The Heaton's

Valentines Day

2012-02-16T18:34:00.001-08:00

Valentine's morning my kiddo's came down for breakfast to this. Each had their very own box of candy, a baggie of homeade carmels and pretzel/rolo treat and a heart shaped swirly straw. I do NOT like straws and I almost NEVER buy them. These "special" straws can be used all day long but at the end of the day I tell them they are now done and gone. The kids throw them away for me. When no one is watching I pull them out of the garbage, wash them and put them back in my valentine box. These straws have now been given 3 years in a row. I laugh that they haven't caught on yet!My breakfast pictures turned out too blurry to post. I served pink heart shaped pancakes with pink strawberry syrup and a heart on top made out of cool whip thanks to the spray cool whip cans. They were in heaven!

Monday night for FHE the kids and I put there valentines together. When it came time to make something for the teachers I realized I really slacked off this year. I had NOTHING to give them, I hadn't even thought about them. What is my problem? In the end I pulled out my heart shaped cake pan and made chocolate chip cookie bars.
The kids then made a special valentines and attached it to the big cookies.

A little story about Madelyn's valentine outfit.... She came to me about 2 weeks ago and asked if I remembered that Valentines was just around the corner. She then asked if I was going to make her a valentine shirt like I have done for many years now. Not wanting to dissapoint her yet not having a fabric store down the street or a Wal Mart for a new plain tee I wasn't sure if I could come up with one. So I asked her to help me design what she wanted with what we already had. Madelyn suprised me with her creativity. She spent an hour or two creating different valentine shirt designs on paper. She then picked a plain brown tee she already had and some corresponding fabric we pulled out of my scrap fabric drawer. Lucky for her the fabric she picked out matched her bright pink pants she was hoping to wear on Valentine's. I wish I would have saved her paper with the different drawings of valentine shirt ideas. They were all so cute! I wasn't thinking though and when she picked the design she wanted I then used the paper to make my X & O templates.

Ta da....
Here she is.
I love this girls enthusiasm when it comes to the holidays. Her and I are quite alike when it comes to this. We both love all holidays and want to go all out for them. Make them memorable!
She couldn't stop with just the outfit. She asked for hearts in her hair too. And so we created two pigtails and turned them into heart shapes and added some ribbons to the bottoms. She LOVED the way she looked when she went to school.

I really struggle on tuesdays. They are by far my most busiest days of the week. It seems all morning I'm getting ready for preschool and then when that's finally over at 1 p.m I get lunch, clean up from preschool and prepare for mutual later that night. The kids get home from school just for Hunter to run off to scouts. When he get's home we eat dinner and off we all go for mutual and then don't get home till about 9pm. By the time I crawl into bed tuesday nights I am beyond exhausted. I know being pregnant has a lot to do with this. So when it came to our valentine dinner instead of going all out which I would have liked to do I did an easy meal instead. We had spaghetti and a homemade heart breadstick with pink lemonade. For dessert we ate our extra heart shaped cookie bar. It was yummy and it worked for us this year.

It was a busy but great Valentine's Day.

Side Note......

My daughters are so different. Madelyn loves the frills, the dressing up, she WANTS her hair done each day with a matching bow attached. She loves the holidays and enjoys "dressing up" for them.

Emily on the other hand could really care less. While making Madelyn's shirt she asked me if I was going to make her one too. I told her NO!..... Why????

I made her a halloween shirt that she refused to wear. Didn't matter that she picked the shirt and the corresponding fabric. At Christmas she did the same thing. I told her then that I would not be making her anything else since she refuses to wear them. I spend a lot of time and energy creating these holiday shirts and I don't appreciate her attitude towards them. Especially when she asks me to make her one specifically and then refuses to wear it. It's not that she doesn't like the way the shirt has turned out she just doesn't want to wear them anymore. And so I am done!

After the big kids left for school Valentine morning Emily asked if she had a new shirt too?

When I said no I'll admit I was almost hoping for a little temper tantrum, anything to show that she was jealous or disapointed that she didn't have a valentine shirt to wear like big sister.

But.... there was nothing she actually said "Good, I don't want one".

Well I'm glad little one because I didn't waste my time making you one.

I feel like we are raising our girls the same way yet they are so different and in more ways than just dressing up for the holidays.

It will be interesting to see the personality of this new baby girl that's going to join our family.

Preschool Valentines Party

2012-02-16T18:18:00.000-08:00

Tuesday my preschool kids celebrated Valentines like all their big siblings. Being preschool is only 3 hours I didn't feel like we could party the whole time so I TRIED making "learning" extra fun on this special day. One of the many activites for the day was to graph a box of sweeet hearts.We played a matching game... lowercase to uppercase letters.
The funnest part Emily told me later was when I let them frost sugar cookies. They each got to frost one for themselves for snack and then they each got 2 more cookies to frost and decorate for their parents.

Another game we played involved dice.

Each child had his own paper and 2 dice. When rolled they counted the black dots and put a marshmallow on the corresponding number.

Our project of the day was to make a valentine holder.

It drives me crazy that this little man squints his eyes EVERY time I try to take his picture.

When our project was complete the kids were able to pass out there valentines to each other.

Preschool was a sucess and so was our little party.

I was tired after the party, a little more than usual.

But it was worth it, to see all the smiling kiddo's.

It's A Girl

2012-02-07T15:38:00.000-08:00

I had my ultra sound yesterday morning.

It's a girl!!!!!

Kory and I decided that since this is going to be our last baby we'd take all the kids to the ultrasound appt. Hunter and Madelyn are old enough that we hope they will remember this experience. Before the ultrasound we took a tally of what the baby was going to be.

Madelyn and Emily thought/hoped for a girl.

Hunter and Brayden (with Hunter's help) thought/hoped for a boy.

Mom and Dad kept saying as long as the baby was healthy and strong we didn't care. However, if we had to choose (the kids wanted us to) we'd both choose boy. As fun as a little girls are they can be full of drama. It's seems our house has had a little too much drama lately. With Emily going to kindergarten next year I thought it would be great to have a little brother to play with for Brayden.

When the technician took the pictures between the legs I saw the 3 white lines. She asked me if I could tell what the baby was. Having 2 already, I said I believe those three white lines means It's a girl. She confirmed it. Emily was thrilled. She was jumping up and down saying, "yes, yes, yes. I knew it was going to be a girl". Then ALL day she kept asking, "Can we go back to the hospital to get that baby out now?" Madelyn was just as thrilled but kept her excitement to herself a little better than her sister. Hunter leaned over to me and quietly asked,"is there another baby in there? It could be a boy!" His question made me feel sorry for him. He really did want another brother.

On the way home Madelyn drove both Kory and I absolutely CRAZY!!! This girl just had too many thoughts running through her head like: "Where are we going to put another bed in our bedroom. We already have 2 beds in there!"

"We're going to have to get a bigger dresser. The one we have now barely holds my clothes and Emily's".

"Maybe dad can make us bunk beds. Emily can sleep on the top and we can put a bigger bed on the bottom that I will share with the baby".

"Where are we going to keep all the baby stuff? Like the crib and her little chairs and her swing?"

"Mom you can make all 3 of us matching easter dresses."

"Our table's not big enough for another person. We need a bigger table."

"Can the baby sleep in my room and when she wakes up I'll bring her to you?"

"Are you going to hang her clothes like you do ours or fold them like you do the boys?"

"Mom did you know that we don't even have a car seat for the baby?"

"Mom, you know those initial letters you hung over my bed and Emily's? Your going to have to make another one for this baby."

Seriously the questions/statements went on and on and on. Finally Kory reminded her that we still have about 4 1/2 months to make all these decisions. Lets talk about them later.

PLEASE!!!!

Listening to her talk was kinda making me nervous. I was realizing I didn't have an answer to the majority of her question's. It's a good thing we still have a little while before baby joins our family. We are so not ready for a baby. And she is right we have absolutely NOTHING for a baby.

Why oh why did I get rid of everything after Brayden???

I am getting excited for another little girl. It's been a while. It'll be fun to make new bows and bracelets. Another 1st doll and just the fun that little girls bring. As far as names go Kory's a brat!! He never wants to discuss names until the baby is born. I swear he does this just to irritate me. Despite what he says, all of our kids names were picked out before they were born except for Emily. The ONLY reason her name wasn't picked out was because we were letting her be a suprise. However I felt like the baby would be a boy, all the wives tales said it would be a boy. Every one around me told me they thought it was going to be a boy. I had 2 outifts to take to the hospital to bring our new baby home in. One was for a boy and the other one was for a girl. However, I knew it was going to be a boy so I left the girl outfit at home and only brought the boy outfit. I didn't buy a lot of clothing while being prenant but what I did buy well... was saved for Brayden because it was all boy! Needless to say Emily wasn't even a consideration until she was born. But that girl was named before we left the hospital.

As of now the kids and I are leaning towards Kylie, not sure about a middle name yet. I liked Kaleb better but baby's not going to be a boy. Kory says he doesn't like Kylie but I've HEARD that with all my pregnancies until the babie's born and he says, "I really don't care, that sounds fine, whatever you want." So until then with all the extra help I have with this prenancy baby is now being called Kylie. By the time baby is born Kory will probably be used to it and just assume the baby's been named with out any input from him. I'm afraid if he wants a say in this he had better jump on the band wagon and do it soon!

1st Month of Preschool

2012-02-07T15:05:00.000-08:00

Since I was laid off several months ago, I have been trying to find another job. Living so far away from a city has made it a bit difficult to do. While working in St. George my travel time didn't bother me to much as I really loved my job, I enjoyed being there. Now that I've had a break from having a 4 hour commute to work twice a week I've decided that I really don't want to do that again. These past few months I've made many phone calls and was constantly looking on craigslist and ksl.com. But I still haven't found anything close by. Before Christmas Break I learned that my sister-in-law who was currently teaching preschool for our town was looking for someone to take over for her. I did have another sister-in-law that was talking about doing it but decided she liked the 3 hour break 2 times a week that she currently had and wasn't too sure about teaching preschool as she had never done it before. Being jobless I decided to give it a try.

I teach preschool every tue/thur from 10am-1pm. I've got 6 kids. Four girls and 2 boys. 3 of these kids will start kindergarten later this year and the other 3 will have one more year of preschool left. Brayden will be old enough to attend next year which helped me make my decision of taking over. Each week we learn a new letter/number and I try to pick a theme that correlates with that weeks letter.

My first week teaching we had the theme Ice Cream to go along with the letter I. Somehow I missed pictures of our ice cream party.
This is Rachel and Emily. They are cousins and are just 3 days apart!

I must have forgotten to take pictures during our J/Jungle theme week.

For the letter K we read books about kings and then made our very own crowns so that we could be king for the WHOLE week during preschool.

We also made a kite and talked about a few shapes.

Our letter L fell during the week of Ground Hog's day. On tuesday we talked about hibernation and learned about the different animals that hibernate. Thursday was Ground Hog's day so we made our very own groud hog and had it guess if we still had 6 more weeks of winter or if it was Spring. Being it was snowing outside during preschool every little ground hog decided we had 6 more weeks of winter, cause it doesn't snow in the spring!

Here's our groundhog treat.

This week is the letter M/Monster theme.

Today our snack was little apple monster's

We practiced writing the letter M, we wrote words that began with the letter M like: me, my, mom and monster. We read a silly book about monsters and for our craft? We made our very own monster to take home out of an empty tp roll and "stuff" from my craft drawer.

Who doesn't love monster's?

All about Madelyn

2012-02-07T13:42:00.000-08:00

I believe it was just last week that our kids celebrated the 100th day of school. Madelyn was given a blank poster board and was asked to bring it back with 100 items. I love these kind of projects that my kids get to do. It's great to see them brain storming and coming up with their very own ideas of what to do. After rummaging through a few drawers Madelyn decided we had enough fishy crackers to do her project with. I thought that she'd just glue them on and be done with it. Boy was I wrong! After she cut the pond out and glued the fishy's to it she just kept going on and on and on. Near the end she thought the picture would be even better with clouds. She started to cut out paper when she saw the bowl of left over popcorn on the counter from the afternoon snack. Why not use popcorn for clouds? This girl amazes me with her creativity sometimes. She worked very hard on this project and I think she did a great job!

In January Madelyn participated in a mini cheer camp. She loved it! She had 3 days of 1 1/2 hours of practice with her age group. Then friday night at half time during the high school girls baskettball game they performed.

I forgot my camera to the big event but my sister Hanna had her's. Now it's just getting the pictures from her. Goooooooo.... Valley!!

Isn't she cute????

Let me tell you about the day I signed Madelyn up.... The school bus arrives about 3:30 every afternoon. So it was about that time that I heard the foot steps of my older children arriving home. These weren't the normal foot steps but the running foot steps. I just assumed someone needed to use the bathroom really bad. Madelyn bursts through the door with a gigantic smile on her face and waving a paper in my face. She said something like this, "Look mom, I can finally be a real
cheer leader! I can't take dance lessons living here but I can be a cheer leader here. This is going to be so cool. It's only $15.00 Will you please please please sign me up for it. It starts this week?

Loving this little girls excitement, the $15 fee I signed her up not thinking anything about it.

Well... the next day Kory happened to be home when Hunter got home from school by himself. He asked where Madelyn was and Hunter replied, Cheer Camp. Kory replied, Cheer Camp! While giving me a strange look. Uh Oh... O.K So I know Kory has always said our girls will never be cheerleaders but I didn't think he was serious and what's wrong with cheer camp for a 7 year old. He also said he didn't want to waste money on them taking dance classes but Madelyn took those in Prescott and it wasn't a big deal. In my defense I had only signed her up the night before and with Kory's work schedule we don't have a real chance to talk about the trivial things that happen during the day and quite frankly I didn't think that Cheer Camp would be an issue. Is there something wrong with being a cheer leader???

When the kids went away here's how our converstion went...

Kory: I can't believe you signed her up for cheer camp!

Me: What's wrong with that?

Kory: Do you know what cheer leaders do?

Me: Um... Do a dance routine during half time during baskettball games, they probably practice most days after school. It's just another extra curricular activity for HIGH SCHOOLER'S to participate in. Let's not forget she's only 7 and in 2nd grade not 9th!

Kory: But cheerleading??? Absolutely Not! Our daughter is not going to be a cheerleader!

Me: I don't know why you're blowing this out of porportion. What the heck is wrong with being a cheerleader? And she's not a cheer leader. She's 7!

Kory: ..... They dress imodestly!

Me: Oh please! And participating in sports doesn't cause you to dress immodestly?

Kory: She can play baskettball and not be running around in skimpy clothing.

Me: You're absolutely right! She can play baskettball, wear gym shorts that touch her knees and run around in a sleevless shirt with arm openings so large you can see her bra underneath or she can be a cheerleader who wears a turtle neck underneath her sleevless shirt (because it's so friggen' cold where we live) and dance around in shorts that realisticly aren't that short! Hunter's playing baskettball right now. He's running around in a sleevless shirt and that's not modest either yet you don't have a problem with that!

Kory: That's different! You weren't a cheerleader you don't know what kind of stuff they get into!

Me: What's different? It's o.k for your son to be immodest but not your daugther. In The Strength of Youth Pamplet it says for all youth to dress modestly not just the young ladies. And your right I wasn't a cheer leader, I was too shy. I do know that in my highschool the cheerleaders ran around with the jocks of the school. Cheer leaders aren't perfect just like anyone else. I'm sure they did things they shouldn't have.

Kory: That's the problem! You don't have any idea what the cheerleaders do. They were doing things with the jocks behind the bleachers that got them suspended from school. We had a cheerleader get pregnant!

Me: How do you think that cheer leader got pregnant? It didn't happen by herself! And let's talk about who got her pregnant? I'm sure it wasn't the computer geek of the school. In fact, being these cheer leaders only cheer during baskettball season I'm going to say it was someone on the boys baskettball team. Gee, Kory you played baskettball all 4 years during highschool. In fact you were considered a jock! Just becuase one jock got one cheerleader pregnant does'nt mean ALL jocks and ALL cheerleaders or our daughter will get pregnant IF she chooses to be a cheer leader in highschool in seven years! I will support all of our kids in which ever sport/cheerleading they choose to participate in. Quite honestly having seen my sister participate in Cheer this past year I'm learning how expensive it is and I hope our girls don't want to do cheer. But we will cross that bridge when we come to it. There is nothing wrong with Madelyn doing Mini Cheer Camp if she wanted to.

Kory: I still don't want our girls to be cheerleaders, they just don't have high standards.

Me: Then consider this the last time Madelyn will do Mini Cheer Camp. This will also be Hunter's last year participating in Baskettball because Jock's don't have high standards either.
Kory: You just don't get it!

Me: You are absoluety right. I don't get it! You said one cheerleader got pregnant. Not all of them did. It was one jock that got her pregnant. Not all of them did. It doesn't matter if our kids play sports or not. In my highschool we had many girls that were pregnant and it wasn't every cheerleader. It was the girl labeled "loner". It was the girl that hung out with the computer geeks. It was the star volley ball player. That pregnant girl could be anyone who didn't live up to our standards along with the young man that got her pregnant. You were a jock but chose to live by the standards you were taught. The same standards I lived by and the same standards we are teaching our kids.

End of conversation!

What a converstaion that was. It totally took me by suprise. I guess I should be thankful for a husband who truly cares about our children. He doesn't want one of our daughter's to get pregnant in highschool, neither do I. I was just suprised that he had such strong feelings about cheerleaders because one got pregnant. (And in my mind I keep thinking, she didn't get that way by herself. Kory confirmed that it was a baskettball player that helped her get that way. Yet Kory has no problem with and hopes that Hunter will play ball in highschool.) After our converstaion it wasn't terribly suprising to hear that none of Madelyn's cousins participated in Mini Cheer Camp. What was a little suprising was that no one from our little town participated. Really? Am I totally wrong about my thoughts of cheerleaders?

20 Weeks Along

2012-01-25T17:21:00.000-08:00

Today it's official. I am 20 weeks today.

Where has the time gone???

I really do feel like this pregnancy is going by fast. Maybe it's the going to school online, the 4 kids I take care of on a daily basis, teaching preschool 2x a week, the holiday's we just went through or maybe being in the YW Presidency. Not quite sure what it is but time seems to be flying. I forget I'm pregnant until someone asks how far along I am. Last night I was asked how many weeks I was and my mind completely went blank. I couldn't answer her. I really did not know what week I was in. My answer to her was far enough along that I'll be having an ultrasound in the next few weeks so I guess I'm at least 17 weeks!

WOW!

With any of my other kids I would have known that yesterday I was 19weeks and 6 days.

I was on pinterest.com the other day and came across a cute idea of monthly belly shots. So here's to our 1st photo shoot over the next few months. Thanks girls for your help, Emily for holding the sign and Madelyn for taking the picture. It was fun!

Pregnancy Facts

I'm feeling the baby move quite a bit now. It's great to know there's a reason why my belly continues to get bigger. Baby's still small enough that I can't feel with my hand baby moving from the outside. Doesn't stop my kiddo's from trying though.

I'm constantly peeing during the 24 hour day period. Doesn't matter what time or where I'm at.

I've never really craved sweets in pregnancy and this one doesn't look to be any different. What I am craving however is eggs and dark green vegetables. Paticularly steamed spinach and broccoli. I'd eat broccoli for breakfast, lunch and dinner if I could. The other night for dinner I steamed 3 heads of broccoli. All my kids took a spoonful (they all like brocolli too) and then it's embarasing to admit that I ate the rest. I had to have eaten 2 1/2 heads all by myself. Soon after it was gone Hunter asked for me to pass the broccoli to him. I told him it was gone. His reply was,"What the heck??? You ate all that??? What are you a pig???" Gee, I think I've heard this before but it wasn't coming from him!

Emily's new do...

