Happy Birthday Brennon!!

To get from this....

To this....
Has been a blast!!

Though he still is only "army" crawling and has only two teeth....

Life couldn't get any sweeter without you.

We love you Brennon Boo!! Happy Birthday!!

Stimulus Package $800,000,000,000

Just how big is eight hundred billion dollars? Let's suppose you spent $1,000,000 every single day since Jesus was born (2009 years), that's right, one million every day. That's over 733,000 days. You would still have spent about $67,000,000,000 less than the US government just spent. Sixty-seven billion dollars less! You could pay off 5,000,000 mortgages with an average of $160,000/mortgage. You could give over $6,000 to every household in America. I swear I would spend the $6,000 to stimulate the economy. How would you spend your $6,000?

Bye Bye Binkie

So, we've given ourselves an ultimatum. Since Shelby is content to keep her binkie until she's in 9th grade we decided we needed to nip this thing in the bud. We have three things that we want to do this year. 1. Binkie 2. Potty training 3. Big girl bed- in that order. So, we've divided the days up equally to give her a break in between major changes this year. Today, we started binkie! Here she is lovin on her binkie for the last time...

Here she is saying goodbye... Sorry the video is so dark. It's from our camera!

She was pretty happy about the whole "goodbye" thing until Randy put the garbage under the sink. Then it began to dawn on her that she wasn't getting it back and she started crying. I wavered for about 3 seconds and then gave her a good helping of tough love and kissed her! Wish us Luck!! We're gonna need it!!

Think Spring Boutique

You're invited to a "Think Spring" boutique on

Saturday, February 28, 2009

At my home from 10:00AM- 12:30PM

Vendors Include....

Pampered Chef- Michelle Farnsworth

Lia Sofia- Louise Yarger

Vinyl lettering & Photography- Kimberly Lynn

Scentsy Candles- Starlene Hatch

Photo Cards- Jamie Garner (www.myprincesspie.com)

Sensaria- Liz Flesvig

Hope to see you all there!!

Dream

As many of you know, I have VIVID dreams. I've been known to: scream, throw stuff, see people, cry, and even tear stuff out from under my bed. Let me just say that sometimes my dreams feel so real that I don't know at all that I'm dreaming. That was the case last night. It had started out a VERY bad night with Keilie not feeling well and crying out in her "fake" cry every 20 minutes. Let's just say that at 3:00, I was not very sympathetic to that cry. She finally fell asleep in time for Shelby to wake up. She's got two teeth coming in. By the time I got to sleep, I was TIRED! I fell into one of my dreams and had a hard time coming out of it. It was that someone was trying to get after me and signed me up for the ARMY. I came to grips only to be told that I would not be deployed in May, but in 5 hours. I was terrified and heartbroken at the same time. I had to find a way to call all of my loved ones and tell them goodbye- maybe even for the last time- and convey the love I had for each in these small 5 hours. I woke up crying and sweating, only to realize it was a dream. Of course I was happy to wake up, but it has had a profound impact on me. I would like to take this time to let everyone that reads this post know how much you mean to me. It's not the same- obviously I'm not dying or going away in the next 5 hours- but the concept remains the same. I love you all so much. I don't know what I'd do without your love, support, humor, patience, and spirit. I am a better person for knowing all of you. I also want to take this time to say sorry for anything that I have done to ever hurt any of you. I am truly sorry. I get emotional sometimes and take things wrong and say the wrong things. If I have offended you in any way, please accept my apologies. In a way I am grateful for that dream. It was a "nightmare" of a dream, but has shown me that I may have been taking my "good life" for granted. I love you all. More than these simple words can express!

Don't hold a candle!!

My friend had this on her blog along with a SERIOUSLY funny post about her BFF ice cream who is married to a JERK- thunder thighs. Anyway, let me put things into perspective for many of you~ At least Brennon's thighs aren't this big!

WHEEEEEEN!

So, I'm not sure what it is about today, but if any of you have seen Sword in the Stone, this will be funny for you!

And I quote, "When!"

"Dash it all. WHEEEEEN!!"
I guess Shelby likes it chocolatey! And, because Caden left it out, he's cleaning it. He's got a lot of work to do vacuuming and cleaning this up! Now he's wishing for that Janitor!!

Fun Facts

I started teaching my new class Sunday with Brennon as my "aid." I told them that he'd be one at the end of the month- well, sort of. Anyway, it dawned on me that he'll be 2 when he gets baptized, 4 when he can drive and date, 5 when he's on his mission, and about 6 when he gets married. That was kind of fun, although I still HATE leap day!

Boots

Caden took his snow boots "snowboarding" with Randy on Saturday. He got them pretty muddy! He came home and made quite the mess all over the floor, so we told him to let them dry out in the garage. Today as he's getting ready for school, he comes in and proceeds to stomp around the wood floors. I was changing Brennon's diaper and getting irritated by the second and told him to come to me. That's when I notice that his boots are COVERED in dirt. I realized what he had been doing and asked him why he was making such a mess on my floor. He said, "because I don't want to get it all over at school!" Yep, home is a much better place to get dirty. Only, I'm the janitor, not someone actually paid to clean! NICE!!

