Baby...it's all jacked up!

O.k. imagine that line to the tune of Elvis' "I'm All Shook Up". That's the tune and line that's been going through my head for the past few days as I think about our yard. So here's the long story short of why:

We've been wanting to do some kind of patio out back for a LONG time. Originally we wanted to do a deck but had major sticker shock when we got a bid. Obviously it would be the cheapest just to do cement....BUT it would be too hard to do as big of a pad as we wanted because you'd have to do it by wheelbarrowing the cement to the back a little at a time. But after much thought we decided it was at least worth a shot to get some bids and see if someone would be willing to do that. So last Monday I called about 15 different places and found NO ONE that spoke English very well. I tried to get a rough estimate from them over the phone since I didn't want a ton of people coming out and giving me bids....but it was too difficult to explain to them exactly what I needed done because of the language barrier. So finally I agreed to let a select few come and give bids. There were supposed to be two that were going to come out that day....they didn't show. So the next day two more were going to stop by and their appointments were within a half hour of each other. Well, the first one showed up, looked everything over, gave me a bid that seemed pretty reasonable and I felt pretty good about him and since no one else had showed up, Matthew and I decided to go with him. He said he'd bring in a Bobcat to come dig out the sod from the area and the old, small concrete pad. I was worried that it would be too heavy and he swore that they'd done it a bunch of times without problems....so I ok'd it. Um, the ground in Lehi sucks! It's either too soft or too hard depending on whatever you don't want it to be. So in this case, it was too soft. The Bobcat totally sank into the ground and left tire tracks about a foot deep in some places, through our side yard. Yikes! I was really worried because this was just a tiny company that is basically working to put food on the table....not some huge company I could yell at and make them fork out tons of money to fix the mess they'd made. There's a little more to the story, but I won't bore you with the details. The end result is basically this.....they have agreed to fix it. They'll have to bring in some fill dirt and new sod and will probably end up making nothing on our job. I feel so bad. It's not their fault, but it's not ours either. I'm glad they stepped up and were willing to fix their mistakes. I didn't want things to get ugly and thank goodness it never came to that.....well, if you don't count what our yard looks like right now. ;) So hopefully by the end of this week our yard will be back to normal and we'll have a nice big patio in the back. I'll be patiently waiting...

These pictures just don't do it justice!

September & Kya's Dance Recital

September and Kya had their dance recital last week and then had their final day of dance for the term a few days ago. Their teacher actually decided to discontinue teaching so it was kind of a sad day. I don't know if we'll continue somewhere else. The girls had a great time and learned a lot....the extra coordination has been helpful. ;) But I think we might try to find somewhere for them to take gymnastics in the fall....we'll take a break for the summer from anything, other than piano lessons . Or I think we might do soccer. That could be fun. We'll see....

Completing the BOM!

I finished a very big feat (for me) 10 days ago. I finished the Book of Mormon! My goal was to do it in 97 days to go along with the Hinckley challenge that someone created (to honor President Hinckley by reading the BOM in 97 days.....the number of years old he was when he passed away). Well, I have to admit that I didn't quite do it....I was 5 days late! BUT, I finished. It's only my second time personally reading it front to back (or in this case I actually listened.....Matthew downloaded the audio book onto my ipod). I have started it a gazillion times, but only finished twice. I gained an even stronger testimony this time around. It's interesting how you can read the same things over and over and yet get a different message with the same passages. I want to take a quick second to bear my testimony that I KNOW that Joseph Smith was a true prophet of God and I am so thankful for him and for everything he did to restore Christ's church. I know that The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is the only true church on the earth today, and I am thankful to be a member. :)

GIRLS NIGHT OUT!!!

