The Middle Of No Where...

The drive from Prescott Valley to Hurricane Utah is pretty blah. There's not much to see. The trip usually takes about 6 hours. The 1st 1 1/2 hours is to Flagstaff where your in the mountains, it's a little cooler or so it seems and there's lots of green to see. That 1st little part is by far the best of the trip. The remaining trip seems to take forever as there is really nothing there. Several years ago during these long drives when the kids would ask, "Where are we?" We would reply, "In the middle of no where."

On our trip here Maddie looked out the window and seeing this asked, "Mom where are we?" Before I could reply Hunter piped up saying,"We're in the middle of no where!"

A couple of hours later Emily asked, "Mom where are we?" Again before I could reply Maddie replied, "We're still in the middle of no where!"

The "middle of no where" seems to last forever.

Nearing the end of our long drive I decided to pull over near Lee's Canyon to let the kids get out and stretch their legs. We pass by these HUMONGOUS boulders each trip and have never gotten out to enjoy them.

A little cave to explore.

It was so hot!

Lots of red dirt.

Despite the horrindous heat with basicly no shade the kids had fun stretching their legs.

We're Not Here Anymore!

The much awaited moving day has finally come and gone. The kids and I have moved. I knew this past wed would come much too fast. Don't get me wrong, I was excited to move. I am excited to finally live closer to family. To live close to our dear friends that Kory and I introduced to each other and got married just 6 months after us. To have grass. To be home again.

However I miss Prescott Valley already. I miss the weather. It was over 110 here today. It's hot. I miss my house. I miss my kitchen. (I started unpacking today.) I was sweating as I was moving boxes around the house. It's hot. I miss my garden. I miss my chickens/ducks. But what I miss the most is my best friend and her family. April and I have been friends since they first moved into our ward 5+ years ago. At that time it was just Kevin and April with baby Josh on his way. We invited them over for dinner, we hit it off and our friendship quickly blossomed. We have been unseperable since.

I miss my best friend.

I was going through the grocery adds this morning. How could I not think of April and tears came to my eyes.

I started putting the kids bedroom together and pulled out a baskett I bought from Hobby Lobby. Again I thought of April.

I was putting all my free toothpaste on its shelf in the bathroom and thought of April.

I passed by a box labeled "cake decorating" I thought of April. I am so sad that I will be missing Logan's 1st birthday. That probably sounds a little silly to most of you. I know Logan isn't my child but I think of him as one of my own. This is a mile stone that I have planned to be apart of since Logan was born. I think of all of April's kids as my own. I love her children. Today my children were ignored a bit as I was trying to unpack. They of course got a little bored and so I went to pick up the phone to call my best friend to see if her kids wanted to play.

Oops!

Some friendships come and go but I know the friendship between the Heaton's and the Schultz will remain. I know it will change a bit and it will be different with distance between us but we will ALWAYS be friends. April will always be one of my most treasured friends. I snapped this pict. just a few days before we left of these 2 beautiful little girls playing.

Emily and Jenna are best friends.

I know it's only been TWO days but I miss you guys already!

Celebrating our Nation's Birthday!

Saturday we had a 4 ward bbq celebration on the church lawn. The kids got to wear their "party clothes" for the big event.

I wanted to get a nice, good, cute picture of the 4 of them together. All I can say is I tried!!! We are going to be having our family pictures taken soon and some individual picts of the kids. After seeing what I captured I'm nervous all ready. These kids are driving me absolutely CRAZY when I try to take their picts.

Brayden was having a hard time sitting in place so I gave him a prop to help out. Unfortunatley most of my picts now have him looking at where he rolled the ball or it's in his mouth. Brayden is the only one that doens't look like a dork.
The girls INSISTED on having to sit next to Brayden which I think throws the pict. off. It makes it look like Maddie was an after thought.

Hunter can't seem not to fill his cheeks with air when I say *smile*. Emily couldn't NOT fold her arms for the picts. And Maddie well it looks like she's a deer caught in front of a car's headlights. When she does smile it's so FORCED.

Maddie is sufferning from seasonal allergies again this year. Her little eyes are just so swollen and puffy.

My little Sparkler's...

My Boy's...

After trying to take just 1 good picture of everyone which ended up being a bazillion of not so good ones I gave up and we headed to the church.

We enjoyed lots of good foodand desserts.

