Pacheco Family Blog

Our Honeymoon...7 1/2 years late

2010-05-12T14:15:00.003-05:00

As part of our spring break trip we headed up to Oregon to visit Jake's mom. She was kind enough to volunteer to take on the kids for a couple of days while Jake and I took off on our own. We never went on a honeymoon and never went on a vacation as just the two of us, so we were very excited. We left on my 27th birthday for our trip to Cannon Beach. We splurged on a great hotel right on the beach, and even though it was cold we had a great time. Tropical beaches can be fun, but northern beaches are just so beautiful and peaceful. It was just what we needed. Thank you Benita and Mark!!!!
On our first day we just walked up the beach and explored the town, then enjoyed lava rock massages back at the hotel (heaven!!) The next day we went to Seaside, up the road. It is the end of the Lewis and Clark trail. We have been to St Louis, which is the beginning of that trail, and now we've been to the end. We enjoyed shopping and scouring the beaches for sand dollars. We only found a few whole dollars, but we got a bucket full of 'half-dollars'. We were told it is really hard to find whole dollars because all of the birds dig them up and crack open and eat them. We also explored further up the coast and crossed into Washington for a bit before heading back.
On our last day we went into Ecola State Park (right in between Cannon Beach and Seaside. We did a bit of hiking on the main trails, and then we found a little-used trail that led down to a small beach in between the cliffs. It was completely deserted and we enjoyed the serenity there. It was such a beautiful peaceful place. We ended the day at the temple in Portland before heading back to see the kids.
I just put the pics in a slideshow because I had so many to share. If you slide your mouse over the pictures you will see the captions I wrote. Warning: these pictures will make you want to travel here! It was beautiful!!!

Our New Temple

2010-05-12T13:59:00.003-05:00

A new temple has been built in southern Arizona! It is in Thatcher, AZ. It is officially meant to serve the members of our area, as we are considered to be one of the core stakes for this temple. It is pretty exciting for all of the people here. Right now we are supposed to go up to the temple in Mesa, it takes us over 3 hours to get there so we don't go much. This temple is still a good 2 hours away, but we'll take it. Hopefully it will be much less busy than the Mesa one. It is a very small temple, but beautiful. We are excited to officially attend it after the dedication. Jake and I went up to be volunteers at the open house for a day. We sat in the front of the temple under the white tent (that won't be there when the temple is officially open) and helped people put plastic booties over their shoes. Yes there were many bootie jokes thrown around all day. It was fun to get to be involved in that event. The open house goes for the rest of this week and then next week it will be dedicated by President Monson! We haven't had the chance to take the kids up to the open house to go through the temple, but hopefully we will get up there before the end of the week!! There were no good pictures without fingers, so I had to go with what I had. That's what you get when you ask a stranger to take your picture!

I'm Back!

2010-05-11T13:15:00.002-05:00

So it has been quite awhile since I have written anything on this blog. It is bad because this is really the only sort of journaling/scrapbooking that I do. I hope to take pictures and posts from my blog and turn them into a family photo album, I am currently looking into companies that do that. So I need to get back on it. I have included a few recent pictures just for fun. We did get a new camera back in March, but have been having many computer issues that did not allow me to upload pictures. Now we have an external hard drive that we store our pictures on. It is safer that way anyways. This computer may be on its last leg soon. We've had it for 6 years or so. It still works though, so we probably won't get rid of it until it dies.
Jaxon and Kailey have become best best friends. I am happy to say that I do feel like we were inspired in not preventing any pregnancy after having Jaxon. Before we had him we said he would be our last, but we both felt strongly that we needed to have another one soon. Maybe Kailey couldn't stand to be without her best friend for very long. They just love each other and play very well all day with minimal fighting. (Though I can't say the same about Jaxon and his older sisters.) Here he is helping give Kailey a bath:

We usually throw her in with the rest of the kids, but she usually requires much more bathing than the others (like after every meal) so she still gets a quick sink bath now and again.

These are my helpers when I was cooking up my first ever batches of strawberry jam. Strawberries were on sale for 88 cents a pound (as opposed to 2 pounds for$5) so we stocked up. I made 14 jars of jam and froze the rest. It turned out extremely well (if I may say so myself). I am starting to get a hang of this canning stuff, if only I had a garden to can from!

These pictures are specifically for my relatives with extreme culinary talents (Aunt Hope, Amber) and for my mom who made me the apron that inspired my cake. I LOVE the color purple (though I've never seen the movie) and my mom made that apron for me for my birthday. They had a cake decorating class at my church a couple of weeks ago and I decided to make a cake to match the apron. It was my first ever time working with fondant. It is a LOT harder than it looks!! This took me several hours (and that was in coming to the class with the cake already made and frosted!) But I thought it turned out alright.
Me in my apron with matching hat and earrings:
It was a super fun class, and hopefully I can create something nice for Mckayla and Lyla's birthday this week!

Classics Challenge

2010-04-02T23:21:00.003-05:00

So I know that I have a lot of catch-up blogging to do, but I have become a bit of a bookworm since moving to Arizona. A friend of mine joined an online reading challenge, so I decided to join in as well. To learn about this challenge and join go HERE.

I actually challenged myself to read 'the classics' awhile ago. Because, though I wasn't able to attend school at the time, I still wanted to be educating myself. I usually feel very enriched by reading some of the classics. I have also been struck by how many of these books have influenced culture and society today. I thought it was interesting that they had a list of 'future classics' for a bonus read. I am going to share some of my recent reads that I consider to be classics (or if they are on the 'future classic' list) and would love to hear some suggestions for classics I should get in for this challenge.

Recent Classic Reads:
*The Woman in White *The Count of Monte Cristo *The Jungle *The Odessy *The Hiding Place *To Kill a Mockingbird *1984 *The Great Gatsby *Animal Farm *Beowolf *Canterbury Tales *Othello * Treasure Island
And some of my recent reads that are on their 'future classic list that I highly recommend:
*The Life of Pi *3 Cups of Tea *The Atonement *1776 *Girl with the Pearl Earring *Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society

Suggestions from anyone????

The goal is to read 6 classics before October 31st of this year. Plus a bonus future classic if you want. My six right now are (subject to change)

1. Frankenstein - I keep seeing this on classics list, but it seems so strange to have it on there. I'm very curious about it now.
2. Fahrenheit 451 - I already own it, so I have no excuse
3. Huckleberry Finn - Same deal, I already have it but haven't read it yet
4. A Tale of Two Cities - I just have yet to read anything by Dickens and it is a shame.
5. Pride and Predjudice - Cliche I know, but it is my favorite movie, and I really should read the book.
6. Alice and Wonderland - My girls have recently become obsessed with this movie and I would like to see what the book is like.
*I also would like to do the 'school classics' like Catcher in the Rye, Of Mice and Men, etc but I'll get to it someday.
Bonus: I'm not sure. I am thinking of reading 'A Town Called Alice', I have had it recommended like a classic, but I am not sure if that is the full title or not. I am open to suggestions.
I challenge all of you to join in the challenge and chat with me about books!!!!

First Post of 2010!!

2010-01-13T09:35:00.001-06:00

Well if you are wondering where I have been take a look at this link. We are officially on the market as of December 19th, FINALLY! I have been working very hard on this house. And though there is still work to be done I am mostly done and it is showing-worthy. We have had 3 showings so far and one request to rent the house, but we'd really rather sell so we are still pursuing that avenue. We got the house on the market and left for Colorado, and I guess I'd better start with the low-light of our trip so that y'all understand where I'm coming from. After some time in New Mexico and Colorado we were heading to my mom's on Christmas Eve and between Jake's dad's and my mom's houses are several mountain ranges buried in snow. Going over one we ended up sliding off of the road and getting stuck in about 5 feet of snow. A few good samaritans tried to dig us out, but we were irretrievable we had to wait to be rescued by a tow truck. We were stuck in the snow for about 2 1/2 hours. Everyone was fine, we had food and water and gas to keep warm. The front bumper was all cracked and hanging off so the tow truck driver had to wire it on for the rest of our drive. Now the van is in the shop and I am driving a rental car. Something that sucks is that my camera was in my purse and in the accident a big bottle of water poured into my purse. It didn't spill on the floor or anything, the purse held it in. But it drowned my camera and a few other things. I didn't notice because I was a bit caught up in our being stuck in the snow. I have not been able to retrieve our pictures from the camera yet and we didn't get to take any Christmas pictures which also bites. I am hoping to get some from my mom soon. But until then we will be picture-less on this blog. That is our low-light hopefully the highlights will be coming soon.

Future Design Star! (In my dreams)

2009-12-11T00:02:00.003-06:00

So I am going to brag for a little bit and maybe this will explain my absence of blogging. We are trying to get our house ready to sell and on the market. Jake and I are incapable of moving into a house and doing nothing to it. We immediately start looking at where we can knock down walls. Some things we had already done, and some we started just to make the house look good for selling. We were worried that we would lose money on the house since we have only been here a year and a half and the market is bad. So we thought that if we put in some sweat equity it would help. Only time will tell. Your house is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. So here's a few of my projects that we've been working on. A lot of it was started and worked on while Jake was here and I have been doing all the finishing touches. Above is my family picture wall. It was a big blank wall that we couldn't put any furniture against because it is also a narrow walkway. So That was my idea and I like it. Below is also my own pet project. It was a tree ring that had a stump and weeds in it. So I (with Jake's help) dug it all out and filled the bottom with gravel then I (on my own I might add) put two additional rings of bricks with matching bricks that were stacked under the deck. Now we have a fireplace. I have added seating and such as well.

This is the view to the side of the front door. It is our sitting room/office and you can see into the dining room. What you don't see is a huge giant custom bookcase that we got when we thought we were going to live here forever. It surrounds our piano. And the desk is in the other corner with cabinets above. I like it. I prefer an office out in the open and not in a closed room. That's just me. We painted this pretty much right after we moved in.

This is our biggest project ever and it is done as of TODAY!!! It was pretty bad before. It had retro-brown cultured marble tub surround and sink. With matching floors and cabinets to boot. When we started we had no idea how big of a project it would be. Due to a major mold problem that was not disclosed we ended up ripping out most of the drywall and some of the insulation, not to mention the floors, marble, and cabinets. We gutted the place. That tiling was done by Jake and I (I was the official tile cutter) and all of the plumbing, cabinets, counter tops, and even the toilet is new. After a week without being able to shower in my house I took a shower in it today!! YAY! It works! Don't worry we have been bathing at friend's houses. My other shower is not quite functioning yet though.
So that is our handywork. And my only finished things at this moment. I have one week left. Let's see if I can do it!!! Keep your fingers crossed.

Two Books

2009-12-02T17:53:00.002-06:00

I had previously joined the two book groups because I had gone to both and couldn't decide between them. This month one group read 'The Count of Monte Cristo' which I decided to read first because I had picked 'Three Cups of Tea' for the other group and was to lead the discussion so I wanted it to be fresh in my mind. this turned out to be a mistake because 'The Count of Monte Cristo' turned out to be a VERY long book. It is my fault for getting the unabridged version, not realizing just how long it was since I got it on audio on my ipod. I had to have a rush of listening and listen to 'Three Cups of Tea' in 2 days, barely finishing it 30 minutes before the club was to meet. I thought I'd give a little review of the books for those who are interested.

1. The Count of Monte Cristo- Very good, but VERY long. Longer than I thought it would be. And even though it was long I still kind of felt like it ended abruptly. There was just so much story ingeniously woven together that it took a long time to get through. Definitely Dumas' greatest work IMO. It gets a bit sinister, but it is an awesome story. I think everyone knows or has heard the story, but you would never know how complex this twisting, turning plot is unless you read the book. No movie could ever do it justice. Though it is long, you won't feel like it drags on, it continues to be a nail-biting page turner to the very end. If you like action, you'll like this one.

2. Three Cups of Tea- Awe inspiring. This is a life-changing true story of the difference one man is making in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I think every American should read this book and see a different view of how to fight 'The war on Terror.' What struck me most was the love this man has for those people. Such hatred is being cultivated in America towards muslims and it is really sad to put them all under the same umbrella. This book makes you want to get up and do something and make a difference. It made me feel so insignificant and feel like I needed some loftier goals to work towards. I really recommend this book, especially in the political climate we have in our country.

One More from Lyla

2009-12-02T17:51:00.001-06:00

This was the other day while we were at the store:

Lyla- Mom can sometimes kids wear a swimsuit with booby holders?
me- What?!
Lyla- You know the swimsuits that just have booby holders and panties.
me- not my kids.

Funny Sayings

2009-11-19T23:03:00.002-06:00

I have some very talkative girls. Jaxon talks a lot, but he still mostly just jibber-jabbers. My girls are non-stop talkers so I thought I'd share some of the funny things they have been saying lately.

Lyla- Mom, were you ever a baby?
me- yes, we all were
Lyla- was it 100 years ago?
me- no I'm not that old
Lyla- 65 years ago?
me- Lyla I'm not that old
Lyla- But you look really old to me
me - Thanks Lyla

Lyla to Mckayla- Do you want some of my french fries?
Mckayla- No, I don't like french fries.
Lyla- Yes you do, you always like french fries.
Mckayla- No I don't like them anymore
Lyla-Why?
Mckayla- They're too Frenchy.

I had a bunch of things I wanted to write, but now that I sit down to write something I am drawing a blank. Look for a second installment another time.

PS.

2009-11-06T00:58:00.002-06:00

PS. It is not that late here. It is barely 11:00, the blogger thing always says that it is super late when I post, but it's not. I am not much of a night owl anymore and I am off to bed right now. It must be on EST or something and I don't know how to change it. Any suggestions?

Lost Lost Lost

2009-11-06T00:53:00.002-06:00

So I have spent all day continually searching for the Jetta key. I took the seats out of the van to transport stuff to Kyle and Hana's garage and had used the jetta for errands. Anyways I was going to go grocery shopping yesterday but I couldn't find the Jetta key. And though I had the van key and the van was empty, Kailey's seat was locked inside the jetta. I have cleaned house continually and worked and cleaned all the while looking for the key. I was able to get the girls a ride to school this morning with the Williamsons, but I really don't like to ask favors. Anyways, I had looked everywhere I could possibly think it would be. I was really frustrated and I knew I could not sleep tonight without finding it because it was driving me insane as to where is could be. I said a prayer asking for help (which I should have done right from the start) and began to look again. Not 10 minutes later I found it. It was a very clear answer to my prayer. We have a blue jar on our counter that is supposed to be a cookie jar, but as cookies don't last long enough at our house to be put into a jar, it is where we always throw our loose change. I don't even remember thinking that I should look in the change jar but I just lifted the lid without thinking and saw 2 lemons in there. This of course led me to reach in and pull out an array of things: lemons, candy, a straw, a small toy car, and the KEY!! Yay! I wonder how the key got in there? I just am totally confounded. It must have sprung legs. I guess we'll never never know.

The frustrating thing about politics

2009-11-04T09:14:00.004-06:00

I voted yesterday in our local battle. There was only one thing on the ballot. A yes or no to a budget override for the school district. Because of budget problems at the state level our school district has lost over 1.5 million dollars in funding and has done drastic things like firing all art, music, and pe teachers, making schools share librarians, counselors and nurses, and shorter school days. Now the vote is to cut funding to the schools even more. It makes me so mad. There was a smear campaign saying that this would cost tons of money to everyone and the school district is just irresponsible, etc. But the truth is that this would just ensure that the appropriate tax dollars make it to the schools and it makes education the priority (as it should be).
Anyways. We lost. The schools will suffer even more.
I think there are 2 parties responsible for this. 1 - the retirees. You may think I am stereotyping and am being unfair, but they will vote down funding for the schools every time. The proof was when I went and stood in a very short line to vote I didn't not see a single person there without a significant amount of gray hairs on their head. From the time I got out of my car, till the time we drove off. I was the only person who was not a senior citizen. I had a few pro-override signs in my yard that kept getting pulled up and thrown down. And who is walking their dogs down the sidewalk day and night? Senior citizens. I don't know why they think it will benefit them to have crappy schools.
But who is really responsible? And what is so frustrating about politics? THE PARENTS!!!! Why weren't they at the polls!!! I have heard so many complaints from parents, and the principle sent out a newletter explaining the changes and how they were out of her control because of the complaints she had had. But yet, these parents didn't go out and vote! There were less than 8000 votes total and it was 57% to 41%. I know that doesn't add up and I am not sure how there can be a gray area in a "mark yes or no" vote. I was standing outside with our PTSO president who was trying to catch parents during the parent teachers conferences last week to hand out fliers with override information. He said that at least 70% of the parents had no idea what was going on and didn't want to stop and talk about it. This is for your kids! You need to talk about it! There was one guy who went by and TJ caught him to give a flier and he briefly explained what the whole thing was about. The guy had no idea. He wanted the school to get the programs back and to have regular school days again, but he had no idea. How can you not know!!!!?! There are signs posted on every corner of the city. You can't drive to the grocery store without seeing at least 20 yes or no signs. And the bigger clue... Your kids! You'd think that they would want to know what was going on when so many changes are made at your own kids school. You'd also think that more would get out and vote on an issue that has such a clear, distinct impact on their lives. But no.
After all the signs posted, fliers handed out, phone calls made, speeches given, we still lost. That is frustrating. It just seems like no matter how hard you work people still don't care and there is nothing you can do about it. They want the changes but still won't take the time to go to the polls. It makes me so mad. It just makes it all seem pointless. I hope the community we are moving to has better support for schools and more involvement in government. We'll see.
There is my opinionated rant for the next little while. I should do this more often.

