there IS a fracture! The dr. yesterday did say that sometimes a first x-ray won't show a fracture, and then if you do a second x-ray a week or two later that it can show up clear as day. So they told me to keep doing everything they told me yesterday and if it wasn't starting to feel better in a week or so to go back in and get it x-rayed again. So now it's just a waiting game.

I'm pretty frustrated by this whole thing because I do NOT have time for this. I am constantly on the go, and even more than usual this time of year! But I'm trying to find the silver lining and I guess this is it. I finally have a reason (well, FORCED to have a reason) to sit back and take things easy and get some things done that don't require movement.....like blogging! I'm choosing to look at it as an early Christmas present.....the gift of time! I surely wouldn't have chosen it to go this way, but I know that the Lord knows best and maybe this is what I need right now. So blogging here I come.....

New addition to the family.....

2009-11-04T19:34:00.001-07:00

Last month we went up to my cousin's house in Northern Utah to pick up a piano. It originally belonged to my grandparents on my Dad's side and since there are only 7 grandchildren on that side of the family and none of them were married or had a house of their own at the time that they passed away, there was nowhere for it to go. So my cousin on my Mom's side offered to "store" it at her house.....and that's where it's been the last 12 or so years. We've been dying to get our hands on it for a while now since September and Kya have been taking piano lessons for a few years and for the time being all we had was a keyboard. Things never worked out to go get until.....until last month finally. When we got there, this cute itty-bitty kitty greeted us at the door. It was love at first sight! Now you have to understand, I am a cat-lover BUT I am very picky about cats that I like. We've actually had 3 cats since we've been married and long story short, for one reason or another none of them lasted very long. After the last one (about 6 years ago) we had decided for multiple reasons that we would just never do another cat.....or any other pet for that matter. But then I laid eyes on this sweet thing. I loved it and cuddled it while the men got the piano moved into the trailer. My cousin kept telling me I could take it if I wanted and I kept telling her, "No, no, we can't do animals." Then as we were getting ready to leave I was saying my goodbyes and then Matthew said those magical words that I'm sure he has possibly regretted every now and then since....."If you really want her you can have her." Oh crap! I couldn't say no after that! So the next thing I know we were off and there was an itty-bitty kitty on my lap! She slept pretty much the whole way home.

The kids were SOOO excited when they saw her. All of them were really nervous about holding her at first though. I love this picture of Kya "trying" to hold her.....

Look how awkward Ember is trying to hold her.

Could you BE any lazier? Seriously?!?

We named her Q-Tip because as you can see she has a dark tail with a little white tip. Mostly we just call her "Q". We considered a suggestion my friend made to call her "Finch" in homage to our first cat that she is a complete replica of. His name was Atticus from "To Kill a Mockingbird". We considered it for a while, but Q just seemed to fit and the name had already stuck with the kids.

Logan is often found snuggling with her.

She got STUCK jumping down off of Logan!

Not joking. It was hilarious!

Peyton absolutely ADORES her and the first thing out of her mouth every morning is, "Where's kitty?" So one morning I decided to take her to her. I went in and Peyton had apparently gotten too hot and had undressed herself!

Peyton would hold her non-stop if you let her. She's actually pretty good with her for a 2 year old.....all things considered.

So far she has been a GREAT cat. She can be very playful and fun, but she'll also just sit and cuddle with you. I have to admit, life feels a little more complete with a pet!

The fruits/vegetables of my labor

2009-11-04T18:58:00.000-07:00

Take your pick on the title of this post. I'm still unsure whether people consider tomatoes a fruit or a vegetable. I'm convinced they are a vegetable, but they do produce seeds.....

Either way, these particular tomatoes were very exciting to me because they were from MY VERY OWN GARDEN!!! That's right, I planted a garden this year. O.k. so it only consisted of 3 plants, all of which were tomato, but still a garden nonetheless. I think next year we'll stick to 1 tomato plant and venture out into something else.....carrots maybe? I'm a big tomato-lover, but I think I got more than I bargained for with 3 plants. I was a little overzealous. Give me a break, it was my first garden!

The Flower & The Bee

2009-11-04T18:50:00.000-07:00

I was mowing the lawn a couple months ago and had to stop and go get the camera to take a picture of this mushroom before I ran over it. It was all stretched out and looked like a flower. As I got in close to take a picture I spotted a bee trying to make its way over to it. Apparently it was so believable as a flower that it was attracting bees! ;)

Can you spot the bee???

Katie's baby shower

2009-11-04T18:42:00.000-07:00

Laura, Sabrina (the hostess and she was actually not one of our childhood friends - we all met her in Jr. High), Katie, Angela, Tiffany

Back in August I went to a baby shower of one of my oldest friends, Katie. This is her first child and it has been quite the road for them to finally be at this point, so it was very fun to go and be a part of this very exciting time in her life. The guests came and went, but me and a few other of our very close friends from so many years ago stayed and chatted (and chatted and chatted) about old times.....talking about all of the different clubs we started, all of the weird things we did (I better not post them here!), and just all of the fun and funny memories we all had from back then. These are girls that I've known for almost 22 years! It was such a fun walk down memory lane and I hope I get the chance to do it again in the near future!

First day of school

2009-11-04T18:28:00.001-07:00

The first day of school crept up on us this year probably faster than it ever has. Maybe because it started earlier than it ever has. Geez, I expect it to start in July within the next couple years or so!

September (9) - 4th grade: She continues to amaze us with her "smartness". She reads well beyond her reading level (she's currently in the middle of the 6th Harry Potter book), she flies through her math papers, and has become even more of an amazing speller! She is enjoying her new school and thinks it's pretty cool, but thinks it has a dumb name!

Kya (7) - 2nd grade: So far she is LOVING it! She has continued to love reading (and do very well at it) and has really taken a liking to math, and is becoming an amazing speller as well! She has adapted well to her new school and especially to not knowing anyone in her class when school started. She's already made a bunch of new friends.

Logan - Age 4 - Preschool: I have been taking Logan over to the Literacy Center here in Lehi. It's a free community program that is run by volunteers and focuses on early reading. So far they haven't done much, and sometimes it's frustrating because it's only 40 minutes long which is barely enough time to drop him off, come home, and go back and get him. But hey, it's free and he seems to enjoy it.....most days! And it gives him something to do.

Running to catch the bus. There was no need, we were there PLENTY early!

Annie & Kya

September & Ariel

Waiting to get on the bus.

One of Kya's best friends, Courtney (who is Ariel's little sister), is actually only in kindergarten this year. They started a week later, so we had to take more pics on her first day of school!

Kya & Courtney

IM Flash Open House

2009-11-04T18:08:00.000-07:00

Every year Matthew's company (IM Flash Technologies) holds an Open House for friends and family members to come take a tour of the facility and see what they do there. It is a pretty fun day and they set up lots of different stations for the kids to learn things at....with plenty of candy along the way. Then they have a nice, big catered lunch....followed by little carnival games and activities outside....along with more candy and treats! Well, since the kids can never get enough candy, this is something they really look forward to. "Wow, Dad, this is where you work. Hmmm, interesting. Oh look, CANDY!!!"

Putting on the "bunny suits" that they have to wear in the "clean room". These suits help keep dust particles to a very minimum.

Reunited and it feel so good....

2009-11-03T21:11:00.000-07:00

I had been missing my YW like crazy since being released in January! I have stayed in close contact with most all of them and they occasionally come to visit me, which is always a fun surprise. Some of them had mentioned doing a little reunion activity together in the summer which I thought was a great idea. One of my favorite activities (and the girls) was going to the Gardens at Thanksgiving Point, so that's what we did. I was prepared to take tons of pictures as usual, but as it turned out all of the batteries that I brought were DEAD! We managed to get a couple pics on the last little bit of battery charge. Afterwards we came back to my house and roasted marshmallows and starbursts over our fire pit and just sat and told funny stories and giggled! At one point we were all on the trampoline together and laughing so hard and being so loud that Matthew and the kids could hardly hear the movie they were watching inside the house. Oops! I didn't want the night to end, and neither did they. Allie started saying we should do a sleepover, which I actually probably would have been all for if I'd have planned for it. It would've been a perfect night for it too because it was the night there was a huge meteor shower. But the night had to come to an end. We lost track of time and they were there til almost 11. We had such a fun night! One more memory to add!! I sure do miss and love those girls! I wish they all could have made it, but maybe next time. Trust me, there WILL be a next time!

