kids!

kids say the funniest things- and mine have been hilarious!

Christena has been into cooking lately and yesterday she was asking for a cookbook. Jake innocently asked her if she wanted to go to culinary school when she is older. Christena's reply- "No! I don't want to look at colons all day!"
Jake and I almost died laughing.

Then, since we were talking about school and where the kids wanted to go to college, Jake told Christena and Savannah that if they wanted to go to BYU they had to do good in school and get good grades. Savannah said she wanted to go to BYU- Idaho. Jake said why do you want to go there, the football team and basketball team are both at BYU Provo and that's where all the cute boys are- she quickly and emphatically answered, "Then I want to go to Provo!" I have to admit that left me a little worried, she is only almost 8!

My kids always amaze me and make me laugh everyday- They are great!

still here!

okay so we really are still alive, we haven't dropped off the face of the earth. I wish I had a great excuse to explain my 5 month absence, and while I have a few, I won't bother you with all of them. I will quickly give you our 5 month update. I added a few pictures but it didn't upload them in the order I wanted it to, so they are a little scrambled- I will do my best to explain them.
This picture is shortly after Christmas- we got a pretty big storm and the kids convinced Jake to help them build a snow sculpture. This is their snow turtle. My contribution was the green and yellow colored water for the shell. Isn't it cute!

In January my kids had crazy hair day at school- This was Savannah's crazy hair.

Christmas morning breakfast- we had cinnamon rolls, bacon and orange smiles!

I also got new dishes-finally after being married for 10 years I have enough matching plate for our whole family!

In september Christena got her hair cut. She looks so grown up with her short hair!

this was Olyvia's first day of Kindergarten, the other girls had been to school for a week already.
so that is a very quick rundown of our last 5 months- a couple of things that are going on right now. We are looking forward to Savannah's 8th birthday in a couple of weeks- and then her baptism. I can't believe she is almost 8. She is so excited about her baptism. she is getting so grown up and is such a big help at home. Christena entered a poem into the school's reflection contest and it moved on to the district level of judging where it received an excellence award and now it is at the state level of judging. She also tried out for a part in their school play- A Big Bad Musical and got the part of the fairy godmother. The play is a trial of the big bad wolf and the fairy godmother is the attorney for the good fairy tale characters. She has a bunch of lines she is learning and even has a couple of solo's and one song that is pretty much her with some backup singers. She is working really hard to learn it all and she is doing great! Olyvia is doing great in school and is reading really good, unfortunatly the work is not very challenging for her so she is often bored. On Saturday she is going to be taking a class for a special pull out program for next year. It would be a 1st and 2nd grade classroom. It is not at the school she is at right now so she has already told me she is not going to pass the test so she will be at her same school. She is smart enough she probably could figure out how not to pass the test too. Juliana is now a sunbeam and it is alot of fun having her in primary- although I usually feel like I've run a marathon by the time she heads to class. She is not getting the concept of sitting reverently with her teacher or even sitting with her teacher during primary. She tends to wander around the primary room, either sitting by me at the piano or with Christena or just making a break for the door. Of course it is usually during singing time when I am trying to play the piano that she tries to run! Jake has gone back to school and it slowly getting back into the rhythm of studying and doing homework. He is doing on-line classes through Utah State University to earn a Masters in Rehabilitation Counseling. I am still sewing my hats which takes most of my time and trying to balance childcare, housekeeping and all of the other usual jobs a mother gets to do, while maintaining some sanity. I don't know how well the sanity part is going though. We also are in the middle of house hunting. In January we thought we had a house in Sandy, but it fell through and then went under litigation so we had to move back to the looking stage. Our realtor is very patient with us and has been working hard to help us find something in our price range. Jake tells me I am too picky but for this amount of money I think I have a right to be.

Anyway that's what's been going on for the last few months in our busy corner of Utah- I will try to do better in keeping everything updated!

too much fun!

