The Bricker's

Tyler's Baptism

2015-03-10T02:00:00.005-06:00

"The older you get the more you realize that it isn't about the material things, or pride, or ego. It's about our hearts and who they beat for." -R.A.

Nothing could have prepared me for that moment 8 incredibly short years ago. You read about it, you see it in movies, your mother tells you it's the most amazing thing in the world...but the reality of the miracle you're apart of can't possibly be understood until you experience it yourself for the first time.

Dr. Berry grabbed, what looked like a ketchup dispenser, off the medical table to his left and squirted cold, gooey, gel on my butterfly filled stomach. He gabbed on and on about the next marathon he was training for as he nonchalantly placed the heartbeat monitor right on top of the globby mess, squishing the ultrasound gel around my entire abdomen. At just 8 weeks pregnant I could barely breathe with anticipation and kept my eyes locked on his as he ran the hand monitor back and forth, around and around in what seemed to be pointless circles. I added an "uh-huh" and a meaningless head nod every few seconds as he rambled on, hoping my eyes weren't betraying me; giving away the fears I had tried to lock away discreetly in my heart. In a sudden moment I saw his eyes shift down, his brows furrowed together, and the description of his morning run in the mountains came to an awkward halt. I strained my ears listening for whatever it was that had caused this change in behavior and heard...nothing.

He moved the monitor a few more times without a word and looked off into the corner of the heavy room avoiding my pleading gaze. Every fear I had taken time to lock away so securely came roaring to the surface taking over every emotion in my body leaving me a vulnerable pile of heartbreak, the key dangling from the doctors hand. My heart was beating so where was the beat of the heart whom my heart would spend the rest of its life beating for? Was my life not enough to give life to another? He left the room explaining that this was "totally normal"... "don't worry"... and he'd "be right back". That was the first moment I ever worried about you Tyler. The first time I REALLY understood that life is precious and not to be taken for granted. The first time I knew that it wasn't about material things, but about my heart and about your heart. About the healthy, overflowing, cared for heartbeats of ALL those we love.

Dr. Berry, thankfully, turned out to be right. I had been SO sick for several weeks so we had gone in for our first doctor's visit earlier than the 12 week appt they typically want you to come in at. Because I wasn't very far along the doctor couldn't pick up your heartbeat on his small hand-held monitor. He brought in a bigger ultrasound machine, got me all hooked up in a few minutes, and sure enough there you were right there on the screen. A tiny little squiggle that resembled a peanut more than a human but it was the most beautiful image I had ever seen in my life. Although at that appt I couldn't HEAR your heartbeat, they could monitor it on the screen and they said it was perfect. You were perfect. Tears poured down my cheeks as I watched the little heart symbol on the screen beat over and over and over. Rhythmically, steadily, fast, and constant it continued to beat, and I remember sitting there watching you on the screen in awe at how much I could already love you.

As I sat next to you this afternoon at your baptism, an 8 year old goofball that loves to read, write, create science experiments, study snakes and volcanoes and dinosaurs, spend quality one on one time with people you love, hang out with your friends and play on the wii, I sat in awe again at how much I love you. As I held your hand and listened to grandma give her talk on baptism, you glanced up at me with a little nervousness in your eyes and smiled. I squeezed your hand and as you squeezed back I could feel your little heart beating in your fingertips and was reminded of this experience I had, wanting so badly to hear your heart beat for the first time not so long ago. I'm so proud of the choice you made to get baptized today and am thankful for your example to me of kindness, love, compassion, and not taking life too seriously!

Years from now when you look back on your baptism day you probably won't remember everything that was said, who all was in attendance, or the gifts you received, but I hope you will remember the spirit that you felt. The light and happiness that surrounded you as took that important step. The outpouring of love from family and friends who support you. The feelings that were in your heart. Always, always follow your heart. Pray for guidance over the choices you make and remember that no matter what, there is always a way back. Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ love you. They know you personally and as you take the time to develop a personal relationship with your Savior, you will feel His love surround you and gain that testimony for yourself. We love you so much and are so happy you're in our family!

Dear Kylee

2014-08-28T01:07:00.000-06:00

8.26.2014

Dear Kylee,

When I was 5 I thought I had a pretty good idea of what love was. 26 years ago I had just started Kindergarten like you did today, and left my mom for the first time. I got to ride the bus to school and wore my FAVORITE outfit. Grandma had curled my hair 'just so' and I was with my best friends! I was nervous and excited and shy and hopeful and felt so much LOVE! I was looked after, appreciated, supported, snuggled, read to, played with, and tucked in with hugs and kisses goodnight. I knew love.

Then I was 16 and love was different. This time it came from a boy in the forms of cheesy notes and long letters, and hand holding, and butterflies in the stomach, and dances in the rain. I knew love.

Then I was 21 and love was everything. It was in my heart and my thoughts, in my hopes and my dreams, in my speech and my moments of silence, in my prayers and in my pleadings. Love was my life and I could have it for eternity. On the day dad and I were sealed in the temple my heart was so full that I knew I couldn't possibly love more than I did at that moment. I knew love.

Then I was 23 and love proved me wrong. It was wrapped in blue and screaming at me. It was 5 lbs 9oz. of pure innocence. It was the smallest baby I'd ever held, yet made my heart the biggest it'd ever been. Love was being a mom. It was late nights and early mornings, poopy diapers and puked on clothes. It was worrying and pacing, and laughter and singing the same barney song over and over and over. I knew love.

Then I was 25 and love was you. 5 years ago when the doctor told us, "it's a girl!" at our 20 week ultrasound I laughed and said, "I know!" He looked at me a little confused and said, "what?" I informed him that from the moment I found out I was pregnant I knew it was going to be a girl and the feeling only got stronger and stronger over the next couple months. I was waiting for you Kylee! I knew you were coming to our family and I couldn't WAIT to have my girl here on earth with me. I have loved you from the moment I heard your heartbeat and saw your peanut body on the screen. "No one else will ever know the strength of my love for you. After all you're the one who knows what my heart sounds like from the inside."-author unknown. I knew love.

About 5 mo. ago I dropped you off at pre-school and you were in a particularly good mood. You hoped right out of the car, gave me a quick kiss, with a roll of your eyes, because you had just jumped out of the car when I made you turn around and come back by saying, "Hey! Get back here little miss and give me my kiss!" Then you threw your backpack over your shoulder, and ran up to the door. After you knocked you turned around and gave me a quick wave and a giggle and shouted, " LOVE you!" through my open window. You whipped back around as your teacher answered the door and scampered inside. I don't know what it was about that particular day, or that exact moment, that I was all of a sudden just completely overcome with LOVE for you, but I will never forget how I felt sitting out there in the car watching you. It's almost as if I had never felt love until that point. It was so real, so raw, so different than any kind of love I have ever felt that it caught me completely off gaurd. I had planned to run some errands after I dropped you off that day, but instead went home to get a tissue and try to process what my heart was doing. I realized then that my love for you is constantly changing, growing, and getting stronger as you grow and learn and experience life. I knew love.

And grow you have. I still am having a hard time believing I dropped you off today for the first time, for the next 12 years. But you were SO ready!! You wore your cute pink shirt (that you wanted to wear bc you said it made you look like an adult so your teacher would really like it :) ) and your polka dot shorts, with your sliver sparkly tennies. You HATE when we curl your hair, so we flipped it out like you like and you picked a headband to match your shorts. But the MOST important item for the first day of school?? Your backpack. You were SO excited about your backpack. It had to be the perfect one. The day you spotted it at target, you knew it was the one. A pink, with white polka dots, knapsack. You ran over to it and said, "Mom! I love this one! This is the one I've been waiting for!" So we loaded the most expensive backpack I've ever come across into our cart and bought it because... well when "it's the one", what choice do you have?

We got to school about 10 minutes early and I went into your classroom with you to help you find your desk and put your backpack away. We talked to Mrs. Lindberg for a second and then she told us to go outside and wait at the kindergarten playground until the bell rang and then she would come show all the kids how to line up.

We headed outside but you didn't join the majority of the kids that ran onto the playground. You held my hand, that you hadn't let go of since we got out of the car, and I was secretly so glad. You see, at that moment, I needed you as much as you needed me. Before I was ready to let you go, out walked Mrs. L and she clapped her hands and told all the kids to come line up in front of her. You looked up at me and I nodded my head yes, not able to open my mouth because I was bitting my lip so hard to keep from crying in front of you, and off you ran to join the others. I told myself to "Man up!", turned my head to the side for a second so I could get the ginormous lump out of my throat that was litteraly burning from the pain of keeping all my love for you inside, and turned back to give you a big smile and wave and yelled, "Kylee, have SO much fun today!!"

You were nervous, but brave and confident, as you followed the 18 kids in front of you (yep, I counted! Had to do something to keep my mind from thinking about you too much). I was so proud of you! Mrs. L said, "Okay kids tell your partents goodbye and that it's time for them to go. You'll see them soon." I wanted to slap her. Time for me to go?? What if you weren't ready for me to go?! I wanted to walk up to that line and yank you out and say, nah we'll try this again next year. Or in the least just run up and hug you another 10 times, and remind you to use your manners, and raise your hand before you talk, and make sure to tell her if you have to go to the bathroom, and don't be nervous and, to remember EVERYTHING so you can tell me all about it and, and, and...that I love you. Then I realized that she said it was time to go for MY sake, not yours. And it was, time for me to let you go. Walking into your class you only looked back at me once before you disappeared behind the doors that slammed shut behind you with an emphatic "Goodbye mom, she belongs here now. Hope you taught her everything she'll need to know for the rest of her life." I've never been jealous of a place before. But right then I would have given anything to be the walls that stood around you. Did I teach you enough? Are you having fun? Are you being kind? Are others being kind to you? What if you get hurt, who will kiss it better? Who will tell you it's ok to cry? Who will wrap their arms around you to make you feel secure? I hate that it won't be me. I know love.

And you know what the thing is about all those times? I was never wrong. I was always eager to let love in. In all it's amazing, wonderful, promising, and even sometimes heartbreaking, forms. And every time I allowed it to find a place in my heart, my heart grew bigger and stronger than the time previous. I'm so lucky to have had, and still have, SO much love throughout my life. I wish the same for you. Love can hurt, but it can also heal. Never be afraid to love. Love life, love learning, love family and friends, love your Savior Jesus Christ, love your passions and love your struggles. Love your enemies, love strangers, love kindness, love chocolate, love beauty and seek for things that are of true worth. Love LOVE! But most importantly...love yourself. YOU are amazing. YOU are a child of God. YOU are of worth. YOU are beautiful. YOU have a divine destiny as a daughter of a King. Always remember who you are and whose you are. "Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is youer than you."-Dr. Seuss The thing I LOVE about you Kylee is that you are always true to who you are. Never stop being you. Love you forever.

Love,
Mom xoxo

Dear Tyler

2012-08-29T00:41:00.000-06:00

8.28.12
Dear Tyler:

Today I dropped you off for your very first day of Kindergarten! You have been looking forward to Kindergarten for months and have been counting down the days-telling everyone we see how many days there are left till Kindergarten starts! The thing you were MOST excited about about going to "real" school was that you would get to ride the bus!! During the last year of pre-school Teacher Jen took your class on the Logan city bus several times for different field trips and you loved it! Unfortunately I'm not real keen on the idea of you riding the bus with so many older kids-especially because I don't know any of them-and am not quite sure I'm ready to put you in that kind of environment yet. But I know how much riding the bus means to you, so we've come to an agreement that I will take you to school in the morning and you will ride the bus home from school since it will just be other kindergartners riding with you.

