Saturday...

Saturday we got to drive to Logan to see this beautiful niece baptized. And we saw this handsome nephew blessed. I got to hold him and he is so precious!
Also witnessed Brecken dipping everything into the frosting on his cake because he just really wanted to eat it!!!
Grossed out watching Mikaela shove a WHOLE PIECE OF CAKE into her mouth! She's gorgeous otherwise!
And see the beauty of nature in the trees changing colors. It was beautiful to see the reds and oranges and yellows amidst some greens. Beautiful drive and fun day!

Flashback Friday

I am 6 months old in this picture. That is Gina that is holding me. She is 11 and doing her own hair (can you tell?). Marni is to the one on the right that looks thrilled to be in the picture, and that would be Amy on the left that looks stoned.

I remember that ugly afghan. I wonder what happened to it. Fun times!

picture updates and milestones

Last week I did two ponies on top when I fixed Sidney's hair in the morning. So fun and so cute. She kept grabbing them all day long trying to figure out what they were.
She is the biggest copycat that I have ever seen. Seriously, she is so smart! She always takes her bath at the same time as Jonathan and just by watching him do the shampoo on his hair, she has learned how to do her own. I noticed her doing it a couple of weeks ago, but Mike just noticed it this week and so I grabbed the camera and got a couple of shots of her doing her shampoo. She can really work up a lather!
Jenny's big idea was to keep track of the scores from Dancing with the Stars on her little chalkboard that she bought at the dollar store. She is such a nerd! No actually, she reminds me of myself. Back in the old days, during the Miss America and other pageants when they gave the scores, if you didn't keep track of the highest scores you would lose track of who was in the lead. We would all sit around and watch the pageants and I remember sitting with paper and a pencil and writing down the scores so that my dad would know who was ahead for when he made his prediction that Miss California, Texas, or Maryland would win.
Anyway, now I have Jenny to do the same thing for me! She kept trying to write down the phone number for me but it went too fast across the TV sreen. I told her "that's okay, I'll go online and vote". She said, "what line will you go on Mom? I don't see a line". Needless to say, I had to explain what "online" meant. :]

Wordless Wednesday- best friends edition

Starting tonight...

Dancing with the Stars starts tonight. Will you be watching?

'Cuz...we WILL BE!
My prediction for the winner: Cloris Leachman. Just kidding, I think it will be Juliann Hough and her partner who is from Disney Channel (what is his name again?...)

So, I guess we will see.

Flashback Friday

The best part about this picture is that I STILL have this bib! Or rather, I found one just like it at my Grandma's house when we were cleaning it out after she died. Because every kid needs a leopard print bib, right?

*Marni...got anything great to say about this picture? Post a comment and tell me about it!

Lego my birthday!

Jonathan wanted a fun cake for his birthday. I made him a Lego-shaped cake since he had asked for some Lego sets for his birthday, and it could kind of go along with the theme...if he was having a themed-birthday. Which he wasn't. But, he COULD have. I am a shameless bragger and I personally think that the cake turned out GREAT! Bottom line- Jonathan was happy with it!
Blowing out his candles. It took him 3 tries. Stupid asthma.
Posing with his favorite presents--his Lego sets, and his camo robe. It doesn't take much to please this little guy. Thank heavens!

*the crown is courtesy of his preschool. His mom is not THAT awesome that she makes crowns for her kids to wear on their birthdays. :]

5 years ago...

Something special happened five years ago..... This little peanut came into the world. Jonathan surprised us all by coming 3 weeks early while his dad was on a business trip to St. Louis.
Here I am in all my glory after he was born and my funny doctor with his arm around the "invisible dad". Fun times. Thank heavens that Shannon came to my rescue and was with me through the whole ordeal. I keep saying, "everyone needs a Shannon in their lives". It's true. She held the phone next to the action so that Mike could hear what was happening. She cut Jonathan's cord. She saw my parts! ARGH! And she drove my van like a bat out of hell to get us to the hospital on time so that Jonathan wasn't one of those babies born on the freeway. :]
And this is to prove that we really are BYU FANatics. Jonathan was 10 days old and already wearing his first BYU shirt.

Jonathan is a sweet boy with lots of love and even more energy. He is a good brother and his mommy's little sweetheart, not to mention, his daddy's little clone.

Happy Birthday Bubbs! We love you!!

Wordless Wednesday

No more gum!