Peyton's 2nd Birthday

2009-11-03T20:58:00.000-07:00

We did another joint birthday party celebration for Peyton and Logan on the Cluff side. It was not extravagant at all and I got VERY few pictures (I usually go overboard), but it was a fun night!

Peyton lounging in her new "Tinkerbell" chair, who happens to be one of her favorite people in the world!

Peyton on her new tricycle. Now she'll hopefully stop stealing the neighbors little car ride-along toy!

Logan blowing out the candles on his cupcake.

Attempting to have Peyton blow out her candles. She was apparently more interested in the frosting.

We absolutely LOVE having Peyton in our family and can't imagine life without her. I wanted her so badly to be a boy (for multiple reasons), but now I don't know what I'd do without my baby girl. We affectionately call her our chunky monkey since she has quite the curvaceous little body for someone so small in stature (she'll be lucky to pass me up in height). It's hard to believe that she had such a hard time gaining weight when she was first born. (She lost a lot of weight after birth and wasn't back up to her birth weight until 3 months old!) That girl is an absolute bundle of energy and has more personality in her little finger than most people even have altogether. She is an absolute character. She is very curious and is constantly doing all sorts of naughty things as soon as I turn my back, but you just can't stay mad at her because the very next instant she is making you laugh SO hard! And she knows that she can make you laugh! She also does something I've never had an issue with with any of my other kids....she is a tattle-tale like you wouldn't believe! The second someone starts saying something that sounds like they're mad about something, she'll hurry and say, "Logan did it." Or she'll come to you and tell you what her sibling are doing whether it's naughty or not and expects to receive praise for doing this. She LOVES Hannah Montana and is often heard walking through the house belting out one of her songs. She also loves to sing and dance to The Killers, The Fray, and Green Day.... among others. She has a one-track-mind and is absolutely relentless about what she wants until she gets it. Hopefully someday this will come in handy. Right now it's just plain obnoxious! Some days we're ready to give her away.....for free, to the first taker. But most days we just can't get enough of her! We love our Pey Wey!!

Bear Lake summer fun

2009-11-03T20:38:00.000-07:00

We usually have the reunion for my Mom's side of the family sometime in July up in Bear Lake, but this year it was August that worked best, and this year that date happened to land on Peyton's birthday. We weren't so sure we wanted to go at first because of this but it also happens to be my brother, Chuck's birthday, so what the heck. I have far too big of a family on that side to have a chance to really celebrate her individually (there were also about 5 other people there that had a birthday just within the week), but we did celebrate a little while we were up there, and then celebrated with Matthew's family when we got back. It turned out to be a pretty chilly day, so there was no going down to the lake this trip (dang!), but the kids did enjoy the usual favorites....

Playing in the boat converted sandbox.....

Playing on the big swing.....

Riding on the "train"......

And last but not least.....playing in the AWESOME array of dress-ups there are to be found at the Hirschi Hideout! Check out these glamor girls!!! ;)

(This one is actually my cousin's wife's wedding dress.)

They look like they just stepped out of the 90's!

First shave

2009-11-03T20:15:00.000-07:00

For Logan's birthday we gave him a Car's themed "shaving kit". He wanted to get going on his manliness right away! His excitement was hilarious! What I find funny though.....is WHERE he gets the idea of shaving like this though. Matt does shave with a manual razor, but he doesn't do it in the "typical" fashion. (i.e. with shaving cream) Is it just in a boys nature??? Is this one of those things that boys are just BORN with the knowledge of? It sure seems like it.

And here he is clean-shaven. He looks a good 3 months younger without that 5 o'clock shadow!

Logan's 4th Birthday

2009-11-03T20:03:00.000-07:00

My little boy is now FOUR years old! When did that happen??? He has grown up so much this past year it's been unbelievable! And I mean that in multiple ways. Physically he has grown quite a bit. He is very tall for a 4 year old and often wears size 5 and even 6 clothes. He is already at the height that Kya was when she was 5 years old.....and Kya was very tall (still is) for her age. I think this kid has the potential to be very tall....but thanks to me being his mother, I don't think he'll quite reach his Dad's stature. He has also grown so much socially and emotionally. He is a completely different kid than he was a year ago. And yet still so much the same. O.k. I admit it, he's a LOT like me......a walking contradiction. What do I mean by this? Well, he is such a happy kid, but he is also very moody. He can be very tough (he shows this by beating "things" up - not people thankfully), but he is also so dang sensitive. (Yep, our most sensitive child is our one and only boy!) He's very energetic, but he's also laid-back. He can be such a loner and loves to be by himself, but there are days you can not disconnect him from your side! With Logan you never know what you're going to get. He keeps us guessing that's for sure!! But we sure do love that kid! He definitely makes us laugh!

He is constantly getting the girls scooters out and riding them (which they're not very happy about), so we figured it was time to get him one of his own. I think he'd be out there all day if I let him!

Peyton always has to be a part of the action and since she doesn't have a scooter of her own, she'll find whatever other transportational-type item she can find. This car happens to be one of her favorites. It's the neighbors. She routinely "steals" it out of their garage.

Oquirrh Mountain Temple Open House

2009-11-03T19:42:00.000-07:00

We have had the absolute privilege of going to not one, but TWO temple open houses both within 15 minutes of us, and both within a 5 month period! All I can say is WOW, we are so blessed! Back in July we went to the Open House for the Oquirrh Mountain temple in South Jordan. (I think that's what city it's considered to be in.) Do I even need to say how unbelievably beautiful it was!! The thing is, ALL temples are beautiful....but there are some that just "speak" to us more than others. Well, this was one for me. The chandeliers are so cool and breathtaking! They kind of have a star-shape to them. It was just so beautiful I can't even describe it! Something else I can't describe.....the spirit that I felt while we were there. Again, just like all temples are beautiful but some stand out to you more for some reason......the same goes for the spirit felt. You can feel the spirit so strongly in all temples, but there are some temples in which you just feel a different, even more powerful spirit that you feel such a personal connection to. And this one was one for me. I have my personal, private thoughts for why I think I felt this way, but we'll just have to wait and see what the future holds.

I can't even begin to express how blessed I feel to be surrounded by so many temples. They have begun to mean more and more to me this past year as Matthew and I have made a valiant effort to go at least once a month. I have SEEN the blessings pour into my family's lives as promised to us by our prophet, by following this counsel. I have gotten to the point where I realize that I can't afford NOT to go. Our parents have been so great to take turns watching our kids so that we can go and we have been so thankful for their willingness.

We went with my in-laws and it was on the second to last night that they were doing the Open House, so it was BUSY! The kids started having a rough time while waiting in line, but then this cute little girl below started entertaining them. Peyton thought she was an "angel". Too cute!

The Fray!

2009-11-03T19:14:00.001-07:00

Back in July Matthew and I got to see one of my favorite bands, The Fray, in concert for the second time at the same venue we had seen them in the first time, which happens to be one of my favorites...Usana Amphitheater. The show was even more amazing this time, and I was a lot more comfortable this time around.....since I was a full 9 months pregnant the first time I saw them in concert! Plus, this time we got to go with one of my favorite YW, Dani, and her friend, Chelsea. We didn't actually get to sit with them because they were up in "the pit" and we had seats, but we met up with them in between the opening band and The Fray, and then we took them home afterwards. It was such an amazing concert! Seeing them in concert reminds me why I love them so much! Next time they come to town, I'll be there!!

The opening act, Jack's Mannequin. I'm not a huge fan, but I like a few of their songs and they were pretty good live.

THE FRAY!!!

Dani & Chelsea

Me and Matthew :)

Liberty Land

2009-11-03T18:58:00.000-07:00

Back in July we went with Merrill's to Libertyland. They had their niece and nephew staying with them off and on for a couple weeks and were looking for things to do and we got a great deal to go to Libertyland....probably because the place is DESERTED and they desperately needed customers! Seriously, there were probably only about 20 other people there the entire time we were there. There were only like 3 workers and they kept having to go from ride to ride to operate them. So even though there was nobody there, there were times that we had to wait in line for 5-10 minutes waiting for there to be an employee available to operate the ride. It was actually a really fun day, especially considering the price we paid to get in. Plus, it's just down the street, so we were able to take a break in the middle of the day to go home and eat lunch and then go back for a few more hours.

