Self-Sufficiency

Yesterday I was in the process of completing the big pajama pants sewathon for my kids. While I was doing this, my daughter apparently decided she was hungry. When I walked through the kitchen to show off my progress to Danny, I noticed Ellie sitting at the table with a pop tart on a plate... happy as a clam. Upon further inspection, I realized she had scooted the stool over to the counter (we have very high counters, so quite scary actually) climbed on top of the counter, grabbed herself a plate, got down, went into the pantry where she got herself a pop tart, put it onto the plate and sat up to eat.

Now, I know she loves pop tarts. She would eat them all day long if I let her... IF I let her! Now I have to keep my eyes on her, as she will just help herself whenever she wants. Sometimes I wish she was my little baby still. :)

PJs

For the first time I am actually making my children's Christmas pajamas this year instead of buying them. I just finished Ellie's and I love them! They turned out really cute! I even took the time to put a pocket in the back (something that I probably won't do for the boys). Anyway, check them out...

Front:

Back:

PS... To see them bigger (up close) just click on the picture.

It's Tiring To Be A Girl

Ever since Kayla was here and introduced my daughter to painting nails, Ellie is always wanting to have pretty nails. She sometimes gets confused and calls them pony tails instead of fingernails (silly girl). She loves to have them painted and she actually sits still while they are drying. This particular time, she actually fell asleep while her nails were drying. She was so cute, just sitting there with her fingers spread and her head on her arm. See for yourself... So cute!

Christmas Decor

I've been meaning to post pictures of our tree for a while now. We got a real tree this year. It is the first year we have gotten a real tree. And it's BEAUTIFUL! I love it. Danny says it's too big. :)

I was also able to put out my nice nativity set. I love that thing! I wish it was pertinent for me to keep it up year round!

Pictures

Fun In The Snow

After the big snowstorm earlier this month, the kids wanted to go play in it. Preston had the grand idea of making a snow "gum-ball machine", so he and his friend went to work on that. Kaden, on the other hand, wanted a really great snow fort. He invited a neighbor friend over to help him with it. They got about 1 foot of the walls up. Then it got dark. It was a good idea though. :) As for Ellie, she just wanted to be a part of the big kids' fun. And she just played with the fluffy white stuff.

Pictures!

From Thanksgiving To Christmas!

We had such a wonderful Thanksgiving! Danny's family came and stayed. We had everyone together except Matt and Kim who are in Virginia (we miss you guys). We loved visiting with everyone and (I must say) had a really great Thanksgiving meal (turkey, ham, potatoes, gravy, stuffing, pretzel salad, spinach salad, rolls, honey butter, etc, etc. - I could keep going). It was awesome to see everyone. And we know what it took for them all to make it here. Between the many storms, it was amazing that they were here.

Anyway, Danny's mom gave each of us girls a project to complete. It is such a cute advent calendar (of sorts). I really wanted to finish it by today so that my kids could join in the fun of counting down to Christmas. Here is the final product:

Isn't it awesome. I just have to say that Ann thought of absolutely everything and I really appreciate the time she put in to this craft. The picture doesn't do it justice. It looks even better in person. And, if you can't tell, each of the little people, animals, buildings, etc hang on buttons. So from now until Christmas, the kids will get to hang up one picture each day.

Now all I have to do is get to the store and buy a hook for it to hang on. I was going to do that today, but from my earlier post, you might gather that it's just a little too snowy out for that kind of outing. Maybe tomorrow...

(Thanks again Ann!!! You're the best!!!)

What!?! No School???

One of the pros to us moving to the Boise area is that everyone we talked to said that the winters here are so mild. They all said that it might snow a little but that it usually melted by the next day.

Well yesterday it started to snow. And it snowed... and snowed... and snowed. I think it has only let up for a few minutes this afternoon and then started back up again.

So when we woke up to the announcement of "no school for Meridian School District", all I could say is, "mild, my bum." Oh well. I've lived with the snow my whole life, guess I'm just meant to live in the fluffy white stuff for the rest of it as well.

Our Back Yard:

Out The Front Door:

Recessionista

I know I've blogged about this before. But there is a contest going on at http://www.recessionistaparty.com/ and they are giving away 3 $50 gift cards. I really like their stuff (especially their hats and scarves)... Just wanted to let ya'll know.