O.k. many years ago GNO would have consisted of a whole different set of events. But these days, now that I'm a mature (LOL), married woman with four kids, it's a little different....but it's still a LOT of fun. To celebrate my friend Christie's bday, we went to Ikea and did a picture scavenger hunt. A couple of the girls went to Ikea a few days earlier and took some pictures of random things throughout the store. We broke up into two groups and went a huntin'. When we found the item we had to take a picture WITH the item. Then at the end we loaded up all of the pictures we took onto one of the girls laptops and watched a slideshow of the pictures we took. Some of them were very funny and creative. The final destination was the cafeteria where we had dinner. I'd never eaten at Ikea before....it was actually pretty good....and cheap! Anyway, it was a lot of good, clean, silly fun!

"Christie the Cripple"

Me pretending to blow bubbles like the kids in the picture on the book.

Mine & Christie's tea party. Good grief, we didn't even raise our pinkies....we are so not lady-like!

Me, Wesley, Angela, and Christie

Patty, Vicki, and Crystal

The "Bucket-Heads": Patty, Vicki, and Crystal.

Crystal the "maid".

Crystal, Patty, and Vicki

Vicki

The Group

Back row: Vicki, Angela, Brittany (with baby, Preston), Rochelle (with baby, Ellie)
Front row: Crystal, Wesley, Patty, Christie, Me

Old friends are the best!

Angel, Me, Chrisy, and Bonnie at the park....with Peyton in the background. ;) We figured it would be easier to do it without all the kids, so we just let them keep on playing on the playground while a little old man took our picture.

A couple weeks ago I got to see all three of my best friends from high school. First, my friend Angel called and said she was in town (she lives in San Jose, but works out of New York). I haven't seen her in 2 years! Her sister happened to be in town as well, so me and my sister (all 4 of us are friends) got together up in Salt Lake. We went to Liberty Park and let the kids play for a bit, and then we went to lunch. It was so much fun to catch up!

My cute sister, Bonnie, 8 months pregnant. She thinks she's huge, but I think she looks amazing.

Then, a couple days later I got together with Anj and Lyndsey at a park up in West Jordan....which is where Lyndsey lives. It's sad, Lyndsey only lives like 15 minutes from me and Anj lives about a half hour and yet I don't see them very often either. It was fun catching up with them too.

I just love those girls so much. They're such good friends! In high school it must have been a trip to see all of us walking down the hall together....which was actually pretty rare that all four of us were together at the same time. But anyway, we are all really short (ranging from Lyndsey at a whopping 4' 11" to me at 5' 2" - that's right, I'm the tall one of the group!). We must've looked like a crew of midgets!

Anyway, it was fun seeing you girlies. It's too bad it didn't work out for all of us to get together. I look forward to seeing you at our 10 YEAR REUNION! Love ya!

Me & Anj. She'll be mad when she finds out I posted these on here because she thought she looked horrible....she's not wearing any makeup. Whatever Anj, you're still gorgeous...you and your tiny-baby-teeth smile! ;)

Hailey (Anj's daughter) and Kya. They're about 5 weeks apart. They are salt and pepper twins.....skinny, tall twigs!

Khalil's Blessing Day

We went to my nephews baby blessing a few weeks ago. My sister-in-law is Nicaraguan and these types of events are very huge for their culture. Lots of her family flew in from Florida to be there for it. They had the blessing and then a FEAST afterwards. Holy meat galore! There was quite a few people there and there was enough steaks for everyone to have probably two 12 oz. steaks! And that was just the start of the meat....and the food. It was a nice little shindig. They had it at their church and as they were cleaning up and loading the tables onto the cart thing, the kids couldn't resist and piled on top and begged for rides. Uncle Mike to the rescue!

My mother-in-law holding Khalil. That kid is a chunk!! He is exactly 6 months younger than Peyton and at about 3 months old he weighs as much, if not more, than her.

Logan had to get in on the pushing action.

My cute niece, Aymara, and her cousin Alex (from the other side) taking their turn on the table ride.

My hilarious nephew, Cohen, pushing Peyton around in her stroller. He was just learning to walk, so this was great. He's kneeling in this pic, but he was walking around most of the time. It was too cute!

Happy Mother's Day to me!