Hungry

So, this little darling, whom you all know I LOVE, has been wasting her dinner on a regular basis for the past year or so. She has wasted good food for the past three nights and it's thrown me over the edge. I told her that if she didn't finish her food tonight that she'd be spending some time in her room. She, of course, had to go to the bathroom the minute we pulled out the desert. I said- hoping that she'd want to eat-, "it's too bad you have to go to your room. We're having some good times." She looked at me and said, "I could just watch while I starve." Man, she's good! I wish I could "starve" the way she does!

Gospel Doctrine

So, with the recent happenings with our investment, we have been pondering a TON about inspiration and decisions. At the beginning, we prayed and felt really great about the decision, only now to regret it. So, when the topic came up today in Gospel Doctrine, Randy thought he would find out what everyone else thought about the topic. So, he asks, "What about the times when you feel really good about it and then it turns out to be a total disaster?" The joke was made, "like marriage!" To set the record straight, he was not referring to our marriage, not even just marriage in general. We've both come to realize that sometimes what we interperate as "the spirit," may just be our own feelings and longings. Joseph Smith asked two times to give the first 116 pages of the manuscript to Martin Harris and was told no. The third time he was given the answer yes. This doesn't mean that the third time was ok, but just that Joseph had asked and wanted it so much, that he willed it to be yes. This may be the case with our investment, but not with our marriage!

Disgusting Date

Randy took me on a date last night after the hard two weeks I've endured. He took me to 303, a fine dining restaurant, but they were closed till 5:30. He then took me to Boticcelli's, another fine dining restaurant, but they were closed with not hours posted. So, we decided to try On the Border, since I'd never been to one. We got there at 5:00, were seated and got our waters. We decided to share the Sampler. As were were getting our free chips and salsa, I noticed that they hadn't cleaned off the trash from another customer. Then, I got my plate and it was dirty. Cheese was stuck to the edges. We got our food, which was burned on some of the edges. I was not impressed. We splurged on desert, a Dulce Le Leche cheesecake. Any of you know that Randy loves caramel and I love cheesecake. We waited for about 10 minutes to have the waitress come and say it would be right out. We'd waited, it wasn't like they had to make it from scratch. When it arrived, we knew it wasn't made from scratch, since it was frozen enough to use the steak knife to cut pieces off to eat. The nasty thing was that there was a hair on the plate. We left a note to have them thaw the desert, it wasn't good frozen. And gave them a small tip. Needless to say, we're not going back!

Special Valentine

I was subtly asking Caden if there was a special Valentine in his class. He said, "what's that?" I answered, " Someone that you like more than others." He said, "Yeah, YOU!" I'm the luckiest girl in the world. He's such a sweety. Looks like Randy has some competition!

Celebrity Morph

MyHeritage: Family tree - Genealogy - Celebrity

I think I'm going to dye my hair blonde, cap my teeth, botox my lips, and lipsuction my whole body!

New Shoes

When your shoes get too tight, you could either do this...

Or get new ones!

Just a fun memory from childhood.

A Spoon full of Sugar!

Tonight I used an idea from one of my favorite movies, Mary Poppins. More specifically the song, "A spoon full of sugar."

As anyone that has seen that movie knows that as they're singing this song, they "Snap, the jobs a game," and the room cleans itself. Now, I do not have magical powers, but I do have a brain. I came up with a game, used my "sugar sweet excited voice" and bribed my kids with treats. I'm tired of cleaning all the time by myself, so I put together a game. We'd all clean something together for 15 minutes and then get a "grasshopper." We did this for about an hour. I got comments like, "I love this game," "I like doing chores when it's a game," "I like working all together." One of my favorite memories with my dad was one such "game." He used his "sugar sweet excited voice," where we'd put all the chores on separate paper and picked them out of a hat. We'd race to see who got done fastest. I don't remember if there were treats, but to this day, it is a sweet memory of my dad. I love spoons filled with sugar!

Night Frights/Terrors

One night in 2004, Randy was out of town and I had put the kids to bed. I went to bed as early as I could, since I had a new baby. About 2 hours later, I was awakened by blood curdling screams coming from Caden. As I ran into his room, I found him sitting straight up with his eyes open screaming for "mommy" over and over again. I got right in his face and was asking him what was wrong. He continued to scream for me and was shaking. I was so scared, I started to cry begging him to look at me. "I am right here," I kept telling him. I finally turned on the light and walked him across the hall to the bathroom. He kind of woke up and I realized he didn't know he'd been screaming. As the years have passed, we've come to know that these episodes are called "Night Frights." As soon as he starts screaming in his sleep, we run down, turn on all of the lights, and make him go to the bathroom. When asked what he'd been dreaming about, he NEVER remembers, and has even told us that "we're funny." Even if we wake him up immediately and ask. Lately he's been screaming for Keilie or Shelby, but every time it's like someone's torturing the one he's calling for and yelling "NOOOOOOOOOO." Although it's been 5 years since he had his first episode, it still breaks my heart to hear him start. He's had 4 in the last two weeks. He goes in spurts of lot in a month, and not one for another month. The one thing that remains the same is the screaming. It's the scariest thing imaginable that first couple of times. The hard part is that they are supposed to go till he's 12. It may go less, it may go more. I'm just glad to know he can't remember when he awakes. I want to know, but then I don't. It's a hard thing to come to grips with.