How would you live without running water?

Early last week we went to Utah as a family for Kory to install a job. We spent almost a full week and had a great time spending time with family. We have been home since early Wed. morning. As most people do right before leaving town I didn't buy many groceries the week before we left. Not being able to pay ourselves quite yet we have been living without milk, eggs, and some of those bare essentials. We've done this before so it hasn't been that big of a deal.


Since we've been home I've been babysitting everyday and have had 7 kids running around. Emily has been running a fever since we've been home and it seems she is constantly crying (thanks to her shots last week).When Kory came home this morning to grab some paper work he commented on how quiet our house was. Hunter and Maddie were at a friends and Emily was napping. It was very peaceful. Not having anyone at my feet I was trying to catch up on some buisness work. Kory went into the kitchen and asked me what the hissing noise was. I couldn't hear it in the office and didn't know what he was talking about it. We soon discovered that the hissing noise was coming from under the house. We have a water leak. It's not gushing water but we've got ourselves a pudddle. After calling around and being a friday afternoon afterall the soonest we can get someone to come by is monday morning. Not wanting to waste water and cause any damage we have shut our water off.

Not having any fresh produce, milk, eggs, nearing the end of our laundry detergent and now not having running water has made me think. How would our family do in an emergency situation? I don't know if we'd do very well. Thankfully I have about 20 gallons of water stored. We have been using that today to wash hands and flush toilets. Tommorrow I will heat some water and wash my dishes by hand. I have two sinks full and a dishwasher full. YEAH FOR ME!!!

With the warm weather the kids and I spent the afternoon outside. When Kory got home from work we grabbed some shovels and started moving some dirt around. When we came in it was a real pain to wash everyones hands without running water. I can't bathe anyone tonight.
(If we had just had a natural disaster we would probably have been outside assesing the damage, maybe even starting to clean up. Chances are we would be dusty and sweaty and probably not have any running water.) I was tired and not having any leftovers tonight I let the kids make themselves a jelly sandwich. They've done this many times but tonight I realized how messy these can be when I don't have the convienience of running water. Kory and I had grilled cheese sandwiches.

Tonight feeling my nerves were fried we scrounged up some change and I ran to the store and bought another loaf of bread, milk and eggs to help ease my pain over the next few days. What if we had just survived a natural disaster and I couldn't go buy these things? I feel better tonight knowing for the next few mornings we will have cold cereal in a plastic bowl with plastic spoons. But what if we couldn't? Tommorrow night we'll turn the water on just long enough to bathe everyone for sunday. This is going to be interesting to see what and how we do during the next two days.

I have learned that I need to get a few more water storage containers and some spickets for them so I don't waste as much water as I feel I am doing now. I need to get some hand sanitizer. I need to find some recipies that don't ask for milk or eggs, especially breakfast meals. So far we've had bottled fruit, muffins that I had in the freezer and cinnamon toast. I need to have a good supply of paper goods.

It is going to be an interesting weekend for us. I know we will be O.K. it's only 2-3 more days. There is an end in sight. I'm just thankful I had water stored. I always thought I'd probably never use it and if I did it wouldn't be becuase of a water leak. I will be very thankful to teach my lesson next sunday. The lesson is "I am thankful for water". The things you take for granted.

Belly Dancing

For my brithday last month I told Kory all I wanted was to take a dance class. I looked into several but most were offered during the day during the week. I didn't want the hassle of trying to find a babysitter on the same day every week for 12 weeks. And I've started babysitting again. I babysit 2 different families and their work schedules are different every week. So I finally found this. It's a beginner belly dancing class held on Saturdays from 2-3:30, for the next 7 weeks at Yavapai College in Prescott.

This past saturday was my first class. I had so much fun. Just turning 28 I was thinking that I may be one of the oldest ones there. WOW was I wrong. I was one of the youngest ones there. There's probably 30+ women and most are 50+. I ended up standing next to a teenager. She asked me how old I was and when I told her I laughed at her expression. Her eyes almost jumped out of her head and her jaw dropped. Then she said,"Your that old". I replied,"Yep I'm that old, I left my 3 kids at home with their dad." She thought I was about 21. I guess I'm aging very well. She's 17. After our class had started 3 young girls that are probaly 18-21 walked in. Other then that though the others are 50+ which isn't a bad thing it just surprised me.