We started off our 'first day of school traditions' last night when daddy gave you your first Father's blessing for school. It was beautiful! You were a little squirmy because you said daddy's hands were "heavy" on your head, but you faithfully kept your eyes closed the whole time (obviously I did not :) ). You're Heavenly Father knows and loves you very much Tyler! It was a neat thing for me to be able to be apart of, I felt the spirit VERY strong! I'm so thankful for the Priesthood in our home.

Then, this morning you woke up at 7:15 READY to get this show on the road! School doesn't start till 9:00 so we had plenty of time to get you ready, but you wanted to start now! I had just gotten out of the shower so I told dad to start your special first day of school breakfast-apple pancakes! He did a great job!!

You were so surprised and thought they were THE coolest thing ever!

After eating a couple-you just couldn't sit still any longer-you jumped in the shower and then carefully took your time getting dressed in the outfit you had picked out the day before. You looked so handsome in your striped dark blue shirt and grey shorts and were very proud of yourself for picking out an outfit that matched. You wanted to wear your new grey shoes, even though they were a little big (and you came home with a blister on your heel-ouch) and brushed your teeth slowly making sure all that syrup from the pancakes was gone! You brushed your hair (which I only had to fix a little) and slung your brand new Avengers back-pack across your back. "I'm ready!" you sang out!

We took lots of pictures before we left to take you to school so we were running late!

We pulled into the parking lot at 8:50 and fought through the crowd of other nervous parents and excited 5 year olds waiting on the kindergarten playground in front of the school. Kids were lined up around the fence of the playground, standing by the colored signs that had their teachers name written on it. I glanced around...Mrs.Shelton, Mrs. Black, Mrs. Harper, Mrs. Titus-There! "There's your teachers sign!" I shouted. I reached down to grab your hand to help you know where to go, but you had already left my side, jogging toward the green paper tapped to the fence holding the name of the women who would soon become your teacher. Your guide through your first year of school. The person who will read to you, make you laugh, teach you about the world around you, tell you it will be ok when you get hurt, and inspire you to learn for 3 hours a day. You walked up to her name and stood under it smiling back at me, proud of yourself for figuring out what to do on your own. As I snapped out of my surreal state, I realized that you were the only person standing there. I quickly glanced around, panicking that somehow I had led you to the wrong place when out of the corner of my eye I saw a line of children disappear around the corner of the red slide. I grabbed your hand, forcing you to need me one last time, and ran around the jungle gym just in time to see Mrs. Titus's plump, round frame enter the school. Her pink flowery skirt and attractive cream cardigan gave her an extra sweet and welcoming look that seemed to say, don't worry, he's in good hands. As her caring eyes darted about they gave off a trusting vibe and the simple wrinkles around their corners testified she'd done this dance before. A quick, dimpled smile goodbye to the parents looking on-hands clenched tight around their middles-showed her love for the children obediently mimicking her every move. As she glanced back to make sure her little ducklings were following along, I noticed her short blonde hair, styled with slight curls, bounced around when she moved and framed her smiling face perfectly. But as sweet as her demeanor seemed to be I still wanted to run up to her, grab her by the shoulders, look right into her eyes and shout,

"Listen lady, you take care of him! You don't know anything about him yet, but he is patient and loyal and kind-sometimes to a fault-so don't let those kids run all over him. He loves to build with legos and has an engineer minded brain like his father. He is good at puzzles and numbers and can drive me crazy with all the ideas he can come up with in one day. He is shy, but smart so don't let his not answering a question fool you. He is sensitive and the slightest negative remark can send him walking away with his head hung down. He is constantly in another world and you will have to work to keep him focused, but he learns quickly and is eager to please. Praise him and he will flourish. Encourage him and he will rise to the occasion. Please, please take care of him. I trust you!"

But I couldn't do that. I couldn't even manage to get a wave in before her plain, brown flats carried her hurried body away behind the heavy, turquoise, metal door. All I had was one glance. One glance where our eyes met for 1.3 seconds, and I used every millisecond to plead to her...please, please just love him. See in him what I see in him. And then she was gone. I didn't read her eyes because I was too busy doing all the talking. Hopefully she understood me.

After that, I pointed out to you the last kid in the line that you were to follow into the building. Some goofy looking kid with shaggy brown hair and a dark blue back-pack. (Don't worry, your Avengers back-pack was way cooler.) You re-confirmed the boy I had pointed out and asked worriedly, "Him mom?" "Yes! Hurry go, follow him. That's your class going into the school now." I told you. "OKAY!" you shouted, nerves gone and excitement eagerly taking its place, and you bounced off toward what would become-up to this point-"the best day EVER!" I quickly ran in front of you, trying not to let my nerves come across to you, and said, "Wait! I need a kiss!!" You laughed and said, "oh yea!" and let me pull you in for a quick smooch, a two second hug and a flash of your left-dimpled smile. I felt the tears coming so I quickly stood up and looked the other way, scanning the parents around me for a mom who was letting her emotions get the better of her as well. I came up empty-handed. I gulped down the lump in my throat, refusing to be the one mom who couldn't let their kid go and turned back to wave a last goodbye, a fake smile plastered to my face. Only you weren't there.You had already run, or jumped or skipped into the school (I'm guessing ran) and that was it.

You did awesome.

(pics after school)

You were excited and brave and confident and eager and full of hope. Absolutely everything I wanted you to be. Everything I hoped the first day of Kindergarten would be for you. Everything I've prepared you to be, to be a successful, independent, happy child. And while all this should have made me happy, in that moment it tore me apart. It meant that you had grown up. (Something I am avidly against by the way :) ) I guess every parent wants to know they have done their job well, and you walking away from me today, a smile on your face and excitement bursting out of your little body meant I had. I guess I just didn't expect a job well done to hurt so much.

But I survived, you survived and tonight as I sit here writing this I am SO SO SO happy for you! I am excited to see where this journey of life will take you and want you to know I am here for you every step of the way. Sometimes I will be in the shadows, sometimes I will be behind you, sometimes I will be next to you, and sometimes I will be right in your face! But no matter, I will always be with you. Happy first day of the rest of your life. You're off to a great start.

i love you forever and ever,
Mom

P.S. You brought this paper home from school today. I asked you why you started writing random letters after your name and all annoyed you said, "mom, it says Tyler James B..."B" is for Bricker you know." Haha! You've never written your middle name on any paper so maybe Kindergarten makes you feel official?!?!

Happy Easter!

2012-07-15T17:24:00.002-06:00

Since we came home from St. George just a two days before Easter, our Easter was pretty simple and low key. I didn't even put any decorations out this year! *gasp* I know! I'm telling you, LOW KEY. Dyed some eggs, did an egg hunt in the backyard and found Easter baskets. I don't even think we had an "Easter" dinner this year...if I'm remembering correctly we had cereal for dinner. Ha Ha! AND I don't even have any pictures of their Easter outfits for church. Am I the lamest mom ever or what?! Oh Well, maybe I'll get my act together next year. :)

Not even an Easter basket to put their eggs in?! At least it was just the back yard...

Tyler was excited the Easter bunny brought him Chutes and Ladders, a Frisbee, some bubbles and some candy.

Kylee was beyond excited, as you can see from her...I'm so excited I'm speechless and can only make my eyes as big as they can get and stare directly at you face, to get Angelina Ballerina memory game, some princess bubbles, a pink Frisbee and candy.

I'm thankful and proud to be apart of a membership of people who truly believe in not only the religion they preach, but in the importance of living that religion. As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints we want, and try, to live what we preach and know to be true every day. This means that as we go throughout our day we try to do things that will bring the spirit of peace and love into our homes and lives, that we do things to remember Christ, and we find small, simple ways to worship him and show our thanks for his sacrifice for us. As we celebrate Easter and Christmas during the year and emphasis is placed on remembering the Savior, the Atonement and his life, we can draw even closer to him. I'm grateful for the knowledge I have of the gospel and that I can use the hope and strength I draw from it everyday-not just on Sundays or holidays-but I am truly grateful for the focus the Easter and Christmas holidays bring to help me reflect more deeply on what those particular parts of the gospel have done for me, and make me want to draw more closely to Him.

Family Pictures

2012-07-15T17:22:00.000-06:00

Since we were all-together back in March when Ty came home, it was a great time to get family pictures done-especially since we have, are you ready for this....NEVER have had a family picture taken. What?! I know, so it was time. :) Left-Skyler, Alisa, Bailey and Nate Middle-Amanda, mom&dad, Alena and Ty Right-Kylee, me, Bobby and Tyler.

My parents and us crazy kids...all growed up. So weird. I still see all my siblings in my mind as the same ages that they were when I left home for college. Does anybody else do that?!

And since we were gettin' pics done, I figured I might as well snag a few of my little fam since the hubby gives me ONE family picture time a year. He absolutely detests getting family pictures. DETESTS. Ha ha :)

And just because I have THE most gorgeous sisters on the planet...I'm so lucky to have ALL 3 of my sisters be just as gorgeous on the inside as they are on the out. Love them!

Alisa's family-cutest family EVER!

How sweet are these kids?!?! (anybody else see that glint of mischievousness in Mr. Nate's eyes?! ha ha!)

I love us!

Aren't they lookin' GOOD?!

I just love that in every picture with Kylee she has her left hand up on her hip...I guess she's seen her mom and aunts taking a few pictures...ha ha!

Love. Love. Love. and then Love some more.

Ha Ha...there are no words needed. The whole pic just kinda speaks for itself. :)

So cute! Seriously...the cutest parents ever!

I just love Alisa with dark hair, she looks BEAUTIFUL here!

All the girlies!

One boy, with all these sisters...he's going to make one AMAZING husband-trust me. We've been

training him for awhile ;).

Hopefully we won't wait another 28 years to get a family picture! We're gaining a brother-in-law in a couple months so we'll have to update relatively soon right?! *congrats AMANDA!!!* :)

Elder Nelson comes home!

2012-07-08T17:09:00.001-06:00

My brother Ty left for his mission to Spokane Washington on Mar. 17th 2010 (st. patrick's day).

He returned home Mar. 19, 2012 and we were SO excited to see him!

The kids and I headed down to St. George a few days before Ty came home, so we had fun celebrating St. Patrick's day with Grandma, Alena, Amanda, Alisa, Nate and Bailey.

Grandma did a FUN scavenger hunt for the kiddos that lead them to their...

...treasures of Gold!!

That night we headed to Krave for dessert-a St. George favorite. We can't ever leave without a little Krave being had once (or twice :) ), during our visits!

(Tyler, Amanda, Nate, Kylee)

Mom was SO excited to have Ty coming home, and having our whole family back together again for the first time in 3 years, she got a little weepy before Ty's plane even arrived. :)

Everybody waiting patiently...

Grandma Olsen, Bailey and Kylee

Tyler and Amanda

The St. George airport is very small so they let you just wait right by the door where they walk in from walking off the plane. When we saw Ty's plane arrive, everybody was glued to the windows just hoping to be the first to catch a glimpse of him. The kids lined up with their welcome home signs to be the first to greet him.

Mom was the first to hug him and I don't think she let go for a few minutes. :)

Everybody, including my grandparents who also live in St. George, was able to be there for Ty except for Bobby who was in the middle of mid-terms :(.

Ty has such a GREAT group of loving and supportive friends and it was fun to see them all at the airport to welcome him home as well.

We love our Uncle Ty!!!

The weather in St. George was Awesome in March, so we had lots of fun outdoor days at the park by my mom's house. They LOVE rolling down this hill!

We had LOTS of races! They even made Alisa and I join in on the fun :)

And after the kiddos go to bed, it's games games games! And of course a little chips and salsa!!

Uncle Ty was fun before his mission, but in two years he matured...a LOT :), and the kids are absolutely in love with him. He paid special attention to all of them the whole time we were here and they loved playing and wrestling with him.

A little down time after a long day playing in the sun and water.

Since we were down there for so long, mom also put a fun Easter egg hunt together for the kids.