2012-01-07T14:10:00.000-08:00

Both my girls generally speaking always have long hair and I absolutely LOVE it. I've always peferred my girls having long vs. short hair. I enjoy being able to do the long hair in a style and have it last for more than 1 day. For several months now Emily's head has turned into a very soft head. She cries and cries and cries when it comes time to doing her hair. Every day she cries! She starts crying before I can even pick up the brush and then cries harder as we work out the tangles. For over a week now I decided that just maybe it was time to cut this beloved long hair into something a little more managbale for a 5 year old.

Emily wanted her hair to come to her chin. My problem with this is that when Madelyn was about the same age she wanted to do the same thing. I took her to a friend who cut her hair to her chin. She loved it for about a week and then decided she hated such short hair. She hated it not being long for pig tails, she hated we couldn't do any of our favorite do's, she just didn't like her hair so short. Since then when it comes time to cut Madelyn's hair she's always quick to say, "Remember when my hair was really short? Don't cut it like that o.k?"

I don't want a repeat of this experience with Emily!

(Emily before the big hair cut)

After I cut 9 inches of her hair off I had her jump in the shower to wash it.
She wanted to brush it for the 1st time. She was THRILLED that there were no tangles and that she could brush ALL of her hair.

I wanted to cut her hair to her shoulders. I feel like we compromised.

Her hair straight is at her shoulders. When we blow dried the hair around her face we curled it under. She loves that it's as short as her chin.

She loves it.

I hope she will continue to love it.

Whether her hair is short or long she still looks cute!

1st Doctor's Appointment

2012-01-05T18:55:00.000-08:00

Today I had my 1st Dr.'s appointment for my pregnancy in Cedar City. Sitting in the waiting room reminded me of what I once knew. I was not liking the realization of having to get to know a new doctor, new office staff, new hospital, new city. I didn't like the question's I later had to ask, "Where is the lab for me to do the blood work? Where's Radiology to schedule my ultrasound?" In Prescott, the 7 years that we were there I saw the same doctor who basicly had the same staff. I delivered at the same hospital and used the same labs. I loved my PV doctor, I've missed her already, she delivered all of my babies thus far.

I was impressed with my new certified midwife, Laurie Hansen. She does not do home births she was quick to say and I learned the difference between a doctor/ certified midwife and a certified midwife/midwife. Not sitting in the waiting room for more than 2 minutes before being brought back started my appointment off with a good start. The nurse did the normal things took my urine sample, blood pressure, gave me a new pregnancy book and just talked about my previous pregnancies. She than left telling me Laurie would be right in. I was very impressed that I had barely pulled my book out of my purse before Laurie came in.

WOW! No waiting.

I think I will learn to love my new midwife like I loved my previous O.B. I was very impressed.

The best part of my appointment was hearing babies heart beat. It's great to know there is something living inside me causing me to get fat once again. Today I am 17 weeks and 1 day. My due date is June 14, 2012. I scheduled my ultra sound for the same day as my next O.B appointment. This means the beginning of next month as long as EVERYONE is cooperating we should know what our next little bundle of joy will be.

Hunter and Brayden (says Hunter) are wanting a brother. Madelyn and Emily no suprise are wanting a sister. I would absolutely LOVE another little girl to do the frillies with, bows, flowers, teeny tiny bracelets. It's been a long time. However, later this year when school starts it's new year Emily will be at school all day leaving Brayden home by himself. I'm thinking a little boy would make for a nice playmate for a few years anyways before Brayden is off to school too.

Kory is quick to point out our family is 3 to 3 (boys vs. girls). What will our little tie breaker be?

It's a New Year...

2012-01-03T10:01:00.000-08:00

Last Friday morning I talked to my best friend, April, in Az finalizing our weekend plans. You see Kory had a job in AZ to finish and so our whole family had plans to go with him. Being Kory had to work Friday night our plan was to leave saturday morning and arrive in sunny Arizona sometime that afternoon. We were going to take both families to our favorite restaurant, Garcia's, for dinner. Saturday night both our families including kids would attend a New Year's Eve Party at our old bishop's house. Several other friends were also attending. We were so excited to see everyone again. Our plan sunday was to attend church at 8 am and spend the rest of the day catching up with each other's lives. On Monday April and I were going to hit all the Christmas Clearance's at a few differnet stores. I was really looking forward to going to Hobby Lobby my most favorite store of all time. We thought about taking the kids to the park that afternoon and just enjoying what little time we had together. Tuesday morning our family would leave Arizona to return home in time for Kory to be to work by 4 that afternoon. We knew it would kind of be a short trip but we were going to make the best of our few days away from home.

Come Friday night, our bags were packed, the van loaded, Kory was off to work and I was arguing with the kids why we had to wait until the next morning to leave instead of what they wanted :leaving Daddy in Utah to find himself a ride to AZ the next day. Silly kids, it was because of Daddy we were going to AZ in the first place. I was sitting on the couch folding my last batch of towels when Brayden came to me saying he was sick. I asked him where he was sick at and before he could answer he threw up all over me and the couch. UGH!!!! I was desperately hoping it was a fluke. Not the case every 15-20 minutes like clock work from 7 o' clock that night till 1 o'clock the next morning my baby boy was sick. At midnight Hunter came down to inform me that he too had just thrown up. From then until 8 the next morning Hunter was throwing up every hour. When Kory got home at 3 that morning I told him that the kids and I just couldn't go. Not only do I not want to be stuck in the van for several hours with puking kids but it wouldn't be right to show up at someone else's home with sick kids. And so our wonderful plans changed.

Saturday I spent the day washing sheets, comforter's, blankets, towels and trying to disinfect our entire house. As saturday night approached and no else got sick we were seriously considering leaving sunday morning to AZ as a family and continuing on with an even shorter mini vacation.

I couldn't believe it when April called that night to inform us that her kids had just started throwing up too. Seriously? I didn't know germs could be spread through the phone line. Needles to say our family didn't go to AZ this weekend. Kory did leave late sunday night, he finished the job monday and returned home in the wee hours of this morning. He may be coming down with what the boys had a few days ago as he's still in bed complaining he REALLY doesn't feel good. Hopefully he can sleep it off.

Our family rang in the new year by fixing a gigantic bowl of popcorn and watching a new movie mom had hidden away, Beethoven. Hunter, Emily and Brayden had all fallen asleep on the couch before the clock struck midnight. Madelyn desperately wanted to stay up till midnight so Kory and I stayed up with her. As soon as midnight struck we all went to bed.

The kids and I played together all day yesterday trying to make the most out of our last day of Christmas Break. Today it's back to the grind stone, school, dishes, taking out the trash, etc. I'm already missing our break that went by way to quickly.

Happy New Year's Everyone!

Christmas Break 2011

2011-12-30T10:01:00.000-08:00

I was a little bummed to see that instead of my kids getting the full 2 weeks off like most school districts give for Christmas Break we only get 1 week and 2 days. Having the kids home has been a lot of fun. I am so glad that school is half way over. I'm looking forward to summer vacation already without all the homework, spelling words, getting up so so early to catch the bus, etc.

We are taking advantage of our Christmas Break this year.

On monday of this week Kory and Hunter got up early and drove to Panguitch. Kory with 2 of his brothers and a few of there kids went ice fishing on Panguitch Lake. The girls and I decided to stay home because quite frankly I wasn't going to go stand on ice and freeze my tushy off for a few hours to fish. That is not fun for me! However we have been having exceptionally warm weather of late. All week our outside thermostat has hit over 65 degrees. By afternoon we're almost to 70. I am not complaining about our Spring like weather we are currently having. Kory and Hunter had a wonderful time fishing in this warmer weather even though they got skunked!

Tuesday afternoon the Young Women had an incentive trip. They planned to go ice skating. Being no one had school and all the leaders had plenty of room in there cars all of us leaders took our kids. This was the 1st time my kids have gone ice skating. We all had so much fun! Madelyn started off with a little help. After about 30 minutes she ventured off on her own.
Hunter was a natural. The leaders kept asking me if this was really his 1st time on ice skates.Not long after we got there he and some cousins started playing tag. I was pretty impressed with his new found skill!

After some coaxing even Emily went out on the ice. She's sure glad she decided to be brave. She was the last one off the ice when it was time to go home and kept asking if she could do it just one more time.

Brayden and I stayed off the ice and watched everyone else have fun. We brought books and puzzles to keep us occupied together. Before heading for home we splurged and bought 2 hot chocolates to share. It was pretty good. When we 1st got there and I went to pay for all the kids I was told it was going to be $2 kids and $3 for adults. However, despite the hour drive we had to get there they considered us "locals" so it was only $1 for the kids. That included there ice skate rental too. They let Emily skate for free and the hot chocolate was $1.50 each. I spent a total of $5 for a great afternoon spent! For such cheap and fun entertainment we've got to do this again.

Tuesday night Hunter asked if I'd play Monopoly with him and his sisters.

I LOVED Monopoly growing up.

So after dinner was cleaned up we opened our new family christmas gift and started playing. We didn't start the game until 7 and didn't finish until almost 11 o' clock that night. WOW! I had forgotten how long this game can go on for. The kids had fun, I had fun and we've played it once more since.

Yesterday, wednesday, Uncle Dustin invited us to go quad sledding with his family. We don't have a snow to do it the right way so we did it a little different. Uncle Dustin has a big field behind his back yard that is quite often than not in shade. I think this field has the most snow than anywhere else in town. Which really isn't saying a lot.

Uncle Dustin tied a sled to a long piece of rope and tied it to the back of his quad.

Here's cousing Esther taking Brayden for a ride. Brayden was dressed very warm but decided he was to hot and took off his coat. I guess that just goes to show how warm it was...

Here's Emily and Madelyn. Madelyn fell off and decided she wanted to be dragged instead of getting back on the sled.

Hunter was pretty thrilled when Uncle Dustin asked him if he wanted a turn to drive it. There was no hesitation from him of course. Uncle Dustin did sit behind him during his driving "just in case".

We stayed up late again last night not getting to bed until after 10pm. This is so not like us. I'm a pretty stickler about getting my kids to bed at 8 each night. It's been fun staying up with the kids and enjoying their company. No one seems to roll out of bed until after 8. Breakfast hasn't been until almost 10am. As I said we our taking advantage of this mini break from school and are throughly enjoying ourselves and the little adventures we've done each day.

Heaton Christmas Party 2011

2011-12-26T10:34:00.000-08:00

This year being we are the new family to town Kory and I decided to host Christmas Dinner for the Heaton Family. We invited his 4 siblings and their families that live here in town along with 2 other siblings that live within 2 hours from town. In then end only 5 of his siblings and their families came. His older sister Holly decided not to make it because her oldest is on a mission in Texas and for some reason wasn't able to call home until that evening. Can't blame her for not coming. However, they were missed.

We had lots and lots and lots of food to eat. Being the host of this grand event I missed out on taking pictures during our grand turkey and ham dinner. After dinner some of the adults stayed on the couches visiting while other sat around the table playing games. Here are the 4 oldest grandkids that were present.
The boys kept themselves enteratained with the WII, nerf guns and lego's.

After I kicked the boys off the WII, the girls took their opportunity to play Just Dance Kids.

I think they had fun.

The little girls and boys had fun playing in the girls room and loft.

Our house was FULL, it was little LOUD and CRAZY at times but I hope we all had fun.

It was good to have everyone that could come, come. It's nice to know that my house could hold 40+ people all at the same time and survive. I have the best sister-in-laws ever. Before everyone left they ALL helped clean up bedrooms that suprisingly weren't bad and helped wash, dry and put away all the dirty dishes. Even though my dishes were done and my sink was empty before everyone arrived it was astounding to see how many dishes we had piled up after our big meal. I was very thankful for all the help in the clean up.

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Christmas Morning 2011

2011-12-26T09:37:00.000-08:00

Twas' the night before Christmas and all through the house not a creature was stirring NOT even a mouse. The children were nestled all snug in there beds with strick instructions from Daddy not to get out of bed until 7 the next morning. Daddy however working nights for almost a year now REALLY struggles sleeping like the rest of the family on the weekends. Saturday night was no exception. The kids were all in bed by 9:30 and at 10:30 when I went to bed they were sleeping. Kory came to bed about midnight and I KNOW he struggled with sleep. With all his tossing and turning I felt like he kept me up all night too. We were both lying awake at 5 am sunday morning when Kory suddenly said, "I can't sleep let's go wake up the kids". I said, "Heck no! With all your threats from the night before you are not waking anyone up till 7." After another 30 minutes listening to him toss and turn, knowing I wasn't going to get much more sleep I threw in the towel. Kory jumped out of bed, ran upstairs and woke the kids up. Despite the picture Brayden wasn't crying just yawning and stretching. Can't imagine why?????Santa definetly found us...
Santa brought Hunter a Star Wars Lego set. He also filled his stocking with a box of Mike and Ike's, a star wars watch that came with a figure and Indiana Jones 2 WII game.
Mom and Dad gave him some real cow boy boots, a nerf gun and a Lego Star Wars set. The rest of the goodies came from Grandparents, Aunts and Uncles and Cousins. This year we had the kids exchange gifts that could go in our food storage or just storage in general. They had so much fun with this. Hunter was given several deodorants and a bottle of white gas for his bbq.

Santa found Madelyn too.

Santa brought her a Hello Kitty Camera. Her stocking was filled with a new watch, Just Dance Kids WII game and a box of Sugar Babie candies.

For several weeks now Madelyn and I have been talking about giving her Barbie house a make- over. So mom and dad gave her a box with 4 different Barbie house furniture rooms, a pair of boots and a box of Horses that her barbies can ride. For her food storage gift she received several boxes of cake mixes and brownie mixes. The rest of her goodies came from friends at school and extended family members.

Santa brought Emily a horse for her baby doll's along with a new doll. Her new doll is dressed up as a Horse Jockey. She loves it! Her stocking had a new watch, a Pet Rescue WII game and a box of Gobstopers.

Mom and Dad gave her a doll house with a ton of family members and so much furniture it won't all fit that I bought months ago off of Craigslist. We also gave her a new Memory game. She like the rest of the kids recieved many gifts from fellow classmates, her preschool teacher and extended family members. Her food storage gift was a case of Top Ramen (her favorite) and 2 cases of Mac N' Cheese (her 2nd all time favorite).

Brayden was so much fun to watch this year.

Santa brought him a Fire Station that has a fire truck, 2 firemen and a dog. His stocking had a box of Skittles and Diego movie. Mom and Dad gave him Diego puzzles a Diego book and a game. I think he was more thrilled with the play dough his Nursery Teacher gave him and the crocheted ball Grandpa Bob (other nursery teacher) gave him. His food storage gift that didn't make it into the picture was several boxes of Life Cereal, his favorite. He too recieved a few extra gifts from cousins.

After pictures and the floor was picked up Mom and Dad went back to bed while the kids played with their new toys. Hunter kept himself busy with his new lego's.

After a great Musical Sacrament Meeting only we came home and started to get ready for the Heaton Family Christmas Party we hosted this year. Brayden kept himself entertained on the stairs playing with his new playdough.

We had a great Christmas this year.

Kory and I enjoyed just sitting and listening to our children playing and talking together. It was a great spent day! We recieved some fun Family Christmas Presents this year. My brother gave us a sled. Now all we need is the snow! Kory's sister gave the kids 2 of those blow up balls that kids sit and jump acorss the room on. On top of the ball came a fabric horse, so that it looks like the kids are galloping. My parents gave the kids a teepee to play in. I'll have to post pictures of these soon.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Christmas Eve 2011

2011-12-26T08:34:00.000-08:00

We did some things a little different this year with the kiddo's on Christmas Eve. The past couple of years our tradition has been to take the kids to a movie (something we do only once or twice a year) or bowling with friends. Not wanting to do this with the 4 hour commute to go along with it we opted out and did some things different.

My kids have a few favorite treats that they like to help make. In stead of making them earlier in the week I purposely put these off until today.

One of Hunter's favorite treats is dipping pretzels in melted chocolate. Right after breakfast was cleaned up he and I started making these treats. Of course it wasn't too long before the girls came in to investigate. We weren't going to exclude them by any means but more often than not one of the girls is always helping me in the kitchen. It was nice to have a little alone time with just Hunter and I doing something together.
When Hunter's treats were finished we moved on to Madelyn's favorite treat. I have heard several different names for these but we call them turtles.

She placed a rolo candy on top of a pretzel, put the pan in the oven for about 2 minutes. We pulled the pan out and then smashed a m&m or pecan on top. Way yummy! All the kiddo's helped make her treats too.

While I was cleaning up the mess of the treat making Madelyn got a little silly and creative.

Can you guess who she is?
In no time at all it became lunch time. Wanting to do something a little different than the norm we ALL made homemade pizza.

Madelyn LOVES working at the stove. She quickly volunteered to get the sausage ready while the little ones helped me roll out the dough. Due to sticky fingers I didn't get any pictures of my little helpers!

Hunter put our pizza together.

Boy did it turn out yummy!

After lunch our plan was to play some games together but..... a phone call from an Uncle took my big kids away. They were invited to go sledding! Who can blame them for ditching the family?

I didn't get any pictures but was told over and over how much fun they had.

Come Christmas Eve each year it seems that Kory and I have the same converstation. We wonder if we taught our kids the "true meaning" of Christmas or did we let the wordly view get in the way?Over the past few years we've tried many things but I don't know if any of them have been the right way for our family. At the same time I've wondered if it's becuase of their young age that I feel like we "loose" the true meaning. It seems like with all the shopping and seeing Santa at stores, the tv commercials about the newest and latest toy and all the hype at school for Santa among there piers I feel like our views of Christmas is a little outweighted. I sometimes would ask myself if we even have a chance with all the outside world influence?

This year I spent hours on the internet reading up on other's idea's of keeping the "true meaning" of Christmas in there home. I took a few idea's and combined them together. It was such a hit that this will become our newest tradition during the Christmas Season. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures so I'll just have to tell you what we did....

Before Dec. 1 the kids and I for a FHE made a paper chain leading up to Christmas Day. Pretty ordinary right? What we did different this year was put a scripture about Christ on the inside of each paper chain. Each night before bed we turned off ALL lights, sat around the kitchen table and read the scripture by candle light. Each child had a "day". On there day they got to change the Christmas countdown block, offer all the prayers that day, pull off the chain, light the candle, help read the scripure and then blow out the candle. Blowing out that candle was the biggest event of the day! At the beginning of the month our scriptures were stories of miracles that Christ performed or parables that he taught. It was interesting to hear what our young children thought what the parable might mean. It was GREAT to hear the wonder in their voice when they would ask Christ really did that? Some of the stories they had heard before but lots of them were new to them. Of course the closer we got to Christmas Day the scriptures were leading up to Christ's birth. It was such a simple thing for our family to do. I was REALLY suprised at how well the kids took this new tradtion. They looked forward to our night reading and WANTED to do it despite that late hour we had some nights. It was awsome.

So back to our Christmas Eve.... come about 7 o'clock we read our last scripture chain by candle light. We then went to my bedroom and watched the Living Scriptures animated movie The King Is Born. The movie was less than 20 minutes long and almost followed this past weeks scripture reading. It was great to hear the kids say "hey, I read that part". Watching the movie was a great way to finish off our Christmas Eve. I went to bed asking myself that same question "Did we teach our children the "true meaning" of Christmas? This year I had no hesitation. I know we did a good job!

After the movie we followed it up with our last tradition of the season. The kiddo's got to open up one gift.

Of course that gift was there new pair of pajama's.

Emily was the most excited about her pajama's. I think it had something to do with the matching pajama for her baby doll.

For some reason I didn't get a picture of all the kids together in there new pajama's.

I don't know what I was thinking!

Ward Christmas Party!

2011-12-23T18:12:00.000-08:00

After many, many discussion's with my Young Women it was decided that they wanted to make watch bands for their Christmas Present. Each girl chose to make 3 of them. My kids then decided that they wanted to make the same thing for their teachers this year. This has become a tradition as this is our 3rd year in a row making them for school teachers. Between tue and wed of this week I helped make 14 watch bands. Here's just a few of them. Can I say I'm all beaded out?Yesterday being the last day of school for the year the kids and I celebrated by making sugar cookies!
So much fun...