This is about the 3rd time I have tried to blog, but I can't get any pictures to load onto blogger. I'm kind of bummed because I have some cute pictures of my kids, but I figured I better just blog and forget the pictures for this time. Maybe next time I can get it to work. I guess I will just have to let everyone know what we have been up to this last 3 weeks.
1st up- we had a ward campout the middle of August. It was a lot of fun with only a few mishaps. We went up on Thursday the 14th and we were the first ones there. We picked up the keys to the stake property from the bishop and headed up expecting the bishop to be coming up a couple hours after we got there. The road up to the property was crazy- I am not a big fan of twisty mountain roads and this one was not one of the best I have ever been on- it was very narrow and 3 of the 5 miles was dirt. We made it to the camp safely, with I'm sure just a few new gray hairs on my head and set out to pick a campsite and set up our tent. It sure is a good thing Jake is such a good sport, and a brave soul camping with me and 4 girls. We got the tent set up without too many problems until we tried to set up the screen porch part of the tent, and ran into the concrete surrounding a stove. We decided to scoot the tent back, so up came all of the stakes and Jake, Christena, Savannah and I all tried to pick up the tent and move it. Then we had to stake down the tent again, only this time to find we needed to turn it so we would be able to get in and out. Up came the stakes once again and again we moved the tent. The third time was the charm and we were finally ready to go. We were fine until dinner time when we pulled out our little table top grill and coleman stove to fix dinner and the matches I had packed wouldn't light. I had just stuck about 20 matches in an old pill bottle so I wouldn't have to mess with the box and it was smaller to pack. Unfortunatly these matches were the strike on the box kind. We went through about half the matches before we finally got the grill lit so we could cook the hamburgers and hot dogs. I don't know if I was thankful that no one had shown up yet to see all of this, or if I wished there was someone to borrow some matches or a lighter from. Luckily that was the only problems we had and the rest of the weekend was a success and we all had a lot of fun. There was a zip line that the girls couldn't get enough of- I have some cute pictures, but of course they didn't pull up so you don't get to see them. The kids even convinced me to go on the zipline on Saturday before we came home-again there is a picture but, well, you know.

Since I last blogged we also have had the start of a new school year...Yeah! Christena and Savannah started back last monday, but Olyvia doesn't start until Thursday. She did her kindergarten testing last tuesday and flew through it. When Jake asked her how it went she told him it was really easy. She is such a smart kid I hope she doesn't get too bored with the work.

Today, (labor day), after the rain and hail cleared up we took the kids to the Hogle Zoo. We promised them last spring we would take them and got rained out that day and never made it over the summer, so we figured we would give it another try. We got some cute pics of the kids here too. I may try to post them another day. One funny story though- while we were looking at the animals we saw the cougers. Jake said to Olyvia, "Look over there, there's a couger." Olyvia follows this comment up with, "Rise and Shout the Couger's are out!" all Jake could say is, "I've raised her right!" Anyway we had a fun day and thankfully the weather finally cooperated and we could take the girls to the zoo. Tomorrow they get to head back to school.

trying to catch up

It has been forever since I last updated my blog and I feel like I have been severly lacking!
I still don't have much time since it is 12 AM but I thought I would take a few minutes to five everyone a brief overview of our busy July.

First of all- we had a great 4th of July, unfortunately the batteries in my camera died so I have no pictures! We walked down to State street that morning and watched the Murray city parade- not too bad of a parade although Jake complained that it was all advertisements and politicians.
Later that day we went to Jake's parents house and had dinner and then on to the Sandy City parade. My nephew James was in this parade with the West Jordan High School marching band. After the parade we headed over to Jordan High School where we met up with more of Jake's family for fireworks.

Next up was a trip to Idaho- The tile around our shower started to fall off the wall and after two estimates the landlord decided it would all have to be replaced. Because we would not have a bathroom for the week the girls and I headed up to Idaho to stay with my family while Jake headed to his parents for the week. It was nice to be able to visit my family for the week since I didn't think I would be able to make it up there this summer. This also gave Jake some time to spend with his parents before they left on their mission, which brings us to one of our next big July items.

July 13th Jake's parents spoke in church in preparation for their mission to the Little Rock Arkansas mission. After a week in the MTC they were back home for the weekend so the 20th we all said goodbye and they left the next tuesday for their year in the mission field.

July 26th was Juliana's 3rd birthday- here is a picture of her with her cake
and then the 31st was Christena's 9th birthday- her is a picture of her with her cake
she wanted a fashion cake, so this is her purse cake.

And here is a picture of my kitchen after I was done making and frosting both cakes for the family birthday party on the 27th.

It was lots of fun, and a lot easier for me to just celebrate both girls birthdays on the same day. My sister Doreen and my birthdays are only a week apart and we always had seperate birthday stuff. I don't know how my mom did it.

Here is Juliana opening one of her presents.

she got a ball from Michele and Steve and kids. It was wrapped really well so she needed a little extra help to get it open.