Turns out I was actually too big to have gone on this ride. Oops!

Kalun's just one of the kids!!

Turns out, Kya is an amazing climber! She climbed to the top very easily on every single one, including the hardest. A couple of the kids made it to the top of some of them, but Kya was the only one to make it to the top of all of them. Apparently the less body weight you have to pull up, the easier it is!

Halfway through the day all of us adults caught on to a little love connection going on. Zach (the nephew) had a little crush on September.....and I think the feeling was mutual! They kept wanting to go on EVERY single ride together. It was really cute at first, but after a while it started kind of freaking me out. I'm not ready for boys to have crushes on my daughters!!! I felt pretty safe though with Zach since he lives hundreds of miles away and would be leaving in a couple days!

The "lovebirds".

Fun in the sun in St. George

2009-11-03T18:23:00.001-07:00

We invested in a timeshare back in October of last year with great intentions of traveling more. Well, life got crazy and we never got any trips planned. The kids had been begging to go somewhere with a pool, so one day on a whim Matthew and I sat down and booked a trip to St. George. We went in July. It was at a time in our lives when our family really needed a much-deserved vacation. It was such a simple trip, but we had SO much fun!

The kids got so excited about seeing palm trees! I'll admit it, so did I. That's one thing I LOVE about St. George. It's so close to home, but because of the palm trees and sunny weather, there are moments where you feel like you're somewhere tropical. :)

The second day we were there we took the kids over to the St. George temple grounds. The kids LOVED it. We told them about how their Great Grandpa Cluff used to be the groundskeeper there. They thought that was pretty cool. We had a great time just playing around on the grounds. Is that bad? I promise it was reverent fun. Can those two words exist in a sentence together?

We went over to Brigham Young's winter home and took a tour. By the time we got there the kids were pretty worn out and done. I don't think they got much out of it. I remember going on the tour when I was about 12 and I didn't get much out of it, so why would I have expected much less? However, going through as an adult was pretty cool and interesting. I learned a lot of things that I didn't know. One thing is for certain, that man was SMART for having a winter home down in St. George. When I'm older that's exactly what I want to do!

We spent the majority of the time in the pool. This was after all the point of the trip in the kids minds!

We met a fun family from Ogden. The Dad (Mark) had so much fun playing and teasing our kids and his two teenage daughters. All the kids teased him back and eventually ganged up on him. Logan took his "noodle" and kept filling it up with water and would blow one end with his mouth to shoot the water out at him. Mark totally hammed it up to make Logan feel so cool. He thought he was hilarious!

Our room had a "murphy bed" (ya know, the kind of bed that folds up into the wall). The three older kids thought it was so cool, they insisted on sleeping on it all together.

On our way home we detoured up through Cedar Mountain to stop at the Cluff reunion. On the way up the mountain we needed a little break so we stopped at Navajo Lake.

The kids enjoyed playing in the dirt up on the mountain!

What a fun and relaxing trip. I think we may have to make it a yearly one!

When life throws you Swine Flu....

2009-10-30T11:43:00.006-06:00

There's nothing worse than having sick kids.....except maybe not being able to do much about it because you're sick right alongside them.....with one of the most horrible sicknesses you've ever had no less! That being said, there's also nothing like feeling completely miserably sick to make you appreciate your health!!!

I posted last Sunday with the hopes of getting everything caught up this week. Here we are 5 days later with NO updates, but I have a perfectly good excuse for that. I woke up Monday morning hardly able to move a muscle, feeling more miserable than I can almost honestly say I've ever felt in my entire LIFE with a little thing called (you may have heard of it.....oh, here, there, and everywhere!)....the SWINE FLU!!! These days it's about as common as well, the common cold.....but there is NOTHING common about it! It is NASTY!! If there's anyone out there who was thinking, "Eh, swine flu, what's the big deal. I think I'll catch it to see what the fuss is about, "......DON'T DO IT!!!

I can't even begin to describe the deep appreciation I now have for my general good health, not to mention all of the other zillions of blessings I have in my life. I mean seriously, the fact that I started this post with saying "there's nothing worse than having sick kids" tells you that we really do have things good. We definitely have our hardships and struggles, but at the end of the day.....LIFE REALLY IS GOOD!!! I'm loving this new lease I have on life. It stinks that it took swine flu to get to this point, but hey, even as horrible as that was, I can think of a LOT worse. Not that I want to go there, but you never know what blessings will come out of some of your most difficult struggles.

I sure hope I feel this same positive way tomorrow.....and the next day, and the next day..... If not, I'll at least have this post to remind me of how good it felt while it lasted!

And for those of you who have not had swine flu (yet!) and think I'm being a bit drastic.....just you wait. Your time will come. And when it does I will pray for your speedy recovery and hope it will give you the same new lease on life that it gave me.

Cheers to life and good health.....oh, and me getting the blog updated! :)

So much to catch up on......

2009-10-25T18:13:00.002-06:00

There's been a few big changes in our lives the past few months that have kind of detracted me from blogging. I am itchin' to get going again, but I have so much to catch up on. I know some people would rather just start in the moment and not worry about the past. I am NOT one of those people. I will not feel complete if I don't go back and catch up. So, hopefully in the next couple days I can find the time to do just that. It's been about 3 months since I've really posted and in that time we've had: 2 birthdays, 3 family vacations, the first day of school, and other various activities. This could take a while. Stay tuned.....

He's growing up....

2009-07-31T15:19:00.005-06:00

I have so much other blogging to catch up on, but I just had to make a quick post about the awesome event that happened in our household today.

We've been working with Logan trying to get him to be more responsible and clean up after himself. He's had the job of unloading the silverware from the dishwasher for about a year now, but we decided he was getting old enough to start handling other things.....one of which was making his bed. So I've been working on it with him for the past couple weeks and I usually have to help him a little. Today I asked him to do it and he just said, "Ok Mama," without even asking me to help him. I left the room and it wasn't until a couple hours ago that I went back in and noticed this:

I love that kid!! I thought for sure that someone had helped him, but I asked the girls and they said no and I called him up and I asked him if anyone helped him and he just beamed and with much pride he looked at me and said, "Nope, I did it all by myself!" I love how he even laid out all of his small blankets nicely. Not even I used to do that. I'd just throw all of his extra little blankets in the corner. We'll see how long this new phase lasts, but for now I'll just enjoy the moment! :)

Independence Day

2009-07-22T16:23:00.006-06:00

We started Independence Day with something that I think we'll start doing as a tradition from now on.....and we ended it doing something I hope will NOT be a new tradition.

We all woke up early and headed down to Provo for the Balloon Festival. We have wanted to go in the past, but have never managed to get out of bed early enough. Matthew's parents often go and this year they wanted to take Ember & Kya with them. So we decided we'd go too. I absolutely loved it and I think the kids did too. Peyton was so giddy watching the balloons get bigger and bigger, but as soon as they started the flames she got a little scared. Afterward we went to breakfast at Village Inn with Cluff's. I was so excited to see that they had Stuffed French Toast back on the menu.....it is one of my favorite foods in the entire world. So I ordered it, but it turned out that it was NOT the same thing they had on the menu years ago. I still managed to clean my plate! Yum!

On the way there I saw this flag and thought it looked so cool against the sunrise. I actually got a little emotional over it. I think this year was the most emotional I've ever been. Every time I saw a flag I would tear up!

Peyton was so excited watching the balloons.

Did I tear up again? Sure did!

It was such an amazing sight to see all those balloons all together. Someday I'd love to actually go for a ride in one.

Easter and the 4th of July are the two big days each year that I love to get the kids new outfits and take pictures. Here's a couple snapshots from this year:

If you look closely at Logan's left eye you can see that it is a little swollen. I'll explain more about that in a bit.

Does their hair look like fireworks?

That night we had all of Matthew's family over for a BBQ. The kids had so much fun just running around the backyard and playing on the trampoline. They also would not stay out of the drink bucket. Most of the kids kept grabbing drink after drink, but Khalil was going for the ice!