Somehow I forgot to take a picture of all the yummy cookies made!

Today someone dropped off a Christmas Plate for us. I loved it and had to share.

It's several paper plates with plastic cups stuffed with plastic forks, knives and spoons. Sitting on top of the 1st plate was several pieces of candy along with gummy bears.

Here's a close up of the poem.

Isn't that great!

Tonight was our ward Christmas Party!

Santa made his entrance in a way I've never seen before.

On a fire truck with lights and siren's blazing.

I didn't get pictures of Santa with all my kids but my brother-in-law did. I'll have to post them another time. I was suprised that Santa was able to bribe Brayden on to his lap with NO tears!

After Santa left the building we ate a light dinner. Here's Hunter with all his boy cousins.

Miss Madelyn... Oops! Caught her with her mouth full.

Miss Emily....

and Brayden.....

One of the events during the night was a edible table center piece contest. This is what I submitted....

Everything is edible.

The figures are made out of cake and their heads are a sugar cookie.

It was fun to make. It took a lot of time and effort and I'll probably never do it again. There was so much detail with so many different colors and in 2 different types of frosting. This definetly ended up being a bigger project that what I thought it would be. But... It was still fun and I won 1st place.

Yeah!!!!!!

After dinner the Primary kids sang Christmas Songs dressed up.

Madelyn is standing right in front of the mike with the grey robe and blue head piece (a shepard). Emily is right behind her wearing a white angel robe.

Hunter was also a shepard. Middle row far left.

Wish Kory could have been with us.

I hate how many activities he misses due to the night shift. We were really hoping he'd get tonight off but instead gets Monday. Oh well... The kids and I still had fun visiting with our new friends and family.

December

2011-12-20T17:42:00.000-08:00

It seems like these past 2 weeks our family has been run ragged!

Mostly it's due to this little man in our lives. Hunter had 3 games last week plus 2 practices. The 1st two games his team won by more than 10 points, his last game this past saturday they didn't do so well. They lost by 10 points! Despite the loss he still had fun. His coach has moved the early 6 am practices to after school for an hour in a half instead. I love this much better even though it interferes with dinner time!(Hunter's sitting on the far right, bottom row)

Earlier this month we put our christmas tree up.

It was fun to see the littler ones getting into the festivities.

Ta da.....

During the past 2 weeks we've had two HUMOUNGOUS winter storms.
I hate the cold cold cold temperatures these bring. I have a hard time sending my kids out to the bus stop in 0' degree weather. We quickly learned that we could see the bus coming from up the street so the kids now wait until they see her coming before they go running out with me yelling at the them to be careful and NOT slip on the ice! One afternoon Kory brought in a little treat he picked off of our front porch for the kiddo's. Who knew ice cycles would bring so much joy for these kids.

Sunday we left for church during one of these snow storms. I couldn't help but remenence with Kory the year that church was canceled in Prescott Valley due to the snowy weather. Why oh why can't we cancel church here everytime it snowy weather? It's so stink'n cold. On our way into the building both Madelyn and Emily were whining about all the snow that was getting into their church shoes and Brayden was crying that the snow was making him wet! I wanted to complain and cry right along with them. I've decided we all need to invest in some winter sunday shoes!

I'll admit we all have some toughening up to do.

Due to our busy schedule of late (between YW, Scouts, Enrichment and Baskettball) I had to make goodies twice to pass out to our family, friends, neighbors and primary teachers. It's always fun to see the joy it brings to my kids when they give their teachers a little thank you! It makes all those dirty pots and pans and sticky floors worth it.

I've decided to take over the local preschool here in town. Kory's sister has been teaching for about 5 years now and this is her 1st year with all of her own kids in Elementary School. Her husband has talked her into finding a replacement. This week I am attending preschool with Emily to get an idea of how Heather's been doing it and to get to know the kids. This thursday will be the last day of school for my kids until next year. I'm jealous of you Arizonian's who are already out for the year!

One of the best things that has happened during the past 2 weeks was that I finished my semester of school! YEAH!!!! I am looking forward to the school break ahead for all of us. I'm glad my next semester doesn't begin again until the middle of January! I'm anxious for the kids to be done with there school and the "slowing down" it will bring to our lifes even if it is only for a little more than a week. Bring it on!

Junior Jazz

2011-12-06T17:04:00.000-08:00

Several weeks ago both Madelyn and Hunter brought home a sign up sheet for Junior Jazz Basketball. Baskettball will be 6 weeks for each of them. Hunter's team will be Dec-Jan and Madelyn's will be Feb-Mar. Being I'm on my own at night I was glad to see we'd have a little break between the 2 different teams. The best part was that it only cost $35 for both of them to play and that includes their very own jersey they get to keep. The same jerseys will be used each year so next year it would cost us $10 less for the two of them to play again.

Can't complain right?
What I would like to complain about is Hunter's team practices. This is our first week and we have 4 practices. I assumed when I signed them up that the practices would be after school sometime. Boy was I wrong! Practices are at 6am to 7:45am at the local church by the kids elementary school. After practice all the boys walk to school together. My issue with this time is that it means my 8 year old is woken up at 5am. He gets dressed, eats, brushes his teeth, grabs his coat and then is picked up in our car pool at about 5:30am. He then continues to go around picking up other boys playing and then takes the 20min. commute to the local church and is there about 6.
So my issues with this is.....
#1 Almost 2 hour practices for 8-9 year olds?????
and
#2 8-9 year olds getting up at 5 am to play basketball!

After 2 days of getting up at 5 am do I even need to explain how our 8 year old is behaving?
Let's just say.... SHORT TEMPERED, ORNERY, TIRED, ORNERY, ARGUMENTATIVE and did I mention ORNERY!
I've been an awfully mean mom and has made him go to bed at 7:30 which is only half an hour early than normal. The problem is he lays there and can't seem to fall asleep until about 9. I think it's due to the excitement. I am hoping that tonight he will fall quickly to sleep and feel more rested tommorrow and hopefully a little less ornery!

I am so glad that tommorrow there is NO practice but we'll be back at it thur and fri.
Thank the *stars* starting next week we'll only have 2 practices but....... 3 games. Did I mention all the games are in Kanab which is 1 hour away!!!! What was I thinking????? After next week we get a 2 week break due to the Christmas holiday and then we jump back in when school resumes in January.
When Madelyn's team starts I have been told that practices should be after school and that their game will be local. Hip Hip Hooray!
Now if we can only get through the next 6 weeks!

Thankful for...

2011-11-30T08:07:00.000-08:00

I have been looking forward to Thanksgiving for some time now and for more than one reason.

Kory and I celebrated our 10th Anniversary on Thanksgiving Day this year. It's amazing to think and ponder about our life together over the past 10 years! It's fun to say that 10 years later we have 4 kids, drive a mini van and have a white picket fence. I am very thankful for my husband. I am thankful that he is such a hard worker and wants to provide for our family. I am thankful for his love and his commitment to us. I am thankful I have a husband who helps around the house and that together we are raising our family. I know he loves me for who I am and I love him!

Another reason I was looking forward to Thanksgiving this year was knowing we were going to be away from home for 4 days! We don't travel very much any more being we live close to family. It's something I don't think I'm use to quite yet. On most occasions when we go to St. George or Hurricane it's just a day trip and seems we are always rushed to get home. We had such a great time spending some time away from home. It was great to spend a few days with family. It was great to get away from our day to day life. I loved that Kory didn't have to go to work and the kids were out of school. It was great to be able to go shopping without a time limit or being rushed to get home before Kory had to be at work or the kids were out of school.

One of the biggest reasons I was looking forward to our Thanksgiving Vacation was to let the cat out of the bag. We were the last to arrive to my parents home as Kory had to work the night before. Being we were the last this worked to our advantage of announcing our latest news to everyone. When we got there this is the shirt that Brayden wore into the house.

The front of his shirt says:

Hey, Listen up!

This li'l turkey has something big to say....

The Back:

I'm going to be a big brother!

We are very excited for our newest addition to arrive. I am currently in my 11th week. My due date is June 14, 2012. This just happens to be my mother-in-laws birthday. Madelyn is hoping the baby will arrive on June 25, her birthday. I hope not! Kory's birthday is June 4. I'd be fine if baby wanted to be born that day or even June 11th as that's my father-in-laws birthday. Either way I think June is full of birthday's already.

Thanksgiving 2011

2011-11-30T07:42:00.000-08:00

This year for Thanksgiving we were in Hurricane with my side of the family!

Each year we alternate the Thanksgiving holiday between my side of the family and Kory's. Two years ago we were in Hurricane but we were missing my brother Matt as he was serving a mission in Penn. The last time our family was complete at Thanksgiving was in 2007, 4 years ago!

I think we all had a great time being together this past weekend. Everyone stayed for a few days so the kids had plenty of time to play with their cousins and us adults had plenty of time to sit around and visit. We did the black friday shopping together, the grandkids helped Grandpa set up all his Christmas decor outside, the Daddy's and Hunter went Paint Balling and Emily's favorite part of the week was to go carolling to her GG and GG Pa's house. When you've got 13 adults and 9 grandkids singing all at once we didn't sound to bad!This is Jamie and Elena. These two were born the same year Brayden was. We call these three the triplets! Folding there arms waiting so patiently for dinner.

We had plenty of food the entire week.
My borther,Travis brought his X-Box so there was plenty of video playing done by all the boys in the family!

Grandma had a Christmas craft ready for us do with our kids.

Madelyn did one side and Emily the other. Brayden was napping at the time and Hunter was having his turn on the X-Box.

So what is this Christmas craft?

Ta da.......

A toilet seat cover!

The first thing my kids did when we got home was to put our new and only toilet seat cover on!

Good Job, Grandma. It was great craft and the girls really enjoyed it.

Thanksgiving School Play

2011-11-30T07:30:00.000-08:00

This year at the kids school, the 2nd graders put on the Thanksgiving Play. There class performed 4 different plays about Thanksgiving during an hour long assembly. Madelyn played a few parts but her favorite was the pilgrim. Other's in her class were turkey's, indians, farmers and we even had a football coach!
This is the pilgrims crossing the ocean. You can't see Miss Madelyn as she's behind everyone else but she was there!

These are the pilgrim girls learning the ways taught by the friendly indians.

Madelyn is the child in the middle standing up.

I love my camera for outside shots but it sure stinks taking pictures inside. Unfortunatley these were the best I could share.

Madelyn had so much fun during her play. She loves dressing up, she loves speaking parts and she loves to perform. She was so cute to watch and did such a great job!

A weekend in Vegas

2011-11-29T14:24:00.000-08:00

Two weekends ago our family made a quick trip to Vegas.

That saturday afternoon Kory and I had the priviledge of attending a VERY special sealing.

My brother, Jonathan and his wife Camille and there two children, were sealed to their newest addition to the family. Miss Mya has been apart of their family since she was born. Her birth mother abandoned her at the hospital and Jonathan and Camille became her foster parents. They brought her home from the hospital and have had her in there home for the past 13.5 months. She is so adorable. She's like a little doll!

Her adoption was finalized before a judge that thursday and then this sweet little girl was sealed to her family on Saturday! It was such a wonderful experience.

Something the sealer said to everyone in that sealing room has stuck with me during the past two weeks. It was something that I heard but really didn't think about until my mom and I started talking about it. The sealer said that before we were born we prayed for our parents.

I've never thought about that. Why wouldn't we pray for our future family?

He mentioned that before Mya was born she knew who her birth parents were going to be. She knew the situation she was going to be born into. She also knew that she COULD have the opportunity to be sealed to a righteous, loving family. The sealer believes that Mya was praying that Jonathan and Camille would find her, she prayed for them to live righteous lives so that she could be apart of there family for forever.

For the rest of us in the sealing room he said our children that have already been born to us prayed for us too. The children that have not yet joined our families are still praying for us. They want their family to be together forever in the here after. They are praying for us to remain righteous, to keep the commandments, to do everything we know we are suppose to be doing. They want to join a loving family that will be together forever!

Isn't that just the coolest thing you've ever heard?

Sorenson's Pond

2011-11-17T18:29:00.001-08:00

Last week I was able to go with Madelyn on a little "reward" field trip. Her teacher, Mrs. Sorenson, had a reading goal for each child. Those that met their goal (all but 3) were able to go. We went to Mrs. Sorenson's house where she has a little pond. The 1st thing Madelyn and I did was to make a turkey using an apple, colored marshmallows, gum drops, etc.
Here's Madelyn's turkey!There was fishing to be done...

and the most favorite part was the paddle boats!

Madelyn had a blast on these paddle boats.

I even took a turn at taking a group around the pond. It was a little harder than it looked. Those things aren't to easy to steer.

I'm so glad I went. It was great to get to know the other mom's of the class and to meet some of Madelyn's new friends. What an awsome field trip these kids had. As much as I miss certain things about our previous schools we've attended I'm pretty sure this kind of a field trip wouldn't have happened at those schools.

Self Sufficient

2011-11-17T17:52:00.000-08:00

Before our family moved to Alton I thought about how our family would probably become a little more self sufficient. Not necesarily by choice but my neccesity living so far away from a grocery store and such. Tonight's dinner brought these thoughts back to my mind. About 98% of our dinner tonight was litterally from scratch, homemade, etc.

Tonight I made Madelyn's absolute FAVORITE meal of all time. Let me back up for just a moment.... For several weeks now we've had the opportunity
to take part in milking the family cow. We milk every saturday night. Some milkings our better than others. For instance 2 weeks ago and for a few weeks before that all we were getting was about a gallon of milk. This is not enough milk to last our family an entire week. So I've had to stock up on store bought milk. Then something happened, the past 2 weeks we've gotten more then 3 gallons on our turn milking the cow. This is great but it's been hard to drink all of our "fresh" milk plus the store bought before it goes bad. So having about 6 gallons of milk in my fridge and knowing in 2 days I may have another 3 gallons I decided I had to do something. I talked to a few sister-in-laws and decided to try my hand at making cheese. Yesterday with Emily's help we took 4 gallons of milk and made mozzarella cheese and cheese sticks, then using the left over whey we made ricotta cheese. It turned out GREAT!

So back to tonight's dinner... Our dinner consisted of store bought jumbo shells stuffed with our homemade ricotta cheese and mozzarella cheese. The shells were then smothered with our homemade spaghetti sauce we put up this summer with what we reaped from our garden. Our sides for dinner was beans that we canned this summer and garlic bread using our homemade bread and dried parsley flakes we also put up this year. I did sprinkle a little garlic salt which was from the store. 98% homemade, the only 2 store bought items used in tonights meal was the shells and garlic salt. This definetly doesn't happen a lot but it's kinda neat to see the rewards from all our hard work over the past few months of gardening, canning, freezing and then yesterday spending a few hours making cheeses coming together in one meal. I was curious to hear what the kids thought of dinner not realizing it was mostly homemade. Madelyn and Hunter both thought it tasted the same. I did too. Emily and Brayden didn't have a comment and Kory will be eating our meal for lunch tommorrow. I'm anxious to hear his opinion. Overall though I thought dinner was GREAT!

Chicken's

2011-11-09T16:16:00.000-08:00

Today I'm playing blog catch up. We were gone all day saturday moving Kory's tools to his new shop and didn't notice until sunday morning when I tried going to LDS music. com that our internet was down. It is FINALLY up and running again. The company blames our recent snow activity. Yes, it did snow for almost 3 straight days in a row but we didn't get that much. I'm afraid to see what happens during the harsh winter months when we've got 4 feet on the ground, and there sattelite has who knows how much sitting in it's dish!
Our family has had chickens for a few years now. We do this mainly for the eggs. We started in Prescott Valley as something to try because we could. We had ducks and chickens at that time. It was a great learning experience for the kids. There was a little store down the street that would buy our extra eggs for $3 a dozen. As long as the kids kept up with there chore of taking care of our friendly fowls they could keep the money. They loved this.
When we moved to Utah we gave our chickens to our best friends.
When we moved to our new home we found a chicken coop already installed in the barn in our back yard. We found ourselves more chickens and have continued to have all the eggs we can get. Living in such a remote area I quickly realized that cereal/milk was going to be WAY to expensive to eat as often as we were use to. I'm not doing coupons anymore and not having any stores around to compare prices with each other just wasn't working. We decided to do away with cold cereal! We got more chickens to give us more eggs for more wholesome breakfasts.
Several weeks ago a few of our chickens got sick and died. We were left with 7. Last friday morning Hunter went out to feed his chickens and discovered a neighbors dog in the coop with a chicken hanging out of his mouth. Hunter "kicked" the dog out of the coop. Unfortunately the dang dog got to 4 of our chickens. Yesterday, Hunter and Madelyn again went out to feed his chickens to discover our last 3 chickens had been killed. Madelyn was in tears. She was so upset that those dogs got to her chickens. And so we now have no more chickens!
It's not exactly the season to buy chickens and so we hope to do things a little different come feb. Kory's brother has an incubater he is willing to loan us and we are going to hatch ourselves our very own chickens. What an experience that's going to be!

Our 1st Snow Fall

2011-11-09T15:55:00.000-08:00

Is it possible to be tired of the snow already?

It started snowing at our house late saturday night. We woke up Sunday morning to it still snowing, we went to church while it was snowing, we came home from church while it was snowing. I went V.T later that afternoon as it still continued to snow. We went to bed that night to it snowing. The kids got up for school monday suprised to see it STILL snowing. When they got home from school it was still snowing and didn't STOP until tuesday mid morning.

It was a cold 3 days and I'm pretty thankful for all the wood we've got sitting on our porch just waiting to heat up our house for us. During a brief snow fall stop on monday the 2 younger ones wanted to go out to play. Emily's 1st thing to do in the snow was of course to eat it. Brayden came to me tattling that Emily was eating gross stuff. I told him that it was O.K to eat the snow. This was his reaction....
Really mom, I can eat this stuff????

and so he did...

We were given a swing set before we moved here and what a blessing it has been. Emily and Brayden go out to play on it daily. I wondered if they'd still play during our winter months and I suppose the snow didn't deter them. They still had fun.

When the big kids got home from school they decided to play during another brief, lack of snow fall.

The snow was never coming down really really hard it was just a constant light snow fall. After almost 3 days of snowing we only got about 4 inches. When I knew we were moving up here I started looking for snow boots at D.I. I was pretty blessed to find each of the kids some boots and only payed $3-5 a pair.

It's been pretty sunny since the snow fall stopped and lucky for me has started to melt a lot already. I don't know what is worse. Fresh white snow all over my tile floors that quickly turns to little puddles that no one BUT mom seems to notice to clean up or the now brown, muddy slush all over my floors. As cold as our house gets thanks to all the tile flooring, I am thankful for the somewhat easy clean up I have.
I'm not ready for the daily mopping up of snow!

I am definetly going to start some new rules about shoes being taken off at the door, regardless of the amount of time being spent inside before going back out.

Bragging Rights

2011-11-09T14:24:00.000-08:00

I've been a little concerned about the kids new elementary school they are attending. Many people have asked about the scores of the over all school? On the same note I've also been told that the scores aren't very good and the school is one of the worst in the state of Utah.

OUCH!

Besides choosing to home school we don't have any other choice than the school they are already going to. My kids don't need to attend the best school possible but at the same time I don't want them attending a "not so good" school and not being taught the things they should be learning.

I've been doing a little research online to come to my own conclusions. Valley Elementary is NOT as bad as I was being led to believe it was. On several UT websites I found there are a total of 496 elementary schools. Ranking #1 as the best and #496 as the worst our current school's ranked at #121. The school they attended last year was ranked #222. The schools are ranked by the states test scores. So each year a school can go up or down on the ranking level.A little while ago I had parent/teacher conferences other wise known as SEP's.

Both SEP'S went extremely well. I'm going to excersise my bragging rights and brag about Madelyn for a minute....

At the begninning of the year the kids are given a reading test to decide their reading level. Madelyn is in 2nd grade and scored a 3rd grade reading level. She was also tested on vocab. She once again scored a 3.2 which is 3rd grade 2nd month. There is another test coming up next month and her teacher thought she'd probably score at least a 4 which would be 4th grade.

