Crazy? You tell me...

Growing up in Utah, I never once dealt with cancelled school. I always wished for it, of course, because who wouldn't want a day off from school? Every little kid's dream, for sure. I remember that we could get two feet of snow and still have to get up and go to school the next day.

Kaitlin and Camie's school district is just a little bit different than what I am used to. They have had me pick up the kids early because the school was too hot inside.... several times. They have had me pick them up early because there was too much rain and thunder. On Tuesday they had me pick them up early because it snowed two inches. And today (which at the moment is 25 degrees and slightly overcast) I just got a phone call to pick up Kaitlin because of impending bad weather. So, let me get this straight. I need to go pick up my child from school for bad weather that hasn't even happened yet? Um, yeah.....

I Heart Nauvoo

Recently, we had two members of our branch go through the temple for the first time. They wanted all of the members of the branch to be there, so our fam made a trek up to Nauvoo to go support them. It's really exciting when stuff like this happens because our branch is so small and poorly attended. I remember how shocked I was our first Sunday in Illinois because about 15 people showed up to church. I spent 3 hrs trying to hold back my tears because our branch was so small and there were no other young couples to be friends with. Kaitlin and Camie were also the only kids in primary. Quite a change from Utah, for sure.

Anyway, we couldn't both attend the session since we haven't found any babysitter we trust, especially for 7+ hours, so Rob attended while the kids and I wandered downtown Nauvoo. We went to all of the little shops, looked for souveniers and tried to soak in all things LDS since we don't get to experience it all around us anymore.

Here's a pic of Kait and Cam in the darling little pioneer bonnets I bought them. They thought I was a loser for buying them, but I didn't really care and I made them wear them for my own personal enjoyment.




Here's a gorgeous pic of the Nauvoo Temple. There's really nothing like a clear autumn day to help you take an awesome picture.




Here's a close up of a sunstone, which I LOVE!!! I think that they are so beautiful. I bought a heavy marble carving of one to put somewhere in my house. It's still in it's box right now because I have not bought any furniture yet to put it on. Curse-ed backwoods Illinois....

Finally, here are my sweet little munchkins in front of a fabulous backdrop.

I honestly can't get enough of Nauvoo!!

I love yardwork?

I am so-o-o-o-o not used to doing yardwork. We have spent 10 years living in apartments, condos and townhomes and as a result, we have been spoiled. In times past, we have waved to the passing workmen as they've mowed our lawn and pruned our bushes. We've asked them to spray for bugs and to remove the bird's nests and beehives in our eaves. In all, we have hardly had to lift a finger to care for our green surroundings. Awesomeness, I know....

Anyway, our time for laziness has come to an end now that we have our own property to care for.

I spent an hour on Tuesday sweeping up leaves on my deck and on the back portion of my driveway. It was a lot of work, and I didn't get very far.


It's sad that this is what I still have waiting for me in my front yard.

This is what I have waiting for me in my backyard.

Oh yeah, and here are the kids destroying all of my hard work.

To top it off, these are some of the leaves I am going to have to take care of in the future.

I've got five more trees full of leaves in the front yard and seven in the back. All just waiting to fall and torture me with endless work. Now I'm wondering why I even bothered in the first place...

Halloween, here we come!!

I just can't get enough of these girls!! They are so cute!



Presenting Kaitlin as Princess Aurora, long blond locks and all. Making this costume robbed me of a week of my life (that doesn't sound bitter, does it?) but the effort was well worth it.

Here's Cam as her current fave, Tinkerbell. Thank goodness I didn't have to make this costume!! She received it for her Tinkerbell inspired 4th b-day party and I was so proud of finding it because I got an $80 costume for $20!!!

We are definitely ready for Halloween tomorrow, are you?

Tagged again!

Kristy tagged me forever ago, but I didn't know it because we haven't blogged for so long. Sorry Kristy, I promise that I wasn't ignoring you!! Anyway, here goes...

How to play this game of tag:
Post these rules on your blog.
Name 3 joys, 3 fears, 3 goals, 3 current obsessions/collections and 3 random surprising facts about yourself.
Tag 5 people at the end of your post by leaving their names.
Let them know that you have tagged them by leaving a comment on their blog.


