The Youngdell Family

Inspiration

2012-01-13T07:32:00.001-08:00

After I wrote my post last night I felt somewhat relieved. I needed to vent and get it off my chest. Later that night as I lay in bed I started to feel stupid. What do I have to complain about?! My life is really good. Of course I have my bad days, like everyone does, but I need to focus more on the positive in life. I have some friends that are going through some major trials in their lives and I have no reason to complain. Jake and I were talking about this last night and he mentioned that a day at work can be pretty good but one or two things can go wrong and it seems like the whole day is ruined. I let that happen to me yesterday. Instead of brushing off the bad and focusing on all of the good things that happened yesterday I focused only on the negative. Naturally I am a happy person and I usually am able to brush things off and move on. My downfall though is that I worry too much and if something is bothering me I have a hard time letting it go.

This morning as I was thinking about this a part of this quote come to my mind and I had to go and find it. It is from President Gordon B. Hinckley. It says, "Generally speaking, the most miserable people I know are those who are obsessed with themselves; the happiest people I know are those who lose themselves in the service of others...By and large, I have come to see that if we complain about life, it is because we are thinking only of ourselves."

Well... I am now feeling a bit humbled. The truth hurts, I tell ya! It's funny how things that you have read in the past come back to you when you need them. Needless to say, I needed this. Today is a new day and I am thankful for that.

Can I have a do over?

2012-01-12T18:33:00.000-08:00

I am annoyed. Do you ever have days when it seems like everything that can go wrong does? Today was that day for me. I just wrote a huge paragraph of everything that went wrong and even I didn't want to read it so I deleted it. I will spare you the details. Let's just say that it was one of those days. I was running around all morning and afternoon and by the time I got home I put on my pajamas even though it was only two in the afternoon, and I sat on the couch and didn't move for an hour. The whole day wasn't terrible, but just enough to put me in a funk.

While sitting on the couch I stewed about everything that was bugging me. Then I decided to check Facebook on my phone and that actually made me more irritable. Does that ever happen to you? Maybe I am just a major snot but sometimes I really can't handle Facebook. I either leave feeling really happy and glad that I was able to connect with people, or I leave feeling worse. It's a weird thing. Sometimes I wish I could just walk away from it and never look back. I've tried to cut myself off of it cold turkey and when I do something big always happens and I think, "Why didn't I hear about this?" I come to find out it's all over Facebook and I look like a jerk for not knowing what was going on. It's a vicious cycle. Dang you Mark Zuckerburg.. I blame you.

I think it's time I make a list of some good things that happened today.

1. I started the morning with two of my favorite things: An egg mcmuffin and a Diet Coke. The Diet Coke was a good one too. It had a nice burn going down.

2. I saw an old friend at Walmart and it was fun to chat for a minute.

3. My Mom bought me lunch and we went shopping together.

4. I had a small piece of my Dad's German Chocolate birthday cake. Actually afterwards I felt guilty for eating it, but at the time I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

5. I made french toast, turkey bacon and hashbrowns for dinner. Breakfast for dinner always a good thing.

6. Jake and I had a good talk and were able to spend some good time together before he left to work.

7. I took a scalding hot bath. In my opinion a hot bath can fix anything.

Here's to hoping tomorrow is a better day.

Christmas, New Years and Karly's Baptism

2012-01-07T16:44:00.000-08:00

The Holidays have come and gone. I have noticed that some years I can't wait for life to get back to normal after the Holiday's. This year I was actually a little sad to put everything away. I think it's because we had a really wonderful Christmas Season. Our kids stayed healthy all month long and that is a Christmas miracle in my opinion. It seems like every December someone in our family gets really sick. Last year every single one of us had strep throat right before Christmas. It was awful! I prayed every single night that we would all be healthy for the Holidays and my prayers were answered. Jake was off for two weeks and we had such a great time having him home with us. We relaxed but we also did some major projects around the house. I now have my own craft room downstairs, we de-junked the laundry/storage room, and Jake put in a new bathroom floor upstairs. We also made a huge trip to the dump, took down all of the Christmas decorations, and deep cleaned the whole house. It was awesome. I feel like a new woman! I also have something else newsworthy to report: I am all caught up on my laundry!!!! I have turned a new leaf and laundry is my friend. I used a lot of advice you guys gave me and it has really helped. Thank you!

Here are the girls on Christmas morning in their new Christmas dresses. We went over to my parents and had a delicious breakfast with the whole family before we skyped with Aaron. It was so great to talk to him! His year mark is coming up this month. Hooray! After we talked to Aaron we headed over to church and the meeting was so good. My parents ward has a really talented ward choir. They sang so beautiful and it was a beautiful meeting. I love that we were able to go to church on Christmas Day! The past two or three years we have had Jake's side of the family come over to our house for a New Year's Eve party. It is a tradition that I love and always want to keep. This year was really fun. We ate, played games and just enjoyed laughing and being together.

This is a picture that I will always cherish. We were playing a game called Seven Deadly Sins and this was part of Jamie's dare. I won't go into details but I must admit we all died laughing when she busted out in the splits. So funny! Thanks for the laugh, Jamie. :) And here is Jake with peanut butter on his face. Ah, good times..

Karly was baptized today! It was a really special day. She looked so beautiful and she was so excited to be baptized. They had all of the men that were baptizing their children to say a little something special about their son or daughter and Jake did a great job. He mentioned that Karly is the sweetest girl and once you get past her shy side she is so funny and brings so much joy to everyone. He is so right. We love our Honey's. (That's been her nickname since she was tiny ). She is such a wonderful daughter and we are so blessed to have her in our lives. After the baptism and confirmation we had lunch with everyone and everything went so well. It was a wonderful day!

Now here we are at the beginning of another year. For me 2011 was a really good year. There was some definite ups and downs but more ups so that's definitely what matters. The year started with me being released from my calling in the Young Women's. That was very bittersweet for me. Actually I have missed it more than I ever would have thought. I love working with the Youth. I must admit though that when I was released my stress level went down substantially. I didn't really notice how much time went towards my calling until it was gone. I have enjoyed having a simpler schedule and spending more time with my family.

I've enjoyed becoming more active and making lots of new friends at my Zumba classes. I've enjoyed having new friends come into my life and old friends continue to be a part of my life. I have been so blessed by Heavenly Father and I am so grateful for my blessings. I also accomplished some personal goals that I have been working on and I have many, many more goals for 2012. Here's hoping this year is as good as 2011 was!

Laundry

2011-12-19T04:55:00.001-08:00

Today's topic is going to be laundry. I have been thinking about my relationship with Laundry and I've came up with a conclusion. I am terrible at Laundry. No really, I am. Now we don't look like homeless ragamuffins wearing dirty clothes because I am ok at washing the laundry, it's folding and putting away that I'm not so good at. Wait... I'm lying. The other day Karly came up to me before school and she was wearing a pink Valentine sock and a white sock. She doesn't even try to get them to match. I said, "Karly, where are your socks?" she replied with, "I can't find any." I then feel the Mommy guilt. I go through this rant in my head. "Man Emily, pull it together! How hard is it to keep your daughter's sock drawer full?" Apparently it's harder than I think.

Now I have a long history with laundry disasters. There was the time in high school that I washed and shrunk Jodie's really cute salmon colored gap sweater. She was so nice to even let me wear it in the first place seeing that every shirt she got back from me was stretched out in the chest area. :) I washed it and when I pulled it out of the dryer it looked like it was maybe a size 2T. Actually I think it would have been really cute on our dog Vivian. Though back then sweaters on dogs weren't as hip as they are now. Also there was a time that I washed some chap stick with every single new pair of garments I had just bought. Oh, that was an ugly day. I was engaged to Jake at the time and he saw how upset I was and he went out and bought me all new one's. Another reason why I married him.

I also have a memory of doing Laundry when I was at Snow College. Back then I had to haul my laundry down to the basement and it was a humiliating process for me. I thought it was just weird that my laundry was so far away from me, and I also thought it was embarrassing when you would come down and someone had taken out all of your wet laundry and piled it on top of the washer if you weren't there the second it was done. The nerve!

But the most embarrassing moment was when I was down in the laundry room and this really cute guy named Eric walked in. I may or may not have had a tiny crush on him. I tried to play it cool and I said, "Hey, how are you?" He replied with his adorable smile, "I'm good." And right when he looked at me as I was shoveling my clothes into a hamper out drops my pair of black, glittery underwear. Now why did I have black glittery underwear? I'm not sure about that. I have a vague memory of me and my friend Becky buying them to be funny. Satan panties is what they were.. Anyways, I snatched those panties up as fast as I could and booked it out of there.

So my friends, all of these examples must have something to do with my distaste for laundry. I have tried to buy fabric softeners that smell really good to try and entice me to enjoy the laundry process and that hasn't worked either. I can't wait until my girls are a little older than they will be in charge of their own laundry!

Now I feel like I need to put a couple of things out there so I don't sound like the worst mother of the year. There are a couple of things that I am good at. I make my bed every single day. I make dinner everyday and I always take a shower and get ready everyday. Ok, I feel better.

I'm not the worst homemaker out there, but I will admit my downfalls. Thankfully Jake is so helpful on his days off and we get back on top of it. I am lucky I have a sweet husband that will do stuff like that. Now if I was a smart girl I would go out and find some more black glittery panties and I bet Jake would do the laundry everyday for me. Muah ah ah ah!!

Random thoughts by yours truly

2011-12-14T18:41:00.001-08:00

Well, hello there. Long time no see. I tell myself that I am going to write on my blog more often and it hasn't really happened. Maybe that should be one of my New Year's resolutions. I use to write pretty frequently and now it has become a bit of a pain to blog for two reasons. 1. My computer sucks. 2. My camera sucks. There you have it. I haven't got my camera fixed yet so it takes me forever to edit that stupid blue line out of every picture and then it takes my ancient computer forever to upload them. Secondly, my html code got all messed up mysteriously. Some stranger came on here and messed it all up just to frustrate me. Ok, so it was me. I've tried everything. I've google my problem and I hate to say this, but google has failed me so far. Anyways, it's all messed up so when I write a blog it types it up in one huge paragraph and I end up looking like I never took an English class. My apologies. Please bear with me. So... on to more important things. November has come and gone and it was a wonderful month. We had Thanksgiving with both families and both were equally enjoyable. Jake had to work on Thanksgiving (sniff, sniff) so the girls and I went to my family's house and it was a really nice day even though I missed my Jakey. My parents invited the missionaries over and it was fun talking to them and having them spend the afternoon with us. We missed our missionary Aaron so much! Man, the holidays are rough when you don't have your family all together. We do get to skype with him on Christmas and I am very excited. I miss my little brother! Anyways, back to Thanksgiving.. So, the day after Thanksgiving we had another Thanksgiving dinner with Jake's side of the family and it was awesome. So much good food and so much fun. I loved it.

Thanksgiving with the Filby's

Thanksgiving with the Youngdell's! Apparently Kolbe didn't want what Jake was offering. I love his face!

A few days after Thanksgiving my sweet Karly had her 8th birthday! This year she finally decided to have a friend party. She is a bit introverted and the thought of a party was enough to put her over the edge in years past. This year was the year. We had a Christmas themed party and we invited some of her friends and had a great time. We did the limbo, the hokey pokey, watched the Grinch cartoon while eating pizza, opened presents, played with presents, the end. It was great and she loved it. Karly is going to baptized early next month and I am in shock that she is old enough to be baptized.

Six days after Karly's birthday my little Ashwee had her 5th birthday. FIVE!!! My baby is five! Where has the time gone?! Ashley had a wonderful birthday. We didn't' do a friend party for her, but my Mom took her out and then we spent the rest of the day spoiling her. The picture below makes me laugh. Look at her tiny cupcake. Those are the cupcakes she wanted. Also, I cannot get her out of that swimsuit! She is obsessed with it. Did I mention it was Haley's?!

Hmmm, what else is new? Christmas festivities are in full swing and man are we busy. I love it though. I have been blasting Christmas music, making lots of treats and just enjoying the season. I have a new love I need to share with you guys. I was making my own Christmas soundtrack of songs and I came across The Lower Lights group and I am in love. I not only love their Christmas music but they also sing Christian music that I love. Now for me to say that I love Christian music is coming a long ways my friends. When I was little my Mom went through an LDS music phase and we listened to Janice Kapp Perry from sun up to sun down for a very long time. I don't know how long it lasted but when I think of my childhood Janice Kapp Perry is part of it. The Lower Lights are amazing. Go to Itunes and check it out. Come on, you know you are curious. My favorite songs are Secret Prayer, Jesus Savior Pilot me, Count your blessings and The Lord is my Shepherd. The Christmas CD is so good too. I forgot to add that I have a new love for Spanish music too. No, I don't speak or even understand Spanish. My love for Spanish music has come from my love of my Zumba class. I went a couple of years back and then I dropped it because I had Young Women's on the night I usually went to. Well this summer I was tired of just walking for exercise and I needed something new so I decided to head back to Zumba and I am so glad I did. I was nervous going by myself but I have met so many awesome women. I am not lying when I tell you that I am one of the few white girls in the class. It's true. :) I love all of the women that I have met. They are so friendly and so fun to hang with. I try to go a few times a week. It's a dang hard workout but it is so fun at the same time. If anyone wants to go with me they're welcome to. It's a blast!

I really need to go now. These cute little girls are upstairs running wild and it's bedtime. Toodles!

I love this time of year.

2011-11-07T19:24:00.000-08:00

October, November and December are the best months of the year in my opinion. The leaves are gorgeous, the first snowfall, and of course the holidays!! I love Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. I'm sure one of the reasons I love all of these holidays is because they all involve food which is kind of a challenge when you are trying to eat healthy and make good choices.. But I will prevail and I will allow myself some pumpkin pie. I have to. Just a little piece.

