Make Some Time for Wasting

Sam's art

2012-01-27T11:44:00.000-08:00

Sam did some drawings a few days ago that I thought were blog worthy. The first is the inside of a dog. Did you know that dogs had vocal cords in their legs and backs? Neither did I. Are we supposed to be teaching him detailed animal biology/anatomy?

Second is a giant bunny rabbit gleefully playing near a headstone of his friend Harold that reads, "Herld laye in peas." Peas. I think Sam is on to something with this one: relaxing in peas sounds kind of nice.

Jesus wants me for a sunbeam

2012-01-03T13:59:00.001-08:00

Okay, you might want to sit down before you read on but I have some very exciting news.... I actually sewed something cute! If you know me, then you know that me and my sewing machine don't always get along. We actually cooperated this time (thanks to a fun night of sewing with friends) and the result was a cute skirt for Sophia.

To make the skirt even better, the first time she wore it, it just so happened to be her first week as a Sunbeam (a church class). I made a big deal of that since she was so grown up and officially out of nursery she needed a beautiful golden dress to wear so she would look like a ray of sun.

Apparently wearing a Sunbeam dress turns you into amazing dancer. She convinced Sam to be her dance partner and you could see the happiness in her eyes as he spun her around over and over again. She was so proud of her new outfit and the fact that she is now a grown up Sunbeam. And I have to admit that I may just be a teensy bit proud too :)

New Years Eve

2012-01-01T08:45:00.001-08:00

We totally partied this year for New Years Eve at our friends the Wrights. Sophie was asleep by 6:30 and Sam by 9:30. The adults spent the night playing humiliating games and laughing at each other while the kids (that were awake) kept themselves entertained in the basement. It's been a lot of years since we have spent a New Years Eve with friends and even though it was slightly humiliating, and only Josh, Nyoka, and myself followed through with the ugly sweater theme. What a blast!

If I had to do it all over again....

2011-12-30T07:40:00.000-08:00

I would still say yes! Happy 13th Anniversary my Joshie!

Dec 30th 1998:

1999: Boise Idaho

2000: Graduating from USU

2001: England

2002: Manhattan Kansas

2003: Niagara Falls

2004: The Uintah's

2005: Star Valley, Wyoming

2006: The Outer Banks, North Carolina

2009: Red Rock Canyon, Colorado Springs

2008: Calf Creek Utah

2009: Colorado Spring

2010: Our mountain property in Cripple Creek Co.

2011: Teotihuacan Mexico

I LOVE YOU!!!

family photos

2011-12-28T12:31:00.001-08:00

A few months back when we went to Estes Park we took the tripod and attempted some family photos. Taking my own families pictures is always the biggest challenge of all, but I am quite pleased with how they turned out this year. I will forever love Caleb's awkward bucktooth years, Sam's toothless grin, and the innocence of Sophie's piggy tails.

Christmas Day

2011-12-27T14:35:00.000-08:00

After our 2 a.m. false start, the kids re-awoke at 6 and we were pleased to see that Santa had found us once again (there were a few serious worries Christmas Eve that perhaps they hadn't been good enough this year).

Both Boys were overjoyed to see that they had received Laser Tag sets:

Caleb's loot:

Sophia's loot:

Sam's loot (you wouldn't believe how much he had begged for a bomber hat and refused to take it off all day):

After 15 strait hours of playing the kids crashed pretty hard Christmas night and although they might not have gotten everything on their wish lists, overall it was a very successful Christmas!

Our boys might be disapointed

2011-12-24T10:36:00.000-08:00

December is always a busy month with Christmas parties, piano recitals, and the anticipation of Christmas. This year the boys made sure they had plenty of time to let Santa know what they wanted by writing their letters back in October. Judging by some of what they asked, Santa obviously has a generous heart and unlimited resources. Here are their wishes:

Caleb's letter:

I garantee you Caleb will not be getting a rat for Christmas. His own air force? I'll try to work on that one.