After they found all their eggs, grandma said the Easter Bunny had left them some Easter baskets they were supposed to hunt and find as well!

First they had to skip...

...then they had to hop...

...then they had to crawl...

...and lastly they had to quietly sneak to...

...the hiding place!

Grandma is SO fun!!

One day we had a girls day and checked Alena out of school to take her to lunch! Love my sistas!

My mom was just starting to get her garden ready when we were there, so she let the kids come out and help her plant and water.

Little gardeners :)

We were talking in the kitchen one afternoon and the kids were quiet-that NEVER happens (besides the time Tyler drew all over his face with Alena's mascara), but when we went to check on them they were being so good sitting on the couch reading together.

Ahhhh, we LOVE being in St. George and spending time with family! We're so happy that Ty is home, but more importantly that he chose to serve the Lord for 2 years and was able to bring so many people happiness through our Savior Jesus Christ. We are grateful for his example of dedication and love for others and miss his inspiring letters home every week. I loved having 2 siblings out serving missions and know that our family has been blessed through their actions. But it is dang good to have him home! :)

March 2012

2012-07-01T00:50:00.000-06:00

LOADS of March Randomness, and what turned into some kiddo updates....

When life gives you lots and lots of snow...have a snow day!

One morning I heard Kylee laughing SO hard outside, so I went to check and her and Bobby were just outside playing with this ball, trying to throw it on the roof and catch it. I love that she gets such a kick out of the simplest things. I took a quick video of them (it's not posted) and I love to watch it! I hope she always realizes how much her daddy loves her.

Random March pictures from my cell phone...

Our ward celebrated the Relief Society birthday in March and I had the wonderful opportunity to serve as the RS activities director in this ward (seriously I LOVED serving in this calling!!). Our theme for the evening was a birthday PAR-TAY celebrating each sister in the ward. It was a great night and our committee had a lot of fun putting this on. Since I was put in charge of the decor, I went with a pretty traditional birthday scheme with balloons, candy, and party favors :). Since I had just done Kylee's birthday a few months before and had a lot of things left over, I used the same colors of pink, white and yellow to decorate with.

Cute little sundae centerpieces for the tables that I found the idea for on pinterest!

Front of the room.

Since our goal of the evening was to celebrate each sister individually and their important and extraordinary role as a member of the Meadowbrook ward relief society, we used this quote from Emma Smith to tie in the party favors to our evening...

"Sisters we are going to do something extraodinary."
(On the pack of "extra" gum I wrote):
The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is the little extra.

There are such great women in that ward and I miss them so much!! It was a great evening!

For Tyler's birthday Alisa sent him an UNO game and he was obsessed with playing. We played over and over and over again everyday for months! He is VERY into playing games right now (which I love because I come from an intense game playing family :) ) and if we're home at nights we always play a few as a family before bed (good leverage to make him eat his dinner). His current favorites are {still} UNO, Candyland, Chutes and Ladders, The ICE breaker game, crazy 8's, any kind of memory game, and operation.

If we're not playing games, he is usually spending his time building with legos (his newest passion since about april). He has 3 different transformer lego sets right now (bumblebee, optimus prime and mirage) that he can build into either the figure or the car and he loves to just go into his room, close the door and spend an hour or two building. He's great at following the instructions and is SO proud of himself every time he finishes building one-even though he's probably done it 100 times. :)

And he is still completely obsessed with superheroes. Like 90% of his day he is talking either about Iron-man (his current favorite and who he has already decided he will be for Halloween because he is dying to have the Iron-man costume), spiderman, Batman or Captain America. How does he even know about these guys?! I don't ever talk about them-because I know nothing about them. Anything I know now, are things he has told me or I hear him and Bobby talking about. He's never seen any of the movies or shows. It blows my mind. Boys are just like...ingrained with this stuff? He sees a poster, figure, display, toy, ANYthing superhero in a store we have to stop immediately to talk about it and how much it cost (if it's a toy). He currently has a list of 10 different things he wants from the store-superhero related- and is like mega stressing over which thing he will choose when he has saved up the money he needs to. He goes over his list pretty much everyday and is just absolutely torn apart at having to just choose one toy. It totally cracks me up. Oh the stress of being 5 and making such difficult choices!

Back to the pictures :)

We went to a gymnastic meet up on campus with some friends when USU was competing against BYU. I think I was the only one in the stands cheering for the BYU girls (and they did win the meet!) ha ha!

It was a fun night!

KINDERGARTEN registration?!?!?!!

At this point we still weren't sure what our plans were and where we were going to be living come school year time because back in March Bobby was still going through all the applying and interviewing processes for jobs, so I went ahead and registered Tyler for kindergarten in Logan just in case. They do a whole big application and assessment for those kids that will be entering kindergarten in Logan (which is completely opposite of where we are now-kinda weird) because if they don't *pass* than they have to attend a mandatory kindergarten readiness program during the summer to prepare them and I was SO nervous. I know he is ready for kindergarten, but I don't know....I was just nervous for him!! Bobby stayed home with Kylee and Tyler and I headed up to the school.

First we went into the gym where we sat at a table with a bunch of other parents and filled out paperwork. My hand was literally shaking and I accidentally started filling out the paperwork with all my information instead of his and had to go ask for a new paper-so embarrassing!! Oh my gosh, what am I gonna do when this kid goes to college?! Somebody's going to have to come tie me up and put me in a closet somewhere. There was SO much paperwork to fill out and Tyler was bored out of his mind so I let him play some games on my phone. Then I started to panic and thought, he should be practicing all his stuff for his little test! So I made him right his name over and over (which he knows how to do with his eyes closed and backwards but I was just going crazy with nerves-ok not really, I've never made him try it that way, but you get my point ha ha!) and rhyme with me and count as far as he could and write his numbers. He just kept saying, "moooom, I already know how to doooo that, please can I just play angry birds?!" ha ha!

Then we had to wait in this loooong line to meet with some lady who just sat there and entered in all the stuff I had filled out into the computer, took copies of all his documents and gave us our preference of morning or afternoon kindergarten (morning). Then we had to go sit in the lobby with everyone and wait for a teacher to call him into a classroom and do a ten minute assessment-sans dear old mommy. They didn't tell us beforehand what kinds of things they would be asking him to do, but my {old} VT comp is an elem. teacher and so she kinda told me the things they usually require kindergartners to know before coming to school. I felt a little better having somewhat of an idea if he was on track or not, but sitting out there on that bench by-myself with my little buddy in another room being *tested* was torture for me. Torture! Longest 10 minute of my life-dead serious.

I think the assistant in the lobby (the lady who was taking the kids back and forth to the classrooms) could tell I was about to wet myself because she came over and sat next to me and patted me on the back and SO nicely says, "this must be your first" ha ha! Is it that obvious? I asked. She reassured me he would do just fine and would do great in Kindergarten. (which was oddly reassuring since she had never said more than 4 words to him-"come with me Tyler!"-and he said zero back to her. Yet I wanted to kiss her and be her best friend all the same.)

I know that Tyler is smart. I know that he will absolutely LOVE school. I know that he's ready to open this new chapter of his life. But I want him to know. I want him to be confident in who he his and what his talents are. And I was so nervous that if he completely forgot everything he knew in that room with that teacher, that he would be terrified to go back. That he wouldn't feel smart. That he wouldn't think school was fun.

He couldn't have cared less. He's five. His main concerns in life are how he will be able to create the iron-man suit so he can fly, which toy to buy with his hard-earned money, whether or not he will have to have vegetables at dinner, and how many more days it is till Halloween. He talks all the time about how smart he is and could actually do with a little criticism to bring him back to planet humility. The kid knows and brags about his talents-which include being able to completely embarrass me in public when he decides to stop dead in the isle of the store and completely become Iron-man. He starts by miming putting on the suit and then his whole body shakes as the suit is getting ready to take off and he then launches himself into the air and lands on the floor in, non-other than, a spiderman pose. He looks like he's having a seizure. He even foams at the mouth. It's pretty amazing. What... lady who is staring?... Your kid can't be as cool as mine? Too bad for you. Nothing could deter him from his excitement from going to school because he's been excited to ride the school bus since he saw it drive past our house 2 years ago. Not even a mean teacher.

He did great. He came marching out of that room with a big ol' smile on his face, a sticker on his hand and a new shirt and shouted, "Mom, I'm ready for kindergarten!" Ha Ha! The teacher who assessed him sat down with me and took about 5 minutes to go over everything they had done with me, and he did very well! I took a real breath for the first time since we had walked into the school and hugged him tight. I can't remember everything, but I know he got all of the rhyming, spelling his name, identifying numbers, counting syllables, and identifying main concepts of stories right on, but totally got counting to 10 wrong! Ha ha! I guess she lined up ten cups and they were just supposed to count the cups, so he goes, "1,2,3,4,5. 1,2,3,4,5." instead of continuing on "6,7,8,9,10". I laughed and was like, he can count to 30 so I don't know what that was all about. She said it was fine and that since he could identify his numbers she was pretty sure he could count to 10. Silly kid.

AND silly ME! I have got to get me some chill pills because I know kindergarten assessment is nothing compared to what the future holds! I think I have a problem internalizing things around me. I make everything about me, even when it's not so I get all anxious and crazy. Like in this case, school was never something that was easy for me. If I got an A, I worked daggum hard for that A. Not doing well in school really affected my self-esteem and if I didn't understand something I felt incredibly stupid and defeated. I went to school because I loved the social side of it and the activities I was involved in. I was good at that part :). ha ha! I think walking into that school and knowing he was about to have his first test EVER just brought all of those negative feelings I had toward school back and I just freaked out because I internalized it. I just need to remember, he is not me. He has this love for learning that I envy, and thankfully has lots of his father in him!

So bring it on Kindergarten!

Kylee climbed this ladder thingy at the park in our old neighborhood for the first time all by herself and we were so proud of her! Tyler is her biggest cheerleader and kept saying, "ky, you DID it!"

We LOVE going to the park...even when it's cold and still has snow on the ground!

Kylee's dance class ended in March and even though she missed her end of the year recital (because Ty came home from his mission the same week so we were in St. George) she practiced their *bibbety bobbity boo* dance very hard! (ky's on the left)

Ky's on the left

She's in the middle doing her ton-due. She was such a good listener in class and hung on to every. last. word. that came out of Mrs. Ruth's mouth. She wanted to be the BEST dancer and I have never {still} seen her concentrate or try so hard at something.

She was always the first one standing on her "x", ready to go in first position! She took her class very seriously and was never the girl that twirled around without permission or wandered around the classroom. Mrs. Ruth praised her constantly throughout the class and Kylee just ate it up. I was SOOOO proud of her and all her hard work!

Kylee and Mrs. Ruth on her last day of dance.

This was exactly what kylee needed to break her out of her shell. It was a small, no pressure, confidence building class and her teacher was amazing with her. When Kylee started dance she would not let me leave her side. I did every stretch, warm-up, and silly dance right by her side and Mrs. Ruth was so kind to let me join in so Kylee would feel comfortable. She never pressured her, or made her feel bad for not doing something the class was doing. She gave her her space and let Kylee warm up to her instead of forcing it on her. I learned so much about how to be a better mother to Kylee just by watching the way Mrs. Ruth handled her and her emotions and feelings. She's very different from Tyler and it was like Mrs. Ruth was my little guide on how to parent this kind of child. Seriously I could praise this woman till I was blue in the face and it wouldn't be enough. By the end of the year Kylee was not only dancing completely alone, she didn't even care if I was in the room or not. And it extended to other areas of her life as well. She started doing better in primary, she was better at home, and in new situations-where she used to just hide behind me and not make a peep. She has this confidence about her now that I just love and I can't wait to find her a new class where we are now!

