Yet another birthday

Her long awaited birthday has finally come and gone. She had to watch Kaden and Ali have their birthdays first, but she endured and it paid off. She had a really good day. She got some pet shop toys, clothes, a dress, scriptures, and some very awesome baptism things from her grandparents (Shumways). My mom is making her a dress to be baptized in, and we are very excited to see it as well. Happy birthday sweety. WE LOVE YOU!

This picture I have to share because it's so cute. Danica found these glasses the other day and when I walked in the room, this is what I saw. I loved it! These were Ali's sunglasses, but the lens' fell out. I had thrown them in the garbage, but that is Danica's favorite place to look for things to play with. Anyway, just thought I'd share.

Time Flies!

I couldn't believe it when I looked at when I last posted. I can not seem to keep up with life I guess. Actually, I think that it's actually my computer that can't keep up. I was thinking about it this morning. Last year when the kids got on the bus, I would post a blog, or read other blogs almost everyday. For some reason waiting on the computer last year was not a problem, but what a difference a year makes. A Jr. High student, 2 very active girls, a preschooler, and a much more mobile toddler keeps me very busy. I just don't seem to have the time to wait for dial up, but I also don't have the money for satelite. I wish we could do wireless, but I guess that's the sacrifice we make to live in the mountains. Anyway, enough about my excuses, and on to business.


Kaden turned 12 no matter how hard I tried to stop him. It was really great to have sooo many people come to his ordination. He has now passed the sacrament twice, and I only cried once. That may be because I was sick last Sunday and didn't get to go see his 2nd time. He has been keeping us busy traveling to ball games and practices, but we sure love to watch him play. They are just about finished with one league, and then they will start another one. The good news about the second league, is that it's about 30-45 minutes closer than the current one is.

I know that by looking at Kaden's picture it's hard to see the maturity of a 12 year old... or is it? I warned him to at least give me one decent picture for the blog, but he decided to use his free agency on this and gave me no decent pictures. I have to pick my battles, so here you go...

Happy birthday Dude! We are proud of you and love you!

Ali turned 10 last week, and was so excited about it that she hardly even came home that day to be with us. Her BFF turns 10 the same day, so they went to Logan with her friends mom to celebrated their big day with roller skating, then came back to town for basketball practice, and a team pizza party. She had a great day and we are sure excited for her. She threw her hat in the air to announce to the world that she is now Half A Lady! We love you little lady.

Ali's picture is of the score after one of her ball games. You can tell by the look on her face that they won! Hurray. Her last game was last Saturday, so she is now finished. She had a great time and did such a good job. She also had a clogging performance last weekend. It was their first of the year, and she did so good. We sure like watching her clog.

Paige is cheering and reading up a storm. She has also had a performance since my last post, and did a great job as well. She has been into Junie B. books and has been going through them like crazy. She just got 50 AR points yesterday, and earned a Free Doughnut. Good job babe! Paige will turn 8 next week, and we are looking forward to her baptism on March 6th. I still don't know a time, but hopefully will soon.

Tyce has been a crack up lately. Our new favorite story with him is this... He came upstairs the other day quite upset and said, "Jesus doesn't help." I asked him what was wrong, and he said he lost his checkers and asked Jesus to help him find them and He didn't. I told him that the best way to ask for something was to pray. He agreed and went back downstairs. A few minutes later he came back up still just as upset. He said, "I asked Jesus to come down and find my checkers, and He didn't come!" I giggled a little as I explained that He won't come find them, but will put thoughts in your mind of places to look. Anyway, long story short, he was consoled, and 2 days later found the missing checkers. Jody and I have chuckled about this for awhile now. He has also been praying for all of us to follow Jesus and not Lucifer lately. He sure makes us chuckle.

Danica is as sweet as ever. She has been sick several times, which we have been passing around like crazy, so her sleeping habits are not all that they use to be, but hopefully we can all be healthy some time in the near future. She is on the countdown to nursey, and I'm not really excited about this either. She's been such a good girl that it makes it hard for me to let her grow up. If she were screaming all during church it might be another story, but I imagine I'll be able to stop her aging process about the same way I stopped Kaden's. Not At All!

Well, now that I've caught you up on the kids how about Jody. He started the masters program at USU in January. He goes on Friday nights from 6-10, and then goes again on Saturday mornings from 8-12. It will be a tough schedule to keep, especially in the summer time, but we are sure proud of him for doing it. He does get some weekends off, so hopefully it won't be too bad. I don't think he's loving doing homework agian, but he'll do a good job.

