My winter heroes!

During this winter season I'd like to take time to say that I am so thankful for snow plow drivers! Driving in the snow is no fun, no fun at all, and it's scary. There is a fleet of snow plow drivers that come out at all hours of the day and night to keep the streets clear so that little ole me can drive, and run errands and what not. So here is a shout out to all the snow plow drivers out there! Keep up the good work. :)

Update.

Okay so I know I haven't been keeping everyone up to date exactly....we have had a busy winter season thus far but not necessarily post-worthy. We did get to visit Tucson for Thanksgiving to visit family and friends. It was wonderful to see everyone! The only downfall to visiting on a holiday is that inevitably some of the people we would have liked to have seen were out of town as well. The kids have been busy with school and play and Jeremy and I have been busy with the usual stuff. So that is the long and the very short of it. :) We hope everyone is enjoying a very happy (not too cold) holiday season. Oh and I can't for the life of me find the camera so...no pictures of anything. grr.

Snow Cocoa

Well as winter rears its ugly head I have just discovered a new and wonderful hot cocoa.
Hope you all enjoy it as much as we did! (For comparison I think it tastes like a Hershey's cookies and cream bar melted down-YUM!)

12 oz. (1 bag) White chocolate chips
6 cups Milk (I used 2%)
2 cups Whipping cream
1 tbl. Vanilla

Put all the ingredients in a crockpot, turn it to high, and wait for the chips to melt, once they have melted turn down the crockpot to warm and enjoy!

We Elved Ourselves!

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

I love finding pictures.

I found this picture of Jeremy and the boys that I didn't even know was on my computer. It is from Easter this year at Temple Square. Credit for the page goes to Summer Driggs you can find her website here . Anyway...I spent some time looking at the pictures on the computer today and there are a lot of good ones...as well as some that I'm not sure why we keep. :)

Contest/Beautiful Quilts

I found this blog through another persons blog and it is wonderful. http://camilleroskelley.typepad.com/simplify/
She designs her own quilt patterns and has her own line of fabric for Moda. All of which are absolutely fantastic!
She's having a contest to win a quilt.
Check her out!

I must laugh otherwise I'd cry.

How to start...
I worked last night so this morning I was asleep...
When I was awakened by Tia covered in flour. Yes, flour. She says "Mom Tailia is making a mess."
Very nice.
So I take several (like 60) deep breaths...calm calm calm...then I decide I will avoid the eye of the storm for a moment...detour into the bathroom...
The bath is covered in conditioner, an entire brand new bottle of conditioner...well at least it smells nice....( this is me trying to see the bright side)
A few more deep breaths..
Living room...all cushions removed from couches...of course because one can't be expected to sit on the floor without cushions.
An entire change jar emptied on the floor...that's fine....easily cleaned...right?
On the couch a bowl with a concoction of oatmeal and tea from a torn open tea bag (decaf of course) mixed together...of course not all in the bowl because what better surface for mixing then the couch.
A few more deep breaths...
The Kitchen
Covered in flour.
Covered.
My sewing stuff out on the table...luckily seems to be relatively in tact.
An open jar of peanut butter, more tea, half a loaf of bread, and dog food all on the floor.
Deep, cleansing, breath.
I guess it could be worse...they could have wet the flour.
Ha! (trying to see the bright side)
And then I realize...it's going to be okay...it may be a lot of cleaning but overall it's just flour and tea and dog food. It's not permanent marker or honey or soy sauce or butter (all of which I have had experience with cleaning). So I choose not to yell or freak out because I will be fine. Deep cleansing breath.
PS. I have not been downstairs and think that I will get this mess cleaned before venturing down there.

Tagged

Ruth tagged me and I am supposed to put the 4th picture in the 4th folder. Well here it is. Sorry it's blurry...why do we keep pictures that are this blurry? This is of Tailia in February...for her and some cousins birthdays we had a princess party where everyone including the adults had to come dressed as a prince/princess/king/queen so she is dressed as Cinderella. As far as the mouth open part...your guess is as good as mine.
I tag Mindy, Melissa, Val, and Summer.

4 days later!