3 Joys: My family, My church and apple jolly ranchers
3 Fears: Spiders, untimely death by choking or drowning, uncovered windows at night
3 Goals: Be completely organized, finish renovating my house, get rid of my fat butt, etc.
3 Current Obsessions/Collections: Finding current and pretty furnishings for my home in the the middle of podunk Illinois (almost impossible, by the way, as evidenced by the fact that I have not found one single item to buy in 3 months.), perusing anthroplogie.com, and finishing the girls halloween costumes in time, which is not looking very promising at this point.
3 Random Surprising Facts About Myself: I can play the bagpipes, I was on Orrin Hatch's senate youth advisory committee in high school, and I can make my upper lip touch my nose without using my hands.

I tag Kimmie, Stephanie, Tammy, Teresa and Farrah!!

Yes, We Are Still Alive

We have not posted for so long that some people may be wondering if we are still alive. Yes, we are surviving here in Illinois. Things have been a little crazy over the last few months as we have been trying to get situated here. It rained a lot last month here in Illinois which we are not used to. It rained for about 3 days straight. When I say rain, I don't mean the sprinkles that we have out west, I mean pouring rain. Anyways, the ground was so saturated that everybody's basement began to flood, including ours. Luckily we don't have anything too important in the basement. Our food storage is down there but it managed to stayed dry. Our basement is concrete and has a drain in it so we didn't have to use a pump to get all of the water out. I took about 2 days to drain. Here is a picture of the "wonderful rain."

Owning a house is good, but a lot of work. The old house that we have is sure pretty on the outside, but it being old we have found a lot of problems. About 1 week after the basement flooding, Becky was working on the computer and all of the sudden she drips of water coming form the ceiling. After a few minutes, it began pouring water from the ceiling and part of the ceiling fell down.

This happend the night before General Conference and when I was watching the BYU football game. I was so ticked. I did not want to call a plumber because it would be very expensive on the weekend. I found the leak in the upstairs bathroom. In order to get to the leak, I had to take out part of the wall as you can see. Luckily, this is in the bathroom closet so we can hide it well.. After working on it for most of Saturday, I was able to fix the leak. Besides all of the house repairs, I have been busy with work and with my church calling. Becky has been busy taking the girls to dance, gymnastics, school and working around the house. She is also busy practicing the piano as she is the only person in the branch that can play the piano. She has been putting a Primary Program together basically all by herself. None of the other ladies in the branch were ever in Primary so they do not know what to do. Becky is putting the program together and she has to play the piano for all of the songs. She is amazing. Even doing all of this she still has time to do fun things for us. She likes having a bigger kitchen where she can make stuff easier. One night I came home from work and she had a wonderful dinner prepared for us. For all of you who know Becky, presentation is very important. Here is a picture of the dinner table all ready. As you can tell, Kaitlin is very excited.Becky had prepared a full four course meal, all of it from scratch. Here is the broccolli salad.The garnishes for the salad and the sandwiches.The sandwich on homemade froccia (sp?) bread. You can see the dessert on the first picture. Becky is amazing and she always has so many creative and fun ideas. I don't know how she does it all, but I'm very glad that I have her.

Kaitlin is staying busy with school, gymnastics and dance. She is doing very well in gymnastics and likes it the best. She has gotten 100% on every spelling test this year. She is a smarty pants. Besides that, she is focusing a lot of her energies on trying to grow some teeth!
Camie is busy just being cute and funny. She is the clown of the family and can always make us laugh. She is loving pre-K. Sorry that this is so long, but we will update you guys on some other things that we have done. Living close to St. Louis is fun because there is lots to do. There are a lot of free things to do there. Last month we went to Grant's Farm. It is actually owned by Anheiser Busch. It is free to get in. First you ride on a tram through a wild animal park, then you go around and see different animals. Of course, there are the famous Clydesdale horses there. This is one of the young Clydesdale horses, if you can see, this horse is trained well as it looks like it is smiling for the picture. You can buy bottles of milk to feed the baby goats. This was the highlight of the girls' day.

Since it is fall, it is the perfect time to break out the kites. Camie was quite the pro at kite flying and she kept hers up in the air the longest. Kaitlin just wanted hers to fall so that she could catch it. I was trying to take pictures of the trees while I was trying to fly my kite. Here is one of the pictures that I took. While I was taking the picture, I wasn't paying attention to the kite and it got tangled with Becky's kite. She was ticked off. She said that I don't know anything about Kite "etiquette". I didn't know there was an etiquette to kite flying. In Brazil, the goal was to knock down other people's kites. Oh well.Well, I know that was long and definitely not as witty as Becky's posts, but at least you can see what we have been up to. I will get Becky to post soon.

