Halloween and More

We had a big snow storm last week. On Wednesday it snowed about a foot here in Loveland. It was awesome. The kids had a couple days off of school for Parent Teacher Onferences and had lots of fun playing in the snow. We even went sledding on Friday. The temperatures have gone back up and it has been really nice this week. All of the snow has melted and for the first time in several years, we had great weather for Halloween. Usually it snows or rains and is very cold for Halloween. This year, I guess the snow just came a bit early.

Here are some pics of the kids from Halloween.

My Blue Man Group

Little Red Riding Hood

Pics of Kaylee coming soon.

The kids had a great time Trick-or-Treating. They got way more candy than we need. I am trying to spread it out so they don't rot their teeth out of their mouths. They only get a couple of pieces a day and they are handling that pretty well.

We woke up on Halloween to a mess in the front of our house. One of Kaylee's friends got us good!! Silly string, crepe paper streamers, toilet paper, paper shreds, confetti, post it notes, and so much more. Someone was very busy and I have no idea how we never heard them. I will say that I was very grateful the two boys came and washed off the residue from the silly string from my front door.

The boys all started wrestling last week. It is so fun to watch them. Kyle is doing great. He is such a little scrapper. This week, he was paired up with a little boy his size who was really mean. They were practicing take downs and Kyle did his take down and every time Kyle took him down, the other boy cried. Yet when it was the other boy's turn, he took Kyle down and beat the crap out of him (illegally) by punching him in the face, kicking him in the crotch, and jumping on him. Kyle was really good and did not retaliate, that made me proud. Jake is learning how it all works and because he is so strong he is often the last one left in the circle when they play a game called push out. They all try to push everyone else out of the circle. He's a tough guy. Ryan is doing well also. He is learning the moves and is doing quite well with his take downs too. I will have to get some pictures of them wrestling to post later.

The girls are staying really busy too. Tiffany just started a new session of Volleyball. SHe is excited to keep up her schools and work hard to prepare for next season. Kaylee is still doing physical therapy on her finger. It is healing nicely and hopefully soon she will have full range of motion again.

The kids brought home their report cards last week and it was so wonderful to see their grades. 4 of the kids get letter grades (Kyle doesn't in Kindergarten) and on those 4 report cards, it was all A's and only 3 B's. I was amazed and so proud of all their hard work. Kyle's marks were very good too and he is doing great in kindergarten.

Mike moved into his new apartment in Oklahoma this week. It is weird to think of the fact that my husband has a separate residence in another state. But it will be so nice for him to not have to stay in hotels all the time anymore. He will be working there for about a year so it makes sense for him to set up a more permanent residence, even if it is temporary. We sure miss him when he is away, but have settled into our own routine and we are managing okay without him. He makes it home every Friday and heads back to work on Monday mornings. He is hoping that it will be a Monday thru Thursday thing in Oklahome soon so he can have 3 days home with us.

As for me, I stay busy enough with the kids, house, homework, etc., etc., but I have opened up a new card shop online. If you haven't seen it yet, check it out here. I am doing custom photo cards. You choose from any of my card styles, send me your photos, pick your font and sentiment and I create your card for you. Then I send you the jpeg file and you take it to get printed. Here is a sample of one of my favorites.

Also for any Twilight fans, only 15 more days until New Moon. Yippee!! I can't wait. I am heading to see the movie with a bunch of my girlfriends. We are all getting special shirts for the occasion. Speaking of shirts, I have some new shirts in my t-shirt shop, you can check out my t-shirt shop here. There are some great Twilight and New Moon shirts for your movie night!

Well, I think that is about all for now.

Well, Kaylee had her surgery and all went well. While she was home recovering, Tiffany was sick for 3 days. It turns out she probably had H1N1, which Kaylee then got also. Tiffany missed 3 days of school and between Kaylee's finger and H1N1, she missed 8 days of school. She did sneak back in to school on the Wednesday and Friday after her surgery. Wednesday proved to be too much too soon and she spent all of Thursday in bed, but felt well enough to go back on Friday. Then on Sunday she spiked a fever and missed another 4 days of school thanks to the Flu which copletely kicked her butt (probably because she was just recovering from her surgery). Thankfully Kaylee and Tiffany were the only ones that got the flu and everyone else has managed to stay healthy. Both girls are doing well and this H1N1 wasn't really all the media has hyped it up to be. Thank Goodness!!!