Okay these pictures were taken from my front and back door because I am currently hiding inside my house. Four days ago the pictures below were taken of the kids playing in the leaves. And now...now...sniffle...snow. I'm thinking that I won't shovel and hope that the sun comes out later. Looks like it's time to start pulling out the bibs and the boots. Sigh. On the other hand, it's so beautiful and it feels so clean and fresh. Well you can count on the fact that I will not be playing in it....look for more pictures to follow...the girls have figured out that its out there and have already attempted a jail break...barefoot.

Fall Fun!

So we have begun the shedding of the leaves...well I shouldn't say begun because of this moment I think the entire city is covered in leaves! It makes me a little crazy...but I am withstanding the urge to go out and rake seeing as I would have to do it all again tomorrow too...and the next day. But the kids love it! When they all ran for these leaves we were on our way somewhere so my first instinct was to tell them no but then I figure it's not often that the kids are perfectly entertained with something completely free that doesn't make a mess in the house. :) So I let them play and guess what?! It didn't hurt anything...they were still clean when they were done and I got some cute pictures. I think I sometimes forget that it's okay to say yes. This was a small reminder that it doesn't hurt.

Pumpkin Carving

Tia's Spider Pumpkin

Jeremy's Panda Pumpkin

Tiloi's Bat Pumpkin

Tailia and Mom's Ghost Pumpkin

Tala's Grim Reaper Pumpkin

Well since we didn't do the pumpkin patch this year I thought I would do a post of our carvings. We did them last night for fhe activity. The kids all picked their designs off the internet. Of course I ended up doing most of the carving. Jeremy and Tala did their own but the rest of them were mostly done by me. The only thing I'm hoping is that they don't rot by Halloween. I am hoping that it's cold enough outside to preserve them and I read online that if you put vaseline on the parts that are carved it will help preserve it. We'll see! Happy Halloween everyone!

Update

Thanks for all the notes about my ankle. I will be fine I am able to walk on it without limping now. It's just really swollen and bruised. I just have to be careful about sideways motion. So I won't be playing volleyball yet but walking is under control.

Church ball is brutal!

Okay so I, me, the grown up, was playing volleyball on Wednesday night and rolled my ankle. It is not pretty. I was debating putting pictures on here but my foot just looks gross, three times its normal size and bruised, so I will just keep those off the internet for now. So we went into the instacare on Thursday morning because I am cheap and didn't want to pay the 100 dollar copay for emergency the night of heh heh. It's okay though cause there was no breaking...I apparently tore some ligaments though. Yummo! They gave me a brace that ties up and wraps around and we got some crutches from DI (again with me being cheap..lol..crutches are like 40 dollars brand new!) since they don't give crutches out at instacare. So I have been hobbling around. But, I've been pushing it, so, now I'm able to bear weight on it somewhat and I can walk/hobble without crutches which is good cause my shoulders are so sore from carrying my fat booty around all day. Ha! In short I'll be fine soon enough.

Excuses Excuses

Okay I know you have all been there before. The house is a mess and I can't for the life of me get motivated to clean it. Funny cause I love a clean house...it's the process to get it there that I don't like. The worst part is I do have many things to distract me like sewing projects, and cross stitching, and reading but I am unable to do those things surrounded by a messy house! I guess this means that I am just going to have to do it. No more excuses. Just get up and do it....I can do it.

I love my husband!

Tia has developed a new found love for nail polish. Unfortunately since Tai has been in love with nail polish and painted many a thing with it (poor couch) we got rid of all the nail polish in the house. So to indulge Miss Tia I went and got some clear with sparkles...I thought this would be a little less damaging if painted on anything else. Anyways...I digress...Miss Tia decided that she needed to practice her skills and unfortunately I had to leave for work. She was so upset by this fact that my sweet husband let her paint his toe nails. It was so cute...notice the blue blanket under his foot...she decided she needed that there just in case there were any drips. So I snagged these pictures right before I left. So cute!

The weatherman didn't lie.

It happened, the snow came...and then quickly melted. I was going to get a picture of it to put on here but by the time I thought of it the snow was gone. And I'm perfectly okay with that...I'm not ready for snow for reals yet.

Winter Already?!

