Chase and Liz Thurston

Is this really working?

2011-10-17T14:23:00.002-07:00

Wow! I just discovered that in addition to deleting my last 20 downloaded apps , the most recent apple update allows me to to blog from my iPad directly from the blogger website without any e-mail work arounds. Maybe I will do better at blogging more frequently now. Maybe.

Today we went with Sam's preschool class to a farm. They had lots of different activities to do, some Sam loved- the train ride and the peddle cars and the swings, and some Sam hated- the bounce house and all of the animals. Except for ducks and the baby chickens. Those were okay to him. Hopefully his aunts got some cute pictures that I can post later.

While it was a fun adventure it left me feeling too hot and extremely tired. Basically the same way I feel anytime I have to venture outside so far this pregnancy. Really... I am always tired no matter what I do. Thankfully I am not too sick yet- as long as I put food in my belly every 2-3 hours. Sam finally seems to be accepting that we are going to have a new baby that is not him. He tells me where the baby is, and that the baby's name is pumpkin. All of the kids are really excited, but they don't seem to quite get how long it will take. I have told them how tiny the baby still is- but I am still getting asked if the baby is kicking yet and if they can feel my belly. Hannah is thinking a little bit more long term and asking if she will be old enough to change this babies diapers. We told her no when Sam was born- but I think a 9 year old will be much better at it than a 5 year old. It will be a whole different experience this time around having big kids that can help effectively instead of having practically all babies in the house.

Picture Day!

2011-10-13T17:52:00.001-07:00

Today was picture day at school. We didn’t order any, so we decided to take some at home. Let me know what you think!

(yes- that says bigger, I am horrible at getting all four kids in one picture)

And 2 eyes, 2 ears, 1 nose and 1 mouth bigger. You get the idea… right?

We are having another baby! The kids are very excited. We are only 4 weeks along. I know that lots of people wait till they are out of the miscarriage “danger zone” to tell everyone, but we are really happy so we wanted to let everyone else be happy with us. And worse case scenario, you can mourn with us. Best case scenario- you will be a little more understanding of me not having it all together right now.

First Day of School!

2011-07-28T09:16:00.001-07:00

Kids went back to school on Monday, and everyone is excited about this except for Sam.

Hannah is in 3rd grade with Mrs. Shidawara, Brad is in 2nd with Mrs. Davis, and Bekah is in kindergarten with Mrs. Wojo (wojtulewicz). And yes, her father-in-law is the same Mr. W who taught me, Aaron and Dylan at Emerson back in the day.

They love each other so much! At least when they know they have made it to the end of summer without killing each other…

This picture made me laugh- parents were trying to get the girl behind Bekah to smile for a picture and she was being an absolute snot to them. At first I wanted a better picture of Bekah, but I think her face exactly mirrors my face as we listened to the other family. And I didn’t want to sound as obnoxious as they did.

Bekah was my first child to not cry when I left her classroom, but Sam did. Me and Sam have had a good time being buddies at home most of the time, but mornings are hard- he either stays at home and cries when the kids leave, or he goes for the ride and cries when all the kids get out of the car. One morning he was sobbing “I want my brother and sisters at home!” This morning he did fine till we pulled into the garage and declared “I don’t have any friends here anymore!”

Hannah is getting baptized!

2011-07-07T13:57:00.001-07:00

On June 12th Hannah turned 8 and she has made the decision to be baptized. It will take place July 9th at 1:00, at the LDS Queen Creek Stake Center, and afterwards we will have food at our house. If you would like addresses or any more info please e-mail me at Chaseandlizblog@gmail.com.

Makeover party

2011-06-25T13:45:00.001-07:00

Dad and brad left sam with the girls today... he wanted his nails painted too... At least he picked blue.

Blogging from my cell phone

2011-06-24T20:27:00.001-07:00

This works?

This message was sent using the Picture and Video Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

Note: To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime� 6.5 or higher is required.

2011-06-24T20:01:00.001-07:00

Test

2011-06-24T19:47:00.001-07:00

Test

Blue Living Room

2011-03-14T10:26:00.001-07:00

After living here for 3 1/2 years I finally decided to paint my living room. I had already done the Boys bedroom, Girls bedroom, and the girls Bathroom. (each in a different color) And thanks to the donation of a new camera, I was able to buy 2 gallons of paint this past weekend. It would have been more paint, but our only car needed to go in for some repairs and once again my budget was limited. But it turns out that it was a blessing in disguise. 2 gallons of paint is just a little bit too much work in a weekend when my 5 foot 3 inch self is painting 9 foot walls by myself. My legs are still aching from climbing that ladder so much on Friday and Saturday. During Nursery on Sunday I sat my bum on the ground to play with the kids and tried not to get up for anything. Doing the jump at the end of every SunBEAM during singing time was pure misery. So anyways, here are the pictures:

(looks like the lens on my camera needs cleaned!)

I did one wall “cool cobalt” and got one other wall painted in the lighter “clear blue sky”. The blue was a little bit shocking at first, and I was losing confidence in my paint choices at first. But it is growing on me. I am excited to buy 1 more gallon of paint each week to finish painting the living room and kitchen in the lighter blue. Regardless of the new paint color, it is really nice feeling to have clean, shiny new walls instead of the dirty un-washable flat paint the builders used. As I was trying to wash the walls before painting the old paint was coming right off if I had to scrub even a tiny bit to get dirt off the wall. Which is why I don’t make my kids scrub their artwork off the walls. I am excited to finally be doing some decorating. It will look tons better once all the walls are painted and I start hanging up real curtains, instead of that too small orange sheet that Chase has hung up over the back door.

I did my grocery shopping this morning. I have found that it is less busy, and the cashiers are generally less grumpy than on a weekend evening. The guy at wal-mart complimented me on how well I did with coupons and ad matching. The lady at Fry’s just scowled at me when my total went from $65.48 to $31.81.

Hannah lost 2 teeth this weekend. The tooth fairy actually remembered to vist our house 2 nights in a row, and got each tooth the very first night. Sometimes the tooth fairy is too tired to get to our house.

I am excited to have spring break for the next 2 weeks, only because that means no homework! The day after our homework fiasco, Brad finished his homework in 22 minutes, and got 100% on his practice spelling test. That’s what makes it sooooo frustrating when he refuses to do it- he can do it perfectly and quickly if he just chooses to do it. And on the day that it took 2 hours he had already played at a friends house for an hour, and taken a break for snack time before starting the homework.

Bekah sees her cousin Londyn at preschool once a week, and once a month at our family dinners. Occasionally it is a little more often. She found out that Londyn was going to be a on “vacation” for a whole long week. That night I heard her sobbing in her bed and Hannah was trying to console her. “why are you sad?” Londyn is going on vacation for a whole week!” “where is she going?” “I don’t even know- she is just going to be gone for soooo long, I can’t see her and I don’t even know where vacation is at!”

Sam is going through his terrible 2’s stage. He yells at us fairly frequently if he doesn’t get his way. He is always trying to drink out of my cup- even if it’s just water it is better if it is mine. If we try to get him to do anything that he doesn’t want to do he yells back “stop bossing me!” And his favorite thing to say to me is “I need you mommy, I need you!” when he wants to be held. And I don’t think he realized just how big he is. All the rest of my kids had a younger sibling by this age- Sam is still the baby and he uses that to his full advantage.

cell phone pictures

2011-03-13T11:51:00.001-07:00

Chase still had some pictures on his cell phone, and the last time we put money on it we remembered to save them to our computer.

Brad cut the tip of his finger off in a bike chain. Not a fun message to get at work.

Not sure if I will ever do this again.

Baby Sam

Guitar Hannah

Sleepy Time

Focus on the Positive

2011-03-11T13:10:00.001-07:00

So today a lot of bad things happened- Earthquake and tsunami in Japan, possibly dangerous waves on the western coast of the United States and on many Islands. Hearing things like this makes me worry a lot- I have a brother and a dog-nephew over in California that I want kept safe , and there are also kids from our school district over there on a field trip. (I just read that there was another earthquake in Japan.) I worry a lot, even about people I don’t know. I am sure some of you are like me as well. Not to take away from the seriousness of the situation, but to give you something to smile about before you got back to reading about the ever climbing death and missing people numbers, I give you this:

I pass by these lovely animals every time I take Chase to work. One is outside of “The Pork Shop” , one is just gazing over the wall of someone’s house. When the swine flu fear first hit, the pig had a giant mask covering his nose and mouth.

Spring has hit my yard. I have just a tiny little bit of green grass sprouting in my front yard, the trees have new leaves opening, and one of my 12 freeze damaged plants finally has new growth on it.

Now you can go back to reading bad news. You could also find something to do to help someone. Whether it be donations to help people in Japan, or making sure your children feel loved today, do something to make the world a little bit better.

And no more ads- Google AdSense doesn’t like my blog.

Anger Management

2011-03-10T11:52:00.001-07:00

We need some at our house.

Well, I was going to do a long post about what a rotten day we had yesterday. But I used all my time up redesigning my blog, and now Sam is demanding my attention. So I will give you the short version: It took over 2 hours to get Brad’s homework done, I was in tears, Brad was in tears, an old neighbor lady was spying on us to see if someone was being murdered at our house, there was screaming, and yelling, and I now have a broken scrubber brush and a bent pot. I think me and Brad are just too much a like, and it’s days like these that I really wish Chase got home in time to help with homework. We picked him up after dinner, we sent the kids to bed, and Chase bought me Lindor chocolate truffle mini Easter eggs from Wal-mart to make me feel better. They were almost what I asked for. I felt like the worst mom ever. The only way I could have done worse was if I hurt him physically. (I hurt inanimate objects- not my children) Days like that don’t happen frequently, thank goodness, but I know it is entirely up to me to do better regardless of how Brad acts. So I went to bed early, slept really good, gave Brad a big hug before school and we promised each other a better day. I took time to regroup this morning before Chase left for work by taking a long hot bath, drinking Dr Pepper and eating more chocolate. Today will be a better day. Now to end on a happy note (since Sam is no longer sitting on my lap blocking my view of the computer screen) our neighborhood is so cool- the tumbleweeds have parties in the street.

We first noticed them on Sunday, and there was even more of them then. These pictures were several days later , and they were still taking up an entire traffic lane and piled several feet high. It made me laugh every time I drove to wal-mart or QT . I saw a guy with a shovel and 1 garbage bag just looking at them one day. I don’t know if he ever did take them on, but they were gone one day, so somebody did something. It made me a little sad to have the road back.

Haircuts

2011-03-09T14:43:00.001-07:00

We went to Tanya’s house for haircuts last week. Funny how something as simple as haircuts can make me so proud of my children. Hannah decided that she was chopping hers off again. She went with a cute chin length cut. She wasn’t copying anyone else, and she wasn’t concerned with what people would think of it. She wanted her hair short, so she cut it short without any self doubt. I thought Bekah was going to do the same thing when it was her turn. She often does things simply because Hannah does it, and she adores her big sister. But no, she didn’t care what Hannah did this time. Bekah just got a tiny trim. I would love to have Brad’s hair grow out to more than a buzz cut, but he doesn’t like it long, doesn’t like me to comb it, and really doesn’t like and gel or hair spray in it. So he got it cut exactly like he wanted. during the middle of haircuts I had to leave to get Chase real quick from work while Tanya continued working on the kids. I really didn’t think that Sam would get his hair cut without mom or dad holding him. He hates hair cuts, and any time Daddy mentions it Sam gets mad. But Tanya managed to get him in the chair, Brad was an awesome big brother and put on a puppet show to keep Sam entertained, and the trim was done before I got back. I love my kids, and love that they are starting to make good decisions for themselves.

Hannah’s new hair cut- she was the only one to go with a different hairstyle.

Price Matching

2011-03-08T10:17:00.001-07:00

I enjoy participating in Bountiful Baskets, but I really hate doing anything early on Saturday mornings, and I although we got a lot of good produce we weren’t using everything we got. I am not knocking the program at all- it does save a lot of money and puts a lot of nutritious food into lots of homes. But I wanted to see if we could use the same $15 on just produce that we would actually use. Our Wal-mart does price matching, so I saved all of our grocery ads from the Wednesday newspaper and looked for the best fruit and veggie deals. And this is what I came home with:

5.53 lbs. bananas
3.53 lbs. navel oranges
2.05 lbs. seedless grapes
3.20 lbs. gala apples
3.00 lbs. strawberries

I made out with 17.31 pounds of fruit for 14.65. And I know that my family will eat every single bit of it. Sure, we probably would have gotten more with the baskets, but I doubt I could get my kids to eat as much of it.

Did You Win?

2011-03-07T10:16:00.001-07:00

Using a random number generator, The winner of my adorable bag of bean bags is:

Grandma Kathleen!

I hope you get lots of use out of them with your grandchildren, I will be in your neck of the woods in about a week and will drop them off at your house!

Are you sad that you didn’t win? I already sold my extra set of these, but check back often and I will do another give-away in the future!

Friday Give-Away (pictures added!)

2011-03-04T13:11:00.002-07:00

Today I have a special made by me gift to give to one of my lucky readers. Sadly, I do not have any pictures to show of it! I thought I had gotten my camera bandaged up enough to take a few last pictures with it, But it is now telling me that it can’t read the memory card and to enter a new one. So sad. So I will try and describe for you what you can win this weekend. I raided my scrap drawer and found enough super soft minky (the fuzzy material with raised bumps) in pink and black to make a really cute little sack. Hot pink at the top and black on the bottom, with a black tie to close it tight. For inside this adorable bag, I made 10 bean bags out of more minky material. These turned out so cute, I really wish I could post a picture. They are an assortment of pink, purple, blue, a different pink, black, and a pink/white/black/green paisley pattern. Not all of them are the bumpy material, but they are all soft and cuddly. My kids love the bean bags I made for them awhile back. They make up all kinds of games to play, and it is neat to see them using their imaginations instead of zoning out to tv shows or video games. If you would like to have this for your very own, just leave a comment and you will be entered into the drawing! I will even pay to ship it to you if you aren’t close by. You have until Monday at 10 a.m. to enter, and the winner will be selected randomly (begging will not increase your chances, but it will make me feel good.) If there is a lot of interest I will make Friday give-aways a habit, so spread the word!

I might be able to get a picture up before the contest is over. Someone read about my camera plight on my last post, and sent me an e-mail offering me their old camera. How cool is that? They said I can have it whenever I see them next. They are awesome. And if they want credit for their generous offer they can let the world know in the comment section!

What? As soon as Chase touches my camera it works enough to take pictures? Here you go:

The colors are kind of funny, but now you have a better idea of what you will be getting! The Black panel on the bottom of the bag shows more when it is being carried from the top, and the black tie is attached in the back so it won’t get lost.

