I have a request...

Does anybody in the near-by area have a copy of "It's a wonderful life" I can borrow? I really want to watch it this year. No, we don't have cable and the library copies are all checked out. Thank you ever so much.

I went to a conference on Aging and Alzheimer's a month or so ago and there was a inspirational speaker, Joan Endicott, who showed a clip from the movie and it almost made me cry... kind of embarrassing when you are sitting next to your boss! Ever since then I have been meaning to watch the movie.

Have a merry happy Christmas.

Dress up

I love dressing my kids in red for Christmas. I decided to do it earlier this year in case they aren't so accommodating later in the month. It was a bit of a struggle to get Eliza to wear red to church instead of pink but she was reconciled to the dress because it had dots on it just like Grandma Jan wears.

As you can see by my pictures, I had as much success as I did last year with taking pictures of these stinkers dressed nicely.

This one is by far my favorite of the lot. I officially retire from taking holiday pictures!

Update on other things.... I finished my turkey trot and I wasn't even last! I can't remember my time, but I had a great time running with two of my sisters. Mike, my brother in law Glenn, and Meridith also ran but out distanced us quickly! For all of you who said you wanted to run with us... we are planning on running the Orem turkey trot next year, a 4 mile run. It should be fun! I have to admit I have been a slacker since the race and have only been out running a few times. It's cold outside! Merry almost Christmas!

The Franks

For all you Twilight lovers and haters.... this is really funny. I keep laughing about it, I hope you all think it's funny too.

It's November already!

Here's our update.....

1) Eliza potty trained herself this week. I really like this new self-cleaning model. It can't be beat. She was so excited to give all her diapers to "baby cray-cray", a little boy of the woman who babysat the kids this summer.

2) Ian started swim lessons this week. He LOVES them, even though he was scared at first. He has a nice teacher who lets him have a lot of fun.

3) Mike bought some awesome skis and we are getting excited to do some winter sports this year.

4) My Christmas shopping is almost done!

5) I am signing up for my first race, a 5K Turkey Trot in American Fork. Any joiners?

Almost Halloween....

Yeah. I couldn't get the kids to look at the camera at the same time. But we had fun carving pumpkins today! Notice Eliza's pink hair, leftover from the ward Halloween party the night before. They are excited for Halloween. On Friday they get to come to my work and trick or treat to all the patients. I dressed like a nun for the ward Halloween party and some one in the ward basically told me that it is an offensive costume so now I need to get a new costume for my work party. I might go with the Marathon runner idea that Jessica C gave to Mike on Facebook. Unless all you REAL marathon runners would be offended...

Family Photos

I try and utilize the skills I learned in a high school photography class to take our family photos. This saves money and provides us with quality time together. I can't pretend that I really remember anything from that class, but I try. These are some of my favorites.....

Here is Eliza telling Ian he can't say cheese, only she can.

Ian trying to shoot....

This lasted 2 seconds before Eliza wriggled free...

And Ian is wrestling with his sweater while we attempt to get the kids to look at the camera....

We did get some cute, usable ones, and I am getting them printed off at costco. Family photos in your hand in less than two hours! That's the way to do it. I was surprised at the afford-ability of printing your photos there. We are new to Costco membership but have liked it so far.

P.S. Eliza is sleeping through the night a few times a week! We went cold turkey with her "milky" at night and she is sleeping better every day.

The Happiest Day of My Life

Eliza slept 10 hours straight last night. And so did I.

Runners

Mike and my sister Tiffany decided to run a race this weekend! Mike the full marathon (26.2 miles) and Tiff the 1/2 marathon (13.1 miles) Everybody kept asking me if I was going to run but I had my own type of race to run, watching over 4 little kids before and during the race.

Here are some kids waiting patiently by the finish line. Jared and Abby came over so Jared could run the last part of the marathon with Mike.

We got to the finish line early that morning so we had time to play on the swings while the leaders of the race finished.

Tiffany did such a great job! I am so proud of her! I like the running shirt they gave her for running.
Here's mike just at the finish line. He doesn't even look like he's going to pass out! Funny thing, when I downloaded my pictures I noticed my boss behind mike in all the pictures. I am so proud of Mike and Tiffany! They are amazing.

Camping Trip

We took a quick campout trip this weekend just outside of McCammon. It was beautiful! The kids loved the creek.

Our friends joined us for the evening campfire but couldn't stay the night. We are so glad we found this place! It's only 30 minutes from our home and it had firepits, picnic tables, a shallow stream. Ian wants to go back as soon as possible.

I even saw ferns and moss! Two of the thing that I miss most from Oregon. I love greenery and wetness. We will try and get one more trip in before winter sets in, but will have to go more next year. Anybody want to join us?

