Christmas Time

Here are the kids with Santa at our previously mentioned Ward Christmas party. We took photos for all the kiddos. The funny thing is that the guy who was Santa has a couple of kids and many grandkids in our ward. The only kids that were screaming were his own grandkids. I thought that was hilarious.

And just to get everyone in the Holiday Spirit... I present "Christmas toes" (These are Alexis' feet)

And speaking of Alexis, we've had quite a fun few weeks with this girl. It started out when I was in my room, sorting laundry and she was in the living room, playing with money. She came in to me screaming at the top of her lungs (anybody who knows Alexis, knows she is a very quiet girl, this is totally out of character for her) So I'm telling her to calm down because I can't understand what she's saying, finally I hear "I swallowed a penny" I thought she was too old for this stuff, I thought I was past the putting things in the mouth stage. Nope. So I called the doctor just to see what they say, and they tell me to take her to an urgent care and get xrays. How fun. So we do that, and from the looks of the xray, it was a quarter, not a penny, but she calls all coins pennys, so I wasn't all that surprised. So they tell me to fish through her poo, and if it doesn't come out in 48 hours, bring her back. (this was all on a Monday) So Mike and I looked (mostly Mike, she kept going when I would leave the house) (haha) and we never saw (or felt) anything, so on Friday night they call to see if she had "made a deposit" yet, and told us to give her laxitives, both oral and suppository. Oh yeah, fun. So I took her back in again Saturday night for more xrays, and guess what? It's gone. She must have snuck one out and not told us. So who knows how long we were doing that yucky stuff for nothing.

Then last week she suddenly got very sick, running a fever of almost 104 and coughing, so back to the doctor. She was panting by the time we got there and her heart was beating like a hummingbird. She was also just laying there. Not fun. It took them several breathing treatments to get it under control. She has a bit of asthma, and it only acts up when she's sick. She has bronchitis right now, so she's on some really strong antibiotics, steroids, and several different breathing treatments a day. So, that's why I painted her toenails. It makes her happy. Other then that we are all doing good, and the kids are ready for Christmas. So Merry Christmas to all my readers out there. I know I hardly ever post, so most of you won't see this for a while, but have a good one!!

Dustin's 6th Birthday

Dustin's birthday was on Thanksgiving this year (poor kid) so we decided at the last minute to have his party the weekend before. He invited over a few friends and they had a great time playing with his new things. This was the favorite present. They had a lot of fun seeing who could get the rockets to go the highest. And I had a fun time sweeping them off the roof!

When I asked Dustin what kind of cake he wanted he answered "Chocolate. With chocolate frosting." He must be my kid. So I asked what would you like on top of your cake? and he said star wars. That left it open quite a bit. So I googled "easy star wars cakes" and you would not believe the cakes that popped up. They most definatly did not look easy. So after a few pages, I found this cake. Anyone who has seen the movies will recognize this scene.

It was a little soft and the men kept sinking in, so that's where the toothpicks came in, and I could not get the lava frosting red enough, so Mike finally made me quit before I made it any worse. So once again I ended up with one of those cakes that doesn't look as good as I want it to, but it tasted good!

As for other things, Mike and I got called to be the activities chairpeople about two weeks before Halloween. So we had to throw together the Halloween party at the last second. (With no committee) Ugh! It was not fun at all. (for us, everyone else seemed to have a good time) So we had our Christmas party planned for Dec. 13th, and we got to church two weeks ago to find out that they did not reserve the building for us, and the only open date was the 6th. So it's been a bit of a stressful two weeks, and I am sooooo glad it's over. Everything turned out beautifully this time, and I actually got to sit and eat for about five minutes. I hate to admit it, but I actually work better under last minute stress. Way back in high school I wouldn't write my term papers until the night before, and they were always decent. The longer I have to do things the more I second guess myself and redo them, usually the first thing I come up with is the best. Okay, so now you've all had a little peak into my inner self. Christmas and Mike's birthday are coming up soon and we are not prepared. But I can at least try to post soon after they happen!

Halloween

Halloween night at my parents home. Everyone is so excited, can't you tell? After this we went to Alice's ward party and had a great time. They had some fun carnival games and a spook alley. We didn't do any door to door trick or treating this year because fewer and fewer people are handing out candy. A lot of the churches around here do the "safe halloween" parties now, and they attract huge crowds.

This is Alexis at school for the kids' parade, she had to get dressed up too. It was very windy (our yes on prop 8 sign blew away) so that's why she's holding her hat on. Isn't she the most adorable thing you've ever seen?