I have once again been dealing with some of my own medical issues. Sometimes I wonder what is going on with me, I am too young to have had so many health issies (my doctor even told me that this week). I have had right lower quadrant abdominal pain for a full week now. It started last Sunday night and was so bad I laid in the fetal postition and cried for a few hours until I finally fell asleep. When I woke up in the morning the pain wasn't near so bad. I have continued to have pain off and on all week so I went to the doctor on Friday. She sent me for an ultrasound and while they don't think it is anything serious, I will be going to see the GYN (yippee) soon to discuss my options. Have I mentioned that I hate going to the doctor? In addition I have to go in tomorrow to have a bunch of labs. They will be checking my kidneys, liver, thyroid, blood counts etc. to figure out what else might be going on. yay me!

Today was the kids' primary program in church. Once a year the primary kids ages 3-11 and their teachers do a program in our sacrament meeting. Each of the children is given a part to say and they sing the songs thay have been learning in primary each sunday throughout the year. The theme this year was My Eternal Family. The kids did a great job and it made me so proud when my little ones stood up at the podium and said their parts. Even Kyle said his little part without any help. It was a great meeting. I always enjoy watching the children sing.

I also had a chance today to teach relief society. I haven't done that for such a long time. I was so nervous, but the lesson went quite well. I am always grateful for class participation and we had lots of it today. The lesson was also on families and the eternal nature of our family relationships. I cried, of course when we talked about parents. But I guess that is okay. I still don't really have a calling in church yet. It's weird because it has been over 2 months since I was released from the young women program. I don't think I have gone this long without a calling since I was 18 years old. Well, I guess technically I do have a calling as the YW assistant volleyball coach, but we only have a couple more games left. I am anxious to see what the Lord has in store for me next.

Everyone is doing well. I will be working this week on cleaning the basement and organizing a bit more around the house as well as finishing up the kids' halloween costumes. I am so excited about the costumes we are doing for the boys. It is going to be so much fun. I will post pictures next week. We have the ward Halloween party this weekend. It will be a blast.

Well, I suppose that is all for now.

September has come and gone...

Wow, has it really been that long since my last post? I am getting so bad at this. I can't believe that September is already over!!!

So, what have we been up to around here? The kids are doing great in school. Everyone has been working hard and they all seem to be getting really good grades.

Kaylee and Tiffany have been playing Volleyball. Both girls made the varsity teams for their grades and both girls have played very well.

Tiffany plays setter and she has learned so much. She had never played an official game of volleyball before, but you would never know it watching her. She plays well and she plays hard. Her team took the city by storm and won the 6th grade championships last week. Here are a couple of pics of her.

Tiff has a great serve and often goes on a run of unreturned serves they call that an ACE!!!

Tiffany has also surprised us with her grades this year. She has always been a good student, she has always had B's with an A or 2 thrown in, but right now she is pulling straight A's and most of her averages are over 100% thanks to her enthusiasm for doing extra credit. I am so proud of how hard she is working this year. I knew she had it in her, she just had to figure it out for herself. Go Tiff!! She and I had the chance last week to go with her volleyball team to CSU to watch a college volleyball team play. It was so much fun and amazing to watch. Now she knows how hard she is going to have to work if she wants to play on that level.

Kaylee plays "Outside Hitter" on the 8th grade team and has improved her skills so much over the last year. She is very aggressive and plays really well. Here are a couple of pics of Kaylee playing.

She has an awesome serve!!

She saved this one, she got under it and got it up just enough for someone else to hit it.
Her team will be playing in the Conference Championships this Saturday, however she will be watching from the bench after a season ending injury to her pinky finger led to surgery and two screws this week. It was a freak thing that happened, as she was catching a ball off a serve in practice, it popped up and caught her finger just right and broke it bad!!! Here is the x-ray.
She is so disappointed to miss the last few games of the season, but we are hoping that all goes well in her healing and she is able to get back on the court soon to get ready for next year. She too is pulling straight A's and is working hard. Though now she is a bit stressed from missing 4 days of school thanks to her injury. She has some work to make up, but I know she will pull it off. I have been able to help her by scribing for her with some of her work. (Did I mention she injured her right hand and she is right handed?) She will do fine and be caught back up in no time. She is enjoying time with friends this year and has been attending football games for the high school with them and hanging out whenever possible.