Sam's letter:
You'll see a heavy Halloween influence since it wrote the list just after that holiday. Let me translate what I can:

1. "Nerv bolits" = Nerf bullets
2. "Nerv gan" = Nerf Gun
3. "Pet huming bard roden wood pes blag bird" = pet humming bird, ? woodpecker, blackbird
4. "lasertag" (he got that one right)
5. "doo bice" = new bike
6. "dlabooks" = bla books?

7. "Popcorn masheen" = popcorn machine

8. "scop for my bee bee gon" = scope for my bbgun
9. "warewolf"=wearwolf (doesn't everyone want this for Christmas?)
10. "moxts" = mask (I think)
11. "shorp teeth" = sharp teeth
12. "I pod tuch" = Ipod touch
13. "mad sinetest" = mad scientist
14. "littl rabot kingaroo" = little robot kangaroo
15. "woterbotl" = water bottle
16. "clos" = clothes
17. "tras stuf booc" = trace stuff book
18." beer santa clos I wish you wil giv mee my presets chesmes is my faverit halodaye good by." = Dear Santa Clause, I wish you will give me my presents Christmas is my favorite holiday good bye.

After putting these letters in the mail a few weeks ago, guess who we just heard back from? Good ole' Santa himself! The letter was even postmarked from the North Pole. Santa does live!

NORAD Santa

2011-12-21T16:20:00.000-08:00

Josh had his work party this last week. The kids got to sit on Santa's lap and tell him what they wanted for Christmas. Sophie wants a "Lalaoopsie," Sam a remote control car, and Caleb said he wanted a bb gun (which Santa replied "You'll shoot your eye out!")

Were pretty sure he was the real deal because he told the kids that they had to stop fighting so much and that they needed to make sure they kept their rooms clean. How would he possibly know these things if he wasn't the real Santa?? Brilliant Santa, brilliant.

Pink granny panties and orange slices

2011-12-17T06:01:00.000-08:00

While at my parents for Thanksgiving we also celebrated one of my brother's and Dad's birthdays and also celebrated my dad's retirement.

Congrats Dad!

Dad made a HUGE wok of stir fry. Afterwards we gave our gifts, including a

pair of granny panties that my kids have been exchanging with their grandpa for years.

One of our (joke) retirement gifts to Grandpa: Orange Slices! As kids we gave my dad Orange Slices for every holiday thinking he loved them. Only as an adult did he finally confess that he doesn't like them - what a good sport! The grandkids had no problems making the box disappear.

Does that look comfortable?

Little kids and dogs love Uncle Mike. Lucky for him, my extended family has plenty of both.

Traditional gumdrop turkey making.

Awkward family photos

2011-12-01T11:27:00.000-08:00

Oh, awkward family photos. We have all had them, but some of us have had it worse than others. A certain brother of mine was victim of Olan Mills, a photography company back in the 80's who are now famous for their humiliating their customers. My brothers pic was bad: a 13 year old boy, dressed in a cardigan, wearing thick framed glasses holding his pet poodle. So cool for the 80s, and wonderful blackmail material for the rest of eternity.

Unfortunately, no one in the family can find this picture anywhere other than our memories so we decided to re-create the event for my brother's birthday. We gave him huge poster of everyone posing with our poor schnauzer Trench to remind him of how much his family loves him, (or was it to make fun of him for posing with a poodle?). No matter what, taking these pictures and giving them to my brother was the highlight of our Thanksgiving.

Brother-in-law Mike has no problem taking his pants off in public. Not awkward at all :)

Everyone got in on the action. Too bad you can't see

everyone else behind the camera laughing hysterically.

Do you think my brother appreciated the gift?

#80

2011-11-29T10:39:00.000-08:00

For the BYU and USU fans, remember a few weeks back when BYU's #80 made the awesome catch that won the game with 11 seconds to go? We'll, that #80 just happens to be a nephew of ours, Marcus Mathews.