Camie's First Day of School!!

I can't believe that my baby is old enough to go to preschool!!

Camie started on Monday and she loves it! I was a little bit worried about her because she is my tender/sometimes shy little one. In fact, when we went to go sign her up for preschool and get her picture taken a couple weeks ago, she was in tears and didn't want to leave my side. So, of course, I geared up for an upset little girl and a tear-filled parting on Monday. I was so wrong!! She was ecstatic to be at preschool: to meet new friends, get her locker, play games, etc. etc. She honestly couldn't get rid of me fast enough (tiny ego blow, by the way...) but I am glad that she was so happy!!

Here she is on the first day of school!! I had her dressed in the cutest little outfit that morning until we reviewed over the preschool papers, which said that she had to wear her preschool t-shirt on the first day of school. She was very upset because the t-shirt was huge and ugly. We solved some of the problem by tying up her sleeves with little bits of ribbon that matched the bow in her hair. She wasn't terribly happy, but she still looked cute, no matter what she was wearing!





Here she is in her classroom. Her teacher in Miss Davies and she is very young, probably fresh out of school. She is incredibly nice and sweet and I already love her. When we got to school, Camie sat right down and got to work. She made a new friend right away.

Here is the outfit that she should have worn on the first day of school, but what can you do? She wore it on the second day of school instead and she looked fabulous, dahling.

It is so weird to have two kids in school and even weirder to have 3 hours to myself every day for the first time in seven years. I almost feel guilty....

Kaitlin's First Day of School!!

Here's my baby on her first day of 2nd grade!!




She slept with her hair in curlers last night so she could have beautiful curly hair for school in the morning. She wanted the small sponge rollers so her hair would be extra-extra curly. Mom vetoed that idea immediately and chose the biggest rollers so she could have soft waves instead of a 'fro.




Here she is at her table in her new classroom. Her teacher is Mrs. Heafner (pronounced Hefner, as in Hugh) and she seems really nice. She sits at a table with 6 other kids, so hopefully she'll get to know some more kids asap.

Hopefully this is the start of a great school year!!!

Happy Anniversary to us!!

August 8th was our 10th anniversary! (Which is not today!) On our actual anniversary, I had intended to post some loving comments about my wonderful husband and gush about the 10 fabulous years that we have had together. However, in typical Becky fashion, I didn't get around to posting it when I should have and now you get to see my too late, sorry attempt at celebrating our time together. I apologize in advance...


We got married on August 8, 1998 in the Salt Lake LDS Temple. Out ceremony was at 7:20 in the morning, which meant we had to be there at 6am. It was so early that my plan was to get my hair done the day before and sleep with a hairnet, SITTING UP (good plan, I know), so that my hair would be pretty for all of the pictures. Unfortunately, I got into a car accident that day (just a fender bender) and it made me miss my hair appointment. I was so upset over the accident and the thought of my wedding hair being ugly that I cried all the way up to the Inn on Temple Square, where my family was staying the night before the wedding. Rob spent the better part of that evening consoling me over the phone, and I believe that I threw a little tantrum and refused to go to dinner with my family. (Of course I was mature enough to get married....what were you doing thinking otherwise?) I didn't really sleep that night and woke up around 5am to do my own hair, with my mom's help. It took longer than I thought and I was about 15 minutes late to the temple. Rob, remembering how upset I was, honestly thought that I was ditching him when I didn't show up on time. Oh ye of little faith.

The rest of the day went off without a hitch. The ceremony was amazing and it was wonderful to share it with our family and friends. The rest of the day was a whirlwind, with pictures, luncheon, reception, etc. We were tired, but so happy. We had almost everyone that we loved with us that day and we had each other. It was a great day.

Finally...GUSH ALERT: Turn away if this sickens you. Consider yourself warned.

I just wanted to say what an amazing husband I have. I'm so lucky that I was able to marry my best friend. He is kind, loving, supportive, hilarious (bet some of you didn't know that because he is so quiet), etc, etc. The list goes on and on. He is the best husband and father that anyone could ask for and I'm so blessed that he's mine.