Logan had been absent most of the night because his eye was bothering him. He had come in the night before complaining that his eye hurt. We couldn't see anything and just figured it was just something in his eye, so we sent him off to bed. The morning of the 4th he woke up and his eye was a little swollen and it continued to get worse throughout the day. We thought it was kind of strange but we were so busy the whole day that we kept brushing it off. At one point we thought about giving him some of the leftover eye drops we had from an eye infection he'd had a few months earlier, but again we got busy and forgot. We are such terrible parents!! But Mike (my brother-in-law) took special interest in him and at one point during the BBQ when I couldn't find either him or Logan, I went upstairs and they were in the toy room. Mike's mom is a nurse and he had called her to ask her about it. Based on what he told her she thought it was possibly this thing called Orbital Cellulitis. She recommended taking him to a dr. and having it checked out. Well, not only was it a Saturday, but it was also a holiday AND 8:30 at night. I knew that not even an Instacare would probably be open and I didn't want to take him to the hospital for a silly, swollen eye. Plus I was really looking forward to the fireworks and didn't want to miss them. But he kept urging me and urging me. Finally I decided to at least call a couple of the local Instacare's to see if by some chance they were still open. I was able to get a hold of a dr. at one that was just finishing up paperwork. He asked what the issue was and I explained it to him and even told him what Mike's mom had said. He agreed that that's what it sounded like and he said, "You do NOT want to mess around with that. If it progresses it can be life threatening. I would take him over to the ER right now!" What?!? So off we went. I expected to arrive at an ER full of patients with firework injuries, but it was practically empty and they were able to take us back almost immediately. I explained everything that Mike's mom and the Instacare dr. had said and sure enough after looking it over the dr. said that's what it looked like. The next thing I know she's ordering all sorts of things to be done. Within 30 minutes of arriving at the hospital they placed an IV, did blood-work (thankfully it was through the IV so it didn't require any extra poking), gave a Tylenol suppository (he had a very high fever by that point and he will NOT take medicine orally), swabbed his throat for a strep-test, and last but not least did a CT scan! I was completely overwhelmed and freaked out, and he wasn't exactly thrilled about being completely violated. He screamed bloody murder through most everything but finally settled down and actually fell asleep during the CT scan. Then we waited for the results of the scan. It seemed to take forever even though it was only about 45 minutes. Turns out we were able to catch things in time before it progressed and it looked like everything was going to be fine, he'd just need to be on antibiotics. The nurse came back a few minutes later and started some antibiotics through the IV. I don't know if they had something in it to make him loopy but he sure started acting strange after that. Then suddenly he needed to pee. He was attached to his IV pole and I didn't know what to do and before I had a chance to find a nurse to help me he had peed his pants! Someone went and found some small hospital pants. They didn't have any type of underwear and the biggest diaper they could find was a size 3. Logan was very nervous about having to go commando, but what do you do? They finally discharged him just as all the fireworks were ending back home. They felt so bad he had to miss the fireworks that they sent him home with a stash of lollipops. They wanted us to come back the next day for a follow-up check and for another round of antibiotics, so they left the IV in. They wrapped it with cast stuff so that he wouldn't mess with it, but we were still nervous he'd try to take it out so we had him sleep in our room. He slept on the chair and slept the whole night thank goodness.

Poor guy!

The next morning his eye already looked so much better. We took him in and did another round of antibiotics. Then they said they'd just give us a prescription for the remainder of the antibiotics. I knew there was no way Logan was going to take anything orally so just in case they decided to leave the IV in his arm again and gave us an order to bring him back for a couple more days of IV therapy, but just up in the pediatric unit so we wouldn't have to have any more ER charges. Sure enough it was a no-go on the oral medicine. So it was off to the hospital again the next day. The nurses all just doted on him up in the pediatric unit and even gave him a blanket that had been donated to the hospital. They felt so bad because what should've just been a very simple and painless process turned into yet another traumatizing experience for the poor kid. They tried to flush the IV line and it started leaking. They tried a couple more times and then told me that the line was bad and that they'd either have to place a new one that he could keep in for both days (if the line stayed good) or I could opt to have them do an extremely painful shot both days. I opted for the shot. It took me and 3 other nurses to hold him down the first day. Then the 2nd day we tried it with me and 3 nurses again. He is VERY strong and this time he knew what was coming and he moved and they had to do it twice. He sure doesn't like to make anything easy. But we were DONE! And by that final day his eye was pretty much completely better. We were very thankful that Mike had pretty much forced us to do something. I felt like such a terrible parent, but who would've guessed. Even though Logan is completely traumatized and may never want to set foot in a hospital ever again, we are very thankful everything turned out o.k.

Summer fun with the Corbett's

2009-07-22T15:52:00.006-06:00

Well, June came and went and so did the Corbett kids. Here's a look back and some of the fun memories we made while they were here:

The kids all seemed to go to our local library (it's walking distance) about every other day. They all spent a lot of time reading and finding fun books with crazy facts.

Jessika reading to Kylee

It was always fun to peek in on Skyler and Ashton to see what position they were in by morning. This particular morning Skyler apparently found it comfortable to use the Chubby Chair as a pillow.

Occasionally Logan will wake up and go in the toy room to watch TV or play the Wii while he waits for other people to wake up. He wasn't able to do that while Corbett's were here and there were some mornings we'd find him patiently waiting outside the door for them to wake up so he could go in. :)

It was a common sight to look outside and see the whole crew of kids running down the street chasing each other.

This picture makes me laugh! We all had scripture study together every night and one night in particular Skyler was completely exhausted and fell asleep in the middle of it. If you look closely you can see that his fly is even open. I guess he wanted to make himself comfortable before crashing.

We spent the kids last day here like the majority of so many other days.....outside doing water activities.

The month seemed to fly and I think we all had kind of mixed emotions seeing it all come to an end. We had a lot of fun having them here, but I think the kids were ready to go back and see their dad and we were ready to have our house back. A lot of fun memories were made though and we look forward to seeing them again.....hopefully sooner than later.

TEN!!!

2009-07-21T16:25:00.011-06:00

Last month Matthew and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary! We had originally been planning and hoping to go to Hawaii for this milestone, but as the date got closer we realized that due to life's ever changing circumstances we've been through this past year, there was no way we were going to be able to afford it. Could we have put it on credit cards and figured out a way to make it work? Sure. Were we tempted? Yes! But in the end we decided to be more practical and spend within our means. And just because we were giving up our dream vacation didn't mean we still couldn't do something nice and fun. So we looked around at different options and found that through an exchange program with our timeshare we were able to get an amazing deal on a nice resort in Las Vegas for a week. Our parents were very kind and generous and took turns watching the kids while we were gone. The kids were looking as much forward to their "vacation" as we were to ours.

Life was so hectic leading up to our trip we didn't have much of a chance to really "plan" much before we left. But hey, Vegas is a city that you can't really get bored in, so we decided it wasn't that big of a deal. Plus, we figured that even if all we did was sit around and relax we'd be happy.....which is what we truly ended up doing a majority of the time. We did make it out and about to do quite a few things, but mostly we just sat in our room watching movies we rented. We also found other ways to keep ourselves busy. Wink, wink. Hey, it was our anniversary after all!

The room we stayed in was so nice. We had our own full kitchen (recently remodeled), a 52" flatscreen in the living room, a 42" flatscreen in the bedroom, nice king-size bed, a walk-in closet, and a HUGE bathtub. Here are a few pics:

The kitchen

The living room

The bathroom - the tub was huge! This picture doesn't do it justice but it was very large. Matthew and I both fit in there very comfortably.

The view from our deck. This was 1 of 3 pools the resort had.

One of the things we got a chance to do was to go to Madame Tussaud's wax museum. I don't know if it was worth what we paid, but I guess overall it was a pretty cool experience.

I tried to figure out a way to get Angelina out of the picture, but I'm a lot shorter than her so I had to be creative. It didn't really work.

My very own 007.

Here's Matthew and his bald buddy, Patrick Stewart.

I tried to make a face like his....but it didn't quite work out. Matthew never knew that I have such a crush on "The Rock".....er, I mean Dwayne Johnson. Ooh la la!

Don't we make such a great couple?