Ryan decided to run for Student Council Historian. He had to come up with a campaign, make posters, and give a speech. He chose a concept of Harry Potter for his campaign and used the idea to make posters that said "Harry says vote for Ryan" and used different characters from the books. Then in his speech he acted like he was Harry Potter recommending Ryan for the job. It was good. He was elected out of 7 who were running for that position. He is following in his sisters' footsteps. Both girls were also Historian in 4th grade and both went on to be elected President in 5th grade. Go Ryan I am so proud of you. Mom and dad were unable to watch him give his speech since dad was out of town for work and mom was at surgery with Kaylee, but Grandma went and got a picture for us. She said he was very confident and did a great job on his speech. Here is a picture of him giving his speech for the elections. He also received an award today for good work in his daily language exercises. He is a great student and doing really well in 4th grade so far. He has been reading the Fablehaven book series by Brandon Mull and is really enjoying that.

Jake is active as ever and is a bottomless pit to boot. He is always hungry and can never get enough until it comes to meal time when he is suddenly not hungry for what I have cooked, oh how frustrating!! I have squashed the snacks (he hates that) but we have stopped buying chips and other things that he likes to sneek. He is doing well in school and I am so proud of him for working so hard. He has been reading some Henry and Mudge books and is wanting to start reading Harry Potter too. Go Jake!!

Kyle has come alive and I am so happy with our decision to put him in all day kindergarten. Before, he wouldn't write anything for me, he wouldn't practice his letters, write his name or anything. I knew he could, but he wouldn't practice for me. Now he comes home everyday to do his (self-imposed) "homework." Last week he had Mike help him make a book to practice his letters and he does a couple of pages each day. He has also made his own numbers book now too so he can practice his numbers as well. He is thriving in school and I am so excited to see his improvements. Here is a picture he drew of our family.

As for me, I have been busy with the girls' volleyball games, homework, housework, volunteering with school projects, digital scrapbooking, and cooking. I recently learned how to make bread thanks to my mother in law. I then filled in for her to teach a class about it at our enrichment meeting. I have since been making a couple of loaves of bread each week. The kids love the homemade wheat bread and it has been kind of fun. I also had a cook day with my friends a couple weeks ago and enjoyed that as well. I especially love having all the meals in the freezer. I have been working out on a regular basis and I must say I am glad to have a workout space in the basement. I have been combining cardio (on the treadmill) with weights to give myself a pretty well rounded workout. Though I haven't noticed a difference on the scale yet, I am noticing that I am toning up a bit. Hooray!!! Overall, I am doing really well.

Mike is back to traveling agin. We enjoyed having home for almost a month. He is arranging for an apartment in Lawton, Oklahoma where he will be living Monday through Friday every week starting in November. It's hard on all of us to have him away so much, but we are managing and we are so grateful that he has such a great job. The benefits alone have been a huge help this year with 2 surgeries again for the second year in a row. Everyone loves the weekends around our house. We spend our time together as a family, Mike and I have date night and we just treasure the little time together.

Well, I think that about catches us up on what is going on around here, so that is all for now.

Back To School

Well it is official, I finally have the house to myself. All the kids are in school now ALL DAY. It has been a crazy week so far. Tiffany started 6th grade on Monday, Kaylee started 8th grade on Tuesday, and the boys all started today. (Ryan 4th, Jake 2nd, Kyle Kindergarten) It is a little sad in some ways to realize that all the kids are in school all day. I can't believe how fast life is going lately.

Everyone keeps asking me what I am going to do with all the time I am going to have to myself now and I really don't know the answer to that question. I think I will spend some time getting the house reorganized. We have lived here almost 2 years now and though I organized things pretty well when we moved in, some of that has been lost. So my first order of business will to be to reorganize and clean the house. It is my hope that if I can redefine the proper place for everything to be put away the kids will do that and the house will be easier to keep clean. I can hope right? Once I get that project done, I will think about what comes next.

So, Kyle was the only one who let me take his picture today. So here are a couple of pictures of our big boy on his first day of school. Here he is in front of the marque at the school. NOtice he is wearing his favorite color shorts (orange). He picked them out at the store and said, "mom you have to buy me these shorts! " I asked, "why?" he said "cuz their my favorite color" It was like duh mom why do you think?
These are some of Kyle's friends from church who are all also starting Kindergarten today.Here he is with his teacher (believe it or not). She is the tiniest little lady but so full of personality. He is going to have a great year!And here he is the first in line ready to go into the school. He was so excited!!! Well, I guess that is all for today. I will have to blog later about the visit I had with my sister last weekend.