Video Time

I have had a request to post more videos on my blog. So here we go... (mainly for grandparents; if you are not a grandparent and still watch them all - Good on ya) :)

(Preston had been pretending earlier about how when the blocks fell, they would go through a long process of falling down the stairs. This is Ellie copying him. "Cool trick! It fell off the wall, and on the step, and off the wall, and hit the wall, and hit the wall, and hit the wall, then down the stairs.")

(This was when Preston was doing the pretending. Ellie still wanted to be the one pretending)

(Ellie playing dead. So funny!)

(Ellie pouting.)

(We have started a tradition of playing a game on Sunday as a family. We have done Monopoly, Hide & Seek, and this last Sunday we played Yahtzee. It's been lots of fun and here is Preston rolling. He was on a team with Kaden. I loved how he would say, "I whoosh for a 6, I whoosh for a 6!")

(Kaden playing Yahtzee. He was so serious about rolling.)

(Ellie was being crazy! She got all wound up right before bed. And whenever she says that she loves someone, she'll say, "I like-a Mommy," etc. Funny.)

And as a side note... These videos took forever to upload so I hope there is somebody out there who is glad I posted them. :)

Reflections

Ok, so we all know that it's fairly unlikely that I will get caught up on the blog. I mean, I am 4 months behind on this thing. So I decided to just start anew.

Kaden has the opportunity to participate in Reflections. For those who don't know what this is... it challenges students to create art inspired by a specific theme. Each student can submit something in one of six arts areas - dance choreography, film production, literature, musical composition, photography, and visual arts. They are judged, receive prizes, and (if they continue winning) move up the levels, eventually to the national level.

Anyway, Kaden decided he wanted to participate in the photography category for this contest. He was very excited about it and wanted to use my "nice" camera. So yesterday (Saturday) Danny showed him the basics of taking pictures and we walked around the yard with him as he took some really nice nature photos. The theme this year is "Together We Can". And the title of his finished project is "Together We Can Discover Nature". I am super proud of him! He did an amazing job with his pictures.

And HERE they are.

For those who don't go through the slideshow of pictures, this is the final product...

June

We have a lot of pictures for June...

My birthday was in June (30 years to be exact - ugh) and Danny splurged and got me the nicest camera I have ever owned. It takes still shots as well as video, so I've been having a blast with it (when I can and when I'm not busy packing or unpacking another box.)

First, we have lots of pictures of my cute kids. While playing around with the settings on the camera, I figured that they're my greatest subjects to practice on. :)

For my bday, I decided that I wanted to try making homemade ravioli. It sounded yummy! :) It was actually delicious. Our only complaint was that we didn't have a pasta press so the pasta was a little thick, but other than that - YUMMM! Ellie just really loved the bread; which we happened to buy from Macaroni Grill. She ate more of that bread than she has ever eaten of anything in one setting.

We also had some friends come over for a "birthday party". (We miss you Angie and Chad.) Chad let my kids play with his iPhone and they had a hard time putting the thing down. What is it with kids and electronics these days?

Chad and Angie brought over Dance Dance Revolution. We played that and Guitar Hero for my birthday. I know, strange request... but we did do what I wanted. :) Even Danny danced for us. :)

In other pictures, Ellie the banana head was eating some yogurt and decided that it would look great on her nose. Then the next day, she decided to finger paint with her yogurt. Again, I had just gotten the camera and was a little picture-happy. :)

June was about the time when Ellie decided that she loved trying on other peoples shoes. She is still in that phase and still loves to wear others' shoes (whether it's mom's or dad's or her brothers', it does not matter).

When Danny and I were in the process of looking for a house in Boise, we had our computer set up with his laptop beside it and we went through hundreds of homes virtually in the matter of a weekend. We narrowed down our list to give to the realtor. Basically, we did a TON of the work in finding this place. It was actually at the top of our list before we even came to Boise to walk through homes. Anyway, Danny took a picture of our computer setup... we called it our command center. We spent a lot of hours at that command center!

When the kids woke up for Father's Day, they wanted to draw pictures and make cards for Danny. They all did a really great job and were so cute while making them.