I felt kind of bad running off and marrying someone else on my anniversary trip, but hey....it was George Clooney, the most unattainable bachelor in Hollywood! I found out later that our marriage wasn't valid because I was still currently married. ;)

We learned that not all the figures are life-size. Matthew is tall, but there's no way he's as tall as Michael Jordan.

I found an adult with smaller hands than me! It turns out that Gloria Estefan has freakishly small hands.

We made friends with a couple that was walking around behind us and we took pictures of each other with the Blue Man Group.

My husband is so presidential. :)

I blend in well with this picture with the flag on my shirt and all. :)

A quick sidenote: There was a statue of Michael Jackson there and I had actually intended to get a picture with it, but got distracted and forgot. After we left the museum we went over to the mall and we were looking at something at one of the kiosks and the employee was on the phone. When he got off he told us it was his mom and she was just calling to tell him that Michael Jackson had just passed away. When we went home and found out what time it was, we realized that we were probably there with his statue at almost the exact time he was pronounced dead. Kind of strange. I kind of wish we'd gotten a picture so we could've seen what it was time-stamped at.

I had to take a picture of this girl because I kept complaining to Matthew that so many of the people in Vegas look like they've rolled out of bed and put on something they've had in their closet for 15 years and headed out without even bothering to check a mirror. This girl was a prime example! Really people?? I don't mean that you have to get all "gussied" up to go out, but come on! Can't we put forth a little more effort....for the rest of us!?!

There were a few different locations amongst the street shops that they were selling these wraps at and I was quite intrigued. They can be transformed like 35 or more different ways. The girl working there was showing me all the different things I could do and it looked so easy and I was so tempted, but it cost a lot and I was sure that even though it LOOKED easy that I was going to be too dumb to figure out how to do any of them once I got home. But she said she had a DVD that showed step-by-step how to do all of the different ways that she would "throw in", and Matthew kept convincing me.....so I bought it. And sure enough I was right, I can't figure out how to do anything with it except wrap it around a couple times to make it a skirt. But hey, it is VERY comfortable!

This was some pretty cool decor they had within the shopping area at The Venetian. I think that's where this one was.

My absolute favorite part of the trip was going to the Las Vegas Temple. It is breathtaking! Funny story though.....we actually tried to go on Monday because we wanted to start the week off on a good note. Before we left people were telling us that it's a pretty slow temple. We arrived on Monday and there were like 5 cars in the parking lot. We thought, "Wow, we heard it was slow, but we had no idea it would be THIS slow!" We got up to the doors and they were locked. It had a sign saying something like, "Please ring doorbell for assistance." We thought that was kind of weird. I just thought that maybe because there are so many crazy people in Vegas that they have to have very tight security at the temple. So we rang the doorbell and waited.....and waited. Finally we looked up and a security guard was walking towards us. Apparently not all temples are like the ones in Utah. In Utah the temples are closed only in the evenings on Mondays, but outside of Utah they are closed the entire day. Oops!!! But we did have a chance to go back ON our actual anniversary and sure enough, it was very slow. The workers assumed we were going through a session and they were so excited because we would bring the total of the group to 14! But we were actually planning on doing sealings. There were only a few other couples there doing sealings and they were in and out so we got to just sit and chat with the sealer. He told us some very cool stories. And then we got to go the Celestial Room. It was absolutely beautiful.....and empty. We were literally the only ones in there besides 2 temple workers. The whole thing was such an awesome experience because at home when you go to the temple it is such a nice, pleasant escape. But when you're in "Sin City" it is that much more of a contrast. I was so glad we were able to go.

I really wanted to get a picture of US in front of the temple, but it's not like in Utah where you have tons of people coming in and out that you can stop and ask if they can take a picture. There was literally no one to ask, so we had to do some creative setting up and use the timer. I actually think it turned out pretty good all things considered!

We had been wanting to go on at least one of the rollercoasters there and finally on the last night we were there we got a chance to. We went on one called "Speed - The Ride". We thought it was the dumbest name....I mean seriously, who came up with that?! It was very cool though. We only wish we'd gotten there an hour or so earlier. To get an unlimited pass where we could ride it and one of the other rollercoasters at that particular place was barely more than we paid for our one-time ride that lasted all of 15 seconds.

This is the loop you go on. It takes you through the ride to a dead end where it stops for about a half-second and then you go backwards through the whole thing.

We used to not be fans of In-N-Out. It seemed like everybody else in the world loved it, and we just didn't understand the hype. But we decided to give it another try and.....um, we are now converts. I think I could've eaten there for dinner every night and been happy. We are now anticipating the opening of not 1, but 2 new franchises near our home. Yum!

We had a thoroughly relaxing and fun time. And the car ride there and back was equally as fun. I enjoy road trips, especially when I don't have to worry about kids crying/fighting/yelling or asking, "How much longer?" I LOVE being able to just sit and talk to Matthew about anything and everything and not be interrupted. We played a lot of the music that we listened to on our honeymoon, stuff that was popular at the time like Red Hot Chili Peppers album "Californication". We also listened to the MiniDisc (old school!) of the songs we played at our reception. It was very nostalgic. We did miss our kids like crazy though and were very excited to see them....and they were very excited to see us!

Daddy/Daughter date

2009-07-21T15:49:00.005-06:00

A few days before Father's Day, Matthew had the opportunity to go with September on a Father/Daughter date for September's Achievement Days activity. The leaders had arranged to have all of the girls get their hair done by a couple women in the ward. September was sooooo excited and couldn't stop talking about it. She doesn't have a whole lot of hair to do much with, but she still felt like a princess and felt so grown up being able to go to such a dressed up event with her Dad. They had a nice dinner over at the church and each girl took a turn talking about what they were working on in their Faith in God book.

NINE!

2009-07-21T14:09:00.005-06:00

I have so much I need to catch up on with my blogging!! But first things first.....last month September turned 9!!! That makes me feel so old....even though I'm not!

Already getting a little attitude!

Something you should know about September.....she hates change probably more than even I do. She is just like me where she plans certain events in her head for weeks, even months sometimes, and if they don't go exactly like she had been planning on, it is very hard for her to adjust. But boy did she ever have to make some adjustments in dealing with her birthday this year.......again and again and again.

First of all, a month or so before her birthday we had discussed what she wanted to do and she wanted to either go swimming somewhere or go rollerskating. I looked for places I could get the best deal and it turned out that I could get an amazing deal at Hollywood Connection to take everyone skating. But a couple weeks before her birthday I realized that the place wasn't as local as I thought and I didn't want to have to drive as far as it was so we changed plans to go swimming at the Scera. And then it decided to rain....and rain, and rain! So we had to change plans yet again. In the end we decided to go skating at Classic. Well, her birthday came and Matthew woke up sick with the flu. I wasn't excited about the prospects of taking all of our kids, plus Ember's best friend and her little sister, to Classic by myself, but I wasn't about to disappoint Ember, plus Lisa and Kyle would be there to help me. And then at the last minute Lisa and Kyle started feeling kind of sick and weren't going to be able to go. All of her kids still wanted to go though, but I had no idea how I was going to get them all there. We had invited Kalun and Kristi and their kids, but Kristi wasn't going to be able to go, so I called Kalun and asked if he could help me transport some of the kids. So he came over and between our cars we were able to fit everyone. We got away about 45 minutes later than planned, so by the time we go there we were only able to stay for about an hour, but the kids all ended up having a great time. It was a little nuts trying to keep track of all the kids, but Bonnie met us up there as well and between her, me and Kalun we managed to not lose one child! We almost lost a couple scooters, but no children.

She was so excited about all of her gifts. One of the main things she wanted was a new Webkinz and she ended up with two. We got her one, and then the cute little neighbor boy that has a crush on her brought over a gift and part of it was a Webkinz. Apparently he had involved her best friend to find out what she wanted. He is too cute! She also got some new jewelry. She was very excited about the pool, but we weren't able to put it up until about 2 weeks after her birthday because it wouldn't stop raining!

Jessika and Kaiden were the only kids that knew how to skate very well, so Kalun helped me take some of the kids around and give them an opportunity to do it without falling.

There were still quite a few falls though!

Tristan didn't have to worry about falling though because he brought his BIG WHEEL! What a stud!

September and her best friend, Ariel.

