January 2005

I was just thinking about what my life was like a few years ago. I found these pictures of January 2005. I was actually looking for some on this day, but these were taken on Jan. 14th. What-ev. It got me thinking about my time with just Pacen around. We had some fun. He was the perfect shopping companion. We were living in the frigid Michigan...even though it is so cold there, I have nothing but warm, happy memories....aawwww cheese!

Pacen was 6 months old and just super happy and fun. He didn't crawl until 9 months so we had plenty of sit and be happy time. Than worked for Neighborhood Gold driving around the state. We had many many trips to California visiting family, and many many late nights playing games with our friends since Pacen didn't really sleep at night anyway. It was a glorious time.

He always stuck his tongue out like that. Good times.

Two from Today

This is what I found when I walked by Pacen's room during naps. So cute. Penny loves to sleep with Pacen.

And you gotta love pictures of my kids where one of them is screaming. I think she's screaming because Pacen yanked her over to get in a picture and she wasn't down with that. She is miss independent.

I'm writing this watching american idol...Randy looks like he is wearing yellow eye shadow and has way too much makeup on. Camry just threw up and so she's sitting here next to me. I'm pretty nervous that she's going to throw up again. A guy just came on AI and I'm pretty sure he's mormon. Yep, said he served a mission and is from Sandy.

Oh, man. I need to go to bed. Let's all pray for no more puke tonight.

I heart faces

I'm entering the I heart Faces contest. Never done it before, but I'm making it a goal to enter little photo contests and unfortunately I have to post this on my blog to enter and everyone has to know what I entered. Yuck.

"Pre-school"

In our neighborhood we have quite a few kids all Camry's age. A few of us moms hold a little 'preschool' for the three year olds. Rian told me about Mothergoosetime.com, which she heard about from Heather, and now we use it...and it's great! For around 45 bucks each, we got all the supplies we needed for the year, plus daily lesson plans with more than enough material for the day. All I do is pull out my bag for the day and go. It's super nice and easy and the kids really love it. And I love it because I only have to teach one week (tues. & thurs.) every six weeks. That gives me some time with only Claira and some time to volunteer in Pacen's classroom. It's really a win win.

The Boys: Zach, Levi, Kamden, and Jesse

The Girls: Camry & Hailey

I really just love to listen to them talk when they think I'm not paying attention. Camry makes them play house with her and they seem to enjoy it. She picks who she's married to and even was holding Zach's hand the other day until I told her to knock it off. "But, mom, we're the mom and dad," she says. And I just will never get over the way that boys are just boys and girls are just girls. They just come that way. I'll have Hailey and Camry in her room playing with her princess stuff, and then the four boys will all have some sort of weapon in Pacen's room. Three is really a great age to be.

Kyle and Becca's Wedding

Meet the Foster's!

Kyle and Becca were married on December 19th, 2009. They let me shoot

their wedding. Needless to say, I was a little nervous having never done it before.

Straight out of the temple...

The Reception. Carnival Theme. It turned out super cute...I think we all were a little skeptical! Kyle's dad built everything and it was pretty amazing to see the cultural hall turn into real carnival complete with lots of games, cotton candy, funnel cake and giant pickles.

They gave away small bags of cracker jack's as their little Thank You's and even though they were not intended to be thrown and the bride and groom on the way out, they were. Such a big mess!

Congrats Kyle and Becca!

Giddy.

Why am I such a loser!?!? Seriously I was giddy when I saw an advertisement for Project Runway. And then The Biggest Loser was on again and I just started thinking about all my shows that I love that are coming back to me....TBL already started, American Idol is on Jan. 12th (I'm still an AI lover, but I'm a little nervous this year with Ellen), PR is on Jan. 14th, 24 starts on the 17th ( I know the past few seasons of 24 have been rather predictable and over-the-top, but that is just what 24 is and I love hearing Jack Bauer have a raspy voice and scream at people), February 2nd is the all important-i can hardly contain myself-last season of LOST. Holy crap. 5 years of watching this show and it's coming down to this. I remember the first night I watched it actually. It was the recap of season one and season two was just starting and I told Than, "We need to watch this." So, we rented the first season and watched until 2 in the morning every night that week and was ready to start the 2nd season and I love it. Probably my most favorite show of all time. And then combine that with The Office, 30 Rock, and Community and I have way too many shows. If you haven't watched community, you should. It's really coming into its own and it's hilarious. I'm so thankful for DVR. You all now know how I'll be spending my time from 9-midnight every night. And, yes, I'm well aware that I am a loser. :)

