Forts, Bubbles and School

I did something fun with Evie today. She woke up from her nap with enough energy to power a nuclear submarine. Seriously. She would climb onto our couch and one from one end to the other and just LAUGH. So anyway I started playing with her and got the great idea of building a fort for her. You know, out comes a big comforter, a potted plant goes in the center of the of the coffee table, and the couch pins the rest against the wall. Walaa.... custom built fort. We had fun in it for a while and is now pretty much silent. Perfect fort day.

We followed the fort building with some good old bubbles. So dad pulls out her favorite kind, you know the ones that G. Smith gets that float forever, and I begin to blow. We had a BAZILLION bubbles floating through our kitchen/living room. Evie would crawl around on the floor saying "bubbles...pop, pop, pop." It was pretty cool.

I also found out recently that I get to take some more classes through work. Which I am pretty excited about. The best thing about it is that all of you get to help me go... thats right your tax dollars are paying for me to go to school. So thanks to all of you. I also made my second pie ever. Yep thats right, yours truly is a famous baker in the making. This one was a strawberry/cherry pie. It turned out pretty good. Good enough that my two girls will eat it anyway. So I was proud of that. I love sundays with my family. It is days like today that you hope never end. Yet it is time for bed. Love you all.

Just a look at the Passed!

She is the best woman in the world, Thanks be given to the Lord for her in my life...
As all of you know, I doing read very good and my spelling is even worse and most of the time I try to get a lot out of the pitchers, and try to read.. but the pitchers are worth a 1000 word will this last blog set my heart back a long way... NOT at all funny. I love each of you very much. I will try to add a pitcher or to... Just rember i am tryying. This is left to right Don, Arlene, Ora, Carl,Genial,Wayne I have learned to not press my luck so I will close for now... God Bless America and all of ye
Dad

"Oh yeah baby! GONE!

Sup everybody, hows life? I realize that I am crappy at keeping up on this whole blog thing and I now realize how much work Becca puts into this thing. So I'll try to be a bit more reliable as far as posting goes.

I started working this past week which was absolutely amazing! It feels so good to finally be working again. I worked at provo craft in the shipping and even though I don't care much for that line of work I enjoyed the fact that with every hour that passed I would have a little more money in my pocket.

Softball season is rapidly approaching (that is if the stupid weather will cooperate) so I've been trying to get out and play as much as I can. The "rents" decided to give my birthday gift to me a little early this year so yesterday we ordered some SWEEEET softball shoes that I will attach a picture of. Yep thats them! They should be here this week sometime and I can't wait! I went and hit today with my buddy Shaun and Levi which was great. I kept getting frustrated at the beginning and finally just stopped trying to really hit the ball but instead decided I would just make contact and let the bat do the work. After a while Shaun came in and started giving me pointers on little things concerning my swing and what do. When I fixed those few things just right WHAM! First home run! Almost 300 feet. And as if that wasn't cool enough mom and dad showed up a few minutes later and I did it again!

So, thats pretty much all thats going on here. Still alive, still waiting for good weather... All in all, one of the better weeks I've had in the past four or five months.

Love you guys

Jared

I'll give your bike back--I'll give you a broken back

Speaking of Broken backs--I think I broke mine--I mean it really hurts and I don't know why. Ellie agrees with me, so there you have it; I am down in the back.

This could potentially be quite a problem because long before I married Adam, I had the good sense to offer a pre-nup. We were both broke, so money wasn't involved, but I did stipulate that if he ever got a bad back I was out of there. I wouldn't stand for it and he shouldn't be upset because I have no patience for a bad back. Adam did not however stipulate the same requirements, so technically I am safe, but I am feeling a little downtrodden about the whole thing.

The really lame thing is I didn't even injure it doing something cool like jet skiing. I guess I really am getting old.

PS you get an extra point if you can name the movie title from which this title originates.

O Bri

Thanks for the e-mail it made me :) and :) it made my day.....