I'm a big Jazz fan and I had not been to a Jazz game all year (we usually go to 2 or 3). So when the opportunity arose to go to Game 3 against the Lakers, I couldn't pass it up. PLUS, David Archuleta was going to be singing the national anthem....LOVE HIM!! So as my Mother's Day gift, Matthew took me to the game and bought me a Derron Williams jersey. :) We actually ended up going with our best friends. They called us that morning and apparently they had the same idea, so we ended up getting some tickets together. We had a blast! It was a great game. It's too bad we went on to lose the series. :) Better luck next year, Jazz.....

David Archuleta singing the national anthem. He was amazing!

David waving to the crowd.

I just had to get a picture of this guy. He was in the row in front of us and he was in full retro uniform, baby! It cracked me up!!

Final score....oh yeah!!

Me and my baby! We look a little exhausted. What a night!!

Me sitting in the "approximate" seat that David Archuleta sat in....give or take a row. :)

Kalun being tough while Kristi and I are just cute. Jazz are number 1!!!

Kalun & Kristi....wow, they look young for some reason.

Great American Road Trip follow-up

So not only did my brother and his friends make it back safe and sound (and accident and ticket free!!), they did it in record time! They made it in 106 hours and 43 minutes!! As far as they know it beats the best known record, according to anything ever documented. They were constantly bombarded with phone calls for interviews and ended up doing too many to count. They even did one by speaker phone to a 7th grade (?) geography class. They originally planned on driving the 4 hours longer to get home after arriving at 4-corners, but they were wise and stayed the night in a hotel down there. Then Joey took the next day to pack and prepare to leave again the following day with my youngest brother to drive BACK across the country to work for the summer. He sure is one driving fool! :) Love ya, Ho! Glad you had a safe and adventurous trip.

Josh & Joey next to the Scion they took their great adventure in....affectionately nicknamed "Scionara" by popular vote on their travel blog.

Baby Shower 2nd Grade Style

Libby, September, Mrs. Dastrup, Emily

So September's teacher is (I guess I should say was) pregnant, and the cute little room mom threw her a baby shower that they did during class and invited all the parents to come if they could. I just love her teacher and I think it's a great feat to be pregnant as a teacher, so there was no way I was going to miss it. It was a blast! They played some games that would have been kind of dorky if it was a shower for adults, but because it involved the kids it was so much fun. They did the one where you measure out a piece of string and cut it to the size you think is the pregnant persons "girth" (that word makes me giggle!). The kids were awfully flattering. Some of them had pieces of string that would probably barely make it around their waist! And yet after telling September that her piece was barely bigger than me, she ended up taking like 3rd place. That made me feel a little self-conscious. ;) Then they did the diaper changing race to see who could do it the fastest. You could tell who had little brothers and sisters and who didn't. September took like 3rd in that one too. I wasn't surprised with that one....we call her the "second mother". Anyway, it was a lot of fun. Her teacher ended up having her baby about 4 days later, which was about 2 weeks ago, so September has had a substitute and will have a substitute til the end of school. She's kind of sad because she really loved her teacher, but she might come in for the last day of school.

September and her friends, Libby and Emily, with their "girth strings".

Mrs. Dastrup measuring September's string.

Mrs. Dastrup and the string winner, Bridger. Yes, he is as short as he looks. September is really small and he's about 6 inches shorter than her! I'm sure Kya is taller than him! He is a little spit-fire though.

September changing her fake baby's diaper.

Site under construction! :)

Clearly I am not meant to design blogs! I have so much to catch up on and would like to do it, but any time I've tried to do it in the past few days I've only managed to screw up my blog. If you've checked on it any time in the past couple days you may have noticed. ;) I'm trying to change the template, but somehow I only ruin things. At one point I pretty much erased the whole thing...oops! I was able to get it back and I'll have to leave it as is for a while until my computer decides to listen to me! I consider myself a pretty smart person when it comes to computers....but somehow things are not working! So wish me luck that in the next couple days (or so) I can get things fixed the way I would like to.