Camping and Being released

We had a wonderful week last week. We spent Monday at Water World as a family. It was a great day to be there except for a short period of time in the early afternoon that we had a bit of wind and rain. Thankfully that didn't last long and we were able to enjoy the rest of the day. The water slides were a ton of fun and the kids had a blast riding the slides and playing in the wave pool.

I worked very hard on Tuesday and Wednesday to complete a slide show from girls camp. I attended 2.5 of 4 days at girl's camp this year and had a great time. Our Young Women are so amazing. The slide show included over 200 photos of our girls in their various activities. I loved putting the slide show together and it turned out really good. We had our camp awards night on Wednesday and had a great time reminiscing about camp.


On Thursday, Mike and I packed up the gear, trailer and the family and headed into the mountains for a camping trip. We camped with 6 other families and had a great time. The weather was wonderful and the campground was amazing. We camped at Dowdy Lake and everywhere you looked was a beautiful view. The kids played in the lake, went fishing, hunted for crawdads and just enjoyed being with their friends. For Mike and I it was a pretty relaxing camping trip. Now that the kids have gotten so big, they don't require quite so much attention and we let them run and play all day. On Friday me and all the other moms took a little walk around the lake. It was a simple little walk, but was very beautiful and so peaceful without any of the kids. Thursday night I made the BEST camping desert we have ever had. We made homemade ice cream in bags(which has become a tradition when we camp lately, thank you Mel) and I made dutch oven apple cobbler to go with it. It was sooooo good.


While camping we fished a ton, actually we cast out a ton, we never caught anything. Kyle loved casting out and reeling in his line. We saw so many fish jumping I don't know how we never caught anything, but we had a total blast trying anyway. Sadly, our camping trip came to an end and we headed home. Now the piles of laundry await and things need to be put away and I need to recapture my house. I got a good start on those things yesterday but have quite a bit more to do tomorrow.


Finally the last of my blog for today is to tell about my sadness over being released from my calling in church today. I have been serving in the Young Women's program for over 4 years. I have enjoyed serving in that capacity so much. I have worked with the girls ages 14-18 the whole time. I have sent numerous girls off to college, seen several girls get married, watched them grow and learn and mature in so many ways. I have also grown so very close to so many and have so enjoyed being a part of their lives. I have been confidant to some, a shoulder to cry on to others, given support when they needed it, offered encouragement when necessary, and I hope I have been a friend. I certainly consider them my friends and hope that they will all stay in touch. It is so hard for me to think about not being involved with them in this capacity anymore. It makes me sad and I have literally cried for a good part of the day. I know that the Lord will have some other postition for me to serve in and with time, I will grow to love those I serve there too, but it doesn't make this any easier right now. I love the Young Women's Program and feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to work with so many wonderful young women. I will miss them all so much!!!

Well, that is enough for now.

Late July

July was a busy month. I had the wonderful opportunity to go to Girls Camp with the Young Women in our ward. The theme was Everday Heroes and I learned a bit about the heroes that I work with in our ward. The young women in our ward offered so much service to one another. They worked hard when they had assignments and were commended for it. I was so proud of them. Our girls are amazing!!! I have been enjoying some time with the kids at the pool, though the weather this summer has n ot cooperated as well as I would have liked and we have had tons of rain this year. It has spoiled several of our pool days as well as other plans too. Oh well, there's not much we can do about the waether.

The boys all finished a second session of swimming lessons and all passed their second levels off this summer. Ryan completed level 5, Jake completed level 4 and Kyle completed level 2. Kyle went from being afraid of the water at the beginning of the summer to being a complete fish. He is swimming all over the pool with no floaties. He can dive to the bottom to retrieve his toys and he just loves it. Swimming lessons were well worth the money paid this year.

The boys are all looking forward to school starting next week and will have fun since it will be the three of them at the elementary school all day this year.

Tiffany finished up her season of softball. She had a great season. Her coach suggested that she try out for the Rage softball program here in town, but because of finances and the fact that they often play on SUndays we have decided not to do it. I hope she finds comfort in the fact that I am positive she would have made the team if she would have tried out. Now she is looking ahead to starting middle school and volleyball tryouts that are just over a week away.

Kaylee has had a crazy busy summer. She has done lots of babysitting and mowed the lawn for grandpa & grandma while they were on vacations, as well as our own lawn. So she has been able to make some money this summer. She has also spent a great deal of time with her friends and has enjoyed watching friends baseball games, playing in the river, walking all around town, spending the night at friend's home and so much more. I think she has had a fun summer.