October has already come and gone. One Monday night we went up to Butterfield Canyon and took some really gorgeous pictures of the leaves.

And no, I haven't fixed my camera yet in case you were wondering. Halloween was the best we have had so far. We went to the schools Monster Math night part, we had a party for the Achievement Day Girls, and the day of Halloween was really fun. The girls looked so cute in their costumes and we had a great time walking around the neighborhood trick or treating and visiting with everyone. Can I just say I love my neighborhood? Even though we are in the "ghetto" I really love it here. We really have such great friends and neighbors. We decided to let the girls go trick or treating as long as they wanted. I couldn't believe how much candy they got! Insane amounts... Maybe we won't go so long next year.

And now here we are in November. The Halloween decorations are down and my Thanksgiving ones are up. Of course when November rolls around you start really thinking about what you are thankful for, right? Well today I had a very deep thought while I was cleaning my house. I had to change out of my Levi's and put on something comfortable and the thought came to me, By golly, I am so thankful for my cotton Capri's. This pair of Capri's has seen me through thick and thin. Literally... Let's start at the beginning. I had Haley two weeks before my 22nd birthday. On my birthday my dear, sweet sister Jodie bought me a really cute post-baby outfit. A cute striped shirt and some navy blue cotton Capri's. I was very happy. The drawstring pants were perfect for the awkward phase of trying to get back into my normal clothes. Had I known what an impact these Capri's would have on my life I would have been shocked. I am still wearing these Capri's today my friends. I only wore them as actual pants for the first year that I had them and then they started to fade and became my most favorite pair of pajamas. Down below is a picture that I took today of these pants. This is so not cute, but you needed a picture of them. This is me saying, "Woot, woot! Ten years, baby.." Almost ten years later and they are still with me. In fact Jake and I fight over them all of the time. Have I mentioned that my husband is very confident in himself and he has no problems at all wearing my pajama bottoms? Once he answered the door in my pink snowman pajama pants. True story. Jake is all about comfort my friends and he doesn't care how he gets it. So whenever I walk out wearing them or he does the other person always has to comment how unfair it is that they got them first. These pants have seen me through good times and bad. They have led me through two pregnancies, many different sizes and many nights lounging on the couch. I love you my blue Capri's. Let's try and have ten more good years together.. Happy November everyone. For all two or three of you that read my blog, I am thankful for you too.

Abbey and Tyler's wedding

2011-10-13T13:00:00.000-07:00

My little sister Abbey got married last weekend! She is now Abbey Teran. I still can't believe it. It was an awesome day. Lots of good time with family and friends. Everything was really beautiful and the day went really well. I am so happy for her and Tyler. They are perfect together and I can't wait to see what the future holds for them. We forgot to get our camera out of the car for temple pics and the luncheon so all we have are a few from the reception. Also, I gave Jake the job of photographer and he did pretty dang good despite the fact that we don't have one good picture of the couple together. Ooooops... Anyways, here are some pictures from their wedding day. All of the girls in their cute outfits my Mom made. Hey, I made the bows... don't you think that is equal to making a dress?! :) Hayden the one and only grandson. Maybe Ab and Tyler will help us out in that department. Tyler comes from a family of four boys so the chances are good.

My handsome brother Kaleb.

They had their reception at Wheeler Farm and it turned out so cute! She did kind of a rustic elegance type theme. It was adorable. Loved it!!

Haley loved this job.

My cute parents. I love my Dad's excited face in this picture.

This is one of the only pictures I have of the bride and groom and Tyler is pulling a face in it. Oh well, beggers can't be choosers..

Jake caught this little candid shot. Ashley's face cracks me up. She loves Tyler.

Jodie, Abbey and me. "Sisters, sisters, there was never more devoted sisters."

Erin (Kaleb's girlfriend) will hopefully be a sister-in-law of ours someday. Hint, hint Kaleb.

We got these old doors from a friend so Abbey had a cute idea to paint them and use them as her cake backdrop. Cute! I was secretly nervous of a little kid running by and knocking the doors down onto the cake. Thankfully no such thing happened. Phew..

This is what Ashley and Parker did the whole night. Little kids are so much fun during a reception. HA!

My Dad and Abbey. Ah, tender. Excuse the red eyes.

Rachel came and Jake took a picture of us just hanging out. Then someone had the idea to take a funny picture and somehow I ended up giving her a noogie (sp?) and while doing it I noticed Tyler's Dad looking at us with a very concerned look on his face. Hahahahaha!!! I'm still laughing about it. The infamous noogie picture. :)

It was a long night, what can I say? All in all it was a great day. It is so fun to see my little sister start a new life with her husband. Good times with the Filby's and Teran's!!!

September couldn't come fast enough

2011-09-16T12:32:00.000-07:00

I am loving September. The number one reason is the cooler weather! I love that I can have the windows open and it feels perfect. I am so ready for fall. School is now in and everyone is loving their teachers, the summer heat is gone, and the Holidays are just around the corner. Yipee! I love this time of year. Anyways, let's stick to September or I will get side-tracked. We went on a really fun camping trip with my best friend Rachel and her family over Labor Day weekend. We had the best time. Also, Ashley is now a preschooler! I know, it's crazy. First things first... our Labor Day trip. Rachel and the whole side of her family go up to the Uintas every single year on Labor Day and she always invites us to go. We went when I was pregnant with Ash, but not since then. This year we were finally able to go. We seriously had such a great time with her and her family. Her family is so awesome and so much fun to be around. Another reason I loved this trip so much is because there were probably eight dogs up there with us. Sadie and Bear were in heaven. They had so many new friends to sniff, and for Sadie, harass. We went on a long hike with most of the dogs and they were all off leashes and just leading the way and it seriously put a smile on my face. They were so happy and so in their element. Sadie had her first swimming experience and I was such a proud Mama. I'm so glad I didn't have to fork out money for her swimming lessons too. She was swimming all over with the other dogs and having the time of her life. Ok Emily, enough about the dogs. Let's talk about the humans now. :) I know you are probably not interested in hearing what we did every hour of everyday up there so I will sum it up. We visited, laughed, fished, laughed, played games, laughed, sang some songs at the campfire, laughed, shot some guns, laughed, ate some of the best food ever and laughed. When Rachel and I are together there is usually tons of laughing. Our sense of humor is pretty much identical so we do the best we can to entertain each other. Here are some fun pics from our trip. Jake and I loved the fishing up there. I think Jake caught 14 that weekend! Did I mention it was freeeeeeeezing cold at night? Oh my gosh, I have never been so cold. You can tell by Jake's multiple layers that it was chilly. That seriously was the only downfall the whole trip. Oh wait, Ashley eating too much junk and puking in front of everyone at breakfast was kind of a bummer. She did make it to the garbage can though. Thank goodness. She was so busy having fun the day before that she wouldn't eat hardly anything so by the next morning she was starving! She had a waffle, hot chocolate, some candy, and who knows what else... Ashley thought she would add some spice to our day and do some bingeing and purging.

Here is Gracie (Rach's daughter) and the girls. Rach did all of their hair in french braids.

Here is my newest little swimmer with her friend Peggy. Rachel's brother David has two dogs named Peggy and Mona and they were so cute.

Here is Bear exiting the water. "I'm too old for this.." is what he was thinking.

While we were on our hike Haley was throwing her shoes across to Jake and one fell into the river and Jake had to chase it down. It was so funny! Oh wait, I mean it wasn't funny at all... Sorry about that Jake. :)

Ok, every time I look at this picture I laugh until I am in tears. This was during our hike and we stopped for a little break. Please note Karly's hair and expression. She seriously looks like she escaped from a mental institution. Her braid is falling out in huge chunks and she looks like she doesn't know where she is or who we are. Oh man, I'm laughing all over again. Also, Bear looks like he was on the verge of dying from exhaustion. Good times..

Rachel and me. Have I mentioned what a wonderful friend she is?! We have been super close for the last five years and she is such a blessing in my life.

We were walking down to go and shoot some guns and Ashley decided to do a little impromptu photo shoot. She was striking some serious poses.

I think she's been secretly watching "America's Next Top Model," when I'm not looking.

Here is Jake and Karly shooting.

Here's my Haley look very sober. These safety glasses remind me of something a creepy perv from the 80's would wear. I know, safety before fashion..

Now this picture and the next make me laugh. Rachel's brother Joey was letting me use his gun and I look like I'm thinking, "Ok, now let's see what we do with this..."

Here's Joey coming to my rescue. "Ok, little Missy.. let me help you."

Nobody messes with Jake and his gun. He is serious about this. Take that Diet Coke can!!

How cute is that? Seriously, that face is too sweet. Ashely loved shooting the gun.

I love my Jakey. Can you tell I mostly took pictures on the last day? I am wearing the same outfit in every single picture.

The girls preferred the archery over the guns. Imagine that. Now on to my little Ashley Kathleen. She is now a preschooler and she is loving it! She loves her teachers and she already has a new friend named Grace. I am so glad that she is loving it. It was hard to drop her off the first day but I still have afternoons with her so I'm handling it ok. Now when she leaves me and goes full time in first grade I might have a nervous breakdown. Well that is September so far. Next month my little sister Abbey is getting married!!! That will be a fun day to blog about.

August!

2011-08-22T13:21:00.001-07:00

The summer has come and gone. School started today!! Before I go into that I thought I would catch up on the month of August. At the beginning of August we had the Nielsen Family Reunion with Jake's side of the family. We drove down to his Aunt Sharol's house in Ferron. It was a fun trip. We all went down, including the dogs. I love when they can go on trips with us. We were only there for a couple of days, but we had such a great time. Sharol's property is awesome. She has horses, chickens, a huge yard and the best part... it's out in the country. Oh, how I love the country. Someday I will live there. The first night we got there we visited, ate dinner and then we watched Peter Pan outside on the projector. I was able to cuddle with my nephew Jaxton throughout the whole movie so that was the best part for me. He is so sweet. I love that I can hold and cuddle other people's babies and then give them back. Ha!! Our home away from home. Look at those gorgeous flowers next to our tent! The next day we got up and ate, went for a walk with the dogs to the old cemetery, the kids beat the crap out of a pinata, we visited, and then got ready for the HUGE slip 'n' slide that Jake's Grandpa reserved at his church. The slide was awesome. And no, I didn't go on it, but I did watch and was the photographer. I totally forgot my swim stuff. I think everyone thought I was lying, but I really did. I got many offers to wear other people's stuff and I turned them down for one reason and one reason alone. I only brought one bra. I will not go bra-less for the following reasons: 1. It would scare the adults and the children. 2. Do you know how long it would take for a bra my size to dry?! I don't think so, people! Anyways, everyone that went on it had a blast and I was able to take some hilarious pictures. When we got back from that we ate lunch, relaxed and then decided to pack it up and go home. The next day was Sunday and Jake had a meeting he felt that he should really be to, and I didn't want to rush home and get ready for church the next morning. All in all we had a really great time and made some great memories. Here are some pics from our trip.

Bear had his head in the window the entire ride down. He was very excited. I really love this picture. All of the cousins had the best time together. Our nice little walk through the cemetery. It was a really pretty cemetary with huge gorgeous pine trees. Me and Karly. I actually think I might see a resemblance.

The girls had such a great time on the slip'n'slide. Did I mention they covered themselves in soap first? The adults were flying down the hill. It was so hilarious. As you can see they were going down on part of the dry tarp. Very hot. Very painful. Very funny!! My sweet Sade. I'm so glad we got to bring our dogs. Did I mention there were eleven dogs at the reunion? Yes, there was. It was so fun! Most of the dogs got along pretty good.

My old man, Bear. He just turned eleven this month! Look how gray his muzzle is now.

Shortly after we got home from the reunion our swamp cooler died. It's been a sad, sad day in the Youngdell home and I have been so pleasant. :) I'm trying hard not to complain over and over about how hot it is. Our cooler started making a horrible banging sound so Jake and I strapped on our tool belts and went on up to see what the problem was. Ok, so I didn't strap on my tool belt, but I did go up and offer some assistance. Come to find out a major part of the drum is broke and to sum it up we will probably have to replace the whole cooler and funds are not available at this time to do such a project. So.. we roast. It's been yucky. I hate being hot. I love going in the car, because I can enjoy the cool air. I can't wait for the fall!!!! Please come soon. Now on to other things. One summer morning we got up early and got ready to go to the.... Kearns Hometown Parade!

Jack Sparrow was interesting. He came up to us and asked us if we wanted a picture. Um, Ok... Did you know he does birthday parties? Oh yes, he does. I have his number on speed dial now. :) We had a great time and got TONS of candy. We literally walked around the corner from our house and went and took a seat. I love Kearns. I've lived here my whole life and I'm pretty sure I will stay here forever. I personally think Kearns is a wonderful place to live.

Our local celebrity. The guy head bangs and plays air guitar like no other. Everybody knows the Little Caesar's guy. I give him a little honk every time I drive by.

This will be me in thirty years.

Hmmm, what else is going on? I found a new way to get in my exercising that I really love. I finally decided to to take my dogs on a walk. I know, I am a horrible dog owner. The reason I haven't taken them on walks often is because they take me for a walk! They literally drag you the whole time. All of this changed when my brother-in-law Jason introduced us to the Holt collar. It goes around their jaw and head. It clips under their jaw so they have no way of pulling. It is amazing!!! If you are a dog owner, go buy one. It is so worth it. I now take them both out twice a week (never together because that would be insane) and it is such great bonding time for both of us. I am going to miss our summer nighttime walks. I want to keep it up for as long as I can because I enjoy it that much. Feel free to laugh at my hair. I am!! We all have bad hair days now and then and apparently I decided to document mine. I did want to put a picture of my pups with their Holt collars on so you could get an idea of what it looks like. I am a Holt believer.