At the end of our appointment her teacher said she'd love to clone Madeyln about 22 times. It would make her job as a teacher much easier. What an awsome compliment for this mama.

Good Job Madelyn.

It's Hunter's turn for a little bragging now....

At the beginning of the year Hunter was given a reading/vocab/comprehension test. He to will be tested again at the beginning of the new year. His teacher told me his scores were off the charts! What does that mean???? The average score for the reading test that was given was a 17. She asked me to guess what Hunter's score was. Ummmmmm? Maybe a 50 (you know off the charts right?) She replied, yeah NO! He scored 147! Good grief. She told me she thought maybe he was just a good guesser until she looked at the rest of his scores. For vocab. he scored, drum roll please.......

7.2 what's that????

Seventh grade 2nd month!

His comprehension was a 6.8, sixth grade 8th month.

Apparently it's pretty common for the comprehension score to be a little lower then the reading level. She too mentioned what a great kid Hunter is. He's always quiet, never speaks out of turn, is quick to raise his hand, and is just an overall joy to have in class. She wishes others would act more like him.

What can I say? I left the school pretty proud of my kids.

These scores are what prompted my research into there school. It's a little unsettling to know that there scores where as high as they were and no one else in there class was that high.

It made me wonder if we were now attending a "dumb" school. The school's scores aren't terrible. Kory and I have decided neither one of us is ready to home school so we'll just keep pushing the kids to do the best they can and try to challenge them a little more from home.

Halloween 2011

2011-11-01T15:44:00.000-07:00

I absolutely LOVE halloween.

I love the "fall" weather, the costumes, the friends, the parties, the candy, the trick-or-treating door to door and most especially the normal meals that I can turn into a "Halloweenish" meal. My kids really love the candy of course along with all the parties we end up going to. While trick-or-treating they look at everyone elses costumes and try picking one that they want to be for the following year. What can I say, Our family really enjoys Halloween!

This year something happened and I can't quite put a finger on it cause' I'm thinkin' it was a lot of little things that all added up. Anyway, somehow I think our family became the "scrooge" of Halloween this year. It all started the beginning of October when we pulled out our 3 huge tote buckets full of our Halloween decorations. It's always hard the 1st year in a new house trying to figure out where to put everything but this time we really failed! Real quickly we realized we had almost NOWHERE to put anything. We don't have any shelves, our piano top that we've used in the past is in my bedroom so that was out, we also no longer have an enterainment center. All we had this year was 2 small black tables that I have sitting between our couches. The kids were quite disapointed with the lack of decor we used this year.

One of our traditions that we've had for many years is a Halloween Party at our house. The party just didn't happen this year. Of the 3 weekends we had we were out of town for 2 of them. Needless to say it just didn't work. Usually we end up going to a ward halloween party each year but apparently our current ward doesn't have a halloween party! Every year I love turning ordinary meals into something a little ghoulish. This year I didn't make a single one! I'm shocked at myself. What the heck??? I have been very busy these past few weeks with my school midterm and working 2x a week. The flu bug has also landed in our current town and has left many of us with diahria and throwing up. Just not fun around the holiday's.

So yesterday at school the kids were suppose to dress up for Halloween. This little guy must not have felt well cause he went to school REFUSING to wear a costume! He was the only one in his entire class not in costume. I'd be mortified being the single man out but it didn't seem to phase him. When he got home from school he asked if I'd take everyone down to Hurricane/St. George for trick-or-treating. Not wanting a 4 hour commute for a 2 hour trick-or-treating I refused to do it. So then he asked if I'd take him to Orderville (a near by town) I again said no, he then wanted me to take him to Glendale (a even nearer town) and of course I said no. He wanted to leave our little town because he thought there wasn't enough houses for trick-or-treating. I though we should stick around and give it a try. And so we did.

Hunter went as Darth Maul but refused to let me paint his face. He decided to change his costume to "the unknown phantom" instead!
Madelyn loved her costume! She was a new Winter Barbie in a box. A collectors item, right?

As I mentioned on an earilier blog I was hoping Emily would be something most little 5 year old girls would want to be. You know like a butterfly, a fairy, a princess but NO WAY. She insisted on being Alecia who is Diego's big sister. She wore her green pants with a vest and click around her neck. She insisted on leaving her hair down too cause that's how Alicia wears it. Over all her costume worked and she did look pretty cute in the end.

Brayden went as Diego! He refused to hold his bag for the picture.

Seriously, we should have done what Hunter had asked me to do. We should have left our little town and gone somewhere else. The kids and I started off walking up our street (Kory had to work being he's on the night shift). We were able to hit all 4 houses on our street. We turned the corner and came back down hitting 5 more houses. During the hour it took us to walk around our rather large block we didn't see a single person doing there trick-or-treating and the majority of the houses we got to, no one was home. There was a bowl of candy left on the porch to pick from. Frankly it was kinda boring and lonely! I couldn't believe we hadn't seen a single person out trick-or-treating at 7:00 at night. When we got close to our house a sister-in-law was driving by. Apparently the way people go trick-or-treating in our new little town is to have mom or dad drive the kids door to door.

SERIOUSLY???

Being the wind was starting to pick up and the temerature was starting to drop I loaded the kids in the van and finished our trick-or-treating for the night by me driving them. I am so glad I did too. There were only 6 other houses that had there porch lights on that we were able to stop at. Hunter was just beside himself thinking he only got to go to 15 houses!

Sorry kiddo!

The kids, and me too, were quite disapointed at the lack of people on the streets. The lack of community gathering that his holiday can bring. I loved talking to other parents as we watched our kids tentatively walk up to a spoooky house. Even though I really never liked the "trunk-or-treating" we had in AZ that our ward ALWAYS participated in, that would have been better than what we had this year. I'm thinking next year we'll head on down to Grandma's house to have ourselves a halloweenish good time. The kids can just skip school the next day!

Carving Pumpkins

2011-10-28T16:02:00.000-07:00

Halloween is one of my most favorite holidays.

However, the one thing that I really, really don't like at this time of year is the "carving of the pumpkins". I've been putting it off and putting it off and finally told the kiddo's we'd do it after school on friday since Dad would be home to help us.

It was no suprise that the 1st thing out of the big kids mouth when getting home today was, "can we carve pumpkins now, you said!"

While helping the big kids "carve" I gave Brayden his pumpkin with a tub of markers!

Wow! Did he go to town. Being they are washable markers he really thought it was great when dad using a wet cloth washed his drawings away and he could do it all over AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN!

Every year a few local famers donate "extra" pumpkins to the elementary school. So both Hunter and Madelyn were able to decorate a pumpkin at school using paint or markers. They loved doing this at school. I don't know why they won't do it at home. Bringing these pumpkins home today, Hunter and Madelyn were able to carve 2 pumpkins. Boy did they think they were hot stuff! During the 1st 2/3 months of school other people donate fresh veg/fruit from there gardens to the school for a "healthy snack" for all the kids.

I think that's kind of cool!

Crazy Hair Day 2011

2011-10-28T15:56:00.000-07:00

This week has been spirit week for the big kiddo's.

Wednesday was RED day, so they wore as much red as possible to school.

Thursday was pajama day.

Leaving today: Crazy Hair Day (always Madelyn's favorite).

She LOVED it!
We just cut Hunter's hair for our recent family pictures so it was a little short to be able to do anything drastic. All I had left from my stash was Pink and Red hair spray dye. He didn't want those colors so he went to school normal.
However, when he got home he was quick to show me that his hair is now green!
Someone at school brought the green hair spray and colored his hair for him.
I guess I need to pick up a few more colors after Halloween this year!

Halloween Costumes

2011-10-24T21:01:00.000-07:00

This year Halloween has snuck up on me which is NOT normal!

Did you know that Halloween is in just 7 days?

I've got a few projects to complete for each of the kids costumes this year. I started with the 2 younger ones today. Can you guess what they're going to be?
Brayden is going as DIEGO, what a suprise! Emily on the other hand has suprised us all. She wants to be Alicia who is Diego's big sister.
Why????
Well duh!
She's Brayden's big sister. So now she feels the need to be Diego's big sister too.
Boy did I feel dumb!

Brayden LOVES his "backpack". He insisted on backpack going to sleep with him.
He hasn't seen "click", the camera, yet becuase I didn't get it finished until after all the kiddo's were in bed. I love the way backpack turned out. Click on the other hand is just O.K. Her eye's bug the crap out of me. It's only the 3rd pair I did and they are still NOT the same size. Seriously! I'm thinking I may need to go back to kidergarten and learn how to cut again.
Oh well, I'm sure the kids will love her too.
Tommorrow I will be making Emily and Brayden's matching safari vests which will complete there costumes. Brayden will be wearing "backpack" and it'll double as his candy bag. Emily will wear "click" around her neck while she does her trick or treating.
Two down, two more to go and just six days to do it in.

Emily Starts Preschool

2011-10-24T20:54:00.000-07:00

Miss Emily FINALLY started preschool this past week. My sister-in-law, Heather, put a preschool group together the same year I was part of one in Prescott Valley, 4 years ago. The difference between ours was that she couldn't get enough moms that wanted to rotate each week. So she took it upon herself and teaches it solo twice a week. When we moved here Emily talked to her Aunt Heather about joining her preschool. Aunt Heather warned us that she didn't start preschool until sometime in October due to all the canning she does. Emily was so excited for her big day to finally arrive. Here she is with her Aunt Heather, a.k.a "teacher".
Emily had a great 1st day of school and can hardly wait to attend again this week.

Woo Hoo!

2011-10-24T13:13:00.000-07:00

Knock on Wood for me please......

I've decided that it's finally time to blog about this big event in little man's life.

Brayden is Potty Trained (no accidents for 9 days).

Woo Hoo! His older 3 siblings were done by the time they were 2. Brayden was by far my oldest to potty train. All I can say is it was much easier in a way with the other kids being a bit younger. For instance at the beginning Brayden would cry for his mickey mouse diaper. I thought him having Diego underware would make everything alright. I was mistaken!

Being he could talk he could tell me that he perferred to run around "nated", he didn't want to be "mobest". So for a few days I relented and let him run around naked as there were far fewer accidents. He still perfers to be bottomless but is slowly getting the idea that those days are over and his cute little cheeks will be covered now, regardless of what he wants. The nice part about him being older then his siblings were is that he usually goes by himself. It's not until he gets close to me and I smell something horrible that I ask him if he's gone potty. He replies quite happily, "Yep, me pooped!" No kidding! So we high tail it back to the bathroom to take care of that stink! Yesterday before church Kory and I talked about having him go in his undies but decided with both us having to teach we'd go one more Nursery class with a diaper BUT as soon as we got home the diaper was replaced with his big boy underware. Next week we'll be more brave and let him attend church with underware on.

Good Job Brayden!

Family Pictures 2011

2011-10-24T12:01:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago we had our family pictures taken.

Here are a few of my favorites. I'm not sure which one I like the best to have it blown up and placed on my wall. I like the old truck we are sitting on.
The photographer brought props such as the teddy bears. I like the picture but not sure I want the teddy bears on my wall.

The photograper saw this tree and thought it might be fun for Hunter to climb. Once he climbed it he decided to try the whole family.

I really, really really wanted the fall leaf colors in our family pictures. At the time I was going over Cedar Mtn. 2x a week and was watching the leaves change. We decided it would be a little farther to go to the mountain and so we tried Rush. Being we had just been there the week before we thought it would be perfect. It probably would have been if it wasn't for the recent wind storms we were having. There wasn't a single Aspen tree with leaves. However the grounds had a beautiful blanket of fall colored leaves that we got to use instead. I was happy with that.

This is my favorite picture of the girls. I have one of the boys but they were all a bit blurry except one. Of course that's the one that Hunter has his eye's closed. AHHHHH!

I just can't have family pictures taken without a few of just "us".

Newest Cakes

2011-10-17T19:42:00.000-07:00

To say this past week was very busy is an understatement. I volunteered myself to do 2 cakes all wanted on the same weekend.

My Aunt Pam got married about a week and half ago and this past friday was her open house. I volunteered to do her cake. It was hard at the beginning as she really didn't have any ideas. By the end of our conversation she asked me to do some sort of a Fall theme. I searched on line several different places and decided that due to the lack of time I had I was going to use regular ol' frosting instead of fondant, the "in thing" and to use fake flowers.

I don't see frosted cakes a lot anymore but

I think this one looks AMAZING!
I absolutely love it and she did too.
The only part I didn't like about the whole ordeal was that I needed to be in Vegas the same night as the reception. I wanted to deliver the cake myself earlier during the day but beeing S.R 14 is closed for the next 6-12 months, I had to drop it off in Hurricane with my parents and have them deliver it for me.

After dropping the wedding cake off the kids and I headed to good ol' Las Vegas where my brother Jonathan lives. There little girl, Mya, turned one and the family was getting together to celebrate. Camille, my sister-in-law, and I have been corresponding by email. She wanted a hot pink, zebra style birthday cake.

I love it. She loved it and all the guests loved it.

I enjoyed the compliments I recieved, especailly from the kids. According to the many small cousins running around they have never had a birthday cake like this. They haven't even seen a birthday cake like this. They wish there moms could make cakes like this. The best compliment and my favorite of the night was "You are the BEST cake decorator ever!"

I love it.

For Hunter....

2011-10-17T19:34:00.000-07:00

Hunter has been pestering me about blogging about his recent "hunt". Several weeks ago, and I mean several, like before school started our family with some friends had a cook out up at Rush. While there we brought a few toys with us. After shooting many times at a few pop cans and such Hunter asked if he could shoot at a few squirrels with his pellot gun. Being he didn't hit a single target all afternoon Kory figured he wouldn't hurt anything as long as he went far away from the group. Right???

WRONG!

Not 5 minutes later after he had left the group he came running back saying he had shot a squirrel. The adults started to snicker thinking to ourselves, "Yeah Right!" I could not believe it when he came running around the truck carrying his prize. This kid actually aimed/hit and killed a squirrel.

Emily's 5th Birthday.

2011-09-22T20:36:00.000-07:00

Today was a big day for Miss Emily.

It was her birthday.

For a week now she's been on the countdown.

Every morning for the past 13 days she been quick to tell EVERYONE how many days were left till her birthday. And then today finally arrived. She came walking down the stairs this morning and when she saw me this is what she said, "You know mom, TODAY is my birthday!"

Yes siree it is! We ventured away from our breakfast tradition of stacking pancakes on top of each other in the amount of how old they are. With Kory's work schedule being changed from 6pm to 6am for the time being this little girl had to go to the sitters yesterday because I had to work to. This means I had to wake her up at 6am. She then got to bed at 9 last night (an hour past her bed time). She didn't wake up till 10:00am this morning. Breakfast was long gone for everyone else and she wanted a scone. So being her birthday I caved instead of forcing cold cereal and stuffed her scone (frozen dough roll out of the freezer) with birthday candles instead. She was then lucky to recieve a solo of "Happy Birthday" given by me since the older kids were at school, Kory was sleeping and Brayden just kept saying Happy Biday over and over and over.For a few weeks now she been practicing her balancing skills on an old bike that we gave to Hunter when he turned 5. We took the pedals off of it for her to learn how to do this. A few weeks later she thinks she can balance well enough that she wanted the pedals put back on. Knowing I bought this bike several weeks ago off of craigslist Kory's been telling her he'd put them back on for her birthday.
Along with the daily birthday reminder we've been having we've also had a pedal reminder too. When Kory got up this afternoon Emily's first comment to him was that today was her birthday and he promised he'd put the pedals on the bike. So... can you go do that NOW! Kory told her he would but she needed to go put her shoes on first. While she was upstairs Kory brought the suprise inside. To say she was excited about this new purple, frilly girls bike was an uderstatement. I could hardly get her to stand still long enough for a picure. She kept hopping up and down with excitement.

The bike she's been balancing on is a 10" and this is a 12". OOPS! I did not realize that. She can balance on it but can't quite keep her balance and push the pedals at the same time. I'm sure with some practice she'll get use to the bigger bike. She loves it!

Emily's requested birthday cake this year was LPS (Littlest Pet Shop).

I cheated with this cake and put her little figurines on top of the cake instead of making them out of fondant. I love playing with fondant. I love the sleek, clean look that fondant gives. However, I do not like the taste along with most everyone else. A few weeks ago I made a Madagascar cake that was all fondant. Most everyone scraped the fondant off and ate the cake with what little frosting there was in between. Knowing that no one really likes fondant I decided to make Emily's cake out of my cream cheese frosting that everyone likes so much. A few days ago I did make the decor (flowers, reeds, paw prints and mini cake) out of fondant just so I wouldn't have to take the time to do it today with regular frosting. Fondant can be easier in some ways like that.

Being Emily turned "5" our tradition is that this is her 1st "Friend Birthday Party" this year. We invited all the 4-5 year olds in town to this big event. Six out of the seven came tonight.

Our first activity was to decorate a home for the LPS that each girl would be adopting later in the night.

When our boxes were done we played Musical Paw Prints.

Madelyn was in charge of the music.

Our next game was "Animal Trainer Says". You probably know this game as Simon says...

stick out your tongue.

After a few more silly games it was present time.

I hate going to birthday parties that all the kids crowd around the birthday person pushing their gift into their face and yelling open mine, open mine. The birthday kid is so busy taking gifts that the opened gift is barely looked at before the next is shoved into their hand. The birthday kid can hardly breathe a thankyou to the gift giver amidst all the chaos and confusion around him. At the same time Mom can't get any decent "opening gift" pictures. It also makes it harder on mom to know who gave what for future thank you cards and most of the time the birthday kid has no idea who gave what. It also seems that when a group of kids get around the birthday child too much help is often given in the opening of the present department. Sooooo I took something I saw a friend do many years ago and applied it once again to this party. That is instead of having one chair in front of everyone for the birthday child to sit on and open their gifts I put out 2.
I had all the guests grab their gifts and sit on the couch. Then one at a time they were all given the opportunity to sit next to Emily while she opened their gift in front of them and everyone else.

This gives me plenty of opportunity to take pictures of Emily with all of her friends. This weekend when she and I sit down to write her thankyou notes we now have a great reminder of who gave what to make the notes more personable.

Emily is very excited to have her very own apron like mom and big sis.

Thankyou cousin Rachel.

I had to include this picture because I think it's HILARIOUS! Cousin Sara thought Emily would enjoy a bag full of goodies. The new pony her mom bought for Emily wasn't good enough for her. She included two old shirts that didn't fit her anymore but thought Emily might like. A pair of well worn sunday shoes that are to small for her and the best of all an extra used toothbrush she doesn't use any more. Thankyou Sara!

After presents came the adoption time.

Each house the girls decorated earlier had a tag tied to it. There was a matching tag tied to a LPS on a different table. Each girl got to match there tag for their new best friend to take home. Along with their new friend came an adoption certificate and a bottle of bubbles to take home.

LPS's can be expensive. I was able to win a lot on Ebay a few weeks ago that ended up costing me $.75 a piece. That includes my charged shipping fee too. The boxes I got at Dollar Tree a pack of 3 for $1. The bubbles I also picked up at Dollar Tree. They are the wedding bubbles you see all the time. They came in a package of 9 for a $1. I wrapped them in a piece of scrapbook paper and put a LPS sticker on it. The LPS stickers I paid almost $3 for one package of 30 stickers. Good grief!I only paid it cause I was next to Target and didn't have the time to drive to Wal-Mart where I know they had a package for $1.50. It makes me feel better to think it would have cost more than that in gas to go to Wal Mart and my time is worth more too, right???? Total cost on goodie boxes was $13 for 9 girls. I spent $1.45 for each girl and it's something that will actually be played with and not thrown away the first time their mom has to pick it up off the floor. Or am I the only mom that throws the cheap, crappy made, going to break the 1st time it's played with plastic toy I find on the floor after my child has come home from a birthday party?

After our adoption center was complete we served cake and ice cream.