So then we had planned to celebrate Ember's birthday with the Cluff side that following Saturday. She really wanted to put the new pool up that she had gotten for her birthday, along with the slip n' slide and do other fun water games. The weather looked like it was going to work out and then the day before it got really yucky and stormy again. She was so disappointed, but we decided to go forward with the party but just to keep it to cake and ice-cream and gifts inside and let the kids play for a bit. Then the day of the party Matthew woke up sick with the flu AGAIN!!! I had gotten sick the day after her birthday and we'd gone to the dr. to make sure it wasn't swine flu and it wasn't, but since we didn't want to take our chances that it could be this time, we decided it wasn't going to work out to have everyone come over. Poor Ember! It finally ended up working out to have everyone come the following week though. We sure like to draw birthdays out in our house, but not typically for a week and a half. The couple weeks before and week or so after were full of many talks with Ember about how things don't always work out the way you want and you have to learn to be flexible. Yeah, it was hard for ME to have to sit there and tell her that....but I managed to learn a lesson or two as well through the whole thing. As they say, there's nothing as constant as change, so I guess we'd better sort out our issues and learn to accept it.

This is 1 of 3 cakes we ended up eating on behalf of Ember's birthday. We are all caked out!
We also had a chance to celebrate with my parents, which was the only celebration that did end up going as planned....but almost didn't work out....again because of sickness! But it did work out and September was very excited about the gift that they gave her. My Mom gave her a sheet that had a bunch of pictures of different tutu's and she got to pick which one she wanted my Mom to make. She spent a long time figuring out which one to pick. Surely she didn't want to pick the "wrong" one.

That issue though might be one of September's only character flaws. Generally speaking, she is about the most amazing daughter anyone could ask for. She is smart, funny, kind, beautiful, friendly, helpful, organized (well, in certain things), and I could go on and on. She was the perfect child to be first because she is so great with her younger siblings. Or maybe this is because she WAS first. But somehow I can't see Kya having all the traits that Ember has and vice-versa if they had been born in opposite order. I tell ya, God knows what he's doing when he sends them down in the order he does. Each one of my children are perfect where they are. I didn't always used to think that about Logan and Peyton, but I've come around.....and learned to accept the fact that things don't always go as planned. ;)

Out of all of my children, I think September is the one that is the most like me. This makes for a very close relationship, but also a lot of days where we butt heads with each other. On her birthday we had the opportunity to go, just the two of us, to JCW's for their huge twist cones. We sat and chatted and giggled while we ate them. Later that day we had a disagreement over something that neither one of us was going to budge on our position. But in the end, I wouldn't change a thing about her.....and not just because I hate change! ;)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SEPTEMBER!!!

Rain, rain, go away!!!

2009-06-20T17:02:00.003-06:00

Can I just say....I am SOOOO sick of the rain!!!!!!!! I know it sounds so cliche because I know many people here in Utah feel the same way, but I am seriously ready to scream! I HATE RAIN!!! I can "deal with it" in the Spring, but this is getting ridiculous! (I know, I know, technically Spring just ended yesterday, but still, you know what I mean.) We are almost 1/3 of the way through the summer (or at least what is "summer break" from school) and it hasn't even truly felt like summer. I think we've had 2-3 days that have been rain-free since school let out. I know we need it, but can't it just rain in the middle of the night, please?!? I am not someone who handles bad weather days very well and all of this rain has really been getting to me lately! It cheered me up a little to see this the other day.....

....but I'd rather have no rain! Matthew and I leave tomorrow for Vegas for a week though, and even though it's SUPPOSEDLY going to start being better weather starting tomorrow, I'm happy to know that I'm headed somewhere that is pretty much GUARANTEED to be warm.....o.k. HOT!! I have so much to catch up on with blogging, but it will have to wait at least another week. I'm outta here!!

Oops!

2009-06-11T23:24:00.002-06:00

So the other day I was making smoothies for everyone and the blender was having a hard time "blending".....so being the smart person I am, I stuck a wooden spoon in it to help push the strawberries down. When your mom tells you to NEVER stick any kind of utensil into the blender while it's going, she means it!

This picture doesn't actually do it justice. It was splattered EVERYWHERE! I was laughing hysterically, but the kids were all just staring at me like I was an idiot. O.k. maybe they were right.

FULL HOUSE!!!

2009-06-11T23:00:00.005-06:00

Lisa's kids arrived last Tuesday and will be here for a month. So we now have 4 adults and 9 children in our household! Did you catch that? That's 13 people!!! Surprisingly it has not felt too crowded and things have actually been going VERY well, all things considered. They're such good kids, and all of the kids have really been getting along. Occasionally you'll see them as a couple separate groups doing their own things, but the majority of the time they're all together as one big group.

The weather has been horrible pretty much from the day they got here, so you'd think they'd all be cooped up in the house going stir-crazy and driving us crazy. But no.....they haven't let the bad weather deter them. Rain or shine, they spend most of their days outside running around.

The night they arrived.

Jessika spending time with her new baby sister. I think she was a little nervous to first meet her, but she has fallen in love and loves helping out with her.

Kaiden showing off his moves on his skateboard.

Like mother, like daughter!

Skyler trying to be like his big brother, Kaiden.

I think there was a game of football, soccer, and frisbee all going on at the same time in this picture....with all the same people. Fun times!

Logan's preschool graduation

2009-06-11T22:37:00.003-06:00

O.k. so technically Logan still has another year of preschool, but he did graduate from his FIRST year of preschool. And he was NOT happy! He fell asleep about a half hour before we left for it and he is a BEAR to wake up. We dragged him over to it and tried to get him to sit in his chair. He eventually reluctantly stayed. He did not participate in any of the songs, but did go up to accept his diploma. We were so proud!

Could he be any more sad???

His amazing teacher, Ms. Patty!

He started perking up towards the end.

I think he finally woke up just as we came home.

Joey's & Emily's Big Day

2009-06-11T21:27:00.006-06:00

It's official.....Joey is off the market. He and Emily got married a couple weekends ago (May 30th). We have a new sister-in-law and the kids have a new aunt. Although according to Kya, Emily was already her aunt. I saw her writing one day about how her Uncle Joey was marrying her Aunt Emily. Hmmmm..... Anyway, it was a beautiful day! The weather turned out great, but we were nervous about it all day long. It kept threatening to rain, but waited until the reception was over and we were almost done cleaning up. :) I think most everything went smoothly. There were only a couple things that didn't work out. Bonnie and Travis weren't able to get their temple recommends renewed in time (long story!) so they weren't able to make it to the ceremony. And Nick wasn't able to make it to the ceremony either.....or the luncheon. He is living back East and working for the summer, and he missed his flight home.....which led to a whole slew of missed/delayed flights. He finally arrived at about 3 or so that afternoon and was able to be there for the reception, but had to wake up at 3 am to turn around and go back. Poor Nick! I felt so bad! But other than that, I think everything else went very well. The actual ceremony was very sweet. I teared up....a lot. The sealer had some amazing words of advice. One of the things I remembered most was about how you should "RISE in love" not "FALL in love". I loved that!

Joey is on the phone with Nick.....this was our way of getting a shot with Nick in it. ;)

My goofy sister-in-law, Ginger, jumped in front of the camera as I was trying to take a picture. She cracks me up!

My sweet, sweet cousin's daughter, Destiny watched our kids while we were at the temple and then brought them over after the ceremony was over. She was such a great help that whole day! I love her! I also love Kya and Logan in this picture. Hilarious! They're trying to entertain themselves while all the pictures were being taken. Bless their hearts.

Bonnie, Me, Chuck, Emily, Joey, Mom, Dad

Peyton

Emily looked beautiful!

The luncheon was held at Willow Park which is a really cool and fun park up there in Logan. (I totally forgot to get pics!!!) There's a little zoo as part of the park, but we didn't get a chance to go see any of the animals. Everything was great though except that the willow trees were shedding terribly! There were things floating all over in the air. You could hardly talk without one getting caught in your mouth. They were a wonderful addition to the allergies Matthew was already suffering from! I, however, thoroughly enjoyed myself because after one year and one whole extra week.....I had soda for the first time! It was only my mom's homemade root beer, but hey, you gotta ease back in, right?