Caleb is a HUGE fan of his cousin and we were lucky enough to take him to the last BYU home game of the year against New Mexico.

It was very cold that night but hot chocolate made it bearable.

Poor kid was tired! The game started at 8:15 pm so staying awake for the entire game was somewhat of a challenge for Caleb, but he made it though most of the game with BYU handily winning the game.

Grandma and Grandpa E. are season ticket holders and faithfully attend all BYU home games.

Caleb fell asleep at the beginning of the 4th quarter and Josh literally had to pack him out of the stadium at the end of the game. Although he is upright in this pic, he was really snoozing! Kurt and Lisa, the parents of Marcus, look proudly on.

We managed to rouse Caleb for one quick pic with his cousin...and then he fell back asleep.

This is Halloween

2011-11-03T13:10:00.000-07:00

Everyone make a scene, it's Halloween! This year, Caleb was a elf from Lord of the Rings (minus the pointy ears he didn't like), Sam a werewolf, and Sophie a "princess" witch (it seems we have to add the title of princess to everything).

Overall it was a successful year with no mental breakdowns at the last minute that their costumes weren't everything they had dreamed of. After 2 hours of trick or treating they were exhausted, but had gobs and gobs of candy to show for it. Last year our candy lasted until June, we'll see if we can make it that long again this year!

Happy Halloween!

Guts

2011-11-01T12:12:00.001-07:00

Another Halloween tradition - carving pumpkins. The boys all did awesome and didn't mind the pumpkin guts at all. Sophie gratefully kissed Sam for making her pumpkin for her and I happily took pics and avoided the guts as much as possible.

Did you wear your ballerina swimsuit while carving pumpkins this year?

Traditions changing

2011-10-30T08:50:00.000-07:00

Having a little girl in the house impact our Halloween traditions more than I ever would have imagined. Our "Bones and Blood" (bread sticks and marinara sauce) tradition is way too gross for Sophie this year. She got mad at us every time we said the phrase. Instead we just had boring old "breadsticks." Not clever I know, but much better than a screaming, grumpy three year old.

After "breadsticks" we did our yearly carving of apple heads. Sophie got creative with her's since she couldn't use a knife - instead totally on her own she decided to use her teeth. It cracks me up! It was nice to have Grandma and Grandpa J there to share our traditions with. Now we just need to convince them to move here when Grandpa retires in 3 weeks!

Agent Blue and the new wood floor

2011-10-26T13:44:00.001-07:00

When Sam "accidentally" dropped a near-full bottle of Agent Blue plaque stainer all the way from the upstairs balcony onto Sophia's head I had very mixed emotions. At first I wanted to kill him, he had nearly given his sister another concussion and we now had a huge blue stain on our light-colored carpet. But on the other hand, after realizing Sophia was okay, this also meant maybe now I had a legitimate reason to replace the carpet with a wood floor I have always wanted! I secretly did a little dance that my carpet was now officially destroyed, and it wasn't even my fault!

Josh and my dad worked for 10 straight hours putting the floor in. It looks beautiful and if you asked Sophie she you would tell you that it makes a very good dance floor!

The hard workers. Notice the blue stain went all the way through

to the subfloor. A before picture of the room with carpet.

Josh and Dad - man, they worked hard.

The dance floor.

Ahhhh, beautiful huh?

Thank you Josh and Dad! And a secret thank you to Sam for making this all possible!

ISU Volleyball and Giant Cookies

2011-10-19T13:38:00.000-07:00

I love an excuse for a road trip. Two weekends ago we had a great excuse: Our niece Vanessa was in Greeley playing Volleyball with ISU. The first 2 matches ISU got whooped by Northern Colorado, who is #1 in their devision (ISU is 6th). The 3rd game rolled around and Vanessa became the star of the show with killer spikes and blocks. She is an awesome volleyball player (my natural sports ability must have worn off on her when she lived with us a few years back, hehehe). She totally got her team back on track and they went on to win the next three games. We had so much fun cheering her on.