Here is Darth (Dustin) Vader. He wouldn't put out his light sabor, but at least he carried it.

And here is Tinker Bell Emily. (She's a little obsessed with Tinker Bell lately, can you tell?) I actually made this costume, wings and all. The wings were shaped a lot better when I made them, but they got desroyed really fast.

Emily's 9th Birthday (and Eddie's 39th)

As everyone knows, (or should know) Emily was born on Eddie's 30th birthday. I remember him coming to the hospital to see us and I tried to stammer out an apology (lots of drugs, not enough sleep) and he said something to the effect of "No! This is great! Now I never have to celebrate another birthday again, it will be all about her" We can't let that happen, we always sing to him, but this year we put together a few cupcakes and made him blow out some candles too. Emily invited three friends over, and spent the entire night giggling with them. She wanted a Tinkerbell cake, so once again I made one of those cakes that tastes a whole lot better then it looks. But like Mike said, it's better then a cake that looks perfect and tasted horrible. Thanks to everyone who came and sent birthday cards.

My first view of the canyon.
Down the trail a ways.
No trees blocking this view
The Colorado river. We wanted to hike down there, but the shortest trail was 7.5 miles one way. We were confidant that we would make it down, it was the getting back up that worried us.
And, finally, a beautiful sunset under those monsoon clouds.

I know I said I would post the pictures below, but the silly thing posts everything backwards. Does any body else have this problem? Or am I just blogger illiterate?

My (semi) impromtu trip to the Grand Canyon

Sometimes it's funny how things come about. I was having a rotton day a few weeks ago. It turned into a giant pitty party for me and I ended up crying. This is not something I do often. It's about once a year or less, but once I get going it's very hard for me to stop. I tried to tell my husband that he should feel lucky because there are women out there who cry all the time and about anything, so he rarely has to deal with this, but he went into "fix it" mode and just kept asking what's wrong? How do you explain to a man that you have no idea what's wrong and really don't know why you are crying? That sounds just plain crazy! But that is pretty much where I ended up at. Feeling crazy. As most of you know he has been off work for several months due to the latest round of broken foot. So I decided I'd had enough of it and just needed a vacation by myself, just to get away for a few days. A few hours after I finally calmed down the phone rings. It is my dear, wonderful, almost saintly (I hope she gets a kick out of this) friend Alena. She said to me "I want to go to the Grand Canyon, wanna come?" Without thinking I blurted out "YES!" A few hours later and a little convincing to Mike, the plans were layed and set into action. We had less then two weeks to prepare, but everything turned out wonderfully. We took along two more friends, Diana and David. It was seriously the best hole in the ground I have ever seen. There were quite a few times that I was extremely grateful that I didn't have my kids with me because I would have been a nervous wreck. This way I was able to relax and enjoy the beauty of it all. And except for losing David for a little while and those crazy monsoons that blow through once a day, the trip went great! We drove there on Friday, set up camp and went to bed, spent Saturday and Sunday hiking/exploring and drove home Monday. Below I will post a few pictures, I took a lot, but there are only so many angles you can look at the thing from, and a picture will never show the full beauty or the enormous size of the place. Hope you enjoy!

The first day of school

I know this was a few weeks ago, school started on August 18th here, but here are a few pictures of the kids on day one! (I was probably way more excited then them)
Dustin finally started kindergarten, woohoo!

And Emily is starting fourth grade. She's not so happy about the level of work expected of them this year, but I'm sure she'll survive. I was a little surprised when I walked into her classroom to see that her teacher is the younger sister of one of my friends, so I've run into her a lot over the years at birthday parties, baby showers, etc. It's a small world sometimes. I brought Alexis along in a stroller so I didn't have to keep too close of an eye on her, but I didn't take a picture of her. She spends her days now asking me "where Dustin at?" "He's at school" "oh, yeah, school" Every day we have the same conversation. I wonder when it's going to sink in?

Summer 2008

Hi everybody! I am finally going to post pictures because school is starting next Monday, and with all the events soon to be happening, I figured I'd better catch up now or I'd be in big trouble. So the following are pictures of a few things that went on this summer. Enjoy!

Preschool Graduation

Dustin graduated from preschool in May. Even though we have a ton of pictures from it, I'm only going to post one, you get the idea. They gave them a little diploma, a Clifford book, and a book that they made with pictures and things that they have done throughout the school year. It was really cute.

Student of the Month

This is how long it's been since I've posted pictures, here we are with school about to start and Emily got student of the month in May. They have a big assembly and give the kids medals.