I hate gum. No really, I hate it. Furthermore, I hate having to cut gum out of long brown hair. Don't worry, it wasn't MY brown hair. It was the long brown hair of my spastic 7 year old. I am pretty sure that she could possibly be scarred for life now and never want to chew gum again. Let's hope so anyway. Because, really, having to strategically cut gum out of hair first thing in the morning is not my cup of tea. At all.

And to top it all off....Friday is picture day. Fun times. Hope the bald spot doesn't show.

Museum Fun

I get to work with the 8 year old girls in my church in a program called Activity Days. It is lots of fun and these girls are so cute! My own little Rachel one of them too! Twice a month we have an activity. We try to make sure that they are all from a little booklet that the Church puts out, which means that essentially they are "passing off" a requirement, but sometimes we think of other things to do that are more fun and we do those instead. I work with an awesome lady named Natalie who also has two daughters in our group. This past Thursday was our activity day and we had planned to go to the museum here in Syracuse. It would actually pass of one of the requirements that is "going to or participating in cultural event or place". A museum works for that!!

There was lots of great stuff at the museum. Old clothing that the girls got a kick out of. There was like 7 wedding dresses! Here are three of the girls saluting next to the Air Force uniform.
Two more of the girls checking out the REALLY old piano.
This wooden bench used to be in the first LDS meetinghouse (I think) that was here in Syracuse. Natalie said that she remembers sitting on it as a kid and how hard it was. We had to girls squish in like if they were part of a pioneer family and then give us their best "Pioneer serious face". They did great!
Right next door to the museum is the Farm Museum. It is more interactive. For example, if you can't tell....in the above picture, the girls are MILKING the cow. Can I just say how cool they thought that was!!
Funny story with this picture. There is an old outhouse and the tourlady was telling the girls about how you would have to walk all the way outside in the winter or in the dark to use the outhouse and then she unlocked and opened the door and the mannequin scared the living daylights out of one of the girls. She screamed and jumped about a foot into the air! I don't think the girls anticipated seeing the outhouse actually being "used". It was classic. We giggled for a long time about that!
And last but not least, here are the girls posing in front of the log cabin they have on the property there. Some of them were striking a pose if you couldn't tell. Fun times!

Flashback Friday - riding "cool" style

When we were kids, I remember us going for rides in the country or the South Hills all the time. It was just what my family did. And I also remember that we all got excited about it.

This "fun" picture is of one of those times that we went for a ride. Mom and Dad were in the front of the pickup with Andi, and us bigger girls were in the back. (Andi posed for the picture with us in the back only) We had quite the setup. I mean, if you're not gonna wear seatbelts, then do it up full throttle, right? If you can't tell, we are sitting in lawn chairs, except Marni who is on one of those recliners lay down lawn chair thingies. I am wrapped up in my Bert and Ernie sleeping bag to keep warm. (Gimme a break- I was 10!)

Here is what I really love: Check out my hair! Did I even comb it that day? I am so glad that my girls are cuter than I was- WOW! (ps, I am on the left) And Amy- looks like she was just learning to curl her hair with the curling iron. YIKES! Andi is there in the front. Probably about 3 years old and thrilled as beans to be going on an adventure! And then there is Marni in the center...Love the hat and the shades! Oh baby! She was a rockstar just waiting for...well, I don't really know what she was waiting for.

Anyway, this was us. We thought we were so hot. And truly, by 1985 standards, we probably were!

Wordless Wednesday

Grapes...and more

This weekend Mike picked some of our grapes and got the older girls involved in taking them off the stems in preparation for making juice. If Mike and I do that part, it always takes so much longer because we have to chase kids during, so we decided to offer more allowance as an incentive (okay, it was a bribe) to do that part for us. Meghan was pretty good about helping, but she would rather have been pretending she was married to Zac Efron than help and so she kept stopping and wandering away. Rachel, on the other hand, was gung ho and all about getting it done. She is kind of OCD though and this was the perfect job for her.
Anyway, we got 4 batches of grape juice done for our food storage (24 quarts) and will be sharing the rest of our grapes with a neighbor so that she can make juice for her family to use. What was funny was that during the time we did grapes, I was trying to catch up on the laundry and had washed Jenny's bedspread and hung it out on the swingset to finish drying. (I don't have a clothesline-wish I did!)

Well, Jonathan thought of a fun thing to do and him and Sidney took turns running under the quilt! It was pretty funny to watch.


* Did you notice that all the kids are wearing their BYU shirts? 'Cuz HECK YA- it's BYU time!!