After watching the game we thought we would take a little trip over to Estes Park to see the elk, the fall colors, and take some family pics. No such luck on seeing elk, but the leaves were beautiful and after some serious bribing of children and some serious cussing out, we ended up with some really good family pics (future blog in the making).

Throwing leaves in the river was really fun - that is until Sophie completely fell in. Thank goodness pictures were already over!

Giant cookies always make good bribes :) Unfortunately,

they didn't taste nearly as good as they looked.

Our little fullback

2011-10-18T12:19:00.000-07:00

This fall Sam played flag football for the first time. He did awesome and, if I am being honest (and a little proud), by the end of the season Sam was one of the best on the team. If you asked Sam if he liked football he would just say "Ehh, it was okay." But I was a proud mommy at that last game when he got 2 touchdowns and 2 near touchdowns (he fumbled once at the goal line and after running the whole field, and on another play he was pushed out of bounds right before the goal line).

Here's the fumble I told you about.

Touch down!

Caleb on the other hand LOVES football, but the only league out here for him is a super competitive tackle football league that practices 3 times a week for at least 2 hours in addition to their weekly games. In addition to that they play rain or shine (they played in a blizzard 2 weeks ago) and they aren't nice to the kids that aren't so good. In fact they are mean to them in hopes that the "weak" will quit. I couldn't do that to my Caleb. Too competitive. Maybe in a few years he will be ready for that. But for now he will just have to play football in the fields with the neighborhood boys and just dream about one day playing football in college like his cousins do now.

Now Sophie, she's just happy to play on the playground...

See the similarity?

2011-10-17T13:19:00.001-07:00

Probably derived from his love of Calvin and Hobbes, Caleb regularly mentions that he wants to be a cartoonist. If you ask me, the little cartoon-man that he draws does look disturbingly like himself...

Here is one of his cartoons about eating a worm. I hope his source material isn't drawn from his real-life experiences.

14 Mad Scientists

2011-10-11T11:10:00.001-07:00

For Sam's party this year he chose to have a Mad Scientist party with 13 of his closest friends. What can I say, it was a hit... the kids all loved it! And with all those kids here, Josh and I felt as if we were going mad ourselves only a few times :)

Sam chose to have a ice cream cake. With my cake making skills severely lacking, I kept it simple this year!

The Mad Scientists:

Sam, Ian, Hayden, Carson, Gannon, Bruce, Caleb

Sophie, Jordyn, Sam, Dylan, Brayden, Landon

The soda geyser: I think everyone knows this one... diet coke and 1/2 a pack of mentos. Hopefully we are not planting any ideas into their little heads for when they are teenagers!

Ivory Soap explosion: Cut up a bar of ivory soap into 6 squares, place on a paper towel and microwave for 3 minutes. The kids LOVED this experiment and left my house smelling nice and clean!

Dry ice pumpkin (the kids thought it was really cool to watch this), tower building, and 24 shoes by my front door.

Dry ice bubble: Out of all the experiments this was the favorite. Get a large bowl with a rim on it, put dry ice and water in the bowl, rub soap along the edge of the bowl then get a wet very soapie strip of cloth and drag it across the top to form a bubble. We counted each time to see how long it would take before the bubble would burst. I think our record was 46 seconds. I dare you to see if you can beat that!

Sammy turns seven

2011-10-08T15:12:00.000-07:00

Seven years old. Seven years old! How is it that my babies are growing up so fast!

Sam's birthday ended up being a very cold and blizzardy day. In fact we got 2 1/2 inches that morning. It was quite ironic that he asked for a snow cone maker as his big present! He also got a head lamp and a cool model from Sophie and Caleb. Despite the snow, it ended up being a great day for a birthday!