She dances every chance she gets, and her current jam is Call me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen. Whenever it comes on the radio she shouts, "turn it up mom this is my song!!" and sings every word of it. And if she's not too busy twirling around in her leotard and ballet skirt and practicing her ballet poses, she's wearing princess dresses (that she changes every 5 min.) and saying, "hello, I'm ________, would you like to come to my castle?" She's also really into playing with all the princess barbies and my little ponies she has. Thankfully Tyler can be pretty easily talked into playing with her as long as his "guys" (ironman, green lantern, spiderman, etc) are involved in the princesses lives. Kylee loves the attention from him and most of the time they play really well together.

Whenever she needs a break from him, she comes into the craft room and paints. She LOVES to do her "projects" which can be anything from using paints, markers, glitter glue, colors or playdough. She gets bored with things much quicker than Tyler does so she is constantly changing her mind on what she wants to do throughout the day. The apartments we're living in right now have a nice pool so we go several times a week, and just in the few weeks we've been here she has gotten so much more confident in the water. Last year, she wouldn't get any farther than getting her knees wet, and now she's swimming all over the deep end-with her floaties on-and thinks she's the coolest fish in the sea! They are both looking forward to their swimming lessons next month!

On our way down to St. George for Ty's homecoming we stopped for the night at the Ellett's in Springville and had a fun night with a fire and smores'!
Tyler, Macey and Kylee

Bestest friends!

Up next, our fun week in St. George when uncle Ty came home from his mission in March!!!

Miss me?!?!

2012-06-29T14:50:00.000-06:00

Miss me much?! Ha ha! Wow, it has been SOOO long since I've updated with pictures and stories and information on our family! A lot (major understatement :) ) has happened over the last 4 months so I'm trying to get caught up and there are over a 1,000 pictures on my computer that I have to go through and post but now that things have finally settled down-for now :)- you should see lots of posts going up over the next couple weeks.

You probably are pretty caught up on the major changes and events that have been going on with us from my random and sporadic facebook updates, but I really, really, really miss writing! It's a great outlet and therapeutic for me to have a place for all the crazy thoughts, feelings and ideas bouncing around in my head.

For now, I"ll just start where the blog left off....Random February cell phone pictures. :)

Our sweet little Ford Focus that we've driven for 7 years, and bought with only 23,000 miles, hit 111,111 miles in Feb, and it's still truckin' along!!

I still kinda can't believe that we survived driving this for the last 4 years as our only vehicle-traveling back and forth to st. George LOTS, 2 kids, school, work, and mine and the kids activities. I feel so blessed to have my AWESOME van now, she's my baby!! Two cars feels like such a luxury and I'm so so so thankful!

I <3 JB. And I may or may not have bought these valentine cupcakes for myself. And loved them.

Tyler's first attempt at cooking in the kitchen 100% solo. Good ol' PB&J. I was talking to my mom on the phone and in walks tyler with a PB&J he had made all by himself because, "I was hungry...so I made a sandwich. It's good, do you want one?" ha ha!!

Beauty school time...

For Tyler's birthday he chose to go to Firehouse Pizza for dinner. While we were waiting for our food, Bobby gave me a math problem-completely out of the blue- he was SURE I wouldn't be able to solve. So he wrote the top two lines:
1000=8
0100=4
and then the rest of the numbers in green and told me to solve them.

It took me less than 5 minuets. And I haven't been in a math class for...10 years. BAM! Stay-at-home mom what?!?! ha ha, he was impressed and it felt good :)!

About once a month, we get a movie for the kids and let them stay up late and we have a movie night together. This night we rented Space Buddies and both Bobby and Kylee were asleep in the first 30 minutes...so sweet.

Both kids love to "run" on the treadmill.

They're always pretending something...this time it was "camping" in the living room. I love them!

Pictures from March coming soon!

I 'like' Alena, do you??

2012-03-09T16:09:00.004-07:00

So if you know my littlest sister Alena at all, you know she LOVES photography-mostly if she's the one being photographed-and she has an opportunity to win a photoshoot from Shannon Kaeding Photography by simply getting the most 'likes' for her photo on the Shannon Kaeding Photography Facebook page HERE. Just click on over and 'like' the photographer's FB page and then go HERE to the contest and click on Alena's picture and 'like' it. That's it! Good luck Alena, you're beautiful!!!!

Happy Birthday Tyler!!

2012-02-25T22:22:00.001-07:00

This little boy turned 5 on Feb. 17th.

And no photo-shoot of him would be complete without some spiderman poses. :)

We've decided to do birthday parties every other year for the kids, and just do smaller family parties on the year that they're not having a big party. I was a little nervous telling Tyler he wasn't going to have a party this year, since he's had one the past two years, but he didn't mind at all! He was just concerned he wouldn't get to have Ironman be apart of his big day and wouldn't get any presents, but once we assured him that wasn't the case he didn't care a bit that it wasn't going to be a big shebang.

I just did a simple set-up on the table with some balloons, cake and his presents for him to see when he woke up. There were also some balloons and streamers I snuck in his room the night before to put up as well-which he came running into my room at 6:30 in the morning to tell me, "MOM! It must be my birthday because there's balloons EVERYwhere!" ha ha-and then I made him go back to bed.

About an hour later I heard him and Kylee whispering in the kitchen and I walked out to see them just sitting here in the dark starring at everything on the table, telling each other all the different things they saw. ha ha!

So even though he wasn't having a party he still wanted "an Ironman birthday", so I picked up this cake (a set of 12 cupcakes frosted together) from Walmart and I swear to you I will never bake my own cake for a birthday again. For less than $8 I got this fun little cake with a spinning/light-up Ironman that Tyler got to keep and it was the thing he talked about all day!

He also had pre-school that day, so I picked up some cupcakes for him to take to school and share with his friends. He's recently become obsessed with Captain America (Bobby's showed him some clips from the movie)...

...and I knew he would LOVE these superhero cupcakes with the cool rings on top that all his friends would get to keep.

After we dragged Bobby out of bed, we lit up 5 little candles and sang him happy birthday! He thought it was THE. coolest. thing. EVER that when the candles lit up, it looked like fire coming out of Ironman's feet as he was flying!

After a nice, healthy cupcake breakfast he got to open his presents.

I don't know what it is, but Kylee loves to wear Tyler's old jammies-especially his toy story ones!

This is the first birthday that I've had a really hard time with. I've just loved watching him grow up, and learn, and discover life, and become his own person but there's something about him being 5 that terrifies me. I think most of the reason is because it means that he'll being starting school in 6 months. And starting school means that I won't be the one that's there for all those moments of learning and growing and discovery. It means that he's really starting his life as his own little person-picking out what he wants to wear, who his friends will be, what his interests are, what he believes in. It means that fairly soon, I will no longer be the center of his world. And...it just makes me feel old. Like really old. I have a 5 year old. What?!?! I still have memories from when I was five.

Just looking at this picture makes me want to laugh and cry at the same time.He was SO worried that those darn balloons were going to blow away so he was holding onto them for dear life and kept saying, "mom, I just CAN'T let go! Make sure they don't blow away ok mom?!" And then I look at that sweet face and I just see everything that he is: happy, playful, determined, excited about life, kind, sensitive, and completely everything I've ever wanted in my life.

After daddy was done with school for the day, we headed over to the Fun Park and had fun playing all sorts of arcade games-where Tyler beat Kylee at air hockey, and then I CREAMED Bobby-9 to 1...booyah!

Look at that look of determination...ha ha!

I promised he played lots more than just gun games... :)

They also ran around together in the little soft play area for an hour-I need to come here during the winter more often!

After we scored hundreds of tickets, we "purchased" all sorts of crazy knick-knacks from their ticket shop-that have mostly by now been thrown away-and headed to Tyler's choice of Firehouse Pizza for dinner (he also chose this last year!). It was a friday night and the food took forevvvvver to come out, but the kids were so good about coloring and keeping themselves busy.

Daddy and Tyler being weird.

Mommy and Kylee being...well, Ky's being pouty because she was HUNGRY and just wanted some food!

About 15 min. after we got home, Amanda knocked on our door! She came up from Provo to stay the weekend with us (since it was a 3 day weekend) to surprise Tyler for his birthday and he just fled into her arms and would not let go of her! He told me that BY FAR, it was the best part of his birthday! It was so fun to have her here with us for a couple days and she helped him build legos, play with his new Ironman toy from Grandma, play games and be his teacher in primary (I happened to be subbing in his class that day so Amanda came with me).

Sat. night Amanda and I escaped away for a nice girls night! We went to Texas Roadhouse for dinner and shared some Ribs (sooooo good! I'm salivating just thinking about them!).

Then we went and saw The Vow, which we both loved! I'm so happy I had her to go see it with me, as Bobby refuses to watch movies with actors that have 2 first names. :) (and seriously...if I woke up from being knocked out, and Channing Tatum told me he was my husband I would not question that!!)

He's pretty excited to be 5.

Happy Birthday little man. I love you.

Valentines Day

2012-02-16T06:00:00.000-07:00

We had the BEST valentines this year! We kicked our celebrations off the weekend before Valentines with a 'couples only' party-best. thing. EVER! My friend Tess and I decided we needed a night out and thought since it was valentines it would be okay if our husbands tagged along...and then we decided it should just be a party! I took care of the decorating and she took care of the games and we both helped with the food. We opted not to have it be a dinner party because we wanted to do it later at night, so we mainly just did appetizer type things and dessert.

I know the big ol' crockpot in the back sorta throws off the pretty red and pink vibe, but it housed bacon wrapped smokies so all was forgiven. :)

We invited 6 couples which was just the perfect amount of people to have it be fun and loud and crazy, but intimate enough that we could play games and really enjoy each others company.

And of course, what Valentine party would be complete without a little '7 minutes in heaven'???? And yep, you know that was my idea!

We made it totally old school, with a backdrop for pictures and everything for all the dates to get a shot in front of (including having a professional cameraman take our pictures-Tess's dad :) This picture is just from my camera tho cause we don't have ours back yet.) We also took a group shot in the form of a 3 level pyramid. Awesome. I am DYING to see it as we had 2 pregnant women on board!! ha ha!

After talking and eating we played The Newlywed Game and Tess's mom was our host. Funniest thing EVER!!! My cheeks hurt so bad from laughing so hard. We are SO lucky to have such great friends as neighbors, this was such a blast! In this picture, the couple on the left, Kayla is trying to explain why she answered a question a certain way and Caleb is shaking his head in disbelief...we saw this a lot. ha ha!

These two in the back were crying they were laughing so hard.

*And just in case you're wondering...Bobby and I totally lost. We got a total of 2 questions right.
1. Within 3, how many pairs of shoes does your wife own?
-I said 15, he guessed 12.
2. What is the first thing your husband will say he noticed about you the first time he met you?
-Let's just say...he got this right. such a man.

Moving on...

The next game we played was pictionary and we played boys against girls, and they CREAMED us!

Bobby was on FIRE, guessing almost every single one of the guys pictures within seconds of them drawing it on their board. I mean he actually guessed 'Kentucky Blue Grass' with a squiggle of grass drawn in 10 seconds and was right! Who is this man I married?! And where was he during the Newlywed game when he was on my team?!?!

Seriously one of the top 10 best nights I've ever had! Maybe I need to get out more. :)

On Valentines day, the littles woke up to a little Cupid mischief! Rose petals everywhere, treats, love notes, pink milk and a fun breakfast! (the little birdhouses on the table I made for them earlier this month and we've used them to slip love notes in every morning...you can read more about them here.) The roses on the table were given to Kylee and I from our boys the day before because the Bobs was afraid they might die in the car overnight before we got them. :) The red one is mine from Bobby, and the yellow one is for Kylee from Tyler. I'm not typically a flower type girl (well I LOVE flowers, I'd just rather spend the $ on something else) but I just love our tradition of one simple rose.

Cupid's arrow from heart shaped pancakes with sprinkles and cut up bananas.