Living the Wild Life

Out here in Illinois we have been able to see a lot of wildlife on our yard. The kids have enjoyed it. We have a squirrel that lives in our backyard and is frequently on our porch. The kids have named him Alvin (squirrels and chipmunks are about the same, right?) We bought him some dried corn and he comes onto the porch and eats it. Here is a picture of him resting on our porch.

We have seen rabbits, frogs, butterflies and fireflies in our yard. The girls love to catch the fireflies and to place them in containers that they call their "lanterns." Also, the other day when I was mowing the lawn a baby deer came running onto our lawn. He went almost up to our house before he got scared and ran off.

We have found a few bugs in our house as well. One was in the laundry and Becky was freaked out when she was folding clothes and it came jumping out of the basket and ran up her front. She was freaking out, jumping and screaming. Ha ha.

Yesterday I went outside to take out the trash and was surprised to see this coming out from under our porch.

No, your eyes do not deceive you, that is a snake. It hid back under the porch when it saw me and so it is still there and we have no idea how to get it out. I know it's not poisonous, but I still had nightmares about Indiana Jones when he is in the pit with the snakes. I will have to go on a snake hunt and will keep you posted on the progress. I went to Farm and Home to see what options there were, but they only sell snake repellant. That doesn't help me now, so I will have to get some of that when he is gone.

We also have some other "wild life" present in our neighborhood. The neighbor on one side of us is a widow, so we never hear much coming from that side. On the other side of us the neighbors seem to have a party every night. They were particularly loud on Friday night. They apparently had a good time as is witnessed by what we found on our side yard on Saturday morning.

At least we aren't bored in our small midwest town!

iFun with iPhone

Cell phones and I don't have a very good track record together. I got my first cell phone in 1998, one of those huge ones that had a flip-down mouthpiece and 75% of it's size was battery pack. I had it for around 1 1/2 years before I accidentally left if on the roof of my car and drove off, leaving it in pieces on 500 W in Provo. I tried again with a Nokia in 2001, when Kaitlin was a baby, because I needed one for "safety reasons". Ironically, it would have never kept me safe because I was incapable of remembering to charge it. My Kyocera flip phone that I have had for the past five years was a good one, but finally died after having too many cups of water, juice and milk spilled on it in my diaper bag. I constantly drive my husband crazy because I never hear my cell phone when it rings. It is never charged when in needs to be, and I am always losing it and having to call it to find it. "Why do you have a cell phone if you can't even answer it?", is a common question in our home.

We had to buy new cell phones when we got to Illinois because they don't have Verizon in our area, and I ended up picking out one that I love!!

I'm not one who is tech-savvy or cares about electronics, but our new phones are so fun! I watch You-Tube on in, listen to my music and even check my email (which is shocking, because those of you who know me know that I check my email a few times a year). I can actually hear my phone to answer it, just because I have it close to play with it. I'm sure that the novelty will wear off soon, and I'll g0 back to my cell phone abusing ways, but for now I am loving it!!

I've been tagged

Sara just tagged me with the Husband Tag. I've never done one of these before. We'll see how it goes....