By the way Ian is doing great in Kindergarten. Every day we ask him what he did in school and he says snack time and recess. I guess he only remembers the important things!

Kindergarten here we come!

Sniff Sniff. We sure love the kid but are glad to see him go!

Chubbuck Days

We had a local town celebration today, with freezing cold weather and lots of rain. There was a parade, a Police vs Fire softball game, and music and food. This was the third parade me and the kids have attended this year. The Newton parade had a great candy to float ratio. The Pocatello parade had no candy and was really short for the amount of time we spent waiting for it to start. Every single business in town particpated in this parade. Me and the kids huddled under a raincoat waiting for it to start (check out the Idaho State Journal tomorrow, a photographer took about 20 pictures of us huddled on the side of the street!) The softball game was fun to watch and Mike did great. I forgot to take any pictures of the parade, the kids loved seeing Mike drive the fire truck in the parade and the people around us were suitably impressed. What's the best parade you have attended?

p.s. our picture didn't get into the paper but it did get onto the newspaper's webpage .... http://journalnet.com/galleries/chubbuckdays/

I Can't Believe Ian is 5!

It doesn't seem like 5 years ago I had Ian. In some ways it seems 25 years ago and in some ways it seems like yesterday. It all started back in July of 2004. Mike, Jan and I drove from Fairbanks to Denali National Park on July 31st. We stayed the night in the White Moose Lodge and Sunday August 1st we took an 8 hour bus ride into the Park to see the sights. We saw some wolves, Dall sheep, a bear. It was a LONG and BUMPY ride. I wasn't due until the 15th of August. But it was LONG and BUMPY ride. That evening we drove back to Fairbanks. My contractions started about 1 am, my mother-in-law flew home about 6 am. At 10 am I sent Mike to go buy a car seat. I went into the clinic around noon or one. I labored there until about 10-11 pm when it was decided he was stuck. We then relocated to the hospital about 1 block away where they also decided that he was stuck. Then about 1:30 in the morning on August 3rd, I had a C-section to get the stubborn kid out. I still remembered the first time I heard his cry, the overwhelming happiness and astonishing thought of "oh no, what did we do..."

Ian has been begging me, I mean BEGGING me for He-Man pajamas. Since they don't exist anymore and my time machine was broken, I had to get creative with my printer and iron.

Ian is such a nice brother, he let Eliza open one of his presents! I don't think I would have ever been so generous!

To top off the day we invited some neighbors over to eat Ian's cake with us. I didn't realize the frosting had melted in the heat and pooled all to the sides! We ate it anyways. Ian loves to decorate his own cake and he went crazy with the sprinkles.

We are lucky to have such a great kid. I had to add in this picture of Ian and SO rock climbing in Newton. Didn't they do a fantastic job?

Wedding Bells

Here are my favorite pictures from our mini-vacation / wedding trip to Utah last weekend. We had a blast, the kids got to play with lots of cousins and stay up late and we got caught up with a lot of fun relatives.Eliza insisted on wearing her new pink flip flops from Auntie Cris, brought all the way from Brazil. They clashed terribly but she loves them!
Ian was a good sport but extremely bored during all the picture taking and waiting, waiting, waiting.

It was sooo bright out and the kids were done with pictures by this time. But it's nice to have a new family picture!

I guess I should add at least one picture of the new couple.....

Congratulations to Richard & Janae!

July again!

It's hard to believe that it is July already. And it is still rainy rainy rainy here! The good thing about that is we get to see a whole lot more of Mike because there are NO fires anywhere.

I finally took some pictures of our rock climbing adventures at Ross park. I didn't climb this time but our friends and Mike and Ian did. Ian loves his new harness, and it gives everybody a lot of piece of mind!

The little girls had a ton of fun just scrambling around on the rocks.

Ian climbs all the way to the top of this rock cliff. He really is good and can climb harder things, wedging his little feet into cracks. He climbs up up up and only slows down when coming down, we have to keep reminding him to keep his bellybutton toward the rocks. We also had a nice 4th of July, this is the first 4th of July in four years that we actually got to spend with Mike. It's also the first 4th of July since about 2002 that I've actually bought fireworks! We had barely shot all of ours off at 7:00 pm when a huge rainstorm hit, which ended up flooding quite a few houses in the neighborhood. At times like this I enjoy having a 2nd floor apartment.

I had to include this picture. Eliza has adopted my ironing board as a bed for a her baby. I think I am going to have to go to my parents house and retrieve the baby cradle I had as a little girl if I ever want my ironing board back. Eliza is constantly shushing us when the baby is sleeping and Ian delights in attempting to wake the baby up.

I hope everybody had a wonderfully independent 4th of July!

Help!

I need some creative minds to help me name this blog. Any suggestions not involoving my full name, social security number, or date of birth?