Well it's time. The mountain tops are already dusted with snow and according to the weatherman we are supposed to be getting some tomorrow. Yes, I said tomorrow! Where did fall go? Didn't fall just start like last week?! I was enjoying it so much and now....tear...sniffle....the snow is coming. I don't mind the snow so much but I love the fall and summer so much more. Plus who knew it would cost so much money to be outfitted properly for snow? Not me. Oh well I'm sure in the middle of the winter when we are sledding and building snowmen and drinking hot chocolate and warming ourselves by the fire I won't be so sad. But for now, I'm just having a little missing fall moment.

The Locusts are Coming!

Okay so I have now officially seen a few too many of these creatures to think that it's just a random large grasshopper. To be honest I'm not really sure exactly what this is but I can tell you they are quite large, and completely harmless, thank goodness, because Tia and Tailia want them as friends so they want to chase them and grab them. FUN!!! Luckily none have made it into the house yet. I'm not so worried about spiders and bugs that crawl but anything that jumps or flies I get a little squeamish. I think that might be from being attacked by June bugs in Tucson...well maybe not attacked but when one gets stuck in your hair that's what it feels like! Well I guess overall I should just be thankful that my kids are okay with bugs...cause I don't want to have to be the one that squishes them.

Digital Scrapbooking.

Okay I love how scrapbooking looks I love how creative it is. Here's the thing, it's expensive, very time consuming, and well messy. Well thanks to Summer I recently discovered the fantastic world of digital scrapbooking. Now I can put together these adorable pages (thanks Summer!) and I don't have the cost or mess and the best part is that it takes me no more than a half an hour to put a page together! I am in love! And now no guilt about the lack of scrapbooking on my part. ;) (I know the halloween picture is almost a year old but I couldn't help myself)

I love craigslist.

So I check the free section of craigslist almost daily. You would be surprised what people are just giving away. My latest free treasure....a trampoline! Woohoo! One of those big ones. It doesn't have a net but we can buy the safety stuff separately. The point is that the kids played for almost 2 hours yesterday afternoon on the tramp. I was able to clean most of the house during that time it was soo fantastic. I recommend free trampolines to everyone. :)

Kids Singing I am a Child of God.

Jeremy wanted to put this together for everyone to see. So hope you all enjoy. :)

Tai's first injury.

Well, we took Tailia to the Dr. this morning. She has a hairline fracture in her foot.
Last night she came in crying and limping, I calmed her down and just figured she stubbed her toe or something. But when she woke up this morning still limping we decided to take her in. The dr we go to is so wonderful they have everything right there in the same building so he looked at her foot and then we walked over to the xray area, they took an xray, the dr looked at it and determined that it was a hairline fracture. He wrapped it in an ace bandage and said that it should heal itself (fingers crossed). All of that only took about 45 minutes...I was so surprised at how quickly and smoothly it went. They are wonderful. Tai is doing good she is playing just like she normally would except for her slight hobble.

Rocksteady AKA Rocky

Well we finally broke down and did it. We got a dog, from the Humane Society of course. We went in and we weren't really planning on buying one but then we saw Rocky and our plans changed. :) He is very good, so calm and good with the kids. We actually haven't heard him bark once. We were going to call him Rocksteady which is from the Ninja Turtles there are 2 villains, Bebop and Rocksteady, Jeremy has always wanted to name dogs those names so here we are...unfortunately Tailia cannot say Rocksteady she only says Rocky so we are calling him Rocky for short. The boys are already learning that they have new chores now to pick up the dog doo doo and to feed and water him. So far the girls and I have been doing the walks. Anyway...that's the news for now.

Dog Pile!

Well this is what happens when dad takes a nap and we want to do something!

Okay so here is a picture of all of us at Easter. We will have be able to put more pictures as soon as I can get a usb cord for our camera but I really wanted to get this going.

First Post.

Well, first post...we are living in Utah now, as I'm sure everyone reading this knows. haha
We are loving it here, learning how to take care of grass (not doing to well at that) and learning to love snow. One thing we didn't have to learn to love are the mild summers! How excited I was to be able to take the kids to the park in the middle of the day and not have to worry about dying of heat stroke...haha. We laugh when people complain of the heat here it's just beautiful all the time. The mountains are soo close by and so accessible we love driving up there the scenery is amazing. I am also learning to love four seasons...who knew!? Well that's all I have for now...more to come soon, I have to get a usb cord for the camera.