And here Christena is opening her present from Jake and me.
She was very excited to get her own digital camera. Now maybe she will quit using mine!

Sorry for just the quick overview of our month- now that it is halfway through August I hope this month might be a little bit slower!

Sunday Undies!

We have been working on potty training Juliana for the last couple of weeks. I really hate potty training, I personally think it is one of the worst parts of being a parent, and I would love to never have to do it. Luckily for me Juliana has been doing a great job. The first week was a little scary and her biggest challange was actually doing something when she sat on the toilet. She loves to sit on the potty, but doesn't like to sit there for more than 30 seconds. The only way we can get her to stay is by singing with her or reading her stories. My poor downstairs neighbors have probably heard us singing "the wheels on the bus", "thumbkin", or "5 little monkeys jumpin on the bed" so many times they want to pull their hair out! Last week was pretty good, we only averaged one accident a day and now she is even figuring out when she has to go and is telling me-yeah! I think we have almost gotten there- She has been one of my easiest to potty train!

These are her pretty rufflySunday underwear- they look really cute under a dress!
Of course I am too paranoid to let her wear underwear to church-I don't really want an accident in nursury, so she still gets to wear a pull-up for church, but after church she gets to wear these pretty panties!

late again!

Once again I am late at updating my blog. Since last sunday was Father's Day we were gone most of the day and didn't get home until almost 10 and I still had to call my Dad so I had planned on updating on Monday, of course that didn't happen and here we are back again at Sunday.

Jake had a good father's day. The girls have all enjoyed the presents that he got. I gave him a croquet set and the girls could hardly wait for him to get home from work on Monday so they could play. They played 3 or 4 times this week.
Here is Olyvia trying out croquet. She had a few good hits.

Jake showing the girls how it is done

It took him the longest to get through the first wickets, but of course he ended up winning-by a long shot!

Olyvia and Juliana gave Jake a Rummikub game. Christena and Savannah love to play this game and Monday morning they took these pictures with my camera.

Savannah likes to be the look a like for the wild's.

I thought this picture of Juliana was cute- I think she was a little bored with our dinner conversation!
Well I hope everyone has had a great two weeks- hopefully it won't take me another two weeks before I blog again.

Calling in Stupid!

This week has been a little crazy! Tuesday was supposed to be the last day of me working at Alta View Elementary, but I encountered a little glitch in my plans.

Christena and Savannah were going to come to work with me so they would be able to see their friends from their old school and Olyvia and Juliana were going to go to my friend Rachel's house like they did every Tuesday. Tuesday's I also have to drop of my hats for the week at Hat's with Heart, so I usually do that on my way to work. Things have a way of not going as planned, however.

Tuesday morning we all got up and dressed and at 10:15 we were ready to go. I went into my room to grab the keys while the kids all headed to the car, only to find my keys were not where I had left them the night before!

I knew I had put my keys on top of the armoire in my bedroom the night before when I went in to change into my pajamas but they weren't there. I looked around the armoire to see if they had fallen on the floor and looked underneath to see if they had been kicked underneath-nothing. 15 minutes more of frantic searching I called Jake to see if he had taken them, or moved them or had any idea where they may have gone- of course he hadn't seen them either, but asked if I may have left them out in the garage the night before when I went to get somethings out. The only problem-we had a lock on the garage and the key was on my key ring! I tried to cut the lock off, but only had little wire cutters-didn't work. Next I tried to take the bolt off the garage- all I succeeded in doing was rounding off the bolt. 30 minutes later, after calling in to work to tell them I was going to be late- I headed back inside for another shot at my bedroom. This time I cleared everything off the top of my dresser and under and around it. When by 11:15 I still hadn't found my keys I called Jake again and he said he would leave work and come home to open the garage.

After he opened the garage we found...nothing! He came inside and helped to look for the keys. About an hour later ta-da...

My keys! (sorry the picture is sideways)

Jake said he had got to thinking where I may have put my keys if I hadn't put them on the armoire like I said (and still insist) that I had put them, and he figured I may have dropped them on the bed.

He had to sift through all of the other stuff we had thrown on the bed in our frantic search, and there under a blanket was my keys! They had to have been there all night!

At this point it was already 12:15 I was supposed to get off work at 1:00. Factor in the 15 minutes it takes for me to drive there, I didn't make it. So instead I called in stupid and got to work on Wednesday instead. On the plus side that meant there were no kids to have to fight with!