Today was Haley and Karly's first day of school. Ashley's first day of preschool is next Monday. I can't believe that Haley is in 4th grade and Karly is in 2nd. Why do they have to grow up so fast? This morning they wanted me to walk them to school and that made me very happy. I wasn't sure if they wanted me to or not. I dropped Haley off at the side of the school where the big kids line up and it hit me. My kids are growing up way too fast. Pretty soon they will be graduating, go off to college and leave me forever! Ok, so that's a little dramatic.. I do think about that often. After I dropped them off I was walking back home and finding myself very nostalgic for the days when they were little and at home with me all day. I have to admit that life is much easier now, but man do I miss those days! I am not going to lie though, there may have been a teeny tiny part of me that was excited to get back to my normal life again. I am hoping my house will stay cleaner and I will have more time to get things done around here. Here's to another school year. Let's hope it's a good one!

Donut Falls.

2011-07-22T07:02:00.001-07:00

Jake and I have been wanting to take our girls up to Donut Falls for quite awhile and we finally went a couple of nights ago. It was beautiful. I love that we can drive for a half hour and be out of the city and in the mountains. I am obsessed with the smell up in the mountains. I love it. I literally had my head out the window like a dog sniffing the air. It is the best smell in the world in my opinion. We had such a great time. Donut Falls is the perfect hike for family's. It's only one mile and it is pretty easy. On the way up it's a little rocky and a tad steep at times, but not bad at all. The girls did great!

When we were hiking up some teenagers were coming down the mountain and they mentioned to us that they saw a moose. I thought they were kidding, but they said they were serious. We kept our eyes peeled to the sides of the trail to see if we could see it. Actually I think only me and Jake were excited to catch a glimpse of it. Haley was walking with me and she was drilling me on Moose and if they are dangerous. I was trying to spare her the scary details that I have heard about Moose and all of the sudden Jake pipes up, "Moose are really scary. You don't want to run into a Moose, especially a baby one. The Mom will attack anyone that gets close to her baby." Well there goes my reassuring talk right out the window. I try to spare my girls scary details and Jake fully believes in telling them if it's going to scare them or not. :) When we did stumble upon it we about died of shock at how close this moose was!!! He was literally laying in the grass a mere few feet off of the trail. Honestly, I was a little nervous. The Moose just relaxing in the grass and stared at everyone as they walked by. It was awesome! Jake was excited. He has never seen one up close before. I saw one once when I was a counselor at Oakcrest. I was hiking with another counselor and we saw a really young one a little bit off in the distance. It was nothing like this one. It was amazing how close it was to the trail. Look at his little baby antlers! Best friends.

Darn. I was really hoping to bum slide down the stream. :)

Isn't that pretty? Jake told me you could see the actual donut shape in the falls a lot better when he was younger. I personally didn't see it very good. Oh well, it was still beautiful.

The girls loved the hike.

What a great night! We will definitely go back again soon.

Our visit to Nephi.

2011-07-18T17:54:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday and Friday we went down to Nephi to stay with my friend Karla. She invited us down for the Ute Stampede and to stay with them for a couple of days. We had the best time!! It was so much fun. We got down to Nephi around 4:00 on Thursday and we went over to her parents house (Jackie and John) and met up with them and some other family members for dinner. Malinda is Karla's cousin and our old roommate too. She was there with her parents and it was so fun to see her again. Then we had Karla's brother Austin and his wife Kara and their cute little girls. They were all so nice. Here we are hanging out until we leave to the rodeo. Karla's parents have the coolest patio. They have a patio set, tons of comfy chairs and a built in bench that is decorated so cute. They also have a radio, cute candles and a built in fan. It is so stinking cute!!! I ♥ it. I envy it. I want it. Hanging out until it was time to go to the Stampede. (*I still need to get my camera fixed*)

Cute girls. I don't know how much longer Haley is going to tolerate me having them all with the same hair-do? I will try to get away with it as long as I can. After dinner we walked down just one block to the stampede. We had awesome seats! It was perfect. Though I have to admit that after three hours all of our bums were aching. Karla the beautiful. Her hair is naturally curly and so gorgeous.

This is where my jealousy almost got out of control. I want to be a cowgirl!!

Now is that an awesome picture, or what?!

Jake and Ashley enjoying the rodeo. This was Jake's first rodeo and he loved it!

Ah yes, the cowboys. Mmmmm,mmmm.. I think I am going to buy Jake a cowboy get up for Christmas.

This was our view during the rodeo. It was so pretty. That night after the rodeo we went back to Karla's parents house and had dessert. Austin lit a couple of awesome fireworks and Karla's husband passed out glowsticks and turned on some fun music. We goofed off for awhile and then we ended up sitting around and telling embarrassing moments. There were some good one's. By the time we went back to Karla's it was 1:30 am. Way past our bedtime. We camped out in Karla's basement and the next morning we had a big breakfast back at her parents house with everyone.

Karla is the type of person that is so crafty and always likes to have fun things planned. So, the first thing we did was walk to the railroad track and put some penny's down to get smashed. These are the kind of fun things people do in the country! Who knew?

We let the kids make cute little necklaces with their smashed penny's and we also made flip flops with cute material on them. It was really fun visiting and being crafty. The guys went and hit some golf balls for awhile. Poor Jake, he's never golfed before so I think he was feeling a little out of place. He ended up having fun though and he said all of the guys were so nice and gave him some good pointers. I tell you what, I have a very sweet husband. He had no idea who these people were and yet he went out of his comfort zone and went down for a few days because he knew it would make me happy. Love him!!!

Rosemary, Malinda, Karla and Kara working on their flip flops.

Here's Jackie, Karla's Mom. I love this lady! After college I went and hung out at their house in Arizona quite a few times. This family knows how to make anyone feel comfortable and loved. Here's my Karly with her cute flip flops on. Haley is so funny. This girl loves accessories. As you can see, she is sporting glow sticks that are made into hoop earrings, her penny necklaces, and a piece of material tied into a fashionable scarf. She makes me laugh. :)

After we were done being crafty it was time to head back home to our pups. Abbey came and stayed with them but had to go to work in the morning so they were lone pups in the house. Thankfully we came home to no accidents or disasters. They are such good dogs. What a great trip! It is times like these when I wonder how lucky I was to have such great roommates. We are still friends after all of these years. ♥ Pinetree 29 will always hold a special place my heart. ♥

Summertime

2011-07-05T13:33:00.000-07:00

This summer has been a busy one. We have been busy doing lots of fun stuff. I signed the girls up for swim lessons in May and June and they loved it. They learned so much and it was a great experience. I decided that after the June lessons were over we needed a break for the rest of the summer. Having swim lessons three days a week was pretty time consuming. Since it's been over we have been going up to the pool a lot so they are still swimming a few times a week. I had been wanting to sign them up for swim lessons for years and for some reason I never got around to it. This year I told myself we were doing it no matter what. To say that my girls enjoyed it was an understatement. They loved it!

Haley is doing really good at jumping into the 5 ft. water and then swimming back to the edge. She still gets a little panicked at times so we have to make sure we are there to help her just in case. Karly is doing really good too, but she still needs some more practice before she is confident enough to swim on her own. Ashley loves to do her bobs under the water and float on her back. I am definitely going to sign them up again next year. I never took swim lessons and I am learning so much from watching my girls in their class. You guys should see me at the pool... I am over in the corner floating on my back, doing monkey/soldier/airplane (swim lesson lingo) and doing bobs under the water over and over. I can't get enough! (JK). I don't have one single picture of my girls swimming. I will need to fix that in the near future.

Here are some pictures from the month of June.

We went to Wheeler Farm one day and had lunch and looked at all of the cute animals.

We have gone to the park quite a few times and had lunch. That is always fun. :)

We went fishing a few times. We went up to Tibble Reservoir last week and it was so beautiful and not too far of a drive.

At the beginning of June I also got back in touch with some of my Snow college roommates and it has been so great! We had a little reunion a few weeks back and we laughed and talked for hours. I love those girls! I had my camera with me and I was so involved in talking and laughing that I didn't take one single picture. :( It's interesting how you can go years without seeing someone and then the next time you see them you pick up right where you left off. That is how it was with all of us. We all live fairly close to each other so we are planning on more get togethers in the future.

A couple of weeks ago my old roommate Karla, who lives in Nephi, invited us down for the day. We had such a great time! Karla is so hilarious and we can talk and laugh for hours. Her parents live in Nephi too and they are such great people. We spent the afternoon with them and I loved every minute of it. We are actually going down next week for a couple of days to go the the Ute Stampede in Nephi and spend the weekend with her and her family. We are so excited. I love getting back in touch with my old friends. My roommates were like family to me. We have so many wonderful memories that I always think back on. It was such a great time in my life that I cherish. Now our kids can play together and we can hang out with our families. It's crazy how much life can change is twelve years. (It's been twelve years since college? That's scary..)

Well now I am caught up to July. We had a BBQ at my sister-in-laws Jamie's house and lots of family came. It was a really fun night. We ate, visited and watched fireworks. I'm pretty sure the majority of you did the same thing. I love the 4th of July. I am thankful to live in this country and enjoy all of the blessings that come from that. "I'm proud to be an American, where at least I know I'm free," is running through my head right now. My Dad would just love that. He has a small hatred for patriotic country songs. (not that he isn't proud to be an American..) I was going to call him yesterday and serenade him with that song but I forgot. Maybe next year..

Happy Fourth of July!!

I love the smile on Jake's face in this one.

The kids had fun playing in the back of the truck while we waited for the fireworks to start.

I got lots of good cuddle time with my newest nephew Jaxton. This is a terrible picture, but he is oh so cute!

The kids had a great time playing. Whenever we get together they disappear downstairs or outside and can entertain themselves for hours.

So far this summer had been pretty awesome!

Ratfink 5k Race

2011-06-06T14:28:00.000-07:00

Last February it was the dead of winter and I was feeling the need to challenge myself. I had just been released from my very time consuming calling and I had some spare time on my hands. I decided I wanted to do a 5k. My Mom runs races all of the time so she asked me if I wanted to do the Ratfink 5k in Manti on the first weekend in June. I told her I would love to. I decided to start by doing the Couch potato -to- 5k running plan. It basically helps you build up your time by starting you out by running one minute, walking one minute. You continue to add more time and pretty soon you build up to running a 5k. I did that for about a week and then as I was running at the oval I saw a couple from my ward running and I didn't want them to see me walking so I just kept running. I have a little competetive streak in me sometimes. :) That day I ran two miles and I was so excited! I thought I could do this.

The past few months I have been running/walking with my sister Jodie a few times a week. I knew that I could run three miles, but I am pretty slow. I get my pace and I stick to it. As the weeks went by and June was coming closer I started to get pretty nervous. The day before we were going to go down Ashley got sick so her and Jake weren't able to come down to Manti with us. :( We were so bummed!! We had been planning this little road trip for months. I did end up going down with Haley, Karly and my parents and we had a really great time. The Ratfink festival is pretty fun. It is a reunion for a Ratfink gang from the 70's. My Mom's friend Cathy lives down there and she said it's basically a bunch of former hoods who are now bishops, who get together to relive their youth. Their leader passed away a few years ago and the rest of the guys decided to get together every summer for a reunion and it soon became a big event in Manti every summer. It's pretty fun. Friday afternoon we drove down and got to our motel around 4:30. We got dressed for the race and hung out for awhile and pretty soon I found myself standing at the start line with major butterflies. Ithought to myself, " What the heck am I doing?!" When they blew the whistle everyone sprinted off the finish line and I was bringing up the rear. I stayed in that position for most of the race. I started to get discouraged because there were so many good runners there and I was seriously lagging behind. I gave myself a little pep talk and told myself it doesn't matter how long it takes as long as I do it! I finally finished and my timing was better than I thought. I really thought I was one of the last ones to cross the line but my Mom kept telling my to turn around and look because there were a few more people coming in. Thank goodness I wasn't dead last. I thought this race would be pretty casual and laid back, but I was wrong. These were serious runners! It was a really good challenge for me. It was super hard during it, but afterwards I was so proud of myself. Nothing feels better than accomplishing a goal that you set for yourself.

My Dad is a hoot. We had so much fun driving down with my parents. They spoiled us three girls like crazy. I have the best parents.

Me and Karly hanging out at the retro motel. This motel was super cheap and totally retro, but we loved it. We stayed in Gunnison because all of the motel's in Manti were booked. I love small towns! Wish I could live there.

Me and my girls. We had a great time together. Aw, sisterly love. It was really fun doing a race with my Mom. She was sick and she still ran it and came in 1st place in her age group. There is no stopping that woman! What a fun trip! I can't wait to do it again next year.

P.S. I am having issues with my blog. It prints all of my blog in one huge paragraph. Does anyone know how to fix this?

Mothers Day Weekend

2011-05-09T16:04:00.000-07:00

What a crazy, fun weekend we just had. Jake finally had the weekend off and we partied it up. We had a million things going on and it was pretty hectic, but they were all fun things so it wasn't too bad. On Saturday we had a family breakfast with the Youngdell side for Mother's Day and it was really fun. We ate breakfast and enjoyed the gorgeous weather at Murray Park. The guys played ball, the kids played on the playground and the women visited. Good times. The reason we were laughing so hard in this picture is because Jamie's dog Jasmin was standing between Debbie's legs. She thought she needed to be in the picture. Sadly we didn't get it in the picture.