The kids played lots of water games. Look at Hunter's cheeks. I didn't have to say, "say cheese or smile". I swear this kid is constantly blowing his cheeks out.

Emily was quite aprehensive with the crowd of kids. Her big sister took her by the hand and told her she'd stay with her. They were holding hands and had just let go when my camera clicked. I love capturing moments of my children showing each other kindness and love.

Brayden is feeling very comfortable on his feet and usually walks every where now. Brayden loves being outdoors and was very content to walk around and explore.

To continue with the celebrations we were invited to a friends house after church for a pot luck. We once again enjoyed lots of good food and great company (can never go wrong with bbq ribs).

I just loved the way she decorated the table.

Being this was a pot luck we brought a layered red white and blue jello salad along with a very patriotic dessert.

I enjoy making cakes every chance I get.

Be warned Grandma C and Aunt Hanna. Your birthday's are next Aug 4 and Sept 1. (Uncle Travis your birthday is in there to but my kids are telling me you don't like cake and would rather have a plate of brownies. Your not fun! Did you know this?)I've accumulated several Wilton cake books that are full of ideas. The kids quite often pull them out and talk about who's birthday should get what cake. So far your grandkids/nieces and nephew feel like you would LOVE a 3 tier beautiful red and white lattice wedding cake (Madelyn), Dora the mermaid (Emily) and a Circus cake (Hunter). Lucky for you I keep telling them to keep looking and that when we get to your house YOU get to make the final decision.

After our pot luck dinner we ended the evening with Sparkler's and watching the fireworks from our driveway

Madelyn tried to write her name. While Hunter loved making shapes.

Emily was to scared to hold one and Brayden fell asleep on the couch.

Happy Brithday America!

16 days to go....

We are moving in just 16 days. As I've mentioned before this move is going to be bitter/sweet. When we started telling people we were moving we asked around if anyone would like a few of our prized possessions that we will not be taking with us.

The first being our chicken coop. We've had chickens/ducks for over a year now. My baby is OBSESSED with our only pets. When Brayden gets outside he would crawl now walk to the coop and start knocking/grunting and then cry at the door until someone opened the door. He would stand at the entrance all day if I let him. Most afternoons we would let these little guys out to roam. Brayden would just sit/stand in the middle and watch these little guys run all around the yard. Brayden loves these creatures. He tries to grab at them and hold them. Not once was he ever scratched or pecked at. Our realtor advised us to move the coop before we had our 1st walk through from an interested buyer. So this past saturday this is what we did. Bro. Cornwall brought his flat bed and his catipole mechanism to help out. 3 men, 7 kids and 2 moms taking pictures later this is what we had.
The kids were fascinated with the whole process. The 2 moms had their doubts if this was going to work or not but it did.

The roof stayed on, the walls didn' break, windows stayed intact. I guess they did know what they were doing.

The chicken coop was moved just across the street but becuase the coop was in the backyard the truck had to leave our place via the empty lot behind us and drive around the block.

What a site this was to see....

They did it. Once the coop was set up again it was time to move the chickens/ducks. That's the picture I'm so so so sorry I didn't take. It was fun.

4 days later Brayden is still tyring to figure out where his special little friends went. The other kids say they miss them too. Emily named one of the ducks "my sparkly duck" the rest of us called her

*Sparkles*. Hunter and Maddie will not be missing the collecting of the eggs, shoveling the coop, emptying the chicken bucket at least once a day, cleaning the waterer (you know all the WORK part.) They will be missing the money they got paid to do it. I recently found a little home market store that would buy our eggs and then resale them. We would get $2.50 for chicken eggs and $3 a dozen for duck eggs. I can usually take about 5-6 dozen eggs a month and still have plenty for us to eat. As long as Hunter and Maddie helped with the chore part we'd give them some of the proceeds.

Raising chickens/ducks have been a great experience. We will most definetly be doing this again one day.

It's official...

Need I say more?

Maddie's new dress

My Maddie girl hasn't had any spring/summer dresses for church. All of her dresses has been long sleeve winter dresses. A few weeks ago I was able to pick up 1 spaghetti strap dress that she can wear a white shirt underneath. She has been wearing this dress for a few weeks now and is tired of it. I can't blame her. Who wants to wear the same dress to church every week over and over. As one her birthday presents I wanted to get her a new dress. I've been everywhere over the past 2 weeks and I can NOT find a church dress with sleeves. Not being able to find one I decided I'd have to make her one. So I went through my fabric drawer, her new shirts I was saving for this coming school year and came up with this. The picture does not do it justice. She was quite pleased with her new dress.

