Vacation Day 1....traveling

We decided that we needed a vacation, so we reserved a hotel room, packed the car and the kids, and headed for Disneyland.  Everyone was SO excited!  Troy has been to Disneyland, but I hadn't been since I was 11, and Kevin hadn't been in a while either, and the three younger kids had never been.  The trip over was so long and seemed like it took forever, but since we were all in good spirits it wasn't bad.

Miss Annie has decided that she does not like her picture taken, and she was not looking forward to the roller coasters, so to get her to smile was a fight.  Little stinker.

 Troy was raring to go (he was in the next bed over in the hotel room and wouldn't quit talking), and grinning all the way over.

 Taylor was the cause of this stop and had to "rest" so badly that he didn't take the time to put on his shoes. As a reward, he got a sock full of stickers and spent a few minutes trying to get them all out.

 Tyson did amazingly well on this trip.  Usually he's puking every 10 miles, but we didn't have one problem (thank heavens!).  He like the potty stops so he could get out and stomp in the dirt.

My sexy sweetheart coming back from seeing the monument and ready to get down the road.  I think our stops and starts annoyed him more than anyone.  :)

 I was just as excited as the kids.  When I went, Dustin was 3 and we only spent one day there, so we didn't do anything big and fun...just the little stuff (which was still fun).  I was excited to try some of the roller coasters and rides that I missed before.

 We finally made it.  A storm hit just as we got to Riverside and it poured like crazy.  There was about 5 feet of visibility with the rain and the fog, I couldn't see the lane lines, and those California drivers are flying past me at 70 (can you say NUTS?!?!?!?!?).  Kevin was navigating and encouraging me, but it was pretty scary.  By the time we made it to our hotel, my knees were shaking and my hands hurt from holding the steering wheel so tightly.  It was sure nice to get off the streets and into a nice, safe, parking lot.  :)

We got to meet up with our friends the Rareba's (I used to babysit their little girls) for dinner and had a great time chatting with them and Nia and Nana...we also got to know the newest little one, Lewa.  She's adorable, just like her sisters.  After a quick trip to see their new house, it was back to the hotel for showers, jammies, and down time.  Tyson was so up on down time that he was annoyed I was taking his picture.

 Got a smile out of my girl!  She was glad to be out of the car too.

 Mr. Taylor taking his turn at the computer and down time.  We really scored with our hotel room.  We got a two room suite with 2 big, comfy beds, an "L" shaped couch for Annie and Taylor to share, and a full kitchen....not that we did any cooking, but it was nice to have it there.  Breakfast was served every morning and it was pretty tasty.  I would definitely hit the Homewood Suites again.

 My sweet hubby is a little too excited to be out of the car, don't you think?  What a goof!

We finally got everyone settled in and comfortable, though everyone but Tyson had trouble getting to sleep. Finally, they were all snoozing, which was a good thing, because Monday was a doozy!  :)

Happy Birthday Taylor!!!

Mr. Taylor turns 9 today...can't believe how time flies!  We had his birthday dinner and cake last night with Grandma and Grandpa and it was a lot of fun.  Taylor decided on a Captain America cake, so we made the shield.  The only complaint I got was that the pink is supposed to be red.  Oh, well...can't win them all, right? :)

 Since he was sick with a cold I consider this smile a good thing...poor kid.

Tyson was able to exhibit the right amount of excitement for the cake and has since requested that I make him a cake....on an hourly basis.

Taylor and Grandma visiting...anxiously waiting for the ice cream to soften.

This kid cracks me up....he gets so shy over things.  Tyson on the other hand is completely excited for fire...the little pyro.

 I just missed him blowing out the candles...9 at once, good job Taylor!

Taylor is my sweet, giggly, goofy, adorable little man and we are so thankful he is a part of our family.  Happy Birthday Taylor!

Hair Days

Annie had a party on Saturday and since the gal was turning 12, it was a makeover party.  Miss Annie came home looking super cute with a little makeup, and a new 'do.  Daddy is already looking into boarding schools.  :)

 From the side...I don't know how those curls stayed, but they did.

 On Sunday, I had choir practice, and when I got home, all the boys were laughing and the camera was out.  Annie came to the door in her Mickey's Wizard hat.  I could not figure out what was going on until they took her hat off of her and there was Mater hanging from her head.  


Apparently, she did not learn from the last time this happened and started Mater's wheels a turnin' then ran him through her hair.  Sure enough, just like last time, he got stuck.  She was NOT a happy camper, though it is hard to tell from this picture.

 Such embarrassment!  BUT, it gets worse....

 The men of the house with their infinite amount of intelligence decided the only way to get her hair out was to cut it and they were getting ready to do that before I rescued her.