Sete de Setembro

Hey it's Brazil's Independence Day today! Hooray! If you have been reading my blog for very long at all, then you know that it is where I served my mission and I love it! Such wonderful people and memories!

Not a day goes by that I don't think of the time I spent there and the people that I got to know and grew to love. It was wonderful. My portuguese is not what it used to be and that makes me sad, but with MORE practice I'm sure it could get better!

So anyways....Happy 7th of September everyone!

Flashback Friday- Holy Sheep!

Um k. So I found this picture and was instantly intrigued by it for several reasons. Let's see if I can remember them all.

1. I am the baby in the death trap playpen. Remember those. If you do, it will date you a bit, but you know what I am talking about when I say "death trap".

2. Sheep? I grew up on a farm and I remember us raising animals and stuff, but I DO NOT remember sheep. Goats? Yes. Sheep? NO. Granted, I was a year old in this picture, but still. I don't even remember anyone in my family EVER even mentioning that we had sheep. Weird.

3. Notice how CLOSE the playpen is to the ditch. Am I the only one that sees how bad that could be if, say, the sheep decided to CHARGE the playpen and knock it over into the ditch? This is probably why my kids are so freaking sheltered. I see what could happen and it freaks me out. Well, I am alive, so I guess No Harm, No Foul, right?

4. You can see our car right there beside me. Anyone want to venture a guess as to make/model of that car?

5. As goes along with a farm, see our hay wagon in the upper right corner? Cool, huh? I bet you thought only Pioneers had hay wagons. Nope. My daddy did too. And we would follow behind the tractor pulling the hay wagon in the field picking rock and throw the rocks onto the wagon. I always hated that. But, apparently it is good for character. Or so I am STILL told anyway...

Fun times, eh? Come back next week for another installment of Jana's Dorky Old Pictures. I'm gonna try and find one with my sister Marni doing (or wearing) something embarassing and then see if she checks my blog and notices. Hmmmm. That should be fun!!

Fives about me

My sister did this on her blog and it looked like fun, so I am copying it.
Without further ado:

Top 5 movies
Legally Blonde
Batman Begins
Some Kind of Wonderful
Bourne (all of them)
Pride & Prejudice

5 things in my fridge
3 kinds of milk
sliced up cucumbers
cheese sticks
soft flour tortillas
yeast

5 things to do today or tomorrow
laundry
dinner to my friend Hollie that just had a baby
pick up Rachel's prescription from pharmacy
Chiropractor appt
check out the craft fair to see what good things they have

5 words I hate
the f word
crimanittly (probably NOT how you spell it...)
uh
ma'am
any anatomy part (hate to say the names, hate it!)

5 things in my purse
cell phone
planner/calendar
sharpie marker
wallet
pictures of my family

5 goals
have happy children
pay off house before Meghan goes to college
lose another 20 pounds
maybe one more baby....
read the Bible all the way through

5 random things about me
I love cheesecake
Spiders give me the heebie geebies
I speak portuguese
I am named after my dad (my middle name)
I have been driving for 17 years

Wordless Wednesday

Starting school...

Jonathan started preschool yesterday. He was so excited. He said, "Mom, can you do a mohawk in my hair?" What he meant was a faux hawk, so we did it and he was thrilled! (How handsome is he?????) Then he told me that he needed a picture by the door, since it was his first day. What a character!

So far he has accomplished two days at preschool and hasn't gotten in trouble yet. I know you all must roll your eyes because I say that in every post about my kids..."and they haven't got in trouble yet"...
But you've got to understand that around our house, not getting in trouble is a BIG deal and frankly this mom's day revolves around how many times someone has or has not gotten busted for something. Sad, but true.

Also true to form in our house is what we like to call Picture Crowders. And we have yet another one. That's right. Miss Sidney is our latest and greatest. While taking the picture of Jonathan, she totally BUSTED in and started scooting him over so that she could be in the picture. I wish you could have seen it live because it was pretty funny!

Ummmm, I am.....

I haven't done a quiz for awhile and since the only other things I could think of to write about today are 1) Presidential nominees and who they chose for the VPs, or 2) PRISON BREAK is back on TV and HOly cow- very Good!!......But you probably don't want to hear what I think about those two things.

So, I'm doing a quiz instead. EnjoY!

You Are Aphrodite!

A total shining star with a ton of admirers And no wonder: you live life to the fullest! When things get bad, you can easily take off to a happier place But occasionally, you need to deal with problems head on

What Goddess Are You?