The reception turned out great. Matthew even described it as "one of the least horrible receptions" he's ever been to. He hates receptions whether they're for close friends/family or very distant relatives. I appreciate him enduring that "trial". It really did turn out very nicely though. It was in Emily's parent's backyard which is beautifully landscaped and had many great areas to take pictures at.

The cool cake.

Peyton was being such a ham for the camera the whole day. I think the official photographer got as many pictures of her as she did of Joey and Emily. ;)

My battery died right after this picture which I was really mad about because they had a fun photo-worthy cake fight. I hate when people are cutesy-wootsy and just feed it to each other nicely, so I was happy about it, just mad that I didn't get any pics.

First dance

My Dad having one last man-to-man talk with Joey before they took off. I don't even want to know what THAT conversation was about.

And they're off......

What a beautiful day! I'm excited to have Emily as part of the family and I'm so happy for both of them. They're such a great couple! I wish them many, many wonderful memories together. I already know they'll have a happy life!

NO DOUBT!!!

2009-06-11T21:11:00.005-06:00

One other fun thing Matthew and I got to do on Memorial Day was to go to the No Doubt concert!! I have been wanting to see them in concert for over 10 years. I am a HUGE No Doubt fan!! I was a little nervous because they performed a few weeks earlier on American Idol and the performance was really strange. I was so afraid that that's how the concert was going to be and I was kind of setting myself up to possibly be disappointed. But I absolutely was not! It was an amazing show!!! The stage set up was really cool and they all sounded great live. I'm not a fan of crazy interpretations of songs that sound nothing like the original, and they weren't like that. Everything sounded very similar to the albums which is perfect in my book. Sorry, I hate change! Also, it was Gwen's son's birthday the next day so she brought him out on stage toward the end and had everyone sing Happy Birthday to him. He was so cute. The whole thing was so awesome. One of the funnest nights of my life! A big thank you to my parents for watching the kids for us so we could go. :)

Paramore was the opening band. I like a few of their songs so it was pretty cool. And they sounded pretty good live.

This was No Doubt's grand entrance. I thought it was pretty cool.

Outfit #1

Outfit #2

Outfit #3

Memorial Day weekend

2009-06-11T20:26:00.004-06:00

We had a very busy, but fun, Memorial Day weekend. We were determined to get the rest of our fence put up (the parts that connect from the side to the house), but it kept raining and ruining our plans, so we only got as far as getting the posts cemented in. We did get a bunch of other things done with the yard though. It now looks more complete than it ever has.

I forgot to take pics of the finished project, but here's some in the middle.

If you look closely in the top right window you can see Peyton peeking out of her window. She was taking a nap but could hear all the commotion and fun going on outside and was looking longingly down on us.

On Memorial Day it was actually Tate's birthday, so we took a break from the yardwork to go over and celebrate with him. Kalun and Kristi have been so busy with other things that it all got kind of thrown together at the last minute. But it turned out great! The weather cleared up for a few hours and they were even able to pull the slip n' slide out. The kids had a blast!

Matthew was trying to stay in the shade so he wouldn't get burned, and Peyton decided to be his friend.

Let's play "How many people can you fit on a trampoline?"

Tate got the bright idea to take the sprinkler out from under the tramp and spray the girls. We thought it was hilarious....the girls didn't.

Peyton was tired of waiting for someone to get her some cake so she went inside and got some utensils from the play kitchen and went and helped herself to some of Tate's. Smart girl! :)

Eventually she got her own and boy did she enjoy it!

So long, farewell Jazz! Until next year.....

2009-05-02T12:07:00.003-06:00

Matthew and I had the "opportunity" (if you want to be optimistic enough to call it that) to go to the Jazz game last Saturday. It was Game 4 of the 1st round of the Playoffs. This is all I have to say about that:

Matthew looks like he's about to laugh. He's not very good at pouty faces.

There's no point for me in even continuing to watch the Playoffs.....unless it is to see somebody, ANYBODY, kick the trash out of the Lakers!!!

Happy Birthday, Kya!

2009-05-01T14:48:00.007-06:00

My beautiful, crazy, red-head, Kya, turned 7 last week. She is growing up so fast, and I mean that quite literally. She is catching up pretty quickly to September in height and I think they're closer than they've ever been. My prediction is that she'll pass her up in the next year or two. But anyway, back to the point. We had fun celebrating her birthday which ended up happening over 4 different days which I don't think she seemed to mind. The Saturday before, my parents celebrated with her while they babysit the kids while I was at my friend's funeral. Then the next day we celebrated over at Cluff's after Sunday dinner. She got a chihuahua Webkinz from her Uncle Ben and Aunt Shannon that she was SOOOO excited about. Her and September are both into Webkinz big-time right now.

On her birthday I went to her school for her spotlight thing. She was supposed to have done it a couple days earlier, but I had been so busy with various things that I didn't get a chance to work on her poster until the day before and when I went to get the pictures printed to put on her poster the machines were down at 2 different stores. So I asked her teacher if I could do it a different day and it worked out to do it ON her birthday which I think made her feel that much more special that day. She did a great job of presenting it to her class by herself. It's always interesting to me to see my children in a school setting because you always wonder how differently your child acts at school versus home. It's amazing to see how far Kya has come since last year. She had a rough time in kindergarten for reasons that I will choose not to go into on a public blog. But she has suddenly blossomed into little miss popular this year and has more friends than I can count. I have friends parents telling me all the time about how their daughter is always talking about Kya and what a great friend she is and how funny she is. And Kya comes home constantly with little notes from friends saying the same types of things, and little pieces of paper with friends phone #'s. It makes me so happy to see how many friends she has made. Her confidence has grown so much this year and just thinking about that makes me tear up a little and make my heart feel like it's going to burst!

After school we surprised her with a few things. Matthew left work early and as soon as she got home he took her on a scooter ride to go pick out a movie for that night, while September and I stayed home and finished decorating her room (which September had already gotten up early and partly done that morning....she cracks me up!). We blew up a bunch of little balloons and put them all over her bed which had her new quilt on it that I FINALLY finished after starting it 4 1/2 years ago!!! (The funny thing is, I don't even like it all that much. Back when I started it it matched the look and style I was going for in the girls room. But now, not so much. But I had already finished September's, and I was so close to finishing Kya's that there was no way I wasn't going to finish it and at least let her use it for a year or two.) When she got home and we let her in her room she didn't even notice the quilt. She just got excited about the balloons and gift on her bed. It made me absolutely feel like those last 7 or 8 hours I had frantically spent finishing the quilt was all worth it!! I got over it. I try not to get offended by things like that with Kya anymore. It's not that she's ungrateful, that's just how Kya is. She can be completely oblivious, but once we pointed it out to her she was very grateful. She was also very excited about her gift...we got her Super Mario Kart for the Wii. Although it has been Logan that has gotten the most use out of it. Perhaps it would've been a more appropriate gift for him instead.

We only let the kids have big parties where they invite multiple friends on certain years, and on the other years we let them choose a fun place to go and they get to invite one friend. She wanted to go to Chuck E Cheese, but we wanted to wait and do it the next day so we could go earlier in the day. But we still wanted do something ON her birthday, so we let her invite her friend over for pizza and a movie. We actually ended up with two friends coming over.....one was actually September's best friend, who is the sister of the friend Kya invited. We let them both come because that's pretty much how it works with those 4. They're a package deal! Ariel and Courtney practically live at our house and vice-versa.

Ariel & Courtney spoiled her with lots of gifts.

The Party Crew - Ariel, September, Peyton, Kya and Courtney

The next day at Chuck E Cheese it was a little crazy. The weather was yucky (it was pouring rain when we left!) and apparently everybody else had the same idea as us that Chuck E Cheese would be a fun place to go on a rainy Saturday afternoon. I've never seen it so packed! But the kids managed to make it onto some rides and squeeze in some games. September and Ariel were so focused on earning as many tickets as they could so they could get some AMAZING prizes! That is one of the things I HATE about places like that. The stupid prizes that you can buy with the tickets you've earned. It cost probably $5 in tokens to earn enough tickets to buy a lollipop. It's ridiculous! I mean, sure it's great that you at least get SOMETHING out of it. But I'd rather just have them focus on having fun. But that's my perspective. And theirs.....well, they did have fun, so whatever I guess! ;) One thing that I spotted at the last minute that I thought was pretty cool was this "sketching" machine. You sit down and it takes your pictures and then the machine turns it into a sketching and prints it out for you. It's only 1 token just like everything else. So I did one with Peyton and she was being so funny and smiling away until a half second before it finally took the picture when she decided to bolt. But then I had Matthew do it with me and we now have a lovely sketched drawing of the two of us hanging on the fridge. I'm such a dork! But hey, it's not that often that we have any sort of pictures of the two of us, so I thought it was great.