Colors

2011-03-03T11:35:00.001-07:00

I made this for dinner earlier this week.

And I love the colors. They make me happy.

The kids did not like the asparagus though. One child compared it to seaweed and the rest of them didn’t have a chance. It was set in their brains that they would not like something that looked like seaweed.

Now that I am in my own house, I have slowly been painting the inside walls. Very slowly. I have finished 2 bedrooms and one bathroom. But I finally decided to tackle the the living room/kitchen area. And that meal up there was part of my inspiration. Along with a blue and green owl poster I bought from wal-mart last year that I have never put up. I even went to wal-mart and picked my colors.

Sam is pointing out his favorite color. And my camera really didn’t do a good job getting true colors. But- I was going to do “cool cobalt” as my accent wall, “clear blue sky” for the rest of the walls, the “new grass green” was going to be my fish tank stand and bookshelf color, and I was going to do “orange marmalade” picture frames. I was going to find material for curtains and throw pillows to match. And I was going to do all of this with the $200 left over from our tax refund.

But then, as I was taking these paint pictures, I dropped my camera. it was already missing the knob on top to change settings, but it was stuck on the automatic setting that worked ok for most of what I was doing. Now the battery compartment won’t close. So I duct tape it, right? Now, inside the battery area there was a little clip that held the battery in place. That broke off too. so if I let the battery door hang open and push the battery in with my thumb, and I use the index finger of same hand to click the button on top it will take a picture. oh, and when I do get it to turn on, the lens doesn’t come out every time. about 2/3rds of the time is comes out crooked and gets stuck, then I have to turn it off and back on to see if it will work this time. All while keeping my thumb on the battery. And dirt and dust can now get in from the top, and the bottom, potentially gunking up the inner workings. So… Do I bring color into my house? Or get a new camera to document our lives and keep photos on my blog? So sad that I can’t do both. On the positive side, we used almost all of our tax refund to pay off a chunk of our debt. Now it will take less time to save up again for whatever I don’t get right now.

Kids Music Concert

2011-03-02T11:24:00.001-07:00

Tuesday night my kids participated in the school k-3 general music concert. They sang really cute songs, and had lots of fun. The school had a lot of parents and families come out to watch the performance. While it is awesome that there was so much support, it was more support than anticipated. The bleachers in the gym were completely filled up and they had to bring in a bunch of the bench/tables from the cafeteria for people to sit on. And after that I still saw people sitting on the floor or standing against the walls. Hopefully next year they will separate it into more nights and people will still come despite the craziness of the night- no seats and having to park 5-10 minutes away from the school.

The k-1sts sand animal songs and made cute animal masks in art class to wear. The songs were: Party animals, Carnival of the Animals, and Cat Went Fiddle I Fee.

Brad says this was his turtle mask, but I think it looks a little more like a frog. He instisted on wearing a brown shirt for his turtle shell. We couldn’t understand the words to their songs very well, not sure if it was the masks that covered their faces, the music being to loud, or if it was just that 200+ 5,6, and 7 year olds are hard to understand.

The 2nd and 3rd graders sand songs about Peace and love. They all dressed in tie-dye shirts and made peace sign necklaces that they made in art class.

Now just take a moment to check out the “peace signs”. yup- that’s the design used for every single one of them. Made me giggle a little bit at how many times it was done wrong. And Hannah wearing hers upside down made it even more fun.

Hannah’s songs were My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean, a Peace round, Put a little love in your Heart, and Pizza love. The words were much easier to understand with the bigger kids. And the kids had so much fun doing choreography for the last two songs. And Hannah was in the back row so she stayed standing and was much more into the motions than the kids sitting down. Lots of fun, but I was very glad I had Chase just keep the little ones at home with him.

And did I mention that my readers are totally awesome? I had a record # of page views for February, and as a thank you I will be doing a little give away this weekend of something made by me! Check back on Friday for details!

roll-up fail

2011-03-01T15:44:00.001-07:00

I tried to do an easier version of my fruit roll-ups yesterday. I used wax paper instead of plastic wrap. It doesn’t work. Don’t do it. The wax paper became one with my fruit roll-ups. It was fruit paper. Chase told me to just give it to the kids like that, but the thought made me gag a little, and I threw the entire batch into the garbage.

So don’t use wax paper with fruit roll-ups.

I don’t have any pictures of my fail. But I do have never before blogged about pictures of my kids.

Do dress your child in gigantic aprons.

Do give your children boxes, because boxes become awesome airplanes.

Do give your kids cereal.

Because it’s awesome when they are this excited for something so easy to make for lunch.

Strawberries

2011-02-28T08:12:00.001-07:00

We had soooo many yummy strawberries this weekend. One of my favorite presentations was the crepes I made for lunch on Sunday. Yes, we counted this as lunch, but it really feels more like dessert.

I sliced 2 pounds of strawberries on Saturday night and let them sit in the fridge with a little bit of sugar on them. or maybe a little bit more than a little bit. They were so sweet and juicy the next morning. I made the crepes from scratch and filled them with strawberries and whip cream, and topped with powdered sugar and more strawberries. If we have a lot of fruit, sometime I will spread it all out on the counter and the kids get to maker their own. This time is was all about the strawberries. The kids were sad at first about no options, but by the end of the meal the only complaining was when we put the food away and said no more!

Bountiful Baskets

2011-02-26T10:45:00.001-07:00

This week our basket seemed a little weak.

We have a 3 pound bag of potatoes, 3 tomatoes, 1 pound asparagus, broccoli, lettuce, 2 bananas, 1 mango, 8 baby pears, 1 cantaloupe, 1 pound of strawberries, and a coconut.

Bekah says its not a coconut, cause coconuts have 3 holes in them like a bowling ball.

We also paid $11.50 extra to get 8 pounds of strawberries. On Monday it seemed like a really good price, but I just checked ads and they had them a little cheaper at Fry’s. kids have already eaten 1 pound of them fresh. I will also do some dips to go with them, make some into fruit roll-ups, and make some type of strawberry desert for the Thurston family get-together this weekend. Maybe throw in some strawberry crepes too.

I only like Chicken gravy

2011-02-24T06:00:00.000-07:00

I was having a good day, making a yummy dinner, kids were cleaning, we were listening to good music, and then it all went wrong.

For dinner I was making “chicken rolls” or maybe you could call them home-made hot pockets. Canned chicken combined with cream cheese, wrapped up in Pillsbury crescent roll dough, and cooked till golden brown. I love it- the first time I had it was in the hospital after the birth of one of my little ones (one of the first 3 cause I was at the yucky hospital). I had already eaten my completely forgettable hospital dinner when my mom brought these in, leftovers from what she fed the fam at her house that night. And a little container of chicken gravy to go with it. So simple, and yet so delicious. Now it is on my list of ultimate comfort foods that I don’t make as often as I would like. I enjoy the chicken rolls as left overs plain, but the first night the gravy is what makes it for me. So like I said above- everything is going great- rolls turn out perfect:

and then I go to make the gravy. I opened one packet (yes- packet, only store bought mixes make the cut in my house. I want nothing to do with that made from scratch nonsense!) and it was fine, opened the second packet to dump in the pot. It wasn’t till I dumped it in, forever mixing it with the first, that the smell reached my brain and I realized it was the wrong gravy. Why on earth did I even have a packet of Brown gravy in my house? (Chase!) And if I had realized that one of them was wrong, I would have only used one and we would go light on the gravy and it would be fine. but it was to late, and we had “Brown Chicken gravy” that made me gag, and no car to get the right stuff. Chase and Brad insisted it was fine, the other kids usually eat it plain anyways, but I couldn’t do it. I had mine plain and was very disappointed in myself for the rest of the night for ruining my own dinner by not looking at labels. Bleh. It wasn’t the way it was supposed to be. The agony of it was eased a bit the next morning when I had my leftover plain chicken rolls for breakfast and they were exactly the way I wanted them then.

Brad’s plate:

Blue Sky

2011-02-23T14:54:00.001-07:00

I love using my treadmill at least a little bit each day. But I find myself missing the fresh air and sunshine from when I would rollerblade. So now after each workout, I go outside and lay on the trampoline. I enjoy the beautiful Arizona weather, feel the sun on my skin, and marvel at the blueness of the sky.

And the craziness of Sam’s hair.

It may sound silly, but just spending 5 minutes doing nothing in the sun is a major morale booster. You should try it. Even with Sam interrupting my peacefulness I feel better.

Cupcakes

2011-02-22T10:18:00.001-07:00

On Sunday night me and the kids were watching food network (they still haven’t turned off our extra channels) and they had shows about cupcakes. Which made me want cupcakes. And thinking about it- I didn’t really want to eat the cupcakes so much as have fun making them. On Monday morning I went to Wal-Mart and got all of my supplies before Chase headed to work. We used 3 different boxes of Pillsbury cake mix, homemade frosting, sprinkles and enough food-coloring to make you poop rainbows for a week. The kids loved them, and they are probably my best cupcakes ever. And they were pretty.

We did one pan of 24 mini cupcakes, and only 6 of them made it to the frosting stage.

And I suppose sometime I should invest in proper cupcake storage pieces… so I don’t use up practically every plastic food container in one day.

This made for a fun activity while the kids were out of school. As I was reaching in to take one pan out of the oven Sam came running into the kitchen screaming, it made me jump and bump my pinky into something hot and reacting to that my hand it the top of the oven. My pinky has a little blister on it now, but the oven oven just took away some of the skin on the back of my hand. Yesterday the blister hurt worse, today it’s the missing skin. And I guess I should be thankful that it’s the back of my hand and doesn’t get bothered to much from using it.

Oh yeah...

2011-02-21T20:37:00.000-07:00

After a long day with all the kids at home, and Chase at work, I got in a nice hot bath to relax. But it burns horribly whenever I put my left hand in the water. Wha... Oh yeah- that's the hand I tried to cook in the oven with my cupcakes. And yes, it has been such a day that it did take my mind a few moments to connect the dots.

On the surface Chase didn't seem to concerned "don't you know you aren't supposed to cook you hand?" but I know he loves me cause he spent part of his lunch break getting me tacos and diet dr pepper.

And I did make my best cupcakes ever. (its not hard, I haven't made a whole lot of cupcakes in my life) And I do intend to post pictures of their multi-colored awesomeness tomorrow.

Sam is a rock-star

2011-02-21T10:06:00.001-07:00

So I tried to put Sam’s hair into a mohawk on Sunday. And I think I might finally agree with Chase that Sam needs a hair cut.

He really went to church like this… But my hair gel was not up to the challenge, and by the time he got home it was just sticking up strange.

Chase made me show Sam in the mirror what he looked like. In hopes that Sam would hate it and I would fix it. But not, Sam loved it! he thought it was very cool. and gets mad anytime Chase mentions a hair cut.

Sam is a rock-star, and he will Chop you!

Bountiful Baskets

2011-02-19T11:56:00.001-07:00

Once again Chase went and picked up our basket this morning, and I slept in for a little bit. And here is what we got:

3 mangos, 6 baby pears, 4 apples, 1 cantaloupe, bananas, 1 lb. strawberries, 2 pounds of carrots, 1 bunch of spinach, 6 yellow squash, 11 sweet potatoes, and 5 chunks of mysterious root thing.

We already ate the strawberries (soooo good, kind of wishing I had paid for extra strawberries). I will have to slice the mangos up and put them in the dehydrator for my kids to like them. The difficult things this time around are the squash, sweet potatoes, and the root things. We will have to get creative.

Bountiful Baskets just posted on Facebook that the mystery root thing, which we thought might be ginger, is actually a “Jerusalem Artichoke or Sunchoke”. And while I may have a name for it, I still have no idea what to do with it! Any ideas?

Update for Emily- my “sunchokes”?

Goodbye Disney

2011-02-18T13:29:00.001-07:00

We have had extended advance digital super should be expensive cable for the last 3 months. And the kids have gotten super spoiled having so many good kids shows for their viewing pleasure. But our free trial is up, so we packed up the cable box today and took it back to the cable store. For now, with the cable just going into our TV we still get some extra channels. But pretty soon a worker will be out to switch it back to just the basic cable we get through our HOA. A whopping 22 channels. Our children will be sad, but I am not spending $50 for the couple of channels that were safe for our kids to watch. What are you doing to keep household expenses under budget?

I need to have more faith

2011-02-17T15:13:00.001-07:00

Me and Chase are trying harder to budget our money. We really really want to be out of debt, and I keep doing stupid stuff to get us more in debt. There is plenty of money coming in if I make good choices, and if I can get more debt paid off. And if I do really good this year, I am getting a new sewing machine for Christmas. So for this week I thought I was doing really good- I was only a tiny bit over budget, and I wasn’t supposed to be using the debit card again till Friday. I got into the car to take Brad to the dentist on Wednesday and realized we were going to need more gas. But if I filled up with gas on Wednesday, it would throw off the whole budget for next week, and that tank of gas wouldn’t last us till the next pay day. So I panicked. And put it on the credit card. Then at the dentist I had allotted a certain amount from our checking account for the dentist, but I panicked and didn’t use the debit card at all and put even more on the credit card. I had this idea stuck in my head that I needed to hold onto all of my money to feed my kids. That afternoon I received a discover gift card in the mail. it will help with the groceries. It may have even counterbalanced the extra tank of gas had I not used the credit card. And silly thing was, I knew it was supposed to be coming. I was doing everything right, putting all my money where it was supposed to be, and I have one little setback and panicked and made the debt even worse. If I had a little more faith, and a better memory, I could have had a little less stress in my life this week. The 25th we get a bigger than normal paycheck, plus our tax refund should be getting here around that time. I will be putting as much as I can towards debt and then running the numbers again. Apparently we need to increase the budget for gas- I don’t think getting a gift card on the day I need to pay for gas is going to happen all that often.

And here is some of Brad’s artwork, he is very imaginative:

“2 guys are trying to get a walking-talking piece of gold that broke out of a box, but they fell on spikes that makes their blood come out, and then the blood turns into lava.”

Roll Recipe

2011-02-16T13:13:00.001-07:00

Several of you have asked for my roll recipe. I haven’t been ignoring you, just procrastinating. I got it from my mom, and I don’t think she minds me sharing it.

1 1/3 cups warm water
1 egg
1 stick of butter
6 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
4 1/2 cups bread flour
1/4 cup dry milk
2 teaspoons yeast

Starting with the wet ingredients I put it all in my bread machine (an awesome birthday present from my mom) and end with the yeast in a little indention at the top. and then I turn it on to the dough setting and let it go. I use “bread machine” yeast, but it might work with regular yeast too. Sometimes I make my store bought bread flour last longer by substituting 1 cup of it with home ground wheat flour.