After we hung out with Jake's family my Mom had all of the girls in our family over for lunch at her house and she gave us each a bunch of herbs and some pots to plant them in. I am so excited!!! I love to cook with herbs but they are so stinking expensive. Now I can have herbs for cheap. Let's hope I don't kill them... I had to cut my visit short at my Mom's because we had a Mother/Daughter activity planned for Achievement Days that I was partly in charge of. We didn't have a great turn out, but it was still fun. I love my calling. I work with the cutest girl named Heidi and I just love her. After that was over I wanted to plant my butt on the couch and do nothing and that was exactly what I did! I sat and watched old reruns of Charles in Charge that I got at the library. I love how the library has so many old TV shows from my childhood on DVD. I tell you they don't make good TV shows like they use to. Sunday morning I woke up to lots of presents and my favorite bagels for breakfast. Jake took the girls shopping and he let them pick out whatever they wanted to get me. Oh boy... that would be ok if it was at a cheap store, but Jake decided to take them to Ulta. He went over to Jordan Landing and ended up there. I don't think he even knew what kind of store it was. :) Ulta is awesome, but pricey. Heck, I don't even shop there.. So, needless to say I got some pretty nice gifts! Body wash, lotion, perfume and a nice bag. My sweet husband also surprised me with some caramel apples from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory. DELICIOUS. Jake really knows how to spoil a girl. He's so sweet. We went to church and all of the meetings were so good. I found myself getting really choked up during a sweet poem that a sister in our ward read about her mother. I think of the love I have for my Mom and I really can't express it. I love my Mom more than I can say. Besides Jake, she is my best friend. She is always there when I need her and I have learned the greatest life lessons from her. She is funny, kind, and beautiful. I am lucky to be her daughter.

After church we went to my parents to have dinner and visit. The best part of that visit was that Aaron got to call home and we got to Skype with him. It was so good to talk to him. He is doing so good. He is so happy and loving every minute of his mission. Where's Haley? I didn't see her until I pulled up this picture. :) All of the girls in the family. In case you are curious the girl in the orange jacket is Kaleb's girlfriend Erin. Hey, do you gys like Ashley's green panties?

Skyping with Elder Filby. (I apologize for the purple line running down every picture. I need to get my camera fixed. ) Ok, here are some of the humorous pictures we took. Jake took the majority of them and I must give him a pat on the back for a job well done. It looks like Jake is giving birth. HAHAHAHAHA! All of us died laughing when we saw this one. The one below is so funny. Jake took a picture of Jodie right as she sat down on a book. Love it!

Abbey and Haley at their finest. What a great weekend to spend with our families celebrating Mother's Day.

Ashley

2011-05-05T11:30:00.001-07:00

Ash and I usually get seven hours a day together when the girls are at school. We are BFF's. We love spending the day together. For awhile whenever the girls would leave to school she would look at me and give me a hug and say, "It's just me and you." We love our one on one time together. We have a few traditions that we do. If we go to Walmart in the morning she always asks me so sweetly if she can have her favorite burrito. It is the sausage burrito from McDonalds that she loves. Of course you can. How can I say no to that sweet face and chubby cheeks?

We usually spend the mornings shopping and running errands together. If she is really good at the store she gets to pick a treat and it's usually a Kitty Kat. Also we play a favorite game every day. When I get her in the car she will hurry and climb in and then shut and lock the door. She loves to lock me out. I act like I can't open the door and I am begging her to unlock it. When she finally does I open it with a look like I am going to get her and she giggles so hard. I love it! She is so easily entertained. She must take after he mother. I love having her home with me. Next year she is in preschool and boy am I going to miss her. I know I am going to get teary the first time I go to Walmart and she isn't there to spoil. I will probably plop myself down on a bench at McDonald's and sob over a sausage burrito and a Kit Kat.

She makes me laugh daily. Just a minute ago she sneezed and I didn't say anything because I wasn't really paying attention and then I heard her say to herself, "Bless you. Oh, thank you Mommy." I was quietly reprimanded for not blessing her. Ok, now this is kind of gross to share, but I must document it for the future. She will love it when I tell her future boyfriend this story someday.

The other night we were laying in my bed watching TV and she was laying on my legs and she rolled over and was staring at me so sweetly and I was just gazing back at her and then she said in the sweetest voice, "Mommy, I am going to fart." Talk about wrecking a moment! Oh my gosh, I couldn't stop laughing. At least she warned me, right?

This little girl brings me so much happiness. I have to kiss her chubby little cheeks many times a day. They are so irresistible. I love my sweet, funny, lovable Ashley Kathleen.

Easter, Spring Break and overtime.

2011-04-27T17:58:00.001-07:00

I have been wanting to do a blog about Easter but we were having issues with our computer so it has had to wait. Jake finally fixed it after much prodding/nagging from me. He doesn't realize that once you get behind in blogging it is hard to catch up.

Easter has came and went and it was quite eventful. The Easter Bunny brought way too much candy. Funny how he always brings my favorite things.. Chocolate, caramel, peanut butter. Maybe I need to tell him to bring candy that I don't like. That would be a good idea. Every time a holiday comes up my desire to eat healthy flies out the window. Dang those caramel cadbury eggs, reeses peanut butter eggs and Kitty Kats (Kit Kats) as Ashley calls them. :) Our Spring Break and Easter were really fun. We did the traditional things like dying eggs, Easter egg hunts, etc. We also had lots of family get togethers, went to the movies, slept in, Jake and I went on a date, and best of all a lot of down time. It was wonderful.

The girls in their Easter dresses. I had to literally peel Haley's dress off of her. She wanted to wear it to school and I was heartless and told her no.

I love how dyed Easter eggs look. They are so pretty. Maybe I will dye my eggs year round. Red white and blue for the 4th of July. Red, orange and gold for the fall. Red and Green for Christmas. That's it. I'm doing it.

Ashley on an Easter egg hunt at Grandma Debbie's house.

At that same party my sis-in-law Tiffany made the cutest cake and at the end of the night I noticed that someone decided to redecorate it with roast beef and deviled eggs. Hahahaha! Oh man, I love Jake's family. They are always good for a laugh. Me and Jake relaxing on Easter before he went to work. We read scriptures, sang some hymns. You know, the reverent things you should do on Easter Sunday. Ok, I'm lying. You can tell by the remote in Jake's hand. I had you going, didn't I?

Jake went back to work Friday night and he is still working. Two other foremen are out sick so he has been working tons of overtime. Overtime means two things around here: Number one- Extra money. AWESOME. Number 2. Stressed out Jake and Em. Not so awesome.

Can I just say that motherhood is hard! I have had a stressful week and my girls and I have been butting heads. Last night I was at my wits end. They kept fighting, they wouldn't listen and I was totally out of patience. I finally just broke down and had a good cry. I hate when I get to that point.The girls went to bed feeling really guilty for making me cry. Serves them right little turds. Just kidding. (not really) After they went to bed I was able to lay in bed and relax and regroup. Bedtime is a good thing my friends. It is so nice to have total peace and quiet at the end of the day. I told myself that tomorrow would be better. Today I woke up to a blue sky and the sun was out and I was feeling much better. I almost threw the front door open and broke into, "There is sunshine in my soul today," but I refrained. Jake would have chucked something at me. I have had a much better day. It's amazing what a little sunshine can do.

It's Spring Break baby!

2011-04-18T11:58:00.000-07:00

Today is not a regular Monday. Everybody is home this week! The girls are on Spring Break and it is Jake's week off. What great timing. I actually got some really good sleep. I only slept in till 7:15 because I fell asleep early last night. I love when I get to bed early. I got up and got dressed and headed up to the Oval. My sister Jodie and I have been jogging/walking together and it is great way to start the morning. It's been really fun going with Jodie. We talk about our kids and husbands. We rant and rave about things that tick us off. I complain about my bra rubbing me raw and Jodie makes a crack about her tiny boobies. It's good fun. When I got home I took a shower and went and layed back down in bed. Jake and I watched Sister Wives (that show is fascinating to me) and pretty soon I was dozing off. It wasn't exactly a great nap, but the rain made it better. I had my window open a bit so I could feel the cold breeze and listen to the drizzling rain. Heaven. I could have layed there forever. I finally drug my butt out of bed and went out to face the day. I am still not dressed and my hair is air drying, which is never a good thing. Oh well, I am really enjoying this lazy day. I don't have them often enough. I came downstairs to catch up on some blogs and I was reading a blog that I love and she listed a bunch of her favorite blogs so of course I had to check some of them out. I checked out Pioneer Woman's blog because I have heard about it off and on through the years and holy cow that lady is amazing. She lives on a ranch, homeschools, does photography, has a food network show coming out and ten billion other things. I read a little bit and went away feeling like I was a teeny tiny grain of sand in the blogging world. There are so many amazing women out there! The blogging world is interesting. I have been reading a blog that I really love for awhile now and I finally got the courage up to tell this girl (who is a friend of a friend) how much I loved her blog, and she didn't say anything back to me. I felt really stupid. I didn't expect her to strike up a friendship with me, but it was hard for me to admit that I was stalking her in the first place! I honestly wonder if she gets so many compliments that it was just one of the many? Maybe I will quietly stalk people from now on instead of acting like an adoring fan? Lesson learned. I guess you have to accept the good and the bad in the blogging world. One perk to blogging is recording the funny thing your kids do and say. Here's a funny story that I want to remember. Yesterday Jake was getting ready for a High Council meeting and Haley says to him, "Are you going to a meeting with the President?" and Jake said that he was assuming she was talking about our Stake President. She then got a really puzzled look on her face and said, "Barack O'Bama?!" Actually she combined his name into something that sounded like Rock-a-bama. Jake and I died laughing! I am so glad that I get to spend a week with my Jakey and my sweet girls. Hopefully the weather will get a little bit better so we can spend some time outside. It's called Spring Break for a reason...

A much better day!

2011-04-12T17:46:00.000-07:00

My apologies. I was such a Debbie Downer yesterday! It was just one of those days. Today has been so much better. I'm thinking it has to do with the fact that I got a nap and managed to clean the girls room and redecorate it. That has been on my to do list for some time. We bought them new bunk beds and repainted their room a few weeks ago and it has been driving me crazy that nothing was on the walls. It still needs some work, but it's looking much better. We bought a bunk bed that has a full bed on the bottom and a twin on top and that has been such a great investment. They love it and Jake sleeps on the full bed when he's on graves so I can still use our bedroom throughout the day. Our girls have to sleep together. They won't sleep without each other. It's kind of cute and kind of weird because we have a bedroom that nobody is using. It is a craft room/laundry room/Jake's clothes room. Is it weird that we don't keep all of our clothes in the same room? Honestly in our room there is only room for my clothes in the closet. We share part of the drawers. Ok, I'm not being honest... Jake has one drawer in there. I sound like such a mean wife! I didn't kick him out, it just kind of happened that way. That's it, I need a bigger closet. In my dreams..

Today I have been pondering if I should do a recipe blog or not? I have tons of recipes that I love and I like sharing good recipes with my friends and family. For instance, tonight we are having meatloaf and it is such a good recipe. I shared it with my Mom and it is now a favorite with her too. I know that it is probably going to be a lot of work to do, but it could be fun. Something to think about.

I have been wanting to share my favorite quote from Conference and I keep forgetting to. It is by President Uchtdorf (I accidentally just wrote Uchtdork and gave myself a good chuckle..) Anyways, President Uchtodorf is one of my favorite speakers. He always seems to say what I need to hear. I have thought about this quote daily since I heard it. I love it that much. He said, "One of the greatest sermons ever preached on missionary work is this simple thought attributed to Saint Francis of Assisi: "Preach the gospel at all times and if necessary, use words." Isn't that so simple but so powerful? LOVE IT!

Three painful hours.

2011-04-11T17:12:00.000-07:00

There are usually three painful hours in my day. You want to know what time I really don't like? 4:00pm to 7:00 pm. Why is that? Three things come to my mind. 1. Dinnertime 2. Chores 3. Homework. (In no particular order)

Dinnertime at our house is an event. If I make something the girls love it usually goes smoothly. If I make something they turn their little noses up to (which is almost daily) then dinner is a very long ordeal with lots of whining and comments like, "This is gross. What is this?" Let me tell you, my cooking is not gross. I think it's rather delicious. I really don't make my kids eat horrible things. Now here's the dreaded phrase that I use quite a bit. "When I was your age I had to eat every single thing on my plate or sit there for hours!" True story, my friends. I don't force many vegetables down my children's throats. I don't make up disgusting casseroles and force them to eat it. I think I make pretty good stuff. Jake and I were pretty lenient for a long time and it seems like our girls are getting more picky as they get older. Now we give them choices. They have to eat at least half of what I give them or they can sit there till it's gone. Some nights I even cook them something different when I am feeling especially nice. Tonight I made Turkey Burgers with fries. Not too bad. Ashley ate about half of hers. Haley managed to get one spicy bite and refused to put it up to her mouth after that, and Karly is too busy goofing off to eat hers. Their fries are all gone. Imagine that... Instead of sticking to my guns I came downstairs to write and blow off some steam.

Reason number two for my hatred. Chores. I really don't think we ask too much. I really don't. Today all I asked my girls to do was to clean up their bedroom, which was a mess! I told them that when they came home from school. I went downstairs to do the laundry and clean the basement. I had already finished the living room, kitchen and bathroom. I was on a roll, what can I say? So... I come up about half an hour later and the living room is a bomb and so is the kitchen. My anger is starting to rise... Calm yourself, Emily. Deep breaths. So I tell them nicely to clean up their mess while I cook dinner. They managed to finally do it with about ten reminders from me. So, after our dinner ordeal I have to get them to go and clean their room now, which they should have done earlier.

Reason number three for my hatred. Homework time. It just sucks. It takes forever and with Haley there is usually a little bit of frustration and many reminders for her to pay attention. I know why the evenings are so hard. I am tired and they are tired. I just need to try and have patience with these little angels. (HA!)

You know what my favorite part about the evening is? Jake comes home and we can tag team these wild children of ours. Thank goodness for that!

Hello again!