Hay ye all 2week wonder it works

Yep I would recommend this for ye all... I had a great time with Jared on our road trip, stood out in the rain at the ball games, and loved every minute of it. Jared played real well, hit the ball ran the bases and even played in the muddies water on the field. Yep Great fun.. Hoover Dam, Grand Canyon, Glen canyon Dam, Cedar brakes and loss of snow.... Home at last, o nothing like being home... The next week fun and games with the VA...Salem to Salt Lake City up and back, up and back, up and back,,, 122 miles each time o ya did I menchen that there is no place like Home!!! :)

This is for all the grand children xoxoxoxoxoxoxox LoVe ye All Dad

That John Denver is full of......

A little update for those who actually care;)
Ben
He just got back from the ghetto of Denver Colorado and really it was the bad part so don't think I am just over exaggerating a little. Baahaa!! He had a joyous time while he sat in on about a million interviews at the SRM. He enjoyed being on the other side of the table this year. And was reminded how blessed he is to have a job that he is absolutely is in love with all around. He got home late tonight which is why y'all get me as the narrator to this ONE post. He just got back from some meetings for the Search and Rescue that he is now involved in. Which I think he will be more than great at. He talks about it quite often and is pretty dang excited of what it entails, such as; scuba diving training at Lake Powell for a week (which I will be watching from the house boats I plan to rent while he is attends), snowmobile, helicopter, avalanche and all that other stuff to help human beings. I am so enthused about all the things he has done!


Little Evie
Where do I even start with this blissful kid of ours. She is doing well with the colors and the anatomy lessons I give her, about 50% of the time I'd say. Today she did something Ben thought was an absolute hoot. She took all my buckle punch cards and walked so graciously and innocently over to the big garbage can and threw them away as if they weren't of any worth. Mind you there were about 8 filled ones that is 80 bucks off a 150 dollar pair of pants! I applauded her for throwing something away, and shooed Ben and her away so that I could put my latex gloves on and dig those precious cards out of the trash. I did save most of them:) Ben thought it was some kind of divine inspiration that she would know to throw anything away that has to do with shopping. She is growing up so quickly and I am molding wrinkles as the years pass by. We are so happy for the smiles and ease she brings to our home.

Mariah
I talked Ben into going snowboarding the other day at a little "mom and pop" ski resort near where we live. At first I didn't like it much, but I started to get the hang of it and really enjoyed it. Ben kept telling me that I was really good at it, I will be honest, and say that I did indeed snowboard circles around him once :) It was really fun and neither one of us crashed as much as we thought we would. Ben seemed to have more trouble staying on his feet in the parking lot! It was great! I thought that I was the only one that saw him fall on the ice until the girl in the car next to me asked if he was okay, at this point I had to hide in the truck so he wouldn't see me laughing! :) By the way we are seeking to buy a new camera and we are leaning toward the Nikon 5000, let me know of any good suggestions that you keen folks have on the camera department..Please! Hope that you all are well.

Sunday late, as always...

I know, our anniversary is past so what's up with the wedding photo? It just seemed like a good place to start. (I will use Jared's funny emoticon here, -_- ) We've had a lot going on in our part of the world which is directly related to what you all have going on in your part of the world. Adam and Lesli in Denmark, Ben to Denver, Levi to San Jose, Jared and Dad to the Grand Canyon, Bry, Jen and the girls to Kansas City. Oh well, someone needs to stay home so Becca and I will volunteer. Did you all know that becca is taking Bee keeping lessons? Dad hadn't caught that, and when I referred to it he looked at me like I'd lost it. Good for her.

Dad and I have been taking lessons on being self-employed- 4 nights, 3 hours in each class. It's been good- even better is dad's discovery that he can go to any undergraduate program at a state school and they will waive his tuition because he received a Purple Heart during his marine corp days. Wahoo! Who knows what may come of this... welding? photography? pottery?!? I am happy for him.

So, after all that, why the wedding photo? Well... it's just that back then we didn't have a clue what life had in store for us- At one time we actually thought we wanted 12 (t.w.e.l.v.e) children. I cannot imagine having 6 additional children, and all of them younger than Jared. We'd still have a stack of missionaries to do- save me! We'd thought we'd always live in Utah, Dad would always have a job, and life would always be sweet. We had no clue about parenting, and couldn't imagine the joy of a grandchild. Wow, look at us. I'm happy each of you have a part in what brings me the greatest satisfaction I've known. No doubt about it, life is a long term project. I love you all!