(my little helpers)

When the bread machine beeps at you you take out the dough, form rolls and let rise for 20 minutes or more. Bake at 325 degrees for 20 minutes. I am sure if you are a good cook you could figure out how to do these rolls without the bread machine. I am perfectly content not trying that.

Last night we used the wheat flour in the dough, and used it as our pizza crust!

I made a dozen little pizzas with the kids. we used Ragu spaghetti sauce, and the only topping we had was cheese since it was on sale last weekend.

The kids each ate 2 of the little pizzas. After making a dozen little ones I was getting tired and just used up the rest of the dough to make the last pizza that we saved for Chase.

I think fry’s has cheese on sale again this weekend, and I still have some Ragu in the fridge, so we will definitely be having this meal again. The only problem was that I ate too much of it!

Happy Valentines Day!

2011-02-15T15:01:00.001-07:00

I hope every one of you had a good valentines day! My day turned out all right in the end, although I go into it thinking the worst. The thing is that I have a husband who doesn’t believe in it. He says that he would rather do nice things for me year round instead of just on one day when they jack up the prices of everything and make it about money. I think he should just man-up and be good to me that day. I will get him trained right eventually. We have all eternity to reach perfection. But this year, it didn’t even matter if he wanted to spend money on me, the money wasn’t in our budget to be spent on each other. But I still felt a little bitter about that at the start of the day.

Hannah, Brad and Bekah had parties at school and got to exchange valentines and treats. Brad’s teacher sent several notes home requesting “healthy snacks” for valentines, but we ignored it and sent snickers. it seemed that most everybody else did to since he came home with more junk food than Hannah did! He was a very good big brother though and shared willingly with Sam since he was the only one that didn’t get a party. And he didn’t just share the bad candy- he let Sam have anything he wanted.

I went to my best friends house and had a jack-in-the-box taco pity party focused on our unromantic husbands. We were hoping our little ones would play together, but they were mostly just shy and it wasn’t until we only had 10 minutes left that they started playing good.

After school I was very good about not eating the kids candy- I had one sugar cookie (delivered by a very kind sister-in-law) then drank diet soda and walked on the treadmill for awhile. The kids did their homework quickly, and there was no fighting. By the time Chase got home from work I was very happy, and was in the mood to lovingly cook dinner for my family. And I didn’t feel bad that all my valentines were from Chases sister, my kids extras that I paid for myself, or home-made by my kids. I was happy that my family was happy.

And it helped that I lost 2 more pounds.

Bountiful Baskets

2011-02-12T08:11:00.001-07:00

Ever heard of it? It’s a fabulous, multi-state food co-op. You put in you $15, they combine it with everyone else’s $15, and then they buy as much fruit as possible, get it trucked in to hundreds of pick-up locations and it is all split evenly between participants. Did I mention it is not a business? Everything is volunteer based. the entire $15 goes towards fresh fruit and vegetables. There is a $1.50 fee added on and I am pretty sure that goes towards costs of keeping up the website, and transporting all of the fruit, but for sure it is not making anybody rich.

Some weeks are better than others. This week in my standard $15 basket (you can also pay extra to get an all organic basket) I got: 1 lb. strawberries, a bunch of bananas, 1 cantaloupe, 7 Minneola oranges, 5 Braeburn apples, 3 lemons, 2 bunches of broccoli, 1 lb. carrots, 8 ounces of mushrooms, 4 orange peppers, and a small sad bunch of romaine lettuce. Anyone want to go to the grocery store and tell me how well I did? Meh, I think its worth it, and now that we have all of it we have to eat it and be a little healthier. They also have “add-ons” each week, extra products that cost extra. I added on 5 loaves of Alpine Valley 9 grain bread for $10. I love it, but the kids aren’t fond of “seed bread” and Chase thinks it’s a waste of money. I will freeze most of it, and everyone else is forbidden to touch my bread. It makes such yummy toast in the mornings. They also offer bulk fruit or veggies (based on the season) other types of bread, tortillas, cookies, I think they even offered pumpkins in the fall. Its always changing each week, and it’s fun to see what they offer. If interested check out: http://http://www.bountifulbaskets.org/

They have the offerings up for order on Mondays and Tuesdays, and then pick up is on Saturdays. If you do decide to try it out there is a $3 first time fee, to make sure the site you pick up from has baskets there to put your produce in. When you go to pick up remember your own basket or box or grocery bags to transfer your food into. Now I am going to go have a yummy breakfast of toast and fresh fruit!

Sam-I-Am

2011-02-11T21:22:00.000-07:00

Tonight I read "green eggs and ham" to my kids. I think it was the first time that Sam was big enough to actually follow the story a little bit. It was a lot of fun to see his face lite up each time i said his name while reading, and he seemed to think the whole story was me having a conversation with him. He would answer "No!" whenever i would say "do you like green eggs and ham?" and the only place he ever wanted to try them was in a car, a train, but not on the boat. And it was also a big no whenever it involved animals. Me and Hannah were both laughing so hard by the end of the book it was hard to keep reading out loud! When we were all done he climbed up onto my lap and got a silly smile on his face. Looking deep into my eyes, he leaned closer, and closer... And then he licked my nose and ran away laughing. I have a really weird 2 year old.

2011-02-10T21:05:00.000-07:00

Good mom?

I did all the routine things today: got big kids to school, laundry, walk on the treadmill, feed the kids, make sure they don't kill each other. But, as i was making dinner (a super healthy kraft Mac n'cheese) Sam came into the kitchen saying "funny diaper! Funny diaper!". I looked down at him to see him wiggling his bum making his very soggy diaper swing back and forth. So i ask him, "Sam, do you need a new diaper?" his reply was to run away, screeching "no no no no, funny diaper!". So i neglected to add changing diapers to my routine list of things to do? And my kid is totally ok with that, entertained even. Great.

I got a letter from school about Brad, apparently i have been letting him stay at home to much. One more absence from school and he will be considered "habitually truant" and him and his parents may be required to go to court. So how many absences equals the school sending out letters like this? They listed 3 in September and 1 in January. Bahahahah. One more makes it habitually? Great.

We have plastic plates in lots of different colors for the kids to use. Sam made it to the table tonight first and started eating off of the purple plate. Bekah was devastated, how could she possible eat off of the remaining blue or green plate? She tried to convince sam to switch, when that didn't work she threw a royal, the world is ending, tantrum. She went to her room and screamed for 5 minutes, and you know what I did? I caved, and i got her a new purple plate and switched her food over. Teaching my kid to scream until she get what she wants. Great.

So... We finished out the evening by watching wipeout. Which was actually pretty great too. Especially when asked "mommy, if you won wipeout, would we have enough money for Disneyland?

2011-02-09T20:30:00.000-07:00

Busy day, and I am soooooo ready for bed.

I let chase sleep in this morning and got kids off to school, treated myself to a qt diet dr pepper and jacks tacos for breakfast, drained the massacre fish tank, took chase to work, walked 3 miles on the treadmill, did a load of laundry, picked up kids from school for early release day, made brownies, helped kids with homework, ground a bunch of wheat with a hand crank grinder, made wheat rolls, picked chase up from work, finished making a yummy dinner, hemmed chase's pajama pants that we got over a year ago, made Hannah's school shirt skinnier so she would wear it again, did some other mending and swore off any more sewing projects till i can get a new machine, flossed 3 sets of teeth that aren't mine, tucked children into bed, got a shoulder massage from Chase, and now I am trying to blog from my iPad. It was a good day.

But... Bekah and Sam have been wearing the same pajamas for over 24 hours, and my kitchen is a disaster. I didn't actually do any cleaning today. I still have time to clean up, but i think i am going to just veg in bed watching tv till i fall asleep.

Update on Chase

2011-02-08T11:42:00.001-07:00

Well… Chase is Chase.

He goes to work everyday and brings home the money that I get to spend. This month he has been helping to train and “mentor” the new employees, so his schedule shifted from being there 7-3:30 to 10-6:30. I have started taking advantage of this by sleeping a little bit later in the mornings and letting him get everyone to school. I have to do all the afterschool homework stuff and dinner without him, so I figure it all evens out.

He didn’t get a promotion this last time around, but his friend with baby #5 on the way (or maybe here already- he doesn’t tell me these things) did get it, so how can we be unhappy about that?

Good news from work is that Chase got 100% on a quiz and won a drawing or something and is getting a small bonus (I guess small is relative- it’s big enough to make me happy, and about equivalent to one day’s pay) and although he didn’t get the promotion they have asked him to pretend like they did when need arises and I think he will get better pay for the time that he does that. But even if he doesn’t get better pay, it is at least a step in the right direction.

He started our taxes this morning, and I was getting all excited, thinking about what we will do with our refund. But because someone was super slow in getting tax laws organized, or something, we can’t even turn our tax forms in till the 14th.

Boo.

And on Monday he came home on his lunch break and made me some super yummy food because he loves me. And I didn’t tell him that I already ate, because I like it when he makes me food. And it was yummier than what I made for myself.

Update on me

2011-02-07T15:31:00.001-07:00

I can officially say I am 10 pounds less fat! I bought myself a treadmill, (no- I can’t afford it, it went on the stupid credit card!) and set up shop in the living room. That way I can use it everyday while I watch the kids. The sad thing is that this is not the first time I have gotten to this point. Last year I started rollerblading every day and I was losing weight really well till I crashed and messed up my face enough to make me never want to do that again. (Click here to see the picture, i am not posting it again) And I started to put all the weight back on. So here I am, again finally, but this time I am going to keep going. next goal is 6 more pounds and I will weigh what I did right after Sam was born.

Dead Fish

2011-02-04T15:41:00.001-07:00

I have a big fish tank. 50 gallons or so. It is filled with fancy guppies. Beautiful fancy guppies that are like the Rabbits of the aquarium world. There are 7 store bought adults, and 80+ home birthed babies. I seriously don’t even have to do anything besides feed the parents, and they are multiplying like crazy. The one other fish in the tank was a gross, 5 inch long, chocolate brown plecostomus. (Think those ugly fish that suck on the glass and just hang there.) Yesterday I noticed it’s swimming pattern wasn’t quite normal, kind of looked like he was bumping into things a bit more than usual, but I didn’t think much of it. But after the kids were home from school someone pointed out that it was acting funny. It had twisted its body into a u shape and was wiggling much more than normal… like full body spasms. So I told the kids it wasn’t feeling well and turned off the tank light. Fast forward to this morning, I turned on the light to feed the pretty guppies, and the gross fish was now an even more gross dead fish. I try to be tough and not rely on chase for silly things, for instance I kill spiders all on my own. But I hate taking care of the dead fish. If it’s a little tiny one, I can handle it. All you really need to do is net it and flush it. but the bigger the fish, the more I don’t like doing it. This one was a job for Chase. I told him it needed to be done, but somehow he left for work with the dead fish still there. Crap. my visiting teacher was coming over with 2 of her kids, and I have this big ol’ scary dead fish in my living room. So I went ahead and did it myself. Sam saw me with it in the net and ran away screaming. Bekah was yelling “not in the girl bathroom!” but I wasn’t listening, it was shortest distance. I dropped it in, and it made a bigger splash than I thought it would, and I quickly flushed as Bekah and Sam watched. We had successfully taken care of the body. But then, just as I was reaching to close the toilet, it came back! I screamed and then the kids screamed, and I flushed again, and it didn’t go down, and then I tried to flush again, but the tank hadn’t refilled yet. I slammed the lid shut, and got out of the bathroom as quick as I could. Just great. Now I had my visiting teacher coming over and I had this big ol’ scary dead fish in my guest bathroom. She usually doesn’t have to go, but sometimes her kid does, and how scary would that be? To see that thing floating around when you go to pee. Bye-bye potty training progress. This was seriously stressing me out. Finally I went back in and flushed again. Thankfully it finally went down, Bekah has agreed to use that bathroom again, and I had just enough time to calm down before people were knocking on the door. They had no clue that we had a crisis in our house today.

favorite cheap meal

2011-02-04T06:00:00.000-07:00

This is my current favorite cheap meal. $1 box of fettuccine noodles, white sauce made from scratch (butter, flour, milk, garlic, pesto and anything else in the spice cupboard that smells good) and homemade rolls. (my mothers yummy recipe with one cup of the bread flour replaced with home ground wheat.)

The kids scarf it down and me and Chase fight over the leftovers the next day. Only problem is Sam. The kids start with 2 rolls, if they finish the noodles they can have a 3rd roll. Sam always wants just a couple of bites and unending access to the rolls. He is always the last one done, and he tries to sneak in and get them off the pan if we aren’t watching close enough.

I Gotta Feeling

2011-02-03T05:58:00.000-07:00

Brad does not like homework, and he doesn’t have much patience for it. I do not like homework, and I don’t have a lot of patience for Brad not liking his homework. Homework time is not a good time to be in our house, and it usually drags on and on and on, especially with Chase working a later shift this month and not being home to help. Some days Hannah does a better job helping Brad than I do. But we finally made a break through. Brad’s favorite song ever is “I gotta feeling” by Black Eyed Peas. Having it playing on repeat while he is doing homework, or even chores, somehow allows his brain to focus on the task at hand and get it done. Problem is I don’t always think of it until we've already spent a considerable amount of time working on homework.

Sick Hannah

2011-02-02T18:05:00.001-07:00

Hannah has had a bit of a cold this week. She seems mostly ok in the mornings, but by the time she gets home from school she is a tired, sniffly, grouchy girl. And I have been telling her and Chase “that’s it! Tomorrow she is staying home to rest and get better.” But when tomorrow gets here, she seems fine, and she loves school so much that she hides and symptoms from us so that we let her go. Does anybody else have children that fake being well just to go to school? This is my Hannah Banana zonked out on the couch at 4:30 in the afternoon. 2 seconds after this picture Sam fell of the couch and was crying loud enough to wake Hannah up, and then Hannah was crying cause Sam woke her up (as if he had done it on purpose!). I pointed out to her how yucky she is right now, and she finally agreed that tomorrow she needs to stay at home and watch house shows on HGTV. Problem is that I will probably have to convince her of that again come morning.

Who uses all these Towels?

2011-02-02T06:45:00.000-07:00

Every week I have to wash 2 loads of towels. It seems like every time I turn around there is a new towel in the laundry hamper. And no one will admit to it. The extra towels are kept under the sink in the kids bathrooms… which is probably why they are using no restraint in using them ALL. So as I was doing laundry yesterday, instead of getting mad and frustrated at the entire family for the mystery towel user, I found a new place to put them. Each child gets one towel. The rest are going on the high shelf in the laundry room.

Hmmm… I don’t make very neat stacks… I will add “laundry room cabinets” to my list. Now hopefully I will spend a little less time doing laundry, and pay a little less for energy and laundry soap.