I think it's Fall!! Oh wait, maybe not.

2009-11-03T01:25:00.003-06:00

Last week we had to put a hold on some of our outdoor projects because we had a cold front move in. It was a shocker since we had been swimming only the week before. It was chilly enough that I had to go the store and buy jackets for all of my kids after I realized that we didn't own any jackets or sweaters for any of our kids. I still haven't gotten much more than light jackets because they just don't sell thick warm winter clothes here. I thought we had finally hit the start of fall weather. I felt like we needed jackets in the morning on the way to school though by the afternoons we are in T-shirts again. However, it warmed up again by Halloween. I made everyone wear jackets and sweaters under their costumes, thinking it would get cold as the sun went down. But everyone was stripping down after a short while. And today we were dying in the car on our ride home from the airport without air conditioning. It is crazy how much warmer Tucson is than us when it is so close. This week fall is officially gone again because we have record high temps. It's okay because we are enjoying getting to spend as much time outside as possible.

Hold the Roadtrips please...

2009-11-03T01:08:00.002-06:00

My family has started to have a tradition of getting together (as many of us as possible) on Thanksgiving and leaving Christmas for other gatherings. Last year many of my family members made a huge effort to drive all of the way down here to Sierra Vista to spend Thanksgiving with us. This year my mom is hosting thanksgiving. I had been thinking for a very long time that that was where we would be spending thanksgiving this year. However, I am not so sure now. We took Jake to the airport this morning and after spending some time with him and saying our good-byes we stopped at a drive through right outside the airport for some munchies. Just 10 minutes after getting onto the highway Kailey is screaming because she is hungry too. So I pull off onto the access road for some privacy while feeding her. During which time Lyla decides she needs to potty. Since we are near the outskirts of Tucson there is only a ghetto Circle K. I needed gas and air, but after getting all of the kids out of the car and taking them inside we discover they don't have any public bathrooms and there are no gas stations nearby. I didn't want to drive back into Tucson, but Lyla decided she didn't really have to go potty and she was just kidding. Then 30 minutes later she can't wait and we are in the middle of nowhere. I pull off onto a Ranch Road exit and she has to pee in the dirt. By the time we get to Benson (the exit on the interstate that is about 30 miles from Sierra Vista and the half-way point to Tucson) it had been over an hour since leaving the airport. I took the van out of cruise control to stop at the exit and it started making scary noises and refused to accelerate. I was able to pull over and had to get out and check it out (not that I could have done anything). When I started it up again whatever happened stopped and we went on our way. By the time we got home we had taken over 2 hours on a drive that is usually just over an hour! I am not feeling confident about going on a mong car ride anywhere right now. Especially in our van that would probably not make it. Suggestions anyone?

Happy Halloween

2009-11-03T00:01:00.003-06:00

We had a great Halloween this year. It really started last weekend when we went to our Stake wide Fall Family Fun Fest. It was a huge event. My biggest complaint is that it did not go long enough. We didn't get to do everything. The girls sang in the talent show, they got their faces painted, got snow cones, cotton candy, played various games, played on the jumping castles, and (last but not least) I won Second place in the chili cookoff!!!! And just so you know how extremely huge this cookoff was, there was at least 50 crockpots of chili and I was 2nd place! Just to brag a bit. Anyways, on Friday the 30th Jake and I went to a grown-ups halloween party that was really fun. We ate food and played Bunco, which is now one of my favorite big group games to play. And on Saturday we went to the trunk or treat at the church then went trick or treating a little bit and went to a halloween party to top it all off. So can anyone guess what we were?
Maybe Jaxon was buckwheat......

Or maybe Kailey was a baby Dora...

Maybe Mckayla was Tina Turner with Lyla as Lady Gaga....

We bobbed for apples at the party, but after Jaxon touched the water a couple of times with his nose he discovered the real trick to getting the apples out of the water. At least he did try to get one with his mouth.

Lyla got hers without ever getting wet at all.

Mckayla managed not to get wet either. I don't think they get the point of boobing for apples.

Here's your next Halloween costume hint. Kailey is playing the perfect part in....

Any guesses?

Got it yet?

The Pacheco Family Mariachi band!!! Ey yie yie!!!

7 years and going strong!!!

2009-11-02T23:04:00.002-06:00

Last monday Jake and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary. We kept it small this year because of all of the projects we have going and the kids to take care of. But it was a special anniversary because for the first time we are in the city we were married in on our anniversary. We decided to take a walk through memory lane and we went out to breakfast at the little restaurant that we had our wedding breakfast at. Later in the day we left our kids with some awesome friends and took off to Tucson. Jake had written a bunch of things to do on papers and put them into a hat for me to draw out of. Lucky for him, I picked out the Pima Air and Space museum. Jake has always wanted to go there and he is a sucker for things like that. He wants to take a picture of every airplane and read every thing about it. It reminds me a lot of my dad in that way. But since we did an event that Jake wanted we ate at my favorite restaurant, The Melting Pot, and then headed home. It was simple but wonderful. It was so nice to get to go spend some time as just the two of us. We rarely get to go out together alone. I love our kids, but this date was long overdue.

I just wanted to say that I have the best husband ever. He is so supportive and he works so hard. He is a very awesome dad. We find ways that we compliment each other every day. It is not something that I can explain. I think everyone feels this way about their marriages (or at least I hope they do), but Jake and I have something special. At first we felt so opposite from each other and now it just feels like our differences work so well together. Sorry for the sappiness, but it was our anniversary, so I am entitled to it.

Today, one week after our anniversary, we said good-bye to Jake for the next unknown while. Though he has had several trips to Iraq this is his first to Afghanistan. Hopefully it will be short but I will believe that when I see it. The kids and I took him to the airport this morning and he is already half-way around the world. We miss him already. I love you honey!!!

Kailey's first word

2009-10-19T22:48:00.002-05:00

I think this video speaks for itself. I just had to share my cute baby with y'all.

Stereotypes

2009-10-19T22:18:00.002-05:00

Jake and I have decided that we have very stereotypical children in many different ways. Starting with our twin girls, they are ALL girl. They were born loving pretty pink and purple things and loving to play princesses, barbies, baby dolls, etc. They both are very sensitive and loving to their younger siblings. They are also stereotypical big sisters. They are the bosses of the house and love to be little mommies to Kailey and (much to his dismay) Jaxon. They are typical twins that people can't tell apart, opposite in some ways, but identical in many many others. They are best friends and rarely fight with each other. They often finish each other's sentences and complete each other's thoughts. They have just discovered the power they have in looking alike. Once a day after doing laundry they came out both wearing exactly what the other had worn the day before. They were beside themselves with a sneaky glee because they were excited to trick everyone into messing them up. I don't know if they've figured out that they don't need to switch clothes to trick people into mixing them up.
Jaxon is ALL boy. Before we ever thought he was old enough to care about boy-themed toys he would crawl into his big sister's room and steal the pink barbie car and push it as he crawled around making car sounds. He LOVES cars. He is obsessive about cars. He tries constantly to find new ways to inflict bodily injury on himself. He also is a stereotypical 2 year old. I don't ever remember my girls being this bad. He is able to make giant disasters in mere seconds and throw a fit about the tiniest things around him. Yesterday we were getting ready for church and I got him all cute in his shirt and tie. It was closing in on time to go so I went in to get my makeup on. He comes in only 2 minutes later with raspberry jam from head to toe. So we had to completely change his outfit and wash him off. Jake was getting the church bag ready and getting Kailey ready as I went to finish my half-done makeup job. When we headed out to the door we turned the corner of the kitchen to see Jaxon laying on the floor in the middle of a puddle of sprinkles he had poured out licking them off of the floor. Thus, we had to clean him off again and be very late for church. Some days he just drives me crazy, but he is still as cute as they come. He is also the stereotypical little brother. Jake and I laugh at how well he knows to push every single one of his older sisters buttons. They are always fighting and he is always finding new ways to drive them nuts. He is also a very protective older brother to Kailey. It is so cute how he adores her and she him. I am not sure why he is so mean to Mckayla and Lyla and so loving to Kailey. Just instinct I guess. And Kailey is just cute. She is so happy and we just love her. She has discovered her voice and we've never heard the end of it. I just love them all and I wanted to share that for no reason.

Kailey's Laugh

2009-10-07T10:09:00.002-05:00

Kailey is a really happy baby. She is always smiling and laughing, and as soon as she discovered her voice box we never heard the end of it. She is always making cute happy little baby sounds. No one can make her laugh as much as Jaxon. They seem to have a special bond because she lights up whenever he is around. Here is a short video of Jaxon playing with her. He was doing his little thing to make her laugh and she was just cracking up, but of course, when I grabbed the camera to catch it, they stopped.

Book Reviews

2009-10-03T08:45:00.003-05:00

I know it seems weird that I have gotten to read so much this summer, but I am a huge audiobook listener. I like to listen to audiobooks when we travel because it makes time fly and helps to keep me from getting motion sickness. I also like to listen when I am working around the house. It makes me more motivated to go and work because I can't wait to hear what happens next. I have been trying to read a lot of what most consider to be "classic literature" because I want to keep my mind working while I am not in school. Here is a rundown of some of my most recent reads:

"The Woman in White" - Very Awesome. Not on every classic literature list, but on some. This is one that my book club picked out to read over the summer break because it is very very long. It is considered to be the first mystery. It is told like an investigation. There is a combination of many different narrorator's accounts of a series of events that all combine together to reveal one thing. I'd highly recommend that one to anyone. The language is a bit hard to get into at first, but if you stick with it you'll love it.

"The Odyssey" - The coolest thing about this book is the author. It is beyond me that a story or book could survive for so long. It is debated as to when Homer lived, but it is believed that it was at least 600 B.C. I think it is crazy that we have other quotes, poems, stories and philosophies from ancient Greece. There are many different translations of this story though, but I think the overall story would be the same. I read the translation by W.H.D Rouse which in itself is over 100 years old. It is written in the form of the long poems that tell a story like "Beowolf". I had to read that one for school one time and I can't help but see all of the similarities. It is action-packed and filled with lots of blood and gore and love. But not written as graphically as people write today. It is written very matter-of-factly with lots of indifference to human life. But I think it is a classic because you come out knowing not only about every Greek God & Goddess but their own story and their personality which I thought was interesting. It was a lesson on mythology (which, by the way, I am not sure why that is considered a valuable subject, though interesting) and astrology. It was a good ancient story and I liked it. But I probably won't read it a second time. I think everyone should read it once though.

"The Great Gatsby" - I have to say that though I liked this book; I am not sure why it is considered a classic. I think that most classics are educational in some way. Though this is a pretty good story and is well written, I couldn't see the educational value. Maybe it is just me. Also, I didn't think that Gatsby should qualify as a "Great", in fact I thought he was kindof an idiot. So that one puzzled me. Still, it was a good story, but pretty slow and when it ended I went, "that's it?" Not highly recommended by me. Any thoughts on that one?

"The Jungle" - I really wanted to read this one because it is considered to be one of the most influential books in American history. I knew that this book was a hit to the meat industry in 1905. This book single-handledly made our country start the FDA. That is pretty amazing. What I didn't know is that That is not what the book is about. Sure, he talks about the meat industry in pretty gory detail, but he really was making a huge case for socialism. I am a pretty staunch believer in limited government and free markets, but half-way through this book you are asking where the communist party meets. It is pretty powerful. I read a quote, though I can't find who it's by, but they said "Sinclair wrote this book to hit America in the heart, but he ended up hitting her in the stomach." I read that he does acknowledge that he missed his original intentions and the ending of the book falls really short of the rest of the story. The last few chapters of the book are an all-out propaganda case for socialism. That's where he lost me. I thought it was interesting to have it all spelled out like that, but the story was more convincing than the lecture at the end. What I loved about this book is that it is such a vivid picture of how people lived in Chicago in 1905. It is so capivating as it shows all the gruesome details of that life. But, by showing that way of life he really does expose the issues with capitalism run rampant without any sortof checks or balances. The terrible things happening in the food industry were just one of the fall-outs of a completely corrupted government from top to bottom. It was really sad, depressing, and almost hard to read. But I think this is a book that everyone should read. It is extremely powerful and very well written. It is the polar opposite of "1984" which I read last summer. Both are powerfully convincing in their cases, but I can't help but think there has to be a middle ground somewhere.

I have just started "The Lost Symbol" and so far it does not disappoint. I am a big Dan Brown fan, so I was super excited for this one to come out. I am not excited about either book that my book clubs are reading this month. They seem a bit too light and fluffy compared to what I have been reading. But I will read them just the same. That is the whole point of being part of a book club is reading things that you would never have picked out yourself. It has broadened my horizons. Anyways, that post was a novel (get it?), but it is raining outside so some of my projects are on hold right now anyways.

Busy Busy

2009-09-25T11:59:00.003-05:00

I almost feel guilty for posting because we have a lot of things we are working on and I hate to be spending time at the computer instead of working. But this is the only attempt at journaling that I do, and I want to keep it fairly up to date. We have begun our home renovations. And, as is always the way with renovations, each little project turns into a big project. Our house is 40 years old so there are bound to be issues underneath the surface. We decided to update the bathrooms. At first we were just going to resurface the countertops and shower and strip the cabinets and restain them. But we started srtipping the cabinets and discovered that they were unstainable (the paint hides many things), and there were so many different coats of paint on them that stripping all of it was out of the question. So we broke down and spent money on new cabinets for the bathroom. Taking advantage of a 20% off instock cabinetry sale. After scraping the old dated tile off the floors we discovered mold in the walls. So we had to take out a lot of the drywall in the bathroom too. And when we took the toilet out the lid got broken and we haven't found where to buy just a tank lid and not a whole new toilet. We knew we'd have to invest some money in this project, but we didn't want to spend a lot because we felt that was too risky. Right now our bathroom is gutted, but we have gotten the new tile floors down (to Jake's credit). I have finished painting all of the wood deck railing and fencing and am starting painting on the shed and entryway. What has made a lot of this hard is that Jake has been working a lot. They have a big project that they have to get done at work and it has required him to work every weekend this month, there goes any and all time he could spend on the house. BUT he has this weekend off, so we hope to get more accomplished on our gutted bathroom. I feel bad that a lot of those big things are falling onto his shoulders. I really just don't feel like I am competent enough to handle those tasks, and Jake is meticuluous to the letter with his projects. There's our update. Hopefully there is more to report after this weekend!

It's official....kindof.

2009-09-08T12:20:00.002-05:00

Most of you know that we have been in limbo for awhile as to whether or not we will be moving. Right now (though things can change), we are definately moving. Jake has been offered a position in Utah with Northrop. We haven't gotten the official offer letter yet, but we have been told that we need to get things going especially since we have to try to get our house sold. I was a little bit hesitant at first because we just moved here a year ago. And we really moved here with the mindset that this was it. We thought this was where our kids would grow up. But now only a year later we are moving again. We love this house, we have become kindof the party house. There are usually several friends over at any given time and we have loved having a lot of friends close. These are a lot of people we've known for almost 8 years, so it has been fun to live near each other again. I never thought I'd move back to Utah again, and I wasn't really excited to do so.
BUT I am excited to get to live near my family. 2 years ago only a couple of my family members were living in Utah, but right now my mom and 6 of my siblings are living in Utah. And in 2 years we could scatter to the winds again. This is probably our only chance to live close to so many of my family members and enjoy lots of family gatherings. I am really excited about that. Plus, Jake will be working fewer hours and will get to spend a lot more time with us. Also this looks to be a good opportunity for Jake in his career. At first it didn't, but now it does. It's hard to explain that, so I'm not going to. Just know that now we are very excited about the move, though we were quite hesitant at first. We have met with our realtor and have begun doing many projects in order to get our house in shape to sell at a good price. We are just trying not to lose money on it at this point, which is hard since we've only been here a year. But I think the changes we are making to the house will make a big difference.
PS. We are going to be living in Tooele and Jake will be working out at Dugway Proving Grounds. It is an hour commute, but Jake commutes an hour to work on most days right now, so we aren't too worried about that. Hopefully we can get all of this work done in time for a good open house!