More exciting adventures with the ??? Family....

So we will see how many of my followers find my new blog minus our last name. Here is another update on our lives.... Mike's day's off just switched to tuesday/wednesday. Sad for me because now we don't get days off together and I have to teach primary by myself! I'm hoping the kids will have pity on me and be angels but I don't have much hope for that. But at least if there are no fires Ian & Eliza can stay home with him and only go to the babysitters 3 times a week.

Some of you had questions about my job.... I work at a new long term care and rehabilitation facility in town (which I wish to remain annoymous) where I am the Head of the Dietary Department as well as their Clinical Dietitian. So I am in charge of the kitchen, overseeing staff, purchasing food as well as doing clinical assessments on all the patients. It is fullfilling and it keeps me busy.

A few weeks ago we had a great visit from our old friends Brady & Annalisa. We had tons of fun and stayed up way too late.

This weekend since it was our last weekend with a day off together before Mike's schedule change we decided to go camping. We found a great area less than an hour from our house. Any locals have any guesses where we went???

The kids loved it.

We only had a bit of rain during the night but woke up to a sunny morning.

And what do you do with a little girl who dresses herself? And she won't dress up in cutesy girly things. I bribe her to get a skirt on most sundays. She loves dressing up in her brother's clothes. Here she is wearing Pirates of the Caribean Pajamas with a Jedi robe on top. This is a girl who has watched more Star Wars than any Princess movie. Partially because I'm kind of anti-Disney Princess. She still loves to play mom to her dolls and dresses the dolls in her cute clothes.

Thanks for following me over to this new blog. Everybody who reads this needs to comment so I can make sure who knows and doesn't know about the move!

a lonnnng time

It's been a long time since my last post. I haven't felt like posting lately because I feel like I don't fit in the blogging world. I'm not a stay-at-home mom anymore. In the past few months I've worked a million zillion hours but have recently cut down to 32 hours a week. Mike also started work a few weeks ago. We have a few faboulous babysitters to watch the kids. My mom also just came for a week to babysit the kids which we LOVED! On our days off we have been having lots of fun with the kids, rock climbing, swimming, riding bikes, going to the farmers market and library. And the most exciting news is that Ian just learned to ride a two-wheeler!

Life hasn't exactly turned out as we imagined but we are happy and healthy.

Good Night, Leonardo!

Ian was so excited to find a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle at D.I. yesterday. He's seen the cartoon about 4 or 5 times and he thinks they are pretty cool turtles. When we were getting him ready for bed last night he suddenly burst into tears because Leonardo didn't have pajamas to wear. Granted, it was late and he was exhausted but he was also sincerely upset at the fact that Leonardo didn't have jammies! I tried to convince him to put some stuffed animal clothes on the turtle but they just didn't fit right. So to stop the tears I found some turtle-like fabric and quickly fashioned some pajamas. Ian was a little unsure of them at first, but Mike convinced him that they were the type of jammies that ninjas wear. He finally cheered up and went to bed. With Leonardo of course.

Eliza got a new bike from the D.I. that she took to bed for her nap today. What's with sleeping with toys?

The New "Do"

Good bye baby mullet! We will miss you. Kind off. Actually we are really glad to see you go. No more tangles, funny ponytails or hillbilliness.

Plus, this hair do has the added benefit of being Daddy friendly! Just comb and go!
(These are the best pictures I could get! She is terrible at posing for the camera unless she has underwear on her head! for that picture see the Family Blog)
And for all of you out there in blogger land looking for ultra cute hair things for little girls check this blog made by Mike's cousins. Really cute stuff and for a good cause.

Mmmm Pita

I love Greek food! I recently convinced some friends to try the local Greek restaurant. They thought it was ok. I love it! I love feta cheese, kabobs, vinegar salad dressing, pita bread. Mike made some hummus last week but had nothing to eat it with. I was avoiding going to the store at the moment, so I decided to make him something. I found this recipe for pita bread and amazingly enough, it turned out perfect! So we have been enjoying pita bread all week! It wasn't as hard to make as I imagined it would be. The hardest part is the constantly putting it in and out of the oven with small children trying to "help." I substituted whole wheat for half of the flour, but that is the only change I made to the recipe. (This is an acutal photo of my lunch on

Saturday.)

In other news, I won a book! For all you 'goodreaders' out there go to the 'explore' tab on your main good reads page. When you click on it you will see a 'giveaways' section where you can win pre-release copies of books from goodreads authors. You can enter as many as you want so I did and so far this is my first win! I will soon be recieving a copy of this book.... Slathblog's Gold.
So look for my review... hopefully it will be good since I will own the copy!

Fighting the January Blahs

This is what we are doing. How about you?