2011-04-09T17:47:00.000-07:00

Guess who's back? I know you are all just on the edge of your seats....;) It's been almost seven months since I blogged last and time has flown by. I really don't feel like it has been that long! So you may wonder why I quit and why did I want to start blogging again? Honestly, I was just burned out and bored with it. I needed a break. I thought when I quit blogging that I would go back to being a studious journal writer that I was before blogging came around and let's just say that didn't happen! I think I wrote a handful of entries in the last few months. Blogging is so much easier, more fun, and you can add pictures. I really love writing too. I was reading my blog book last week and it was so fun to read my old posts again. Afterwards I was starting to think that maybe I should start up again. It also disturbed me that I was not documenting the cute and funny things my girls do every single day. For instance, in the middle of the night I heard Ashley yell out from her room, "Katy Perry!" Yes, she did. Very random and very funny. What can I say, we love to blare California Girls from the stereo now and then.

Haley is now nine going on fourteen. I am not even kidding. She is constantly into my makeup, jewelry, perfumes, etc. It's scaring me. She is such a girlie girl.

Karly still loves school. She is always happy to go. She loves to learn. She also managed to give herself a gnarly black eye a couple of weeks ago by running into a pole at recess while playing tag. Yes, running into a pole. She is so my daughter.

What else has happened while I have been away?

Every single one of us is now a year older. Turning 31 was weird for me. I don't like odd numbers. Except my lucky number seven. I don't know, it just feels like a weird age. I still feel twenty inside though. Sadly, I don't look twenty on the outside.

I got released from being the Young Women's president about a month ago. That was a long two and a half years. It was so hard, but so fun at the same time. Now I am the Assistant Achievement Day Leader, which is easy and fun. Honestly, leaving Young Women's was really hard. I miss them SO much, but I am really loving all of the free time I have now. You want to know the best part? No more meetings! Yay!

Jake got called to be on the High Council last month. Hahaha... He's still in shock about that one. He will do great. He said he really felt like he needed a spiritual boost in his life so this will be a good challenge for him. I just love him. He is such a wonderful husband. I am really proud of what a good man he is in his callings and his profession. He is such a hard worker and that is so attractive in my opinion. :)

Hmmm, what else? Oh yes, I am going to run my first 5K in June with some of my family! I am really excited. I am not a runner though so this has been a good challenge for me. My Mom is an awesome runner and has always encouraged me to give it a shot. I have always said, "I don't run and I don't ever want to." Seriously, I had no desire. Well after I got released from my calling I had some spare time on my hands and I got this desire to challenge myself and this is what I picked. I know many of you are runners and a 5K is nothing to you. To me it is a big deal. I go up to the Oval a few times a week to run on their track and sometimes I feel discouraged when cutsie little bean poles whiz past me while I am huffing and puffing along. It's not just the cutsie girls that pass me up. . Old men in extremely tiny running shorts have passed me up. True story, happened just the other day. Oh well, I will prevail! Slow and Steady though, my friends.

My brother Aaron left on his mission to Minneapolis in January. I miss him so much. I really, really miss him. There's just a big void in our family without him. It's is fun though writing letters back and forth to each other. We love to see who can be the funniest. He is really happy and has a great companion so that is awesome. I think it's so hard for me because Aaron is the youngest and I babysat him a lot and I just have those mothering-type feelings towards him. Two years is such a long time!!!!

This was our last breakfast with Aaron before we took him to the MTC. Jodie was there but had to leave earlier.

Bear is still our old Grandpa Bear. He is such a good boy. He is getting grumpier in his old age though. (He is seventy in dog years) He has little tolerance for Sadie and it's kind of entertaining.. Sadie is my baby. She is such a funny, love able dog. We adore her.

Jake and I went up to Park City for our ten year anniversary. Ten years!! We had such a great time and made some great memories. We ate at the Blue Iguana, went swimming, a little bit of shopping, watched a movie, ate tons of junk, etc. I got my first apple from Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory and I'm pretty sure I was in heaven.

Life has been good to us. I am really excited to start blogging again. I have missed this more than I thought! Talk to ya soon. You know I have six months worth of stories to catch up on. :)

What a nice Saturday.

2010-09-18T15:22:00.000-07:00

Today has been so nice and relaxing. The only downfall is that Jake is working and not home with us.. Sometimes twelve hour days are really good, sometimes they are really rough. Luckily this one has been good. We started out the morning by getting up at 6:30 am to take Jake to work. It honestly wasn't that bad since I went to sleep at a decent time last night. Thank goodness. :) Me and the girls got up and ready and headed out to the truck to go to our Young Women's first Volleyball game. It starts at nine and we get out to the truck at about a quarter to nine. "Good job, Emily. Right on time," I say to myself. I put the key in and try to turn the truck on and the key won't turn. It feels like it's locked. Ok, no big deal. I keep trying, and trying. "Haley please say a prayer that the car will start." Haley says a quick prayer and it still isn't turning on. It is now gettting closer and closer to nine and I also need to go and pick up one of my young women. Also I have the roster and all of the paperwork that the Stake leaders need. Oh crap, this isn't good. I call Jake in a panic and ask him what I should do? He pretty much tells me to keep trying. I put my head on the steering wheel and say another prayer. Still nothing. Jake calls me right back and suggests that I turn the steering wheel while trying to turn the key. It worked!! I was so relieved. Thank you Jake, and especially thank you Heavenly Father. Off we went to Volleyball. Volleyball went great and the highlight was when I saw some of my "daughters" from our trek family. They are such cute girls and it was so good to see them. After Volleyball we went and grabbed Little Caesar's and headed up to Jake's work to have lunch with him. Pizza, breadsticks and a Coke. Heavenly. On our way home I was thinking that I need to do something fun with the girls or this is going to be one heck of a long day. Off to the library we went! I love the library. I really do. What a great place. Books for free. Movies for free. Awesome.. The girls picked out some movies and books and I got a book that I have been so excited to read. I went over to the kid movies and I found a movie that I absolutely loved when I was younger. The little princess. This is the one that was made in the 80's. It's my favorite. Haley and I decided to watch it together. We decided to watch it downstairs since we have an awesome new couch to relax on. Well, it's new to us. My sister Jodie gave it to us and I love it. Haley and I relaxed all afternoon on the couch and watched our movie together. A three hour long movie at that. What good quality time with my Haley. Ashley and Karly entertained themselves upstairs. I have yet to go up there so who knows what will await me. I guess now that I have had a full day of relaxation I need to go upstairs and do something useful like feed my family dinner or something. Sheez, they are so high-maintenance. :):):)

Abbey

2010-09-16T22:20:00.000-07:00

Abbey and I are eight years apart but have always been really close. When my Mom was pregnant with her I requested a little sister that had red hair and blue eyes and that is exactly what I got! Isn't that crazy? She was the one who would sleep over at my house everytime Jake was on graves because I didn't want to be alone. When I moved back home after college my parents gave me my own room downstairs. I got unpacked and spent one night alone and the next day I went up to my 12 year old sister and asked her if she wanted to come and share a room with me! I was so use to being with her and I didn't like being alone. So she moved downstairs and we spent many nights dancing really obnoxiously, harrassing our poor dog Vivian, and just enjoying being together. We have the same humor and interests so we loved spending time together. Anytime I had an errand to run or shopping I would have her come along with me.

And to top it all off the poor girl lived through mine and Jake's engagement days. She was our chaperone. Jake and I would hang out downstairs in mine and Abbey's room because we had a fireplace down there and a TV and VCR. My parents had strict rule that we weren't allowed to be alone in our bedroom with our boyfriends so Abbey was lucky enough to be our chaperone. Poor girl... I remember her being in her bed "sleeping" and me and Jake saying our goodbye's. Oh boy, the things she must have heard... Hahahaha, good times..

Anyways, Abbey and I have always been really, really close. Well the past two years she has been dating a guy and they recently got engaged and she felt really strongly that it wasn't right. She finally broke the engagement off and broke up with him a couple of days ago. To say that she is having a hard time would be an understatment. She pretty much was inseperable with her boyfriend and we didn't see much of her. Everyone in our family could tell that she was having a lot of stress in the relationship and there wasn't much we could do about it. They had a lot of ups and downs and it was really hard watching her go through all of this. I must say that I really admire her. She did something that was extremely hard and she is standing her ground and standing up for what she knows is right. She seems like her old self again and that makes me SO happy! Man, breaking up SUCKS. My heart hurts for her, but I am so happy that she is starting all over and making good choices in her life.

I am so thankful that Heavenly Father blessed me with such a great family. My Dad was commenting to me tonight that my parents are so grateful that me and all of my siblings get along so well. We truly enjoy being together. When we get together we harrass the crap out of each other and love to reminisce about our childhood and funny memories we have.

I am especially thankful that I have my sweet little sis back again!! You never really know how much you've missed someone until they are back in your life again. I've missed her a lot and I am really looking forward to spending lots of time together. Abbey is so hilarious and fun and I adore her. (I adore my older sister Jodie too by the way. I could write a whole post on our childhood together. It would be very entertaining. Maybe I will do that soon...)

Anyways, life is good and all is well!

Back to school!

2010-08-23T11:35:00.001-07:00

FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL!!! Today was the day. Haley and Karly are both at school and Karly is in 1st grade so she is there all day. So sad.. I am happy and sad at the same time. Happy because Karly loves school. I'm serious, she loves it. I'm just a little nostalgic today because that's how I always am on their first day of full day school. It really doesn't seem that long ago that Haley was four and Karly was two and our days consisted of playing at home, making cookies, going up to Jake's work and having lunch, having play dates with friends, watching their favorite kid shows and having naps. I never thought I'd say this but I miss those days. Those days were draining and hard, but some of my most favorite memories. But... I do have a very cute three year old that is home with me all day and that makes me very happy. This morning started off great. Jake doesn't go into work until tonight so he was actually able to go with us to drop the girls off. Haley is in 3rd grade and has Miss Ipson a brand new teacher who looks so cute. She is young and a return missionary. She sent Haley a note telling her a little bit about herself. It was really cute. Haley is excited. Karly has Miss Vandoornik, Haley's old 1st grade teacher. She is a great teacher and very sweet. I am really happy with their teacher's this year. Jake walked Haley to her line and I walked Karly. I gave Karly a little pep talk about not being shy and make sure she tells her teacher she brough a cold lunch. Then off she went! I started to walk back over to Jake at Haley's line and I could feel the tears coming but I know how uncomfortable Jake gets when I cry so I held them back. (he's such a man..) I was in time to give Haley and hug and take a quick picture and she was off too. Pretty soon we were walking home and I was doing pretty good. Karly and Haley. They look so big now.

Ashley needed a picture too. Man, she's cute!

Here's Karly waiting patiently in line.

Haley wanting to die because her Mom is snapping pictures of her in front of the whole class. :)

I had a great idea that Jake, Ashley and I would go out to Ihop for breakfast. Breakfast was great and Ashley was super cute. It's very rare to have one on one time with just her. On the way home she did tell me that she missed Haley and Karly. Jake bought her some skittles and soon enough she was happy again

This is Ashley's famous pose that she made up herself and does in every picture.

How cute is that? Jake refuses to let me get a decent picture of him. Turd. I do love him though.. :)

Me sneaking a kiss from Ashley. When we got home it was around ten thirty and Jake and I layed down so he could take a nap because he is working graves tonight. We turned on a show for Ashley in our room and then we layed down on the couch and we were out! I remember Ashley coming out a couple of times and Jake going back in and turning another show on and that was about it. I finally opened my eyes and looked at my phone and it was 12:10!! What the heck? I flew off the couch and ran down to see if Ashley was in the house and hopefully still breathing and I found her asleep on her bedroom floor dressed up in my skirt. So cute! Nighty night..

I'm thinking I could get used to this new schedule. :):):)

Pioneer Trek!

2010-08-08T14:30:00.000-07:00

Jake and I were a Ma and Pa on our Stake's Pioneer trek last week. We left on Monday morning at three o'clock a.m. (that was fun.. ) and we got home Thursday night. My parents watched our girls for the week and Karly informed me that they were so spoiled. That's no surprise. :) My Mom is so cute with my girls. She did so many cute activities with them and they had the best time. I missed them like crazy! This is the longest I have ever been without them and it was hard. When we pulled into the church I was practically pushing people off the bus so I could go and give my girls a hug. Right when I bent down to hug them we got blasted with silly string. My Mom had that great idea. :) It was pretty funny. The girls loved every minute of that. It was really cute. I am so glad I have such supportive parents that will help me out at a moments notice. Also my brother Aaron came and stayed with the dogs all week. What would I do without my awesome family? I didn't worry once about the girls or the dogs because I knew they were with people that loved and cared about them. That was a huge relief. Anyways, on to the actual trek. What an experience! It was wonderful, challenging, brutal and life- changing all at the same time. Overall we had such a great time. I have more respect and admiration for the pioneers and what they went through than I ever did before. We went to Martin's Cove and walked the actual trails that the Willie and Martin handcart company walked. It was really awesome. On Monday we walked 5 miles and then on Tuesday and Wednesday we walked 15 miles each day. That was killer! My feet ached, my back ached, and I was so stinking exhausted. I have never been so exhausted physically in my life. I really thought walking would be a breeze and it was pretty much until we hit the ten mile mark. The last 5 miles were killer. I really wanted to quit. It took everything out of me to keep going. It didn't help that one minute it was blazing hot, the next minute it was railing, hailing and freezing cold. Wyoming weather is so unpredictable. Our kids were amazing. Teenagers have endless energy! Holy crap they never tired out. I'm getting old... (sniff, sniff).