Potty Training has begun

2009-09-08T12:11:00.002-05:00

Well, not really. I do hope to have Jaxon mostly potty trained before his next birthday (which is a long ways away if you've read the last post), but I don't think I'll be doing much heavy duty potty training until our lives are a bit less hectic. For now we are just going to be introducing the potty and having him sit once in awhile. However, Jaxon has started to tell me every time he is pooping. He stops and says "eewwie" and then makes the faces associated with that pasttime. So last night when he came into my room and said eewie I decided just to try it out. I took him to the bathroom and sat him on the toilet and he went poop. It was pretty exciting to have him poop on the potty the very first time I sat him on there. The funny thing was that he happened to be holding a book, so he looked like a pro sitting on the potty reading a book while pooping. Typical boy.

Watch out for the Terrible Twos!!!!

2009-09-04T23:27:00.003-05:00

Happy Birthday Jaxon!!! Jaxon turned terrible 2 on September 2nd, though I think the terrible hit a few weeks ago. He has certainly lived up to the cliche. He has begun the tantrums and getting into things and destroying everything he can. But he is also a total sweetheart at times. He loves to try to help me do things. He trys to sweep and vaccum and is good at helping with the laundry and dishes. He loves to give kisses and hugs and he's very good at being the annoying little brother to his older sisters. He is also Kailey's favorite entertainment. Though he sometimes is unintentionally rough with her, he tries really hard to help with her and is always very sweet. He is also 100% boy. He LOVES cars. Everything cars. He loves the movie and he loves any car he can get his hands on. It is also one of the only words he knows how to say. He is a late talker and still only audibly says a few words. Hopefully he'll catch up soon. We love him so much and I can't believe that he is 2 years old already!!!!
PS. We had a few friends over for a little get-together for him on his birthday. We just ate and opened presents and let him play with his new toys. Nothing fancy. He got lots of new toy cars that he loves and we got him his own Lightening McQueen tricycle so he doesn't have to try to ride his sister's bike anymore. Our camera was left at Jake's work, so I have to get those pics from friends who brought cameras, but I'll have them soon. Love you Jaxon!

My Hubby the Pilot

2009-09-04T23:09:00.002-05:00

Jake is now officially a pilot!!! YAY! He started his pilot's license training at the end of last year and he took his checkride last weekend and passed!! YAY! It took him awhile because he could only do it in his free time after work when he could schedule with his instructor. He has been done with all of the training for a few months, but it took over two months to get a date with an examiner, and he had to go to phoenix to do it. But he's done! I am so proud of him, he works so hard and is so determined. I love you honey! Congrats!

A Wedding at our House!

2009-08-13T23:07:00.003-05:00

So I did say I would tell why I have been so busy, and now I have the chance to do that. We had a wedding in our backyard last weekend. I was the designated wedding planner and decorator for the event. It was for our very close friends Kyle and Hana Smith. She is from Japan and came to America to go to school where they met and dated. They had pretty much decided they would get married, but she only had a student visa so she had to go back to Japan since she had graduated from school. This past December she came back and enrolled in school down here so she could be with Kyle. They kept waiting to see if her parents could come out from Japan and it just never happened. So at the last minute they decided they would rather just go ahead and get married instead of waiting any longer. Plus she had to get married or start school in the next 2 weeks to still be considered a legal immigrant, and school as an international student is extremely expensive and pointless since she already has a degree and would only be going so she could stay in country. Anyways so we threw together a backyard wedding in our backyard in only 2 weeks. It was a rough and busy two weeks because several of the people that would have been helping me were not able to help. Two of our other extremely close friends were out of town visiting family because he is leaving for Afghanistan this weekend, and Jono went to CO to see family, and I usually rely on him for help in lots of ways. Also Jake has been really busy with a huge thing at work that had him working late hours; plus his best friend (that also would have been helping me out wherever he could) got really sick and was in the hospital for over a week. So Jake was working really late and then going to the hospital to spend time with him and support him however he could. I was kindof on my own (with the help of the bride and groom of course.) Aside from arranging wedding decor and ordering food (no, I wasn't going to take on cooking as well), we also did our own DJing, and we had a lot of stuff to borrow/rent. We also did a complete overhaul on the yard. At first it didn't seem so bad, but once we got going we had a lot of work to do. We had to prune and trim every tree and bush, plus weed pulling, and raking up lots and lots of pine needles. We had about 10 bags of yard waste picked up on Wednesday and by Saturday Jake was taking another 35 bags of yard waste to the dump! It was a lot. But now we don't have to do yard work for a long time:) I had a lot of help on the yard thankfully. Everything came together in the end with only a few panic attacks here and there. It turned out beautifully and the weather was so unbelievably wonderful. It wasn't blistering hot, or rainy or windy. Just perfect. So here are the pics from the wedding in total random order:

Here are Kyle and Hana in their Kimonos. Hana has her own family Kimono in Japan, but she couldn't get it here in time, but she was able to borrow one. She was married in a wedding dress because it was an American-style ceremony. She said she didn't want to wear a kimono unless she was having a very traditional Japanese ceremony. Plus, it is traditional for the bride to change attire 4 or 5 times throughout the wedding celebrations. So they changed to Kimonos for the dinner and speeches. Then back into wedding attire for dancing and the rest of the party. It was really neat to watch the little Japanese ladies dress her in the Kimono. It is such a complicated process. It was really beautiful and none of the pics I got do it justice.

Here's our reception set-up for the dinner. It looked so awesome at night with all of the lights.

Here's a picture during the ceremony. They were married by my stake president even though they aren't mormon. They all work at the same place, so Kyle felt more comfortable asking someone to marry them that he knew. They aren't church goers, so he didn't want to just get some random priest. The coolest thing was that during the ceremony a hummingbird came and hovered right between them during their vows. It was so beautiful. I wish I had caught that on camera, it was such a neat touch.

They didn't have a wedding party, but they did ask Mckayla and Lyla to be flower girls. They looked so cute and concentrated so hard on their flower-scattering duties.

Here's the reception set-up without people in it yet. We didn't have enough chairs to have them in both places so we had to ask people to take their chairs over to the reception. Kindof tacky, but oh well. I don't think anyone minded.

I had to show off the centerpiece Hana and I came up with. We also rolled the silverware and made the wedding favors.

Here's the ceremony set up. Jake has worked so hard for us to have green grass, and here we are putting it to good use.

I meant to take some pictures of the food, but I forgot. It was amazing! Hana is friends with the owner of a Japanese restaurant in town and she catered the event. She brought everything on big Japanese platters and it was delicious! She brought a lot though. There was a lot of sushi and spring rolls, tempura, potstickers, rice, teriyaki chicken, and a few other things. It was really really good. Anyways we are so happy for Kyle and Hana and their marriage! I am also so happy for all of the people that helped out and let us borrow things to make it nice, and I am so grateful for the perfect weather. We really are becoming quite the party house, but this was our biggest event to date. I don't think I'll be topping it anytime soon.

Summer is Officially Over

2009-08-12T13:18:00.002-05:00

The girls have started school again. We can no longer go anywhere or do anything except for over school breaks. They started last Thursday. They are very excited about being big First graders. They now are allowed to walk home from the bus stop by themselves, though I am usually "taking a walk" down the street around the same time they get to the stop. They are disappointed that recess is so much shorter for first graders. But I think it is shorter for the whole school. This year there have been many drastic changes made to decrease costs. They have cut all of the art, music and PE for all elementary schools in the district and shortened the school day. It is practically half-day compared to last year. School starts at 7:55 and ends at 1:45. I am very disappointed with the changes and I hope that the voters in our district will wise up and see the problems they have created. Hopefully we will get to vote again and maybe have a shot at changing the budget now that we have seen the consequences.
Mckayla and Lyla are very excited to be back in school and hanging out with their friends again. It is funny that they have gotten the same type of teachers again this year. Last year Mckayla had a very structured class and we got frequent communications from the teacher, her teacher appears to be the same this year. And Lyla's teacher last year, although not the communicative type, was very loving and still a great teacher, though maybe a bit less structured and we were a bit more in the dark. Her teacher this year appears to follow that motif as well. But it really works for their personalities, so I think it is great. It is just funny how that worked out the same again this year. Here's hoping I can keep up again with getting the girls to school on time, and doing homework every night which they have now that they are big first graders.

Our Big Trip Part Three: Chicago!

2009-08-12T12:24:00.004-05:00

Though I was born in the midwest and have been back there many many times I have never spent any time in Chicago. We've driven past a time or two, but I've never actually gone there to do sightseeing. We had one extra day to do stuff in between the reunion and our flight home so we decided to go see Chicago. It was really cool. I am sad we were so limited on time and didn't get to do much. But we did hit a couple of hot spots. I can not get pictures to show up in the order I want, or move them into a good order, so it is just random and I'll explain as I go.
We decided one thing we had to do was go to the top of Sears Tower, (or what was formerly known as Sears Tower). The thing is, that is the one thing that a lot of people decide they have to do, so the wait was really long. We ended up in line for at least 2 hours, and we were not prepared for it. The kids were starving by the time we got to the top so we bought some nasty overpriced popcorn at a gift shop. Still, it was an amazing sight. They had these glass balconies that you could step out on and look straight down. It was so freaky. Here is Jaxon on the balcony:
Here is a view from the top:

We also ended up going to legoland. It was pretty cool and the kids had a really great time. The thing is that if you go on a trip with kids everything has to be geared towards kids. Jake and I would love to go back and do grown-up things like visit museams, go to shows, and do more sightseeing. Legoland was still fun though.

The last thing we did was to go down to Navy Pier. They have the biggest ferris wheel I have ever seen there, but we didn't get to ride it because it started to rain soon after we got there. Everything shut down right as we were going to buy tickets because there were reports of lightning. We still walked down it and looked out over the lake and back at the big city. It was really neat. Here's a view of the city at night from the pier:

We went to this 50's style diner in downtown that not only served up some good food, but they served up a big helping of Chicago attitude with it. It seems as though people are proud of their rude population like the south is proud of their "southern hospitality". Our waitress yelled at us a few times, and got more than impatient if we took too long to decide. There were signs on the wall that said things like "eat and get out." It was all in good fun though and we were entertained by the rudeness of people and how some people got all offended and the servers didn't care. Here's Kailey in one of the hats:

Here's Lyla modeling a hat:

Here's all of us at the top of the tower formerly known as Sears Tower: (not sure why Mckayla is making that face).

Here's Jake and the kids on the glass balcony:

Here's some of the mini-Chicago at legoland:

The entrance to legoland:

There's a view of the tower formerly known as Sears Tower from the highway. We were at the very very top of that huge building! And it took less than 2 minutes to get to the top!

Here's Jaxon and a buddy in the jungle adventure part of Legoland:

And that is it for our big trip! Our flight home went really well. The kids slept the whole way because we had to wake them up so early to go to the airport. Plus it was a non-stop flight which made our lives so much easier. Then we got really busy when we got home, which explains my big delay in posting this last post. More to come.....hopefully soon.

Our Big Trip Part Two: Michigan

2009-08-04T10:13:00.003-05:00

Wow lots of pictures! Too many to choose from! After Indiana we headed up to Michigan for a reunion with the Maple side of the family. We all split the cost of renting a lodge-type place that was just a 20 minute walk to the beaches of Lake Michigan. We stayed up there for 3 days and we had such a great time. Everything could not have gone any better or smoother (kudos Maria!), which was such a relief after the disasters of our last reunion. Some of the awesome things we did: blueberry picking, beach, family talent show, beach, campfire, beach, ect. I loved the blueberry picking, they were sweet and delicious, unlike the ones you can buy in the store. All of the kids left with purple stained mouths and hands, plus we had ample blueberries to eat for the rest of the week. The beaches of Lake Michigan were so nice! The water was surprisingly warm, and it feels like you are on the ocean minus the salt (which is a good thing). It wasn't crowded and there was plenty of sand for kids to roll in. I would definately love to go back to swim there. Our Family Talent Show turned out to be a huge success. We did our own version of "thriller" as a Micheal Jackson tribute. Everyone came up with creative fun acts. I think we will be doing that again. We also learned how to make our own jewelry and the girls and I made a few different jewelry sets for ourselves. We took nice family portraits that I will be sharing once I can copy them from Katie's picasa. The following pictures are in a completely random order.

Here's the Thompson family doing their act for the talent show, can you tell what dance they're doing?
Here's the Price family's act, they lipsynced to "lime in the coconut"

Here's Mckayla in the sand:

Here's Katie and Amber who FINALLY got into the water:

Here's some random guy I saw in the water who I thought was incredibly sexy so I snapped a picture without his knowledge, then put it online without his knowledge, but you have to admit- he's pretty dang sexy!

This is my mom and her older sister Jo being lifeguards.

Here's my cousin Maria holding Kailey. Ps-she planned this whole thing plus had to move to another state the next week, so BIG KUDOS to Maria for such an awesome reunion!

Jake with our baby fish Jaxon. He has shown a natural ability to swim and a love for the water. He will already swim across our pool by himself (with a floatie on, but no one helping him) and our girls wouldn't do that until just this summer after they had taken swimming lessons!

This is my niece Megan. I caught her doing meditative sand angels.

Here's Jessica's hubby Luke with Jane and Kailey all in red:

Here's Jaxon devoring a smore by the campfire:

Here's our gathering at the campfire behind the lodge:

This is my uncle Larry reading a bedtime story to all of the kids. One of the grandparents read a bedtime story every night. I thought that was a brilliant idea.

Here's Gabriella, Eve, and Lyla in the lake.

After 3 full days at Lake Michigan we headed off for the last part of our trip. It was so fun to have everyone together again under happy circumstances! We had such a great time with everyone and it was actually a relaxing vacation because we just played together and hung out and didn't try to over plan on activities. So then we were off to............

Our Big Trip Part One: Indiana

2009-07-30T10:24:00.004-05:00

After our last road tripping experience we decided it would be better to fly (even though it breaks the bank). Our car is still in need of a lot of work so we won't be going anywhere far in it until we can afford all of the repairs in need. On the way there we had two flights and they went pretty well. It was Jaxon's last free ride. Jaxon was done by the end of the day. It is hard for him to have to sit and play quietly for most of the day. At least we were able to sit near each other on both flights so that we could keep switching off holding Jaxon and Kailey.
We got into Chicago late and drove down to Lafayette, IN and stayed at my cousin's apartment. The next day (after sleeping in a bit) we went to a big park to have a mini-reunion with all of my extended family on my dad's side. Even though we only had an afternoon together I am really grateful that we were able to spend the time together. Most of my siblings were there and all of my dad's siblings were there plus 2 of my cousins. It was also great to see my grandparents. My grandpa isn't doing well so I feel the need to get out there as often as possible. (though I know once a year isn't often at all). It was so great to sit and visit and catch up with everyone. Here are some pics from Indiana:

This is my Uncle Chris, I am disappointed we weren't there long enough to go out and do Kareoke. That is one of my favorite things to do with my family in Indiana.

This is my great-aunt Jane and her daughter Sarah (my first cousin once removed??).

Here's all my kids and my brother Spencer's kids (Sammie and Carina) playing at the little zoo they had in the park:

Here's my family taking up the last car of the little train in the park. Jaxon kept trying to wander off anf get over to it so we caved and a bunch of people went on the train ride.

This is me and Grandpa:

This is me and grandma:

This is my Aunt Heather:

This is me sister Jessica with her new baby Jane, plus me and Kailey. Jane is 6 weeks younger than Kailey and if Jessica and I have anything to say about it, they'll be best friends some day.

After a mini-Pechin reunion we headed up to Michigan that evening to begin the Maple Family reunion. To be continued.......

The big reveal

2009-07-17T12:01:00.004-05:00

A couple of months ago we started redoing the girls room as a birthday present. We did eventually finish the painting, but the details took quite awhile longer, and there are still a few things I want to do. But I thought I'd reveal what we've done so far. First a few before pictures, but not really, I am terrible at remembering to take the before pictures.
Here is Jaxon eagerly helping with the painting:

Here's Mckayla helping to paint:

Here's a before shot of their room without the toys in it (or all over the floor.)

AND HERE'S THE BIG REVEAL.................

Their little play area:

The closet with the new crown I made (from scratch I might add)

Here's the view from the door:

We'd still like to sand and paint their desks and paint the white craft cabinets with some fun colors and designs, but that will have to come later.

Happy Birthday Jake!!