Favorite Food: "Cheese Pizza"

Favorite Treat: "Dad's chocolate chip cookies"

Favorite TV Show: "Avengers and Jimmy Neutron"

Favorite Activity: "Building legos"

Friends: "Ian, Jed, Emma, Jordyn and Jaxson"

Favorite Book: "Any kind of dinosaur book"

Favorite Movie: "Sandlot"

What am I good at: "Football"

What am I not good at: "Handwriting"

If I could meet a famous person who would it be: "Babe Ruth"

When I grow up I want to be: "A missionary and a veterinarian"

If you could change anything about yourself what would it be: "My body, I would turn it into a skeleton. I've always had a dream that I would turn myself into a skeleton and go to school on a motorcycle."

What I like best about myself: "I like that I'm strong"

My goals: "Draw and paint real pictures of tigers"

What would you be sad if you lost: "Trenchy" (his puppy)

If I had one wish what would it be: "Turn into a skeleton and ride on a motorcycle (don't ask us, this is the first time we have heard this wish as well)"

Happy Birthday Sammy! We love you!!!!

Chico Basin Ranch

2011-10-06T18:25:00.001-07:00

It has been a busy week for my kids in school. Sam had two field trips (to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo and Chico Basin Ranch) and Caleb's class took a trip to Corral Bluffs. I was lucky enough to join Sam on both of his trips and my camera came along with me on Sam's first field trip, Chico Basin.

What is Chico Basin? It's an 87,000 acre Cattle Ranch in the middle of nowhere Colorado. When I first heard we were going to a cattle farm, I have to admit I wasn't too thrilled. To my surprise, it ended up being a very educational and fun field trip! They even have a full-time staff of real cowboys! There is also a small bird refuge on the ranch where we learned all about our winged friends. Did you know bird have see-through skin? The things you learn in nowhere Colorado....

Love those awkward teeth years :)

Sammy is such an animal lover.

Skyline Drive

2011-10-03T17:30:00.000-07:00

After our big race, Josh and I decided that we would make a day of it - just the two of us - kid free. For fun, we took a little road called Skyline Drive that prisoners from one of the local prisons built back in the 1930's. Very cool, but I would not recommend it if you are scared of heights since there are sheer drops on both sides of you! On the drive there are ancient dinosaur tracks that made us miss our little ones back home.

We also window shopped in Old Colorado City and went out for fondue at Mona Lisa's . It was a much anticipated weekend trip. I love my kids, but I love my get-a-ways with just me and that handsome husband of mine.

The fastest couple

2011-10-02T08:34:00.001-07:00

Below are pictures of the fastest couple in the Rim to Rim 10k in Canon City, CO. We won't tell you how many other couples ran the race together :)

Linnea running over the Royal Gorge Bridge -

the highest suspension bridge in the world.

The entire race, with the exception of the bridge, was up and down.

At least the terrain was pretty.

And the victory kiss at the finish line!

A fall escape

2011-09-25T13:18:00.000-07:00

This past weekend Josh and I decided to take the kids on a drive up the canyon to see the fall colors. We left the house at 7am so we could stop by a cafe that we had heard was amazing in Woodland Park. I've never been in a restaurant so saturated with Teddy Bears, and although I did find it tacky, the food was pretty delish and the kids thought it was a treat to go out for a breakfast (something we never normally do).

After breakfast we took a hike right outside of Cripple Creek called Horse Thief Trail. It was perfect for our family and only resulted in a slight amount of whining. The kids did great and loved playing at the falls at the end of the trail.

Why is it so hard to get my own kids to smile it pictures? Out of all the kids I get to take pictures for, I swear they are the most difficult to get a good picture of. I have to admit though, the laughing picture is pretty cute (taken when I had given up on getting them to smile normally).

Horny Toad Stacking: the next internet craze

2011-09-02T18:47:00.001-07:00

Oh, the joys of being a little boy and living by open land.