We were assigned four boys and four girls to be in our family. Our kids were so wonderful! They were so much fun. They all had such different personalities, but everyone got along great. Two of our boys were so hilarious and they had me laughing constantly. Actually our son named Jason was so out of control. I am almost positive he is hyper. That kid had endless energy and no attention span at all, but man was he entertaining. He brought so much fun to our group. The first night we were there he was totally acting up and I was laughing my head off and the Bishop came up and pulled him aside and told him he needed to settle down. Oops, what a great leader I am. I was totally egging him on. That's really not a surprise if you know me well at all.

Anyways, our kids were such hard workers. They were awesome and I am so glad that I met each and every one of them. We had a boy in our group named Joey and he was such a sweetheart. His Mom was up there too and we became really good friends. We walked together all day Tuesday and Wednesday and I felt like we had been friends for years. I love finding awesome friends that you can hit it right of with. I met so many wonderful people and I really miss our family. Jake and I have been talking about the trek all weekend and how much we loved it.

I must admit it is SO good to be home. Air-conditioning, showers, and no line when you need to use the bathroom. Ah, bliss...

Here's a few pictures of our week. I have a million pictures but I was trying not to post every single one of them.

This is the beautiful sunrise we saw way too early Monday morning.

This is the start of our first hike Monday afternoon. (What's up with my face?) It was hot and a little bit tiring, but do-able. We had a good time walking with the kids in our family and getting to know them better. It was a super long day though. I was up at 2:30 am and we didn't get to bed until 10:30 pm that night. I was so pooped. Little did I know what was to come in the next couple of days...

Monday night they taught the kids square dancing and they loved it.

This is the gorgeous sunset Monday night. I tell you what, the scenery in Wyoming was pretty much sagebrush (which smelled so good) and rolling hills. The sky was always gorgeous though.

This is the beginning of our 15 mile hike on Tuesday. Nancy and I had a great time as you can tell by our faces. This storm was mild. By the way, I know you guys are totally jealous of my sexy pioneer attire. :)

Taking a much needed break after hiking for hours and hours. I love my sweet husband. He was so good with our family and I loved spending four whole days with him.

Our son Jason. Isn't he a cute little pioneer? Man I loved that kid. I miss him. I miss all of them! Thank goodness we found each other on Facebook so we can keep in touch.

Going through one of the six huge mud puddles. Mud and muddy water up to our knees. Fun, Fun!

Here comes the storm.... When we had 5 miles left on our Wednesday hike I was totally and completely exhausted and it started to rain and huge pellets of hail were stinging us everywhere. It was miserable. I was wearing a freezing wet jacket, my feet had been wet and icy cold for six hours and I was nearing tears. It was rough. I made it though! There were many times when I said to Jake, "Why in the heck did we volunteer for this?!" After it was all said and done it was a great accomplishment and an experience I will never forget.

This was our family right before we had breakfast on the last day.

Me and my girls. I have a love for bonnets. They cover up bad hair days really well. Let's bring the bonnet back girlfriends! Who's with me? :)

Our boys. My cute sons.

We got to visit an actual burial site where some pioneers had been buried after they froze to death overnight at Rocky Ridge. We actually camped where they camped. It was so sad to see home many little kids' names were on the grave. (Sorry the lighting is so bad).

This was really cool to visit too. We also visited two other graves nearby.This plaque was right above Rocky Ridge. I don't know how the pioneers pushed their handcarts in two feet of snow up such a rocky path. It was so hard just doing it on a normal, sunny day. The Pioneers were amazing and so strong. ( I totally put this picture in the wrong order...) Anyways... after we ate breakfast and visited the grave sites it was time to head home. I was thrilled and sad at the same time. Thrilled because I was so exhausted and I couldn't wait to get home, sad because I was leaving a place that was so awesome and we made so many wonderful memories there.

Joey and Elizabeth on our way home. We had an awesome bus. The windows were so huge so you had an amazing view the whole time.

I had Jake take a picture of my sunburn since I couldn't see it and hadn't looked in the mirror for 3 days. This is by far the worst sunburn I've had in years. The night we got home it was so painful that I could barely sleep that night. Right now I am in the process of peeling. Oh yes and did I mention that I had to give a talk today? I had to talk in front of the whole ward with a a monster cold sore from the heat and my face and chest peeling everywhere. Pretty... Not really..

When we came home we had a huge Welcome home sign in the window that my Mom and girls made and they decorated our house. It was so cute. Jake and I were so excited to be with our family again.

Here I am just showered without an ounce of make-up on. The only reason I am posting this is so you can see Bear. He was sprawled across my lap all night. He didn't leave my side once that night. He had a huge smile on his face and he followed me everywhere. When I was taking a bath he actually layed right next to the bathtub. I'm thinking he missed me... :)

What a great experience. I am so glad to be home. I am so grateful that Jake and I had the opportunity to experience this together. I am really hoping we can go again someday. I'm just hoping it isn't for a few years so I can forget the hard times and only remember the good. :)

Time to chop the mop.

2010-07-17T19:21:00.000-07:00

I have a lot of hair. Massive, thick hair. This thick hair has been driving me crazy in this hot weather. And, frankly I was sick of it. Time to call Abbey! My little sis has been going to hair school for the past couple of years and she is awesome. That girl knows how to do hair! So I text her a few days ago and we were trying to figure out a time that I could come in, but it wasn't working. Jake is working tons of overtime right now (like always) and getting down there for an appointment was proving to be quite difficult. I decided this called for drastic measures. I bribed her. I asked her if she could come over on Saturday and I would promise to make her a delicious lunch. She said that it was no problem since she was cutting my Grandma's hair that morning anyways. What luck! Little did she know that this was going to be a difficult haircut and my girls and dogs would be our audience the whole time. Luckily she loves my girls and dogs as much as I do so she wasn't bothered by the chaos. After we ate lunch it was time to begin. Was I nervous? A little.. Was I excited? Yes indeedy.

So, here's our afternoon in pictures.

The fun begins!! Goodbye long hair.

Ashley and Haley take turn styling the creepy mannequins hair. Man they loved that thing. Haley and Karly entertain themselves out in the backyard. Karly took this picture of Haley. Doesn't that look awesome? The dogs stick their head out of the door gazing at the girls playing in the water.

We're making progress. My hair is probably the thickest hair she has ever cut so it made her a tad bit nervous. She felt bad because it took her quite awhile but I assured her that I would rather have someone take their time and do a good job instead of someone rushing through it. The time flew by though. We talked about life, listened to some awesome music, and had Coke and Chocolate Chip Cookies. Not a bad way to spend the afternoon if you ask me. :)

Here is a lovely side view of the finished product. I am so happy! It is exactly what I wanted.

Aw, what a wonderful little sister I have! Thank so much, Abbey. I tell you what, having someone in the family that knows how to do hair is pretty dang awesome. :)

Payson Lake baby!

2010-07-15T15:32:00.000-07:00

I really was tempted to title this, "Pooping, puking, and Payson Lake." I decided not to since I didn't want to turn anyone off. That should be the title though because that is how the order of things went. We made plans with Jake's family to go up to Pason Lake for a few days and we were so excited. This was our first trip of the summer and we couldn't wait to take off. Low and behold our house was hit with the nasty stomach flu. Karly had it Thursday night, Haley had it Saturday, and Sunday night I was getting ready to go to bed and I had that really gross achy feeling and I started praying like crazy that I wouldn't get sick because we were leaving the next morning. Sadly about three hours later I woke up feeling pretty bad. To the bathroom I went and to the bathroom I stayed for many hours. It was AWFUL. Haley and Karly both had it and it seemed like it passed within a day or so. I called Jake at 2:00 am from my place on the toilet and informed him of the latest news and he was SO bummed. He was beyond excited to go because he finally had a few days off of work and he went and bought us an awesome new tent that we were so excited to use. I assured him that I should be fine in a few hours. The whole morning I was miserable. Jake got home from work around 7:30 am and he slept off and on with me for a few hours so he wouldn't be totally exhausted when we left. I was really wondering if I would be well enough to go or not. The place where we camp has no toilets. Unless you call a nearby bush a bathroom. (which we usually do..) You can drive up to the Lake and that only takes a couple of minutes, but when you have the flu a couple of minutes is usually too long if ya get my drift.... The girls kept coming up right next to my face and waking me up with, "Mommy, are you better? Can we leave?" Talk about feeling bad! I was willing myself to get off my butt and get going but I just couldn't. Jake got up around noon and went to the store to get some last minute stuff and I started to feel a tad bit better so I got up, showered and got ready for the day and things were starting to look better. We started to get things packed up and between me laying down on the couch or floor in spurts we got the car packed and we were off! I am not even kidding, about a half hour after we left I felt like a new woman. It had passed and I was feeling good! Jake slept on the way and we had a lovely drive up to Payson. We got there around dinnertime and we ate some delicious scones that my mother-in-law made and set up the tent and got our beds set up. We visited around the fire for awhile and then it was time for bed. Our new tent is awesome I might add. It's huge! It makes such a difference. There was lots of room and it was way easier to keep clean. Me likey a lot. The next morning brought us a beautiful day. I got up and got ready and went in the trailer with Jamie (my sister-in-law) and Debbie (my mother-in-law) and we ate breakfast and visited. Jake and Ashley were still asleep and all of the sudden out of the window I see Jake take off with Ashley in the truck. My first thought was, "Sheeze, nice of you to ask me if I want to go with you.." He finally came back a little while later and dropped off Ashley and took off again. What the heck?! When he finally came back again I asked him where he's been and he said, "I'm sick. I've got what you had." NOOOOOOOOO.... Come on! I was so bummed. I then asked him twenty questions. Are you puking? Do you want to go home? How are you feeling? We headed to the tent to pack up and Jake goes, "Em, never mind. Let's wait it out. I think I'll be Ok if you can go to town and get me some Imodium." Off to town we went for Imodium. I didn't want to leave! Nobody wanted to leave. Lo and behold we made it through the day. We got him some Imodium and we had a great day at the Lake and spending time with everyone. By that evening it was starting to rain and Jake wasn't feeling good again so we packed up and went home. We were planning on going home in the morning so it wasn't a big deal. On the way home we stopped at a cute little burger place in Payson and we had a fun ride home listening to music and visiting. I love car rides. We have some of our best talks in the car. We came home and left everything in the car until the next day. Honestly, what feels better than a shower and air-conditioning after you've been camping? Not much in my opinion. :) Haley took this lovely off-centered picture. Jake looks like a gangster. Sup foo?! Debbie and Ashley cuddling. Wow, Norm looks thrilled..

Payton, my adorable nephew. I introduced him to Sour Patch Kids and this was one of the faces he made. That kid is going to love me. I always give him food so when he sees me he associates my face with food and therefore he will love me. :):):)

My sweet little pup. She was harrassed and cuddled to death and she loved it. Buddy refused to look at the camera so I didn't get a good picture of him. He was there though and a very good boy. Our dogs really enjoyed the trip in the back of the truck.

Jake was throwing his shirt off to me when he was in the lake and it landed right on his Dad's head and I snapped the picture right when it happened. Hahahaha!

Jake and Ashley playing in the lake. I was the photographer. I would rather be holding a camera than be in a swimsuit anyday.

I love Karly's face in this. She was having so much fun.

Haley Dawn was having a blast too.

Isn't that a beautiful picture?!

We saw tons of cute little baby ducks and I'm pretty sure the kids fed them and entire loaf of bread.

How cute is that? What's better than relaxing by the Lake eating Doritos?

Haley and Kolbe's self-portrait. So cute! Visiting by the fire. This picture isn't the greatest, but it works.

The camping trip was a success despite the minor sickness here and there. I love Payson. If you've never gone there, I highly recommend it!

I ♥ July.

2010-07-06T12:50:00.000-07:00

This summer has really been great so far. I have decided that July is one of my favorite months. There are tons of fun stuff that happens this month. Family activities, reunions, celebrating the 4th and the 24th, and we still have six more weeks of summer vacation. :) My girls have really been great this summer. We took it pretty easy in June, but our favorite part by far was going to Lagoon!

Here was our first ride at Lagoon. The Haunted House. Muuuuaaaahhhhh.... Karly and Ashley loved it. Haley hated it. We literally drug Haley on it the 2nd time because everyone wanted to go on it again and we weren't going to leave her alone waiting for us. She was so mad at us. She literally said this to me when we were getting on the ride, " I am not happy right now." Oh darn. Too bad sister!

Look at this awesome picture I caught inside the Haunted House. Jake took a picture the second time we were on it and out of nowhere a Lagoon worker jumps out and says, "No pictures in the Haunted House!" Jake was embarrassed and I had to laugh that he got caught and I didn't..

The Odysea is my new favorite kid ride. It is so much fun.

Haley and Karly on the Ladybug drop. Nice holey pants, Haley. Isn't that the style now anyways?

Me and Haley on a caterpillar ride that gave me such a dizzy headache. I just can't handle the rides like I use to. :( The bumper cars! On Ashley's first time she just sat there and couldn't get it to move. Karly spun in a circle the entire time and I couldn't stop laughing. Great entertainment!!

Here's Jake and the girls on Puff.

We did so many other fun rides but didn't get a ton of pictures. I talked Haley into going on the Wild Mouse and the Roller Coaster with me and she loved it. It's fun having one of my girls old enough to go on some big rides. Good times at Lagoon!! By the way- in case you forgot... "It's what fun is!" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ~Happy Fourth of July~

On the actual 4th of July we went to Church, made some patriotic mini cookies pizza's to take to our family dinner and lit some sparklers (or sprinklers, as my girls like to call them) that night. It was a nice, relaxing day.

On the 5th everyone had the day off so we spent the day with Jake's side of the family. We went to Wheeler Farm and had a really fun afternoon. Cute little Ash playing in the stream. We ate lots of good food. My cute little nephew Payton totally attacks the cheese ball container and shoves them in his mouth as fast as he can. So cute. We went on a fun wagon ride around the farm.