As for Mike, he actually has had a couple of weeks at home. It has been really nice. He will be heading off again this week to Oklahoma for a couple of days. Since he is still in the preconstruction phases of the project, he hasn't had to travel quite as much. But the weekly travel will be starting up again all too soon.

Well, I think that pretty much catches us up to present.

Pics from reunion, almost stitches, turtle, and more

Okay so it's been almost a month and I finally got my pictures from the family reunion uploaded for your viewing pleasure. You can check out my whole album here. I am in the process of collecting pictures taken by other members of the family as well so that I can compile a book about our adventures.

I know I am a major slacker lately on this blog. The summer is so busy. This week we had a youth activity and we took the kids boating. It was a great time. The kids got the chance to go tubing and wake boarding. Kaylee enjoyed wake boarding a lot and can't wait to go again. We ended the night in the ER though. Kyalee cut her knee on the step in the water on the back of the boat. It was a pretty good slice so I took her in. She was so nervous about getting stitches so we said a little prayer that she would be comforted. A few minutes later the doctor came in and said "The good news is, it doesn't look like it will need stitches, I should be able to take care of it with steri strips." Keep in mind this is after the triage nurse had already said it would definitely need stitches. Kaylee was so relieved and grateful. I was relieved that I wasn't going to have to try and hold her down for stitches. I don't think I could have done it, she is as tall as me now. Here are a couple of pics. ( I know, it's gross) So she got a couple of steri strips to put her back together. They covered that with a big bandage and an ace wrap to keep her from bending her knee too far and splitting it back open. Believe it or not that took over 2.5 hours. We sat for over an hour after the doc finished waiting for a bandage and discharge papers. The doc came back in and said "Are you still here? I was finished with you an hour ago, let me see what I can do to get you out of here." Fifteen minutes later we were finally out the door.

On another note, I am getting ready for Girl's Camp next week and very excited to be able to spend a couple of days up at camp with the girls in our ward. It is going to be a fun time. I have been keeping busy with my scrapbook design work and am still selling quite a few shirts a day in my shop. That has been really fun. I am now trying to decide what I should do with my time when all the kids go to school next month. Even Kyle will be going all day as we were able to get him into the all day kindergarten program at our school. He is very excited, and so am I. It has been almost 14 years since I have had the house to myself all day every day. Whatever will I do with my time? Maybe it's time for me to go to school too. I guess we'll see.

The kids are busy as ever. The boys have been doing swim lessons this summer and all three boys passed off their levels in the first session. Kyle has gone from being terrified to get in the pool to being a little fish in a matter of about 2 weeks. Both Jake and Ryan are improving and learning their strokes and having a great time. Aside from lessons, we have been spending a lot of time at the pool and I have been working on my tan. :] The boys also spend a lot of time in the park by our house. They love catching crawfish, snails, small fish and whatever living creatures they can find in the pond. They are learning to put them back into their environment at the end of the day, because they often don't last through the night in captivity. :(

Tiffany is playing softball again this year and it is fun to watch her play. She is trying her hand at pitching this year and is doing an excellent job. She is looking forward to starting at the middle school in August and hopes to play Volleyball in the fall.

Kaylee is a major social butterfly and is rarely home at all. She has been hanging out with her friends and babysitting a lot this summer so she too is staying very busy. She is rarely seen without a volleyball in her hands.

All of the kids are also enjoying the trampoline we bought this summer for our back yard. They have all learned all kinds of tricks and flips and spend lots of time jumping around. I just wish I could jump with them. (but that's another story)

Mike is traveling pretty regularly again. Right now he is going to Nashville as he is preparing for his job in Oklahoma which should start in the fall. We miss him when he is gone, but are enjoying being able to talk to him in the evenings using our new web cams and pack all we can into the weekends when he is home.

We had another 4th of July party this year and had a total blast. I have uploaded the pics from that party to my sharing site here.

Today we found and saved a turtle from certain death. (he was trying to cross the street just down from our house) He has been fun to watch but we plan to release him back to the park tomorrow (after a call to animal services to make sure that is the right thing to do) Here is a picture of the turtle.

Well, I think that is about it for now. It certainly is long enough, don't ya think? Anyway, life is fun, life is crazy, it's busy, but I wouldn't trade a day for anything different. (Except maybe a small vacation without the kids, coming soon :] )