2009-07-17T11:37:00.003-05:00

Jake's birthday was July 9th. We were just going to have a couple of friends over, but you know how we are. It ended up being a gigantic birthday bash. After more and more people were invited we ended up having about 30 people over. It was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun. We had a taco bar plus homemade guacomole and salsa. I had a crockpot of shredded beef and one of shredded chicken, plus I made homemade refried beans and spanish rice. It is kindof funny that deciding to have mexican food can either mean a really easy, cheap, fast meal, or it can be a really expensive, long, complicated meal. This one was defineately a long one. I had to start cooking the day before. But it turned out really well. I have a bunch of pictures, but I can never get my pictures to show up in the order I want, so they are just random.
This is our friend Hana helping Jaxon take the first swings at the pinata. There is a little mexican party shop that makes awesome pinatas. We got this one and the girls decided to color it to look like Jake so that everyone could take a swing at him for his birthday:

Here is the cake I made for him. It is supposed to look like the Hunter UAV which is the plane that Jake flys for work. It was my first attempt at a cake like this and I couldn't have done it without the tips and advice from my sister Amber (thankyou Amber!).

This is Joey and Jaxon. Joey is a kid that lives across the street from us and he is so sweet to Jaxon all of the time. He just loves him. They are buddies and it is so cute.

Here is when I surprised Jake with the cake:

Here is Jake opening his presents:

This is a shot of everyone at the tables. We originally had it all set up outside, but it started to rain right when we were going to start eating, so we had to move inside.

After all the kids took their shots at the pinata Jake finished it off. These pinatas are really hard to break, and it took Jake awhile to get it open. We didn't have a blindfold, so we put a reusable shopping bag over all of the kids heads. It was very entertaining.

Here's Mckayla who decided she would dress up and play cheerleader for everyone who was hitting the pinata:

Jake and his look alike pinata:

My friends Hana and Ashley with the spread of food that we had. Thanx girls for all of your help!!!

I think Jake had a great birthday. I wanted him to know how much we love him and appreciate all he does for us. He sure is loved by his friends as well. As more and more people heard about his birthday they wanted to come and be a part of it. He is the best husband and father in the world and I love him a ton. I hope you had a great day hun!

Scorpion Update

2009-07-17T11:19:00.002-05:00

I know this is a freaky picture, but I thought it was cool to show. Scorpions really do glow under a blacklight. Jake has been going around the house at night and hunting them. They are really easy to spot with a blacklight. You can see one 10 feet away if you shine the light on them. These are a few of them he's caught: (though I think he should just kill them.)

I am pretty much healed up. I am still itchy only on the two sting areas. We had the pest control come out again for free because they have a guarantee. The guy did a real thorough check of the house and as he was spraying one of the baseboards in the hallway one jumped out at him. I just said, "Told ya so!" But we haven't found any in the house since that time, and Jake has been looking really hard for them. All the ones he has caught have been outside.
We got these glass "scorpion safe" bowls that you put under your bedposts to keep scorpions out of your bed. I kindof feel like it is a company that knows you will do anything to feel safe, so it could be a total scam and we wouldn't know. Supposedly scorpions can't crawl up glass surfaces, so if you make sure your bedding isn't hanging down on the floor and your bed is pulled out from the wall they can't get into your bed if you have these things under the posts. I don't know. We're willing to try anything. I think all we really bought is peace of mind, but it's better than nothing.

Happy last-minute Independence Day!

2009-07-17T10:50:00.003-05:00

On the third of July the elders quorom (the men's group in our church) was in charge of hosting a dinner dance for all the adults in our church. Since Jake is in the preseidency in our elders quorom we had to help put it together. It was kindof last minute considering that only a couple weeks prior the bishop had asked the quorom president how the dance plans were coming and he was totally clueless that there was supposed to be a dance. We got back form our Tahoe trip the week before and didn't know about it until the Sunday before it was supposed to happen. Anyways, we took over the decorating and the desserts. I thought that given the short notice the decorations turned out really great. Too bad I didn't take my camera with me to the dance! After Jake and I spent 2 hours setting up the church with very little help it started, but only about 30 minutes after it started the power went out! It was a real bummer. At least we all got to eat. The power was out in that whole area of the city. We did go outside and continue dancing in the parking lot for a little while, but we ended early and took down all of our hard work in decorations with flashlights. It was still fun to dance in the parking lot though.

This Fourth of July we decided to host a party. It was pretty last minute as well because we had only been home from our Tahoe trip for a week or so, and by the time we thought to have a party a lot of people already had plans. Also we were pretty busy with the dance that was only the day before. But we had a few friends come over in the afternoon and swim, then we had an early dinner outside. It turned out really well. Summer parties are pretty easy with a pool. I don't feel like I have to do much entertaining aside from the food. We just say "go swim" and everyone has a great time. Here is our decked out backyard, I reused some of the decorations from the dance:
This is us at the fireworks. We went and parked in the parking lot of Jake's work. It is right across the street from the park where they do the fireworks show and they only let employees in to watch from there. We sat with some work friends and it was really fun.
Here is Kailey at the party. She loves her bumbo! She will sit in that thing all day, but she won't do swings or bouncers. I just thought this picture turned out ultra cute.

Here are a bunch of people in the pool:

I have to end by saying how grateful I am to live in this country. If you haven't ever read the book 1776, you should read it. It is a nonfiction account of that year, but is written like a fiction. It really made me feel like this country could only have come to be with the help of our God. The outlook of the independence of this country was so bleak from every angle. After reading that book it leaves you wondering if we really did win the war. I just feel like there is no way that we could have won independence without divine intervention. I am grateful for the freedoms that we enjoy in this country, and I hope to be more involved in my community in the upcoming year. We will see.

A Nightmare Come True

2009-07-06T11:25:00.002-05:00

I had a very scary night on the 4th of July. We were tired after a long Independence Day, and we crashed into bed as soon as the kids were in bed. Kailey woke me up at 3am so she could eat and I had fallen back asleep with her lying next to me in our bed. At 4am I woke up again with a searing pain in my right arm. It was like a fire inside my arm and went all of the way up to my shoulder. Jake says he woke to me moaning and he thought I was having a nightmare. I wasn't fully awake, and I wasn't sure if I was dreaming the pain or if it was real. Then I felt a terrible pain in my right leg as well. That woke me all of the way up. I could feel that there was something in the bed but I didn't know what it was. I was thrashing around shrieking from the pain and trying to get away from whatever it was. Jake grabbed me because he thought I was having a bad dream and he was trying to wake me up. I can't relate what happened next because everything was just a reaction, there was no thought involved. All I remember is that the next thing I knew I was on the floor holding Kailey and was in terrible pain and Jake standing over the bed ready to kill the culprit with a shoe.
He had discovered a large Arizona Bark Scorpion in our bed.
For the first couple of hours I only felt the burning pain at the two sights I was stung: my right upper under arm and my right thigh. Jake got me some ice and we called the poison control center. They told me that I should only go to the hospital if I start having severe muscle spasms or siezures. I was hurting and feeling funny, but I was told that I just had to wait it out and it would pass in a couple of days. There was no way we could go back to sleep. We were so paranoid and I was hurting a lot. We checked all of the kids beds and started researching on the internet about what we could do. When I finally fell asleep again I kept waking up feeling like someone was trying to smother me with a pillow. I called poison control again and she said it's very normal for my throat to swell from a scorpion sting and it could be causing the trouble with breathing. She said I shouldn't go to the hospital unless I start wheezing because they wouldn't do anything for me until that point. I only had the trouble breathing when I was asleep. So I just gave up on sleeping and went out to watch TV and get my mind off of things.
After the kids got up I got them some cereal, but I found that I couldn't stand for more than a minute without getting really dizzy and light headed. Then my entire face went numb like I had just gotten out of the dentist office. I couldn't taste hardly anything and had a difficult time swallowing due to my swollen throat. When
Kailey woke up I found that I had no milk to give her. My body had stopped making breast milk (or was making very little milk) and Kailey reluctantly had to take a bottle.
I lay on the couch for the rest of the morning, drifting in and out of sleep and feeling very delirious. I knew that I was awake, but at times my vision was cloudy and I was light headed so it seemed like I was dreaming. We don't have church until 1:00, and at that time I was feeling okay after laying down all morning. I still had a lot of pain in my arm and leg, and I was still pretty numb in my face, but otherwise okay. When I was in the shower the hot water on the two stings hurt so bad. I felt a creeping sensation underneath my skin in those two places. And when I got out of the shower I had a patch of goosebumps just on those spots. It was weird. We went to church, but during sacrament meeting I went into a cold sweat and started feeling very dizzy. So we ended up getting someone to help give me a blessing and then leaving. After laying around and drinking water all day I felt much better that evening, though my milk still hadn't returned for Kailey.
Now aside from being very paranoid I am doing pretty good. My milk came back in today and Kailey was so happy it was funny. I keep looking all over the house and under beds. I had a very hard time falling asleep last night. It is crazy that something that small could have so much power. We are so grateful that it was me who was stung and not Kailey. She was laying on my right side in between the two places where I was stung. The scorpion would have had to go right past her to sting me again. I feel like she was protected and that night we immediately had to pray to God and give thanks that Kailey was not harmed. Scorpion stings can be fatal to small children. It makes me scared because I feel so vulnerable. We already get the house sprayed regularly and we don't know what more we can do. It certainly was a scary experience, but all is well. I am just left today with a little numbness, some tingling and two big itchy red spots.

Our Tri-State Trip

2009-06-27T11:52:00.004-05:00

I decided to do one big post with a slideshow instead of a bunch of little ones about each event. All of the pictures are out of order, sorry.
Despite the miserable car rides we had a great time on our trip. The girls were so excited to get to play with their cousins. When we first got to my sister's house in Syracuse my brother-in-law Steve had poked his head into the car to say hi. Then my neice Megan walked out of the front door, so instead of saying hi to Uncle Steve the girls jumped off their car seats and yelled "Megan!!!" We just hung out with everyone for a few days and I went and got a haircut while Amber took on all of my kids (Thanx Amber!) On Tuesday all of our family from nearby came to my mom's for dinner and we got to have an awesome visit with everyone. Jake had a lot to do in Utah and I joined him in Tooele for one of the days so we could look around at houses and such. We are so glad that my brother-in-law is from there, as he was able to hook us up with his parents who were so awesome in showing me around and telling me all I needed to know about Tooele. Our Utah trip was fun, I'm glad I got some hangout time with my sisters and the girls got play time with cousins.
On the last night in Utah we all went to the Oquirrh Mountain temple open house. I am so glad that we had that opportunity. My girls have been asking if they could go inside a temple and have been so curious about it. They really loved getting to go through the temple and learn more about it. I think that it is a good experience for kids if you ever get the chance. The lines were long and moved slowly though, so by the end of it we were all starving to death. It was a good thing they were serving cookies at the end.
As we headed out across Nevada, our first stop was in Wendover. They happened to be having a big car show so we went around and looked at all of the cars. Jake loves cars and has apparently passed that trait to Jaxon. He is a car guy all of the way. Right after he started crawling he used to crawl into the girls room and steal their pink barbie car and drive it around making car noises. Now he is car crazy as ever.
After a long hot drive, we did make it to Tahoe. It is such a beautiful place. They have gondolas that go to the top of the mountians. They are pretty expensive, but I think it is one of those things that everyone who goes to Tahoe does. It is like if you go to St. Louis you have to ride to the top of the Arch, or if you go to Niagra Falls you have to ride out on the boats. The experience isn't the same without it. It really was an amazing sight and a pretty cool ride, though a bit freaky to be suspended in the air like that.
The wedding was really beautiful. Congrats to Joey and Ashley!!!!! It was a struggle though because since Jake was in the wedding party I had to keep the kids on their best behavior on my own. Not only during the ceremony, but during the reception as well. After more than 3 hours of being told to sit quiet and be on best behavior, my kids were ready to let loose on the dance floor. And they did. They all partied hard at the end, which was good because we were driving that night and they were so exhausted that they didn't last 2 seconds before they were all completely out.
The wedding was last sunday which was father's day. We had gotten some presents for Jake to open in the hotel room, plus he got to sleep in as late as he could. I think I paid good homage to him on my mother's day post, so let me just say that he is an awesome father and we all love him so much!!! So that is the end of our latest adventure. We are already gearing up for our next summer trip which is only in a few weeks. and then just a week or so after that school starts again and we are stuck at home. Wow, summer has gone by so fast!

A Movie Review

2009-06-26T16:31:00.002-05:00

It is a very rare occasion for us to go see a movie in the theater. We usually just wait until it is on DVD. But neither Jake or I had ever seen a 3D movie before so we decided to take the kids to see UP. It was a really cute movie and had some funny parts. It was a little sad though. I thought it was entertaining, but it probably won't be one that we buy and watch over and over. That was the way we felt about Wall-e too. At first the girls were freaking out about the 3D. They kept pushing way back into their seats saying that something was going to hit them. But the weird thing about 3D is that at first it was a big deal and so obvious, but as the movie goes on you just get used to it and it is just like watching any other movie. Here are some shots of us in our 3D glasses:

Happy Mothers Day to me!

2009-06-26T16:19:00.002-05:00

I figure in all of the catching up to do I will start with mothers day. It was pretty awesome. I got to sleep in for a little bit and Jake and the kids made me a big breakfast. Then we went to church. To my surprise, when we got home from church my presents were sitting out for me! Jake had gotten a patio set we really liked and a few barstools for the kitchen. Our friend Rich had put them out while we were at church. Then Jake and Jono made a big delicious meal for us to enjoy outside on our new patio furniture.
I have to say how much I love being a mom. It takes a lot of sacrifice, and sometimes that can be very trying, but it is my life. I love my children and I love the priviledge I have to raise them and help them grow. I also have to say how much I love my husband. He is such a wonderful father and it is so awesome to be able to raise a family with him. I am glad that I found someone who is so like-minded with me so that we are usually on the same page with our child-raising. He is a hands-on dad and views child-raising as a combined effort. I am so grateful for him and all of the support he continually gives me. Here are some pictures of the day:

Lyla at the big breakfast:

The morning spread:

Jaxon being a cutie:

Mckayla showing off the gift she made for me at school:

Lyla showing off her handiwork: (get it?)

Jono slaving away in the kitchen:

My good-lookin hubby modeling our new patio set and awesome mother's day spread:

Thank you family!!! I love you all!!!!

Your getting warmer....no, no colder now...warmer again...

2009-06-26T01:54:00.002-05:00

Well. After a long break I am back and I hope there will be a lot to come in the next few days. We have been out of town and a lot is going on in our lives right now that has prevented me from making it to the computer. Though I will be back tracking and posting about the rest of May a bit later right now I am going to briefly tell you about our trip.
Two friends of ours got married last weekend at Lake Tahoe and Jake had been asked to be one of the groomsmen. But the week before the wedding he was sent on business to Utah (note: we might be moving there, but that is another story) and he wasn't going to be back until the day we were supposed to leave for the wedding. We were going to fly. So I decided that I would drive up with the kids (my sister Angela flew down to drive with me THANKYOU!) and hang out with my family while Jake was in Utah. Then we could drive to Tahoe from there and then drive home. No biggie. Right?
We discovered that my two younger children are not good road trippers. Especially Kailey. She is not one of those babies that falls asleep while you are driving in the car. Neither is Jaxon. So the drive up was miserable and long because we had to stop frequently. I felt like the worst parent just letting them scream it out at times.
When we got to Utah we wished we had brought some warm clothing. I had stuck in a light jacket for each of us and only one pair of long pants for the kids at the last minute. But it was pretty cold and rainy in Utah and we weren't super prepared. Towards the end of the Utah stay our A/C went out. FOR THE FOURTH TIME!!!!!
So as we headed out on our drive across Nevada all the windows were down and we were sweating, but we survived.
We got to Tahoe and did many fun things there (pics and details to come later), but were again found wishing for warmer attire. It was cold! We went there expecting to get to play on the beach of the lake, but that water was about 50 degrees and we didn't see anyone playing in it. We went out on a boat on the lake and were wrapped up in blankets to try to keep warm. We ended up heading in early because we were too cold to have fun.
After that fun and chilly weekend we left sunday night right after the wedding for home. That night our headlights both went out. We had to drive all night with the brights on and we really ticked a lot of people off. It so happened that because we left at night we ended up in the death valley area of CA at around 1:00pm with no A/C. Our car thermostat said it was 115 degrees outside!!!! Our poor children were soaked with sweat and having the windows down just made it feel like we had put the heater on full blast. We did some redneck air conditioning by filling our little cooler with ice water and soaked wash cloths in the water and laying them on ourselves to cool off. We just did that and made sure we were all drinking lots of water all day. We ended up driving through the hottest, dryest part of the country during the hottest, dryest part of the day, during the hottest, dryest part of the year without A/C. Not fun. I don't recommend it at all.
We all made it home in one piece and are now contemplating getting a new van instead of paying to get the A/C fixed because we have an inkling it will go out again, probably in the middle of a trip again. Not fun. Sorry to share the complaining parts first. We really did have some fun times on our trip and I will be sharing those in the near future. But we have definately decided that road trips are out of the question until our kids can handle it better and our car is more reliable.