We went around and saw all of the cute animals.

And... we came home and took naps so we could go and watch fireworks that night. That night we went over to Jamie's house to do fireworks. I decided that I was going to ride my bike down. I must say riding in the evening is on my top list of favorite things. It's so peaceful, the weather is nice, and it's not super busy on the roads. It was awesome. Have I mentioned I love riding my bike? I think I have a time or two... :)

Anyways, we had a really fun time! The girls loved the fireworks and staying up super late. That's what summertime is all about though, right?

This firework was so huge that it had me and Haley jumping off of the curb and running. I was trying to figure out my firework setting on my camera. Obviously I need some more practice. :)

The kids loved playing in the back of the truck and they were a tad hyper since it was bedtime. Jake and his brother Jason put on quite the show. Every year they get a certain kind of firework that they light and then run around holding it above their heads while it's going off. I know it sounds dangerous... and it is. They still continue to do it year after year and we continue to laugh hysterically at them year after year. I wish I could get the video to download. Anyways, it was a blast spending the day with our family.

Awesome date, gout, Lagoon, and emotional breakdown = One crazy weekend.

2010-06-28T03:43:00.000-07:00

Wow- this weekend was insane. It is 4:30 in the morning and I can't fall back asleep because my mind is full. I need to vent. If you aren't in the mood to hear about all of this, feel free to log off. It all started on Thursday morning. I woke up with a massive, throbbing ache in my big toe. I couldn't figure it out.. I didn't stub my toe, what the heck is going on? It continued to ache really super bad to the point that I was hobbling around on it. That night all of the youth went down to the Nephi pageant and it was so awesome, but my foot was hurting bad. The next day I google throbbing toe pain and it kept mentioning gout. What the heck is gout?! Gout apparently is an arthritic disease that is very common in men over 5o who eat lots of red meat, are obese, and a high number of them are Polynesian. Hmmm, that doesn't sound like me.. Interesting.. let's see if this just magically goes away. Friday my Mom took the girls overnight to give Ashley a trial run for when we go on our Pioneer Trek. Jake and I are going to be a Ma and Pa and my Mom is taking our girls for four days. I am excited, but really nervous about the whole situation. Leaving my kids and dogs for four days is something that we've never done and it's honestly really hard for me. I don't like leaving my kids. I like being with them. The trek will be a great experience though and we couldn't pass it up. Anyways, my Mom took the girls and Jake and I had the best time together. We went to Chili's and had amazing fajitas, I got some new lotion at Bath and Body Works that I adore, we went and rented movies and had Jamba juice and candy and it was AWESOME. We really needed that one on one time together and it was the best. I did miss my kids though.. Anyways, the girls had tons of fun with my Mom and Ashley did great. She has never spent the night without us before. The only downfall was now my foot is so painful and swollen that I can't even bend my toes. Ok, time to go to the Doctor. We told the girls that we were going to go Lagoon on Saturday and there was no way I was going to back out because of my foot. I woke up that day and the swelling was down a ton, and the pain had really subsided. I almost considered cancelling my appointment, but I thought I should get it checked anyways. I hurried down while Jake got the kids ready to go and surprise, surprise I have gout. First off, what an ugly name. Second, how random is that?! I googled lots of info. about it and honestly it scared me. It is really painful and it tends to get worse. Also, did I mention it is stress-related? Well it is, and that doesn't bode well for me considering I stress out easily. So my doctor gave me a prescription for anti-inflammatory's and assured me that I should be ok for Trek as long as it doesn't flare up again. Ok, that doesn't make me feel good. Gout comes on in random attacks and if it does walking miles and miles a day won't work. Here comes the stress.... What do I do? Do we still go on Trek and just have faith that it will work out? Jake and I talked and talked about it and decided that's what we will do. It is in the Lord's hands and hopefully all will go well. After the doctor's appointment I decided enough was enough. We were going to have a fun day! I did ignore the stress and we had a blast at Lagoon with the girls. It was soooo much fun. There will be pics and a fun post about it later. Sunday I woke up in a really funky mood. All during Sacrament meeting I kept praying that I would lift out of it. To sum it up, that didn't happen. I had to leave church right when Young Women's started because I couldn't pull myself together. You know when you are crying and you can't stop no matter how hard you try? Yep, that was me. How embarrassing. I can't say what one factor set me off, but it was a lot of little things. I'm going to be honest. Being Young Women's president is really hard. I love it so much, but some days I am beyond overwhelmed. Yesterday was such a day. I felt like nobody ever acknowledges anything good that I do, but they are quick to point out everything I'm not doing right. I know that sounds selfish, but that's honestly how I felt. I felt like everybody was wanting something from me and I just didn't have it in me to deal with all of it. It was one thing after another and I finally just had it. I went out in the hall and bawled to my counselors Peggy and Melissa. They were so sweet to listen to me vent and they took over Young Women's while I bee-lined it out of there. I cried for quite awhile after I left and Jake was the best. He just listened and gave me some good advice. When I came home Jake escorted me to my room with a movie and told me to lay down and relax. I took a good nap and woke up feeling a bit better. It wasn't fun and now I am embarrassed about the whole thing. I hate it when I let everything just build up and build up and then out it comes. We all have those days though, right? I have decided that the moral to all of this is as follows: I need to have faith that Heavenly Father knows what I am going through and that all will be well. I need to quit beating myself up for little things that don't go right. I'm not perfect. I am super hard on myself when things go wrong and I need to learn to just let it go and let it be. These are the lessons that I am trying to learn in my life and do better with. Wow, I feel better now. Thanks for letting me vent. Here's to a better week with no breakdowns.

My favorite summer dinner.

2010-06-22T16:56:00.000-07:00

Lemon Spaghetti- by Rachael Ray Warning: This is addicting. I made it for dinner last Saturday, had the leftovers this weekend and made it for dinner again tonight. I wanted to use up the basil and cream from before so it was a must. :) It has got a really light, lemony flavor and it is really good as leftovers too.

As you can see I substituted dry parsley for fresh, and I didn't have grated parm. so I used the powdered kind and it was still awesome. *I do think that the fresh lemons and basil are a must.* Ingredients: Salt 1 pound of spaghetti 3 tblsp. of extra virgin olive oil 4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped. (I used two cloves) 1/2 tsp. red pepper flakes 2 lemons, zested and juiced 1/2 to 3/4 cup heavy cream (I used 1/2 cup) 1 cup of grated parmigiano reggiano Handful of flat leaf parsely, chopped 1/2 c. (10 to 12 leaves) fresh basil, thinly sliced Directions Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Salt the water and drop the spaghetti into the pot. Heat a large deep skillet over low heat. Add extra-virgin olive oil and garlic and crushed red pepper flakes. When the pasta has been cooking about 5 minutes, add lemon juice, a ladle of the cooking water from the pasta and the cream to the garlic and oil. Raise heat a bit to bring sauce to a bubble. Drain pasta when it still has a good bite to it, al dente. Add lemon zest and half of the cheese to the cream sauce. Season the sauce with salt, to taste. Add pasta to pan and turn off heat. Toss the pasta with sauce a minute or 2, allowing it time to soak up the sauce. Top the plates of pasta or platter with remaining cheese, parsley and basil. Voila! Humor me and give it a try. :)

Things that annoy me.

2010-06-11T06:41:00.000-07:00

What is wrong with me? I have woke up every night or early morning for about an hour and I can't go back to sleep! It's driving me crazy. This morning at about 5:20 I woke up to a rooster cock-a-doodling over and over. First off, who has a rooster in Kearns? Second, who even wants a rooster? Then as I was laying there listening to the rooster I hear this cute little precious bird chirping. Oh, that's a cute little chirp I think to myself. Oh wait, it's still chirping. And churping. And churping. Holy crap, how many chirps does this bird have in him? It was so loud that I could have sworn the bird was sitting on my shoulder chirping in my ear.

I tossed and turned for another 45 more minutes before Jake's alarm went off. I got up. Usually I will doze off and on till I have to take him to work but I was more than ready to leave my bed. I didn't think I would ever say that.... Anyways, we take Jake to work and he realized he forgot his work phone. I told him I would go get it and be back up. I started to leave and I told the girls that Daddy forgot his phone and Ashley, my adorable little three year old goes, "Oh no, Daddy's going to fweek out!" It was so cute.

So, back to our house we go for the phone. I find his phone and head back up. I wait in the parking lot for ten minutes trying to get a hold of Jake. Finally Jake answers his office phone and laughs because somehow he forgot within ten minutes that I was coming back up with his phone. Hahahaha. Oh boy, now that's funny. (not really)

After all of this craziness I feel like I have earned breakfast from McDonalds. Off to McDonalds we went. I looked like a wreck though. I had no bra, wearing a huge hoodie, my hair in a bun with pieces falling out, and mascara smudges under my eyes. I know, it's hard being this sexy...

Anyways, the girls and I enjoyed riding around eating our breakfast and watching the sunrise. Despite all of this craziness this morning I am in a pretty good mood. I do think I am going to go and lay in my bed and watch Cold Case Files. In my opinion there's nothing better than dozing off to sleep while listening to murder mysteries.

Things that make me happy.

2010-06-09T08:24:00.000-07:00

My adorable girls. We have been having so much fun since they've been out of school.

My beautiful pink roses are blooming! I am in love with my bike. I ♥ bike rides.

My crazy, out of control, chew everything in sight, loveable pup Sadie.

My reliable, loyal, old pup' Bear. He is such a good boy.

Oh Diet Coke, how I love thee. How's the cutting back going? No comment.. And, last but not least... being with my most favorite person in the world always makes me happy!

Memorial Day festivities.

2010-06-01T15:27:00.001-07:00

Memorial Day was an eventful one. Jake surprisingly had the day off so we decided to invite his family over for a BBQ and games. We spent the afternoon cooking, cleaning and doing the yard. One of my favorite sayings is, "If you want to get your house really clean invite somebody over." That is so true. I do try hard to keep our house clean but when company is coming over I actually break out the dusting rag and the mop. I know, it's shocking. Jake spent the afternoon in the yard and he was a very happy man. I got him a new weed whacker for an early Father's Day present. It's a gas powered one that he's wanted for years. I am very happy too because now our yard doesn't look like crap. It's amazing what a good weed whacker can do.. While Jake was BBQ'ing I got a few cute pics of my family. Sadly I didn't get any pics of anyone else when we were having our BBQ because everyone was stopping in at different times and honestly I was far too interested in eating than taking pictures. Sorry!

After we all ate we decided to go to the Drive In instead of playing games. I was a little hesitant about going because the girls had school the next morning but my rebellious side came out and said, "Live a little! It's their last week of school. One tired day won't hurt them." So off we went. We had a really great time. We saw Shrek Ever After and it was really cute. I loved it. It got some really good obnoxiously loud laughs out of me so I definitely gave it a thumbs up.

Going to a Drive In in our truck was awesome. Way better than the car. Jake put a little mattress in the back and some pillows and blankets and it was so comfortable. I tell you what, if we didn't have kids with us there could have been some crazy stuff going on back there. ;) Kidding!!! Ok, I apologize. Sometimes I can't control the things that come out of my mouth.

I have a new love for the Drive In. I have to admit that back in the day it wasn't my favorite place to go. All of our kids were younger and being trapped in a car with them or chasing Ashley around the parking lot just wasn't my idea of fun. But now that they are older they actually sit and watch the show. It's amazing what a few years can do. I am hoping that we have many fun summer nights at the Drive In.

Jamie and Corey. Isn't that an adorable picture? Such cute little cousins. While we were there I kept thinking that my most favorite times we have are time when we are with our family. All of the cousins just love being together and the adults always have fun together too. All I have to say is this: "Family... isn't it about time?" :)

Biker babes.

2010-05-27T19:38:00.000-07:00

Back when I was a Junior in High School I had a job at Jefferson Jr. High where I was a sweeper. Ok, a sweeper is a glorified name for a janitor. Anyways, I was so excited for this job because the hours and pay were awesome. I accepted the job and quickly realized there was a downfall to this whole happy situation. This job was quite a bit away from my house and seeing that I was not a lucky teen who had a car my dear parents broke the dreaded news to me. "Emily, you will have to ride your bike." Excuse me? Did I hear you correctly? I have to ride my bike?! How humiliating. I am 17 years old and that is so not cool (ready with a snotty teenager voice). I seriously wanted to die and thought my parents were being so unfair. Did I mention that the entire way to my job was straight up hill? It was and it kicked my butt. I remember riding up to Jefferson and cursing my parents when people in their cars would honk at me, throw pop cans at me, etc. Oh, it was ugly. I loathed that stupid bike and vowed I wouldn't ride one again. Well wouldn't you know that I got a wild idea a couple of weeks ago that I wanted a bike. I wanted to ride it for fun. Not because I had to, but because I actually wanted to. I know, it's mind boggling. I talked to my Mom (the bike guru) about my desires and she informed me that my brother Kaleb has a bike that he doesn't use and it just needs a little help to get it up and going. I talk to Kaleb and he told me I could have it. I go pick up the bike and the seat has been chewed apart by his dog, the front wheel is off, and it's a little rusty. I was determined though, so I took it to a bike shop a few days ago and I got it back today! Ok, so it cost me $140.00 to get that bike on the road, but it's worth it to me. It's a Giant and apparently it's a really good bike so it's worth fixing up. I hopped right on it after I got it and I must say I am impressed. It rides so smoothly and it's pretty dang fun. Haley has been dying to go on a bike ride with me, so today was the day. We rode our bikes up to Maverick to drop off our redbox dvd and rode back home. We tracked it after and that little girl did three and a half miles with me. Go Haley! Can I tell you how much I loved spending time with her? It was so much fun. We talked and laughed and it was so cute to see her in her little helmet riding along next to me. I have an awesome biking memory that I told Haley when we were riding. When I was about ten my parents decided they wanted to do a little vacation for our family but since money was really tight they were going to do something creative. Our little family of 6 rode our bikes from Kearns up to Salt Lake City. We ranged in ages from 2 to 12. Abbey rode in the back of my Mom's bike and Kaleb was only six but he did it just as well as me and my older sister Jodie did. When we got up there we stayed overnight in a hotel with a pool, went out to breakfast the next day and rode all the way back home. What an awesome vacation that I will always remember. I am so glad that I have such fun parents that taught us how to have fun without having to spend lots of money. Honestly that is what life is all about. I love making memories with my family and spending good quality time with them. I am positive there will be many more bike rides in our future. :) P.S. That is the picture that Karly took of me and Haley after our ride. I know its very poor quality but I had to post it because I needed a picture and because my hair is awesome. Nothing like good ol' helmet head.