Hungry anyone?

I have been reading this trilogy and loving it!!! You all know I'm not a big reader but this is one that sucked me in. It's an easy read. Crazy, exciting story with "killer" (LOL) cool characters! I am actually now rationing the pages left in the second book, knowing that I have to wait till August for the final book to be released. :( Anyone have good reads for me till then?

Great Wolf Adventure!

We just spent few days at the Great Wolf Lodge. :) Tons of fun not so much tons of pictures, poop!!!

We love, love, love ya'll! Sorry we r sooo bad at staying in touch. It's just the way we role... dang it!!!

100 days

What did you do to celebrate 100 days down? The kindergartners at Berkeley Arts Magnet counted 100 steps twice, ran for 100 seconds, did 100 jumping jacks, and ate 100 boiled eggs. Really quite a party, and only a few kids reported feeling sick at the end of the extravaganza. Ellie however was pretty bummed when she found out there was school the next day. I didn't have the heart to tell her she has 80 left to go!

Addison for his part is a bit under the weather, but was able to set up a playdate with a friend so they could (he informed me later) practice their knife throwing skills. Apparently Addison is offering lessons at school. Boy am I glad his teacher has very selective hearing.

Lafe for his part in family politics is mostly working on his rollover. He only seems to be able to do it in the kids room whn we aren't watching, so we aren't sure of his form, but he is supposed to be the athletic one, so I guess I will buy it.

Slight Insight

The nice thing about having this blog to write on, and my own is that I can keep my meaningless ramblings off of mine and write them on this one instead! So updates into my life are in order I guess...

To start things off I FINALLY have a job! Its just at a temp agency but good things can come from that, including in the long run placement at a good company. That fact alone excites me, because that fixes two problems... the first being income... I WILL HAVE MONEY!!! Mwahahaha! Which in turn will then fix the problem of bills, followed closely by the ability to feed my insatiable addiction to softball.

Which is just another reason to hate Utah's weather patterns because the fields that I played softball on not 3 days ago are now under a few inches of snow! -_- I wish there was a better way to show you my disgust.

So thats the latest happenings in my life... Still alive, still hating Utah's weather, no longer jobless... all in all... I think this nasty slump of mine will soon be remedied as the seasons change and warm weather melts these "blues" away.

Oh and Becca... I could really use your help finding a background for my blog that is both bold and grabs your attention.. Im having difficulty finding one that I like

Kodak Moment.

Some of my missed photo opportunities include:

Earlier this week, Ainsley was crawling around in nothing but her stinky diaper as I was gathering the stuff to change her. When I finally laid her down to change her, someone (Caleb?) had put a big "JOB WELL DONE" sticker on her diaper. I about died laughing. Perfect.

We're scouting out the perfect farm for my beehive. Yesterday, when Emily and I went to visit one small farm, she was very curious, and one of her biggest questions was "What is 'The Country', Mama??" I pulled up the dirt road and we were greeted by a huge boxer. Em was nervous, but she patted her tentatively and was rewarded with a gigantic, sloberry kiss. The dog then trotted along next to Emily like her friendly horse, as the farmer handed Emily fresh eggs (green and orange and pink from his Easter Egg hen, which was cool), and then let her chase his baby goats. She was already in heaven when she spied a whole cache of fishing poles against the workshop. "Oh Mama. Fishing poles. I LOVE The Country."

Caleb looking lovingly at a picture of himself as a baby with spaghetti sauce on his face and saying "Aw. Spaghetti poop on my face." (Something like that. I only heard this one, but Dave actually saw it.)

Dave put Ainsley to bed earlier this week, tucking her in with her blanket and her bottle, then waving to her. She responded with a HUGE grin, an "open shut" hand wave, and a full body shimie. She's darling.