FHE tonight

Tonight for Family Home Evening we talked about goals. I'm not a good 'goal' person. Than is encouraging me this year to actually have a 'to-do' list for the day so I can even have daily goals and not get too busy playing games with Jana to forget what actually has to get done. It's a good idea...it'll be one of my goals to have daily goals! That was not my point. During FHE, we talked about it with the kids and I just loved the goals that they came up with. I was hoping they would say things like 'keep our rooms more clean' or 'Don't whine so much'. That was not the case (although I did suggest clean rooms and they went for it...probably just so they could get lots of stickers on their ghetto charts that they think are super cool). Pacen, of course, wanted to get better at playing football. He kept saying things like, "Let's go upstairs with Dad so I can play football right now." Football isn't exactly on his little chart, but it'll be on Than's goal list to make sure that Pacen has more than enough football time so that he can get super good at the ever-important football. And sweet Camry said (and I abbreviate...she has a way of taking 5 minutes to describe exactly what she wants using many repetitive sentences), "Someday I want to go to kindergarten like Pacen someday, and so I want to work on combing my hair so that I can go to kindergarten." Okay...combing your hair it is. She's probably just sick of my making her head hurt by getting out all of her tangles! I just love seeing what our kids come up with. We want a goal for Claira to be learning how to speak so that she doesn't throw so many fits. We were just spoiled with Camry. She could use almost 150 words when she was 18 months. She was putting words in sentences and so we never had that fight of, "I don't know what you want, but obviously you want it because you're hysterical." This is just another test of my patience.
I have lots of goals this year. Mainly to be more organized so that I can be a better mom and wife. They all kind of fit into that category. Than says I have to write them down or they are not really goals, so my goal for tonight is to do that. We'll see if that happens.

Camry the Sunbeam

This is Camry (and Heidi). Camry had her first day of Primary today...no more nursery, no more snacks, no more Sunday naps since our church is at 11 o'clock this year. She is a sunbeam! Or sun-bean like she says. She was very excited to go to her new class. She kept saying her teacher's name...Sister Cecil...Mom, how do you spell Cecil??? When I asked if she sang in Sharing Time she said, "I sang, but when I looked over at Pacen he was too afraid to sing."

Peace Out 2009

While enjoying Loren's wonderful New Year's Eve fondue, we were talking about how it's not that we're so looking forward to 2010, but how we're just glad that 2009 is over. 2009 was pretty much the worst year of my life. Not to say that I didn't have fun times and great learning times and enjoy day to day life...I did. And I'll try to remember those things...that's why I have a blog, right?? But, really, I am glad that 2009 is over. It was hard.

But, the end of every year is wonderful because Than and I get to celebrate our anniversary every December 29th. Since Loren is still here, he offered to babysit for us so we could enjoy some time together. He was an awesome babysitter! The kids were great for him and I think he'll even do it again. When I woke up on the 29th, Than was amazing as usual and had beautiful flowers set out for me and a wonderful present. Actually two...one of them was a book of old disposable camera photos that we had set out on our tables at our wedding (remember that fad of 2001!) that we never had developed. Yep, it's been 8 years! Not the greatest pictures of all time, but fun to reminisce. And some pictures of us in our old, nasty, beat down first apartment. Oh, being newlyweds in an apartment where every time you pulled a towel out of the cupboard you had to look for spiders and one time there was a big, nasty centipede. The only time in my life that I had to drive to a laundry mat to do our laundry. Thankfully. Here are my flowers from Than. He is so sweet. Red and pink roses, and our favorite tulips.

We went out to dinner at Carraba's and then went to see Sherlock Holmes. I can't remember the last time Than and I got to go to the movies just us. I'm really trying to think. What I realized is that we're getting old. Most of the people there were noticeably younger that us. And it's ridiculous that when you live in Utah you have to come early and wait in line on a Tuesday night for a movie. And we tried to go to Princess and the Frog with the kids yesterday and it was sold out...a 3:30 show! Darn families with kids in Utah!

Here we are...Eight years baby. Love you.

We love having Than home. The kids think it's so amazing when Than doesn't have to go to work. The kids love to play with him.

If you want to find Claira, she'll be sitting at her new favorite place.

We watched way too much football today. Pacen said he couldn't go to bed because the Gator's were on. Camry has been a big momma's girl today and I loved it. Whenever she talks about Christmas, she says Christmas Day. Mom...what was your favorite present on Christmas Day??? She told me that moms wash dishes, cook dinner, check the computer, go to the store, put shows on for kids, play games with kids, and go to the store. She's pretty much got it right! Notice how she didn't say fold the laundry! I hear Single Ladies blaring upstairs and lots of dancing and laughing. I'm out.