She made out with quite the loot this year.

Happy Birthday Emily!

I hope your day was a special one.

My Baby Girl is 5!

2011-09-22T19:59:00.000-07:00

My baby girl is 5 today!

Where has the time gone?Beautiful Baby!

Bright brown eyes and all that hair.

Emily's 1st BIRTHDAY.

She was such a petite little girl.

Emily's 2nd Birthday.

This was the face we got when we told her it was time to go to bed.

We still get this look. I see Brayden in this picture. He's starting to give looks when he's asked to do something he doesn't want to . I wonder where he gets it from????

Emily's 3!

This was the year that Mosquito's over took Prescott Valley. They were so bad that I'd have a few bites just from walking out the front door to get my mail. This was when Emily learned to "SCRATCH" This girl would scratch those bites until they bled. She's got the scars to prove it.

I finally put bandaids over them but then she wouldn't let me take them off for anything.

Including Pictures!

Emily's 4.

She's accomplished so much this past year.

She finished her 1st year of preschool.

She can count to 20. Write her name and has learned the alphabet.

Today this beautiful young girl is turning 5.

Emily is such a good big sister to Brayden. With the kids at school all day she is so willing to help him get his toys or help him at the kitchen table pouring his milk into the cereal. She is very loving towards him and for the most part puts his wants 1st.

Emily is absolutely FASCINATED with baby dolls. Every where she goes she usually has one of her many dolls tucked under her arm. She wants another doll from Santa she recently said.

Emily is stubborn. Kory use to say she got that from me and I in turn would say she got that from him. We've decided that we are both right. She can be so stubborn at times that she must have gotten it from the both of us instead of just one like the rest of our kids.

Emily loves to pray. Everytime and I mean everytime, it doesn't matter at who's home we are at, Emily wants/expects to say the prayer. It doesn't matter if she said it at breakfast and then lunch too. At dinner she thinks it is still her turn. If she is told no, she says something that her Grandpa Heaton taught her. That is, she expects to be the person to call on someone else to say that prayer. There is no "forgetting" to pray at our house.

Emily LOVES dogs. Her Uncle Kale lives next door and he has 2 dogs and 5 puppies. My girl knows each of there names and gender. Most of her Aunts/Uncles that live in Alton also has dogs. She know all of there names to. We can be walking down the street and to me I see "a dog". I point "the dog" out to Emily and she can usually tell me who it belongs to and what it's name is.

Emily also enjoys any movie that has dogs in it. Right now her favorite movie is The Retreivers. She watches this movie at least once a day and would watch it more if we let her.

Emily, we love you. We are so glad you are a part of our family.

We hope you have a wonderful day today!

Happy Birthday.

Snow!

2011-09-12T06:55:00.000-07:00

Something happened last week.

It got dang cold!

My kids catch the bus at 7:15 each morning and they won't leave the house without there warm comforting jacket's. By the time they get home it's warmed up enough that they don't need it but in the mornings it cold, cold, cold.

Friday on my way home from work in St. George where it was hot, hot, hot I decided to go home over Cedar Mountain. I was in the switch backs (close to Cedar) when I thought it had started to rain. Then I quickly noticed all the white stuff sticking to the ground on the side of the road.

Holy Cow! I wish I had my camera. It wasn't raining but SNOWING!

This whole weekend has been COLD! At night it has dropped as low as 42 degrees. The high has been mid 70's. Being it's rained all weekend long we haven't had too many hours of those mid 70 temperatures. Looking at the forecast for the upcoming 10 days does NOT look good. We are in for some very COLD days. Were dropping down to 35 degrees and our highs will be in the low-mid 60's.

Can I say I am SOOOOOOOO NOT ready for the cold.

Last week I pulled out the kids winter p.j's.

This week it looks like I need to pull out the coats and all of our other winter clothes.
I am hoping this will not be our life for the next 7-8 months.

I am really hoping this cold front will move on pass us and in a week or two we can experience some fall weather. I don't like thinking we've gone from summer to winter already!

We've collected quite a bit of wood for our wood stove. Our back porch is covered and we've had to start stacking on the side of the porch now too. We've got a wood cutting project with our ward this coming saturday. We were going to take Kory's truck and just fill the back of it. Knowing that we'll be using our wood a little earlier then planned I think we'll be taking the trailor after all and stacking it good and tall! I'm ready to start a fire now.

Corn Fest...

2011-09-12T06:46:00.000-07:00

This past thursday night Kory's brother Kale hosted a "Corn Fest" at there house. Every one was asked to bring some corn from there garden along with a side dish to share.

Lot's and Lot's of family and friends came. We had plenty of corn to eat.

Plenty of salads to choose from and all the bbq hot dogs you could eat.

We had a great time visiting and getting to know each other a little bit better.
Once the sun started to go down, Oh Boy did it get cold.

Jacketts and coats were quickly dragged out.

Finally it got cold enough that the little ones found comfort by playing inside instead.

Brayden only ventured out side when he wanted another brownie!

I am not ready for the cold weather!

Madagascar Cake

2011-09-12T06:37:00.000-07:00

Two weekends ago now my niece, Elena, had her 2nd birthay party in Hurricane.

I called Elena's parents to find out what she liked, what she was into.

I was quickly told Madagascar was one of her favorite movies.

Feeling up to the challenge I decided to try to make Miss Elena her very own Madagascar cake. This is what I came up with..... I think this is one of my favorite cakes I've made.
I got lots and lots of compliments on all my home made/hand made fondant figures.
I was glad everyone liked them as they took me many HOURS to complete.

I think this cake took me by far the longest to make that I've ever done.

It was worth it.

I think it turned out very well. I was pleased!

Madelyn's lunch bag

2011-09-12T06:15:00.000-07:00

The week before school started I realized that we were not well prepared to take sack lunches to school this year. After some thought I wanted to make sure the kids lunch sacks was large enough that we could keep a little ice pack in it. The kids favorite sandwich is a chicken salad on a croissant roll. With all the chicken, bacon and sometimes shrimp I wanted to make sure it stayed cold enough that it wouldn't make the kids sick. I love etsy so I went there first to get some idea's. I quickly fell in love with the idea to make re-usable sandwich/snack bags along with the actual sack. Ziplock bags can be expensive and in the past I usually wait to buy them using coupons. Being I don't do coupons anymore and knowing that 2 of my kids were needing to take lunch's I figured this was a good idea to help save some money.

I did Madelyn's first and it turned out great!
Everything fits...

She loves it!

It took a few trial and errors but I finally did get it.

I think life is about to slow down a little bit and when it does I've got to make Hunter's.

He can hardly wait.

1st day of school 2011

2011-08-24T16:30:00.000-07:00

Today was the 1st day of kids for my two older ones.

Hunter is in 3rd gradeMadelyn is in 2nd grade
Today was even more special because they got to ride in a BUS!
They are very excited for this new experience.
I don't mind them riding the bus it's the pick up time at 7:10 am that has me a little worried.

After last year's scenario with Madelyn I was TERRIFIED we'd have a repeat. I normally work on wed.'s but switched days so that I could be home on the 1st day of school . All day yesterday I kept asking myself why I did that. I kept thinking I should have left my schedule alone and let Kory "deal" with her this year. To my utter relief she did great. When I went to wake everyone up this morning she was already dressed, shoes on and back pack on her back. That girl was ready before 6 am this morning. I'm glad she was excited. Before the bus came she leaned over to me and said that she was getting nervous. I told her that was O.K lots of kids are going to be nervous today she would NOT be the only one. I think it really helped that her teacher had a little get to know you the night before. Attending this let Madelyn find her classroom, her desk and she even got to pick the chair she wanted.

Hunter while getting ready told me he didn't feel good. His stomach hurt. After spending a few extra mintues with him this morning helping him get ready his stomach ache went away. I think this was his way of saying he was just a wee bit nervous too.
Despite the nerves this morning it sounds to me like they both had a great day!

Girly Projects

2011-08-18T17:17:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago I had had enough of the girls bathroom. You see despite all the work we've done with this house we're living in we haven't quite gotten to the girls bathroom. There bathroom has a huge counter that runs from wall to wall with double sinks. There are three drawers and 2 cupboards underneath. The top drawer is completely missing. The 2nd drawer is present and is stuffed with headbands, hair bows, hair brushes, combs, toothbrushes, toothpaste, bobby pins, curlers, etc. Thanks to the toothpaste that seems to get thrown in there without the lid on of course it is the NASTIEST drawer we probably have in the entire house. The bottom drawer is there but in several pieces and so is also not usable. Of the 2 cupboards, we are using both but one of the doors is just hangin' on one hinge. I'm waiting for the day it too breaks!

Several years ago I made the girls a bow holder. I bought a poster from Good Will, kept the frame threw the poster away and covered it in bright orange polk a dot material that matched our fishy bathroom at the time. I loved it! The girls used it constantly. Having a bow board keeps the bows from being thrown into a toothpaste covered drawer, it keeps them cleaner, they're not smashed and it's much easier to pick which bow to wear for the day when they are all on display. Madelyn has been wanting to change our bow board fabric and ribbon from the bright orange polk a dot to something that now matches her pink/purple/turqoise bathroom.

Not having Hobby Lobby down the street and NOT wanting to drive an hour, one way, to the nearest fabric store I had Maddie pick something out of our fabric stash. She did good! We pulled out the old hot glue gun and together gave the bow board a face lift. After I hung the board she went through all of our bows and tossed the ones that were broken or the ones that we don't use anymore. She did a great job.

Several years ago while blog hopping I came across a blog about turning garbage into useful items again. The one thing that I remember from that blog was how she turned an old Oat Meal container into a head band holder.

WOW!

Wanting all hair products out of the toothpaste infested drawer this became our 2nd project to do together. Madelyn picked out some scrapbook paper and then she and I mod podged it to the oat meal container. While the paper was drying she painted the lid a matching green.

The next morning after all was dried she quickly put our new container to use.

The oat meal container is the perfect width. The headbands both stretchy and hard strap on real good with out a lot of sliding down. What doesn't fit around the container and go inside.

Madelyn loves the way it turned out.

It's been at least two weeks since we've done these projects. Her and Emily's bathroom is staying so much cleaner. They can now see what they've got with everything on display like it is.

The girls are happy with there cleaner drawer/counter space.

It makes me happy as I haven't had to "wash" toothpaste out of bows every stink'n morning.

This coming week our family's schedule is changing again. School starts for the kids and I'm taking another accounting course online that will also begin this week. With EVERYTHING else happening in our life I've wanted to get a few projects done before life gets very hectic around here.

A few years ago it somehow became tradition for mom to make the birthday child a special shirt/outfit for there big day. At the beginning of this year Hunter informed me that he was too old (8) for a birthday shirt this go round. Madelyn having seen a Happy Birthday shirt at DI earlier this year asked to have it instead of me making her one for her 7th birthday. I knew these day's would soon come to an end but it still made me sad.

Back in early March my sister Sheri and I decided to throw our two boys a joint birthday party. We went with a "car" theme and so I made both boy's matching car shirts to wear on there big day. While I was working on the shirts my sister in-law Christina asked if I would make her daughter a birthday shirt too for later this year.

I LOVE my boys but oh my goodness sewing for girls is so much funner!

Miss Elena is turning 2 in a few weeks and this is what I came up with.
I just love the way the skirt turned out with the matching cupcake and bow.

I just love everything about this cute outfit!

Having a lot of left over fabric I decided to make another almost identical outfit for my other niece that will be turning one in a few months.

I always loved putting my girls in dresses but when they were babies I hated seeing the old white diaper underneath. I always tried to make sure they had a diaper cover on especailly for pictures. With Mya's outfit I decided to add a little diaper cover. Having never made one before I used one of Brayden's diapers as a pattern. I think the whole outfit is just adorable. The diaper cover ended up being a little smaller than I would have liked. I'm not sure it's going to fit her. Not having a one year old around I couldn't try it on anyone but my big 2 year old. He loved that (hehehehe)!

I still LOVE these outfits. I hope the mom's of these little girls like the outfits as much as I do!

Kane County Fair

2011-08-14T11:42:00.000-07:00

This weekend was our Kane County Fair. Saturday morning we headed to the High School's auditorium to see all the exhibits on display. I contemplated some sewing/crafting projects I've done over the past few months but I didn't know when, where or how to go about turning our stuff in. Next year we will definetly be participating. After the kids hearing that you get $3 and up for every ribbon you earn (everyone earns a ribbon) they want to participate too. While walking around the displays we heard a lot of , "Oh! Mom I did that this year too" from our children.

One of Kory's nieces, Angelique turned 15 a few weeks ago. For her birthday she wanted a "new bedroom". Her parents have gone to a lot of work. Her then bright pink little girl bedroom is now a soft brown with white moulding teenage bedroom. She also got a new bed spread with matching curtains. She has asked me to help her decorate. Before this new bedroom she use to be able to nail, tack and tape all the posters and pictures she wanted to all over her walls. One of the 1st things we made for her was a magnet board. I had one that I wasn't planning on using and so gave it to her. One night about 2 weeks ago she came over and I showed her how to modge podge scrap book paper and create her very own magnet board. She painted the sides purple, added a flower, made some magnets to go with it and tadaa... the final project. She turned it it to the fair and one the Sweepstakes! This caught Hunter's eye. He'd now like to take shot gun shells and turn it into art!

We have a very talented cake decorator in our ward. Her 8 year old daughter turned this in. Madelyn and I have been practicing our skills. Next year Madelyn wants to turn a cake in too.

A few hours after the exhibits we went to the rodeo. Our kids weren't planning on particpating becuase every other rodeo we've been too the kids had to register before hand. At this rodeo the kids registered that evening.

Brayden after finding a plastic spoon spent the night away digging and playing.

Hunter with his cousin Orinn sat on the rails waiting for there turn.

Emily and Brayden were able to ride Uncle Dustin's horse next to where we had parked the trucks.

When it came to the events we participated in a few of them. Madelyn was the 1st to ride the sheep. The first time she did it as soon as the doors opened and the sheep and her were suppose to come barreling out the sheep had other thoughts. Instead of running out the sheep fell over and just layed there. Madelyn didn't get hurt and they gave her a retry on a different sheep.

Her second sheep didn't fall over and ran out as it was suppose to. However on it's way out the sheep ran to close to the corral and knocked Madelyn's leg into one of the posts. She hung for about 3 seconds and then fell off. Daddy was there to help her get back up. She was in tears due to her knee. This morning she's got 3 nice size bruises on her knee and down the front of her leg on that bone. I'm sure it hurt last night.

Hunter too rode the sheep. He was the 1st and only in his age group that stayed on for 8 seconds.

He won $20.00. He says he is definetly doing this again next year.

I have a love/hate relationship with my camera.

During the day I LOVE it. At night or dusk I HATE IT.

The pictures at night are ALWAYS blurry when I try to take a picture that involves movement.

Both Hunter and Madelyn also participated in the hide pull. Unfortuanetly every single picture turned out blurry and un recognizable. A cousin of Hunter's was signed up to do the Sweet Heart's Race with her dad BUT she had fallen asleep in the back of the truck. Hunter was asked to fill in her spot. This is when 2 people are at the starting line but one is on a horse. At GO! the person on foot runs across the arena to a barell. That person has to put a dress on, climb up and then stand on the barell. When the person is up and standing the rider and horse come galloping down, picks up the now "sweet heart" and races back to the finish line. Uncle Dustin and Hunter did an awsome job. For quite some time they were the top speed. Near the end though someone else beat them. Kory says they were beat by 100th of a second.

WOW!

Maybe next year.

Over all it was a very late but very fun night. We are so glad we went. Next year we'll be able to particpate in a little more and help the kids earn some money. The one thing we want the kids to do is to do a show animal. The options are endless, goat, steer, pig, etc. During the fair the kids and there animal are suppose to walk the arena showing off there animal. The next day is the aucion where people can bid on these animals. The winning steer was sold for $2900. Some of the kids cousins pigs sold for $500-650 a piece. The kids generally walk away with a profit of $300+. Kory's got nieces and nephews that have done this for many years. They are in there early teens and have $3-6,000 in there savings account. The parents let there kids spend some of the money periodically through out the year but for the most part this money is saved for missions and college. It's a great way for the kids to earn money!

Ice Caves/Cascasde Falls

2011-08-08T14:41:00.000-07:00

Saturday morning we loaded the kids and went out to explore some more.

Our 1st stop was the Ice Caves. It's another hole in the ground only much greener and prettier than Mammoth's Cave was. Unfortunately at the opening was a swarm of bee's, hornet's and biteing flies. Hunter was the only brave enough one to crawl down through the swarms. This cave is much steeper getting into than what we were expecting. This log that's basicly just leaning there was really the only thing you'd have to hold onto. We could have lifted the kids down if there hadn't been so many flying stinging insects around. We had Hunter come out and told the kids we'd come back another time. Hunter said that what little time he was down there he could see ice cycles and the ground was covered with packed snow! We'll have to go back another time.
In the same area that we were in are the Cascade Fall's. Being the Ice Cave was a bust we decided to go here instead.

We had a GREAT time.

It's about a 1/2 miles both ways. The kids were thrilled with this very miniture stream we passed by. It's always fun to get wet.

Eventually we got to the platform above the Casade Falls.

This is what they were all looking at!

Isn't it beautiful?

Brayden was mesmerized by the water fall.

It was a beautiful hike.

The kids had plenty of litle hills to climb.

An almost family picture. Just missing the hubby.

Brayden and mom taking a rest.

It wasn't until we headed back that we realized it was almost all up hill at a gentle slope. Still we quickly realized if we held hands there were less complaints.

We were surrounded by gorgeous scenery.

It was a great way to spend a few hours together as a family.

Sports Room

2011-08-08T14:11:00.000-07:00

Moving into a new house is always a great opportunity to get creative. I love decorating each room with a theme. After we moved in I told each of the kids to be thinking of a theme for there new bedroom. I think it would be easier sometimes just to pick it out myself but my older kids are getting big enough that they like to be included in some of these decisions. After a few days of comtemplating Hunter chose a sports theme. Being we have such big windows in all the bedrooms I decided I'd start with drapes first. I made the curtains for the smaller window 1st and then last week finished these bad boys. I messed up so many times on the smaller window that I had scared myself silly to make this big one. There not perfect by any means but it wan't such a horrible experience like the smaller drapes were. Those smaller ones gave me such a hard time that in the end I had forgotten to add the "black out" material. I made sure I didn't forget this second time round. Here is Hunter's side of the room. At Hunter's baptism I had a picture of him with a mat on display. Those that came signed there names on the mat. Hunter chose to hang this above his bed.

This is Brayden's side of the room. See the difference between the 2 drapes? Big difference of how much light comes through. One of these days when everything else on my list is checked off I'll add the "black out" fabric to them. I found a cute sports theme picture frame at D.I last week. It goes great above Brayden's bed with a picture of him in it.

After finishing the boys curtains I decided to do a few more things on the list for there bedroom.

Hunter helped paint this wood plaque I've had in a box for over a year. We added the dowels and it now makes a perfect place for him to hang his hats.

On our list to do was to re-do his dinosaur magnet board.

I've had these sports wood pieces in one of my craft drawers for many years now.

His new magnet board is done just in time for school to start.

He now has a place to hang all his school work on that he wants to keep for a while.

I love the way this little corner of his room turns out.

There are a few more things that Hunter would like in his room.

The wall that his bed is up against is still empty (heaven forbid). Hunter would like me to make him some sports shelves for him to put his trophy's and other prized posessions onto. His bedroom also has a loft in it. He wants me to make something that hangs from the loft that's of course sports related (He's a Interior Decorator in the making). The only thing I've come up with to hang from the loft is to do a sports banner of some sort????

The boys room is almost complete. It's great to see so many projects checked off the list.

Mammoth Cave

2011-08-01T20:37:00.001-07:00

I'm playing catch up tonight! It's almost been a month since I've posted last which is very unlike me. After my last post our computer CRASHED! It was down for several days before our awsome computer guru from Arizona was able to fix it for us. After thinking it was fixed I tried to blog to discover ALL of my pictures on the computer were GONE!

