Happy Birthday Clayton and BrynLee

Once again I am on top of things(not). Yesterday was Clayton's 9th and BrynLee's 7th birthday. Happy Birthday. We love you guys!!!

Happy Birthday Brooklyn

Even though her birthday was Sunday we just wanted to wish her a belated Happy 11th Birthday. We love you Brook.

A Sneak Peak

Here's a little sneak peek of what we have been working on for the last 6 weeks (It has taken forever and hopefully it will be done by Easter. That is my goal.) We started working on the girl's room. At first I decided I wanted their room a lime green with the beadboard on top. I took 1 full day and painted their room. I absolutely HATED the color. 2 days later I was back to Ace Hardware and got a dark brown and spent another day painting. This time it was a different story. I LOVED the color it turned out. I also spent another week sanding down, painting, and glazing their bedroom set. It took forever, but I loved the way it turned out. I have dejunkd their room ( 2 garbage bags full of garbage and 1 full of stuff for DI). Now all I have left is the organizing and the decorating (This is what might take forever. I have a huge list of projects I want to do including learning how to sew some things.) Hopefully I can show you the finished product here in the next month.


Some before pictures of the girl's room.......

Here is the nasty lime green color. I actually really like the color just not for the walls..........

Jay puting up the beadboard and trim (we had to paint both, but it turned out so cute).....

Stay tuned................

On Healies

Brooklyn has been begging and begging for Healies (shoes with the skates on the bottom) for the past year. She is always borrowing her friends or using her cousins when she visits. I won't fork over the $45 for the shoes and she hasn't been able to save her money for them. We went to DI about 3 weeks ago and she happened to find a pair of healies in her size for $4. She used her own money for them and wore them all day for 5 days straight. On the 5th day she came home from school and put them on rode down our drive-way and BAM. Fell on the sidewalk. One of the wheels happened to catch on one of the cracks in the sidewalk and it tripped her. She fell on her wrist. Of course it was her writing arm. It was sore and kinda of just hung there. We let it go for about 5 days just splinting it, but decided if she was going to continue to play soccer for the next 6 weeks she better be in a cast if it was broken. We took her to get an X-Ray last week just to see and sure enough it was broken. We took her to Jay's office and he got to cast it. She chose purple, and now everything she wants to wear has to have some purple in it. Too funny. She was pretty excited to wear the cast, but 1 1/2 weeks later she is ready for the thing to be off. Only 4 1/4 more weeks to go. At least she still gets to play soccer. All she has to do is bubble wrap it before games.


Note to self....Healies are not as cool as they seem.

Globetrotters

We found out that the Globetrotters were coming to Cedar City in February, so we decided to surprise the kids. We didn't tell them until we got there. They were so excited. We ended getting some really good seats so we were up pretty close. It was fun to see Flight Time and Big Easy (they were our favorites on the Amazing Race) and all of the other fun things they did. All of the tricks they did were pretty amazing. We bought the kids a souvenir ball and they were able to get some of their autographs. They wanted to stay all night and get all of them, but it was so late and we had to drive back. It was a really fun show and if you ever get the chance I would recommend going.

Easton's Birthday Party

We celebrated Easton's birthday when all of my family came down for the weekend before his birthday. He was so excited about his "party". He wanted a pinata and a "Buzz and Woody" cake so that's what he got. He got some fun presents along with the bike that he has been wanting. He got a wiggle racer for Christmas, so we decided to keep this an indoor bike for now. He loves being able to ride his bike all around and it entertains him while I am cleaning. We also took him to Texas Roadhouse to eat one night. We kept telling him that he got to sit on a saddle and they say "Yee Haw" to him. He was so excited and kept asking when he got to sit in the saddle. By the time they brought it he got a little shy, but he still got up on it. He loved his cake. I kept catching him sneaking in the fridge staring at his cake and anytime someone came by he kept having to show them. We starting making it 2 days before his party, so it was really hard for him to wait. Easton loved everything about his birthday and he is already talking about next year.

Last 6 months

We have been MIA for awhile. Our computer got a nasty virus. $200 and a couple of months later our computer is finally virus free (knock on wood). It took another couple of months to finally get everything back on the computer. It is nice to finally be almost normal. Here's a little of what has gone on the last 6 months.

In September we hiked up in the red rocks above the temple. We have been here almost 4 years and had never been up there. It was really pretty and there were so many places to explore and climb around in. The kids had so much fun.