Now, I'm going to go take Ali to school. She has had strep throat this week. I hope we don't all pass that around. We all had colds, then the stomach flu, and now strep. Danica unfortuneately, started getting her runny nose and cough back yesterday, before it actually even got to completely disappear from before. Well, I really need to stop now because I haven't typed this much in quite a while, and my letters are all starting to come out wrong. I will try to not make it another month before I post again.

Check out my sidebar

Just letting you all know that I finally updated Danica's picture on my side bar. She is standing by the bathtub, so the background is not so great, but she sure looks cute.


Things for us have been busy as usual lately. Kaden is playing on a competitive Basketball team over on the West Side, so three days a week we drive him over there to practice. There league starts in a couple of weeks, but they did play in one tournament and did really well. They almost won, but couldn't get the ball to go in the basket in their last game. Unfortunately, you need that to happen to get points.


Ali also started basketball, and had her first game on Saturday. They did not win either, however, she did make a basket and we were all thrilled about that. She's growing up too fast. I trimmed her bangs before her game on Saturday, and she had a melt down with them being shorter than she wanted them. I had to help her fix her hair in a way she was pleased with, and now she's just counting down the days until they grow out. Jody told me she's getting to the age when I'm not allowed to tell her when it's time to trim her bangs anymore. I guess he's probably right.


Paige came home from cheer on Wednesday and announced that she can do a back hand spring on her own now. (They start by standing on the top of a triangle shaped mat, so she still has some practicing before she's doing them on a flat surface. I don't know when they will start having them do that.) For me, this is something I would rather just know about than actually see. I get sooooo nervous watching this kind of thing. But, I am so proud of her hard work to be back to where she was before she broke her arm. Good job Babe!


Tyce's big announcement is that he is a member of the HIGH FIVE CLUB in preschool. This is the club you get to be in when you can say all the letters to your teacher when she points to them in a random order. He is one of only about 4 so far, and all of them are BOYS. He's very proud of that as well! He's a funny little man, and still keeps me on my toes.


Danica is learning more words everyday. Her new one, and our favorite, in PATIENT. She's heard me say it a lot, so one day when she was screaming, I told her to be patient. Then I said, can you say patient? And she did! It's the cutest thing ever. She sure keeps us all happy. She loves to play with her siblings. They all call her WINK. I don't know why except that it's just another one of Ali strange nick names for people.


Jody is stressed even more than usual, as he is studying for the math section of his GMAT test, along with work, farm, family, church, and getting taxes ready to go. He sure is a wonder! I don't know how he does it all, but I sure do love him.


I am in a hair rut, and so tonight I am going to fix that problem. I'm tired of being 33 already, and I've only just begun. Hopefully a new hairdo will bring me out of feeling frumpy, and on the feeling sizzley. If that's even a word. Well, that's our update for now, I need to get batteries for my camera so I can take pictures of basketball and other activities. We have Kaden being ordained a Deacon on the last day of this month, but we're not talking about that. It makes me sad. And then Paige will be baptized on the 6th of March, so I better get those batteries.

Random happenings

I'm finally showing one picture of the house. This one shows the kitchen, dining room, and portion of the living room. You can even see our christmas tree a little. We sure enjoyed Christmas in our new house. I have to say that it was my best gift this year. I am also posting this picture of my baby helping to decorate the tree. She was sooo cute about it. The excitement shows on her face.

We all had a great Christmas. The kids seem very pleased with what they got. Kaden got a new set of golf clubs because the stinker grew out of his Jr. set. It's hard on his mom to let him grow up. He has switched to a different girlfriend, and increasing the gray hairs on his mothers head.

Ali got the zhu zhu pet that she wanted, and also a blow dryer and flat iron because she also is growing up faster than her mother wants her to. But it will be nice when she is able to do her hair on her own. It may take awhile though because her hair is long.

Paige got a zhu zhu pet as well, and it also thrilled with it. She got a CD and all sorts of girly things like a scarf, necklace and earrings. She has been a huge help in cleaning everything up for the holidays, and helping with Danica.

Tyce got a V-Tech laptop computer that has some fun and educational games on it. He has loved it. He's very into computer and video games right now, so Santa new he would enjoy this gift. He has also enjoyed having the kids home for a break.

Danica got a baby and a little grocery cart to push it in. She seems to enjoy them both, but really what she wants is just lots and lots of attention from me and the kids. She sure is a sweety, and we all love being with her.