The Party

2009-05-25T11:30:00.002-05:00

For their birthday party we just had a pool party in our backyard. The only catch was that there is a rule in the kindergarten that if you are going to pass out invitations at school you have to give one to everyone. I didn't know any of the parents of the girls' school friends and the only way to get invites to them was to pass out invitations at school. But our experience at other parties was that only 4 or 5 kids from the class would show up. But my girls are in separate classes so that meant handing out 45 invitations and hoping less than half of that would show up. All in all, we had about 20 kids show up. Plus several of the parents stayed to help which I really appreciated. We just got watermelon and little ceasers pizza and had cake and ice cream. All the kids just played in the pool, ate and played some more. Jake, Jono, and I took turns life guarding, plus several parents got in the pool and we had adult friends that came and swam too. It turned out really well. It was a fairly simple but really fun party.
We also realized how awesomely set up our backyard is for parties. In the hottest part of the day the playground is in the shade and the pool is in full sun and the whole concrete area is shaded. So we set up tables all under the big pine tree and it just worked out perfect. Kids could go back and forth from playing in the pool to playing on the swingset. It also made me grateful for tile floors throughout the house! These are just a few shots of people eating and hanging out at the party:

This is the Mortenson group. I thought it was funny that all the kids from Lyla's class were hanging out together by the fence like the cool crowd.

They got a lot of presents, next year I want to someway make it so that people only bring a present for either Lyla or Mckayla, it was just a lot of stuff. The kids all ended up having at it with whomever was left (we didn't do present opening as part of the party), but we didn't unbox everything. They get to choose a new thing here and there so we can make the newness last. I just felt like it was too much for them to have all at once. So we have a toys-r-us in their closet right now.
This is the cake I made. I am not a crafty or artistic person, but I do want food to taste good. I did a red velvet cake and made a raspberry filling for it and did a cream cheese frosting. Only I couldn't keep the filling from oozing out, so it really became a raspberry-cream cheese frosting. It was good though.

The Actual Birthday

2009-05-24T18:32:00.002-05:00

To start the girls off right on their birthday we first made a really good breakfast with bacon, eggs, and doughnuts. You can guess what they were most excited about... the bacon. Yep. We don't usually get to have bacon except for the weekends. Both Mckayla and Lyla are born carnivores.

Then towards the end of the school day I brought cupcakes to each of their classes. Mckayla wanted to have pink cupcakes with sprinkles and a cherry on top. Above is Mckayla when her class was singing to her. Lyla wanted to have chocolate cupcakes with sprinkles and gummy bears on top. Below is Lyla eating cupcakes with her class.

We did a little party with just our family and the people who are staying with us. We first made them go on a scavenger hunt to find their big present from mom and dad.

It eventually led to the shed, but they had figured out what I was up to because there was a little sign on that door that they made saying "I can not see my prise."

Aside from painting their room, (which is still a work in progress), we got them each their own desk and chair for their birthday. They both love to draw and do art projects and their work is frequently covering our dining table and dining room. It is kindof a present for me too, because we are moving all of the art supplies to their room so the mess can be in there, and so it is out of Jaxon's reach. Here is Lyla showing off her desk and chair:

They also got a present from uncle Jono of jewelry and crowns and here is Mckayla showing off her crown:

Here they are in cute summer outfits from Grandma Benita:
After presents we went back in for some key lime pie. They love key lime yogurt from yoplait, so when I asked what they wanted for dessert they both requested key lime pie. I cheated and just got a frozen one though. Here are cute pictures from the rest of the evening:

Happy Birthday girls!!! We love you!!!

Happy Birthday Girls!!!

2009-05-20T11:40:00.002-05:00

I am pretty late in getting a post done for their birthday. We have had a busy last week. I had decided that for their birthday I would be decorating their bedroom. Everytime we are painting walls in the house they ask when we will get to paint their walls. So that was the plan for their birthday. I wanted to do something creative and have fun with their room. We looked at decorating books together and I asked them what kindof room they would want. After much debate and thought my extremely tom-boyish girls decided that they wanted "a pink and purple princess room." So we began work on it... two weeks ago. Everything is still not moved back into their room and it has been a bit more complicated than I had previously imagined. I will post pictures when we are done. But I wanted to show a slideshow of my girls through the years.
I love them both so much and I am so proud of all of their accomplishments. They are both doing very well in school and work so hard to help me around the house. They are great big sisters and it has been so wonderful to watch them grow up. I can't believe that they are already 6 years old! Anyways, enjoy a look back at my girls growing up!

Some cute Kailey Pics

2009-05-07T11:09:00.002-05:00

At almost 2 months old Kailey is already starting to lose her newborn-ness and is looking like a little baby. She has started to fill out a bit more and is cuter every day.

I caught Jono asleep with here and I thought it was so cute that I had to share. I hope he doesn't mind....

Jake caught her in a smile!!! This is a rare occurance, so I had to put it up. Usually as soon as the camera is out her smiles are gone.

Feliz Cinco De Mayo!

2009-05-07T10:52:00.002-05:00

Ever since Jake went to Chipotle in Tucson with his friends they have wanted to have a "Chipotle Night" so we thought that Tuesday (Cinco De Mayo) would be a great dya to do that. We ended up turning it into a full-out Mexican Fiesta complete with decorations, a pinata, and of course, Margaritas! For those of you who haven't ever been to Chipotle, it is just like a subway for burritos. We grilled steaks to put in the burritos and I made real mexican beans, plus we had fresh salsa, guacamole, and rice. It was really good, but a lot of work. We really like Mexican food, but to make it right it takes a couple of days to prepare one meal!

Jake had gotten Jaxon this outfit from a little stand a while back at the carnival. He wasn't too interested in the pinata.

After 2 legs and the head had been knocked off this pinata we couldn't hang it anymore so we let the girls have at it until it finally broke.

This is a Tres Leches cake I made. It tasted great even though I am not much of a decorator.

Here's some Jake, Ashley, Joey and Jono enjoying their burritos and margaritas. The girls did all of the decor and had fun with it.

Here's Mckayla showing off the sign she and Lyla made for the occasion. This was a lot of fun, we might just have to make it a tradition.

School Changes

2009-05-04T11:51:00.003-05:00

Though this blog is named 'diapers and politics;' the diapers side has obviously overshadowed politics quite a bit. The same is true in my life as well. But I thought I'd throw one in here just for fun.
I made a goal last year to become more involved in my community. I would like to find ways to volunteer and also to become involved in the politics that help shape our city. I am sick of always complaining about stupid things that are done and never doing anything about it. The only thing I have done so far is to join the PTSO. So it is school issues that take the forefront in my mind. I always thought of the PTSO as just planning school activities and fundraisers but we do some much more than that. We talk about issues facing the school at every meeting and we bring complaints to the Board and the city council.
Last November members campaigned (not officially as a group because that is illegal) for the school budget override. We were unsuccessful. Now our school district is facing many many changes. Right now they have a separate teacher and class for music, art, and PE. For next year they are taking away those three classes in all of the elementary schools and putting that responsibility on the core teachers. Since that is taking away teacher prep time that they had during the specialty class, school is getting out earlier. We also have to share our librarian, nurse, and counselor with other schools. This means that a lot of teachers in our district are getting fired this summer. It is sad. I think that in Kindergarten and younger grades it is okay for the teachers to teach the 3 other subjects, but it is the older grades that suffer. We had a 5th grade band and the whole school did a big music program twice a year. There was also a school track team that went to track meets that we won't have next year. Things like that don't seem important, but I think it makes a big difference. I am sure that the core teachers will be able to incorporate a little bit of those subjects into their curriculum, but the kids aren't going to learn nearly as much in those areas.
Other ideas for cutting spending include:
*A 4-day school week - Jake grew up only going to school on Monday through Thursday and he is a big fan. People complain because they don't want to have to find childcare for one day a week, I don't think that is a good reason. I would want to really find out if it makes a difference in the quality of education.
*Half-day kindergarten - Though the girls struggled at the beginning of the year to get used to a full day at school, they are fine now. I can't believe how far they have come. There was a state senator who went on and on in the legislature about how kindegarten was just a day care. I know that he is completely wrong about that. My girls are reading, writing, adding, and subtracting. I can't believe the transformation. The question is: would half-day kindergarten be as effective?
*Shorter school year- I don't know if a few weeks off of the school year would make a big difference, but it almost seems unfair to place the whole burden of this on top of the teachers. They still expect the teachers to be able to teach just as much and to be just as effective.
Who's Responsible?
I don't really know, but I have my theories. Sierra Vista is largely composed of retired people. In fact, we have several age-restricted communities. I don't like that they have so much control over our politics. I do blame them for the failing of the budget override. I think that once you don't have kids in school, you don't care as much anymore. I could be wrong. Also the owner of the Schlotsky's Deli here was a big contributor to the anti-schools campaign slandering it as a tax increase (which it wasn't). We personally don't patronize that establishment anymore.
What are your thoughts? What do you think of having no art, music, or PE until junior high? 4-day school week? Half-day kindergarten? Shorter school year?
What can we do about it?

Best Parent Award

2009-05-01T13:28:00.004-05:00

I think I have found the answer to the age old question: Are girls or boys harder to raise? I would say at 1 1/2 years old that boys are way harder. Maybe I am not remembering correctly or have forgotten, but I don't remember my girls causing as much trouble at this age as Jaxon it. You think he would have figured out by now thadoes. My girls made messes and got into things, but they seemed to be much more cautious. Here's a few examples of Jaxon's recent attempts on his own life that would not make me a candidate for the best parent award:
If he gets really mad (usually when told not to do something), he will get on all fours and head-butt our stone tile floors. ON PURPOSE! We have to grab his head to keep him from doing it hurts to head-butt the tile. The floor wins every time.
On the playground I have to follow him like a hawk because not only has he tried to walk down the tallest slide there, but he frequently goes to the openings for ladders and monkey bars attempting to use them.
He is getting more creative in finding ways to get out of the house. We like to leave the front door open and just have the screen shut to let in breezes. He has figured out how to open it and has sneaked out. Also if the side gate is accidentally left open he bee-lines to the front, down the driveway and down the street. The other day we were so embarrassed when a neighbor that we didn't know brought him to our front door. She was very condecending to Jake and made us both feel very bad (as if we didn't feel bad enough already), she had found Jaxon walking down the sidewalk on his own. We thought he was in the backyard playing with his sisters. We had checked the side gates to make sure they were closed. They were closed, the front door was closed and we couldn't figure out how he got out. But only a few minutes after we had gotten him back he went to the screenless window in the dining room that was open a crack and hurled himself out!! I didn't even think he would be able to fit through there!
He has discovered the art of pushing dining chairs all over to reach things he wants to get to. The other day I caught him attempting to climb on top of the refridgerator! He had pulled a chair up to the counter and flipped over a pot on top of the counter and was on that trying to get up to the top. I gotta hand it to him though, he is pretty clever.
Though he can barely reach the doorknob, yesterday Jaxon managed to lock himself inside my bedroom. I felt so bad because he was in there crying for quite awhile while Jono and I tried many different attempts at lockpicking and getting through the open bathroom window. After all attempts failed I had to call a locksmith to come open the door for me. I am grateful that he came immediately. When we got in Jaxon had strung toilet paper all over my room, emptied the bathroom cabinets, there was water everywhere, and his eyes were poofy and red from crying. I felt so bad.
Anyways, fearing a call to CPS now from making my great parenting skills known, I have to say that boys are harder. We love our boy though and he is a lot of fun to watch at this age because he is always discovering new things. Though he doesn't talk hardly at all he seems to understand everything we say and is very good at communicating his needs with yes and no and grunts and pointing without having to cry much anymore. YAY for boys! I am hoping that my sister Katie will have a boy soon!

Let me brag for a moment...

2009-04-17T17:06:00.002-05:00

I don't know how tacky it is to brag about my kids, but I have to say that I am grateful for good kids. They have been quite good lately and it sure makes my job easier. And I have to say that I am grateful that my kids aren't picky eaters. It seems like some people are just born with that, and I am so glad that mine aren't. I made a seafood pasta the other night, and I was a bit nervous to see if the kids would eat it because there were mussels in it. But the girls ate it right up and after trying a mussel for the first time they asked if they could have more of them. (that's for all of the non-seafood eaters in my family.) Also we had split-pea soup last night and they all (including Jaxon) licked their bowls clean. Split pea soup gets a bad rep, but we really enjoyed it. It is a great after-easter meal because you can throw the big ham bone in and it gets a great flavor. I really enjoy cooking most of the time and I'm glad that I have a family willing to try the new things I cook up.
Also, on a side note, I fit into my pre-prego jeans today for the first time!! YAY! I might just actually get some of this weight off! Admittedly they are still a bit tight, but I refuse to buy new clothes. I started working out last week and hopefully will be somewhat back to my old shape soon.

Some kid funnies

2009-04-17T11:44:00.002-05:00

I am going to copy the route of my sisters Amber and Katie and write some funny things my kids have been saying/doing lately. Every time Mckayla and Lyla pray they thank God for our new baby and lately they have been asking for the baby to be blessed so that she can either walk or talk. When I tried to explain that babies can't walk or talk for awhile and we like it that way, Lyla said that she was ready for the baby to walk and talk so she could be fun now.
Jaxon is mostly frustrating because he has discovered the art of pushing the dining chairs all over the house in order to reach things he wants to get to. Nothing is safe anymore now that he can climb up and get to whatever he sets his mind to. Last night he climbed on top of the counter and opened all of the bananas we had, so we had to make some emergency banana bread. (They were about to that point anyways.)

Easter Sunday

2009-04-16T16:50:00.003-05:00

We had a great Easter Sunday last Sunday. My sister Katie was here with her 3 kids, so we had an Easter egg hunt with them and an enormous breakfast because Katie was leaving for home before we left for church. We did wait until after breakfast for the hunt despite the constant questions as to when we'd be getting easter eggs.
Church was really beautiful. There were special speakers and some great numbers by the choir. I think it takes awhile to learn to still be able to pay attention and feel the spirit even while dealing with rambunctious kids. But I'm glad that we could take a time out to focus on what the day is really for. It is wonderful to have a reminder of what the Savior has done for us and how we should be living our lives after his example. We were also taught what we can do to be closer to the Savior and to build a relationship with Him. I think that sometimes we get so caught up in the motions of going to church and doing all of our assignments that we stray away from building our personal testimonies. I just felt like it was a great day where we left feeling very spiritually fed as we were on our way home to be physically fed.
We had Easter dinner with a few of our friends and had a second Easter egg hunt that Jaxon got to join in on. We try to get him to take a nap before we go to church every Sunday so that we will have an easier time getting him to behave. Below are a few pictures of our day.

Here's the Easter bunny hiding the eggs:

Here's all of the girls anxiously awaiting the hunt. In front is my neice Lily and to the right is Abigail.
Here's Jaxon finding an egg.

Our friend Hanna helping Jaxon hunt.

What a stud!

Here's Abigail with all of her loot. She is such a cutie!

Here's Eve with her basket.

The girls in their Easter dresses.

Mckayla finding a golden egg (after Jake's help), there were only 2 of them and Jake told the girls about the golden eggs. They all then became obsessed with finding the golden eggs.

Here's Lyla with her golden egg.

First Swim of the Season

2009-04-14T19:01:00.002-05:00

Though the Pachecos were anxious to swim while they were here and the kids did splash around and get wet with them, no one actually swam around because the water was still too cold. The water is still pretty cold, but the Thompsons were pretty adamant about wanting to swim. So Katie and I said the kids could put swimming suits on and get in. They actually did do a bit of swimming, but it still didn't last very long. It was a warm day, so they would lay on the hot concrete to warm up in between dips in the pool. Hopefully we will be doing more swimming soon, it is supposed to be getting pretty warm in the coming weeks.