This past fall Clayton played flag football for the city. His team played pretty good, but didn't win many games. Clayton did a great job. He even got a couple of touchdowns. He is always so fun to watch.






Brooklyn played AYSO soccer this fall. We weren't going to sign her up because we usually just do spring soccer. She has really come to love the sport so we gave in. She did really well. She played forward and scored 7 goals this season. She was so excited. As good as she was at forward, she was an even better defender. At one of her games there was some coaches looking for another player for their club team. They invited Brooklyn to play, so we are going to stick with club soccer for now. She has really enjoyed playing with them and has become quite a good little soccer player too.


Easton is my blanket kid. He goes just about everywhere with his blanket. We finally made him quit taking it to the stores and church, so it stays at home most of the time. He was very particular about the blanket he had. He always wanted the blue star blanket. We ended up losing the blanket for a month and so he got used to a couple of others. As long as it had a tag on it that was all he cared about. He loves the tags and he would probably carry around just the tag if that was all there was. A couple of months ago his favorite blanket bit the dust. He was so set when the tag ripped off. He has gotten used to the "rainbow blanket" and the "car blanket" but every once in awhile I will find him going back to his blue star blanket.


Every fall we go to Scofield to Jay's family's cabin. We love it. We always get to enjoy the changing of the leaves. This year I made the kids pose in front of some really old buildings. I haven't played with these pictures yet, but I love how they turned out. Can't wait to see how they turn out once I polish them up a bit.


I was sad that last year was my last year coordinating all the kids costumes. I did convince BrynLee and Easton to match (not hard to convince a 2 year old). BrynLee and Easton went as the Princess and the Frog, Clayton was Darth Vador, and Brooklyn was a bumblebee. Jay even decided this year that we needed to dress up. This was our first time in 12 years of marriage that we dressed up and it was fun. We found Popeye and Olive Oil costumes. So much fun. Instead of carving pumpkins this year we decorated them. BrynLee and Easton wanted them to match their costumes so they had princess and the frog pumpkins. Clayton had a baseball player and Brooklyn did the Tin Man. The kids had a lot of fun looking for ideas and painting them. And of course we ended up with way too much candy!!!

We stayed at home for Christmas. It is getting too hard to travel with 4 kids at Christmas. We loved having Christmas with just our family. Christmas Eve we hung out at the house and played games. That night the kids got their traditional pajama's. Christmas morning was so much fun. I love watching the kids expressions when they see what they get. Brooklyn got her camera, Clayton got his tech deck stuff, BrynLee got her doll, and Easton got a dinosaur play set. They were all so excited. We got such a good deal the day after Thanksgiving that we gave the family "Rock Band" for Christmas. It has been so much fun. Easton LOVES the drums. Easton was so funny when we were opening presents. He kept pushing me and Jay out of the way and telling us that he would show us how to do it. He ended up opening all of our presents. Here are also some pictures of the kids in their Christmas dresses on Christmas Sunday.

This is one of my favorite pictures. Jay's parents got the kids wiggle racers and we had been storing them in the garage. We told the kids their was one more present and Easton must have been going to the bathroom, but he heard one more present and he took off for the garage. I didn't realize he didn't have any pants on until after I started taking pictures. I love it. We let him ride around naked for a minute before we had to pry him off to go get his pants back on.

For New Year's we went to Price. My brother and his wife and their new baby flew in for 2 weeks. Jay had to work most of the time, so my dad met us in Beaver and took me and the kids back to Price for the week to spend time with my whole family (it had been a long time since every single one of us had been together in place at the same time). The kids loved playing in the snow. I think they spent at least half the day in the snow and they were ready to go every day by 8:00 am. This picture below reminds me of "Ralphie" from A Christmas Story.

While we were all together, we threw a baby shower for my sister-in-law who had just had her first baby. So much fun and so much good food. We were so glas that they came out and that we got to meet our new niece Kiley for the first time.

While they were here they were going to bless baby Kiley. My brother ended up having emergency oral surgery the day before they were supposed to bless her. He was really worried that he wouldn't be able to do it or he would be so drugged that he would say funny things. He got a couple of blessings himself that week and everything turned out good. He was still in some pain, but the blessing was amazing and the spirit was so strong. I am so glad they came to visit and that we go to spend the time with them. We just love their cute little family and wish they were closer (Virginia is too far away.) This is Kiley on her blessing day.