In between moves, I tried to take the kids to the park as many times as possible. It was my way of trying to make up for the lack of fun this summer. That is also when Preston finally learned how to keep himself going on a swing. Now that's all he ever wants to do.

I also have a couple of videos that I recorded of Ellie. They are so cute that I can't help posting them. :) It's also one of the first videos I recorded with my new camera. It's not completely in focus, I'm still working out how to download it off my camera, etc. Just bear with me. In explanation of the first video, Ellie's favorite cartoon is Dora. There is a Dora episode with "super babies" and there's a song that they sing in the episode. She LOVES that episode and loves to sing that song. In the second video, Ellie was really starting to talk a lot and say different words.

I guess that sums up June. It was a busy month, and worth the post!

Pics

Video 1

Video 2

May

Ok... so, obviously I am way behind in my posting. It has been a CRAZY summer to say the least. With 2 moves in 2 months - well, that right there is worth the label of "crazy".

I decided that instead of giving each "event" a different post, I would give each month it's own post. So we will start with May since that's about where I left off.

I'll be honest, when we were still in Springville, we had a lot of packing to do. We organized everything into boxes that would stay packed after the move to Mapleton and boxes that we needed unpacked. We managed to keep a lot of stuff packed that some people would have thought of as necessities - like dishes. Instead of unpacking all of our dishes, we ate on plastic (which Danny absolutely hated - especially when a fork broke while trying to eat dinner and splattered him in the face with food.)

With all of the packing and sorting and cleaning and chucking (we threw away a lot of unneeded stuff!), our kids watched more cartoons and movies than I care to divulge. I felt pretty bad for them and I've been working on making it up to them lately; but that's for a different post.

So we have pictures of them watching tv, pictures of them eating licorice while watching tv, and even the pictures where you can't tell they're watching tv - they are. :(

Also included in our pictures this month is Ellie's first hair cut. She was beginning to have a mullet. One day I just couldn't stand it anymore and while she was in the bathtub I took the scissors to the back of her hair. It wasn't much, but it sure made her look more like a toddler than my little baby girl. Since then, she has definitely grown into the toddler stage; but I still call her my little baby girl.

And finally, Kaden is always such a big helper. He is always willing to be my little babysitter whenever I need him to. One of those days when I was busy packing, the kids were very bored. I finally suggested that Kaden take the other two on a walk around the neighborhood and he gladly accepted the task. They were so cute - all holding hands - and I had to take some pictures. They are so adorable!!!

Well, that was May. And HERE are pictures.

Sold!

I know I haven't updated this blog for a LONG time. And I know I have a lot to catch up on and a lot of pictures to post. A LOT has been going on around here! But I was too excited about this particular picture that I just have to post it. :)

That is our house!!! We went to Boise this last weekend, looked at house after house after house. We fell in love with 4 different houses. We chose the cheapest one of them. :) And we just finished signing the counter offer they sent us this morning. Now just to close on the loan and move all of our stuff. Exciting times!!!

For more pictures of our new home, click on this link...

Virtual Tour

Amen! :)

We had a super special day Saturday as we celebrated Kaden's baptism. He's such a special little boy. I continue to learn a lot from his sweet personality and the good choices he makes.

He actually was baptized twice. :) Danny forgot to say amen the first time until Kaden was already in the water and by that time it came out as AMEN!!! It almost sounded as enthusiastic as a baptist prayer. We all had a pretty good chuckle. :)

But, again, we are very proud of Kaden and the choice he made to get baptized. He didn't take the decision lightly. He was very serious in his prayers as to whether or not it was the right choice for him to make. I'm not convinced that I, at 8 years old, thought so diligently about the commitment to get baptized as much as he did.

We love you so much Kaden!

Pictures

Easter '10

Easter was a lot of fun this year. We got to enjoy the weekend with Danny's siblings. We had an Easter egg hunt at Justin and Megan's house on Saturday. Megan provided some egg hunting glasses to help the kids in their search. And we each supplied enough eggs for an entire army to have an easter egg hunt. The kids had such a fun time.

Then we all stayed the night for ping pong, games, and a super yummy dinner. Easter morning we woke up and read some Easter books that the kids got for Easter (Kaden and Kinley actually listened to the books - the other kids played). Then we enjoyed a delicious Easter lunch.