This mama was NOT happy. I haven't backed up my computer in over a year! I was so mad to think all of my pictures were gone. I've been working on my kids scrap books lately. Not wanting a ton of pictures lying around I've only been printing a few at a time one child at a time. I was so upset thinking all was lost. Our computer guro, my new hero, was eventually able to find them for me. Part of the bug that crashed our computer was to hide our files. They were there the whole time he just had to play hide n' seek.

Once our computer was up and running again we went out of town. Since then all I can say is we've been busy with other stuff. So tonight I'm trying to play catch up with what our family was up to for the month of July.

This is Mammoth Cave.

It's only about 20 minutes away from our house.

At first it looks like just a big hole in the ground. It kinda is but it's more like a ginormous hole. Hunter's standing almost in the middle of the picture but his clothes helps blend him in. When you climb down into the hole there are two caves. One on each side.
This is the side we chose to go through first. The opening starts out a good size. An adult can stand up fully.

Very soon though the rock ceiling drops very low.

Madelyn, Emily and Hunter had to crouch through most of this cave too.
Kory and I felt like we were crawling most of the way.

After about a 1/4 of a mile of crawling over rocks, we came out on top through another but much smaller hole in the ground.

We then walked back to the original hole and walked through the second cave.

This second cave was humongous! No crawling or slouching needed.

Our pictures aren't the best. Without flashlights on it was pitch black. You couldn't see your hand in front of you. We had everyone shut off there flash lights for the pictures but then we had to aim the camera where we thought and clicked hoping to catch somebody in it. The flash of course caught what was around us.

There were some pretty big rocks we had to climb over.

This bigger cave came to a dead end but was still quite fun. The kids were a bit disapointed they didn't have to climb there way out like they did the 1st one.

We're having fun getting to know the different fun, family, free outings we have in almost our very own back yard. The kids really had a great time exploring these caves. We'll definetly being going back. Another cave near by are the Ice Caves. Apparently all year long there's a lot of ice with in it's cave. Sound a little cold to me but that will be our next exploration family date.
We're all a little curious to see what that ones like.

A Trip To Prescott

2011-08-01T20:04:00.000-07:00

I've wanted to take a trip to Prescott before school started again. Last weekend we were finally able to go. I was hoping that our trip to Prescott would be for several days but it ended up being quite quick. Kory needed to go to Prescott for a kitchen measurement and wanted to tag along with the kids and I to save gas money. However he wasn't able to get a single day off so we left Saturday morning and returned monday just in time for him to get to work that afternoon. Despit the quick trip we had a great time with our friends. We stayed with our best friends, the Schultz. April had found this pool on clearance and brought it out for the kids to enjoy. Despite having 7 kids in a small pool they all had a good time. The kids kept going back and forth from the pool to the trampoline.

April's husband Kevin was out of town which was too bad, we missed him. Kory did his thing all day saturday while April and I entertained the kiddo's. When he got home April and I left him alone with all 7 kids under the age of 8. We did take April's baby with us and headed off to Hobby Lobby, my FAVORITE store of all time. I could spend hours there walking up and down each isle. I bought some fabric for an upcoming project that Madeylyn and I are going to do. After Hobby Lobby we went to Target and then to another friends for me to get a much needed hair cut. I love the new do! April and I had a great time together having some much needed alone/girl time together. It was great to be together, to reminence about the past. It's been a year now that we moved. I still miss my best friend living across the street.

One of the things I miss about Prescott is the Monsoon season. I love the rain. Almost every afternoon the clouds would come rolling in, we'd have a little thunder a little lightening, a big down pour that lasts less then 10 minutes and then it's gone till the next day. Sunday after church we got to experience the monsoon season again. The kids were out side playing while we were putting dinner together. We had seen the dark clouds on our way home from church but they weren't close by. All of a sudden we saw lightening, heard a roar of thunder and then BOOM! The kids didn't even have a chance. They were drenched. That's what I find so amazing about the monsoons. There's not a lot of leading up to the big storm, there's no sprinkling. One minute it's dry and the next everything is wet!

Dancing in the rain.

WET! WET! WET!

Thanks for hosting us April, we had a GREAT time.

Can't wait to do it again.

A New Experience

2011-08-01T19:08:00.001-07:00

Kory has been talking for the 2 months we've been in Alton now that we need to start collecting wood for this winter. The house that we are living in is heated with a wood burning stove. Since the house has been empty for some time there isn't a nice wood stack already waiting for us.

I grew up in Las Vegas we didn't have a need for chopped wood. After Kory and I got married we lived for a short time in St. George, Ut and then moved to Prescott where again we had no need for firewood. I have never "chopped wood". I must admit EVERY saturday that he talked about going out to chop wood I cringed. He thinks chopping wood will be fun (he's using a power tool, a chain saw, what man doesn't like that?) I think I'd rather stay home and scrub toilets. We don't currently own a chain saw so despite all the talk of chopping wood I've been able to live up to my part by staying home and scrubbing toilets these past few saturdays. Don't get me wrong I completly agree with the fact that SOMEONE needs to collect wood for this winter. When we moved to Alton the end of May I was suprised with how chilly/cold it was and how many fires we had. It was an adjustment for us. We had moved from Hurricane where it was getting plenty warm, the winter clothes had been packed up and summer clothes full of shorts, skirts, t-shirts and swim suits were being worn almost daily. Within the week of moving all those summer clothes were packed back up and the long sleeve, pants and jackets were pulled back out.

This past saturday Kory borrowed a chain saw from his brother-in-law. Hunter and I were then dragged out of the house to help "chop wood". I'll admit it wasn't the HORRIBLE experience that I was expecting. In fact it wasn't that bad at all. We didn't have to drive all over the place as I had imagined. Kory had a great time with the chain saw!I thought that "chopping wood" would take HOURS! It didn't. In fact we had a cook out at the same time. It's sad to say but I'm pretty sure Kory planned the impromtu cook out on my behalf. He knew he didn't have a chance of getting me out to help him chop wood if he didn't have another excuse too. Kory cut quite a few small trees down and into pieces that I then loaded into the truck. I was suprised to find that by the time the truck bed was full of all those small dead trees less than an hour had gone by. I was expecting this new found experience to last many, many hours, not less than one!

Today we had all the kids help unload the truck.

Hunter helped pull all the wood closer to the edge of the bed for us.

Having left our wheel barrol behind in Prescott we all made many trips to the truck and then back around the house.

Emily doing her part.

Brayden thought the wood was "heavy" so he loaded his dump truck and then pushed it to the pile.

Not to bad for our 1st load of fire wood. I'd much rather be doing this now when it's warm outside then when it's wet and cold and the ground is covered in snow.

Here's a few things I learned about "chopping wood":

1) Must wear shoes NOT flip flops!

2)Don't throw the wood to hard into the bed of the truck so as not to break the back window!

(No I did not break the window, however I must have been making Kory nervous as he so kindly kept reminding me broken window's are quite common when people have loaded wood.)

3)Must wear a long sleeve shirt. Bark is ruff and scratches the begebbers out of your arms when your trying to carry an armfull.

4)Cutting wood is not so bad! Must do this again soon!
(Just don't tell Kory!)

Summer Cook Out

2011-08-01T18:57:00.000-07:00

Saturday evening Kory called one of his sisters to invite her family to a last minute dutch oven cook out at the pond. (Braden and Uncle Jim)

Brayden knew who to stand next to for a few bites here and there while everyone else had to wait till everything was done.
Caught You!

Hunter with his cousin Orrin.

Daddy, Sarah and Brayden

The boys took the canoe's out on the pond and had a great time feeding the fish.

I wasn't able to take as many pictures as I would have liked but we did have fun.

I'm glad Kory suggested a cook out. We needed to get out of the house and spend some time away form EVERYTHING else. The summer's aren't as long as we're use to.

Definetly going to have to plan another family cook out soon.

Family Horse Ride

2011-08-01T18:31:00.000-07:00

We've got a couple from our old ward in Prescott that has rented a cabin near by for a whole month. Being the cabin has a number of occupants restriction they are having each of there married children take turns coming for a visit. This week there son Chad his wife Gina and there kids are here for a visit. We are friends with Chad and Gina so it's been a real treat to see them and there kids. This morning we all met together for a trail ride. We didn't have enough horses to go around so each family took there turn. Here's a picture of my kids with there 2 oldest. Hunter rode Beegan. He's about 20 years old and Hunter was in LOVE! Beegan was very obedient and obeyed EVERY command he gave him. Hunter kept asking if we was for sale, maybe we could buy him. Being Beegan already belongs to Grandpa Heaton we're hoping we can borrow him often and not have to buy a horse.
Maddie and her dad rode a horse that no one knew her name. Our friend named her Sassy for the day. Apparently she wanted to do her own thing during the trail ride.

Emily and I rode together on Socks.

Many, many years ago Kory's Uncle Ray put his daughter on Socks thinking it was Sock's mom (apparently they looked identical). The horse bucked the daughter off. Uncle Ray not being pleased with this jumped on Sock's, thinking it was his mom still, to show it a thing or two but..... Sock's had different plans and bucked him off too. It was then Uncle Ray realized it was Socks and not his Mom. OOPS!

10+years later Socks was a great horse for Emily and I today despite his history.

We were always the last in line, fell a bit behind the others and couldn't get this horse to a trot which was fine by me.

It hadn't been 5 minutes of our family riding when all of a sudden we were caught in a downpour.

We stopped under some big trees along the side of the road to take cover. It eventually lightened up and we continued our ride.

This was a new experience for us. We've all ridden horses before but we've never had access to enough horses that our family of 6 could all go out at once and be together.

We all smelled like wet dog when we got home but we had a great time being together today.

I hope we can do this many more times, just with out the rain next time.

Christensen Reunion

2011-07-05T18:20:00.001-07:00

Over the 4th of July my Dad's side of the family had a family reunion. It just happened to take place about 6 miles from our house. Our small town decided to celebrate the 4th of July on Saturday instead of Monday. Participating in these activities was part of the reunion's activites.

Saturday morning my household was very rudely awaken by the town's fire truck. At 6 o' clock sharp that morning the fire truck drove up and down each street with it's siren's on. It lasted an entire 20 minutes. Needless to say we were all awake whether we wanted to be or not. Just a few hours later the town had it's parade.
The parade went right past our house. My dad brought his horses to participate in the parade. My Madelyn and her cousin Carlaya rode while Aunt Hanna walked beside them. The Youth in our Stake had just gotten back from Youth Conference. There theme this year was "QUEST for Christ". Each ward was assigned a story or two from the Book of Mormom that they had to re inact. These girls had a part and chose to dress there parts as part of the parade.

Emily rode a horse with Grandpa but I missed the picture. I had bought candy for the girls to fill there purses with to throw out to the watching people on the street.

More of the parade...

The finale of the parade was the fire truck. He turned on the hose and started to spray those that were watching.

Some didn't move quite fast enough and got WET WET WET!

After the parade the town had a short program at the town hall. My girls were part of the "dancing girls". I wasn't sure if Emily would participate but she did and with a great big grin on her face. Unfortunately my camera wouldn't take a good picture inside the building.

Emily holding her flag that she used as a prop. Madelyn's picture I had to take outide.

Aunt Harmony made a "sparkler" that we clipped in the girls hair.

Here they are on stage.

The girls did a great job!

Our reunion had many opprotunities to sit and visit with one another.

During the afternoon the town hosted some activities at the park that we went to .

Uncle Matt and Emily walking to the park.

Every year that we've been they've had FREE ice cream and popsicles.

Yummy!

One of the many FREE games at the park was a HUMONGOUS slip and slide.

The is Carlaya and Madelyn going down together holding hands.

Madelyn

Carlaya

These girls did the slip in slide over and over and over!

They had a BLAST together.

On sunday after church the WHOLE family got together at an Uncle's cabin to visit and play some family games. This is my Aunt Sheralene who quickly became Emily's best friend.

Grandpa Christensen with Brayden, Mia and Emily

Growing up whenever we went to Grandma's house she would always make her famous "twisties". The Aunts got together and made twisites in remembrance of our Grandma Christensen.

Mmmm.. they were yummy!

Grandma Christensen with all her grandkids that were there for the reunion.

L to R

(behind chair) Madelyn, (in chair) Jamie, Hunter, Carlaya, Grandma holding Mia, Brayden, Noah and Emily. We only had one missing grandchild at the reunion. (We missed you Elena.)

We spent lots and lots of time outside. The cabin, where the reunion was hosted, offered plenty of dirt to play in. This is my favorite picture I took of my nephew Jamie that sunday. He's filthy but sure is a cutie!

Most of the games played this day was taken from Minute to Win It. This game was to see who could pull the ALL the kleenex out of a new box, one at a time and with only one hand the fastest.

This game was a race to see which team could wrap there designated person with an entire roll of toilet paper the fastest.

This game was a race between two people. Who could move the most m&m's the fastest from one bowl to the other. They were given a straw that they had to "suck" the m&m too and run only using one hand.

This game has always been one of my favorites. This is the one that you put a cookie on your forehead and you have to move it across your face and into you mouth with NO hands. You can do this my moving your face muscles.

This game ALWAYS offers funny picures.

My Madelyn.

Brayden tried to play too.

Cousin Christopher

Cosuin Jenny

Madelyn did it. Great job!

It was great to live so close by to where the reunion was taking place at. Instead of having to camp out for the long weekend at night we got to go home to our own beds. My siblings and parents opted to stay at our place instead of camping at the cabin.

Brayden had fun, fun fun with his cousin Mia.

Grandpa Christensen with Emily.

On Monday a few of us went fishing and shooting.

Grandpa brought his fishing gear.

The fish weren't biting with the bait Grandpa brought but the boys had fun anyways.

Noah

Brayden getting into Grandpa's tackle box.

Brayden being a little young for fishing and shooting past the time with a stick!

Uncle Matt and Brayden took a little walk.

Our house had two bad toilets that needed to be replaced. Kory has wanted to take them somewhere to shoot them. For a few weeks now I 've been telling him I feel like "hill bille white trash" for having 2 toilets sitting in my yard. Kory decide shooting the toilets to pieces would be a good thing to do this weekend. So we packed em up' and set them up.

They looked like this.

After a few shots they looked like this...

And by the time it was time to go. They looked like this...

Grandpa Heaton recently offered Hunter a pellot gun. Little did I know it looked like a real gun!
I obviously knew it would be some type of a gun. It just took me by suprise with how big it is and what it looks like.

Brayden wanted a turn so Daddy helped him.

My brother Jonathan helping his son, Noah.

My brother brought all sorts of guns with him.

OOPS! I just accidently deleted my final two pictures. Being Blogger uploads from the top of the post it would completely throw me off if I were to upload them again. So I guess I'm done.

We had a great weekend spending time with our family. It has been many many years since I've seen some of my Aunts, Uncles and cousins that were here this weekend. It was great talking with them and catching up on each other's lives.

I LOVE family reunions!

I hope it won't be to long till the next one.

A Long Weekend...

2011-06-27T22:04:00.000-07:00

We've been here for an entire month now. Wow has the time gone by fast!

Every weekend since we have moved seems to have been cram packed with family activites. We had a family reunion last weekend and then this weekend was my in-laws farewell. Next monday, a week from today, they will be reporting to the MTC. In a few weeks they will be on there way to Navou. Every weekend we seem to be on the go, go ,go. It's great to be so close to family that now we can participate in all the family activites we want. Our busy summer isn't over yet. This coming weekend my side of the family is having a reunion.

After such a busy weekend to say my kids were cranky was an understatement. About 1:30 this afternoon I had had enough. I threw my hands in the air and told each one of my children that it was nap time. I didn't care where or how they slept they had just better get to sleep somewhere and quickly. About 2 I went around to check on everyone. Hunter was asleep on our couch downstairs.
Madelyn on her bed.

Emily under all her covers.

And little man on my bed. It was so peaceful for a WHOLE hour.

It was a much needed peaceful hour for mom too. Despite my temptation to do the dishes or start the laundry or clean the bathrooms, I laid on my bed and read a book uninterupted.

It was a great hour. I decided I don't do that often enough. Must do that again!

Madelyn's 7

2011-06-27T21:15:00.001-07:00

This past weekend was Madelyn's 7th birthday!

We invited ALL of her cousins and there families over for a bbq. Madelyn is growing up so fast. For a few years now I've been making their birthday cake with a theme of something that they are currently into. We've done Tinkerbell, Littlest Pet Shop, etc. This year Madelyn isn't into anything paticular. She had a hard time choosing what she wanted her cake theme to be. After a few days of different discussions we jumped on the internet to see what other 7 year old girls have had for a birthday cake. I must say I have NEVER seen anything like this before. It's called a candy cake.
I was prepared this time. I made ALL the "candy" about 5 days before the big day. This was perfect. The fondant was dried completely and I didn't have a single issue with it falling apart due to wetness. Suckers, Lollipops, hard candy, what else could you ask for?
She loved it!

Kory barbequed the hamburgers while some of the kids entertained themselves on the computer.

Finally lunch was served. Madelyn requested hamburgers and chips. We had everyone who attended bring a salad to share.

Yum!

Somebody got a hold of my camera during the party and took a few pictures. Despite the blurriness I love this picture of these two. Meet cousin Rachel with Emily. I was suppose to be induced the same day Rachel was born. I was a little dissapointed the hospital was FULL and I didn't end up having Emily for another 2 days. It would have been fun to have "twinner's".

It's always fun to watch the birthday child "try" to open there gifts. These gift givers were anxious to "help" the birthday girl open her gifts.

It's singing time.....

And now the much awaited cake time....

Grandma Heaton helping Brayden not make a mess on my new couches.

Uncle Jim brought his candy canon over to celebrate her special day.

This is Kory trying to get the fuse to light.

Madelyn was suppose to light it but it took off to quickly and she got scared and jumped back.

Do they look ready?

I think Brayden had a good ol' time with this activity. Lots of sugar fell into his lap.

The is cousin Andrea who was staying a few days at Grandma's without her family. She felt bad she didn't have a gift for Madelyn so made her some special pies. She even wrote Madie on them.

She's 7!

Here are 7 things Madelyn LOVES in no paticular order!

#1 Her baby brother, Brayden. Madeyln is so good to him. Almost to good. She is so quick to give him what he wants. She is always right there to comfort him. The other day I smacked his hand and he ran off crying and yelling her name. Within what seem like seconds Madelyn had come down stairs and picked him up. He was crying into her shoulder telling her how "mean" (his new word) mommy was to him.

#2 Cousins. Oh my gosh does this girl love her girl cousins. Of the 14 cousins that live near by only 3 of them are boys (2 belonging to me). The other 11 are all girls, girls, girls! Those big girl cousins of her's are so good to allow the little ones to tag along. At the same time Madelyn and the cousins her age are also good to allow the younger girls to follow after them.

#3 Church. She looks forward to church. She likes her new primary teacher and she likes her classmates. She is usually the 1st one ready sunday mornings. She is eager to get to church.

#4 To sing. She is always singing. ALWAYS. She quite often puts a c.d in her c.d player and sings along at the top of her lungs.

#5 Baking. I love her love of baking. Whenever she see's me in the kitchen she asks what I'm doing and if she can help. Her favorite thing to bake is cookies. I'm trying to teach her how to follow a recepie. She's doing very well. Too soon I'm going to be able to let her make them by herself without me looking over her shoulder.

#6 Draw, color, write, etc. If she's not singing or baking you can usually find her sitting at the table with papers, markers and a pencil around. She loves to color and draw. She loves to draw a picture and then add a short story to it.

#7 Clean. She is such a great helper. In the mornings she asks me, "So, mom what are we going to clean today?" Her favorite room to clean right now is the bathroom.

I love you Madelyn, I am so glad you are apart of our family.

You know your a red neck when....