Fun with the Pachecos

2009-04-14T12:26:00.005-05:00

Jake's dad and family came down for their spring break the last week of March/first bit of April. It was their vacation so they wanted to do fun things, but they were understanding that we couldn't go to everything because I just didn't quite have the energy for it yet, so I appreciate that.
We went to Kartchner Caverns with them. I had never been to it, and it is pretty popular. Not just in Arizona, but everywhere, so we had always wanted to go. It is less than 3o minutes from our house. It was really neat, I couldn't believe the amount of money that had been put into it. Not a place for kids though. I had left Jaxon with a babysitter, and though the girls really enjoyed it and were interested in it, the guides were so anal that it wasn't as fun as it could be. Obviously, you aren't allowed to touch anything, and in most places you can't touch anything because there is a guardrail on both sides of the walkway, but the guides didn't even want the kids touching the guardrail. We had to keep telling kids to walk in the middle of the path and keep hands in pockets (even though there was nothing to touch), etc. But the caves were really neat. It is crazy that underneath very ugly, nonchalant-looking hills there could be such beautiful caves.
On April 1st the whole kindergarten was going on a trip to the Tucson zoo (too bad I didn't know about that earlier and we wouldn't have gone in March), so we decided to meet the girls up at the zoo and take them home with us. Our trip was much more uneventful this time despite a few breakdowns from the kids. We had a great time and effectively wore the kids out so that they were all asleep before we were out of the parking lot.
We also spent Monday exporing Bisbee, a fun historic town closeby. We were going to go down to Jake's work and watch him fly, but the wind didn't cooperate. We had fun walking around Bisbee and going to the museam though.
Our visit was a lot of fun and I am so glad that we are a tiny bit closer to family so that driving is possible and hopefully our kids can see their extended family more than once a year.

This picture was taken at Kartchner caverns. We could only take pictures in the visitors center because flashes from cameras can hurt the rocks in the caves. L2R: Jono (Jake's brother that is living with us), Jerry, Kenna then Kailey, Mckayla and Amelie (Jake's half-sister).

Jake and his dad. See the family resemblance?

We did let the kids play at the water playground at the end of our zoo visit, but we were prepared with a change of clothes this time.

Here's Mckayla posing as a peacock.

Lyla riding an elephant.

This is what Jaxon though of feeding the giraffe.

Mckayla, Lyla, and Amelie playing queens of the rock. Luckily no one was pushed off in this game.

Jerry, Jace and Jaxon riding the elephant. (say that 3 times fast)

This is Kailey in the cutest little sundress my mother in law sent. It is perfect because of the little sunhat. My mother in law always seems to find the cutest clothes.

This is Mckayla and Lyla playing at the visitor's center at Kartchner caverns. Those holes are showing the size of hole that they discovered the caverns through.

Here is Lyla in front of a fake formation at the visitor's center.

Some cute pictures of my boy

2009-04-14T12:18:00.003-05:00

Jake always gives me a hard time because I will dressup the girls all pretty and do otheir hair and nails and stuff. But this is proof that he is as bad as I am. He is always getting Jaxon all spiffed up and looking cute. Jake will use his gell and pomade on Jaxon too. On Easter Sunday after church we were trying to get everything ready for Easter dinner when Jaxon went into our bathroom and got into Jake's pomade. He came out of the bathroom with globs of pomade on the top of his head. He had tried to comb it too, so there were several combs filled with the stuff as well. I think Jaxon may have learned his lesson because Jake had to scrub his head in the sink to try to get the stuff out, and Jaxon's hair is still pretty greasy. It is cute though that he is already learning how to be like his dad and trying to imitate him. We just need to hide Jake's razors.
Below is a picture of Jaxon in the bath from awhile ago. He figured out that the foam alphabet toys not only stick to the wall when their wet, but they stick to you too! Jake said he went in to check on him and found him like that. What a cutie.

Mckayla's Lost Tooth

2009-04-14T12:04:00.002-05:00

So Mckayla finally lost her first tooth. She has been extremely jealous of Lyla's tooth-losing abilities (not to mention the money from the tooth-fairy that comes with that.) She has had a loose tooth on the bottom for awhile that was taking a very long time to come out, and last Saturday Mckayla came into our room with a very bloody mouth just elated that Lyla had helped her get her tooth out. With a bloody mouth like that we immediately inquired what Lyla's method for tooth removal was; as it looked like she could have gotten a punch to the face. But Mckayla said Lyla just twisted it out. Either way, she didn't seem upset at Lyla's kind gesture.

Lots of Visitors

2009-04-14T11:56:00.002-05:00

It's funny that when we lived in Texas we didn't get many visitors, but our extra rooms have been almost constantly full since we moved to Arizona (even before we had furniture in them:) We really like having visitors and we are glad that we have gotten to see family much more often because we a bit closer than before. This past month has been a bit crazy though. A friend of ours was here the week of Kailey's birth, then we had to kick him to hotel (sorry Rich!) the next week because my mom was coming for the week, then another friend came to visit for a few days during his break from Iraq, then Jake's dad and family came to visit over their spring break for a week, and last week my sister came down with all of her kids for Easter to let her husband have quiet study time. Crazy! We have had fun though, and I do have a lot of catch-up blogging to do, but first I had to get my house back in order and catch my breath. We have a week off this week, but we do have a couple of friends coming by the end of the month. That'll be fun though. We are grateful that we have the space and ability to offer beds to visitors here it has been a lot of fun.

Kailey's Blessing Day

2009-04-05T14:26:00.002-05:00

Last Sunday we blessed Kailey in church. It was nice that my father-in-law and family were there to be a part of that. It would be nice if more family could come, but we are all so spread out now and there are so many family events that getting everyone to everything is just not possible. Anyways, with much help from my mom I made Kailey's blessing gown, and I am very proud of myself. It had been a long time since I had sewn anything. But it turned out alright.

Here's some pics of Kailey modeling off her new gown.

This is Jake's dad, stepmom and half brother and sister who were here all last week over their spring break. (to be blogged about later).

Here is our family showing off our new baby. The sun was pretty bright that day.

Though I didn't get to write much down, I do remember some of the blessing Kailey was given. Something that stood out to me was that she was blessed with an inate ability to tell right from wrong and to know the path God had chosen for her. She was also blessed with a love of the scriptures and of the gospel. And she was blessed to know that no matter how far one strays from the path they can always always return and be forgiven by their Father in Heaven.

First Outing

2009-04-02T17:42:00.006-05:00

Some call it being brave, but I know that I'm crazy. The week my mom was here to help out also happened to be spring break for the girls. I felt bad that we had stayed home and done virtually nothing all week due to me still recovering from having Kailey. On thursday we decided to go to the zoo in Tucson. It is a small zoo, so I thought we'd be okay. Plus, I thought it would be easy to keep Kailey away from other people since I could just have her in the stroller or a baby carrier the whole time. It took us awhile to get going because we hadn't put the baby seat together after washing it. And since we had her at home we hadn't ever put her in the car yet, so this is her first car ride:

Before going into the zoo we went to eat our picnic lunch out by the duck pond in the park since it was after 11:00 when we got there. We ate under a bunch of orange trees that smelled awesome, and then some stranger came up with a bag of bread that they were done with offering it to us to feed the ducks. We went to feed the ducks and they are obviously fed well, because they weren't really flocking to the side to us to feed. Anyways, Mckayla was trying a bit too hard to throw food to the ducks and fell in the nasty, stinky water!
She was soaked head to toe, and she stank because the water was pretty gross. So we decided to go grab her an outfit from a nearby store before going into the zoo. By the time we got into the zoo it was after 1:00. Here is a picture of the soaking wet Mckayla, notice the wet footprints walking towards me:

My mom had been following Jaxon, holding onto the back of his clothes to keep him from diving in. We thought the girls would be okay, but you know what they say about assuming.....

After finally making it into the zoo we had a great time. We just took our time and let the kids linger looking at the animals for as long as they wanted. We didn't see the whole zoo, but that was okay. Here's my mom with the kids:

This is a giraffe that kept trying to eat off the peacock's feathers.

They had a thing where we could pay to get some food to feed the giraffes. Look at that tongue! Yuck! Luckily they had a handwashing thing where they could clean off.

Jaxon is in the turtle shell too, but I couldn't get him to stick his head out.

There were a lot of birds that had free roam of the place, and that was the kids' favorite part. They loved just following the peacocks around.

At the end we let the kids play on a water playground they had on the zoo grounds, again getting them soaking wet. So, we had to strip them down in the car for the ride home, and we figured they could just cover up with a blanket or something for the ride home. We also decided to stop by a fabric store since they don't have any in Sierra Vista, and my mom had a heck of a time while I was in the store. We had gotten some drive-thru food and they completely screwed up our order, then their thing shut down and after 20 minutes in the drive-thru they gave us a bunch of food for free. Then Jaxon had a giant poop and we realized we were out of diapers so we had to go to the store again to get him a new diaper. What was supposed to be a short day trip ended up taking some interesting turns and we didn't get home until late into the evening. But it was a lot of fun, though I was completely worn out by the whole thing.

My 26th Birthday

2009-04-02T17:31:00.002-05:00

I have always said that I have a very unlucky birthday. I was born on "the ides of march," which historically is an unlucky day. I had a good birthday though this year and I am finally writing about it. It was awesome that my mom got to come and be there for my birthday, she came in on Friday the 13th to meet her 13th grandchild for the first time (a little creepy?), so she was there on my birthday. Given the fact that I had given birth less than a week prior, I didn't do much, but it was nice to not do much.
Everyone else went to church for three hours and I stayed home and took a nap and took care of the baby. There's no better gift for a mother of 4 than peace and quiet. I got to spen most of the day just holding the baby and reading a book. I am boring, I know, but I liked it. Then Jake came home and made a really good dinner for me. My mom made cake and pie and we had some friends over to share it with us, and we opened presents. It was just what I needed.

This is Jaxon enjoying the pie.

Me with 4 of the loves in my life (the other one is behind the camera). Plus, I am holding my favorite birthday present, though she came a bit early.

Here's Jake making dinner for me. He made sheeshkabobs and they were really good. He had become quite the grillin' fool, and it's fine with me because it means that I am not the one who is cooking and the food is great.

Thank you Honey for an awesome birthday!!!!

disney day pics

2009-03-30T14:26:00.002-05:00

I took some pictures of the girls after their disneyland party that I thought I'd share. They wanted to show off their face paint and stickon tattoos. Plus, I did their hair to look like minnie mouse and I thought it turned out cute.

In the News

2009-03-23T11:17:00.003-05:00

On Friday, March 13th, the entire Kindergarten had a Disneyland Party as it was a half day and the day before spring break. They had to earn this party by walking enough miles to get to disneyland, 555 miles. Starting in January the kids would take laps of the field before going to play at recess and they could choose to walk as many laps as they wanted. When the kindergarten had walked enough laps to make it to disneyland they were given the disneyland party. Our newpaper just published an article on the event in their Schools section and Mckayla was in the picture for it! Here is the link to the full story:

http://www.svherald.com/articles/2009/03/23/lifestyle/schools/doc49c31145aba8c439327739.txt

More Baby Pictures

2009-03-11T15:16:00.003-05:00

This is my midwife Stephanie Fritz. She is absolutely wonderful and I would recommend her to anyone considering a home birth or needing birth assistance in our area. She is writing up my birth story (in better words than I could), so if the gory details are interesting to you, you can check it out on her blog: http://thebabycatcher.blogspot.com/

More of Jaxon with his little sister.

Me and all of the kids right after birth.

Here is Kailey, pretty much right after birth. Still a bit smushy and red, but very cute.

I love sleeping baby pictures! Mostly because that is all you're going to get at this point. But I wanted to show off her hair.

This is Jake's first time holding Kailey.

This is the last belly shot. I couldn't hold still during the first couple of hours of labor so I put on some Pat Benatar and walked out my contractions until they were so strong I couldn't stand it. It did help things move along, and the music got me pumped and ready to go.

Meet Kailey Mae Pacheco!

2009-03-11T14:40:00.004-05:00

IT'S A GIRL! Kailey Mae Pacheco was born on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 5:35am in our home. She is a very healthy little baby at 7 pounds and 20 inches long. She has a full head of dark hair (and a back of it too), but not much baby fat. We are all very excited to have a new baby in our family. It took us awhile to pick a name for her, but we decided on Kailey Mae yesterday and made it official by sending out the stuff for a birth certificate before we could change our minds again. Yes, we did have her at home with the major help of a midwife. It was my first home birth and was a very different experience from birthing in a hospital. But everything went really really well. I am recovering quickly and Kailey is very healthy.
I woke up at 1am with regular stronger contractions, but I have had a few false alarms so I busied myself with housework and let everyone sleep while I waited to see if these were going to go anywhere. At about 2am I decided that this was the real deal, and I woke up Jake and called my midwife over. We just let all of the kids sleep, hoping that we would have a baby before they woke up in the morning. I'll spare y'all the gory details (for now), but she was born 3 1/2 hours later and we were cleaned up and ready to meet the siblings by 7:30am after they had gotten ready for school.

Though it is hard for Jaxon to not be able to climb all over me, he has been surprisingly great with Kailey so far. He is very gentle with her, and gets extremely concerned when she is crying. He loves to sit and watch her and loves it when we let him hold her.

This is Lyla meeting Kailey for the first time.

Here is Mckayla meeting Kailey.

Here is our first family photo after the birth. If it looks like I'm half dead- it's because I was at that point. It had only been 2 hours since birth, and no sleep for me yet, so there.

Another tooth down

2009-03-05T17:43:00.002-06:00

Lyla lost her second tooth. Right next to the first one she lost. The bottom teeth are growing in pretty quick because the new one is already close to half way up, and the other new one is up enough that you can't hardly tell where she'd already lost one. Mckayla still hasn't lost any and is very jealous of Lyla. She does have one that is wiggling a little bit and she checks it everyday to see if it is ready to come out yet.

Girls day out

2009-03-05T17:30:00.002-06:00

Last Saturday after all of the cleaning my girls and I went out to get our hair done. The girls have been asking to get haircuts for awhile and I had been itching to do something with mine for awhile too. The girls were really good for the haircuts, and I think theirs turned out really cute. I wasn't super pleased with mine though. I got a cut and color, and though the lady did really well with kids and the place was really kid friendly, she wasn't very good with me. I wanted layers and at least some sort of style, but she basically just cut it into a longer version of what she gave the girls. She butchered it too, she took off about 6 inches or so. Plus the color was much more on the orangey side than the auburn I was going for. I'm 0 for 2 on hairstylists in town to go to. I wasn't happy with the last one either.

Here we are showing off our awesome hair cuts before going to church. Jake did Jaxon up like that, and I think if we just added a bowtie he could pass for Barnaby on Hello Dolly.

Spring Cleaning

2009-03-05T16:57:00.002-06:00

Last Friday and Saturday we decided to do an overhaul on our backyard. It started out with just pulling some weeds and racking up pine needles, but we ended up doing some heavy duty pruning and bush trimming and a lot of other things. At the end of all of the work we had a huge pile of branches and several bags of yard waste to get rid of. The kids were all pretty good sports about helping out. Even Jaxon wanted to lend a hand. We had one bag full of pinecones and Jaxon really had fun finding pinecones and throwing them in the bag.
One thing that stunk was I went grocery shopping that night and Jake accidentally smashed his finger when he was closing the trunk of the car. It was the worst finger smashing I've ever seen. His nail didn't break, but the flesh from under the nail squirted out like butter and was on top of it in a blob. Totally gross, and completely painful. He couldn't cut it off either, we had to wait for it to dry out and die before cutting it off. That was Friday night, and we had planned on taking all of the stuff to the dump on Saturday, but Jake was having a hard time doing any of that work with his finger in so much pain. Luckily, we had enlisted the help of some church members (one with a truck), who made a big difference in getting it all cleaned up and out. We still have some cleaning to do, but the big stuff is done. Our yard is pretty low maintenance, we haven't had to do any major work in it since last fall, and we never have to water. That is, until we attempt at bringing the patch of grass back to life. We'll see if that ever happens. Here are some pictures of the kids lending a hand in cleaning up:

Carnival in Town

2009-03-05T16:14:00.002-06:00

A week or so ago a carnival came through town that we went to. It was the weekend I had been having some false labor, and we figured walking around a carnival might've helped things pick up a bit. It was a lot of fun. The girls are barely tall enough now that they can ride on almost every ride. Though they did skip out on a few of them that looked too scary. I was surprised though at some of the ones they did ride on. It made me feel old to realize that they were big enough to ride with all of the big kids and have a fun time. They are still small though, so it was funny that on every ride I tried to take their pictures, but I could rarely see much of them over the seats and bars. This is one of the "big kid" rides that they rode on:
Here's me and Jaxon. It wasn't much fun for Jaxon because he wanted to go on the rides, but obviously couldn't. Every time we put him down to walk around he would take off running to the steps of one fo the rides. I felt bad that there wasn't much that he could do.

Jono did take Jaxon down a big super slide on his lap, and he seemed to really like that. The girls went down this slide about 15 times. We just always get the wristbands so they can do all of the rides as much as they can stand in the short amount of time we are there.