This particular morning, I left the love notes in their 'love shacks' and Bobby wanted to leave them a note also so he left them on their plates...

In case you can't read it, it says...
"Tyler, I {love} you because you are becoming my little man. You are getting so tough someday soon you will be able to beat daddy. {love} dad."
*complete with drawings of a knife, a rocket-ship and a gun. SERIOUSLY!! I about died. Do you want him to "beat" you or kill you?

Thankfully Kylee's was slightly less dramatic...

In case you can't read it, it says...
"Kylee, I love you because you are sweet and loving when I need you, and tough and crazy when Tyler needs a whooping. {love} dad."

During breakfast Tyler's pre-school teacher called to say she had to cancel school that day because her kids were sick. Tyler was seriously bummed because they were supposed to be having a valentines day party-which they made up yesterday-but when you're that excited about something it's hard to wait!! So I let him play a little game on my phone to cheer him up.

Yep, Angry Birds. He is obsessed and flies through the levels. I don't even know how the game is played. Silly boy.

Later that day, the kids helped me make these cute Valentine Chocolate dipped Oreos for some neighbor gifts. I got the idea from Lolly Jane-and I love how they turned out! And they are soooo yummy!

I boxed them up in little treat boxes (I got them from JoAnns), tied a bow on and added the tag (free printable from Lolly Jane.) -easy peasy!

That night we did our traditional homemade heart pizzas! I looove cooking with the kids and watching them get their hands dirty and having fun-Bobby was going crazy! He kept saying, "but they're getting flour everywhere Angela!" ha ha. I guess it just has something to do with me being with them all day and watching them constantly getting dirty with something!

They just used a cookie cuter to shape their pizzas.

They have pretty simple taste when it comes to pizza. Sauce and cheese for Tyler. Sauce, cheese and pepperoni's for Kylee.

So cute!

The front of her shirt was absolutely covered in flour, but I have no idea how so much ended up on the back of her!

They were happy with how their pizzas turned out!

And we polished off our pizzas with some mini cupcakes! Yum!

As the kids were heading off to brush their teeth, we heard a knock at the door and found a note from Cupid sending them on a scavenger hunt to find their present from him! Absolutely the best part of the ENTIRE day! We just did the same scavenger hunt as last year so you can find it here if you're interested, but they loved it just as much as they did last year and it was a perfect way to end the day!

I hope your Valentines was everything you hoped it would be too! (To read a little more about some of the things we did for Valentines this month check it out here)

January 2012

2012-02-02T06:00:00.000-07:00

I've already blogged about some of the bigger things that have happened this month, but here are some of the other things we've done throughout Jan...

Actually, first, I found quite a few pictures on my phone from December that never got posted so here's a little more re-cap from December! :)

Kylee and I needed to do some Christmas shopping and since Tyler DESPISES shopping (like literally goes into seizures when we pull up to any store) I always have to get my shopping done while he's at pre-school. We were at the mall and Kylee needed a little break to play with some of the toys.

Kylee's dance class did a small dance performance for a retirement home in our area for Christmas. She did SO great-even though her wand broke halfway through their routine! ha ha!

They weren't quite all on the same page during the dance but it was so stinkin' cute and those little old grandmas just ate them up!

Kylee's dance teacher Mrs. Ruth and all her students.

One night when Bobby and I were out doing some Christmas shopping for the kids we stopped at our favorite Chinese Restaurant for dinner. They made the coolest things out of vegetables on our plates!!

Things like this just make me ridiculously happy!!! I'm pretty easy to please I guess :)

One of my most FAVORITE projects that I made last year were some Christmas aprons for the kids. I had NO idea what I was doing, didn't use a tutorial or a pattern, or find them online anywhere and I just loved how they turned out. I didn't ever have time to post them here or on my craft blog, so I'll guess you'll just have to wait till this Christmas to see the front of them, but for now here's a little sneak peak :).

In Jan. our time for church changed from 9:00 am to 1:30 pm. Each time has it's pluses and minuses, but we are loving sleeping in, making fun yummy breakfast's, taking our time getting ready and relaxing. The kids love getting some reading time in with their daddy!

On Saturday Jan. 21st Bobby and I headed down to Salt Lake for the day to go see Brian Regan LIVE! It was one of the Christmas presents I gave to Bobby, and we can both honestly say it was the BEST weekend we've had since we went to Vegas for our 5th Anniversary almost 3 years ago (and even quite possibly better than that)!!

The weekend before this was Kylee's birthday and Mindy, Macey and Royce had come up from Springville to celebrate with us. I had offered to keep Macey for the whole following week after Ky's party so Mindy and Royce could have some time together and get some things done around their house. Since we would be coming down the next Sat. to this concert we decided to meet up in Salt Lake where they would pick up Macey and take our kids for the day, and we would drive down to Springville to pick them up later that night.

Mindy, however, knows me too well and knew I was in need of a little weekend alone time with my hubby and hi-jacked our kids for the night and told us they would bring them back up to Logan Sunday night. It really just made the whole weekend PERFECT!!

First on Saturday we stopped at The Red Iguana in Salt Lake for some lunch after reading some reviews online and OH. MY. GOSH. if you are ever in Salt Lake you HAVE to go to this place! It's a total hole in the wall kinda place and after seeing it, we actually drove away because it looked so trashy from the outside and is in a not so good part of town, but we got brave and decided What the heck?!
AhMAZing!
Bobby got the Enchiladas...

...and I wasn't super hungry so I got an appetizer of Super Nachos. Big mistake. Delish.

Then we headed over to The Gateway-an outdoor mall (never mind that it was snowing like CRAZY!!) to do some 'window' shopping which turned into actual shopping when we saw the Going Out of Business-everything 80% OFF sign on Payless's windows. $130 dollars worth of stuff for $27. Score!

The show started at 3:00 so we got to Abravanel hall at about 2:00. We took this picture about 30 min. before the show started and by 3:00 EVERY seat was full. Totally sold out show!

And yes we were in the very last row...that's the wall behind us. :)

If you haven't heard of Brian Regan, he is a comedian that is HI-Larious! Seriously, look him up on YouTube and watch some of his clips, you will LOVE LOVE LOVE him! He is clean and doesn't swear at all, so I love that you don't have to ever worry you'll hear something offense. It was 2 hours of pure laughing!! His last joke of the show, we were literally-both of us-laughing so hard we were full on crying, couldn't breathe, stomach cramping kind of laughing. I'm almost 100% positive I haven't laughed that hard since high school. I'm a true believer that laughter is SO good for the soul!!

After the show we went back over to the gateway to check out some more stores we didn't have time to hit before the show, and even though Aldo didn't have the boots I've been looking everywhere for in my size :(, we did score some good deals at Old Navy so yay!

After that we decided to head back to Logan because it was snowing pretty good and we have to drive through a canyon to get home-which gets hit really bad during snow storms-so even though it took us about 30 min. longer to get home than normal, we still made it home in time to see a 9:00 showing of Mission Impossible and I LOVED it!! We hadn't eaten since lunch so we were pretty hungry when we got out of the movie so we had to hit up a little late night Taco Bell!

I forget how FUN it is to be able to just go and do things whenever, and wherever, and as late as we want to do them! I love my two little munchkins to death, but every once in a blue moon it's nice to just be Angela instead of mommy.

Since we don't have church till late, and didn't have kids pulling us out of the bed to make them breakfast, we got to sleep in on Sunday and just enjoy a quiet morning together. Not to mention a quiet sacrament meeting! :) And by 5:30 I was beyond giddy to see Tyler and Kylee again! It's amazing how much just 24 hours without them makes me miss them like CRAZY!!!!!

Such a great, memorable weekend! Thank you Elletts for helping us out!

And just a random couple of pictures from my phone to round out this post...

THIS is totally my ky. princess dress, 'pearls', purse and SNEAKERS. She can keep up with the boys, but can be a lady when she needs to be!

We had playgroup at my house this week and one of the neighbor girls wanted to stay and play after it was over so her and Tyler and Kylee decided to have a "picnic" at the "beach"...

...including, snowman sunglasses, mickey mouse ears, princes dresses, sunglasses, princess heels, a Christmas blanket, hairbows and more! Oh I just LOOOOOVE their imaginations! ha ha!

Mom Guilt.

2012-01-27T16:54:00.001-07:00

Mom Guilt.

This week I feel like I've done nothing. Well you know...

I saved superman by gluing his arm back to his body,
I found Rapunzel's long lost shoe-underneath a slice of stale cheese...which was left inside the play kitchen refrigerator for what I would guess (from the texture and color) to be at least 3 days old,
I built a lego batcave in no less than 1 hour,
I attended a dance recital in my living room where the dancer danced to 'Jingle Bells' (a Christmas cd that got left out of the christmas box) over and over and over,
and I'm pretty sure at one point I made a pretty dang good pot of Macaroni & cheese so you know...
it wasn't nothing exactly.

But I've been SO sick this week that I feel like a literal BUMP on a LOG! I look at my house and I just cringe! I look at my laundry piled up to way past overflowing, my kitchen sink full of dishes that I just have no desire to empty, the toys just pushed off to the sides of the room so the kids could go to bed because the thought of having to actually clean their rooms makes me want to dive into a cave, and I look at those 2 little faces and I just feel...guilt.

I didn't play with them enough, I didn't want to crawl out of bed to play princesses and pretend I'm the evil queen that locked the princess in the dungeon, I let them watch hours and hours of TV,-and the fact that I can't even put a number on those hours because I honestly don't know- makes me feel even more guilty.

Even though the hubby's good to try to relieve me of my guilt by telling me that it's okay our kids know all of the characters on spongebob square pants (seriously? dumbest. show. ever.) and haven't eaten a vegetable in a week because I'm sick, I STILL feel guilty.

So by day 3 of having body aches so bad I couldn't move my neck and chills that kept me dressed like I was living outside, on the streets, in the Arctic, and a sore throat that completely obliterated all attempts to break-up fights between the littles because all I could do is whisper (and seriously whisper??...I wouldn't even take me seriously.), I crawled out of my bed because of GUILT. And I played, and I laughed-in a freaky ghost movie kinda way-and I drove kids to preschool and dance, and made dinner, and looked for toys and turned off the TV and worked on reading and writing with them, and read every library book we have (and yes, they are 2 weeks over-due glad you asked!) and woke up to do it all over again the next day. Why?!?!

Mom Guilt.

I think, especially as woman-and I think this is true even if you don't have kids yet-we are so hard on ourselves. We think we have to know how to sew and cook and bake and have a doctorate and never yell at our kids and serve our neighbors and fulfill religious obligations and be an attractive wife with dinner on the table at 5:00 and be in perfect shape and have children that behave like angels and be running at full speed even if we're sick. :) Not ONLY do we have to do all those things, we have to do ALL of them perfectly, ALL the time.

Why do we put all that unnecessary pressure on ourselves?! Is the Woman Police going to come arrest us for not sewing every clothing item our children wear, or for not baking the perfect pie for our sick neighbor, or for weighing an extra 5 lbs because we love cheeseburgers? I think I must think that because I worry about not being able to accomplish all the things I want to do. So I have to focus on this thought:

I can do everything I want to do. Just not right now. One thing at a time.

I think that's why finding balance, and making sure I'm doing other things with my time besides crafting and blogging, has been so important to me this past month. AND I think that's why this week has been so hard because I've been trying to be the perfect mother and I let mom guilt take over when I should have embraced the few ways I was being a good one (like when I turned OFF spongebob-chalk that up for a winner mom moment! go me!)

{source}

I do wonder though if mom guilt will ever go away?! :)

A Ballerina Birthday Party!

2012-01-25T06:00:00.000-07:00

Little miss Kylee turned 3 on Dec. 29th and for her first 'friends party' requested it be a Ballerina party. Oooohhhh I couldn't have loved putting this together more!