I had so much fun. What good exercise it was. I don't need to loose any weight but I'm trying to tighten my flabby tummy. This class will do the trick. She started teaching us a routine already. I'm anxious for saturday to roll around again for my next class.

Plugged Back In

So, how did we do with no electronics? We unplugged everything on a tuesday night. Wed. went surprisingly smooth. It seems like every half hour I was asked if some sort of electronic device could be used but I stuck to my guns and didn't allow it. I made bread that day and we turned some of the dough into differene shapes. We had a dinosaur, a butterfly, a heart, a cookie and a monster.

Thursday went pretty well too. The kids were a little more whiny wanting to watch cartoons but again there was no tv. The kids went to school that morning and we made an elephant paper sack puppet that afternoon. In the evening we played games till bedtime.

Friday morning Hunter got up at 5:15am. He crawled into bed with us and just couldn't seem to hold still. Kory was getting frusurated with the constant movement of the bed and covers and finally told Hunter to go play the WII. Unfortunately this broke my plan of a week without electronics. Saturday and Sunday we were having our own little snow storm which kept us all inside.

I have been talking to several friends and have come up with a plan. Several weeks ago I printed out several picts. of dinosaurs. I had the kids color and help me cut them out and then lamenated them. I keep them in a container on top of the tv. Originally this was just for Hunter and the WII but for a week now I 've been using it for all of our electronics. Maddie doesn't seem to mind using some of the dinosaurs herself. Each dinosaur is worth 15 min. We have 10 dinosaurs which gives them a total of 2.5 hours. They can use this for cartoons, the WII or the computer. We've been doing this for almost a week now and it is really working. We have had a few farely warm days this past week. The kids didn't ask once during the day to use a dinosaur they spent it all outside riding bikes, and swinging. It was great!!!

Hinkley Challenge

I thought I'd share this challenge real quick before I begin our week of being unplugged from our electronics. For those who haven't heard of this challenge it's being called the Hinkley Challenge. To honor President Hinkley who was 96 years old when he died we are being challenged to read The Book of Mormon in the next 96 days. This challenge officially started yesterday Monday, Feb. 4th. You can register for free at http://www.hinkleychallenge.com/. This AWSOME website will track your progress and show you a little graph. It tells you how many pages you need to read to reach this goal. You can also type in your town and see how many people have registered to participate. When I registered I became the 7th person inPrescott Valley, AZ. It tells me who the first 6 people were. I thought it was cool the 1st person to register is in my ward. I have checked the website several times today. It is so neat to see that so far 22,752 people have accepted this challenge world wide.

Un Plugging

Kory and I have never really watched a lot of tv. We passed this habit along to our kids. It's been great. All of our kids even Emily now prefer to be outside than inside. I use to turn the tv on at 8 am. The kids would watch The Little Einsteins and then at 8:30 Mickey Mouse Club House. They would be GLUED to the tv. This gave me enough time to do the breakfast dishes, shower and get ready for the day. At 9:00 the tv would go off and it generally didn't get turned back on until 5 which was when I watched the news.

With the cold weather we've been having lately along with my muddy front/back yard it's been really hard on all of us, but especially the kids. Hunter started turning the tv on about 6 am when he got up instead of playing quietly in his room. I wasn't quite ready to roll out of bed so I was ok with this but of course the tv stayed on until 9 am. It has slowly progressed to more and more cartoons. When they don't like the cartoon playing they'll turn the Wii on. When they are tired of that they'll try the cartoons again or get on the computer. For the past couple of days I felt like the tv and computer have been on most of the day. When I do turn it off they cry, throw a tissy fit and argue with me about it. The hole time it's off they're bugging me to turn it back on again. So this morning I decided I was going to stick with it and go back to our old schedule but.... Hunter was up at 5:30 and I was too tired to argue so the TV was on from 5:30 to 7 when I made them turn it off to get ready for school. I did not allow them to watch cartoons while eating their breakfast (another habit that has been formed). It was kinda nice. We talked during breakfast. Breakfast went by faster making them be completely ready for school earlier than usual, and we left the house calmly and on time this morning.