1. What is your husband's name? Robert
2. How long have you guys been together? Our 10th wedding anniversary is on Aug. 8. (Hopefully a good present will come out of this anniversary. We'll see.)
3. How long did you date for? We dated for exactly 2 weeks before we decided to get married. My mom cried for a week afterwards when she heard. I think that she thought I was too young to be throwing my life away.
4. Who eats more? Duh.
5. Who said "I love you" first? He did. He told it to me a week after we started dating and I said, "thank you".
6. Who is taller? He is 3 inches taller than I am. We are pretty much the same height on Sunday when I wear my high heels.
7. Who sings better? Define better. Neither of us will be winning contests for our singing voices anytime soon.
8. Who is smarter? The obvious choice would be Dr. Rob, though I do have to say that I actually did have higher ACT scores than he did and I was recruited by Harvard, Yale and Oxford. However, that was back in the days before I had kids and before my mind atrophied from disuse.
9. Who does the laundry? Me, but he usually helps me fold.
10. Who does the dishes? He unloads the dishwasher and I load.
11. Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? I do. I am always actually on his right side in almost everything we do. When we sleep I have to be on his right side or we can't sleep. If we are holding hands I have to be on his right side or it feels really wierd. When we are at a restaurant in a booth, I am always on his right side, but we hate it because i am left-handed and he is right-handed and we are always bumping elbows.
12. Who pays the bills? I do. He really doesn't care where the $ goes as long as all of the bills are paid and we have a little left over.
13. Who mows the lawn? He does. In Springville we had a little tiny square of lawn that he mowed with a weed whacker because our lawn mower broke. Out here in Illinois we had to buy a new lawn mower, but since he hasn't started working yet, we could only afford a push lawnmower instead of a riding lawn mower. First time he mowed our lawn, it took him two days to get it done!
14. Who cooks dinner? I usually do, but he is really good to step in if I am tired or bitter.
15. Who is more stubborn? That is easy. Me for sure. Rob is the most laid-back person I have ever met.
16. Who kissed who first? He kissed me first.
17.Who asked who out first? I'm not sure about that one. We were just friends and hanging out when we decided that we liked each other. There was really no official dating involved.
18. Who proposed? Well, two weeks after we starting dating we were at Rob's brother's house laying on the trampoline and looking at the stars. The subject somehow got around to marriage and we, in our roundabout ways, said how we finally felt and agreed that's what we were going to do. He officially proposed a few weeks later at Venice Beach. We were down at his parent's house for his niece's blessing and we were walking around the beach looking for seashells. He called me over to come look at a shell that he had found and then he flipped if over and my ring was inside.
19. Who is more sensitive? Me, though I try to deny it.
20. Who has more friends? I do, but he is able to keep his friends longer and his care for his friendships better than I can.
21. Who has more siblings? He does. There are four kids in my family and 5 in his.
22. Who wears the pants in the family? I have the dominant personality, but he wears the pants in the family. When he feels strongly about something, I defer to him and he always gets his way. I don't fuss about this system because he is really laid back and really doesn't care how I run things, so even though I always defer to him when he cares about an issue, I get my way 99.9% of the time.

That was fun! I tag Courtney, Katrina and Teresa!

Road Trip!

It took us three days to arrive here in Illinois. We left on Sunday, July 6 around 9 am. I cried my eyes out as we were driving through Spanish Fork canyon because it hit me how much I was going to miss all of my family and friends. It is always so sad to move on, even if moving on is a good thing. I managed to compose myself around Scofield and the rest of the trip went pretty well.

TRIP AS FOLLOWS:
Here we are in No Name, Colorado (yes, that really is it's name) enjoying the beautiful scenery:




We got stuck in traffic right after we took this picture. The two hour trip from No Name to Denver turned into almost five hours! This is the embroidery I was able to finish in ONE day because we were in the car for so freakin' long. (Not bitter, not bitter at all)

Here is Kaitlin lounging in the car as she watches one of the 20 Disney movies that she watched in 3 days. Notice the stinky foot kicking me in the back of the head. :)

Here are Robbie and I enjoying our ride together.

We stayed in Goodland, Kansas our first night, in a hotel that was gross. We were too tired to care much, so it was OK. The next day we drove 5 hrs to Kansas City. Last time we were there, we passed by a hotel that Rob has been obsessed with ever since. He loves water, as we all know, and this hotel has an indoor waterpark. He booked us a "Kid Kamp Suite", which had a part sectioned off for the kids that resembled a cabin with bunk beds. The girls loved it!

The water park was a blast as well. We checked in at 4 and were at the water park until 9. We ate dinner, went to bed and woke up early to go there again before we had to check out. Even water-hater me had fun.

Here we are on day three as we are about to cross the Mississippi.

The girls were obsessed with sunglasses this trip and wore them every chance that they got. If you see the angry clouds in the background you will see that sunglasses were not necessary in either pic, but they sure looked fabulous!!

These are the angry clouds that greeted us as we reached the Mississippi. This is the point where we wondered if this was a bad omen and if we should turn around and drive home as quickly as possible.

Finally, here is the blinding rain that we hit about 15 mile away from our destination. I was a little freaked out because the clouds were moving in so fast and because they were so angry looking. I was right to be worried because later we found out that the tornado sirens had sounded in our new hometown and also that a tornado had actually touched down between our town and a neighboring town. What a welcome!!