And I just found 3 more dirty towels.

Fruit Roll-Ups update

2011-02-01T15:04:00.001-07:00

I finished the blueberry fruit roll-ups… And I am not a fan. They have a grainier texture, and leave a funny taste in my mouth. Blah. I am not telling my kids this- (power of suggestion) and hopefully they will like them and they don’t go to waste. I will stick with strawberries from now on, or maybe mix a little bit of blueberries into the strawberries.

Fruit Roll-Ups

2011-02-01T10:45:00.001-07:00

A couple of weeks ago me and my husband had a pretty big fight. like, not talking for 3 days big. We made up, and all is well. The most lasting thing from that fight is that I added $400 to our debt from buying a treadmill (not what started the fight, but it only made it worse). I love the treadmill, but the whole fiasco gave me a reality check on our debt amount. I keep saying we want out of debt, but then I do stupid things like that. Chase isn’t getting much overtime lately, they increased our monthly premiums for health insurance, and I insisted Chase enroll us for dental insurance again, and Bekah turned 5 and is no longer eligible for food assistance from WIC. Meaning I have a smaller budget to work with and not much of a buffer zone if I go over budget. I went to the store on Saturday night, got everything on my list, and went over by $20. Not good, it means I have even less to get through the next week with till it resets at the next paycheck. I got home and realized that I hadn’t put any snacks for the kids on my list. Instead of stressing out I realized I could just make some. I have stuff to make chocolate no-bake cookies sometime in the next week or so, my kids love the “gorilla poop” but I am not thrilled with giving them chocolate for afterschool snacks. Then I thoughts of my frozen strawberries and blueberries that I keep on hand for making healthy smoothies for my breakfast… when I actually feel like being healthy. So yesterday I got out the blender and the dehydrator and the strawberries and got busy.

Strawberries, a bit of sugar, and some water to thin it out. (with the lid on)

I spread plastic wrap over the dehydrator trays to keep the liquid contained. Then started the dehydrator. It took a lot longer than expected cause the crack in our dehydrator seems to get a little bit bigger each time we pull it out of the cupboard.

After the kids were sound asleep in their beds and it was to late for snack time, the fruit was finally ready to be rolled up. I just start at one end and roll up into a long tube, then I use my kitchen scissors to cut each roll into 4 pieces. I then store them in a air tight food container to keep them fresh longer.

It’s a bit cheaper over all than store bought fruit roll-ups, it has a lot more fruit, and even though I added sugar, I know exactly what my kids are eating.

My kids love them, I love them, and I feel good that I didn’t spend any extra money on them this week.

Today I am trying out the blue berries. We have never tried that flavor before, so hopefully the kids like it!

one more present for Bekah

2011-01-30T06:22:00.000-07:00

Bekah thought she was all done with birthday presents, but on Christmas eve Aunt Tanya surprised her with an extra present. With how much Bekah adores dressing up fancy, Tanya knew that this skirt needed to belong to Bekah. It is her current favorite to wear to church on Sundays. And any other day that I will let her get away with it.

Christmas

2011-01-28T13:42:00.001-07:00

For 6 months we planned for our trip to Utah. It was the next big expensive adventure for us. Than we got back and had 5 days to get ready for Christmas. I felt very rushed, but in the end Santa delivered all of the presents, and we had kids declaring that it was the best Christmas ever.

We hung out with the Thurston's on Christmas Eve. Yummy dinner, a white elephant game for the adults, the kids had drawn names for a gift exchange, we attempted to have 14 kids act out the Nativity, all the kids got new jean blankets from grandma and grandpa, we went to the temple to look at lights, and then our kids got to open new Christmas PJ’s that I had made for them.

Bekah was Mary

Hannah was an angel

Brad was one of the very excited shepherds.

And Sam was the truck driver.

And I did not manage to get a picture of all of them together.

Christmas morning we woke up bright and early. kids got to check out their stockings, but I made them wait till after breakfast to open anything else. It helps make it last a little bit longer.

I loved how Hannah organized her candy.

I finally woke up the younger two so we could get going!

Sleepy babies!

Chase making our traditional Christmas Breakfast: sausage, scrambles eggs, and Pillsbury cinnamon rolls. We usually have orange sweet rolls too, but when you go grocery shopping on Christmas eve you don’t always find what you want. Thankfully Santa left little orange sodas in the kids stockings so we still got “orange sweetness” with our breakfast.

He was willing to cook the food without being asked. But he would have nothing to do with smiling for the camera. I took a dozen pictures, and this was the best.

Kids in their Christmas P.J.s. I was going to get a Christmas fabric, but I was too late. The closest holiday prints I could have gotten was St.Patrick's day. And I was running out of shopping days so Hannah was in on the surprise and helped pick out the material. This was the first time ever for me making shirts, and they turned out mostly ok. Hannah added in a purple undershirt with a higher neckline, and Bekah woke up with hers on backwards.

The kids all bought each other toys to open. Mom and dad were going to give them new clothes, but we handed out those before the Utah trip. Santa brought new scooters for Brad, Bekah, and Sam, and roller blades for Hannah. And for the entire family Santa got a Wii! Chase received toy trucks and fireworks from the kids, and I got puzzles, candles, lotion and socks, and perfume.

We soon headed to my parents to exchange gifts with them, my mom made the kids adorable pajama pants and found cute shirts that matched almost perfectly.

It took forever to get a decent shot of my kids. They were all being so happy and goofy. I guess that’s better than crying!

We had dinner at my grandmas with lots of aunts and uncles and cousins. I chipped in a bagged salad, and rice Krispy treats. And Brad bragged to everyone that would listen about his mom’s amazing rice Krispy treat skills. We exchanged homemade Christmas ornaments and surprised grandma with a new flat screen TV that we had all pooled our money to get for her. Grandma also gave us a gift card and some beautiful painted things to add to our collection. (including a new “time-out” seat that they are sitting on above, although its so cute that they keep dragging it out of the corner to play with)

We made it home loaded up with our treasures without incident, (last year we had a flat tire, and then a flat spare, and we had to switch all of our stuff to my in-laws car for the ride home). I hope all of you had a great Christmas too!

Last post about our Utah trip.

2011-01-27T16:55:00.001-07:00

I promise.

And really, all of you have probably linked over to Blogs written by the other Thurstons that managed to finish posting about the reunion before I did.

We had the official reunion day in one of the hotel meeting rooms. We had a yummy catered lunch, and somehow mine and Chase’s table became the kids table. we crammed in extra chairs, and my kids loved having cousins sit with us, and I honestly didn’t mind that we had no adult conversation and more spills at our table than every other table combined.

We played family face bingo till everyone one a prize, the kids all got to pick a present to keep, and the adults all got to pick a present or steal from someone else. It was a lot of fun. Except for me winning a giant case of Monster? energy drink when my bath towels were stolen. I refused to to even take it back to our table, but thankfully someone else appreciated it a little bit more than me and we worked out a trade. We had a wonderful program with singing, a piano performance, old home movies, story telling, gift giving, laughing, dancing, we did just about everything you could fit in to 6 hours in a hotel meeting room with 62 people. The highlight for my kids was probably the visit from Santa!

OK, it doesn’t look like Sam appreciated it all that much but by the time he had gotten his candy cane and his present he thought Santa was all right. Santa delivered gifts for everyone at the reunion- a new pillow with personalized pillowcases for everyone! We had been instructed to pick out a yard of material for each person in our family and mail it up for a secret project. They took a little bit of everyone’s material for a blanket for great grandma Thurston, and we got back the left overs in pillowcase form.

And then there was the biggest pillow fight I have ever seen, the little kids (and some of the big people) had so much fun breaking in the new pillows.

We eventually quieted down to listen to a story. We had a wonderful time with all of the thurstons. We ended the day with all of the men giving a blessing to uncle Brent. He had been sick for a long time, and it was a very touching end to our day.

We are very thankful to Darla and Scott for planning this reunion, for all the time and money they put into it to make it happen. Within a month of the reunion Uncle Brent passed away, and we were so thankful to have one last party with him and no empty chairs.

We finished the day out by going on a quest for cream of weber cottage cheese for my mom(it’s the only cottage cheese she likes) swimming in the hotel pool, and had pizza delivered for dinner. here are the last of the hotel pictures:

one of many meals we made out of the gift basket from Darla and Scott

Sam working hard on the Ipad at the desk.

view from our room.

I had such a hard time waking up these sleeping beauties our last morning in the hotel. Chase woke up at 2 in the morning and decided it was time for us to come home. He was the only one that felt that way.

Chase did such a good job packing up the car. We started the trip with 4 pillows, but with each of us getting a new pillow on the trip, and Bekah and Hannah both getting big character pillows during the bingo game, we went home with 12 pillows. You could hardly tell in this picture when we were still in the hotel parking garage… but after 8 hours in the car they were all over the place. And that truck that Sam is holding? we got it from the bingo game as well, and it makes siren noises. It didn’t last long in Sam’s lap.

Now this next picture… I need to tell you, Chase parents came to visit us the night before we headed home. They said “don’t go home the back way, go through Las Vegas, you will be safe if you go through St. George and Las Vegas.” Did we listen? No. Will we listen next time? yes. I took this picture from the window of our car sometime around 4:30 or 5 am.

We are sitting at the edge of the road, see the tire tracks in the snow, going off the road? those are from our car. See the stranger in the white coat? (one of our heroes) he is looking down and away at where our car was… checking to see if there are any parts left of our car. (yup, I didn’t think to take pictures till we were safe and back on the road). We were driving on a little highway in Utah. It was raining. Rain is ok. Then it turned to snow. We were kind of mesmerized by the snow, we had never driven in it like that before. But then it started accumulating on the road and then we remembered. Snow is bad. And the next thing we knew we were slowly sliding off the highway and rotating to the side. We took out a little reflective highway marker with the side of our car, and a whole lot of bushes. We avoided the big boulders, and eventually came to a stop with our back bumper up against the hillside. we were pointed in the right direction to get back on the road… And we were stuck. Our car was running, but not getting us anywhere. There was smoke, I thought, and that was extremely scary to me until I realized it was just steam from our engine melting the snow. Then came some headlights, hurray! A big huge UPS semi truck pulled to a stop on the road and told us that he almost followed our tracks right off the road. Thankfully he did not, because we would have been toast. He didn’t have any way of helping though, and only stayed till a couple of guys in pick-up truck stopped to help us out. One was from Alaska and had some experience pulling people out of the snow. It stuck in my head that he kept saying “I don’t think we can get you out”, that’s how good we were stuck. So I told all of the kids to close their eyes and start praying. They did have a chain, but we would have to carefully steer between 2 boulders if they could get us moving at all. Chase managed to get our little girly SUV into 4 wheel drive, and with about 6 tugs (chase insists it was only 2) they slowly got us up onto the road. All of my kids were safe and sound. The only casualty was one of them peed their pants as they woke up to us sliding off the road. Our rear bumper is scratched a little and has one hole in it. A piece of plastic from under the front end came off and is somewhere in Utah still, you can’t even tell it’s missing though, unless you are driving to fast then it will start to make an odd whistling sound from that front corner. Before we crashed it seemed like we were completely alone on that highway. no headlights coming from behind us, and no tire tracks in the snow in front of us. By the time we got back on the road the big UPS truck had cleared some of the snow, a few SUVs, a tanker truck, and our heroes in the truck, went down that road in front of us, making it a little bit easier to keep traction. I have never felt more blessed and watched over. As we drove, the highway was looking even more scary. I soon realized that on that mountain, we crashed at the last possible spot to crash and still be alive. The rest of the way had short guardrails (that would probably only help us by flipping our car onto hits roof as we slid into them) and steep drop-offs. We made it down off the mountain in one piece and stopped, along with our heroes, at the first gas station that we saw. Me and the kids just needed a bathroom break, and the guys were making sure our car was still drivable. The two men were satisfied with leaving us on our own after that, but they wouldn’t accept payment of any kind- not even a soda from the gas station. We never even learned their names. The rest of the trip was pretty routine. We were able to help another stranded car that had hit a rock in the road that our car was high enough to just drive over. Well, we didn’t help them that much- we had no room in our car to take them anywhere but we did drive till we got cell service and we relayed a message to get them help and gave a detailed description of where they were stranded. We had breakfast in Paige at a deserted burger king and drove through the worst fog I’ve ever seen coming down out of flagstaff. For all the good things that happened on our trip, I don’t think I ever want to go to Utah in the winter again.

The end!

almost done

2011-01-12T09:31:00.001-07:00

I didn’t realize it right away, but I am on a 7 day course of antibiotics instead of 10. That means that I have one more pill to take tonight, and then my body can go back to normal. Much better than taking medicine all the way till Saturday. I am missing the kids awards assemblies today- Hannah and Brad were both getting awards for 2nd quarter in 2 different assemblies. Too tired and dizzy to drive over there, to tired and grouchy to sit through both of them with Bekah and Sam. I will go and lay down on the couch a rest for a bit. They are coming home from school early and I get to take them all to the dentist this afternoon. This is Sams first time, and he pouts and says “no go dentist” anytime the other kids excitedly talk about it. That should be fun, right?

Checking out

2011-01-07T09:00:00.001-07:00

Just like last year, my January is filled with all the fun of having a Kidney infection. I am on day 2 of antibiotics, and while my infection symptoms might be slowly getting better, the side effects of this medication are interesting to say the least. I am tired. Very tired. And I think I may feel high. Like I float instead of walk. Therefore, driving is probably not a good idea. And my pee is green. Did I mention I took a pill just a little while ago? I have been meaning to finish blogging about the month of December, but that will just have to wait so that it makes sense.

Utah vacation day 3

2010-12-28T09:46:00.001-07:00

We woke up on Friday feeling much better. I cautiously ate a little food and kept it down, and Chase’s eyes were completely normal again. We met up with all the other family to try and do a group picture of everyone. and this is what came out:

A whole lot of us! They had shirts made for us, the front say “got family?” and the back says “I do!” then all the names are listed, and it is 63 and counting. And Jaime made really cute flowers for all the girls hair. We then took a bunch of other pictures with the family in various groupings. The ones that we were involved with are these, the first cousin picture:

And grandma thurston with all the great-grandkids. I think these pictures are hilarious, Sam really didn’t want to be in any more pictures at all.

Sam kept throwing tantrums so I finally picked him up, said throw your tantrum here! and deposited him right in front of everyone else and they were taking pictures as fast as they could before he was out of frame again.

I think this is the one that finally worked out the best, and it is cropped really close cause Tanya is forcing Sam to stand there on the side, but poor Kariah is facing the wrong way! We were bribing with m&m’s and ipods, but sam just wasn’t having it.