It was a lot of fun and we were very happy to be able to celebrate this sacred holiday with loved ones. Thanks to Justin and Megan for the use of their home. It was another successful party at the party house. :)

Pictures

Kaden's 8th Birthday

I'm finally able to catch up on some posts and one of the more recent events would be Kaden's 8th birthday. We celebrated for a complete 2 days. Thursday (his actual b-day) he wanted alfredo pasta for dinner and a Patrick (from spongebob) cake. He opened his presents - Legos, Legos, and more Legos - and then enjoyed putting together his new Lego race car.

On Friday, we did his favorite family activity - calzone and movie night. We have been doing this every Friday for quite a while and Kaden requested a special calzone and movie night where he would choose the movie. We got the new Ice Age movie and Aliens In The Attic.

All in all, it was a wonderful family celebration. (And I can't believe I have an eight year-old!!!)

Pictures

My Cute Kids

One evening (it happened to be Kaden's birthday) I sat down and took some pictures of my adorable children. I don't do this enough.

Click Here

Ellie's Hair

Finally having a little girl is kind of fun. I actually really enjoy doing her hair and making her look so pretty. I don't do it every day - I'm just not that dedicated. But when I do make her hair pretty, I enjoy it. :)

Pictures

PS. As you can see from the pictures, just cause I do Ellie's hair does not mean that I do Preston's hair. :)

Basketball Pics

I'm finally able to get Kaden's basketball pictures uploaded to our computer. (Yes, that was also clear back in January.) These were taken the day that Danny sub-coached. The pictures aren't the best quality and I haven't edited them yet. At least I'm finally getting them on the blog though. :)

Click Here

Baby Doll or Little Girl

For Christmas, we got Ellie a little baby doll that came with a stroller, high chair, and bassinet. We also got her a tinker bell chair. She loves the doll and stroller. And she loves the chair. But she didn't use them in the conventional way. :) Eventually she did start to actually push the doll around in the stroller; but for a couple of months she just wanted to set the doll in her chair and she wanted to sit in the stroller.

The stroller is meant for the doll; therefore, she doesn't fit in it all that well. It was quite difficult for her to wiggle into. She would put her hands on the floor, look between her legs, and back up 'til she could sit in it. Many times it would roll away while she did this move. She would get really mad and throw a tantrum. We finally learned to keep the stroller in front of the couch to keep it from rolling away from her.

She's such a funny girl!

Girl Talk

Back in January (yes, I'm that far behind on this blog) Ellie got a hold of my phone and "talked" and "talked" and "talked". She walked around for a full hour with the phone to her ear. Hope it's not a sign of things to come. :)

"I'm Starving"

This morning, at approximately 1:30 AM, Danny and I were awakened to Preston rushing down the stairs frantically. Of course, the first thing that I thought was that someone had an "accident" and we were gonna have a mess to clean up.

Danny beat me out of bed. I was in the process of climbing out of bed when I heard what Preston was so worked up about. This is what I heard:

(sounding panic-stricken) "I need food. I'm so hungry. I'm starving. I need to eat."

Apparently the 7 bites of chicken and pasta that I practically had to force him to eat last night was not quite enough to hold him out until morning. Either that or he was still asleep through this whole exchange. I have a tendency to think it's the latter. :)

Danny patiently told him that it was almost breakfast time so he could go back to sleep and he would eat when it was morning. He laid back down, went back to sleep, and this morning he had a toaster strudel and string cheese for breakfast. (Don't ask me - that was his choice for breakfast.)

And The Verdict Is...

I waited as long as I possibly could... :)

Danny received an email last night from ASU. It was a surprise to both of us since their website still said that his application was still in review. And the first word in the email was congratulations.

Yes, we are in! We are super excited. We stopped celebrating long enough last night to call parents to tell them. It is now official... We will be moving to Phoenix this summer and Danny will be attending ASU's Master's of Arts, Media, and Engineering program in the fall.

I am so proud of Danny. He has worked so hard throughout our marriage to support our family and to be the best he can be at everything. And he continues to work as hard as he can, in everything he does, to continue moving us up in life. I love that man so much and again, I'm SO proud of him.

Give Some Luv...