But what a HORRIBLE afternoon we've had. I wouldn't let them turn the tv on after pre-school and all Hunter and Maddie did was whine, whine and whine. Hunter even had a friend come over for a few hours. They played for about 15 minutes and then I let them turn the WII on. After a few minutes of the WII I realized they had shut it off and were watching cartoons. Hunter was not very happy that I made him turn the cartoons off and go play with his toys while he had a friend to play with. The second his friend left he wanted to turn the tv on again. I stuck to it and the tv has not been on since this morning before school. I was shocked to see how bored they thought they were. They REFUSED to play with their toys all day.

So tonight at dinner I announced to the family that TONIGHT we are unplugging the TV, DVD player, WII and the computer for the next 7 days. You should have seen the tears from Hunter and Maddie. I told them that Daddy and I were going to be doing the same thing. I don't think Daddy appreciated me volunteering him to go along with my plan (it's baskettball season), but after spending a few hours with the kids tonight and seeing their reactions to this unplugging idea he is willing to go along with it. The kids wanted to watch a movie after dinner but instead I pulled out a few games. We played Memory and Chutes and Ladders till scripture study and then it was bed time. Once the kids got into the board games they had fun and forgot about their movie. We had a good evening together.

Wish us luck. After the afternoon we've had I am not looking forward to tommorrow. I will bolg about our un plugging experience in a week. Till then...

It's Snowing!

Monday morning we woke up to SNOW! We pulled out the gloves and hats and we all went outside. Kory had already gone to work so it was just the kids and I.
Emily wasn't to sure about it but she caught on pretty quickly.
We had a fun little snow ball fight.
We played for about 30 minutes outside and then we got a little cold. Maddie was even still in her pajama's.
We all came inside. I had Maddie get dressed. Fed everybody breakfast and then the kids went back out for another 45 minutes and played. I'm am so glad we played as early as we did. By lunch time most of the snow was gone. We sure had fun while it lasted.

Count Your Blessings...

I have been meaning to go to Wal Mart for almost 3 weeks now. I have several things I need to get that I can only get from there. I've been babysitting almost everyday the past couple of weeks and I just wasn't going to take extra kids with me. Kory went to Safford this morning so I've been telling the kids since last week that we would go to Wal Mart this morning when daddy was gone. My kids love going to Wal Mart and playing with there toys.

The kids were so excited. I loaded everybody up, started the van, looked through my rear view mirror and saw my back window. It didn't registar at first but I new something wasn't quite right. I got out to go investigate and this is what I discovered.

Due to the rain we received yesterday when we got home from church we parked on the road so the van wouldn't get stuck in all the mud. I didn't find a rock or a ball or anything that could have broken the window. I'm assuming the strongs winds we had last night blew a tree branch into the back window???

I called our insurance company this morning and lucky for us we have 100% window coverage and a zero deductible. While talking to them I also mentioned the little chip we had in our windshield, that happened almost 2 years ago, (which I didn't mention). I was told that a new back window and a chip repair would be done tommorrow and to expect a phone call from a local repair shop. When the repair shop called he mentioned the chip and said because the van is an 02' he'll just replace the windshield and claim it was un repairable. I won't complain. I am most definetely counting my blessings this morning. This isn't going to cost us anything, it will be fixed tommorrow and he is coming to me.

Game Night

Friday night we invited 3 other couples over to play games. One couple got a babysitter. I think we were all a little envious of them. They were the only ones not having to chase kids around. We played several rounds of Uno Attack. The first round we followed the rules and the game lasted about 20 minutes. The following 3-4 games we followed most of the rules but said you could play doubles and play it out of turn. The games were lucky to last 5 minutes with 8 players.
You have to play Catch Phrase when you've got this many people together. This is a game that splits the players into 2 teams (women vs. men usually). The men won the 1st round. The women the 2nd. And the tie breaker was the MEN.