2011-06-21T19:57:00.000-07:00

You know your a red neck when.... You take your brother's offer of bringing his goats over to MOW your lawn.
Not just one goat but all 9 goats.
My family has a family reunion next weekend. Some of them have said they may want to camp out on our front lawn, of course my kids want to sleep in a tent out there too. I was telling Kory I was going to find a lawn mower this week to borrow to mow before everyone gets here. I guess he beat me to it. We'll see how good of a job they do.

Escapee...

2011-06-21T19:28:00.000-07:00

This is a picture of one of our many outside doors. The only difference between this and the others is the dang doggy door. Eventually this doggy door will be blocked off. However this doggy door has NOT been at the top of our to do list with to many other demanding fixes that needs done. We've just been saying by winter we'll have it fixed so we don't have snow blowing inside the house and loosing heat from it. This little guy discovered the doggy door after moving in but soon forgot about it until today.
This morning I heard somebody knocking on our side door. Wondering who would possibly be knocking on that door I was quite suprised to see my little boy standing there. He came running inside, went straight to the hallway, out to the door and out that dang doggy door. I couldn't believe it. After coaxing him inside after a little while I shut the connecting door to the hallway so he wouldn't beable to escape again.

After Kory left tonight for work all 4 kids went upstairs to watch a movie. Late last week we ordered a internet phone that worked great the first 2 days. Since then we can make any long distance call we want but no local calls will go through. Knowing the kids would be busy/ entertained for the next 86 minutes I got on the internet to contact this phone server for help. They don't have a phone number to call so we've had to chat with there technicians for help. After almost the full 86 minutes had gone by I was told this company needs to contact the local phone carrier to see why our phones not working. Anyways, I get off the computer and start doing dinner. The movie soon ends and the kids start coming downstairs again. I ask where Brayden is? No one knows. I go up stairs looking for him and I can't find him. Being he missed his nap I assumed I'd find him asleep on the floor somewhere. He's not upstairs so I come back down to look. I can't find him. I'm starting to get panicky. Seeing the hallway door open I know he's escaped outside. But how long has he been gone for? I thought I knew where he was during the past 86 minutes. My father in law brought some horses home the other night and there next door in the pasture. I'm of course thinking the worse. I get the kids to help and we start searching and calling his name outside with of course no response. After about 10 minutes I'm beyond PANICKY! He's not in the pasture with the horses, he's not at the park, he's not on the rock pile in front of my in-laws, he's not out in the barn, he's not in with the goats, he's not at the church and he's not in the ditch Kory dug today trying to fix a water break.
Where is he?
I'm about ready to call Kory at work. I had no idea where he was. I'm in the back yard yelling his name and making my way back to the house when I hear my brother-in-law coming down the lane on his skidsteer. He hears me yelling Brayden's name and calls out to me saying he's on other side of the barn. I run to the other side of the barn still yelling his name and all I'm getting is silence. I don't see him anywhere. Dustin can tell I can't see him still so gets out to help me. The grass behind the barn goes up to my thighs. That kid was sitting in the thick of it. He wasn't moving, I'm sure he thought we were playing hide-n-seek. When our eyes met he gave me the biggest grin.
I can't begin to describe how scared I was.

Tonight after dinner that kid escaped again. Only this time I knew when he left. The fixing of that doggy door just went up on the to do list. It will be fixed, and soon!

A Water Break!

2011-06-21T18:51:00.000-07:00

The owner's of the house we are renting had a barn built several years ago near the house. They had the top of the barn turned into a little apartment. All I can say is this barn would not have passed code when it was built nor the apartment. For that matter it still wouldn't pass code. The owners called Kory and asked him if he'd look into getting the water turned on in the barn so that they can come up for the 4th of July. Kory went out with a shovel to try to find the shut off valve. Most people have the water lines at least 3 ft below ground level to prevent freezing. Kory with his shovel hit and snapped the pipe in half at about 16 inches deep. OOPS!

For quite some time I listened to him ranting and raving about the "idiot" who built the barn and the "idiot" who didn't know what he was doing when he did the water lines and how stupid this person was to put the water line 16 inches deep when it's suppose to be 36-48 inches deep. Especially for putting a water line in Alton where it freezes 6 months out of the year. When he got it all out of his system he borrowed the back hoe from his dad to try to fix the now much bigger problem he had on his hands.
To say this man of mine was NOT happy was an understatement!

Hunter wanting to help his dad put on the extra pair of rubber boots to go dig through the mud to help fix the leak with his dad.

Brayden loved the time he spent in the back hoe and did not want to get out.

Kory was able to temporarily fix the break. We've got to pick up some more parts while I'm in town tommorrow so he can fix it properly.

I'm glad we moved. I'm not sure this house was the best in the end. It was the nicest from the outside, the newest and the biggest that we had available. I guess I've learned the phrase, "don't judge a book by it's cover". There were so many things that did not work or was broken when we moved in. Here's a short list to remind myself in a month or two when everythings been taken care of:

No propane, means no hot water and no cooking

Dishwasher- broken

No working light fixtures- have now replaced 30+ lightbulbs

Weather stripping was bad on all 4 outside doors, could feel the cold not seeping in but blowing in full force

Water heater that now once a week has offered no hot water

All outside doors must be kicked shut to shut or kicked open to open

The fan on the wood burining stove- broken

Broken, smelly, stinky backed up toilet up stairs

toilets that don't flush all the way

The filthyness, mold in all bathrooms, around all the sinks, in the fridge,etc.

Broken drawers in all bathrooms

Kory's been able to fix many of the above mentioned. We still have some more to go. Sometimes it seems like for every step we take forward we end up taking 2 steps back. For instance today, he was able to fix some broken fence outside this morning till he ran out of screws. After that he break's the water line and then tonight (after Kory had already left for work of course) the girls came running downstairs to tell me there sink was broken, the water wouldn't shut off. I booked it up stairs to investigate. Sure enough the cold water handle had broken. I was able to get a screw driver to shut if off but seriously! I don't dare ask, "What's next?"

The owner knew his house had many problems and has told Kory that what needs fixed can be taken off the next months rent. I just wonder if he knew how much fixing he really needed. From where we're standing I don't know when we'll have to pay another months rent.

A Park

2011-06-21T18:41:00.000-07:00

Having a park across the street is so much fun. It certainly helps get the wiggles out.
Brayden loves the swing and could stay in one all day long.

Knowing I had my camera with me all I heard was, "Mommy, take a picture of me now."

Lots of fun to be had.

When we moved a month ago the weather in Hurricane was gorgeous. I had packed up all of our winter ware and had pulled out our summer clothes. During our first few days in Alton I quickly decided that Spring was most definetly not here yet. I unpacked those winter clothes and packed up our summer clothes for a few more weeks. Last week the weather was finally starting to warm up. I pulled out a few summer clothes to please the kids. This past sunday when we left for church we all commented how the weather was suddenly cold again. We had dark sky's and the wind was blowing. Coming out of church I was shocked to see snow flurries. Really! In the middle of June and it's snowing. It didn't stick and it didn't last for long but it SNOWED. On Father's Day, no less.

Yesterday was still quite cold but today the sun came out and we could feel the warmth. I hope it stays for a long, long time. I am ready for winter to be over.

Heaton Reunion

2011-06-21T17:31:00.000-07:00

Every year during the month of June the Heaton's get together for a Family Reunion in Alton. There are usually between 125-200 people that come each year. For the past 3 years we have been unable to make it. I'm so glad we were able to participate this year. We had so much FUN!

This year instead of having the reunion in Alton it took place 10-15 miles away in what we call Rush. Rush is where the Heaton's keep there cattle heard during the summer's.

This picture represents what a reunion is. Cousins, Cousins and Cousins. Some you know better then others and some you don't know at all. These 4 boys were the only 8-10 year old boys around. Where there was one there were the other 3. These guys were stuck like glue. It was fun to watch Hunter make new friends. Uncle Jim brought his candy cannon.

I want one.

The kids went bezzerk when the cannon was fired and candy came falling out of the sky.

There was plenty of food around for someone to be constantly eating.

I love his mouth wide open. This was his expression when he turned around and saw this:

Look at that fire!

Being in the mountains brings the cold night air a little quicker than normal.

Grandpa Heaton carved whistles out of tree branches.

They actually worked. Grandpa's can do things like this.

It may have driven the adults CRAZY with 10 kids running around with homemade whistles
but they sure had fun.

Emily spent a while trying to catch some dirt fish!

Emily and her cousin Rachel were great babysitters. Many, many, many toddlers plopped themselves in the dirt to play. Any time one of them got up to wander these girls would quickly go find an adult for help.

Kory and Brayden.

One of the many games that were prepared for the weekend was "catch the chicken's". Hunter was so pleased that he was able to catch one. What a different kid he's turning out to be. This past year when we got baby chicks he was too scared to hold them. Look at him now, chasing chickens!

One of the other activities we had going on was a Zip-Line. Oh my goodness the hours of fun everyone had on this. The above picture is of Kory coming down.

Emily and Rachel near the end of the Zip-Line. I love Emily's facial expression. Despite the fear she had, she went down numerous times.

Hunter and Brayden also LOVED the zip line. This is them coming to a stop at the bottom. Brayden only being 2, I was not planning on him participating. I guess this is what happens when Kory found me and said, "Here let me take him from you. I'll watch him for a little while." Little did I know that he had plans on sending him down on the zip line. Kory took him with him the 1st time and he loved it. He wanted to do it over and over and over. He would throw a mini temper tantrum when it came time taking him off the chair after his turn. When he was put down, he'd head straight to the hill and start climbing up for his next turn. This kid definetly belongs to Kory. He has no FEAR.

Grandma Heaton and Emily eating there dinner together.

Madelyn and her Cousin Ruth were connected at the hips.

They had lots of fun together.

One of the activites was to have a game of Paint Ball. Not having enough guns and not wanting to spend too much money on sling shots all the kids made there own. The first part was to find a good strong Y branch, they then cut a piece of rubber and tied it to some tubing, connecting it to the Y.

Hunter's homemade sling shot he made.

Of course Grandpa brought his horse for the kids to ride.

At the end we had a box full of treats the kids got to pick out of.

Emily chose a bottle of bubbles.

Brayden was given a water shooter out of the prize box.

I love his face.

It was a great weekend that went way too fast!

We didn't camp out like some of the other families did.

I can't believe how dirty my kids got. I guess that means they had a good time too. Brayden wore himself out. He fell asleep like this on our way home in Daddy's truck.

Boys Drapes

2011-06-15T21:52:00.001-07:00

One of the biggest issues we are having living in this house are the upstairs windows. Despite the cooler weather we have here it gets very, very warm upstairs. Not only does it get warm but the sun doesn't go down until after 9 o'clock each night. In the past we usually put our kids to bed between 8-8:30. During the summer I don't mind if it's closer to 9. However it's been VERY difficult to send the kids to bed when it looks like this outside! I took this picture a little before 9 last night. It doens't seem to matter how tired the kids may be it's just too stink'n bright outside for them to go to sleep. Both these windows are in the boys bedroom. These windows are huge.

They are both over 6 ft. in length.

I love all the light during the day just not at night.
After much consideration Hunter has asked to decorate his room in a sports theme. I got online to see what options I had out there with a sports theme. I was astonished to see how expensive drapes could be. I found some really cute sports themed curtains but because of our large windows they would have cost me almost $150 a window. I can't afford that nor could I justify it. I have 2 other rooms upstairs that also need window coverings with the same size windows. So Hunter and I kept surfing the internet until we found something he liked.

We eventually found something similar to this.
Instead of paying there asking price of $30 for the drapes and $50 for the valance (just for the smaller window) I spent a total of about $30at JoAnn's. I was able to get enough fabric to cover both windows. Included in this price I also got "black out" fabric which I sew to the back of the dark blue drape that will not only help the sunlight stay out but also helps with the heat.

Two days ago when I began this project I didn't know that I would have extra kids at my house from 9 that morning until 9 that night. I'm going to blame all the MANY distractions I had that day for all my mistakes. I cut the fabric about 6 inches to short. I of course didn't realize this until I went to hang it up. I also didn't know that my iron has a very HOT spot on it. Must be getting old. When I began ironing my hems this hot spot melted the fabric. I'm sure you didn't notice before that where the drapes meet in the middle one corner is about a WHOLE inch shorter then the other side. That I can blame on the HOT spot. I also forgot to add the "black out" cloth. I din't realize it until I had hung the drapes and could see the light through the drapes still. SERIOUSLY! Where was mt head? Now that this window covering is done and hung Im not sure I'll add the material to this window. I did enough unpicking over the past 2 days to last me a life time. Despite my very long, frusturating day at sewing something I thought would take just a few hours of my day not 2 WHOLE DAYS! I'm excited to make the matching set for the bigger window. I'm anxious to get the window coverings done and then start on decorating his room "sportsy". Despite all my mishaps and mistakes Hunter is thrilled with his new window covering. And I don't think it looks to bad at all!

Stake Acitvity

2011-06-15T21:30:00.001-07:00

Every weekend since we've moved has been full of activities. This past weekend was no different. Our stake held a large activity right here in Alton. It was kind of nice having it here as usually all stake activities take place in Kanab, almost an hours drive away. At this paticular activity they have each year my in-laws are asked to make there famous, well known,

sour dough bisquits. I ended up sticking around helping them. We ended up making two 5 gallon bucketts FULL of dough. Very quickly I lost track of how many pans of bisquits I was putting in and pulling out of the oven. As people around heard the next batch was about done my little table would be swarmed with people. I had NO IDEA how much people enjoyed the Heaton's sour dough bisquits!Next to my table was a couple in charge of making home made butter. Anyone who wanted was given a container full of cream. After about 10 minutes of shaking for these little ones they had there very own butter to put on there hot bisquit right out of the oven.
Outside they had other activities like roping the steer, barrel racing with stick horses, ring the chicken with a hoola-hoop and so on.

After the many different activities the kids participated in we headed to the park for dinner.

With Kory and us living in Alton this makes 4 of his siblings living here now with all of our kids.

All but 3 of the grankids that live here are GIRLS! Two of the three boys belong to us. That means these 2, Hunter and Orin, despite the 2 year difference with Orrin being older are ALWAYS together. I can only imagine what mischief these 2 will get into this summer.

What's a picnic without watermelon.

This was definetly Brayden's FAVORITE part of the day.

He wouldn't look at me normal for the picture. He kept giving me his "deer in the headlight" smile while saying "cheese".

A New Porch

2011-06-15T21:08:00.000-07:00

My in-laws, the Heaton's live next door at least for the next 3 weeks until they begin there 2 year mission in Nauvoo. There cement porch has held up pretty well during the past 30+ years it has been in existence. This past winter it took a great beating from weather and old age and started to fall apart. Kory's brother, Kirk came up for the week to re-pour the porch. After several days of getting everything ready the cement truck arrived thursday morning. ALL the grandkids and other kids from the neighborhood came to watch. It was a picture worthy moment, too bad I didn't have my camera yet. After the excitement wore off and most of the kids had ran off Uncle Kirk was looking for some added weight to smooth the cement with. Being Brayden was close by he chose him 1st. What we thought might be a fun experience for my 2 year old was not so. He screamed and would NOT hold on. Lucky for Kirk, 4 year old Sarah (a niece) was also close by. Being a little older then Brayden she thoroughly enjoyed the ride.
When the ride was over one of the many kitties around town made it's way into the yard. That poor thing didn't have a chance with these 2 around. It was instantly picked up, snuggled, smothered with kisses (oooh yuck!) and fought over.

When the kittie made it's great escape the kids moved on to other things. What kid doesn't like a hose to play with. Especially one that is broken and NEVER completely shuts off?

There was some left over cement when the guys were finished. My sister-in-law Heather had a great craft idea for all that left over cement. We all went home and scrounged around for old tupperware or plastic bowls we didn't mind not getting back. We filled them with cement and then the kids went to town turning them into little gardening stones. All the moms pulled out embellishements for the kids to decorate them with. We had jewels, beads, foam stickers, buttons, feathers and natural products like rocks and sticks.

For over an hour the kids sat on the side of the road decorating there stepping stone. I know I took pictures of the finished products. Some turned out really cute. I just don't know what happened to the pictures. They were on the camera but didn't download to the computer and having erased the memory after the download I think there gone. Oh well.

The kids had so much fun. Next time we've got cement being poured we'll definetly do this fun project again.

The Schultz Visit

2011-06-15T20:45:00.000-07:00

Just a few short days after we moved to our new home we had our 1st guests arrive.

Our best friends who lived right across the street from us in Prescott, The Schultz Family.

Despite the cold weather or the 80 miles an hour wind storm we seemed to have the ENTIRE time they were here, we did have fun. We borrowed some quads from Kory's sister.

These 2 boys could have stayed on ALL day long.

They would both throw a fit when it was one of the other kid's turns.

It's great to live in such a town that we can ride quads up and down the street.

Despite the horrible winds we were having the kids spent a lot of there time outside.
They dug in the dirt, road bikes up and down the street,played with each other and fed the chickens and the pig. They got to see the goats next door. They even had a few hours on our swing set until it collapsed.

This trip was especially fun since we got to meet there newest addition to there family.
Meet Brystol!

Just 3 weeks old. Isn't she beautiful? She still had that new born smell and oh so so tiny.

I forget how tiny they start out to be. Especially when compared to my baby who is now a 2 year old toddler.

We had so much fun with our friends. It was great to see each other and remenince over the past 6 years that we have been friends. Sometime this summer I'd like to plan a trip to there house. We need to get together one more time before school starts.

Newest Weekly Activity

2011-06-15T20:38:00.001-07:00

A little over 2 months ago, Hunter turned 8.

This meant a new weekly activity for him.

Scouts!At the time I was also one of his scout leaders. Of course when we moved 3 weeks ago I was released but overall I did enjoy my calling. Having Hunter as one of my boys was a great experience for the both of us. Before we moved he earned 2 belt loops.

His 1st belt loop was for knowing the rules and playing a game of bowling. He also earned the belt loop for baseball by fullfilling it's requirments too. He was pretty excited about earning his rewards.

Keep up the good work Hunter!

TIRE-D

2011-05-29T14:38:00.000-07:00

Warning Hanna: This post is a book!

It's offical. We are finally residing in Alton, Utah.

This past wed we left Hurricane around noon. Kory was driving his truck pulling the trailor and I was driving the van packed to the rim. We arrived and were unloaded by 4pm. Kory had to work that night but it was so nice having him around for a few hours. Instead of having to leave by 3 to get to work on time he left about 4:50. It was great. That night however when he got to work he discovered one of the tires on the truck was flat. After gathering the tools he needed he fixed it. A couple hours later he went out to the truck to grab something and discovered a different tire was now flat. He was able to fix that tire temporarily before coming home. When he climbed into bed that morning at 3 am he said, "that was the best drive ever." I am so glad he doesn't have a 2 hour commute each day anymore.

Thursday I spent the day putting my kitchen together. Unfortunately the house wasn't clean ans so I had to vaccummn out coupboards and drawers before filling them up with our stuff. When I got up to fix breakfast that morning I discovered that my oven wouldn't heat up above 180 degrees. Being Kory was asleep I figured he'd be able to figure out the problem. After a cold cereal breakfast I tried taking a shower but had no hot water. The water up here isn't even luke warm it's just plain freezing coming out of the taps. When Kory got up he quickly summed up the problem. The propane tank was empty! Kory then spent several minutes on the phone trying to contact the correct propane comany. Lucky for us the propane company had a driver in the area and would be able to fill us up later in the afternoon. Kory spent the afternoon taking notes on what needed to be fixed around the house. There are many broken, not working repairs that are needed. Being I was working in St. George the next day he compiled a list of materials and tools he needed me to pick up for him. Being he didn't get a chance to fix his trucks tire he took the van to work that night. When he got home at 4 the next morning he told me I would never believe what happened. The van had a flat on his way to work. That's 3 flats now in less then 12 hours. He changed the tire with the spare donut we had but I would need to take the tire into Discount Tire that morning to have the tire fixed. An hour later I was on my way into town.