I had Troy bring me a screwdriver, and I dismantled/broke apart poor Mater...much to Tyson's dismay (sorry buddy...sister's hair is more important).  I got it down to one wheel and the gears and couldn't get her hair out.  So, a quick trip to our wonderful YW president who also happens to be our hairdresser extraordinaire and she was able to get Annie's hair out without too much damage.  Some wisps around her face fixed that.  Sadly, she was having a presidency meeting when we crashed her house, so all of Annie's future YW leaders were witnesses to our little drama.  Oh well...they have to know what's coming right?  ;)

It's Halloween!

Yep, I'm finally posting. Yep, it's been almost a year. Yep, time flies and I've missed a lot of things...BUT I'm going to try to do better now. My calling as a RS president has ended and I no longer do daycare. Now, I'm a primary teaching, full time student, mom. I don't anticipate gobs of leftover time, but I am excited to have a little extra. My goal is to update the blog weekly. Hope I can do it!!! :)

Halloween this year was interesting. I had Bumblebee costumes that I bought on clearance last year and thought I was home free. Nope. The boys changed their minds about 50 times before settling on the characters from Phineas and Ferb. It took some work (it was a nice break from studying) but we did it.

Tyson was not a happy camper at first. He wanted to be a "dipent" guy, but once we wrested him into his Agent P attire, and tricked him into thinking we had wiped the paint off his face, and gave him a weapon, he was fine. His tail was his favorite part.
Annie is quite the reader and her current favorite book series is the Hunger Games. She went as Katniss this year..complete with dirty face, injury and black eye. I tried to get her to look serious...no luck. Oh well, love her smile!

No group from Phineas and Ferb is complete without Dr. Doofensmirtz, AND one of his trusty inators. This inator came in handy...got the Dr. lots of candy (ha! What a cool rhyme!) :)

Finally, Perry the Platyborg. He is from the 2nd Dimension movie. Those who have seen the move knew just who Taylor was, everyone else thought he was a funky washing machine. Poor kid. His bionic leg really slowed him down, but Mom made up the candy difference and all is well.

Halloween is so much fun and this year was no different. I'm tempted to go to Walmart on Tuesday and load up on clearance stuff again, but, I know better. Happy Trick or treating!!! :)

Such a slacker

Well, Christmas has come and gone and I am such a slacker that I completely forgot to take pictures. We've had a fun year and did a lot of activities, so here is the basic rundown:

• Temple lights, trains, visiting Grandma and Aunt Carol, and dinner with the Seavey family. Lot of fun, but Tyson wanted to go home to play with his train, so we ended doing the mad rush through everything else. Still fun though. :)
• Looking at the lights of the neighborhood. Probably our last year of this activity since none of the kids showed any interest and were most definitely not impressed...the bums.
• Loop of Lights (ok, the kids WERE impressed with this house).
• Christmas Eve dinner with the missionaries and our friends, the Colemans. Super good Mexican food with homemade Pico and salsa...mild for the wimps (like me and the missionary from Michigan) and hot for those with a death wish (like Kevin and Troy).
• Christmas morning mayhem...the kids woke Tyson up at 7 and he most definitely did not want to wake up. We finally got him up, opened presents, endured his crankiness for about 2 minutes and then took him back upstairs at 8 for a lovely 3 1/2 hour nap. After that, he was ready to play and we had a lot of fun.

That's about it for us. We are still recovering from a long day with unlimited soda for the kids (yikes!) along with Christmas candy...when they come back down from their sugar high, it's going to be interesting. :)

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas too!

Whew!

Finally....I blogged, I added pictures, I am caught up. Let's just hope I can keep it up. Enjoy!

A little bit of this, a little bit of that...

Annie had to do a 3-D project and report on the Milky Way galaxy. It turned out really cute and she got an "A". (yay!)
The boys chillin' at Annie's Christmas concert...I don't know which is funnier, Troy and Taylor's faces, or Tyson mugging for the camera. :)

Too much time on our hands??? Oh the fun of winter break. :)

Sittin' with Santa. Annie and Taylor got to see Santa this year, but Tyson slept through the whole thing. It worked out though...he doesn't really like Santa up close and personal yet.

Taylor didn't want to see Santa this year, but we talked him into it...he looks thrilled doesn't he?

One more post and I am caught up! Whew!

Baptism Day

What a special day. Taylor was baptized by Troy and confirmed a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints by his daddy.

I love this picture...which is a good thing, because I totally spaced pictures that day and this is the only one I got. :)
Congrats Taylor...we love you! :)

Happy Birthday Taylor!