That night we also played Egyptian Rat Killer. This is a card game that Kory's family plays all the time together. I don't get the name but it is a fun game.

We had lots and lots of popcorn and cookies to go around. Thankyou all who came and participated. We had a great time and hope you did to. Till next time...

Master Closet

2 saturdays ago Kory decided to start working on our master closet. I helped him take everything out and went in search of my camera. When I found it he had already taken the shelve down so this is the only before pict. I have. You can see though where the shelve was. This shelve ran along along 3 walls with a hanging rod underneath. The 1st week we moved in one of those rods snapped in half.

Not having a garage everything that would normally be placed in there found its way to our closet. This is what our bedroom looked like after everything was taken out of the closet. We also had a pile on the other side of the bed that's been there since we moved in and another pile of stacked containers/boxes in another corner.
Last thursday Kory brought home the boxes with the face frames on and installed them that night. Friday he brough home the shelves that go inside the boxes. Saturday he finished installing the rods and the shelving that goes on the very top. And then last night (monday)he installed our built in dresser drawers.

All thats left is to buy the drawer fronts in a few weeks when we've got a little extra money. But for now it's done. Our bedroom almost looks empty without all the boxes ligning each wall and stuffed into each corner. Our closet isn't very big so I had a hard time taking a good picture of everything but you can see what a difference we have. Before we couldn't fit everything in there and now we can amazingly. In fact we have one shelf and one drawer that is empty. I'm sure it won't take to long for something to go there. Everything is organized. Most of everything has it's own place. My birthday was last friday and this was one of my gifts. My other gift is a belly dancing class that starts on Feb. 16 for 6 weeks.

Little Miss Piggy

Emily is almost 16months old. She is so much fun. She can often be heard saying mama and dada. She is finally starting to pick up on the sign language that we have been working with her on for so long it seems. She can sign thirsty, more, eat, cheese (her favorite), milk, cold, apple, candy, finished, shoes and ball all on a regular basis. We are still working on socks, cereal, crackers, dirty, juice, doll, thankyou, outside and tired.

I am so glad she has learned these signs that she uses daily. She is completely weened now and it seems this girl is always hungry. Instead of both of us getting frusturated not knowing what she wants, she uses some of her signs and we can usually figure it out quickly. Even daddy's getting the hang of it again. She is always signing eat cheese or eat apple. Sunday after church, not 20 minutes after she had eaten 2 bowls of rice, several green beans and 1/2 a cucumber she started signing she wanted to eat an apple. After eating 1/2 the apple by herself she came up to me and started whining. I asked her what she wanted and she signed, eat -more- apple. This was the 1st time she used 3 signs consecutively. It was almost a complete sentence. WOW! We need to teach her the sign for please.

This morning at breakfast she was chowing down on a bowl of fruit loops. When I was done with my cereal I left my bowl on the table and started to empty the dishwaher. She put some of her cereal in my bowl and was eating out of both bowls using both spoons. Hunter wasn't quite done with his cereal when he decided to use the bathroom. When he came back she had pulled his bowl towards her and was eating his Kellog's Mini Wheats that look like they had been super-sized.
After she tasted the mini wheats she refused to finish her fruit loops.

After Emily ate 3 of these super-sized mini wheats after she had finished off Hunter's cereal, I thought she'd be done. Maddie was feeling a little left out so she filled her empty bowl with Honey Combs and gave it to Emily. I didn't think Miss Piggy could eat anything else but she finished that bowl off too.

We're Back...

Kory needed to finish his sister's job in Utah. So for the past week we've been hanging out there. It was great to see the kids be able to play with their cousins for several days. They all got along great and had a really good time. For New Year's Eve we went over to the church. Several tables were set up with different board games, a movie was playing in a different room and their was lots and lots of dancing. Maddie loved the dancing part. Her and I were out on the dance floor for most of the night. Around midnight breakfast of pancakes, eggs, bacon and sausage was served. Following the early morning breakfast we went back to Grandma's and went to bed.