So Danny is participating in a contest in his GIS world. It is for a mapping application mashup. For those of you who do not know what that means (I would be one of you if I was not married to him) it is taking some general data and putting that info on a map to create a new application. Anywho... Danny has spent a lot of time on his application and he had to create a youtube video to introduce the app. The youtube video is shown on the right, so give him some love and rate him 5 stars. :) (not bad for being his first youtube video.)

Application posted on Danny's website

Stressful and Busy Life

Sometimes life gets frustratingly stressful to the point that you can feel every muscle in your body tense up and give you more aches and pains than you care to admit. I'm not saying that it has been so traumatic that I just want to sit down and cry (although tears are sometimes near the surface) :). It's just that I can definitely feel the muscles in my body protesting against the tension I have been feeling.

You all know that we have applied to graduate school and we are STILL anxiously waiting for the results for that little adventure. A couple of weeks ago Danny applied for a telecommuting job that would certainly be PERFECT for the "going to school full-time with an entire family to provide for" syndrome. It has been an extremely stressful couple of weeks since we can't remember a time when we applied for a job that we wanted as badly as this one.

It was an extremely arduous application and testing process. With resume round, 2 phone interviews including the "technical" interview, taking several complex technical tests on the computer, flying out to Alabama for personal interviews (4 to be exact), and security background checks... Let's just say that every step of the process consisted of us waiting somewhat impatiently. I am usually one who can just let go of the stress of the moment 'cause I know it won't help. I just couldn't find a way to do that this time.

Now let me just step back a moment and say that when Danny and I first decided to go back to school, I was willing (if it was the right thing to do) to go back to work to support our family as Danny worked on his education. It was a difficult decision, but I was willing to do it. However, as I earnestly prayed about becoming a working mother again, I was told in no uncertain terms by the spirit that I should continue as a stay-at-home mom. It was a very powerful answer to my prayers. Back to the job... Because I had had this experience, money has been a big concern of mine for when/if we go to school. (p.s. I still feel strongly that we will be accepted).

After Danny returned from Alabama, it was time for us to wait once again. After two days of waiting, we were offered the position. We are very excited about the prospects of what this job can bring and we feel so blessed.

Once again, Heavenly Father has shown me (personally and in a very real way) that He will bless us if we just leave it up to Him. I'm trying more than ever to just put our lives in His hands.

Team Player

Kaden has started basketball again. He had 2 practices and now he has a game each week. It is really fun to watch these kids play. Some of them are the "star players" and others run around chasing butterflies, as Danny would say. Kaden is somewhere in the middle - as a mother I like to think he's more on the side of star than butterfly chaser.

Danny got the chance to "coach" one of the practices as the real coach was out of town that week. I have pictures of that week but am unable to post them because we are going to be doing a system upgrade to our computer. I don't want to put any more pics on my computer that would just have to be backed up and then moved back over to our computer when the update is done. So I will post them later. But it was a lot of fun to watch Danny with the butterfly chasers - I could tell when he was getting a little frustrated. He tried to teach them some real defense and there were many who just kept saying, "when do we get to shoot?"

Danny has also been working with Kaden at home. Our seven year-old now understands the term "box out" and he has really been working on shooting one-handed. Last night at his game, Kaden was the one player that was always under the basket whether it was waiting for one of his teammates to pass him the ball so he could shoot, or waiting for the rebound. That doesn't necessarily mean he always got the ball, but he was really trying hard to be a team player.

He has said that basketball is a hard sport cause you have to keep your eye on the ball, know when you're on defense or offense, know where the guy is on the other team that you need to guard, and still try to steal the ball or make a basket. He is a very technically minded boy and therefore has to spell out exactly what he needs to do in order to play correctly. And he tries very hard to not be a ball hog. Sometimes that means he passes the ball as soon as he gets it. :)

He's doing really well and I'm excited for him to have the chance to learn more of this sport that his dad loves so much. Way to go Kaden!

(Oh, and they lost their first game but won the game last night. But, really, who's counting. :)

New Shoes For Haitians

Check out this post. I saw the first picture and was so saddened. This is a great little "fundraiser".

http://www.recessionistaparty.com/2010/02/free-shoes-for-everyonein-haiti.html

New Years Eve

We enjoyed New Years Eve and New Years Day with Danny's brothers and their families. We started out early the morning of the Eve and we played games all day at Justin and Megan's house. The kids LOVED playing with their cousins and the grown-ups LOVED playing ping pong. We spent the night there (after staying up 'til nearly 4 in the morning) and then went to Heber on New Years Day.