I think that little carnivals like these are more fun than amusement parks at the girls age because they can ride everything and they don't have to wait in any long lines to get on. All of the "big kid" rides really aren't that bad, just scary enough for a 5 year old.

The trip to the carnival did get my contractions going alot so that we had to leave because I could hardly walk around anymore. We thought the baby might've been coming, but we were wrong. I'm still here, still prego.

The Guessing Game

2009-02-23T17:41:00.002-06:00

We have had an anxious weekend. I woke up Friday night feeling pretty regular, though not painful, contractions. I got excited and we thought that we would have our new baby by the end of Saturday. Though at times things seemed to pick up a little bit, they never got real intense or closer together. We took our girls to the carnival Saturday night and after all of the walking around I was sure labor was on it's way. But after we got home I was just worn out and it backed off again.
I woke Sunday morning early with some really strong contractions, so strong that I could hardly stand up straight. So we stayed home from church waiting for things to get going. Again they backed off though. Now we are just guessing at what will happen. I keep thinking that we are definately in labor, and then it turns out to be nothing.
We are dialating little by little, so we will see what happens over the next few days. I just hate the guessing game and not knowing when things are going to happen. Plus, I feel bad for keeping so many people on alert all weekend, thinking that we are having a baby. Hopefully this baby will make up his/her mind soon. He/she can't stay in there forever, though right now it seems as though that is going to be the case.

Snow in Arizona!

2009-02-20T16:15:00.002-06:00

We actually got snow down here in Sierra Vista! It was actually during the week before the wedding, but I just hadn't gotten around to posting about it until now. It is the first time they have had measurable snowfall since 2002. The girls were so excited. Lyla has been saying for a long time, "I wish for it to snow in Arizona." I have been telling her repeatedly that we weren't going to be seeing any snow around here. It just goes to show that if you wish for something hard enough, it just might come true. Of course every trace of snow was gone by about 9am, but still, we had snow for a little bit. It was pretty exciting. This weekend is supposed to be in the 80's, so that is about all of the snow we will see this winter.

Our van even had snow on it, but I didn't have one of those snow-scraping tools, so I had to get the broom out of the kitchen to clean the car off so that I could take the girls to school that morning.

Playing Dress-up

2009-02-20T16:09:00.002-06:00

Anyone who knows my girls knows that they have always loved to play dress-up. I still have a hard time keeping them in regular clothes for an entire afternoon. They were playing dress-up the other day and decided to dress Jaxon up too. I thought he'd rip everything right off, but he didn't. He seemed to really enjoy it and when some of the things fell off he brought them over to me to put back on him. So here's the little superhero:

And the two princesses that he was supposed to be rescuing: (Lyla's in pink and Mckayla's in purple just FYI)

More weekend fun

2009-02-20T13:25:00.002-06:00

On Sunday we went to church with my mom and then we went to see my niece Lily get baptized. They had been debating for a long time when to do her baptism, and finally decided that they would do it up in Utah (they live in Albuquerque) when we were all there together. It was neat to be able to be there for that. We weren't able to go to Ashley's baptism (sorry Ashley!) because it was right before Jake was leaving for Iraq. So it was great to be there for Lily's. Afterwards we went back to Amber's for food and visiting all night. I love getting to hand out with my family. I hate that we all live so far apart from each other so we don't get to hang out very much.
This is my niece Lily with me and Mckayla. The girls were so excited to see Lily's baptism. They now are talking about what they want to do at their own baptisms. Of course they are talking about what they want at their weddings too.

Here's some pictures I stole off of Karley's blog that I thought I'd share. Here is the only smiling picture of Jaxon from the entire weekend that I have seen:

Here is the girls eating at Karley's moms house with her son Karter who is 4. We were supposed to all wear either dark blue or gray, but I had a hard time finding anything that wasn't light pink or yellow or purple. I got these dresses at Marshalls on clearance and they were the closest I could get to a dark blue dress. I think they were cute though.

Here is a really cute picture of the girls and Karter. The three of them really had a great time together. Karter is such a cutie.

On a yucky side note, though we had a lot of fun over the weekend our drive home was pretty bad. Jaxon and my little neice Abigail came down with some sort of stomach bug Sunday night. Jaxon threw up many times on the way home and had terrible diaherria. He went through all of the clothes we had for him, including wearing anything that he had already worn over the weekend. As long as there was no barf or poop on it, it was deemed clean. It did explain the grumpy mood he had had all weekend, but it was not a fun drive home. It mostly affected the two youngest, but several of my family members said they felt a bit sick for a day or so after the weekend.

We had a ton of fun for our last trip for awhile. We don't plan on doing much traveling this spring. But anyone who wants to is welcome to come visit us! Probably the next time we see most of my family members won't be until this summer at the family reunion in Michigan, that makes me sad. But we are about to have a baby, and we won't feel up to traveling for awhile after that.

Hannah's Wedding

2009-02-20T12:58:00.002-06:00

Last weekend we drove up to Utah to see my sister Hannah get married. We left on Thursday after Jake got off of work and drove all night to get to my sister Barbara's house around 8am. Not a fun drive, but we had a great weekend. Friday we hung out with Karley, my best friend from high school, and then we went to a family dinner Will's (Hannah's husband) church. With the family alone we nearly filled the church. You all know that I have a big family and 8 of the 9 siblings were there with accompanying spouses and children. But Will's family beats ours believe it or not. He also has nine siblings and he is the youngest and was the only one not married and without kids. So they had quite a gaggle of people too. It was a lot of fun though. Very crazy fun as all of the little kids were running around playing the whole night. We preformed our traditional "sister dance" that turned out really cute. And we played family feud against the Bairds. We won of course!
The next day Karley watched my kids while we went to the Provo temple for Hannah's wedding. My sisters had brought their kids to the temple and I am so glad that I didn't. Jaxon slept the whole time we were gone, and woke up covered in poop, so we were able to wash his clothes before the reception. I can't imagine having to deal with that at the temple. Plus, he really needed the nap. We didn't take any family pictures or anything at the temple because it was snowing really hard and it was freezing cold outside, so there was no need for the kids to be there anyways. It is funny because a lot of my sisters spent considerable time on their hair and then we had to walk up the hill in a blizzard to get inside the temple so all hair efforts were lost.

Above is me with my sister Hannah and below is me with my friend Karley. It was so awesome to see her, even though we didn't get to spend a lot of time together. We had made a deal last year that we would get together during the year and it never happened, so I am glad that we got to get together this year.

This is Jaxon with Karley's son Ty. He is such a cutie. Jaxon is only about 3 months older than Ty, and they became little buddies while we were there.

Here is Hannah holding Jaxon at the reception. He was being pretty clingy the whole time and only happy if Jake or I were holding him. So you won't see any smiling pictures of him.

Here is Hannah and Will coming out of the temple together. Hannah looked so gorgeous and happy. I am so glad that she found the right guy. All night people kept talking about how happy they looked together.

We went to the reception Saturday afternoon at Will's church in Provo. We were able to see a lot of old friends from my ward that I grew up in, as well as some old friends from high school. It was fun to get to see people again.

After the reception we went up to my sister Amber's house for a Valentine's Day/birthday party for my two nieces Ashley and Lily. Mckayla and Lyla really enjoyed making valentines and didn't want to stop making them until they had made at least one for everybody in the house. Lyla says we need to move to Utah because "In Utah is snow and cousins and Grandma!" What more could we ask for?

Belly Shot!

2009-02-19T13:02:00.002-06:00

I have had a few requests for pictures of my belly before this baby comes out, so I am finally giving in. This is a picture of me with my younger sister Jessica who is due on April 15th. This was this past weekend at my sister Hannah's reception (to be blogged about later). It is completely unfair how tiny Jessica is. I am very huge and feeling like I will pop at any moment. Though I am only at 37 weeks, the baby has dropped and I have been having frequent (though not regular) contractions. So we will see what happens this next week!
PS. I don't know why my hair looks so red in this picture. It doesn't look red at all usually, I think it was just weird lighting or something. I haven't dyed it in a very long time and it is pretty much my natural color at this point.

Hiking around in AZ

2009-02-09T10:49:00.002-06:00

These next pictures are from a Saturday in September where we just went up into the mountains for some hiking as a family. These are the mountains we can see from our house. They don't look that big from our house, but get bigger once you are up in them. This is a sign that is posted in the beginning of the canyon, I just think it is funny.
In case you can't read the sign, it says "TRAVEL CAUTION: Smuggling and illegal immigration may be encountered in this area"
Below is a pretty waterfall (the only waterfall) on the road up.

This is the bumpy dirt road with a million switchbacks that you have to drive up to get to the top: Well worth it though.

Here's me and the kids. There usually are no pictures of my on this blog because I am the one always taking the pictures. But Jake got me this time.

Here's a cute shot of Jaxon with an awesome background. I just can't believe how long his hair was. We have been keeping it pretty short lately, but he has to get a haircut a month to keep it that way.

Our trip to White Sands in August

2009-02-09T10:28:00.003-06:00

Last August we went to White Sands, NM on a camping trip with my sister Katie and her hubby Gordon + kids, and Gordon's sister Betty and her family. I didn't realize that I had never written about it until I saw that the pictures from it were still stuck on our other camera. I don't actually have pictures from our time we spent actually in White Sands because we were warned not to bring our camera to the dunes because the sand is really fine and can ruin electronics when it blows. So we took some pictures there with a disposable camera that I never got developed.
Here is Jake, Gordon and Jaxon at the look out point up in the mountains. Though we played at White Sands we camped in the mountains because there was no camping available near White Sands. You can see the sand dunes over Jake's left shoulder off in the distance.

Left to Right: My nieces Eve and Lily, then Lyla and Mckayla, and Jake and Jaxon.

We also went to a solar observatory while we were there. We walked around to the different giant telescopes that they use to observe the sun. It was very high in the mountains and was a beautiful drive.

This is my sister Katie with most of the little girls. They had so much fun together. We did have a lot of fun playing on the dunes the one day we went, but the kids were pretty content to run around the campsite and play together.

On our drive through New Mexico we went through a terrible lightening storm. It was pretty freaky, but also very cool. After many many attempts I was able to catch a shot of some lightening through the windshield. I am pretty proud of that. We actually stayed in a hotel the first night because we didn't get there until after dark and it was pouring down rain. We didn't want to set up camping stuff in that weather. It also poured down rain the second night and I think that every single tent leaked. So much for rainflies!!!

White sands was really cool. It was different from other sand dunes I have been to because, not only are they white, but it is really fine sand so it has a much different texture. Only a few feet below the surface it hardens into a plaster-type feel that is so hard that they just plowed through to it to make roads and parking lots. They just use snow plows to clear the sand down to the plastery-type surface. No other sand dunes can do that. You always have to park on the edge and hike in to it. The most fun thing to do at the dunes is to go sledding. We got sleds at the visitor's center and went sledding in the summer. It was a blast, and not nearly as cold! After dark though, the wind started to blow and the sand blew so hard it felt like it would cut through the skin to the bone.

We had so much fun on that trip, and hopefully I will get those pictures off of the disposable camera soon so that y'all can see what the dune look like!

Long Lost Pictures

2009-02-09T10:07:00.002-06:00

Long ago I had posted that we had lost the battery charger for our camera, and were unable to download any of those pictures. We never found that battery charger, and I went to several different electronic stores but was unable to find a replacement for a long time. We tried buying one online, but it didn't work out either. Someone suggested I got to a specific radioshack here in town, and though I had tried a radioshack I hadn't tried this one.
This radio shack is unappealing when you first walk in. It isn't well put together and is run by a husband and wife duo. But, when I asked the question about my camera battery the guy looked everywhere and then found a "universal" camera battery charger and worked with it for 30 minutes to figure out how to get it to work for my battery. The thing was totally complicated, I never could have done it on my own. I was so impressed with the incredible service of this place and the knowledge this guy had. Though it was a radioshack it had that "mom and pop's electronics" sort of feel. It was really nice to go to a store like that.
Now our camera works again!! And I was able to download all of the pictures off of it from last summer! There were several pictures on there that I had totally forgotten about. So the next couple of posts are going to be way way backtracking. I really use this blog as a family history/ scrapbooking type thing because I don't scrapbook at all and this is the only place that I journal about our family's comings and goings. So really I have to write about the pictures for posterity's sake.

Look at what Sophie gave me!

2009-02-09T09:58:00.003-06:00

Mckayla has a good friend at school named Sophie who she has been talking about constantly since Sophie moved in. On Friday she came home from school all excited because Sophie had given her a present. I small shiny white rock. Only it wasn't a rock. Any guesses?
The girls have been obsessed with rocks since Jake has taken them rock hunting a few times and it is the Tucson gem and mineral show so we got to go up and see some really awesome rocks. We now have a small rock collection growing in their bedroom. Mckayla was very happy to recieve a small white rock from her friend and it even had a certain smell to it....
When I asked where she got it she said that Sophie gave it to her for a present, and when I asked where Sophie got it, she said that Trevor had given it to her....
I had her give it to me and go wash her hands. I didn't throw it away in front of her, but quietly got rid of it at another time. She didn't know any better, as I'm sure Sophie and Trevor didn't either. So, any guesses as to what it was??? The answer will be revealed in the comments section in a little while.

Proof that I do something during the day

2009-02-06T19:15:00.002-06:00

Too often Jake comes home from work and says, "so what did you do today?" Most days my reply is "nothing." Not because I did nothing, but I don't really feel like I did anything if I've just been home doing housework and taking care of kids all day. I never feel like there is anything to report unless we've gotten out of the house. And those occurances are becoming more and more rare. I thought I'd show some proof of what I usually do during the day, which is follow Jaxon around and clean up his disasters.

One of his favorite past times is to pull everything out of lower cabinets and then get inside them and hide. Though it's pretty obvious where he's hiding because of the fallout all over the floor in front of it, and the giggling behind the closed cabinet door.

This one was a couple of days ago. Cute, but what a waste of spaghetti. Jake got him a big Tonka truck for Christmas and he loves to fill it with his toys and push it around the house dispersing his toys in every room he visits. Today while straightening the house I had an entire laundry basket full of things from Jaxon's room that I had collected in the other rooms of the house. I really actually love this age because Jaxon isn't to the fit-throwing years yet and he is so cute and playful all of the time. BUT it is a lot of work to chase after him and try to have a clean house when he is awake. So there's my proof. I DO do something during the day.

A few more of their pics

2009-02-02T22:47:00.001-06:00

Budding Photographers

2009-02-02T22:40:00.002-06:00

Possibly the problems we are having with our camera are the result of two unnamed budding photographers that love to take pictures. These two accomplices shall remain unnamed, but I would like to give them their first big break and publish a few of their works here on my blog.

She wanted a picture of Jaxon's foot..... don't ask me.

A Fieldtrip to Fry's

2009-02-02T16:29:00.002-06:00

This past Tuesday I went on a fieldtrip with Mckayla's class to our local grocery store, Fry's. I didn't go on the last fieldtrip to the apple orchard because I didn't think I could handle an hour on a school bus at that stage in my pregnancy. It was actually quite educational. They took us to different areas of the store and talked about the food groups and what foods are good for what parts of your body. The kids really liked theat they got to eat samples at many different areas of the store. That always makes kids pay extra special attention. It was just a short fieldtrip, but it was fun and I think that kids need a change-up every now and again to do some learning out of the classroom. Our camera is having issues lately, but you can get the jist of it. Mckayla is in the green sweater in the middle of the class. Notice how much smaller she is than most of the other kids. I never thought the girls were that small until they went to Kindergarten and they were a head smaller than several kids in their classes.
This is the kids all looking at one of the live lobsters from the tank. It was funny that the girls were all eager to touch and pet the lobster but the boys weren't as enthusiastic.

A friday night out

2009-02-02T16:09:00.002-06:00

On January 23rd, we went to a dinner/dance for Jake's work. It was nice to have a reason to get a little bit dressed up and to have somewhere to go out together. It is also nice that I got to meet some of the people Jake works with, instead of just all of our friends that come over to hang out. There was a nice dinner, and a presentation, and then the dancing started. We had a lot of fun. I love to dance, and we hardly ever get the chance to do it, so we took full advantage of the opportunity.
There was an activity where each table had to engineer something given a bag of miscellaneous items. And this thing had to be helpful in their job. Our table made an EP headset and this is our friend Joey modeling it for everyone.

I had to show off my hair because I actually went to get my hair done, just for fun, and I thought it came out nice. I had told her that I wanted to look nice, but not 16-year-old prom-ish, and I just wanted it to dress-up my dress a little bit. I thought she did really well at following my vague instructions.