Jody and I got a new beautiful house, and we will slowly (oh so slowly) try to afford putting some furniture in it. We don't own a dresser because the ones in the old house were built in. We also have nothing but an old recliner and some mini banana chairs in the big family room in the basement. I'm not complaining though. I'd sit on the floor if I had to. I'm just so happy to have the house.

This week Kaden has his first basketball tournament and we are all excited to see how it goes. I think it will be good to get the first game under their belt. Hopefully all goes well.

Happy Holidays to you all!

Short and Sweet

I just wanted to let everyone know that I am back up and running. Jody hooked my computer back up last night, and I am now trying to catch up on all I missed. I have to go put Kaden to bed, so I have to be fast, but just wanted to say we are LOVING OUR NEW HOME! It has been soooo crazy moving everything, and I still have a little left to go, but it has been Fabulous! I thought it would take a while for it to actually feel like home, but once your stuff is in it, it just sorta feels like the place you're suppose to be. I will take some completed pictures when I feel like things are cleaned up and put away enough to show on the blog. Hopefully that will be sooner than later.

New House

Thanks to my sweet sister you are getting pictures of my house. Her computer is much.. much... MUCH faster than mine. She came and spent last Friday and Saturday with me to help me move some of the things out of the old storage room into the new one. NO we are not moved in yet, but the storage room had nothing left to work on, so we were able to start moving some things.

This first picture is the front of the house. I'm glad it's at a distance, because that is me in my clean-up clothes holding a broom. We are getting the last little bit of siding put on today, and then we have the deck to finish,and the railing around the deck and the porch to do, and garage doors. I think after that, the outside will be finished. This next picture is of our living room upstairs. Out the doors is where the deck is, to the right is the kitchen, and in the corner is our fireplace with it's beautiful mantle that you really can't see very well, so just trust me I guess. This room now has carpet as well. It was sooooo nice to finally have all the carpet put in. Natalie helped me sweep the whole house to get ready for the carpet layers. THANK YOU A TON!

This picture is of my kitchen. I really love the cabinets. Our little woodworker guy did a GREAT job. I know it's hard for you all to see, but there is a black dishwasher behind the bar. I am SO EXCITED to finally own one of these things. Natalie also promised me lessons on how to actually use one. We cleaned the kitchen up so it isn't this messy, but Natalie said the picure she took of it after being cleaned was mostly of me. I'm glad she chose this one to post.

Last but not least is a little bit of the master bathroom. To the right is toilet, shower, tub. To the left is our closet. We are just super happy with the way everything is turning out. Our plan is to be moving over there next week, with some things going in this weekend as well hopefully. I feel like I need the stress of moving to be gone so I can deal better with the stress of decorating, Christmas, putting everything in a new place, and Jody starting the process of going back to get his masters. (That is for sure more of a stress to him, but we both know it will be a blessing in the end).

I guess it is so long for now. I'm not sure I will be blogging again until we're hooked up in the new house. But who knows, I may just surprise you.

We're on a Roll!

This is my crew on Halloween night. We were in Montana with my brother, and my mom and dad. You can see my dad in the background, and even though I accidently cut off my mom's head, she is posing with the kids. She was dressed up as well.

Kaden was Zorro, Ali was a hippie, Tyce was a dinosaur, Paige was a witch, and Danica was an unhappy little cow. They had lots of fun trick or treating the "old fashioned" way going door to door instead of going to a trunk or treat. Last Wednesday, Paige FINALLY got her cast off. We were SO EXCITED! We clapped and cheered right there in the doctors office. I could not believe how much better the X-rays looked this time. Thanks to all who put her name in the temple and kept her in your prayers. I believe completely that those were the reasons we saw such a tremendous difference.

Now Paige has to work on getting movement back in her elbow and wrist. She's doing really well, but we do have to remind her still sometimes to use her right hand for things instead of her left. After a month of no playground equipment and tumbling, the doctor thinks she will be able to go back to everything as normal. Good news!

Now this is a picture of my cabinets. There is a molding around the top that was not on yet, but this is a great idea of what one corner of the kitchen looks like. I really love how the cabinets and countertops turned out. We also have the pendant lights over the bar that I love. My brother in law is our electrician, and he gave me the idea. I'm so glad he did.

We are going to have to work really hard, but we are planning to be done so we can move in at Thanksgiving time in 2 weeks. Our carpet is going in on the 17th, and that will finish the inside except for a few small things like door knobs and stuff. We should be getting all the rest of the plumbing in starting tomorrow. I'm very excited that we're getting this close, but it also seems a lot harder to be patient now.