Princess Pony Party

We went to a friends birthday party and they had this adorable little horse there. It's hooves were even painted with glitter! So here are pictures of all the kids taking a ride.

Even boys can ride princess pony's!!

Summer Baseball

As I mentioned before, most of the summer was filled with baseball. We forgot to take the camera to any of Emily's games (oops) but here is a picture of Dustin in the out field.

Alexis' 3rd Birthday

Alexis turned three (back in July) and she wanted a Dora the Explorer birthday party. So we got a generic princess cake from Costco. She didn't care, she was just so excited that she had so many friends over to play with.

This is her when she was done opening her presents, she got a lot of new dress up clothes and wears them all the time. By this point I think she was done smiling for the camera, so she only gave it a little effort. But she's still cute!

Camping

We had a really fun time camping together. We were at Big Meadow with my parents and a neice and nephew (Karyn & Ethan) and some of my parents friends that they used to work with at the Los Angeles Temple. The kids had fun riding bikes, building fires, and falling into the stream. The adults played a lot of games and read. It was pretty relaxing. We had a few minor problems, but nothing disastrous.
Here are all the kids on a rock. They really liked climbing up anything that they could, even little Alexis.
And here is the evidence that Mike actually went. This is the only picture I have of him, but then again, I don't have a single picture of me there... hmmm...

How bad am I?

Okay, it has now been two months since my last post. I mentioned on my last post that I got a new camera for my birthday. I still haven't played around with it enough to figure anything out, but I plan on doing that soon. We just downloaded all the pictures a couple of days ago, but they are on the other computer, so I'll have to add them later, it's too late at night to bother with that now. So far this summer we have kept busy with baseball and lots of it. For two months we had a game almost evey night. Emily's were on Mondays and Wednesdays and Dustin's were on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I am relieved that we are finally done, it was getting really hot out there! I also failed to mention that Mike had foot surgery on May 16th, and finally got the cast off two weeks ago. He is now wearing a walking boot but it's still painful. He has quite a large scar down the side of his foot. We celebrated Alexis' 3rd birthday last month also. I can't believe it, where does the time go? As for me? I spend my days staying sane. I am so ready for school to start. Enough said. I am also getting us ready for a big camping trip next week. I'm probably more excited then the kids. (I know I'm more excited then Mike) I haven't been on a big camping trip since I was 17. The year I turned 18, I rushed out and got a job as soon as school was over (because I didn't want to go somewhere, so I had an excuse) Then the next summer I got married and Mike has never had time off to do this. I've taken the kids by myself a couple of times for weekends, but this is our first (and possibly last) huge camping trip! I will definatly post about that when I get home. It's going to be a very busy couple of weeks!

I survived the big 30!

It's been almost a month ago, but I turned 30! I decided I needed to leave my 20's with a bang, so I made Mike throw me a last minute party. Everything came together wonderfully and I had lots of friends and family over to celebrate with me. Mike got me a new camera, but I still need to sit down and figure out how to use all those features. I always have these images in my head of how gorgeous my pictures are going to turn out, but they never look that way. This camera will give me the ability to make everything turn out like I want, once I get to know it.

I had to add this picture in here because my absolutely wonderful neighbor and friend, Jaime, made this for me.

http://www.urmstonwritings.blogspot.com/

Here is her web site if any body wants one (or anything else she makes)

More of my sewing

I know everybody loves it when I brag. This is my first attempt at a rag quilt. They are pretty popular right now (at least around here) I made this for a friends baby and since I was giving it away, I decided to take a picture of it and share it with everyone!

The lastest on Mike

For those of you who don't know, which should be almost everybody since this happened very quickly, Mike got a lap band put in on Thursday. These have had great success in helping people with diabetes, and we are hoping that eventually he will be able to quit insulin all together. He's doing good, just feels like he got beat up in the belly area, he should be able to go back to work soon. Here is the beautiful photo. I know one hole was for the camera, one was for the tools, one for the sucker and one to put the lap band in through, but I don't know what the fifth hole was for. Maybe Jim can shed a little light on that?

However, on another note, he was walking a few weeks ago and heard (and felt) a *pop* He walked on it for a couple of days before telling me that it hurt worse then when he broke it last January. So we went and got it x-ray'd. They told us that it was definatly broken, but that they needed to compare it to the post surgery x-rays to see if it was any different. Well, we got a phone call last week telling us that it is broken and he is going back to see the surgeon on Tuesday. I'm going to have to assume that they are going to take the screw out and do something else, and hopefully soon so it doesn't get any worse. We'll see.