They took a bunch of other pictures, (you can take a look at Jaime’s blog for some more) and while they were doing that me and the kids camped out in the hall, not wanting to go far just in case they needed us some more, and already seeing them waiting for the few people that needed to be recovered after they had wandered off before the official ending of pictures. The kids got my camera., most of the pictures were of walls, doors, carpet, and fire alarms within our little hotel hallway.

Cousin Hyrum was hanging out with us too, and Bekah loved taking pictures of him.

Yes. I was completely worn out by this point. But it was time for lunch finally, and we were headed to Buca di Beppo. (yup, all 60+ of us seen in that first picture!) Some of the family were walking, but with how sick I had been less than 24 hours before, we decided to drive over. I had been worried that I wouldn’t even be able to eat anything for lunch, but it was soooo yummy! There was yummy salads and bread, chicken parme- something, spaghetti, other noodles with sauce and chicken, and for desert there was chocolate cake and cheesecake. I wanted to keep eating and eating, without even acknowledging the calories I was consuming, I knew I had to stop cause of my stomach being weakened from being sick. The kids had a blast at the real restaurant (which we don’t really do that often) and it was fun being with the whole rest of our family in our own room of the restaurant. We had our own booth to keep the kids contained, but I didn’t have to worry about being loud and bothering other people so much.

We spent the rest of the afternoon in our room resting, then the younger kids got to go swimming and/or play with other cousins and grandma and grandpa for the evening, while me and chase went on a special date to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir with David Archeleta Concert in the conference center with Hannah. It is supposed to be for ages 8 and up, but since she is 7 going on 13 I thought she could handle going. We road the on the street train thing (tram, trax, light rail?) from our hotel up to temple square, and looked at lights as we made our way through to stand in line to get inside. We were in plaza 9 (second section up on the floor) in row P, all the way on the aisle. Hannah had a great view. We could have gotten a little closer, but we wanted the aisle so we wouldn’t have to climb over people to get to the bathroom. It turned out to not be an issue, Hannah went when we first got there and was able to sit through the entire concert. But the end seat did give Hannah an excellent, virtually unobstructed, view of the entire stage. Hannah’s favorite song was the cat and the mouse. But pressed anymore about what she liked about the night she blushes a little and grins and giggles and says “the whole night was my favorite!” when we were finally done with the concert we headed back through temple square. Hannah requested to go into the tabernacle so we did. (she had read about it in her Friend magazine and wanted to see it for herself) It was amazing to me that it wasn’t that long ago that we were holding general conference there, yet it seemed so completely inadequate! Even Hannah was surprised at how small it was. We decided to head back to the hotel, since I was a little worried about which one of my kids would start throwing up next, when we came to the train station and comtemplated getting on. It was much more crowded than on the way over, and I wasn’t sure exactly which train would be headed back by our hotel, and I just didn’t feel good about it, so we didn’t get on. As we continued walking the train passed us once, and then we passed it a few minutes later. I don’t know if that train turned at some point or if there was something wrong with it, but by the time we got back to our hotel not one train passed us again. (it was supposed to- the tracks are there). We collected our kids from grandma and grandpa T’s room, and all was well. No throw up anyways. Sam was running around without pants on, Bekah was about to fall asleep, and Brad was losing his voice. All was well. Well enough for me anyways, and we were soon all tucked in at our hotel room and fast asleep. It was a good day.

Utah Vacation Day 2

2010-12-22T08:39:00.001-07:00

We left grandmas cabin and headed farther north into the cold. We enjoyed a very light snow fall during our drive through some curvy, up and down highways on our way to the freeway. Hannah did not enjoy this part. Her stomach was still not settled, and she had a little bit of residual throw-up, which chase kept dumping out the window (I was worried about it just hitting the side of the car) without stopping and it was my job to wipe out the bucket with wipes. We were joking about how good it was that I wasn’t pregnant and that both parents weren’t getting sick. IT got better as we went, and in about 4 hours we had made it to our hotel. Hannah was almost completely better, and I was exhausted. Chase went out with the kids to find lunch, and I just laid in bed. Just tired, right? after lunch Chase took the big kids swimming and we put Sam in a bath. poor substitution for the pool if you ask me. Just as I was getting Sam out of the bath it started. I was not tired. I was sick. Sooooooo sick. I couldn’t be more than 20 feet from the bathroom for the rest of the day. I had left Sam laying on his towel, with no diaper, and after I recovered I found him naked wandering around the room crying, saying “where nana go? where nana go?” Hannah and all the other kids were in the room when he got in the bath, why wouldn’t they be there when he got out? Lucky for him Chase didn’t take long at the pool. He opened his eyes under water, and for some reason the salt and chlorine burned his eyes. His eyes were dark red, not pink, RED. More red than I have ever seen eyes in my life. He could hardly see, the light made it even worse, and nothing we did seemed to help. And we couldn’t even go get eye drops or anything. What a couple of good parents we made that night, sick and blind, and we had to get something in our kids for dinner. Thankfully Aunt Darla had put this monstrosity of a gift basket in our hotel room. it had muffins, fruits, pop tarts, chips, juice, nutri-grain bars, granola bars, martinellis sparkling white grape juice, sees chocolates, candy bars, and many more treats. The thing was so awesome, the clear bag holding it all to the basket was about the size of one of our kitchen garbage bags. We had kept the kids from opening it so far, but we needed it for dinner. Kids ate all the wanted of the healthy options. by the time kids went to bed, they hadn’t made a dent in it. I was feeling just a little bit better, (sparkling white grape juice is apparently awesome for my sick stomach) and Chase had me come try a bite of his apple. I resisted, I didn’t want to throw up any more food, but I was so glad when I gave in. It was the best apple ever. I kept eating it, even when I knew I would probably regret it. But it must have been a magical apple as well, cause it stayed down all night, and I was doing great by the next morning. I was so sad that we only had 2 miracle apples and chase and the kids ate the other one. Chase later asked Darla what kind of apple it was, but she didn’t even know. she just bought them cause they looked good. I got word that my father-in-law was willing to trade his entire basket of goodies just for our box of sees chocolates so I told chase to do it if they had an apple. Shoot- trading the sees for just the apple from there basket was worth it to me. So he locked the sees in the in-room safe. and wouldn’t let me know the code. So ends day 2. by morning Chases eyes were completely better, and my stomach was about 90% better. And before the vacation was over chase managed to get me 1 other apple that didn’t require trading away his beloved sees chocolates.

Utah Vacation Day 1

2010-12-21T10:13:00.001-07:00

We were headed to Salt Lake City, Utah for a Thurston family reunion that started on Thursday, so we decided to take an extra day to drive up and spend the night at Chase’s grandma’s cabin in Pine Valley. Our alarm went off at 4 a.m. and we were on the road driving by 5. And we made it as far as our neighborhood QT when I discovered that Chase got all the kids loaded up without having them go to the bathroom first. Our very first bathroom break was 2 miles from our house. We did pretty good after that though, we didn’t stop again till Kingman. Ever eaten at Wendy's in Kingman for breakfast? Don’t, nothing we got was all that good. pretty soon we were passing through Las Vegas and then eating lunch in St. George. By 1 in the afternoon kids were having a blast playing in the old snow in the shadiest part of the cabins yard.

That afternoon we took some plastic sleds and went in search of a good sledding spot… andwe didn’t have much luck. Eventually we settled on a spot that was essentially someone’s sloped driveway that still had a good coating of snow on it that was at the end of the road. There was no tire tracks in the snow so they weren’t in town, or they were just holed up inside watching us creepily. Either way nobody came out to yell at us and the kids had a blast. I forgot to take the camera with us, but here are the highlights- Brad had a hard time bringing the sleds up the hill, he spent most of the time chaseing them down when they slipped out of his hands. Sam loved going down if daddy would ride down with him. The driveway looked straight, but it sloped to the left just a little bit and if we weren’t carefull the kids would go off to that side into the trees (Brad) or slide right into the small ditch on the side of the road filled with water deeper than the tops of boots (hannah) or catch on the edge of the ditch and flip them face first into the snow on the other side (Bekah). After that last scare Bekah would only make the last trip down if mommy would go down with her. Nobody got really hurt, but when mommy was cold enough to go back to the cabin the only one that resisted was Brad. and it was only a tiny little bit. We got our jammies on, put our boots by the fire, and had a blast relaxing in the cabin as a family. The kids had their own room at the top of the stairs and had a blast going up and down and up and down. Sam found a stash of cars that he absolutely loved. The orange tow truck was his absolute favorite. He played with it all evening, he took it to bed with him, and was very angry the next day when we made him leave it at the cabin as we continued on our adventure.

We had peanut butter and jellies and left over nuggets for dinner. Then we settled in to wait for grandma and grandpa and Tara, Dallin, and Hyrum to get there. The kids were so excited to be sharing the cabin that nobody wanted to go to bed. Chase fell asleep on a couch, then Bekah, and I decided to call it a night.

Tucked everyone into bed, carried Bekah up the stairs, woke up chase enough to get him to bed, shushed the kids several times, sang them some songs, and finally everything was quiet. I should have fallen asleep, I had been up since 4 am. but I couldn’t. I listened to baby Hyrum cry himself to sleep, and then I was still awake when he started fussing around midnight, and then I was awake when Hannah needed to go to the bathroom at 1 and could I please go down to the bathroom with her. Good thing I said yes cause apparently she needed to throw up too. We made it to the trash can that time and found a bucket thing we could take upstairs with us incase it happened again. And it did. 7 or 8 times. The kids little bedroom had a comfy rocking chair that I camped out in till about 4 in the morning, rocking my 7 year old baby girl, dozing a little but mostly just waiting for her little relaxed body to tense up signaling that it was starting again. Each time we would creep back down the stairs to rinse the bucket and wash up. Chase finally woke up and realized I wasn’t in bed when I had been up for 24 hours straight and he took over sitting with Hannah. And I had to shut our tiny bedroom door and rest with a pillow over my head to block out the noises and force myself to let someone else worry about my girl so I could sleep. for 2 hours. Then the rest of the cabin was waking up and it was time to start our day. Dr Pepper and Tylenol was the first order of the day, then we slowly fed the kids and got all of our stuff gathered up. Good things about Hannah getting sick? She made it into a bowl or trash can every single time, so now mess to clean up and no linens to wash. We also managed to not wake up any other person in the cabin, when morning came no one had any idea that we had been up all night with vomit. And Hannah had enough fun during the day that she remembers the cabin as a good place, not just the place that she was sick at. Between 9 and 10 (I think, I was a little out of it from lack of sleep) we were on the road to salt lake city. With the throw up bucket. It was snowing as we left, and the cabin looked so sweet. goodbye red cabin that Bekah asked about everyday for the rest of the trip. We will have to go back someday.

Happy Birthday Bekah!

2010-12-20T11:25:00.001-07:00

My sweet Bekah girl turned 5! We love her so much, and I have a hard time not spoiling her while the bigger kids are in school each day. This year she has been loving preschool with Aunt Tara one day each week and is slowly getting ready for Kindergarten when the new school year starts in July. This year she kind of got a whole birthday weekend instead of just one day to celebrate. On the Saturday before we let her pick kids meals at any place she wanted, and she picked Panda Express. The other kids were fine with this till they realized that Panda’s doesn’t give out toys like McDonalds does, the only one that didn’t care was Bekah. She was just excited to have her very own plate of red meat balls (orange chicken). That night we had Chase’s family over for our monthly dinner and Aunt Jaime brought her a gift bag with lots of chocolate, silly bands, and a glow-in-the dark magic wand. On the Sunday before her birthday we sang to her and she blew out candles on her pink cupcakes with pink frosting.

On the day of her birthday she went to preschool and shared some more of her cupcakes with her class and brought home birthday cards with MONEY from Grandpa and Grandma T, and Grandma Norton. That night she got to open presents. 2 new pretty outfits, a sparkle-blow dry Barbie (our house has been glittery for weeks- a blow drier that shoots our glitter?) and a big workbook full of preschool activities.

(She loved these outfits sooooo much. She wants to wear skirts every single day, she was so giddy and running around happily it was hard to get her to stay still long enough to get pictures.)

Then on Tuesday she went to her 5 year check up and got 4 shots. The dr said she grew a whole lot this year, but turns out she was still in just the 10% line on the growth charts. Grandma C then took her out for lunch at Rosa’s and took her shopping for a new doll that has snap on dresses and clothes.

There was no official party for her birthday, but her weekend was filled with people that love her and she was happy. And nothing makes me more happy than a happy Bekah. Thank you to everyone that helped make both of us happy.

To hot to do anything…

2010-11-03T15:26:00.001-07:00

It is 80 degrees in my house today and I refuse to turn on my air conditioning in November. And Chase is at work- so he’s not going to turn it on either (dang-it). And since I am already sitting on the computer wasting time, I might as well cross one thing off my invisible to-do list.

Halloween was on a Sunday this year, so we just went to the ward trunk or treat party on Saturday night. They had a huge turnout and they weren’t prepared with enough tables and chairs for dinner so I invaded another family’s table enough to get my kids a spot to not eat their chili, while me and Chase stood the whole time. Thankfully that wasn’t the main event- it was just the holding pen while the kids waited for the candy time. Our kids got a whole lot of candy and didn’t seem to mind at all that they didn’t get to do real house to house trick or treating.

The only time I thought to get a picture of them at the ward party was of them not eating their chili and eating the tops of some kind of pudding cup dessert. I hadn’t realized that it was only going to be chili and not hot dogs- my kids are not big chili eaters. When I mentioned this to another mother in the ward she said she fed her children at home first before coming to not eat chili. Wish I had thought of that! Chase finished off just about all of our chili… and everyone can just imagine what it was like sharing space with him for the next day or two…

After the weekend was over and the kids were back in school I sent Bekah to get dressed after bath time and this is what she came out with:

She was so adorable and strange looking I just had to get a picture of it. She had tights and shorts underneath the skirt that you can’t really see. And Sam- who dislikes almost all clothes and regularly strips of anything we try to make him wear- refused to leave Bekah’s side. Yet, when I caught him playing dress up himself he ran and hid. I think he knew that a picture of this was a bad idea…

He instinctively hid his face the whole time until he got in the box and I couldn’t get a clear shot of him anymore. He was wearing both of the skirts at the same time and playing with the wand.

All full

2010-10-12T19:13:00.001-07:00

For some reason I have always thought a family with “just” 4 kids is small. That it’s not complete till you have at least 6. That your final vehicular goal is a 15 passenger van that most likely won’t fit in your garage. For a long time I have felt that my 6 person, perfectly even, family is small. That there must be more of us, we have 2 more seat belts in our car to be filled and an empty bedroom in our house that could be home to another set of bunk beds. And when I cuddle with my kids on the couch during movie time, we take up a whole 2 cushions of our 7 cushion sectional. But after a day like today, I think that I need to measure my children differently. They our all pretty short and skinny still- but if there was a way to measure there personality I am pretty sure it would be off the charts. I think our house would be bursting at the seams, and our bumper would be dragging on the ground despite those two extra spaces. I think I need to stop thinking about how easy the baby stage was of raising these kids and just focus on increasing my ability to raise children.