Look who's "6"

This past friday was Maddie's 6th birthday. As with tradition for our family we had pancakes for breakfast. Maddie got to blow out candles and eat 6 whole pancakes! We had 2 of our dearest family friends come over for dinner and cake to help Maddie celebrate this big day.

"Littlest Pet Shop" birthday cake. The birthday girl was quite pleased. I got a big hug and a kiss for this cake. I'm glad she liked it. It was one of the most easiest cakes I've done and took less than an hour. I must be finally getting the hang of this cake decorating business.

She's not excited at all to open her gifts.

Her favorite gift was the "Littlest Pet Shop" house. These houses are $40-50 bucks. After Christmas my friend called from Sam's Club telling me they had this house on clearance for $20. This was still a little much for my pocketbook. Lucky for me my friend is great at negotiating deals and due to a much damaged/torn/ripped box she was able to get it for $15. Needless to say Madelyn was thrilled with such a gift.

Maddie had a wonderful birthday. We love you sweet heart!

Rumor has it....

It's true!! We are moving. This move is going to be bitter sweet. The kids rooms are stripped down to the bare necessities.

I have a pile of boxed items that has steadily been growing.

We moved to Prescott Valley in Jan. of 2003. We came because Kory had been accepted to Embry Riddle Aeronautics. Our plan then was to live in Prescott Valley for the 2-3 years it would take Kory to graduate. We'd possibly stay for another year to build up his hours or move if he was one of the "lucky" ones who got hired right out of school. Seven years later we are still here. Once our children started arriving Kory's priorities changed. He dropped out of flight school, worked for someone else for a year and then we began our 1st business Wood Designs by Heaton Taylor.

After almost 2 years into the business our partners came to us wantingto move closer to family. We seperated and soon became Cave Man Cabinets. It seems over the past 4 years we have come to many "forks in the road" and have had to make some tough decisions. At each fork we have chosen to remain in Prescott Vally and continue to work for ourselves.

Like most with the economy we struggle month to month to stay afloat. We have decided that we need to make some big changes if our company is to survive in this current economic crisis that in our personal opinions won't be letting up any time soon.

And so this is the reason for our upcoming move. My parents built an awsome home about 4 years ago. Knowing tough times were ahead they were prepared and built a basement apartment into their home. All of us kids have known that we would be welcomed if need be. After much fasting, prayer and consideration of different options we have chosen to move home. The best part about this apartment is that it truly is an apartment. We will have our own kitchen, our own entrance, our own bathroom and bedrooms. We will be living downstairs from my parents but it will be our own place for the next year. We will continue to live our own lives.

We are moving to a place that our business's overhead will be quite less than what we have available to us here in Prescott Valley. We hope that our business will thrive with these changes. We will be keeping our AZ license and getting a UT license so that we can work in both states. We feel good, scared, anxious but good about these upcoming changes for our family.

Kory has work here in PV that will probably keep him here until sometime in Aug. Being school starts in Aug. I don't want to uproot the kids to a new school after just 2-3 weeks of school starting again. The kids and I plan on moving the end of next month so that they can get settled in a new home, get to know the neighborhood kids and make new friends in Primary. I want them to have familiar faces when school begins. We hope to have some of Kory's siblings come soon after to help load up the shop and move it to Utah.

This move is bitter/sweet. I have loved living in Prescott Valley but have always wanted to move closer to home. I miss not being close enough to participate in some of the family gatherings/ special occasions. When we lived in Utah we were present for each baby blessing, every baptism,extended family home evenings that my in-laws would put on, etc. Since we have moved to AZ we have missed more of these special occasions than I can count. We chose to bless 3 of our 4 children in our parent's wards to make it easier on our families to be able to attend. I am excited to be able to attend some of these special events. The year Hunter was born he had 7 other cousins born. Starting the end of this July all these cousins turn 8. The baptisms will soon begin with Hunter's nearing the end this next April. How fun to be able to attend all these upcoming baptisms becuase we will be living closer to family.