We went sledding on New Years day which was way fun. We went to Kim's (sister-in-law) parents unfinished cabin where they had a nice little hill for sledding. Her dad also had a fun little tracker on snowmobile tracks and we were pulled around behind that as well. Kaden loved the sledding and really loved playing with his cousin, Kinley. Preston really love playing on the "playground" with his cousin, Tanner and wouldn't stop eating the snow. It really was a blast until I ran into a port-a-potty. :)

Funny story, really. The hill was actually a road. On one side of the road was the edge of the hill which dropped with a steep decline - we stayed away from that. And on the right side at the bottom of the hill-road was a port-a-potty. Danny had built up a bank as to prevent anyone from hitting the thing. No one had hit it all day long and we were having a lot of fun.

The last run of the day, I took Preston up the road to go down one final time. On our way up, I said to Preston, "Should we go up higher so the ride lasts longer?" And, of course, he said, "Yes!" So we went up higher than we had all day long. Therefore, we went faster than we had all day long. Therefore, we jumped the bank that Danny had built and hit the port-a-potty going backwards (the tube always turned me around so I was going down backwards) going what seemed a million miles per hour.

I hurt my neck and back and had a pretty bad headache. Danny and his little bro, Matt, gave me a blessing a little later. Long story short, I've been recovering from what I think was a cracked floating rib for the past few weeks. But it seems much better now. :) And again, funny story now that I look back at it.

Here's some pics:

New Years Eve

New Years Day

Christmas 2009

Our Christmas was really great! We made cookies on Christmas Eve and the boys really enjoyed that. I told Kaden that he was allowed to wake up early on Christmas morning 'cause I was sick of being the first one out of bed. :) So when they got ready for bed, Kaden told me he was for sure going to wake up really early. We also put Ellie's baby monitor in their bedroom so they could let us know when they woke up. We wanted them to wait to come downstairs until we were able to be ready to take pictures of them.

They went to bed at around 8:00 and by 9:30 we heard Kaden in the monitor whispering, "Dad, is it midnight yet? Can we come down yet? Has Santa come yet?" Of course he was sent back to bed. :)

Kaden forgot all about the monitor and came downstairs at about 6:00 Christmas morning. We were lucky that we woke up and I was able to stop him and send him back upstairs so that we could wake up Preston and Ellie. We got the kids and they all came downstairs together. Ellie wasn't quite sure why we had woken her up so early. Preston was excited about everything he saw and would have started opening every present he saw (whether it had his name or not) if we hadn't stopped him. And Kaden was really excited about his spongebob spinning toothbrush. :0) They finally spotted the robots from Santa and were super excited to play with them as well as the Nerf guns that were from me and Danny.

We enjoyed opening presents, played with toys, made a nice dinner, and ate Christmas dinner with Grandma and Grandpa Hyde and Uncle Wes. Weston stayed the night and we played games, games, and more games. Overall, it was a thoroughly enjoyable Christmas.

Oh, and one funny story is that after we got Ellie dressed that day, she wanted to put her new shoes on. She walked around in her new shoes for about an hour and loved the sound they made on the kitchen tile. She also kept walking to the garage door while waving her hand. She was so excited that she could walk with these shoes on and she just wanted to go bye-bye.

Christmas Eve Cookies

Christmas Day

Ellie Walking

Yes, it has been forever since I posted. And yes, I have a ton of pictures to include in my updates. We'll start with Ellie. She is getting so big and so fun! I love this little sweetheart to pieces. She has the cutest little faces and she is totally a mommy's girl. She does love her daddy though. And she loves it when daddy comes home. Just last night when he came home, she ran around chasing him and laughing for about 5 minutes. She's so much fun.

I never posted pictures of her walking so here are some. Hope you enjoy...

Walking

One day Ellie grabbed my phone and walked around with it in her hand. She walked around and talked" on the phone for about a half hour. She wouldn't give me my phone back and she didn't want to stop. It was so cute!

Talking on the phone