This is a bunch of our friends and us in front of the backdrop they put up. Though, the lighting made it so the picture didn't really turn out. We had a lot of fun that night and I wish we could do stuff like that more often. Jake and I hadn't been out since our anniversary, so it was really nice to have a fun evening together.

Bowling with the fam

2009-02-02T16:02:00.002-06:00

These pictures didn't really turn out, but I wanted to write about it anyways. We went up to Tucson a couple of weeks ago and took the kids bowling. The girls had a lot of fun, and I bowled over 100 for the first time in my life!! Of course, we were using bumpers. There was only one lane available and you had to either have them up or down the whole time, so we left them up. Otherwise the girls never would have hit a single pin.

Here's some pictures of Jake helping Lyla push the ball down the lane. Neither of them could seem to give the ball enough force to keep going until the end of the lane.

Funny story though was that there was some sort of bowling thing going on while we were there and I only took 2 pictures (the two above) and we had people complaining that the camera flash was throwing off their game. We also got many a dirty look if our kids tried to venture out of our area. Everyone seemed so annoyed that we would take our kids to a bowling alley in the middle of the day. Go figure.

More Ghost Town Hunting

2009-02-02T15:43:00.002-06:00

For a good part of January we had a lot of company at our house. Jono, Jake's brother, has moved in with us for the next while, our friend's Jen and Daryl Orcelletto were staying with us, and Ashley, the fiance of a friend of ours, was also in town for several weeks. It was fun to have a lot of people around to hang out with. The only thing is that I don't feel like I am too much fun anymore. I mostly just clean house and take care of kids. It isn't that exciting. I felt like everyone who was stuck at my house while the guys went to work during the day were getting pretty bored. So I tried really hard to find things to do to entertain us.
There isn't much to do, but I did have the idea to go do some more ghost town hunting. We went for an easier town to find. We went to Fairbank, AZ. It is right off of the highway and has been cleared out so people can visit it. There was still some hiking involved, but at least there were trails to follow this time.

We took a trail from the town to the top of a hill where the old cemetary was. Though trails had been cleared out around the cemetary, it was overgrown with thorny bushes and cactus. It made it really creepy. It is not somewhere I'd visit in the dark, just the old broken gravestones were creepy enough. We were able to read some of them though.

This is Ashley and Jono in the cemetary.

This is a shot of some of the old buildings in the ghost town. It truly was a ghost town though, we saw a couple of other hikers, but it was deadly silent. We were pretty far from anything and we kept commenting on how quiet and still the whole place was. A little creepy if ya ask me. But that's what makes it a ghost town I guess.

A few Last Colorado Pics

2009-01-26T18:08:00.002-06:00

So this is the end of my Colorado blogging, and it makes me only about a month behind still. But at least I got it done, right? These are just some random pictures that don't really fit with the other posts. Below is Jaxon playing cowboy with grandpa Jerry.
This is Jake and his dad after going hunting. They finally got one on the last day of the hunting season. They had gone out for 3 freezing cold mornings in a row before they got it. We now have a very full deep freezer that should last us for the rest of the year.

This is a shot of Jaxon gnawing on a rib when we went out to eat one night. Jake is glad that we have been blessed with 3 very carnivorous children. If we go out to eat and I ask the girls what they want to eat they usually ask for steak or bacon. Jaxon would probably eat more steak if he had more teeth.

This is Jaxon in a snow cave that Jake and Jerald made in front of the house.

Jake kept trying to "snowboard" while being pulled behind the 4-wheeler. It was pretty funny. He got pretty good by the end, but had many hilarious wipe-outs first.

A visit to the Farm

2009-01-26T17:47:00.002-06:00

While Jake and his dad went out for another day of ice fishing we went with Kenna to visit her family's farm. We always love to go visit them when we are in Colorado. The girls especially enjoy seeing all of the animals and there are usually babies of some sort that they can hold.
Below is Amelie and Lyla on one of the horses. The girls struggled at first with riding the horse. They kept sliding to one side until Kenna showed them how to move their hips with the movement of the horse as they rode. It was funny because after they got the hang of it they were over-exaggerating the hip movements as they rode. Amelie, of course was an old pro and the girls felt better riding with her than trying to do it by themselves.
We also got to go see and feed the goats. I didn't take enough pictures of that.

We put Jaxon on top of the horse for a brief moment just to snap a picture. He didn't cry or anything, but he looked pretty freaked out.

Here's Mckayla and Lyla on the horse together. They kept asking for more turns after they had the hang of it.

The first thing we did was to drive out to one of the herds of cattle in the pasture. I have to admit that I was a bit nervous about standing in the middle of 200 cattle and 10 or so horses. The horses all came to the front of the herd and stood in a circle around us which was kindof weird. There was a point where something spooked them and all of the animals started running like a mini-stampede. It freaked me out because I am not used to being around a lot of animals like that. We left the pasture after that because the girls were pretty scared too. It was cool, just intimidating.

We had a lot of fun on the farm. It always makes me feel like the time for pets might be coming because my kids are so shy around animals and don't really know how to act. We certainly don't get very much practice with that at home.

Ice Fishing

2009-01-24T16:57:00.002-06:00

Jake wanted to take us all ice fishing, because that is something that he always did every winter. I have only been fishing a couple of times in my whole life, so ice fishing was a new experience for me. I think the kids are still a little too young though. Soon after we got the girls all set up they were asking when they'd get to see the fish. Plus, it was a pretty cold day, so after about an hour they were ready to get warm again. Plus, I had to take Jaxon to go sit in the car after 30 minutes or so. He had a hard time walking on the ice, and he slipped into a puddle and got all wet. I had to get him to the car to get all of his wet clothes off so he wouldn't get too cold. Lyla's pole actually did catch a fish though. She was so proud to say that "she" caught a fish. Even though Jake had just propped her pole up and she had gone to the car to warm up.

Here is Lyla showing off her fish, though Jake had a hard time getting her to touch it long enough to hold it for a picture.

This is a shot of our little fishing site in the middle of the lake.

Up close to our fishing site, with Amelie fishing like a pro.

Here's the girls fishing in their little holes.

This is Jake and his dad making holes for us to fish in. Everyone who was out there that day had oggers with them. Ours was a gas-powered ogger, but some were walking out there with hand-crank oggers. I couldn't believe how hard it was to get a hole in the ice with this thing, I can't imagine doing it by hand.

Though we didn't catch much the first day, the girls had a lot of fun and it was a good experience for them. Jake and his dad went back the next morning and found a much better spot that was further away. They ended up maxing out the limit! We still have 9 good-size trout in the freezer that I need to fix up for dinner sometime.

Fun in the Snow in Colorado

2009-01-24T16:38:00.002-06:00

One of the things the girls were most excited about before our Christmas trip was that we were going to get to see snow. They were not disappointed, because there was no shortage of snow in Colorado. It snowed a couple of times while we were there, plus there was a couple of feet of snow on the ground already. We had to buy snow clothes when we got there because we couldn't find any here in arizona. They don't really sell heavy coats or anything like that. So we went to Walmart on our first day and bought snow boots and snow pants and a big coat for Jaxon. It was kindof annoying to buy all of these things that I knew the kids would only get to use one time. We got the cheapest stuff we could find, and the kids really did make good use of them. The girls at least were outside in the snow everyday that we were there at least once.

This is me sledding down a hill, aren't you impressed that I could fit onto that little disk sled at 6 months prego?

This is the girls and Jake sledding. Jake sure has a much higher tolerance of cold than I do. He was so excited to be out in the cold and to be somewhere where it was winter. He really is a cold weather person, but we just always have happened to live in warm climates.

This is Lyla and her Uncle Jerald on the 4-wheeler. They had fun being pulled around on sleds and getting to "drive" the 4-wheeler through the snow.

This is Mckayla, Amelie, and Lyla just about to take off on a sled together. They are almost too big to fit together on sleds anymore.

Here is Jaxon in his snow garb. He wasn't too impressed with the snow. It was so hard for him to walk in all of his snow clothes that it wasn't too much fun for him. He rarely lasted more than 20-30 minutes.

Family Pictures

2009-01-21T14:29:00.002-06:00

We had the opportunity to take a lot of pictures of everyone while we were there, so here are so shots of Jake's family:

Above is Jake's older brother Jerald, his wife Jackie and their two cute kids Roman and Roxie. Funny note: Our friend Daryl is staying at our house right now and the girls keep calling him Daryld or Jaryl. They just can't seem to get those two names apart.

This is our attempt at a picture with all of the little kids together. I took several and this one is the closest we came to one turning out good.

This is Jake's dad and stepmom Kenna with their two kids Amelie and Jace.

This is Jake with all of his siblings from his dad. His mom also has a cute little boy named Markie that is Jake's half-brother.

This is Jake's sister Nineah and her boyfriend Jose and their two cute boys Lil' Jose and Nathaniel.

Christmas in Colorado

2009-01-21T13:56:00.002-06:00

We left for Colorado on the 23rd and got there at some about 4am on the 24th. We first went to Pueblo to see all of Jake's extended family. The drive up was long, but clear except for a few icy spots. We were very grateful for that. It was so nice to see Jake's grandparents and his aunts, uncles and cousins. It had been a long time since we had been up there, and some of his younger cousins were so grown up that we hardly recognized them! Christmas morning was crazy because there were a lot of people at the house. I am used to having small, private Christmas mornings, and relaxing, lazy Christmas days. But there were so many people going in and out of the house on Christmas, and there were so many people opening presents that it was nuts! The girls had a good time, and so did Jaxon. Jaxon, of course, is still at the age where he would open one toy and want to go off and play with that and not open anything else. We let the girls open a lot of his presents. Jake's dad met us in Pueblo on Christmas for dinner and we stayed for a few days after. Then we all headed to Del Norte for the remainder of the vacation. We had a second Christmas celebration in Del Norte with Jake's sister and her family where we had a big meal and exchanged gifts with each other. It was fun.

This is Jaxon playing with a little toy car from his Auntie Neah. He loves cars and now has quite the collection to play with. They are always all over the house so he always has one or two nearby to grab.

The girls got mermaid barbies from their aunt and the love them. The barbies have become the favorite thing to play with in the tub and the car. Very exciting.

This is all of the girls together from Jake's side. Roxy is on the far left, she is so cute and shy and she is Jerald's daughter. Then Amelie is Jake's half-sister and she is 10 days younger than the girls. The three of them had a great time all week together.

This is all of the girls at the Christmas dinner in Pueblo.

This is a shot of a bunch of Jake's family members at the Christmas dinner. There were so many, and they were soming and going all day. I regret not having the camera out more to take more pictures, but this was a pretty good shot of the table.

Meeting Will

2009-01-21T11:42:00.003-06:00

Before leaving for Colorado we got to have my sister Hannah and her fiance Will come down for a day. It was nice to finally meet him and to get to know him for a little bit. We took them to Tombstone and just hung out together. Below is the girls playing on a bull at the OK corral.
This is Hannah and Will and the girls. What we didn't realize when they came was that there is a WAY shorter way to get to Tombstone than the way that we went. Sorry Hannah and Will! So now we know the way short way to get there for the next time that people come out here and want to go to Tombstone. We had a lot of fun for the short while that they were here and we are so excited to see them get married in less than a month!! Congrats!

Funny story: Hannah is notorious for getting pulled over and getting lots of tickets. I don't know how she still has a license because she is just a cop magnet. Jake got pulled over on the way to Tombstone and we kept saying it was because Hannah the cop magnet was in the car that he got pulled over. Because the last time Jake was pulled over was when we were staying in Utah and Jake had come to visit me from Iraq and Hannah was also in the car at that time. It was several years ago. Kindof funny.

The Traditional Santa Picture

2009-01-21T11:37:00.002-06:00

We did take the kids to the mall to sit on santa's lap and tell him what they wanted for Christmas. The girls were so excited to see santa they could hardly wait. This is really the first year that they have been really into Santa Claus and all of that. It was a lot of fun. Any guesses what they asked santa for this year? Shoes and a book. Both of them. We had actually gone to the mall to buy shoes, and I had them pick out shoes for each other. They had really outgrown their shoes, and the tennis shoes were in terrible shape. We probably shouldn't have waited as long for new shoes as we did, but they ended up getting them before Christmas anyways because I didn't want to pack the old shoes in our bags for Colorado.

School Christmas Parties

2009-01-21T11:28:00.002-06:00

On the last day of school before Christmas vacation both girls had Christmas parties and Jaxon and I tagged along to help out for the day. I really like that we get lots of opportunities to go be with the girls at school to help out. I enjoy meeting their school friends and getting to know their teachers. Mckayla's class played lots of games and then had a gift exchange. I thought it was genious to have everyone bring books for the gift exchange because there were no tears over someone getting a better toy or anything, plus it is all mutual gender and educational. Below is Mckayla opening her present with a stick-on candycane tattoo on her forehead that took days to come off.
Lyla's class made gingerbread houses which was really fun, but also a bit complicated even though we only used graham crackers for the houses. Below is Lyla showing off her gingerbread house and Jaxon in the Background.

This is the group that I did houses with. They were pretty creative with the candy, but unfortunately I couldn't always get the candy to stick in the ways that they wanted it to. It was a lot of fun.

Full House

2009-01-21T11:19:00.003-06:00

So I am going to be playing some catching up on blogging. We went to Colorado for Christmas and came home bringing Jake's younger brother Jono with us. Then we got a call from some friends of ours, Daryl and Jen Orcelletto, that they were coming into town and also needed a place to crash for a few weeks. We have been pretty busy and I haven't had much time to myself for blogging. I still need to put up all of our Christmas pictures and other things for this month. So be prepared for some serial posting for the next couple of days. I have at least gotten all of the pictures onto the computer now so I have no excuse for not writing about them.

Christmas Program

2008-12-19T13:12:00.003-06:00

The Kindergarten put on a Christmas program yesterday afternoon at the end of school. I taped a lot of it, but here is a video of just part of one of the songs they sang. It was really cute about Christmas in Arizona with a cactus Christmas tree. Lyla is in the front on the very left side, and Mckayla was on the top back row on the very right side, that made it tricky for videotaping.

Lost Tooth!

2008-12-19T12:54:00.002-06:00

Lyla has lost her first tooth! It has been very loose and hanging by a thread for awhile now, but she was reluctant to try to get it out or to eat with it. It fell out while she was at school yesterday. She carried it around like a trophy and was again reluctant to part with it. When she was told about the process of the tooth fairy she asked when the tooth fairy would be bringing her tooth back. When the "tooth fairy" went into her room last night he found that Lyla had taken the tooth from under her pillow and was sleeping with it in her hand. Still, she was so excited this morning that she ran into my room to show me the money that was under her pillow.
She is the first of the twins to lose a tooth and Mckayla is extremely jealous. She is constantly checking all of her teeth to see if they are loose. Lyla's new tooth is already coming in, I don't remember the new teeth coming up that soon, but this one is already up and showing. It looks really huge compared to her baby teeth. Below are some pictures of Lyla showing off the new hole in her mouth. It was a little one on the bottom if ya can't tell. The tooth is in the ziplock bag, which made it easier to keep track of and easier for the tooth fairy to grab out of her bed.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

2008-12-15T11:32:00.002-06:00

We put up most of our Christmas decorations the week after Thanksgiving, but there is always a delay from when things happen and when I actually get around to posting about it, in case you haven't noticed. Below is a picture of Jake and Jaxon enjoying the Christmas parade that was last weekend. I took pictures of some of the floats that were all lit up with Christmas lights, but none of them turned out. We had a fun time at the parade. Several floats threw out candy and we were right next to a group of handicap people that were very enthusiastic about everything. It really caught on and all the groups paid special attention to our area. It was fun.

These are my 3 adorable children who aren't photogenic at all. I really have to try hard to catch them in a good photo. The girls don't ever give natural looking smiles for pictures and Jaxon is still too young to hold still. Some of my sisters are lucky with kids who always take good pictures. I am very jealous of that.

Here is Lyla decorating her room for Christmas. We gave them the decorations out of the Christmas box that we weren't using to put up in their room and they really liked that.

Here is the shot of the living room all decked out for Christmas.

These are our Christmas lights for the year. It took Jake awhile just to get these all up and hooked to extension cords. I don't know how people do it who have lights all over their yards. We hope to build up our lighting display year by year, we'll see how that goes. Maybe next year we'll have lights going all the way down to the street, but that was out of the budget for this year.

As a side note: I'm almost completely ready for Christmas!!! YAY! I got all of my cards mailed out, all the packages sent, and almost all of my shopping and wrapping done!! We are going caroling tonight for FHE and handing out all of our goodies to friends around here, and then we're done! I really want to be completely finished by the end of the week so that next week we can really have fun with family and just focus on Christmas.