I can't believe Taylor turned 8 this year. It seems as though I just had him. :)

Per tradition, we let him have a friend party and his baptism party. Of course, a Star Wars party was the request for his friends, so we googled to our heart's content and came up with a cake idea, a pinata idea, and some fun jedi games.

Here is Taylor with his R2-D2 cake. It wasn't as hard as it looks to make...just took some time and a lot of frosting. Since we were hosting 2 parties, I made one body and 2 identical heads. The friends ate one head, then R2 went into the freezer to wait for the next party. I must say, it's one of the best ideas I've ever had. :)
R2 in all of his glory:

We made Death Star pinatas (one for each party) and boy were they heavy. Thank goodness for day after halloween candy sales. :)

Captain Rex (J.T.), Darth Maul (Taylor), and Darth Vader (Annie), all dressed up and ready for the party.

Blowing out the candles on the cake. These kids had a lot of fun (and boy can they eat a lot of pizza!)

Happy Birthday Taylor...you are a very special boy and we love you!

Halloween 2010

So, I totally forgot to take pictures of Halloween and stuff. Luckily, we had a piano recital the next day that was a dress up, so while we didn't get a picture of Troy, here are the other kids.

Army man Taylor:
Blue Bee Annie:

Buzz Lightyear Tyson:

As always, they got tons of candy and had a lot of fun. :)

The adventures of Tyson and the Gubs

Tyson was outside playing one day when he suddenly started crying and telling Kevin that the gubs (bugs) were getting him. Kevin brought him in and we noticed several welts, so we put some cortizone cream on them and had Tyson stay inside.

The next morning, Tyson came downstairs and started to play. As he was running around, I noticed that his foot had quickly swelled up and was turning a red/purple color. We felt it and it was very hot to the touch, so Kevin called in to take the day off and took Tyson to urgent care. Diagnosis: Cellulitis of the foot. Strong anti-biotics and several days of rest were prescribed.

Here is a picture of his foot after 24 hour of antibiotics...it was twice this size before.
And comparing with the other leg..you can really see the difference.

Since Tyson was supposed to rest and keep his leg elevated, Kevin was given a note to stay home from work and this is how he spent his week:

Jealous? Me too. They watched movies, they played video games and they napped. But, it worked and the swelling got less and less each day.

There were times when Tyson just didn't want to sit. What 3 year old does? In fact, when the doctor gave us the instructions, I was a little put out that he didn't give us some sort of meds to help...but what do you do?

This is Tyson finally bored. He decided to bury daddy in blankets and pillows, which was funny for us to watch and very hot for daddy. :)

It took about 2 weeks for Tyson's foot to return to normal. He got some cool Buzz Lightyear slippers to wear since we couldn't get his shoes on and he got to play with daddy for a week. For us, this was pretty scary...for him, the experience of a lifetime. :)

Visiting

Conference weekend we decided to get out of the heat, away from the stress, and get the heck out of town. The place of choice? My grandmother's home in Show Low. The kids were so excited for a road trip and it was a lot of fun.

Our first stop was in Pinedale to pay our respects for Kevin's folks. His dad has been gone for 13 years now, and his mom for 5. The cemetary is small, but beautiful and rustic, and so completely peaceful.
The kids putting flowers on the graves. They don't remember Grandpa (Troy was only 3 when he died), but Mema was a special woman in their lives.

Eatin' with Grandma-Great. My grandmother, bless her heart, is old school. She believes in 3 hot meals a day and does her best to keep us entertained, fed, and happy. We really enjoyed our time with her, though it was too short. Tyson loved it there so much that he actually let her hug him and told her goodbye, calling her gwandmum. So cute. :)

Of course, when it comes to our family, no roadtrip is complete without several stops for puking, or "cukin" as Tyson refers to it. Here is our stop in the canyon, and yes, Tyson is in his undies...we got tired of changing his clothes and decided to let him go like this. Saved us some laundry.

And, no roadtrip through Globe is complete without a stop at our favorite restaurant...La Casita Downtown. The #5 was calling my name all day and to finally get a taste...heaven!

It was fun to get away, but it's more fun to come home. One of these days though, we are going to do it right and actually get out of town for more than 22 hours. :)

Isn't it interesting???

So, I've been murmuring a lot lately, and I feel down sometimes. It's almost like I'm too tired to care on some days. Thankfully those days don't come too often, but today was a murmur day. I didn't get anything done since Tyson wasn't feeling well this morning and wanted some attention, and one of my daycare kids was sick this afternoon and wanted some attention. The laundry is piled up and unwashed, the kids had pancakes for dinner and one of them is cranky and I didn't feel like dealing with that.