Logan loved this ride, but Peyton was terrified and pretty much screamed bloody-murder the entire time.

This is Kya's favorite ride there. This was new to the location we went to so she was very excited to see it there.

After being scared of it initially, Peyton eventually "claimed" this ride and spent the majority of her time in it. Every time we'd take her out of it and she saw another kid get in she would get very upset. And when she managed to sneak away from us when we turned our backs for two seconds, we could always find her in it. You can't tell too well in the picture, but she has her face smashed against the windshield. It looked hilarious!!

September's 15 minutes of fame!

2009-05-01T14:36:00.003-06:00

Last week I was doing my daily reading of the newspaper when I spotted someone on the front page of one of the sections of the newspaper that I recognized....our Bishop! The article was about bankers helping local children learn about money. Suddenly I looked closer at the picture and realized that it was September's classroom, which made sense because the Bishop's daughter is in her class. I looked for September in the background but remembered that she sat on the other side of the classroom than what was shown. I was disappointed, but then the story continued on the inside and I opened it up and lo and behold there was another picture, this time with September right up front. It's more of a side profile, and it didn't have her name in the caption, but it was still enough to absolutely fill this mother's heart with pride!

I don't know how much longer they'll leave the article up online, but you can find the link here:

http://www.heraldextra.com/content/view/306549/17/

You can see our Bishop at the whiteboard in the 1st one, and September is in the bottom, left corner of the second one. Very cool!

Sprinter Break

2009-05-01T13:38:00.008-06:00

This year we decided to call Spring Break "Sprinter Break" because it was such a mix of Winter and Spring. It ended up snowing a couple days into it and snow remained on the ground the majority of the time. Ug! But the kids had fun getting their snow gear on and going out one last time (hopefully!!!) and making a snowman and playing in the snow.

One big treat for us during the week off was that Kalun & Kristi's niece, Kyli, was here! They'd had her plane ticket booked for a few months and September and Kya were really looking forward to it. One night we went over and had a BBQ and let the kids just play. Another day we went bowling and then we went to Jump On It, a place that is pretty much wall-to-wall trampolines, with an area of huge blow up toys for the tiny kids. We pretty much had to stick to indoor activities the whole week because of the crummy weather, and it felt more like the kids were out of school just because than it felt like Spring Break, but we still managed to have fun!

During one of Logan's throws he ended up tripping and falling on the floor. He just stayed on the floor as if he was trying to prove that he did it on purpose and just wanted to watch the ball from that angle.

Peyton was a little hard to control at the bowling alley. She wanted to play with the balls so bad and she would get so excited about the pins falling over that she kept running up by the person bowling and almost got hit a few times.

Peyton got very excited about the big pink elephant as we were leaving.

Easter

2009-05-01T10:07:00.008-06:00

Once again, I haven't posted in a while and so much has happened, so let's get down to business. First, Easter....

We had a great Easter! We colored eggs on Saturday night. Afterward September made a comment that made me feel like a failure as a parent. She asked, "I understand that part of what we celebrate at Easter is new life (well, it started out all right).....but (you know you're in trouble when there's a "but")....what do eggs have to do with that?" This led to a fun discussion. No, it didn't quite escalate to the birds and the bees.

When we woke up on Easter morning, we came out of our bedroom to find little colored pieces of paper in the shapes of eggs all over the wall. At first I thought Lisa and Kyle had done it, until I went to the bottom of the stairs and found this and realized that it was September's handwriting.

We could hear her and Ember awake in their room so we just figured that they had gotten up early and done it. Nope! They had in fact stayed up very late making all of it, and then set the alarm clock for 2:30! The alarm clock's volume was turned down so it didn't wake them up but September happened to wake up at 2:35 and that's when they got up and did it. I think maybe she should take over the Easter Bunny's duties! They both crack me up how big they are into holidays. As Matthew says, "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree!" He's right, I absolutely love holidays....the big and the small.

Here's a close-up of the Corbett's basket. Chocolate for Lisa and Gobstoppers for Kyle. Kyle is known for having a mouthful or so of Gobstoppers at any given time! It's become a big family joke. Then you can also see Kylee's little easter egg I made for her for her "1st Easter". We also got her a little bracelet that would've gone so well with her little Easter dress. But then they all ended up sick that day and I don't think I even got to see Kylee all day on Easter. I still want to get some pictures of her in her Easter dress and if we ever get around to it I'll try and post them.

Peyton got right down to business eating her chocolate!

We had Kyle come and take some traditional Easter Day family pics. He took probably 20 or so to make sure we got a good shot. But when I went to upload them something happened and it only uploaded TWO of them! I was so upset!! And by that time we were all out of our clothes and everyone was a mess. It sounds so dumb, but that's one of my favorite parts of Easter is to buy all the kids new clothes and to get a nice family picture. That way we at least have ONE every year. Well, neither of them were ones that were all that great. But this one turned out to be the best of the 2.

Then of course I had to do my usual photo shoot with the kids. They were all really good sports about the whole thing even though it was a pretty chilly day....except for Peyton. She was in an ornery mood at the time and so I didn't even attempt to take any pictures. I was hoping to get some later when she decided to be happier and we just got busy.

We did our traditional Easter egg hunt for the kids after church and even though all the kids enjoyed themselves, it was Peyton who was the most excited. She's at such a fun age for it and she just could not get enough. It's so great to see the small things that give little children so much joy!

That night as we were on our way to dinner with Matthew's family, I received a phone call from my sister informing me that a friend of ours had been shot and killed the day before. This was a kid that we had been friends with during our teenage years. He was a foster child living with one of our neighbors. He had had a really rough life and as a consequence had gone on to make some bad choices in his life and he had been in and out of prison. I hadn't had contact with him in years and didn't know all of that until after I'd heard about his death. He had just gotten out of prison last year and had been working really hard to turn his life around. In the last couple weeks of his life he had started feeling very overwhelmed and depressed and it led to an incident that ended up with police officers at his house and in the end he was gunned down by the police. The media twisted the whole story and made him out to be such a monster and I was extremely upset by some of the comments that people left online in response to the articles. Deep down he was a good guy with a good heart, he just had a tough life and had made bad choices. It was extremely bittersweet to receive the news about his death on Easter. It soured a day that had been otherwise very fun and uplifting. BUT, I couldn't help but think about our Savior and his Atonement and how much it related to this situation. It made me that much more thankful for my Savior and the sacrifice he made for all of us. I know that I will see him again and I know that he is finally at peace, and that leaves me at peace just knowing that.

Happy April Fools Day!

2009-04-01T21:58:00.000-06:00

My kids are very big into holidays and today (even though it's not much of a "holiday") was no different. One of the first things Kya said when we saw her this morning was, "Happy April Fools Day!" Then September showed us a card Kya had made for her. It read:

"NOT Happy April Fools Day. You are not our sister, you are our friend."

I think somehow Kya equates April Fools Day with "opposite day". Either way it was pretty funny and we all had a nice laugh.

On another note, today is my Dad's birthday! I just want to thank him for being such a great Dad. We've had our differences over the years and we can sometimes butt heads, but that's because we're so alike! Dad, I hope you had a great birthday and that's no April Fools joke....or in Kya's world, the opposite of what I mean.

I'm such a big girl!

2009-03-31T14:04:00.003-06:00

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!

2009-03-25T23:03:00.003-06:00

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! :)

2009-03-24T16:19:00.004-06:00

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.....

2009-03-24T15:41:00.006-06:00

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!!!

2009-03-19T16:18:00.005-06:00

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....

2009-03-19T15:44:00.003-06:00

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!

2009-03-19T15:14:00.006-06:00

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

2009-03-19T13:50:00.007-06:00

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.