Today at church I was trying to keep Caleb quiet during the Sacrament. Sometimes I'll pull him up into my lap and whisper stories about Jesus into his ear to help him think about the Savior. Today I was trying to tell him about when Jesus visited the Americas after his resurrection. Caleb was listening attentively and then he whispered to me "The Nephites had lollipops and jelly beans?!" I whispered back "No." Then he whispered "Oh. Just lollipops?" Again, "No. Just regular beans." His whole face fell at that tragic news. (I think this has something to do with the fact that I told him awhile back that he shouldn't play with himself because Heavenly Father said not to. He accepted that, nodding, and then said "Heavenly Father have a prize for me?" Well, yes! He DOES have a prize for you, Caleb! So now, whenever we talk about choosing the right or being righteous he gets all excited for the treat Heavenly Father has for him. Whatever it takes.)

Ainsley is smack in love with her father. She was being loud in church today, too, and so I took her into the foyer. She could still see her dad through the open door and so she continued to happily bellow "Dadd-EE! Dadd-EE! Dadd-EE!" (Nursery countdown: two weeks!!!!)

I had one more for Em... I can't remember what it was. Oh well. Happy Sunday!

Copenhagen, makes me feel so good

Lesli and I arrive home safely after a week in Denmark. Below is a slideshow. I'm too lazy to put captions, but a few highlights are the original Christus Statue, human sacrifices, an icy canal, Victorian doll houses (for Mom and Becca), and my first steak tartar (at which point I learn tartar=raw).

Happy Valentine's Day...

It snowed Friday night here. Real snow. The pretty kind. It snowed 3-4 inches of beautiful, fluffy whiteness and then--Saturday--it was beautiful and sunny and warmish, so everything melted.

Now THAT is my kind of winter. Beautiful snow, and then it melts.

Dave spent the most time in it because the rest of us are pansies. He built our whole family in snowmen. They looked awesome. (You'll notice how accurate they are--he even gave me saggy boobs. HA!) When they started melting, we all had fun kicking them to smithereens.

Let's see... what else?

Oh yes. Happy Valentines. We love you!

Lafe in Copenhagen...

I can't wait to hear all about Adam and Lesli's trip when they get back, but I just had to post this picture that I smouched from Adam's facebook page. It's Lafe having his first Ramen noodles. In Europe. (Talk about spoiled rotten.)

I hope your presentation went well, Adam!!!

Get outa here!

So for those who don't know Pops and I took ourselves a little road trip this past weekend. Oh I know what you are thinking... "Dad? Take some of his vacation hours?" But it's true... We started off by heading out on friday afternoon to Mesquite for a softball tournament I would be playing in the following day. How did the tournament go you might ask.. Well all things considered we did ok.

We had about 8 different guys bail out on us the week of the tournament and ended up only playing with 3 guys that we would normally have on one of our teams. 5 of the people that played we had never met until the start of our first game, and thats just the start of the problems we had. So like I said considering we did ok.... We might have lost every game but we still took 9th and come to find out the 3 teams we did play took 1st 2nd and yep you guessed it 3rd.

After the tournament dad and I headed to Las Vegas or as mom calls it "lost wages" and spent the night there. I having not slept well the night before passed out by 9 according to dad who for the first and probably last time in his life can say he actually stayed up longer than I did.

The next morning after breakfast and a failed attempt on dads part to find a sacrament meeting we headed for what I thought would be another desert town in the middle of no where surrounded by cactus and tumble weeds. We drove south east, and stopped at the Hoover Dam, which come to find out dad had never seen.. and then headed into on of the bigger surprises of the trip.. Snow... Wait, snow? In Arizona? What the heck, why are we climbing through a range of mountains? Yeah needless to say I had no clue Flagstaff was at 8,000 feet and had 4 feet of snow.

After a good night in Flagstaff and a great game by the Saints we headed to the south rim of the grand canyon! O.O Thats all I have to say.. If you haven't seen it you might want to consider a trip some time in the near future. The snow added a nice little touch of awesome to it. The only thing that would made that cooler is if I woulda had a parachute and a helicopter to pick me up at the bottom. After that we had quite the adventure seeing summer and winter in the same season on our drive home. Which was great and though took a very long time seemed to pass quite quickly. The end... oh and if you want pictures look em up on facebook... oh and I started my own blog you should check it out. "instanceofrising.blogspot.com"

Thanks all

much love

Jared

Happy Valentine's Day...