Since the day Kevin and I married, we have struggled with money. It seems as though we are always counting our pennies, with very few to spare, and after 17 years, I've just about had enough. I have no desire to be rich, but it would be nice to count quarters instead of pennies, know what I mean? Kevin and I both work so hard...on days like today I feel like we should have more to show for it.

Anyway, as I'm doing dishes tonight and grumbling about things in my head and getting crankier and crankier, I got a phone call from a good friend. Her husband works for a company that services heavy equipment and they are in desperate need of a new mechanic. She names some numbers that put stars in my eyes, and I immediately think of all the things we could do with that money...build up our savings, buy a new and badly needed couch, take an actual vacation, go to Joe's Crab Shack for dinner, etc.

Then she names the price of those stars. Lots of travel with the possibility of spending some weekends at home, but not all, no benefits, no overtime, no stability. Boy was I humbled quickly. I let her know that I'd pass on her message to my sweetie and we had a nice chat. But, when I hung up I thought about this opportunity a little more, and, as I thought about what my friend had to deal with, I realized just how much I have to be grateful for. I get to see my sweetie for about an hour to an hour and a half a day, plus most of the weekend. That is a good 14 to 15 more hours than she gets. We have health insurance, a 401K, and paid vacation days. Sure, it's been tough to make ends meet, but it's not all bad, and things are looking up.

Now as I look back, that call came at the perfect time, and I don't believe it was an accident. Isn't it interesting how the Lord reminds us of what we need to be grateful for instead of wishing for something we don't need? Definitely more evidence of his loving care, and a perfect lesson to me this Thanksgiving season.

P.S. I have a lot of pictures and stuff to share but I'm waiting until after Taylor's baptism this weekend. Stay tuned for an update! :)

Whoa!

Boy it's been a while since I posted. Things have gone from busy to crazy to insane to a life that there is just no description for. I'm still serving as the ward RS president and I LOVE it, but with end of year stuff and getting ready for next year and all that goes on in a ward, it's been a lot to handle. Thank heavens I have the shoulders of a linebacker. :)

School is hard, but I'm working through it. So far I have 3 A's and a B. The B kinda sucks since its in English (which I thought I wouldn't have trouble with) but I'm working on it. Math isn't too bad, I'm really enjoying Communications, and Sociology has changed my thoughts of majoring in Psychology. We did an entire chapter on deviance and how it relates to us socially. I threw up several times and I've decided that my stomach cannot handle the dark areas of the human mind or the actions it produces. I've had people say, "Oh, you'll get used to it", or, "you'll desensitize", but I don't want to. I like being sensitive to others and being able to empathize. No one should be used to the horrors of the world. So, that leaves me majorless for now. I'm trying to decide if I want to just finish my AGS and then work in a certificate program that will allow me to find a good job, or go for a BA in something else, but I just don't know. Any ideas???? :)

All the kids are doing well. Troy will be ordained a Priest this Sunday and Taylor has asked him to baptize him in November. It's kind of cool having a son that can baptize his brother. Things with the school are busy as ever, and it was nice to have our 2 week break and nicer to send them back to school.

During break we canned peach jam and made pies, painted the laundry room, and remodeled the upstairs bathroom. Since I'm posting this when I'm really supposed to be doing homework, the pictures will have to wait. :)

Let's just hope that it's not another 3 months before I post again. :)

Peace at last? Not really. ☺

Finally, some peace...sort of.

The "Luncheon of our Lives" came off without a hitch (and we didn't even have centerpieces! *gasp* *choke*..I know...we are like unto the cavemen for not doing that. Hmmm do I sense a new Geico commercial? ☺) and turned out really nice. We had lots of good food, the room looked pretty and everything went smoothly. We got cleaned up and out of the church by 9pm...just in time to get drenched in a monsoon storm as I unloaded the truck. Kevin didn't mind (think white blouse) but for me, it was a little cold. After a warm shower, a foot rub by my wonderful hubby, a good night's sleep and several thank you's from the bishop and the family I felt that all was right with the world.

Sunday flew by and Monday morning arrived with mounds of homework and welcome statements and all the stuff that goes with starting school.

Can I just say....I don't really like school. I don't mind learning new things (like how to insult someone in Mexico with certain gestures), but I don't like being a slave to someone else's time frame, I don't like being graded, and I really don't like homework. I may be rethinking the whole Master's degree thing, but I'll definitely finish my AA and then figure out where to go from there. As I thought about the time frame, I realized that Troy's mission will clash with my schooling. I will need to be working to support him and so the rest of my school may go on the backburner but we'll see.

Anyway, things are not calming down, just changing and it's keeping us on our toes. Troy's birthday party was over the weekend and I have pictures that I'll post as soon as I get a chance to download them from my camera. Until then, it's time to do more homework. ☺