Our Easter Sunday

Okay, so I cannot get blogger to co-operate today. It will only let me type on the bottom and I cannot re-arrange the pictures like I normally do. So we are all out of order here. But I think you all can guess what's going on. We've got lots of pictures of every body dying eggs, some of the hunt (mostly Alexis, sorry, but she is just so cute!) And then, my kids after church in their nice clothes. Got to brag a little bit, I made the girls' dresses, purses and hair bows. Aren't they adorable? I figure I've got to do it now because Emily is going to get to that age really soon where it won't be "cool" any more.

February's gone!

Even with an extra day, it still dissapeared. Although two weeks of the month was spent dealing with the rest of the family getting this horrid flu/virus thing. Luckily Alexis and Dustin only got it for one day each, but they both had the flu shot this year, so I think we were in the minority and actually got one of the strands covered by it this year. Mike had it for three or four days but was still managing to go to work for at least half a day. Me? Oh it was great. I had the high fever of 103 to 104 for five days before I started almost passing out every time I got up. I finally went in to Kaiser and sat there for a few hours getting some fluid and oxygen pumped into me. (They gave me the O2 because I almost fainted on them while going to a room) I still ran the fever for a few more days. I got to the point where I couldn't get up to feed the kids anymore, so Mike's dad took the little ones, and I left Mike and Emily to fend for themselves and I slept and slept and slept. So the illness itself lasted me a full week, just like Emily. Then for the full next week, I was still so tired and weak, that I was falling asleep two to three times a day. So this stupid illness took two weeks from my life! (On the plus side I lost five pounds and haven't gained it back) So now I am preparing for our Easter break. I started to make the girls dresses before I got sick, then didn't touch them for those two weeks, so I want to get them done this week before school gets out. I don't want to feel rushed, that's when you make mistakes. But we also (we being Emily) have a huge animal project due by Friday, that (of course) got left until the last week to do. Why do I do this to myself? School has gotten so crazy. She has so much homework for being in the third grade. I didn't get regular every night homework until I was in junior high. And I don't remember having to do big projects like this until I was old enough to take care of it on my own. What am I going to do next year when I have to help two of them? Blah. Oh yeah, I got Dustin all registered for Kindergarten on Friday. WooHoo! He has been driving me nuts the last couple of months. "I'm bored" I hear that probably 20 times a day. So I give him things to do. He actually (kind of) cleaned my toilets for me. He helps with the dishes and laundry. Pretty much anything I ask him to do, but it doesn't last long then we are back to the boredom again. I have been spending about three hours a day sitting in my front yard so he can ride his bike. As you can imagine, that doesn't help my house cleaning very much. I don't understand what happens there. I go to bed and everything is fine, then by the time the morning rush is over I look around and wonder what happened to my clean house, and why do I even bother cleaning it when it's just going to end up looking horrible again the next day? Okay, I think I've ranted and raved enough for one night. It's kind of late and I seem to be jumping from one subject to the next. My tired brain doesn't work very well. Good night all!

Thirty Five !!!

It's official! Mike is half way to seventy! (hey, he's the one who came up with that, not me) Well, that's all for the pictures. I haven't taken any since then. I am bad at taking pictures. As for other events in our life...
Mike called into a radio station a few weeks ago and got us on the air to play a game called "relationship roulette" They asked him questions first, then they called me at home and asked me the same questions. I am happy to say that we won! They gave us Lenny Kravitz tickets for his show in Santa Monica. It was his first show on this tour, and it was great! He played alot of different instruments along with singing. I didn't realize how talented he is.
I spent the last week at home with Emily. She had some strange flu/virus that knocked her out from Sunday to Saturday. She just stayed in bed, barely eating or drinking, and ran a fever of 103-104 for several days. I am happy to say that she survived church yesterday and went back to school today. No one else has got it yet (knock on wood)
Well, that's all that has been going on recently.

Christmas cards

For those of you who didn't get a Christmas card, I am really sorry. I didn't think about them until the 20th of December or so, and I did my best to get them out, but after wards I realized that I forgot some people. So here is the photo that we put on our cards this year.

Joseph

Dustin was chosen to play Joseph in his preshcool play. He was so handsome standing up there. (I know that the end of January is here already, but I haven't downloaded pictures in a while)

There is a little boy named Joseph in Dustin's class at school, so he asked me, "If I'm going to be Joseph, who's going to be Dustin?"