Since I won the 'procrastinator of the year' award in 2011 (awarded to me by myself of course...anybody else have one of these trophies layin' around?) I thought...why change my ways? In some weird, completely irrational way, I work better under pressure so I put myself in a tiny box of 6 days to plan, create and execute this party. Whew! And I have to say, I only had one meltdown (day of party...I'll explain) so I'm gonna go ahead and chalk that one up for the win category. Booyah!

First I started off with the invites. Of course when it was 5 days, 23 hours, lots of minuets and counting, I had to turn to my dear creative friend Pinterest for ideas and boy did she come through!

I took the idea for the invite from THIS blog and came up with my own little rendition of a Ballerina invite. On the blog I found she has a step by step video you can watch if you're really interested in making one, but here are a few of the pictures I took making a simple ballerina dress using:
-cardstock bodice form (free template found here)
-square of tissue paper
-thin, white ribbon
-double sided tape

After you have folded your square of tissue paper accordion style, you use your double sided tape and adhere it to the front of your bodice attaching the tape right at the waist. You'll want to make sure the folds are spaced evenly to get a pretty skirt form.

The tape should be about 2" so that you have enough to have some on the back.

Turn the dress back to the front and fold down the top half of the tissue paper. Then kinda smoosh (my spell check is telling me that's not a word, but since it's quite possibly the best word in the English language I'm gonna have to rebel) the tissue paper lightly with your finger-you don't want to flatten it completely, just smooshed down enough that the top layer will lay nicely (yet poofy) over the top of it.

Next, f0ld down the top layer of tissue paper and gently give it a little crease to secure the fold.

Now, using the tape on the back of the bodice lay the middle of your ribbon across it.

Turn it over and tie the ribbon into a bow and you're done!

I then used a piece of double-sided tape to attach the dress to the invite.

The invite itself, is a 6x4 pice of light pink cardstock. I used brown ink to darken up the sides and a strip of white ribbon, layered with sheer pink and white polka dot ribbon, across the top. I had some brown scrapbook stickers on hand so just layed a letter K on top of the ribbon for little miss K. I finished it off with 2 hole punches on the top and a matching pink/white polka dot ribbon run through.

The back of the invitation had all the party information:

Then it was time to decorate! On the front door I hung little miss's ballet shoes, using white grosgrain ribbon, behind the coffee filter wreath I had out for Christmas.

I loved the simple little touch adding something personal to her added to the party!

Inside I opted to decorate with...flowers, balloons and food!! I wanted the atmosphere to be frilly, soft, pretty and GIRLY! I went with pink and white for the colors of the party with pops of yellow! I'm a "pop" kinda girl. Two colors just bores me, I have to have something that says, "HELLO!" ha ha!

Using the tutorial found here, from All Things Thrifty, I made these tissue paper pom pom balls to hang from the ceiling, and I have to say I was really disappointed with how they turned out.

The tute wasn't super specific-as far as telling you what kind of wire to buy-so I bought something that was too thick (thanks to the advice from the cashier at Michaels-boo) and the tissue paper didn't bend and fold right because of it SOOOO I didn't get the look I was going for, but it was alright.

My tip to you...the thinner gauge craft wire the better! I would suggest maybe a 24 or 26 gauge.

But back to the food table...the main event of course! :)

Starting on the right end...pink donuts!

Okay they weren't totally pink because apparently to get custom iced donuts you have to place an order (procrastination rocks) so I bought every single donut they had with pink anywhere on it!

Above that we had cotton candy (I hate cotton candy, but love the fluffy texture for the purposes of a party! And 2 dollar store bags filled 10 cones!)

I made the paper cones for the cotton candy using a sketch my husband came up with that made a cone shape and scalloped scissors to trim the edges (can I admit that for the life of me I could not draw a 3d cone shape that worked?! Geometry was NOT my subject. I did however pass cheerleading so...whatev.)

In the back corner I placed a bouquet of yellow, white and pink flowers in a pink vase I found at the thrift store months ago! I added 4 pink rhinestones to the top and white ribbon around the middle and pretended they were just for me.

Going up the center of the table were glass bottles of kiwi strawberry (snapple) juice that I added a slice of lemon to and a yellow straw (smoothie straws so they're thicker-from Walmart). And to tie in the strawberries on the cupcakes, I added a bowl of sliced strawberries in the center as well.

Worst moment of the day. My meltdown. Over cupcakes. But first I'll give you the good news. I made a cute cupcake stand for the birthday girls' cupcake (idea from I heart Naptime)!!

I started with a glass candlestick from the dollar store, a .50 wood piece from Hobby Lobby, some clear gloss paint and yellow paint from Rustoleum. I always spray paint my glass with some sealer first so that the spray paint sticks to it better. And then spray painted them both yellow.

Using some scrapbook paper from Hobby Lobby, I cut a circle the size of the top of the wood circle and mod podged it on.

Then I used E6000 to glue the candlestick to the wood.

And because it was in some serious need of frillyment, I added pink adhesive rhinestones around the edge of the circle and a little ribbon bow around the candlestick.

Back to the tragedy. Baking. WHY do I try?! Why?!

And the worst part is...I didn't even bake them. Mr. Sweet Love did!

I left the "icing" of the cupcakes till the day of the party because I didn't want them to get hard and crusty. Let's just say...what was supposed to be white icing, turned pink, then blue, then purple and then what can be described in the nicest words possible as 'dusty rose' pink. Then the attempted pretty icing swirls on top of the cupcakes turned into diarrhea looking blobs and the icing bag exploded 'dusty roseness' all over my hands, shirt and face. Awesome. I salvaged what sugar mess I had left and slapped it on some of the cupcakes with a knife and a grrrr, and opened the fridge to see what else I could do. I found some whip cream and some strawberries and tried to make something edible (and not completely revulting) of the ingredients that were left and still sanitary. Next time, if there IS a next time, I will be buying cupcakes. Just so you know.

Moving on :). At the back of table, to add a little height, I made some pink and white lollies. (I love this tutorial for making lollies if you're interested!) This one is a 3...for her 3rd bday.

And this one has her name and some sticker ballet shoes (from Hobby Lobby).

To make the pots, I just picked up 2 medium size ones from Micheals (.89 each) and spray painted them white. I stuffed some green styrofoam floral filler in the bottom of each pot and topped with yellow lemonhead candies. The lollies are attached (with double sided tape) to a skewer and stick right into the green floral stuff inside the pot. So simple but I love how much they add to the table!

On the left side of the table I had pink popcorn (white stove top popped popcorn with white chocolate (turned pink using food coloring) drizzled over the top of it) in little popcorn boxes I made, using this template, some scalloped scissors to trim the edges, and then tied a pink satin ribbon around the box.

The stands that the popcorn and cotton candy are sitting on were made from dollar store platters and candlesticks. Take a plastic platter...

...and a glass candlestick and use E6000 to glue together. LOVE the fun color possibilities of this by just using different color cans spray paint!

In the back left corner I added a candy jar I made for my Easter decorations last year. It's just a dollar store candlestick (I swear by these!) glued (using E6000 of course!) to a glass jar I found at a thrift store for $1, that I had spray painted yellow and then filled with pink candies. You could use gumballs, but since it's around Valentines they had lots of pink candies to choose from!

And last but not least, some PINK rice krispie treats! I was going to make my own from this recipe, but luckily it's valentines so they had boxes of these already made and they were cheaper than 1 box of rice krispies cereal!! Deal!

I really love how the whole table came together!

We have a fairly small kitchen-for party throwing anyway!-so I had to set up 2 card tables in the center of the kitchen to eat at. It was a tight squeeze but 3/4 year olds are pretty tiny so it worked ok.:)

I added another vase of flowers to the table, as well as pink plates, white napkins, white dollies, and wands (all purchased from the dollar store!) for each Ballerina.

My FAVORITE thing on these tables though, were the water bottles and the little bowls of lemonheads. Those little "pops" of yellow made me ridiculously happy.

I had the lemonade for the girls over on the food table, but I know some kids are pretty picky about what they eat/drink, so I decided to add some water to the tables and used the mini water bottles (8oz) and strips of yellow polka dot paper.

Just in case the magic of how to adhere paper to a water bottle blows your mind :)...you just place double sided tape on one end of the paper, stick it to the bottle, wrap it around the bottle and place another piece of tape on the end of the strip and attach it to the bottle.

My other favorite (can I have another favorite?!) thing were the placecards I made for each little ballerina. I pretty much exactly copied the one I found here. When the party was winding down I had the idea to double the use of the placecards and use them as thank you cards as well!

Since it was just cardstock folded in half, I just quickly opened up the placecard, wrote a thank you and stuck them in their favor bags before I handed them to the parents. I love getting more than one use out of things.

I love how the party turned out and little miss K was in absolute HEAVEN, but there are a few little details I had planned on doing that I just didn't have time to get done (maybe next time I'll give myself a 7 day window instead of 6...probably not). Like I would have loved to make a cute Happy Birthday pennant banner to hang on the food table and I wanted to make ballerina cupcake toppers (the same ballerina dresses that were on the invites, just stick a toothpick to the back of them to stick in the cupcake) and matching tutus for all the girls, but as the week was coming to a close I had to pick a few dreams to let go of. sigh. If only...ha ha! But you probably wouldn't have even noticed those things if I hadn't said them!

**Just in case you're trying to gather some ideas for your own ballerina extravaganza here are some of the games/activities we did (our party was an hour and a half)**:

1. As the guests arrived we decorated foam tiaras (from the dollar store) with princess stickers, glitter glue, markers, etc.

2. When all the girls were there we did cake, treats and presents!

*please notice tyler's batman mask :)

I didn't want Tyler to feel completely left out, so he was in charge of handing her her presents and picking up the trash. :) He loved it.

3. we played 'Ballerina says'. Like Simon says, but Ballerina says twirl, jump, hop,etc. and if a player does an action when ballerina doesn't say they have to sit down.

4.Then we played Ballerina Relay.
split the group into 2 teams. Have a basket of princess stuff on one end of the room (opposite to where the 2 teams are lined up). Each basket should have an item for each member of the team. You could use princess dresses, shoes, necklace, ring, purse, feather boa, tiara, etc. The first person on each team runs to the basket puts on an item and has to run back to their team. They then remove whatever item they put on and the next person in line has to put that item on, run back to the basket and add a new item. Repeat until all items have been put on and the first team to empty their basket wins.

5. Next to calm them down a bit we played a fairy trivia game. I had a list of 10 questions about different princess/fairy movies or stories and whoever got the answer right got one m&m.

6. Then we made candy bracelets. I used twizzler pull aparts for the bracelet form and a few different candies that had holes in the center (lifesavers, gummy lifesavers, sour lifesavers, wintergreen lifesavers, etc.) to slide on the bracelet.

7. Then we played freeze dance where we turned on some ballet music (using Pandora) and whenever the music stopped they had to freeze. If you don't freeze you have to sit down. We had little girls that didn't quite understand this so mostly we just kept dancing when the music was on and when it turned off we'd wait for everyone to freeze before we turned it back on again. They loved dancing in their own ballerina sized mirror! :)

I think the girls had a really good time and they loved that they got to dance with their wands throughout the party AND take them home! Yay for girly parties and YAY for it being over! ha ha!

Happy Birthday my beautiful Kylee, I hope all your wishes come true!!

Kylee is a Sunbeam!

2012-01-23T06:00:00.002-07:00

Kylee started her first day in primary on Jan. 1 2012. Being that she turned three 2 days before the cut-off I was really nervous to have her start primary and be the VERY youngest in her class (and more than likely in every primary class until she's 12).