Friday morning I prayed during the 1 1/2 drive that my little donut would make the long trip. I went by my parents house to pick up a tire for our little car that had a nail in it that also needed to be fixed at Discount Tire. When I got to my parents house I discovered the donut I had been driving on was flat! Thankfully my dad was around. He filled it up for me, helped me load the little cars tire and then off I went into town. I had my mom follow me just in case I had another mishap with a tire. We love discount tires. They have a life time warranty on there tires. So both tires were fixed for free. They even put the donut back in it's place for me for next time. After work that day I drove back out to Hurricane. Our plan was to finish loading the van with the odds and ends that we had left behind. My parents were also going to follow me up to Alton, My mom was going to drive our little car, my dad his truck pulling our 2 pigs that our scheduled to be slottered this coming week. So the van's loaded, the car is loaded we get the pigs loaded and off we go. We can't drive through Zion (our normal route) becuase they charge $25 to drive through plus they charge an extra $25 for an escort through the tunnels if your pulling a trailor. My dad didn't want to go over Cedar Mtn. becuase it's almost all up hill and his truck doesn't have a lot of juice. So in the end we decide to go over the Cane Beds. The cane beds is our shortest option then going through Fredonia and Kanab and then back around. However despite being a National Park the roads are TERRIBLE. It's about 25 miles of which only 4 (but seems like 20) is a dirt road that is lucky to get graded every couple of years. The asphalt after the dirt road isn't much better as there are too many large pot holes to count. At the last minute my dad decides to go the longer route becuase of the pigs. He was worried about the bumpy road and all the dust. He didn't want the pigs to suffocate on all the dust we'd surely encounter. My mom and I went ahead and took the cane bed road. After my mom and I have finally gotten off that horendous dirt road my mom signals to pull over. We both pull over to the shoulder. She was hearing a noise that's not normal and wanted to make sure she wasn't loosing the bumper or maybe even a tire after that dirt road. We get out walk around the car and can't find anything a miss. So we both get back in our cars and TRY pulling away. I can't! I pulled off onto the shoulder too much. My van has sunk into the soft sandy shoulder. Well crap! My mom's phone has no service and my borrowed cell phone is dead! My mom gets behind the van and try's to push while I accelerate. NOTHING! So I put the van in neutral and both of us try to push, NOTHING! I then find a long dead branch and am lying on the ground trying to dig the sand out from underneath the van. Just then a truck drives by and pulls over. An older man probably pushing 80 gets out with another older man who's both arms are crippled. They come walking up asking if they could help. I wanted to laugh. Looking at them I didn't know how they could possibly be of help. Well help they did. They had a chain they were able to put under the van and helped drag me back onto the road. They were great. We talked on the side of road. Found out they were from Valley (part of our new home) and we knew some of the same people. After a while my mom gets in the car and I in the van and off we go following our good samaritans. Seriously not 5 minutes later I look in my rear view mirror and see smoke coming out from behind the car my mom's driving. She immediately pulls over. I take my time turning around so as not to get to close to the edge. I was NOT going to get stuck again. I get back to my mom to discover we've had a blow out. SERIOUSLY! In a 48 hour period with three different cars we've had major issues with 5 tires now. My mom and I are just standing there. I mean come on what are the odds? We hear a truck coming and look up to see our good samaritans coming back again. They get out and come towards us asking , "now what"? AAAAAAAHHHHH! Obviously the tire is a gonner. They ask if we've got a spare. Uh huh we do! Only it's in the back of the truck that my dad is driving and he chose to take what was suppose to be the long way. There are no other options. We'll just have to come back for the car later. So we pile crap from the van into the car to make room for my mom. 45 mintues later we finally get to Alton to discover my dad already there, so much for the short cut. We decide that before we unload all of our stuff we had better go unload the pigs. We drive down the street to my borther-in laws house. He tells us where to put them. We open the back of the truck, we start to unload the closest pig which was the biggest. When he's crawling out of the back we notice the other pig isn't moving. Uh oh! Can this day get any better? Nope that 2nd dang pig died during our 2 hour trip! What was it thinking? We called the butcher and asked what we should do? I won't go into details. I don't think I'm quite ready for the farming life. Lets just say in the next hour we drove that dead pig to the butchers and it was decided we may not get alot of pork chops or rump roasts out of it but we will be getting a lot of cured sausage. After my dad I leave the butcher's we head out to fix the car's tire. We've borrowed a jack and the necesary tools, we've got the tire and hope it won't take more then just 15 minutes. We get to car just fine. My dad starts trying to jack the car up to find very quickly we've parked ourselves in an ant hill. We brush ourselves off and drive the car up as much as we dare away from those blasted ants. The jack we borrowed is just to big for the car. We can't get the car high enough to put the jack underneath it. Knowing Kory's had a flat before we decide to empty the trunk of our belongings to see if we can find a different jack. HIP HIP HOORAY! We've got a much smaller jack to work with. Along with the jack we find a spare tire. If I would have known about the spare we could have changed the tire right after it blew out. Oh well, 15 minutes later we're both back on the road. Hallelujiah we both make it back to Alton. By the time we got home it was after 10pm. My parents immediately leave for home since it was so late and they've still got a 2 hour drive ahead of them. I asked them to be VERY VERY careful. The fates were truely against us this day. The last thing we needed was for them to hit a dang deer on the way home. I'm glad to say they made it safely with no other mishaps for the day.

The best part of the day was that after my parents had left and I had crawled into bed my husband came home. He took a 20 minute break after hearing what had happend during the afternoon and into the night to come home and check on me. I felt loved. It was a day that started way too early and ended way to late. I was just very thankful that we had survived the day. I'm hoping next weeks trip to St. George for work won't be quite so event full. Now seriously, thanks Mom, Dad and Hanna for your help that awful day!

Small Town

2011-05-16T19:59:00.000-07:00

For a few months now Kory has been working for the Alton Coal Mine. He works the night shift 5pm-3am 5 nights a week. When he 1st started he worked 10 hours a day mon-sat during the day shift but was then bumped to the night shift. The coal mine workers are suppose to rotate shifts so that the same people aren't always on night duty. However, so that I can continue to work 2x a week and we not have to pay for day care Kory volunteered to remain on the night shift. He's been commuting back and forth all this time. If he drives through Zion National Park it can take 1.5 hours-2 hours to get to work or he can go over Cedar Mtn. which takes about 2hours. During the winter it isn't to bad to drive through the park. During the summer it's a different story due to all the tourists. He spends close to 4 hours in the car a day and about $350 a month on gas.

We've been contemplating moving to Alton just for the summer and then before school starts move back to Hurricane. Then we would move to Alton after next years school year on a more permanent basis. Doing this would allow the older kids to see him during the week. Right now Kory's sleeping when they get up and he then leaves for work 45 min. before they get home. Madelyn and Hunter see him friday afternoon for about an hour, sat afternoon and then all day sunday. Moving would also let us save on gas money. We'd also be able to get to know his side of the family better. His parents, 2 sisters, 1 brother and another brother (next month) all live in the same town.

About 3 weeks ago we decided that there was really no point in moving to Alton this summer, back to Hurricane for another school year and then move again to Alton next summer. I hate moving and that would just be too many moves.

Alton is a very small farming community that most people have never heard of. Even with the mine now up and running it hasn't caused to many families to move in since they hired many of the locals. I've been asked how many people live in Alton. Kory usually says "about 100". I

wanting to know more then "about" looked up the census report for 2010.

Drum roll please.......
119 people

+6 (my family)

+5 (Kory's brother and his family next month)

130 PEOPLE

Told you it was small. The town is so small that you don't see stop signs. This is what you see in it's place.

Not having a large population kinda makes it hard for a new comer to find a place to live. There are no apartments, no condomeniums and no town homes. In fact there were only 3 homes that was a possibility for us to live in. One wanted more than we were willing to spend on rent, another was O.K with us living there temporarily but didn't want us to stay too long as the house is used for family vacations. Luckily our 3rd option was willing to rent to us for something we could afford. It's a corner lot and this WHOA sign stands on our corner.

Like all houses they each have the good and the bad. This one's not any different. What I'm really really looking forward to is this front yard. It's HUGE! I took this picture standing on the wrap around porch (another thing I like). It doesn't have a garage but it does have this shed.

I took this picture last tues. When I got to the house to look around it was pouring outside. By the time we left is was hailing/snowing out side (not looking forward to the cold weather).

This is our new garden spot.

The kitchen.

Emily was with us and she fell in love with the attached bar stools.

I'm looking forward to having more cabinets and just a bigger kitchen in general.

The stove sits in the island and has 5 burners. Ooh LaLa.

The master bedroom's bathroom doens't have a normal shower/tub but a sauna.

I don't spend much time in the bathroom but come this winter when it FREEZING outside the sauna just might become our favorite place to be.

On the 2nd floor there are 2 bedrooms. One for the girls and one for the boys. Each room has it's own bathroom. The girls room has pink carpet that's one of the reasons we chose that room for the girls. The boys bathroom has this.....

Really!

Who puts a urinal in there house?

As you can imagine my 8 year old is in love already.

I hate cleaning bathrooms and am not to thrilled with having the kids bedrooms having there own bathroom. However, on the bright side I think my oldest 2 children are going to have a little more responsibility when it comes to cleaning bathrooms. No more just cleaning off the counters, washing the mirror, counters and sink. They're going to learn to do a little bit more!

Both kids rooms have there very own loft. While Kory and I wandered the house these 2 stayed up here. I can see the hours of fun spent up here already.

We were planning on moving Memorial Weekend but once schools out there's not much keeping us here. The sooner we move the sooner we get to see more of our dad and not spend so much money on gas. So we've decided to move the day school gets out. That's in 8 days.

Alton has it's own church building. If it didn't the nearest chapel would be about 20 miles away. We will never have church at the most dreaded time (2 pm) like we did in Prescott. Church has always been and will probably always be held at 9 am year after year. My mother in law wasn't joking that the Primary would be almost doubling once we and Kory's brother moved to town. One of the members of the community turned there garage into a post office so that we don't have to drive 30 miles to get mail at the nearest post office. There are no stores in Alton, no movie theatres, no banks, no real place of buisness. We do have a town park that will be across the street. Yeah! The neareast gas station is about 10 miles from town. The kids will be bussed to school about 30 miles away. We don't have to worry about choosing our teachers this year as there is only one teacher per grade. Living is such a small town/community is going to be different. We will become much more self sufficient. I'm not going to quit working and that's a bit of relief knowing that I will be going to the "city" at least once a week. I will have to start planning my weekly menu's again as there won't be any. "Running to the grocery store. Be right back, hun!"

We're going to miss Hurricane. It's been GREAT living closer to family again. The kids love there grandma and grandpa and aunts and uncles. It's been fun to be innvolved with the little things that we've always missed. Despite the tight quarters it's been a true blessing to live in my parents basement apartment. It's been a good year here. I know we're going to miss it. We've made friends and I hate to see us leaving and having to start over AGAIN. Yet it's also a relief to be moving too. Living where we've been has always been a temporary resting stop. A place that would help us get back on our feet. It has really helped us. We've known we'd be moving either this summer or next. By next summer we'll all be settled in, have made friends and we'll have a routine again. Next summer I'll be glad I'm not preparing for another move. The move will already be behind us. We hope to make Alton our home and be settled for the next few years.

My family has a reunion coming up July 4th weekend.This year it just happens to be held across the high way from Alton. Now we all don't have to camp out, rent a hotel too many miles away or find a spot on the floor in Uncle Kyle's cabin with the other 100 people planning on coming. We are moving just in time. We'll make room for whomever wants to stay with us. It'll be fun to have family come visit us in our new home.

Randomness about Madelyn

2011-05-16T17:01:00.000-07:00

It's almost been a year now since our family moved from Prescott Valley to Hurricane. In the beginning I think we all struggled a little bit with the change. All of our kids were been born in Arizona. In the 8 years we were living there despite our many moves we always remained in the same ward. We were one of the oldest families that belonged to that ward. We knew EVERYONE and they all knew us. We loved living in Prescott Valley. We left many friends that had become like family to us. I guess thats what happens when you live in one place for so long.

Of all my children, Madelyn, suffered the most. She didn't mind living with Grandma and Grandpa but everything else she didn't like. I purposely moved the kids and I to Utah a few weeks before school started. My hope was that my kids would make friends and have familiar faces when they started a new school with new teachers and new class mates. She did not like our new ward. She didn't like her primary teacher or the kids in her class. I threw a small water party and invited kids from each of my childrens primary classes hoping to start new friendships. Madelyn had fun but didn't want to invite the little girls back to play. She wanted to go back to Prescott.

Very quickly I started to cringe come Sundays. It got so bad that Madelyn would be crying/screaming out of control in the hallways at church. When a Primary worker would try to console her she'd turn her back towards them or push them away. She just refused to go. My biggest mistake was allowing her to come with me or Grandma for a few sundays.When I put my foot down and told her she'd have to start going to her own class the phrase, "all hell broke loose", came true. What a fight it was. She fought me ALL morning about getting ready for church and just getting to church. She'd be crying before sacrament was even over. I tried spanking, time outs, taking her home for a cold shower, taking her home and putting her to bed, yelling at her. I don't know how many times I left her in the hall way at church crying and I myself hid in the mother's lounge crying so she wouldn't see how upset she was making me. It was a HORRIBLE first few weeks at church. I was so embarrased on Sundays becuase of the way she acted. It didn't matter what I did I couldn't stop it. Kory wasn't of much help because he was still in Prescott.

Soon school started. To my embarassement she acted the same way those first 3 weeks of school. I ended up leaving her in her classroom every morning throwing a temper tantrum like a two year old not the 6 year old she was. All of the class room doors have an outside door and we could hear her screaming out on the sidewalk. My parents were great at trying to support me with Kory not being around. Every day my mom would walk the kids to school with me and offer her moral support when I had to leave my screaming child throwing her tantrum. Her teacher said she continued to be uspet for about 5 minutes and then would calm down. Needless to say I so very THANKFUL that she doesn't act like this anymore.

This is Mrs. Seese. Both Madelyn and I ADORE her. And Mrs. Seese ADORES Madelyn. She is the best and I mean the best teacher we've had. She is always doing fun things with her students. She has a sense of humor, she is quick to give praise and is patient with her classroom of 6 years olds. When I asked for a picture she knelt down by Madelyn and wrapped her arm around her. We love Mrs. Seese. We will miss her in 2nd grade.

A few weeks ago Madelyn lost her 2nd top front tooth. When she came out of the bathroom from rinsing her mouth out she was almost laughing hysterically. When asked what was so funny she gave me HUMONGOUS grin and said see! Nope I didn't see anything so funny. Finally she told me..."My tooth left an M for ME or Madelyn". What a funny girl.

Madelyns asked me to post this picture. Since I posted Hunter's last school project she didn't want to be left behind either. For the past 6 weeks Madelyn has had to complete a short book report weekly. Along with the book report she usually had to do some sort of small project to go along with it. With each book report she earned "things" for an ice cream sundae. For instance the 1st week she earned the bowl, the 2nd week the spoon, then a scoop of ice cream followed by different toppings, etc. Her very last book report project was to create a puppet to go along with her book. Madelyn's chosen book that week was about a balerina. Thanks to familyfun.com, we came up with this.

I drew the ballerina (I am not an artist and will never claim to be). She then cut it out, colored some clothes on along with all the facial expressions. We then took a small piece of bubble wrap and used it as her tutu. She was very proud of her ballerina. She came home from school the next day with a bursting ego. Everyone thought her puppet was the BEST!

Way to go Madelyn. We love you.

Pre-School's Out!

2011-05-13T20:43:00.000-07:00

School's Out for Emily.

Yeah!!!!!

Two weeks ago I had my last teaching week. Our theme was flowers/gardens and mothers.This worked great with Mother's Day being that weekend. I had each child plant 2 cups. One with a flower already bloomed and another with a seed. I'm hoping the other children had more luck with there seed cup then Miss Emily did. After preschool we left her cups outside on the sidewalk, since it was "accidently" watered too much. Without us knowing Brayden dumped the cup out and scattered the dirt and the eeny, weeny, tiny little seeds all over. Lucky for us he left her b;ooming flower alone which has since been planted in Grandma's flower pot. The children's gift to there mother's was a laminated picture book mark. The kids got to color and write there name on the back.
This past tuesday was graduation at someone elses house.
The kids decorated there very own cap with tassle.

While the glitter glue was drying on there caps we made t-shirts for everyone.

The mom had bought a white t-shirt for each child. Each preschooler chose a paint color and then left there hand print on each shirt. The mom's then wrote the children's name under the hand print. I loved this idea. Emily has had a lot of fun this year making new friends. She loves her shirt with all there hand prints on it.

While waiting for all the paint projects to dry we celebrated the school year being over by having an ice cream social. We then had the kids go outside with their hats and diploma's for a group picture. There were 5 in our group but one of the boys wasn't participating/cooperating very well. He wouldn't be nice to his friends so his mom took him home early. So unforunately we didn't get a full group shot.

It didn't seem to matter which direction we had the kids stand in as the sun seemed to be in all of there eyes all of the time, so they claimed. Emily looks like she's throwing a fit here but she wasn't. She was just complaining with the rest of them that sun was too bright. This was the only picture I have with no one covering there face with there hands. Yet notice how each girls hands are pretty close! It's amazing I got this one.

I'm so happy that I was able to put together a preschool group this year. Taking part in this kind of "mom co-op" is very satisfying. Emily loves attending school but I don't have to pay for it. I don't have to be the teacher every week but I do get a turn at teaching. I enjoy having my turn to teach. I love finding creative and fun ways to teach the kids something they don't know already. I love seeing the excitement when they can tell me the letter of the alphabet correctly or when they write there name by themselves for the very first time. I love there excitement to learn. Our preschool was succesful this year. It was more then just a play group that got together twice a week. I'm thankful for the new friends we made because of preschool this year. Till next year...

Baptism

2011-05-13T19:39:00.000-07:00

This past Saturday Hunter was baptised.

Our lives are changing ever so quickly. I'm feeling older knowing I have an 8 year old. Isn't he hadsome?

I'm not sure what to call him anymore. He's definetely not my baby. He's not a toddler nor a little boy either. He seems to old to call him my big boy. I've always considered Youth 12 year's or older. You know when they reach the age of YW or YM, when they can attend YOUTH Conference. I was looking at a clearance rack the other day and noticed that a shirt in his size was labeled Youth Small. However I don't think I can tell others about him by claiming him as my Youth Small. So for now I've decided he's my son. No need to have little or big or youth involved. Just my son!
Hunter and his Dad.

I took this idea from a friend's baptism last year.

I had a large matted picture of Hunter along with a marker. Everyone who attended signed there name. This picture was taken at the beginning so not alot of names yet. Now that the baptism is over it's been fun to look the picture over and read everyones name that attended this special day for Hunter.

After the baptism we held a luncheon under the pavilion. All but 1 of Kory's 8 siblings were present. The kids had plenty of cousins to play with. This is Hunter with 2 of his favortie boy cousins his age.

This is Emily with her Grandma and Grandpa Heaton. I loved her smile so thought I'd include it too.

Having Hunter baptised has been a fun and exciting experience but it's also been a little scary. As a mom I find myself trying to protect my children. I want to help them as much as possible. I only want the best for them. Knowing that he is now held ACCOUNTABLE for his actions with his Heavenly Father is a little unsettling. I know our Heavenly Father is a loving Father and he too only wants whats best for all of us. However, I'm not sure I'm ready to have Hunter be held ACCOUNTABLE. I know I'm not perfect and neither is Hunter after all he's 8 and a boy. Need I say more? I only hope I have taught him and will continue to teach him that there are more important things in life then his skate board, army men, computer games and his bike. I hope I have taught him right from wrong. I hope I have taught him enough about the atonement, and will continue to teach, that he will know what he needs to do when he has done something wrong and needs to ask for forgiveness. I hope I can continue to teach him how to be ACCOUNTABLE for his actions, his words and his deeds.

I am proud of you Hunter.

I love you!