You know, I had such great expectations for Valentines this year. I was actually going to get a Valentine made, printed out, and sent to you all. But the furthest I got was taking the pictures. So, here you go, a Valentine from my crazies...

Ainsley was sleeping and I wasn't about to wake her up. What you can't see very well in that picture is that Caleb was actually holding the toilet plunger, otherwise known as his "flying machine", which he usually wears with Dave's ski goggles. Which fit him perfectly. He's a pretty funny kid. This week I was waiting for Emily at ballet class with a nice grandma who brings her granddaughter when he went up into a handstand, held it, and then slowly lowered himself down into a somersault. The grandma looked at me and said "Did you KNOW he could do that???" To which I could only honestly reply "I've never seen the slow lower before. And usually he ends up doing the splits." We've talked about putting him in gymnastics, but his favorite color is currently pink, and we just feel like that's a bit much.

Emily is all ga-ga over Valentine's Day. I don't think she has a clue why, but she very carefully labelled all her "Dr. Suess" valentines for her entire class and stuck them, carefully, to Fruit By the Foot packages. I loved hearing her running dialogue about why she chose each particular card for different kids. For example, "Hm. I need one for Jeremy. Jeremy doesn't choose the right. He chooses the left. He always gets a sad face. Hm." Or "This one is for Cora. Cora is very kind. And nice. But she talks really fast, so I don't always listen to her." The world is a fascinating place through Emily's eyes. She is really into "girl time" right now, so I try to make sure we get some in every week. Her favorite is to stay up late, watching a grown-up girl movie (like Pride and Prejudice or Little Women), and eating popcorn and red pudding. (My personal favorite.)

Ainsley is just herself. She loves to bite people, but she tries to be charming about it. She signs really well and will use the sign for "cheese" for food, the sign for "milk" for any liquid, and we see lots of "MORE!" around our house. She continues to love weird food that none of our other kids will touch, and avoids all of our family staples, like rice. I'm hoping that maybe she's going to turn out left-handed. I would love that. She has been sick this week with RSV and a double ear infection, so we'll all be glad when she's over that.

Dave is learning to be elder's quorum president and I, personally, think he's doing an absolutely magnificent job. I spend a lot of time watching how much thought and effort he puts into the details of his quorum, and how important it is to him that he leads to the best of his potential. I know that he doesn't feel he's doing his best (does anyone?) but I'm his wife and you're his family so I can safely say that I think he's absolutely amazing. On top of that calling, he finds time to play with our kids, make dinner, read his scriptures, feed the cat, do the entire bedtime routine with the kids, and make me feel special. I seriously lucked out with this one.

And me... hm. Well, I have an etsy business doing some graphic design, and I am thoroughly (thoroughly!) enjoying that. I'm also in my third week of "Bee School" to learn how to be a beekeeper, and am really chafing under our HOA restrictions. I want to keep bees NOW, and not "someday." I will learn to be patient and save my pennies so I can get the perfect hive when I have the space for it. (Did you know that one hive will produce 40 pounds/12 gallons of honey, per season??? Isn't that amazing?! *smile*)

So. That's us. Nothing funny or exciting really. But we love you.

Happy Birthday, Mariah!!

What kind of pathetic sister-in-law would I be if I didn't find you the *perfect* cake????

Awwww, yeah. Perfect.

Happy Birthday!!

Becca

Mom, I met a girl....

I was talking on the phone with Ben, who was going to school at Snow, when he said it..."mom, I met a girl...". He went on to talk about how much fun he'd had the night he met her, and how she made him feel. It was not very long before he brought her home one week-end so we could see for ourselves- and of course, he had described her perfectly. The picture above was taken as they were leaving for Ephraim after their visit- it is the first picture of Mariah in the vast quantities of family photographs I have taken over the years- there have been many of her since, and for that I am glad.

This one was taken just a few days before they married, and it is one of my favorite ones- I love her smile- they are just so genuinely happy. So, Happy Birthday Mariah! I'll be thinking of you today, and hope it is a busy and fun day spent with Ben and little Evalyn- I'm grateful you are a part of our family.