Sticking to a budget

2010-10-11T16:05:00.001-07:00

Saturday I woke up feeling so awful. I had come down with this cold-flu-bug thing- I don’t care what you call it, I just knew that I was sick, and miserable, and I wasn’t going anywhere. So Chase did the grocery shopping for the week. Not the greatest idea. I have come up with a pretty strict budget- pay the bills, leave a set amount of money in checking for groceries and gas and anything else that may come up for the next 2 weeks, and transfer everything else into savings for our Utah trip in December and Christmas. I know it’s not an easy budget- I take a calculator with me shopping and add up every little expense, add on taxes, and I manage to leave just enough for my daily qt dr pepper. I kind of feel like I deserve it for doing so well on the budget, and it keeps me from splurging on other things during my grocery trip. Well…. Chase came home, put 4 receipts in front of me and asked me how he did… He spent 86% of the 2 week budget in one single day. I was hoping that this would gain some respect from him- that I really was doing good and was deserving of my 85 cent daily treat. But no- he just told me it was the diapers fault. And he wanted to know why I hadn’t potty-trained Sam yet.

GRRRRRRR

So from now on- even if I am deathly ill, I will be doing the grocery shopping. I took back the box of diapers and got the cheaper version of Huggies (2 less diapers and $5 saved) and pocketed the change for my QT drinks. And I guess it is a good thing it is a self-imposed budget forcing me to be cheap. The money we saved is just sitting in savings calling to me to be transferred back with just a few clicks of the mouse. It wants to be spent. I really wanted just to hide it and forget about it.

And I guess I can’t complain too much about Chase spending to much money- he is the one that goes to work everyday for me to have any money to budget with in the first place.

I’m not pregnant! (just fat)

2010-10-05T13:20:00.001-07:00

While we were camping, I basically wore pajamas the whole trip- comfy sweat pants and t-shirts. Despite this fact, I thought I was looking ok. And then Aaron and my Dad had to take pictures and post them all over facebook. And then someone asked Hannah, “is your mommy gonna have a new baby?”

So yeah…. I guess I need to work harder at losing weight. I was doing good at going rollerblading in the morning and drinking less soda until I did this a couple of weeks ago:

Not so Fun. The sidewalk was uneven and caught my wheel, sending me flying. Skinned my knee up pretty good- (and of course my face) and my lip has a pretty awesome split in it that still isn’t healed quite right. This doesn’t really show how bad it was- a few hours after this it was very swollen and some yucky yellowish bruises were showing up. My confidence was hurt pretty bad as well. And I haven’t been back out since. And in another example of the healing properties of Cola in my life, the first thing Chase did was get me a QT Dr.Pepper. But now it has been almost 3 weeks, kids are done with their 2 week fall break, and I need to start doing better. And I will leave you with one of the only camping 2010 pictures of me I feel comfortable with (and even it’s not all the great):

Camping 2010

2010-10-04T11:36:00.001-07:00

Over Labor day weekend we finally made it to our Clement family campout. Chase didn’t get the time off work to go with us, so my brother Aaron tagged along in my car and was a huge helper for me on this trip. We left on Thursday right after lunch, ate at about 3 in Payson and made it to the campground by about 4. It was great- all 8 of the campsites were empty and we got the best spots saved for the whole family. Not so great was the fact that we hadn’t planned on being there that early… “Dinner” in Payson wasn’t going to hold us over till breakfast on Friday, and I didn’t bring any dinner for the first night. Thankfully I brought lots of pop-tarts. Breakfast of champions… or um, dinner of champions….

I didn’t take a single picture this trip- I had decided to just enjoy the time with my kids and not stress about the camera. I have now copied all of my Dad’s and Aaron's pictures that they posted on facebook, and once I get them more organized I will be posting more of this trip.

Back to school

2010-08-09T11:20:00.001-07:00

We made it through this summer. Mostly it was fun(I will do a quick recap of that), but we had some trials as well(most of which is to private to even blog about). Now that my kids have started their 4th week of school, it's about time I posted the official first day of school picture!

Hannah is in 2nd grade, Brad is in 1st grade, Bekah looks like she could be going to clown school but is really in preschool one day a week with aunt Tara, and Sam is just enjoying lots more mommy time.

(Mom- this is her favorite dress- it looks darling when I pick just the right shirt to go with it for church. It’s only when she picks out her own outfits that it makes me think of a little clown)

Hannah is doing awesome as usual, and the school sent home paperwork to test her for the gifted program at school. She takes after her mom a lot.

Brad is doing much better than last year and we owe a lot of that to the awesome teacher he has now. He takes after his dad a lot.

Brad celebrated his 6th birthday in July. He had fun shopping with money from his grandparents, and picked out some new toy story toys. Instead of having a birthday party for him we got new bunk beds for the boys room. It was about time, he had been sleeping on a crib sized mattress on the floor. He used to have a little bed to use with the mattress, but after he repeatedly took it apart and broke the slats out of the bottom it got taken away. He had lots of warnings. The boys now love their beds, Brad picked out new toy story sheets for his, and Sam picked Cars.

Chase turned 26 in June, and i turned 27 in July. The kids thought it was neat that we were “twins” in that way for a whole month. Of course, anytime anything is the same it makes people twins according to them. Neither of us did anything really exciting. I did let myself splurge on 2 new church outfits.

We did a lot of swimming. I got an awesome deal with swimming lessons through the city of mesa. After 4 weeks of lessons Hannah passed out of 2 classes, Brad passed out of 1, and Bekah is still due for more time in the little sea sprites class. Hannah has decided that next year instead of more “just swimming” she will be doing diving lessons. And Sam is looking forward to when he is old enough for the lessons so he doesn’t have to sit out with mommy.

Boy feet on a girl towel…

Sitting out with mom does have some perks…

Brad ready to get in…

Chasing birds.

There weren’t enough spots for Sam to sit, and by the time I was ready with the Camera for Sam’s turn he was climbing down to follow the kids into the pool area.

In addition to the pool we made weekly visits to the mesa library. They had a cool summer reading program that had prizes for every six books we read. The kids all finished the entire chart and were very excited for the grand prize- their very own book sent to them in the mail. At first I was worried what free book would interest all 4 of my kids, but it was a pleasant surprise that we were directed to a website with dozens of choices all grouped into reading levels. That meant that I could go a little board book for Sam about trucks, Hannah picked a decent sized chapter book, and brad and Bekah each picked out something from in between those 2. Everyone was very happy with the book they got.

My mom spent most of July in and out of the hospital from her Gallbladder surgery and related complications. So this weekend we finally went to see eclipse at the movie theater. My parents took me to dinner at KFC first, and since i actually got to pick something off of the menu instead of being stuck with a piece of chicken from the family bucket I found that I don’t hate everything at KFC! We had free tickets for the movie, my mom took in a bottle of water and I spent $1 to get a drink in a souvenir cup. I was so proud of how little money we spent at the movies!

And I think that about covers our summer. Nothing to exciting but we stayed busy. We haven’t gone camping yet, but hopefully by the end of September we will have pictures from that adventure.

I broke it

2010-07-14T19:25:00.001-07:00

After qt drinks and free sandwhiches, pizza, and birthday cake today, none of the kids were feeling great and nobody felt like eating a real dinner tonight. So we broke out our bag of yummy green apples. We have 2 apple slicers. 1 is a corer, peeler, slicer with a crank handle that Hannah, Bekah and Sam love. The other is just a circle with handles with blades across the center that slice and core the apple as you push down on it using your own strength. It cut Brad’s apple just fine. But mine? not so much.

My Granny smith apple didn’t like being cut. And for some reason I just love how it looks. Like some kind of animal or creature or alien… or maybe it’s been extremely hot and my brain is fried from summer vacation.

Sam

2010-07-11T16:41:00.001-07:00

My baby turned 2! He is getting to be such a big boy. He is talking more and more each day- mostly just mimicking what the other kids say- and is constantly picking up on new words. His favorite thing to eat is pizza. The other morning I went to wal-mart and came home with a flat donut box… as soon as I walked in the door he started yelling “pizza! pizza! pizza!” His disappointment when i told him no pizza was almost comical. Thankfully the box did have donuts in it, and he was soon very happy and covered in chocolate frosting. for the rest of the day he would point to the box on top of the fridge and yell donuts! donuts!

His birthday present was delivered the day before his birthday. The fed-ex guy rang our door bell and ran, leaving the big unwrapped box on our doorstep. Hannah opened the door nice and wide for all the kids to see who was there, and there was no hiding it from Sam to wrap and save for his actual birthday.

He was so excited to get this little car. I hadn’t planned on getting one of these cars for my kids, but I found a super good deal on it ($28 and some change including tax, and the shipped it for free from Wal-Mart.com) and with Sam’s obsession with cars and trucks and anything with wheels I thought he would love it. And I was right. I didn’t get as many pictures as I wanted since Chase was still at work, but the whole time I was putting it together he was trying to be in it or helping in some was. he would sit in just the red body with no door, roof or tires and try to scoot it around the room. He got ecstatic when just the rear wheels were put on and tried to run away with it.

Open the door, close the door…open the door again..

Take it for a spin…

And this is why we have seat belts in the real car!

He absolutely loves the thing. It is open on the bottom for him to use his feet to move, but it also came with a removable floor. That is the big kids favorite part- they love to push him all over the house in it as fast as they can, and that floor keeps me from worrying about his little feet getting all mangled.

On his actual birthday we had brownies and ice cream for dinner and let Sam blow out his 2 candles. (which he did awesome on- no coaching needed, and not being a procrastinator he did it before we could finish singing to him). I was going to feed the kids real dinner, and wait for Chase to get home to do brownies… but notice the piece already missing? Chase came home to eat lunch for a change, and before he left decided to help himself to the brownies. So…. since daddy didn’t have the patience to wait for the right time, neither did we. Brownies and ice-cream were over with and kids were ready for bed by the time Chase got home from work.

And just so you know- most days I do try to dress Sam.. he’s just in this phase where he takes off his clothes all the time…

And note the red spots all over him? he had 14 on his face, and a handful over his arms and legs. They all appeared within 12 hours, the nurse I talked to said it was absolutely not chicken pox if it wasn’t on his torso, and he has had 1 out of 2 chicken pox vaccines… but it’s been a whole week and they aren’t gone yet! So we kept him home from church today… just in case.

Hannah’s Birthday

2010-07-01T17:52:00.001-07:00

Hannah turned 7 this year. For the first time ever we did a friend party at our house with a total of 9 kids. Hannah let Brad and Bekah join in on all the fun and she had 6 friends from church or school come over for an afternoon of water fun, and thankfully Sam slept through most of it. She picked to have a littlest pet shop themed party.

Blowing out the candles:

Playing in our itty-bitty pool:

Well, it didn’t look that itty-bitty till they crammed the play-slide and 9 kids into it. I feel bad that you can’t see Hannah’s face in the last picture, but it is the only one that has all of the kids in it. Brad didn’t seemed bothered at all by being the only boy at the party- he actually seemed to really enjoy it! He will probably be trying to tag along with Hannah’s friends for a long time to come. We had the itty bitty pool filled with water, the kids jumped on the trampoline with the sprinkler nearby, played on the new 3-lane slip-n-slide and quickly popped about 500 water balloons. Hannah got lots of cool presents, almost all of which were littlest pet shop stuff. Thank you to all the parents that let their kids come play, and thank you to the Aunts and grandmas that helped Hannah feel very loved on her special day! I can’t believe that in one year we will be planning a baptism instead of a friend party!

Mothers Day

2010-05-10T17:17:00.000-07:00

Well…. this was going to be my post for mothers day with lots of pictures included… but… I think I just deleted all of my may pictures from my computer and my camera. makes me feel like crying…

Chase did pretty good this year. He took all of the kids shopping on Saturday without any prompting from me, well, at least not on the day of. I believe he took some flowers and See’s chocolates to his mom on that day, but I stayed home so I am not aware of all the details. And I hope that she understands about us not making it to see her on the real mothers day. When I woke up Sunday morning all of my presents were wrapped and ready for me- an egg slicer, some new spatulas, a big bag of peanut m&ms, some juicy fruit gum, 1/2 pound of sees chocolates, and a new hand mixer. And chase actually managed to hide the presents well enough that they were surprises! (of course, i had less than 24 hours to find them) I have wanted an egg slicer for awhile, and Hannah was very good at remembering that. And the Hand mixer? I was very much in need of that- It is my 3rd or 4th mixer since we have been married. The last one finally went out in style- popping, sparks, flames, and lot of smoke while making knockerlns. I had so much fun with opening my presents that I forgot the time and soon realized that i had a choice- shower or getting to church on time. I chose to go without the shower and still didn’t make it quite on time. If we didn’t have primary to teach, I don’t think we would have even gone to church that day. The bishopric gave all the women ages 18 and older 2 full size candy bars. I ended up splitting my Hershey's with almonds and my Twix up between my kids without getting any for myself- and it made me feel good that those calories didn’t go into my body. I spent my afternoon baking my kids a cake with my new mixer (which I also didn’t eat- mainly because it was chocolate cake) and getting the stuffed shells ready for my mom’s mothers day present. we headed out around 3:30, and cooked the food at my mom’s house. My dad supplied a salad and some garlic bread. I didn’t mind at all cooking dinner on mother’s day since it was what my mom asked for- but next year the men can figure out something where I don’t have to cook either. After dinner we went next door to have ice cream sundaes with my grandma and a bunch of the clement clan. My kids all got sick of the ice cream pretty fast, but then they realized that they could go back for more of the treats as many times as they wanted- wafer cookies, brownies, m&m’s, sprinkles, cherries, and anything else you could imagine to go on top of ice cream. Hannah ecstatic when great grandma said she could pick any one of the leftovers to take home with her. She held the jar of Maraschino cherries the whole way home and didn’t understand why I wouldn’t let her eat them in the car. Over all it was a very good day. At the end of the day I felt happy and loved, and tired. As a mom to 4, what else could I ask for?

I am loved

2010-05-04T11:20:00.001-07:00

I sent Chase to the store for cheese this morning. And he came home with these. And cheese. I am loved.

Happy Birthday Aaron

2010-04-30T16:03:00.001-07:00

My little brother Aaron turned 21! To celebrate we had my mom’s yummy homemade pizza and Aaron made a bunch of wings in about 1/2 a dozen flavors.