Our ward does a really great thing at the end of the year where they bring all the kids that are going to be starting sunbeams in Jan. into primary for singing time during the month of December. Her nursery leaders said she did great going into primary and sitting still and listening so I was hoping her first day of primary would go over 100 times better than her first day of nursery! AND Tyler is in the class right behind her so I was positive she was going to do great.

Nope. I'm not sure why I thought it would be a good idea to walk her in since she does much better when bobby leaves her places, because the second I tried to let her go she was crying-and not softly. I sat down with Kylee on my lap for about the first 5 min. and then Jodi, the 2nd counselor in the primary presidency-and my neighbor- who was sitting with the sunbeam class also to help the teacher with all the criers, said "Angela, just go. I know she's your baby, but you have to go and just let her cry. She'll be fine."

Hmmmph. I don't like it when people tell me what to do, but I knew she was right. Mainly I was just worried that she was going to puke on somebody again and I'd have to buy somebody a new dress. Oh ya, and because it was probably distracting to the person talking. But I sucked it up, sat her down on the chair, kissed her goodbye and walked out the door. I hated it. I walked right into the relief society room and sat down so I couldn't hear her cry. Bobby waited out in the hall just in case there was any...bodily functions emitted. He said she stopped crying after about a minute and her teacher said she did great the whole time after that.

When I picked her up after church she was happy and ran right up to me to show me her picture so I was soooo relieved! The next Sunday she cried again for the first couple minutes and then was fine the whole time and last Sunday she didn't cry at all! Yay!

She puts up a pretty good sassy front, so she can come off independent and tough but she is sooooo shy and sensitive and just needs time to warm up to new things. I'm so happy to have this little mini me in my life. :)

Kylee's 3rd Birthday!!

2012-01-21T06:00:00.002-07:00

Okay who has not said..."I can't Believe_____ is___ years old!" But seriously there is no better way to say it. I can't BELIEVE my Kylee is 3 years old!!!!

Somehow it felt slower with Tyler. (I mean don't get me wrong, I can't believe I almost have a 5 year old!!!) But somehow it all made sense. When he turned 1, and then 2, and so on, it felt...right. Time felt endless. Manageable. It was just him and I so much that I was really there for every moment. I was his entertainment, his joy, his sadness (he really hated baths), his encouragement, his nurse, his buddy, his life.

The first several months after Kylee was born were really hard for me. So mainly I just remember a lot of crying. From both of us ha ha! There were definitely good moments I remember like how SO soft her skin was and the way she smelled after a bath and her little, tiny nose, but it went by so fast. And then before I knew it, Tyler was her everything. And still is. They are very close. They fight hard and they play hard. They love each other so much sometimes I don't even quite understand it.

He is her entertainment 80% of the day, he is her joy, sadness, encouragement and buddy. I kinda feel like I'm playing a supporting role with her instead of the main one. Don't get me wrong she's my girl and when Tyler won't play princess with her (which sometimes he does :) ) or barbies or babies or anything girly she comes running to me and I LOOOVE the time we spend together pretending. AND it's why I'm secretly glad that Tyler is gone for a couple hours 3 days a week at pre-school because during those hours I get to be her everything and it's absolutely EVERYTHING to me! I really REALLY do love that they are so close (so I hope it doesn't sound like I'm complaining!!), but since I don't get as much one-on-one time with her as I did with Tyler as an only child, I just live for those moments of girl time! :) She loves to go shopping with me-anywhere!-and wants me to paint her nails ALL the time. When she's sad I'm the first person she wants and when she succeeds at something I'm the first person she runs to tell. Those are the moments I live for with her because it's when time feels endless and I can dream that she'll by my little girl forever.

It's almost like, since there's two of them, the time goes by twice as fast!!! With an older child it seems like she is growing up so much faster than he did because she has him teach her everything he knows-and he does! Just the other day I walked in his room and he was trying to teach her how to write some letters-love it!

Sooooo, this spunky, firecracker, sass talkin' diva (all covering a very sensitive spirit mind you) turned 3 on December 29. Unfortunately that's not the ideal time of year for party throwing but-as you know-I love birthdays so I had to do something for her!! :) (I have posted the details of her party on my craft blog if you just can't wait till I post it next week here :) )

I hung some streamers outside her door so she'd see them first thing when she woke up! She hated them and I had to part them like the red sea so she'd walk through her door.

I also snuck in her room while she was sleeping the night before and hung some balloons from her bed and a cluster of them on her door and her bookshelf.

We actually woke up before she did so we all went in to sing her Happy Birthday to wake her up like my sister Alisa does for her kids and she was GRUMPY! This girl likes her sleep and was NOT ready to wake up.

The only reason she got out of bed was because Tyler told her the kitchen looked SO great and she had to come see her presents! ha ha!

She had requested pink cupcakes with purple frosting for her birthday so that's what she got! (even though in this picture the frosting looks blue)

Nothin' better than a cupcake for breakfast on your birthday! (or any day for that matter)

After breakfast she got straight to work opening presents from family. Grandma Luci and Papa James sent her a fun alphabet game...

...and the movie Tinkerbell which is her new favorite movie!

We gave her a new baby doll with a hair dreyer and hair accessories (she saw it in the store and wanted it ALL month (dec) long and since Santa didn't bring it to her for Christmas she got it for her birthday-see there's one good thing about having a bday right after Christmas!

Tyler picked this barbie car out for her and I just couldn't say no since I had wanted one every year for my birthday growing up and never got one.

Later that day Macey and Mindy drove up from Springville so we headed to Carls jr. for lunch (kylee's choice).

We ended the day playing some Leap Frog, eating Pizza and watching Cars 2.

Happy Birthday my sweet Kylee. You are a beautiful little girl and I am SO lucky to be your momma. Thanks for choosing me.

Christmas 2011

2012-01-19T15:00:00.000-07:00

Christmas was absolutely perfect this year. Christmas is my favorite holiday/time of year/thing to celebrate/reason for living...you get it.

Every year, as the kids get older, it just keeps getting better and better because not only can they appreciate why we celebrate Christmas and can get themselves in the spirit, they also appreciate the traditions we've started and I think they're pretty close to loving Christmas as much as I do {almost}!

But I have to say...I think this year has been the best Christmas of all since Bobby and I have been married because we got to spend it with my family at our house!! Bobby always has to work either right before (like christmas eve) or right after Christmas so the past several years we've just done Christmas with us and the kids (which we have begun to really enjoy as well!) and headed down to St. George to be with my family the week after Christmas for Kylee's birthday.

But this year, since Amanda would not be able to get enough days before or after Christmas off of work to go down to St. George the family (my mom, dad, amanda and alena) decided to come up north and celebrate with us so Amanda could have family to be with-especially for her FIRST Christmas home from the mission!

The couple days we had together before Christmas were spent going to see a movie (Arthur Christmas-surprisingly cute!!), playing games, lots and lots of eating (which I am NOW regretting-ugh!), making gingerbread houses using graham crackers-do NOT recommend this ha ha!-and lots of listening and dancing to Josh Groban's Christmas CD (LOOOOOVE this-it was my early Christmas present to myself :) and it's quite possibly the only Christmas thing I'm still having withdrawals over not having.)

We decided mom's was the winner!

Little mishap with the cookies and milk for santa...

...all was well though because the kids got him a new plate. They were pretty adamant that Santa get his treats!

Chrismtas morning the kids woke up about 7:30 and we headed out to do presents before our 10:00 am Sacrament meeting service. Kylee was a little overwhelmed by all the stuff going on in the living room I think, so she sorta hung back and watched Tyler before diving in herself.

Santa brought Kylee an art easel and paper which both the kids have LOVED using! they don't use the chalkboard side ever, but they love to pull the paper down and use all the art supplies Grandma got them for Christmas-glitter glue, markers, crayons, pencils, fuzzy pom poms, pipe cleaners, etc-to make some pretty amazing stuff :).

Santa brought Tyler a leap frog video game which both the kids have also had fun playing with.

Santa always fills their stockings with fun little knick-knacks they love...gum, silly bandz, fruit, candy, etc.

Amanda and Alena opening their stockings...

This year Tyler got his first Book of Mormon! Now that he's beginning to read, and is responsible enough to take scriptures to church, we got him his own set of scriptures (which was actually totally at his request with no prompting from us!). He feels SO grown up carrying his scriptures to church and when we read at night he has to have his scriptures in front of him open to the page we're reading. Kylee got a couple Book of Mormon figures, but she is extremely jealous of Tyler's scriptures and they fight over who gets to hold them almost every night so we might have to get her a set of her own before next Christmas :)

Tyler's favorite gifts this year were this Spiderman webshooter from Bobby and I and his Batcave/car/man lego set from his Uncle Mark (not pictured because he opened that present the night before when we skyped with Bobby's family)

After presents and a yummy quiche breakfast (thanks momma!), we headed out to church. Our ward only held Sacrament meeting and when we came home we had zero luck getting any pictures. ha ha! Kylee is usually my eye roller, hang head down, turn her back to me kind of picture taker and the ONE time Tyler refuses to get pictures taken Kylee is all cheesy smiles and loves. Of Course!!

My HANDSOME boys!!

Oh wait there she is. There's my real Kylee.

And we'll go ahead and call that a wrap before anybody gets hurt.

The highlight of the day for everybody though was talking to TY!!!! I haven't been home for the past couple mother's days or Christmas's when he has got to call home, so this was my first time talking to him in almost 2 years!! (he comes home in less than 10 weeks!) He sounded SO great and is doing so well! Can't wait to hear all his fun stories when he comes home in March!!!

The next couple days we hung out, played with toys, went and saw some Elk in the freezing cold, painted nails and danced to some more of my man Groban.

A couple days after Christmas we headed down to Provo to meet Alisa, Skyler, Nate and Bailey who were on their way home to St. George from having been in Bountiful. We met up at chili's for lunch and then spent the whole afternoon at Amanda's apartment opening more presents and hanging out.

Alisa and Amanda gave Kylee her birthday presents since they wouldn't get to be there on her actual birthday. Alisa gave her tw0 princess barbies-Cinderella and Belle which she has played with non stop! Barbies is her absolute favorite thing in the world right now and she plays all day long with them! Amanda got her a new baby doll (which she was in desperate need of since her old baby doll is disgusting!) which she loves to take care of. If she's not playing with her barbies, she's playing babies!

Nate got Tyler Iron Man which was THE perfect gift for him! He has loved action figures for the last year and always has one-or two-in his hand at all times. He took this Ironman to show-n-tell with him his first day back to pre-school!

The sisters did a gift exchange as well and I had Amanda. Apparently from this picture we can see that she was SUPER excited about her new body spray and lotion from Victoria Secret! (sorry for all the very poor quality pictures from the day...next time I'll remember to be in charge of the camera :) )

I guess this was the only picture our camera-man got of my gift from sweet Alena! I love the beautiful necklace and bracelet she got me and wore it to church the very next Sunday!

Just hanging out...

That night we got to go visit a WONDERFULLY sweet family that Amanda is working with to teach them English. They wanted to meet us and make us Hot Tamales for dinner and Oh. My. Gosh!!! They were soooooo good! She made a *HOT* batch and a mild one and I have to say...I pride myself on being able to eat some pretty spicy/hot things but I could not eat more than one of her hot ones! ha ha! The two older girls were SO SO SO kind to our kids and even though Kylee was much younger than them they wanted to play with her and Kylee loved all the attention!

After dinner we headed back to Logan and I spent the next day-all 24 hours of it :) - cleaning, ha ha! But it was SOOO worth it! Ahhhh. So satisfied. So happy. So in love.

I would have to say...

December 2011

2012-01-15T06:00:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of December, the kids and I traveled down to Springville to spend the day with my BF for her birthday! One of the Christmas presents we brought down for Macey- much to her mother's dismay :)- was some princess nailpolish. The girls had fun dressing up in their princess outfits and doing each others nails! They are SO cute!!