The Great American Road Trip

I have a few things I need to get on and post about, but I've been wanting to post about this for a few days and since it's kind of time-sensitive, I thought I'd hurry and do it before it's too late. I'll post other stuff later.

So my brother, Joey, is taking part in "The Great American Road Trip" right now. Him and a couple of his friends are traveling to all 48 lower states and they plan to do it all in about 5 days. They're trying to break the best publicly known record which is 5 days 7 hours 15 minutes....I think, don't quote me! They don't allow records anymore in the Guinness Book because of concerns about speeding. So they won't make it in the book, but they'll have bragging rights! They left Sunday morning in Vermont (after taking a couple days to drive THERE of course) and will be finishing the trip at 4 corners on Friday morning if things go as planned.

I think they're a little nuts....but I have to say that I'm a bit jealous. It sounds kind of fun! I think they're living a dream for a lot of people. In fact, they have a camera attached to the dash that takes a picture once every minute. So at the end of the trip they'll have a little movie of all of the views from their trip. Way cool! I can't wait to see it. They've been getting all sorts of attention from media across the country, and here locally in Salt Lake. They have set up a blog that they're updating daily with their iPhones, so if you want to check it out, go to: www.greatamericanroadtrip.us. A lot of the comments that have been left are from people all over the country that have seen them as they have been driving!

Anyway, good luck, Joey! DRIVE SAFE! I love you!!!

We had to SCRAPE the car this morning!

I just HAD to come and post about this, but first, I have to start this story from last night. I went to the store last night and as I was leaving the store....it started to SNOW! When I got home, I was parking the car (I drove Matthew's car because it was in the driveway behind the Pilot because the city is doing some work on our sidewalks - they had to jackhammer an area out and repour the cement because it had sunk). It's on the side of the driveway that leads to where Matthew parks in the garage, so it makes it almost impossible to park his car in the garage, so he's just been parking in the driveway for the past couple days. Well, Matthew came out to help me get the groceries and I asked him if he wanted me to try to maneuver it into the garage...after all it was snowing and he might have to scrape it in the morning if I didn't. It was just a JOKE! We get up this morning and sure enough, everything, including Matthew's car, is covered in snow. Not a whole lot...but it's May 1st for heavens sake! Anything that is sticking at this time of year is ridiculous! Earth to the weather....you can STOP snowing...it's May now!! I was talking to a friend of mine the other day and she said, "Global warming, my foot." (Well, maybe it wasn't foot, I don't remember exactly what word she said, but anyway it was funny.) And today was case in point!

O.k. I had to post this picture for three reasons: 1) To show the lovely orange things in our yard. 2) To show how blue the sky looks...why is it SNOWING? O.k. I guess there are quite a few clouds, but still. And 3) Look at my neighbor's yard?! Why is the snow sticking to virtually every other yard on the block EXCEPT theirs. I would think that it's because they did something special to their lawn, which would probably mean that it looks amazing, but no, their lawn looks as crappy as ours. (Sorry Meredith...but we know how crappy our lawns are, right? Especially compared to the Larson's! Ugh! ;) But for the record, the snow was sticking to their "perfect" lawn, too. Weird! I seriously sat out front for a while this morning trying to figure it out, but I just couldn't. Meredith, if you're reading this, any thoughts? Seriously, I'm stumped!)

O.k. I have to tell another funny story that happened this morning and it kind of has to do with the snow thing, so whatever. So Logan was helping me make a smoothie for breakfast and he was sitting on a stool to be up high enough by me. Well, because he was on the stool, he was able to see outside into the backyard. He started pointing at all of the snow and getting all excited....then he turned and looked over to the side and saw the shed in the backyard and said, "Look, it's Daddy's house!" He's actually said it before, but it was still just as funny! Yes folks, I make my husband live in the shed in the backyard. He's only allowed to come in to eat and use the bathroom. ;)

Here's Matthew's "house". ;)