I will miss Prescott Valley. We moved here just after our 1 st anniversary. Our married life has been built here. This is what we know. I will miss our friends, our best friends that live across the street, our ward. Despite moving numerous times over the past couple of years we could never seem to get out of our ward boundaries. We've been in the same ward since we moved here. We are on our 4th Bishopric. We know EVERYONE in our ward. Between Kory and I we could name everbody and probably have a little story about each family in our ward. We love the weather here. We get a little of each season without the extremes. Our family has grown here. I will deeply miss Prescott Valley and our life we have had here. But it is time to move on and start a new chapter to our life.

Kory is doing a job in Utah tommorrow. Being the trailor will not be full with cabinets we decided to fill it as much as possible with items we won't NEED over the next few weeks. I've kept a small box of toys and things for the kids to do over the next few weeks that we are still here but have packed everything else. Kory is taking our 1st load to our new home. Ready or not here we come.

Happy Father's Day

For Father's Day this year we did something a little different. We created (seeing it done by someone else on their blog) a recycled gift for our dad. Being we never buy IBC Rootbeer or Cream Soda and especially not in packaging like this the kiddo's were thrilled. Over a couple of days the kids were able to drink it all without our daddy knowing it. I rinsed and dried the bottles and then allowed the kids to fill them with some of our daddy's favorite treats.

Kory does NOT have a big sweet tooth so we filled the bottles with Pistachio's, Cashew's, Corn Nuts and his favorite sweet treat, Reeses Pieces. My kids insisted that daddy would like the licorice too but I think that was more for them. I let the kids pick pictures that best describes their Dad to help decorate the front of the bottles.
They did good! This really was a fun gift to make and it came from the kids. I allowed them to do most of it. They chose the treats, the scrapbook paper, the clip art and even got to help cut everything out using my paper slicers.
Good Job Kiddo's. What are we going to do next year?

Emily's Owie

This past saturday several families in our ward got together for a barbeque at a local park. We had great food, great company and the kids had a blast playing kickball. After the kickball game Miss Em' took a great fall off the platform of the swingset. I'm still unsure how she got so badly scraped but she sure did a great job. Even her belly and sides were scraped up. She cried and cried and cried. She was crying for Grandma and Grandpa, she was crying "I just can't do this!" (brought a smile to my face as I myself hasve said this about 4 times in my life. All of which have been said right before I was given an epidural.)

When we got home Kory had her lay on his lap so that I could put some Peroxide on her and a bandaid. Bandaids make everything better at our house. This tragedy was no exception.
Obviously a little ol' bandaid wasn't going to cut it this time. Her wound wasn't bleeding heavily but it was oozing. (I was suprised to disvocer how much smeared blood I had on myself when I changed that night.) I love my husband, he's such a quick thinker! Knowing we didn't have a bandaid that was going to work he suggested using a panty liner. It worked! I taped the panty liner to her back and she immediately calmed down and went to sleep. Today, 2 days later, up and down her spine is turning black and blue but her wound is healing. As long as she doesn't get tapped, hit, pushed, hugged, rubbed or back ups to a wall she doesn't complain. We went swimming today and I thought the cholorine might pose an issue but she didn't complain. Tommorrow morning she has Gymanstics. The past few classes they have been using big cushy items that the kids lie on their back and then do back flips over. Hopefully her excitement of another gymnastics class will be enough to keep her mind elsewhere when it's time to do these. I really think today's issues with her back was caused from being scared that it would possibly hurt. There is nothing WORSE then your child getting hurt and not being able to do alot for them. I would have traded places with her in a heart beat if I could have.

Great Coupon Week

The last couple of days I have been able to get some AWSOME deals using coupons.

One of our grocery stores is having a GREAT sale on Post cereals making them $1.00 a box.

Using the sale and 2 coupons I was able to pick up each box for $.50 a piece. My family LOVES these cereals. Even without a coupon a $1.00 a box is a pretty good deal. I just may have to go back and get some more. I don't paticularly care for Wal Mart and I try really hard to avoid that store as much as possible. I could name several reasons why but I won't get into that right now. However, I was pretty excited to see them advertising these wipes for $1.89 and knowing that I had 2 $2.00 off coupons in my coupon pouch. In the end I got these for FREE!!! (even though I had to explain to the cashier several times why I shouldn't be charged for them and ended up having to get a manager involved)

Look at all that toilet paper! Did you count them? Well what are you waiting for?

15

I got these for FREE too!

I love couponing! It can be VERY time consuming, annoying at times, tedious work cutting all those coupons but it is so worth it! I spent $2.00 on everything pictured above when regular prices would have been close to $50.00.

I love couponing!