Tuesday late afternoon we loaded up 7 kids and 4 adults into Uncle Dustin's truck and headed up to the feed yard to go tubing. Uncle Kevin and 5 of his kids were already there having a wonderful time. My little family finally made it to the top of the hill for our turn. There was one huge tractor tube available so Kory thought it would be fun for all 5 of us to go down together. We all climbed on, Uncle Dustin gave us a push and down the hill we went. After what seemed like just a few seconds I realized we were headed towards a patch of dirt that was no longer covered by snow. The next thing I knew I was laying on my stomach, face in the dirt and I could here my 3 children screaming. I couldn't move. Grandpa Heaton (Kory's dad) was by my side and helped me turn over on my back. I still couldn't move. I have never had the wind knocked out of me before. What a feeling that is. In just a few short seconds it seemed all the grand kids were hovering around us and all I could make out was there was blood on the ground and Hunter was pretty beat up. With help we were loaded into a truck and rushed back to Grandma's to assess the damage. The very short trip back to grandma's Maddie kept saying, "Mommy you have blood on your face and so does Hunter"over and over. Grandma took Emily who thankfully didn't have a scratch on her. Kory (whom also wasn't hurt) washed Hunter and Maddies face, while this Mommy was laying on the floor trying to keep consciousness. When I tried sitting up I very quickly became lightheaded and nautious. I was put on the couch and was checked several times to make sure I didn't have a concussion. My entire body was throbbing, and my head felt like it was on fire. It was a horrible feeling to hear my children crying and asking for me and not being able to do a dang thing about it. After a couple hours of Daddy and their grandparents consoling them they were playing with Grandpa once again. Hunter by far looked the worse. He had a nice gash on his forehead with several scratches and cuts all over the right side of his face and 2 fat lips. Maddie had a skinned chin. Mommy ended up with 3 Goose Eggs on her forehead and what looks like road rash, a bloody nose, and a very sore body.

Grandma Heaton took this picture a few hours after the mishap.
2 days later this is what the kids still look like.

Maddies chin looks a lot better. She no longer complains it hurts until she bumps it.

Hunter's face is still very tender. He cried this morning while changing his shirt. He keeps asking when all his owies are going to be gone.

Mommy is down to one goose egg, my skinned forehead is almost healed. It looks very similar to Maddie's chin. I'm hoping by Sunday it'll be healed completely. The right side of my face is still very very tender. It doesn't look swollen anymore but it still feels like it's swollen. My back is very sore. It hurts to carry or pick up anything and I feel very stiff. But we are ALIVE with no stiches needed, or broken bones. It could have been much much worse.

After a lot of talking about our accident and how fun tubing really can be we were able to convince the kids to go to Grandpa's pond that is frozen over. We had several small sleds for them to be pushed around on the ice with. They had a blast. After an hour at the pond we went up to the feed yard again. The kids were brave enough to go down the same hill as the day before but this time with no mishaps. They only went once but they did go. Kory kept saying we had to try to replace their negative experience with a positive one. I was to big of a chicken and did not go down. Maybe next year??? We then went back to the pond and by themselves they went down the small sloped bank onto the ice. They had fun and that was what we were hoping for.

What a way to start off the new year.

It's Christmas

I made the kids matching pajama bottoms and bought matching t-shirts. I tried and tried and tried to get a pict. of the 3 of them. Its hard to believe but this was the best. My baby has developed camera phobia. She sees the camera and she starts screaming.
hunter was quite surprised that Santa brought him a pirate ship.
Santa brought Madelyn a Cinderella and Snow White polly pocketts and a princess purse to keep all the little pieces in.
Santa brought Emily this worm she can pull around. The worm makes funny faces when its being pulled. It also holds three balls that spin around when its on the move. Its quite distracting to her. She doesn't pull it far before she stops and start playing with it.

We invited some friends over for a big dinner. Afterwards the kids played with the new toys, the daddy's played the WII, and the mommies chatted.