This is Aaron- note the cans of Pepsi in the background? Is soda addiction genetic?

Before we headed over our kids spent a lot of time making the perfect presents to take for Uncle Aaron.

Cutting…

Folding…

Taping and gluing…

Basically making a big mess.

My youngest brother Austin helping to mix the pizza dough.

Aaron with his girlfriend awaiting his loot…

The best present of the night? Has to be the giant construction paper ice cream cone that Brad made…

And before the night was over Brad got a buzz from grandma at his own request. The next day he said that people thought he was blind at school because of his hair cut…. finally figured out he meant to say bald.

Primary Activity Day

2010-04-17T12:20:00.000-07:00

We had a special service activity day, trying to teach the kids that service to your fellow man is service to the Lord. It also taught them (and me) that done correctly shaving cream really can clean up chairs and tables. Our primary kids had a blast cleaning up all the chairs in our ward building in what seemed a really short time frame.

All ready to go

New way to clean-

Daddy and Sam, not cleaning (hang on tight!)

He wanted these trucks so bad, but they were part of the lesson so he wasn’t supposed to touch them…

Hannah listening to the lesson and getting ready to do a craft. She wasn’t in my group, so this was the only picture I have of her.

And for all their hard work? Ice cream for dessert.

Playing

2010-04-09T10:13:00.000-07:00

Playing in the water and playing with the new camera.

The Easter bunny got them all swimming suits this year instead of new play outfits. The girls didn’t start out completely matching- Bekah had a similar tinker bell one. Bekah’s was too small though, so we took her to pick a new one at Costco (yup- Easter bunny shops at Costco, and how did I know? Cause I am mommy- i know everything) and she insisted on getting one just like Hannah, and that made Hannah happy too.

My Camera isn’t a super fancy one or anything, but it is a decent Kodak point and shoot. And compared to my last camera? Ooooh- it sure does seem fancy. We bought our first digital camera about 7 years ago, and it was starting to act it’s age, and boy have they improved since then!!! and the best part about me new camera? the rechargeable battery! Our old camera ate batteries up soooo fast. Even the special, fancy, expensive batteries- sucked ‘em dry in just a couple of days. Now my camera charges as I transfer the pictures to the computer. It also came with an adapter so we could plug it straight into the wall. And Chase pointed out that it will be able to charge in the car using our iPod thingy- no need to buy anything extra! Soooo now that I have my camera, and Chase has his IPod touch, no more toys for mom and dad. We have swim lessons to pay for this summer, 5 birthdays in June and July, and the boys really need a bunk bed in their room. So if I talk about buying anything extra for me- yell at me!

Easter weekend

2010-04-05T11:44:00.000-07:00

So- I didn’t take as many pictures as I should have this weekend. My new camera was being shipped to me and my old camera was such a pain to work with i kind of just gave up. On Friday night we colored Easter eggs after putting Sam to bed. This was the first time trying this since Brad was a baby, and they turned out pretty well.

Sam’s didn’t get his picture taken with eggs? Here’s some random Sam pictures to make up for it:

He loves playing outside- and he love-love-loves hats of any kind. This one was given to Brad by uncle Dusty.

On Saturday we watched conference together on the computer since we couldn’t get it on the TV this year. That was a challenge for me. I don’t force my kids to watch all 4 sessions of it with me, usually just the sunday morning is our mandatory sit and watch session. Most years I can go in my bedroom and watch by myself to absorb as much as I can. This year I was getting so frustrated that I couldn’t feel the spirit, and even hear what they were saying as my kids were all around me and not being reverent at all. One thing i did hear though- and I am not sure who said it or what session it was- is that the spirit can still be there with kids all around and being rambunctious, but that once the mom loses her temper with the kids the spirit is gone. (something like that) and it helped me stay more calm for the rest of conference watching. I still can’t wait to get my Ensign so I can go through all the talks again.

On Saturday afternoon we got together with the Thurston’s for a potluck at Jaime’s house and then sent all the men to the priesthood session. (no pictures)

On Sunday morning the Easter bunny left tons of Easter eggs around our house- I think the total was 86. He also left Easter baskets with a few toys and new swimsuits for all the kids. I tried to get all the kids in them for a picture, but Bekah’s was to small, and Brad refused to put his on cause it was Sunday and I wasn’t going to let play in the water anyways. So no pictures of Easter morning. We watched more conference and went over to my grandma Clement’s house for dinner. I forgot my camera for this- but thankfully my parents had lots of pictures that I was able to steal from their Facebook pages.

Playing on the trampolin

Eating dinner

Hanging out with Dad

Giving grandpa a workout with the tire-swing (the blond girl is my youngest cousin Mo)

Playing in the Sandboat with grandpa (my grandpa partially-buried a boat and filled it was sand, it’s very cool but I don’t have a picture of the whole thing)

Showing off

Do the Smarty-pants-dance

2010-03-31T10:16:00.000-07:00

Our school awards assembly was today, and Hannah got the Student of the Month award for February and Scholar of Distinction for the 3rd quarter. I feel bad, but our school has an awards assembly every single quarter, and I had not gone to any of them until today. She has brought home this Scholar of distinction award lots, but I didn’t know what it was for. When I was in school Principal’s honor roll was the highest award you could get. But turns out this school is a little different- Scholar of distinction is the highest and is given to all students with straight A’s for the quarter! I enjoyed going to the assembly and seeing all the kids get awards. I saw kids from the ward- some of them were even past primary kids of mine- and I was able to put faces to names that my kids talk about at home. But Bekah and Sam? A little less than thrilled at the assembly. Pretty boring stuff for 1 and 4 year olds. I am sure it wasn’t that long, but trying to keep those 2 quiet and happy made it feel really, really long. Brad didn’t get an award this quarter, he had 1 really bad grade among his A’s and B’s. We are working hard on that subject so I can hopefully brag about him next time too.

Let’s go fly a kite

2010-03-27T10:59:00.000-07:00

On our last day of Spring Break we loaded the whole family up to go to Grandpa T’s house. They had a couple of sprinkler heads that needed fixed, and Chase is there go-to guy when that happens. I tried to stay home, told him all I needed was a break from the kids after 2 weeks of spring break. But I ended up going. After the sprinklers were fixed we left the kids with grandma and grandpa for lunch while we went on a “date” to home depot for our sprinkler needs, and swung through the drive through at carl’s Jr for our lunch. Then we collected the kids and headed for home. I really thought that was it for the day. The kids would just hang out and make messes, Chase would play WOW for the rest of the day, and I would go grocery shopping. But then Chase asked me- You wanna go fly a kite? It was a beautifull day for it, so we began our search for a kite. We didn’t own one, and our kids had never flown a kite- ever. It took 2 different wal-marts to find one, and when we finally got one, it only cost 99 cents. We went to the big park in our neighborhood and the kids had a blast with it. They all took turns, and even a little girl that we never met before took a turn with it. (little blond girl- sorry we never learned your name) The kids were also really good about taking turns since they had the playground to occupy them when it was someone else’s turn with the kite.

Easter Pageant

2010-03-25T09:13:00.000-07:00

We took our kids to the Easter pageant on Thursday. (sorry no pictures, I left our sorry camera at home for the night.) Something that I don’t think we have done since Hannah was a baby. It was mine and chase’s first official date 8 years ago. We were young, 17 and 18 years old. We got ice cream and cheap spoons from a Walgreens on main street. we cuddled in blankets as we watched the show, and stayed their on the temple grounds for as long as possible after the show. When we got married a little more than 6 months later we decided that every year we would take our family back and relive that first date… I still have the spoons in a special place from then, but that Walgreens? Changed into a $ store, and then it shut down completely. Then we had baby Hannah, and then baby Brad, and then baby Bekah, and then baby Sam. And each year was just harder and harder to get there. So we finally went. I picked the day that would be the least busy since i hate crowds, especially when I have all my kids with me. We got there about 6:30, with our cheap McDonalds hamburgers for dinner and one big drink to share (in hopes of reduced bathroom trips). The ice cream that we planned on becoming a tradition? Not happening with kids- I didn’t even get them ketchup on the hamburgers to avoid possible mess. Bekah took her hair-ties out 5 minutes after we got there- making her look like a wild jungle child. We all layed on a blanket together- and Sam saw that as an opportunity to tackle everyone, multiple times. Even though he is the baby he is also the bully and brought all the other kids to tears at least once each. We made the trip to the bathroom 4 times. The last time was 1/2 way through the performance and Chase didn’t take sam with him- and I was in trouble. He screamed his head off that Daddy dare leave him behind with mommy. Sorry to all those who missed a bit of the pageant wondering what I was doing to my child to make him scream like that. Hannah enjoyed the show a lot, and loved to go over her favorite parts for the next few days. Brad had an emotional night- his bedtime is 7 on school nights, and the show didn’t start till 8, he wanted to go home before it even started. I think Bekah’s crazy hair went to her head and she acted like a wild child the whole night. By the end Chase threw her over his shoulder and got to the car as fast as he could. Then I realized by the time he got there, her pants were slipping and she was mooning everyone. Again- sorry to everyone around us. Sam could care less about what was going on in the show, except for the angels. He ooh’ed and awed whenever their turn came. any other time of the night if he wasn’t hurting someone he was trying to see the cars behind us on main street. OH, how he loves the cars and busses and motorcycles. Whenever a particular car caught his eye he would declare loudly “Arrr!” eventually I had to stand and hold him constantly so he wasn’t trying to climb up to my shoulders as I was sitting, or trying to run around the low wall, to see the cars on the street. In the end- I really didn’t get to sit and cuddle with my husband like we did 8 years ago. Kids were being pretty uncooperative the whole night. And everyone was pretty tired by the time we were in our car trying to get out of traffic that surrounded the temple. but I really really enjoyed it. I am glad that we went. even when things weren’t going as I planned, there is no denying the peace that I felt being on temple grounds with my whole family, celebrating the life of Christ, and just knowing that were doing the right thing as parents at least for that one night.

2010-03-24T09:38:00.000-07:00

Well, it turns out that it was a good thing we spent some time playing outside on Monday. Tuesday morning we woke up to rain. The news said there was only a 10% chance of rain. That the storm would stick to southern Arizona. But no. It rained pretty steady for about 3 hours. The kids all ran out to play in it for a little bit. Sam was having a blast stomping in the “deep” part at the end of our driveway.

And then they all came in, freezing cold with runny noses and changed into different clothes. Which was understandable- they hadn’t been up very long and were still wearing pjs and Bekah still had bed head.

After it had stopped raining for a little while, they asked to go play in the backyard. I thought it would be ok. But they got on the trampoline. And the trampoline was still soaking wet. When they started jumping they claimed it started raining again, but i think maybe it was just the water shaking down from the net. Either way, it lasted only a few minutes before they all came back in, freezing cold with runny noses and changed into different clothes. And not wanting to risk accruing even more laundry on a day when they could have stayed in pajamas all day long, I locked all the doors and kept them inside. And that really wasn’t that much fun either. We are on our second week of spring break, and we are all getting tired of each other. So we made sugar cookies! I did most of the work and just let them watch. (it’s easier that way) But I did let them pick the shapes- Brad picked the boy shape (leftover from Christmas) Hannah picked the butterfly, and Bekah picked a chicken… which wasn’t really a chicken, it was the profile of a bunny turned on it’s side, so when I finally got her to see the right shape she picked a Christmas tree, but I talked her into getting the flower . Which then caused the kids to fight over what kind of flower it was. I should have just let her have the chicken. Then they picked colors- blue for the boys (duh!) but since I only made one bowl of frosting we had to turn the blue into something else for the girls. we tried for blue and red makes purple…. it worked kind of. It wasn’t very pretty, but the girls got over it once we got to the eating part. making the cookies took up time for us in the afternoon, but even more important, eating the yummy goodness of the cookies (even if they didn’t look so great) made us all happy and feel better. Till the sugar rush kicked in. I was extremely happy to put them all to bed at 7 (school night bedtime even though it wasn’t technically a school night) and watch my 2 episodes of Lost.

2010-03-23T16:22:00.001-07:00

On Monday afternoon I got to thinking about every single thing I had to be stressed about. And started getting depressed that it seemed that despite every effort we made, we still weren’t getting ahead. In anything. So I just said forget it all and we went out into the front yard to play. I laid a blanket out on the lawn, and I remembered how grateful i am to have a yard of our own to take care of.

The kids rode bikes, up and down the street, well, at least as far as one extra house on either side of ours, and I remembered how grateful I am that only 3 households lived in that space, instead of 8-12.

Sam drove his trucks up and down the driveway, and I remembered how grateful I am that we have a safe driveway instead of a parking lot to share with 10 other cars.

And we laid on our blanket and looked at the clouds, and I remembered how grateful i am that it was on grass instead of rocks.

It was my reality check for the day. Yes, life is hard. Yes, it takes a lot of work. Yes, it doesn’t always go as planned. But despite all that, my life is pretty good. I have a great husband, wonderful children that make me laugh every day, and a home filled with love.

after our photo shoot with Glen, Hannah has become a pro at “posing” for pictures, and bekah? yeah… not so much. she stuck her leg up like that every single time…

Zoo (x2)

2010-03-22T09:29:00.001-07:00

With the kids being out of school this past week for spring break, we went to the zoo. Not just once, but twice. The first time I took them with my parents, and my brothers Dylan, Dustin, and Austin. It was very very crowded that day, and I was very grateful for the extra hands to keep track of all of my little ones. The second day I convinced Chase to take the day off from work and we met up with our friends Rae and Scott, and their little girls Bethany and Meagan. That day it wasn’t quite so crowded and I didn’t have to worry as much about where each child was at all times. The only problem we had was that little Bethany (just a month older than Bekah) got very frustrated whenever we would call out to Bekah. She said “mommy, they keep calling me something that I don’t know!” Bethany lives in Utah and our kids have only met a handful of times, and she just couldn’t get used to another little girls name being so similar to hers. While it was a bit much to do the zoo 2 times in one week, we only did about 1/3 the first day, 1/3 the second day, and skipped the annoying 1/3 all together. (the children's area with petting zoo…)

Petting the Sting Rays

Bekah was brave enough to try it…

I would love to be able to paint a mural like this in the girls bathroom.

Riding the Carousel

I had a pass from a while ago that had just enough punches left for the big kids to ride, thankfully the little ones were content to sit with the moms and watch.

And if you are tired of pictures, you can stop looking now.

(sorry Rae, the only pics I got of you didn’t turn out good, so I just left them out… I need a new camera!)