I have to say...they did a pretty decent job!

We took them to good old Mcd's for some lunch and they spent a good couple hours playing in the play place!

We did a lot of fun Christmas related activities throughout the month of December (you can read about them here) but I don't have any pictures!! Ack what is wrong with me!! I did however get pictures from our FAVORITE Christmas tradition-going to temple square to see the lights!

Tyler thought it was so cool that smoke was rising off the water in the fountain!

He HAD to have his picture taken in front of the lawn of green and blue lights (his favorite colors)!

...and the blue trees!

Bobby thought it was really cool that he could fog up the lens of the camera by blowing on it and get a foggy picture. Hehe...I love him.

He's quite the photographer no?!

SUCH a great night! Oh man, I just love my little family!!!!!!

We also managed to sneak in a visit to Santa a couple days before Christmas! Tyler was soooo nervous sitting on his lap. He sat with his hands perfectly still on his lap the whole time and didn't move his body an inch the entire time he was talking. When Santa asked him what he wanted for Christmas he spit out, "A spiderman web-slinger" like he had been re-hearsing it for the last 30 min-no emotion, no smile, monotone and quick. You could tell his little heart was beating so fast and his eyes were so big. Haha...He was nervous and it was adorable.

Kylee had NO desire to sit on Santa's lap. She did however want to stand next to him and tell him what she wanted. She was shy but not nervous. She looked him straight in the eye the whole time, answered all his questions and responded that she wanted a baby doll for Christmas in her sweet, shy voice (same thing as last year! She absoultely LOOOOOVES playing babies and princesses-not the dress up kind, the barbie kind-and does so ALL day long!). He gave each of them a candy cane and they were on their way!

December also includes Christmas (obviously :) ) and Kylee's birthday but each of those deserve their own post, so those will be up soon!!

November 2011

2012-01-13T06:00:00.000-07:00

November was a BUSY BUSY BUSY month for us!! For one thing, we did soooo many craft projects! Our fridge and walls were plastered with all sorts of paintings, murals, gratitude trees and different activities from THIS project. We went through 4 large tubes of finger paints and had baskets full of "painting clothes" to wash at all times, it was great!!

Unfortuately it was too cold to paint outside by Nov. so we got used to covering the kitchen floor with newspaper and going to town!

These are their 'hand-print trees with fingerprints for the leaves' pictures.

Just a random picture I found on my camera from November...she's so darling I swear I could just eat her up!! Man she gets away with so much more than she should!

Also random...
Tyler came walking in our room one morning with something he found and asked if this was how you were supposed to wear this "light thingy"??

Well I guess if your name was Chip or Dale it would be.

Kylee doesn't take naps anymore so when I walked in her room one day to tell her that her 'quiet time' was over (about an hour period where they are to stay in their rooms reading books, coloring, playing quietly, etc.) and found her asleep I was SO happy! Just because she doesn't take naps everyday doesn't mean she doesn't need them!!

For Thanksgiving, Bobby's dad and stepmom Mary came out from Missouri and spent the Holiday with us. It was SO nice to have family here for the week and get to relax in our own house! My sister Amanda drove up from Provo the day of Thanksgiving and spent the day with us too and we had so so so much food!!! For the life of me I can't find ANY pictures from our week with the Brickers so when I find which memory card I used I'll have to come back and add in those pictures!

The day after Thanksgiving we took down all our fall decor and the first Christmas thing up was our tree!

It's so much fun to be able to involve the kids now in so many of our fun holiday traditions, they really are what make the holiday's special!!

October 2011

2012-01-11T06:00:00.000-07:00

Ok I think it's official...3 months is the LONGEST I've gone not updating the blog (well...maybe when I was pregnant with Kylee and SO SO SO sick I went longer than 3 months, but I don't really count that) and now that all the holidays are over I'm playing MAJOR catchup!!

For Christmas my mom gave my sister Amanda a book she made for her-using Blurb-of her WHOLE mission. Hundreds and hundreds of pictures and letters all bound into one book and the book is absolutely beautiful and SO well put together! I've been wanting to print my blog into a book for a couple years now but have never really been motivated to sit down and spend the time to do it. After seeing the quality of Amanda's and realizing how special it would be to have all of our memories, pictures and stories printed into a *journal* I am SUPER motivated to start getting ours printed out! Which ALSO means that I am super motivated to keep blogging and keep writing down our memories! Sooooo here's to a lot of late nights in my future :)

October 2010

10/15
Back in October our family home evenings were based out of the first few chapters of Nephi so our scripture for the month was 1 Nephi 3:7. The kids worked SO hard to memorize it! I think they did pretty great for such a long verse! The first video is just of them being...them. :) The second video is of them reciting the scripture. *sorry they're sideways...ugh!

Please note the PURE satisfaction on Kylee's face of pushing her brothers buttons and how she tries to play it off as "love". :)

10/16
I was making dinner one night when a football game erupted in my kitchen! The kids were laughing SOOOO hard! I love that the simplest things make them the MOST happy!

10/24
For one of our Family Home Evenings we talked about the Liahona and the importance of making correct choices and being faithful in following the commandments in order to have the spirit be with us. We talked about how the Liahona only worked when Nephi and his family were obedient to the Lord's commandments and it was dependent upon their faith.

For an object lesson we used a modern day type of Liahona-our GPS :)-and were instructed to follow it's directions to get to the temple.

We followed the directions about half the way there and then we thought it'd be a good idea to show Tyler and Kylee that when we don't make good choices and choose to do what we want to do, rather than what we're being asked to do by our knowledgeable guide, than there are consequences. We decided to deviate from the GPS's directions and try to take a shortcut to the temple because we thought that we knew best and that if we ignored the GPS we'd get there faster doing it our way.

Soooo, we chose to go down different streets and turn different ways than the GPS was telling us and ignored it's promptings to turn around and get back on the right street and...we got lost!!! (not really...we knew where we were but the kids didn't so they were lost :) ) We decided we had better listen to our guide and follow it's directions to get back on track on our journey to the temple. They found that it was EASY to find our way to the temple when we made the choice to be obedient and follow the directions on our compass rather than go our own way.

The problem was that our little object lesson ended up working a little too well because by the time we made it to the temple it had just closed and the gates were locked! :(

They had REALLY been looking forward to getting to walk around the temple grounds and Kylee had been so excited "to smell ALL the flowers!".

Then we felt really bad, but they did learn a good lesson!! And because it was fall time and the tress around the temple had lost a lot of big, crunchy leaves we spent a GOOD while playing in the leaves!

10/29
Our ward doesn't do a trunk or treat OR a Halloween Party (which I hate!) so I was happy that the primary put a little activity together for the kids a couple days before Halloween because Tyler and Kylee had SO much fun!

(You can find details on how to make a rag skirt here)

10/30
Carving Pumpkins is always a must in October!!

The only part she was really interested in was playing in the guts...gross.

10/31
Some fun Halloween lunches! (not too healthy I know, but it's what I had on hand to whip up so don't judge mmmmkay?!)

If you missed it, you can see pictures of their Halloween costumes here!

If there's anyone still reading this there will be pictures from November and December coming soon!

My little Trick 'r Treaters!!

2011-11-01T06:00:00.002-06:00

***This might look like the same post I put up on my other blog, but there's lots more pictures here :) ***

Are you sick of chocolate yet?! Nope. Me neither. These two had a BLLLAST this year trick or treating! Last year it was really cold and rainy so they only lasted about one block. This year the weather was sunshine glowing, fall leaves crunching, cool breeze whispering, perfection! My little Kylee had to be drug from house to house last year, and this year after every house would say, "One more house mama!!"

This boy lives and breathes spiderman every day of his life, so it wasn't too hard for him to get into character. :)

I think she pretty much rocked her skeleton princess costume! :)

Some candid Tyler and kylee shots...These pictures are the epitome of my everyday life. No joke...

1. "Kylee hold my hand so I can help you" "um ya...probably not"
2. Crime fighting duo
3.tough guy/gal
4.Tyler stealing lime light...Kylee not happy about it
5. Giving him a good punch in the chest (After he asked for it b/c his "big muscles can take it") and being really happy about it :)

After ringing the doorbell, and waiting in eager anticipation on the porch-their baskets held right in front of them, the words "trick or treat?!?!" right on the tip of their tounge-Tyler would lean over and whisper excitedly to Kylee, "Ky, are you having SO much fun?!" and she would whisper back, "YES!" and nod enthusiastically. They were so fun to watch this year! And they made out like bandits in the candy department. :) We took them trick- or- treating in an older neighborhood and those grandma's and grandpa's just ate them up!

I hope your Halloween was full of candy and laughter too!

Kylee's Halloween Costume

2011-10-28T06:30:00.000-06:00

I finally finished Kylee's Halloween costume and posted all the details on the making of her skeleton princess costume on my Love Sweet Love blog if you're interested!

Lots of updates coming soon! :)

Shamlessly begging for your votes AGAIN! (please?!)

2011-10-21T08:00:00.001-06:00

This was the project I submitted for the 3rd round of American Crafter today and if you have a second I would LOVE it if you could vote for me ONE more time (voting goes thru sun night). This time only 3 people move on to the FINALS!! I have the smallest blog by far out of all 6 contestants that are left so I could really use as many votes as possible! Thanks for being the best friends ever! :)
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I have SO much in my life to be grateful for (like being in round 3 of American Crafter-Eeeeek- Thank you for your votes last week)! And I love that, due to Thanksgiving, the month of November is a time specifically focused on showing gratitude for the amazing blessings in our lives.

Using the theme hands, I came up with an advent calendar that would help my kiddos be grateful for the MANY things their little hands can do. Being that it's Thanksgiving, I decided to create a turkey calendar-using a pumpkin mod podged in fabric, and a gourd-for the base, and used our hands to be the feathers. Dad's and Mom's hands are the the larger feathers that were cut out of craft foam and covered in fabric. My two kids' hands were cut straight onto fabric and sewn onto the larger hands. This way it's a very special, literal reminder, to ALL the members of our family that...Together, OUR hands can help YOUR hands create, explore, serve, celebrate, and show gratitude-the 5 different category's for the month. I then sewed a line between each of their little fingers to create the pockets to hold the "hand" activity for that day that corresponds to that weeks category. And of course, the BEST part about any advent calendar is the candy, so using twine I tied a tootsie roll to each finger for a treat once the activity for that day has been completed!
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Click HERE to vote. The voting poll is on the upper right hand side of the page and I'm contestant #5. THANK you! (also...you can find all the details and 24 activities on my craft blog HERE)

Thank you friends!!

2011-10-17T09:42:00.002-06:00

Just wanted to say THANK YOU so much for those of you who voted for me in the American Crafter competition! I came in 3rd out of 10 which means I get to move on to the next round!! There are now 6 ladies left and this week's theme is FABRIC!

I'm SO excited to see what the other 5 amazing women come up with for this round. Sewing is NOT my forte so I'm pretty nervous, but I'm excited about the project I'm doing and if nothing else, I'm thankful this competition kicked my booty in a creative gear I haven't pushed myself into before! Thanks again for your votes, I soooo appreciate it!!!

Vote for me Again {PLEEEEASE!} :)

2011-10-14T09:12:00.004-06:00

Soooo, I'm back again for round 2 of the American Crafter competition! This rounds theme was House of Order!

For this round I decided to make some little vintage storage crates for all year round. I would super duper love it if you could take a moment and go HERE to vote for them!! :) PLUS, if you're looking for some order for your home, you are not going to want to miss the other 9 projects; those ladies have got it going on!!

You can check out the quick and simple version here, but if you want all the nitty-gritty, behind-the-scene views, you'll want to check it out on my craft blog here.

It would mean so so much to me if you could take a quick sec to vote! Voting will go through Sunday night 8 pm and I'm contestant #3. :)