Kory took the weekend and monday off. We've had him to ourselves for 5 days. The kids our missing him already this morning. Christmas is one of my favorite holidays. After the many hours of planning, shopping, baking, and all the many other preperations it's hard to see it end in one day. Yesterday was a great day and the kids our already asking when we can do it again.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve afternoon we invited some friends and we all went bowling. We had the adults on one lane and the kids on the other. We were at the bowling alley about 1:30. Only one other family was there. It was like having the place to ourselves. It was great. Both Maddie and Hunter were too funny to watch.


This was the worse game Kory has ever played. Hunter was so excited to learn that he had more points then his Daddy (thanks to bumper pads). Later that night we went to a different friends house for an evening of fondue. Yum Yum. I forgot my camera so I don't have any picts.

The Nativity

Preschool was peforming the Nativity for their families and tonight was the big performance. The kids have been practicing for 2 weeks now. I think all the kids were on a high tonight with excitement. Not one of them could sit still. Maddie played "Mary". Hunter played the Inn Keeper. His wrap kept falling down so he just yanked it off in the middle of their little production.
Amber was our "Princess Shephard" and Jolie was our "Angel".
Bryant played "Joshep" and Jaxen was the "Wiseman".
Good Job Hunter and Maddie.

Heaton Look-alike Meter

MyHeritage: Family tree - Genealogy - Celebrity - Collage - Morph

Heaton Look-alike Meter

MyHeritage: Family tree - Genealogy - Celebrity - Collage - Morph

Heaton Look-alike Meter

MyHeritage: Celebrity Collage - Vintage pics

Ward Christmas Party

Tonight was our ward Christmas party. With Kory being out of town I really didn't feel like taking the kids by myself, but I knew Santa was going to be there and this would be there only opportunity to see him. They've been talking about what they were going to ask from him for several days now.

Maddie was really good. She hopped right up on his lap, looked right at him and said "thankyou, I want a big barbie like Aunt Hanna". I was standing to close to Santa for Emily's comfort. She was crying and trying to climb over my shoulder. This is the first year Maddie would even get close to Santa and this is the only picture I got. Hunter wasn't to sure of Santa. He was right behind Maddie but let several other kids go ahead of him. He just stood there and watched. I had to hold his hand and walk him up to Santa. Santa just bent over, picked him up and placed him on his knee. This is what Hunter does lately when he gets nervous. He starts pulling at his cheeks. It makes him look so funny. But he did talk to Santa while pinching his cheeks the entire time, he asked for a Spiderman.
Maddie's been saying for weeks now that she wanted a Princess Polly Pocket and Hunter wanted a Pirate Ship. I know Santa already has his gift for each of them. Hopefully they wont be to disapointed when they don't get the Barbie and Spiderman that was asked for tonight.
After Santa the kids decorated their own sugar cookies and ate them while watching Frosty The Snowman.
With a cookie in hand Emily finally let me put her down.
After the sugar cookies Maddie and Hunter put together a foam Snowman.
We all had a good time. The kids want to go back to the church again tommorrow and talk to Santa. I told them Santa has to go home now. He has to go to work, finish making all the toys. Maddie said "Santa can't work tommorrow. It's church day and we don't work on church day. He has to go to church just like me." What to say to that??? I told her she was right Santa will go to church tommorrow just like her but he goes to church in the north pole.

Hunter's Nativity Pictures

This afternoon I've been working on putting together a Nativity Scene for me to use during my Nursery Class this week. Hunter decided to draw his own. Josheph and Mary around Baby Jesus in a stable.
This is Mary and Josheph around Baby Jesus. I thought he had also drawn sheep (copying my pict. but he says they are the stable doors. The doors have to be shut to keep baby Jesus and all the animals nice and warm.

Sleeping through the night

Emily is 14mo. old and still does not sleep through the night. For a few weeks now I have been able to pat her back for a few minutes and she'll go back to sleep. Between 11pm and 5am this occurs about 3 times. This morning I rolled over and realized it was 6am and I hadn't gotten up once and neither had Kory. As Kory was getting ready for work I asked him to go check on her just to make sure she was still breathing. Kory came back chuckling. He told me I needed to go look at the girls. This is what he had discovered. Maybe she did wake up but this would be why I didn't hear her during the night.