Happy Valentines Day

2010-02-18T09:17:00.001-07:00

We had a good weekend. Nothing super exciting, or romantic, we didn't even exchange gifts really. The young women from our ward were delivering valentine cookies with a song for their camp fundraiser. So we ordered 1 cookies for each of our children. I thought the kids would love it... but as soon as they started singing You Are My Sunshine, Sam ran away, threw himself onto the floor in the living room and started screaming. Bekah was a little less dramatic- she just quietly went and his in her bedroom. Brad hid around the corner and just let his head peek out. And Hannah was ok with it all. I really felt bad for those girls, some had very confused looks on their faces, but they never stopped singing. My kids all recovered just fine when the girls left and we handed out cookies.

For my Valentines treat Chase let me pick out whatever I wanted from Olive Garden which we got in take-out form. Then we got our propane tank filled for Chase so he could grill some of the meat we had in our freezer for his special dinner. We also got some big drinks from QT to take home with us. I enjoyed driving around and doing all of this with Chase, but did I mention the kids rode along as well? They didn't seem to enjoy it very much at all.

On Sunday Tanya was nice enough to cut my kids hair. On her birthday. and of course all of them look super cute. The boys just got trims, but Bekah got bangs!

I couldn't ever get her to do a normal happy smile- and Sam has decided he likes have his picture taken and will join in whenever possible.

Hannah didn't cut her hair because she was planning on donating it to Locks of Love and we needed 10 whole inches of hair, but she was only at 8 inches. But then Tanya told me they charge for their wigs! We went home and did some research, and sure enough, they charge on a sliding scale based on financial need. That did not sit well with us- Hannah was spending months growing her hair out to donate, but whoever got it still might have to pay for it? So we found a different program. They only needed 8 inches of hair, so Hannah was already there! And for this program they provide all services and products at NO COST to the recipients. That did it- Hannah was ready to get rid of her long hair. We went back to Tanya's on Wednesday and got it done. She was also excited to have her hair just like Londyn's.

(runny nose Sam again)

All short! I am excited to not have all that hair to deal with anymore!

I have one last thing to report on:

Last year when we put in the sprinklers and grass, I got a bunch of climbing vines with either purple or yellow flowers to plant along the ugly grey block walls. Chase was pretty sure they would climb good without trellises, so we didn't bother with that. But.... they didn't grow good. In fact, I was pretty sure I had killed off all 8 of the plants I had bought. But I was looking out my window last week and saw this:

At least one of my plants was alive! It didn't look really great, it still wasn't climbing up the wall the way I wanted, But it did have pretty purple flowers on it! So I wanted to rush out and buy a trellis to climb up... but we really didn't have the money to spend on that... But then I remembered that we still had a bunch of Pipe left over from the sprinklers in our garage. So, all I bought was some plastic zip ties, and I created this:

It's not perfect, but it's a trellis! I made the legs long enough to stick it in the ground pretty good. And I used some of my extra zip ties to loosely attach the plants to the lower poles. Chase was being a little negative about it all and reminded me that the pvc would slowly deteriorate from the sun. But it is on the side of our house where it doesn't get as much sun, so hopefully it will take a long time to show any damage. I inspected my yard further and discovered 2 more of the plants that are growing again. I am out of pipe now, so once we have a little bit of money I will make chase go to home depot and get me something better to make more trellises out of.

Christmas

2010-02-15T14:48:00.001-07:00

Sorry- it's just a bunch of pictures, just for the sake of saying that I have posted the Christmas stuff finally.

I thought this was going to be a cute picture, but I wasn't fast enough. You get either blurry and missing a face, or clear and missing a child...

Thanksgiving

2010-02-05T10:41:00.001-07:00

OK- i am sloooooowly catching up. And I think I fixed my windows live writer so it won't crash every time I try to make a blog post. Back in November I got a job being a cashier at wal-mart to help pay for Christmas. Only problem with that was they wanted me to work Thanksgiving weekend. every other year of my life this would not be a problem at all. I don't have any memory of going outside of the valley for thanksgiving ever. But this year we actually had plans! We were going to Utah with all of Chases family for a baby blessing and lots of fun times hanging out. We were even going to stay in a pretty nice hotel thanks to Chase's parents paying for it as our early Christmas present. Turns out I didn't get a single use out of that present. Chase took off for Utah on Thanksgiving morning with all 4 of the kids. And much to my surprise he did better than i probably would have and got there in about 12 hours without any drama. They had a ton of fun, and here are some of the pictures they brought back for me. (I will leave out most of the shots that chase took over his shoulder while driving, and all of the pics of snow taken through the car window).

this was the 4 youngest cousins at the time- although in size order, not age! the boys should actually be switched with the girls for youngest to oldest.

Bekah's 4th Birthday

2010-01-20T12:51:00.001-07:00

On November 15th Bekah turned 4. Her Birthday was on a Sunday, so the day before her birthday we took the kids to McDonalds for happy meals and time in the Play Place. So people may think, what's the big deal with that? Well, the only time our kids actually get happy meals is for birthdays- the rest of the time they get one item from the $ menu and drinks from home, and we always go thru the drive-thru. So happy meals and eating in the restaurant is a special treat for our kids. We then had Ice cream cones and opened presents at home on Sunday. A pretty low-key 4th birthday party- but she was happy with it. Oh- and I forgot till I saw the pictures, but the Birthday fairy also came to our house during the night and left a bunch of pink and red balloons in Bekah's room for her.

Halloween

2009-10-31T18:54:00.001-07:00

Happy Anniversary! (to us)

2009-10-26T12:58:00.001-07:00

We have been married for 7 years now, we are now a family of 6, we have had 5 addresses, we have 4 beautiful children, we have bought 3 cars, we are 2 people completely in love, and I have 1 awesome husband.

Flashback Friday

2009-10-16T07:51:00.001-07:00

During the summer of 2002 Chase completely stole my heart and made me love him. When he first said he loved me, I said thank you. I took me a little bit longer to fall. But thankfully he persisted, and by the end of summer I knew there was nobody else for me. I have a whole months worth of sweet mushy love letters, 1 for every single day he was serving on the Hill Cumorah Pageant work crew and even after all these years they are good enough to make me get all teary eyed that someone could love me that much. He was an extremely sweet boyfriend, and somehow this is one of the many many things that did me in:

His fire-breathing abilities made me fall in love with him just a little quicker. It also won points with my little brothers when they saw this picture. It's nothing I want them or my children to ever attempt now, but I loved knowing that my boyfriend could do this. Maybe it was just knowing that if all else failed he could join the circus to support me?

I have such silly kids

2009-10-14T18:26:00.001-07:00

As I was making dinner tonight Brad surprised me by saying "Oh man- I have a foot crap!" I replied "you mean a foot cramp." "oh yeah- that's what it is all right- and when you have one in your back it is a back crap! And when you get craps you do this!" and proceeded to hop out of the kitchen on one foot... i think it was probably something that was discussed at school- I certainly haven't discussed foot or back "craps" with my children!

Brad loves these cut pajama pants that Grandma Clement made, and he always has to wear them with the FuelMaker shirt that Grandpa Clement gave him. Thank you so much for helping to clothe my children! I could post about a million pictures of the girls in all the dresses Grandma C has made them. And even knowing that they have a closet full of special things made just for them they had a hard time with Brad getting something made just for him- that doesn't happen so much!

Back to school

2009-10-13T12:54:00.001-07:00

I would love to be one of those moms that just treasures their time with the kids at home, that can hardly bare to leave them to go on vacation and that are sad when kids go to school.... But I am not. I am so happy that the big kids went back to school this week. I feel like there is so much less noise, and I might actually have a chance at getting the house clean. (not keeping it clean- just focused on getting there right now.) It was a long 2 weeks out of school. Thankfully it started out nice with the trip to Disneyland, and then I was able to take a time out for me last Saturday when my mom treated me to Time Out for Women.

Hannah had a hard time understanding why I was going with grandma to "time out", especially when Chase added that he could just put mommy in time out at home.

I am not a morning person, so I was a little apprehensive about needing to leave my house at 7 am to get there in time- but it was so worth it. I spent my day in the presence of 1,800 LDS women Listening to 4 very different presenters- Emily Watts, Emily Freeman, Wendy Ulrich and Kris Belcher. The 1st and last were extremely entertaining and very funny, and the middle 2 were more serious, but all 4 had very spiritual and uplifting messages to share. And interspersed among them all was Kenneth Cope performing inspirational songs. It was a very nice day, and i felt I had put the reset button and was prepared better to shift back into mommy mode. Plus I got a fun new bag to remind me of my fun day.

And this is way off topic but very cute.... Sam seems to think that every toy we own should be a ride on toy. This is a little caterpillar with a pull cord on it, but Sam was having so much fun riding around on it he wouldn't hold still for a good picture:

24 Hours.....

2009-10-06T17:16:00.001-07:00

Of not paying for air conditioning! I am so excited that it's finally cool enough to open the windows and let all the fresh air in. I am always in a better mood this time of year- or maybe it's just that windows open I keep my voice down with the kids since I know the neighbors can hear me more. The kids have been happier too since I haven't let them go anywhere they have been able to hang out on the back porch and play on the one small plastic slide we have out there. OK- so most of the time they either tip it on it's side and pretend it's something other than a slide, or they shove it up to the walls and spy into our neighbors yards despite how much I tell them not to do that. And on the subject of not letting the kids go anywhere- I am pretty sure that we all just have colds- nothing serious like swine flu- and I really don't care that much if other kids at the park or the library get sick, but I really really don't want others to think of me as that mom that exposed everyone to swine flu. So regardless of my reasons- my sick kids have not gone anywhere since they got home from grandma's house last week. Well- except for Hannah= the one healthy child in all of this. She went to wal-mart with me once to get a birthday present, and she went to her bestest friend ever's 7th birthday party, which was a fake slumber party. They had all the girls come over in there pajamas and did slumber party-ish things but crammed it all into just a couple of hours instead of an all night party. I was really happy with it- I don't know if I am ready for my kids to be spending the night at anywhere but grandmas house. My kids have been getting along with each other about as much as you can expect when they have been confined to our house for the last week, but every once in awhile I catch them being so sweet to each other.

I had been sitting at the computer checking e-mails when I turned around to this! Bekah was all cozy watching our usual PBS morning kids shows and somehow Sam decided to join her. And Sam was sitting next to her= not ON her, and Bekah was actually not screaming that Sam was in her space and using her pillow . It lasted all the way until I decided to take a picture, and you know if you take a picture of just one or 2 kids, then the others want a picture too- and they came jumping onto the couch as well:

And after that the moment was lost and Sam was moving on to get into who knows what.

4 weeks since last post

2009-10-05T18:42:00.001-07:00

Wow- I had told myself that if I was going to do this blog, I would update it lots and lots- not be one of those moms that get you hooked then leave you hanging without any current posts. And yet it has been 4 weeks since last post. Most of that was that we weren't doing anything exciting- we were getting into a pretty good routine with school and work schedules and everything was pretty dull around here with not much to blog about. Until the last weekend of September. We spent 3 days and 2 nights in California while the kids stayed in Arizona! And yup- we went to Disneyland.... without kids. Amazingly the kids didn't mind at all that they didn't get to go- the kids seemed to have the same excitement level for sleepovers at grandparents' houses as I did for Disneyland. Our kids spent the first night at the Thurston's and the second night (and half the 3rd night- we got home later than I had planned) at the Clements. And we drove over to California with my very best friend Rae and her husband who drove down from Utah to drop off their kids at her parents house and met us for the drive over. We had a super fun weekend that seemed to end way to soon. All went well- we got nothing but good reports from both sets of grandparents when we got back, and the only close to bad thing that happened to us was Rae and Scott's big huge wooden headboard fell off the wall the first night- (they swear they did nothing to cause it) nobody was hurt and they got free breakfast for it. We were able to do all the big kid rides over and over and over- Tower of terror was the most at 5 0r 6 times I think. We had decided that we would do this trip every 3 years, and this was our 2nd time going- but if things work out for Rae moving back to Arizona soon I think we may need to bump it up to every 2 years. When I woke up extremely sore and tired the day after we got home I was very thankful that it is Fall break for our kids-and i could just relax that first day- but that 1 day turned into several and I still wasn't feeling better, and soon it turned into a week and I was feeling even worse , with 4 out of the 6 of us (including me) having horrible colds and the kids running amok in our messy messy house and they were wearing the same pajamas for 4 or 5 days. Thankfully Saturday finally got here and Chase took charge and got the house cleaned up and i felt good enough to bathe the kids and make sure they work clean pajamas to bed. Now we are into week two of fall break and hopefully we can all get better and maybe do something fun before the kids go back to school.

I said his name was Trouble

2009-09-04T12:27:00.001-07:00

And now he seems to have the need to live up to his name... Sam pulled a bowl of dry cereal off the counter, and proceeded to do a stomping dance thing all over them.

And then he would lean over and eat a few off the floor.

Then back to stomping all over them.

He continued this routine (stomp, eat, stomp, eat) till there was nothing big enough for him to pick up. It was hilarious to watch, and I never was able to scold him for spilling the cereal. I guess we need to be more careful about where stuff is on the counter- it's hard getting used to him being tall enough to reach everything!

Chase and Liz Thurston

Is this really working?

Picture Day!

First Day of School!

Hannah is getting baptized!

Makeover party

Blogging from my cell phone

Blue Living Room

cell phone pictures

Focus on the Positive

Anger Management

Haircuts

Price Matching

Did You Win?

Friday Give-Away (pictures added!)

Colors

Kids Music Concert

roll-up fail

Strawberries

Bountiful Baskets

I only like Chicken gravy

Blue Sky

Cupcakes

Oh yeah...

Sam is a rock-star

Bountiful Baskets

Goodbye Disney

I need to have more faith

Roll Recipe

Happy Valentines Day!

Bountiful Baskets

Sam-I-Am

Update on Chase

Update on me

Dead Fish

favorite cheap meal

I Gotta Feeling

Sick Hannah

Who uses all these Towels?

Fruit Roll-Ups update

Fruit Roll-Ups

one more present for Bekah

suggested reading

Christmas

Last post about our Utah trip.

almost done

Checking out

Utah vacation day 3

Utah Vacation Day 2

Utah Vacation Day 1

Happy Birthday Bekah!

To hot to do anything…

All full

Sticking to a budget

I’m not pregnant! (just fat)

Camping 2010

Back to school

I broke it

Sam

Hannah’s Birthday

Mothers Day

I am loved

Happy Birthday Aaron

Primary Activity Day

Playing

Easter weekend

Do the Smarty-pants-dance

Let’s go fly a kite

Easter Pageant

Zoo (x2)

Happy Valentines Day

Christmas

Thanksgiving

Bekah's 4th Birthday

Halloween

Happy Anniversary! (to us)

Flashback Friday

I have such silly kids

Back to school

24 Hours.....