This is what happens when the girls have the camera.

2010-05-21T06:15:00.000-07:00

I find whenever I go to upload pictures there are quite a few that I didn't take. The majority are Haley's self-portraits and Karly has decided to pick up on this great idea and do it too. Needless to say it makes me laugh every time I look at these pictures. What a special little girl she is.

What a beauty..

I actually think this is adorable.

Well done, Karly.

This one had me laughing till I was in tears. It is scary and funny at the same time.

This is an old one of Ashley. I love her chubby little baby face.

Self-portrait of Haley at Sunday dinner at my Mom's house.

Poor Bear. No worries, no permanent damage was done.

The girls decided to have fun one night with all of the hair stuff.

What's funnier, Ashley's face or her Barbie's hair?

Wow Karly, that hairstyle is a keeper.

I'm so glad I have these little girls that bring me so many laughs. :)

Karly's thought for the day.

2010-05-20T13:44:00.000-07:00

The girls were listening to some Primary songs and Teach me to walk in the light came on and Karly goes, " Mommy, I like this song. But I think it should be called Teach me to walk in the dark though, because we already know how to walk when it's light." I was laughing so hard! That totally cracked me up! I know she was thinking, "Like duh, why would someone need to teach us how to walk when it's light? It's the dark that I need help with. "

I love how her little mind works.

She's a beauty.

2010-05-18T12:57:00.000-07:00

We got a truck!!! Jake and I have been discussing what truck we want to buy for our next car for the past few years. Jake has spent countless hours on Autotrader and I have spent countless hours turning him down on every truck he showed me. We payed off our van with tax-returns so the possibility of trading it in for something newer and better was oh-so-tempting. Our van was a great car but it was literally falling apart. The automatic locks squealed, one side door wouldn't open, the backseat was broke, etc. It was time. Last Sunday Jake sent me a picture of this beauty and I couldn't turn him down any longer. Good price? Check. The style we want? Check. Roomy backseat? Check. Topper? Check. One of my favorite colors? Check. Perfect for us? CHECK! Jake went down with his Dad yesterday (I refuse to go) and within a few hours he was back home with our new truck. Last night at ten o'clock I was lying in bed reading my book and Jake called me on my cell phone. I picked it up and asked him what he was doing and he replied, "Oh nothing much, just sitting out in the truck." I said, "Are you really?" Come to find out he was. Apparently he wasn't ready to leave it. I told Jake that the one downfall is now when I go to the DI and see an awesome old dresser, or hutch I can get it home without saying, "If only I had a truck.." Yipee!

Saturday with the girls.

2010-05-15T16:14:00.000-07:00

Bear eyeballing the pizza. "Please just give me some. I've been a very good boy..."

Haley Dawn

What a beautiful day. I was talking to Jake and telling him how proud of myself I was. :)

Sadie sniffing around for a place to mark her territory on my beautiful lawn. :(

I got a brilliant idea that I was going to work in the front yard and backyard and surprise Jake when he got home from work. He is usually the master of the yard but when you work seven days a week all of the time it leaves little time for that kind of stuff. He has worked SO much overtime this year. It's a blessing but really hard at the same time. The other day I actually told Jake I would do anything he wanted if he did the backyard. ( I was desperate. Can ya blame me?) I think that hurt his feelings. He feels bad because he's not around that much anymore to do all of the little things that need to be done around the yard, etc. I decided that I am a strong, capable woman and I can do it myself and surprise him.

I have only mowed our yard one other time in my life so I was a tad nervous. The front yard went smoothly. I mowed the lawn, planted some wildflower seeds, weeded my flower beds and I was feeling very optimistic for the backyard. I knew the backyard was going to be really tough because it was a jungle back there. I'm not even kidding. This was the first mowing this year and it really needed it. That backyard totally kicked my butt. It took me over two hours. Our backyard has three levels and it's pretty big. The lawnmower kept stopping, the cord got a knot in it, anything that could go wrong did! I was frustrated but I persevered my friends. I finally got it done and I was beyond exhausted.

When I came in Haley told me she had a surprise for me. She had ran me a bath, brought in my scentsy warmer and turned on my favorite music. How sweet is that?! What a kind, thoughtful daughter I have.

Today has been very productive and that makes me very happy. The girls and I rewarded ourselves with a pizza picnic in the beautiful backyard, and I treated myself to my favorite summertime drink. Diet Strawberry Limeaide from Sonic. What a great day!

P.S. I'm bringing comments back. I miss you guys.

2010-05-13T13:41:00.000-07:00

Orzo Salad

I take my stirring very seriously. I just had to add a picture of this apron my Mom made for me. I love aprons.

I found a recipe for Orzo salad in the Tribune and it sounded really good. I went to the store today and got all of the ingredients and came home and made it for dinner tonight. I must say I am impressed. I love new salad recipes, especially for the spring and summer months. I have been toying with opening a recipe blog or just throwing recipes that I like on to this blog. I don't know yet. Anyways, I love cooking and trying new recipes so I thought I would share.

ORZO SALAD

1 lb. orzo cooked and drained

1/2 c. spinach, julienned. *if you take the spinach leaves and trim the ends and stack them on top of each other you can roll them into a little log and cut it and you have little spinach confetti pieces.*

3 medium sized tomatoes, diced

one small onion, diced finely

1 tablespoon of capers

1/2 c. Parmesan cheese ( I used the powdered kind but it actually called for grated)

1 small can of sliced olives

1 clove of garlic minced 1 c. light Italian salad dressing

season with salt and pepper.

- Ok, first you cook the pasta and drain it. Add the spinach, tomatoes, onion, capers, olives, and garlic. Mix in the dressing and then add the cheese last. Refrigerate till ready.

Bonjour..

2010-05-11T17:19:00.000-07:00

When Jake is working Swing Shift I usually like to bake something since he's gone all evening. I got a wild idea that I could get in touch with my french side and make some crepes. How hard could it be? Well, it was a tad bit harder than I thought. Mixing the batter was easy. I used a simple recipe that you can whip up in a couple of minutes. Now comes the cooking part. I heard that you should have the proper pan to make crepes. Pan shman, who cares? I pulled out my trusty skillet and poured my first crepe.

FAIL!!! This was my third or fourth attempt. Looking better, but now I need to figure out how to flip this monstrous thing. I guess that's why it helps to have the right pan. My deep skillet made it tricky. I know, I'm a smart one.. Deep skillet+ flipping crepes = difficulty. DUH.

Finally I managed to crank a few out. They were all different shapes and sizes. Oh, well. I decided to experiment and make a strawberry cream cheese filling. It turned out pretty darn good. My masterpiece! It was gooooood. I think I will definitely need to practice more and get it down to an art. I will be making these for breakfast often. Good stuff.

Happy Mother's Day!

2010-05-09T13:51:00.001-07:00

I love Mother's Day. I love my Mom, my mother-in-law and I especially love being a mother. We were having a lesson in Young Women's about having righteous traditions in your family and I couldn't help but think about how many traditions my Mom instilled in me that I hope to pass down to my girls. She taught me the importance of prayer, having a strong testimony, scripture study, writing in my journal, standing up for what you believe in, being Christ-like but not letting people walk all over you, etc. She has taught me so many things that I am grateful for. My Mom is my best friend (besides Jake). I love getting together with her and going DI shopping, out to lunch, or just hanging out with the kids. She is a wonderful Grandma too. My kids adore her. Today I realized just how much I rely on my Mom. Yesterday Jake gave me a gift card to go and get a new outfit for Mother's Day. I found a really cute and simple black dress that fit great. What luck! I put it on this morning and when we got to church I sat down and it literally fell right open. It is a wrap around dress and little did I know that when you sit down the wrap opens right up. Hello world! I was so uncomfortable during Sacrament meeting. As soon as the meeting was over Jake and I booked it out of there and over to my Mom's. My Mom saved the day. She sewed it right up and all was well. Sadly her sewing skills were not passed on to me. :( How lucky I am to have a talented Mother. I am thankful for my mother-in-law Debbie. She raised Jake and taught him so many wonderful traits that I admire and adore about him. He has her kind heart and compassionate spirit. My kids also adore Debbie. Debbie rarely gets impatient or loses her cool. She is always calm. It's very admirable. And last but not least I am so thankful to be a mother. I always wanted to be a Mom and stay home with my kids. I have been really blessed in my life. I have three beautiful daughters that bring me the greatest happiness I could ever imagine. Are they little turds at times and make me want to pull my hair out? Yes. But, they are my girls and I am so glad that that I get to be their Mom. I hope when they are grown up that I will spend lots of time with them and their kids and have the kind of relationship that I have with my Mom.

I ♥ Fridays.

2010-05-07T12:16:00.000-07:00

Friday's are a day that I love. The girls get out early, the weekend is almost here, and best of all I have my Friday lunch date with Rachel and her girls. We try to get together every Friday for lunch. We usually call each other the night before and say, "What do you have at your house?" We manage to come up with some pretty awesome lunches. There is always Diet Coke or Diet Pepsi involved and some sort of delicious treat. The little girls usually get peanut butter and jelly or macaroni and cheese. Poor little things.. I did manage to get some cute pics that I must share. How cute is that?! Shalece is a little girl that Rachel babysitts and her and Ashley are best friends.

My dear friend Rachel. Doesn't she have gorgeous hair?

Yeah, baby..

Me and Ashley. Oh, and Sadie's head.

Rachel's husband Jake went to Taiwan on his mission and he makes such great food that he learned from his mission. Today she brought over some leftovers from their dinner yesterday. Pot stickers and fried rice. I also made chocolate covered strawberries (we make those a lot when we get together) Everything was so delicious and the girls had a great time playing together. Rach and I sat on the couch and chit chatted about what's going on with our families, our kids, etc. She is such a great friend that I love to spend time with. We can talk and talk for hours. She is pretty much awesome.

Bleh..

2010-05-06T13:21:00.000-07:00

That's how I'm feeling today. I haven't necessarily had a bad day, just a funky one. I am feeling slightly annoyed with the world. I know you know why I'm feeling this way. (It's a girl thing) Anyways, today has been interesting. I had a fun breakfast outing with my friend Rachel and we were talking about the blogging world and it really got me thinking about what I like and dislike about blogging. I really think there is a shallow side to blogging. I think that a lot of the time it feels like a popularity contest and a game of who's blog is the coolest and who has twenty thousand comments on their posts. I know there are some of you that might disagree with me, and that's totally fine. But I know for a fact that a few of my friends have felt the same way so I know I'm not alone. Quite a few of my girlfriends are quitting their blogs all together. It makes me sad, but yet I totally understand. My friend Rachel said that she hasn't wrote in her blog forever because who wants to read something where she just writes, "My day was boring. I did the same things as I usually do. The end." That gave me a good laugh but it's kind of true. I am guilty of feeling like I need to entertain my reader. I naturally like to write about the humorous things in my life more than the serious things so if it comes off that all of my posts are me trying to make you laugh, I apologize. I just like to write like that. So to take all pressure off of myself I am going to take off the comment section in my blog. I like that Stephanie Nelson doesn't have comments on hers and I thought I'd give it a whirl. I think it might free up some of the pressure I feel with blogging. Call me insecure, call me weird, it's Ok. I understand where you're coming from. I feel like if someone wants to talk to me about something I posted e-mail me. (emydawn@gmail.com) My e-mail addresses are on my Facebook account too. Speaking of Facebook, I am trying to back away from the whole Facebook thing a bit. I will still check it but not as often. I am finding that I want to spend more time on my blog and less time on Facebook. Just my personal preference. Jake turned my blog into a book for me this past Christmas and I really love it. That right there gives me more inspiration to write on here more. Thanks for listening my peeps. I ♥ ya!

Cold sores suck.

2010-04-29T17:41:00.001-07:00

I woke up this morning with a tingling feeling above my lip. Oh no. Please no... Yes, there it was. The beginnings of a nasty cold sore. And it is right at the top of my lip. What a lovely spot to be. It's going to look like a little Hitler mustache when it comes in all the way. You know what really ticks me off? I went 26 whole years before I ever had a cold sore. 26 years! What happened?! How I long for the days when I had lips free of pain. Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating. I only get cold sores about twice a year. But, when I do they are a doozey. I first got one in October 2006. You want to know how I remember the month? It was Halloween and I was joking that I could be Angelina Jolie lips with my swollen, massive lips. You know how much I rival Angelina, I mean come on... :)

I decided to take matters into my own hands and google home remedies for cold sores. Wow- lots of weird stuff. I think the weirdest thing I read was someone actually put bleach on their cold sore. Bleach. Um.... no thanks. I prefer to keep my lips instead of burning them off. I also read about putting garlic on it. Now wouldn't that be pretty? I bet I would smell lovely. Let me slap a clove of garlic on my lip and proceed with my day.

There was also someone who dabbed nail polish remover on their cold sore. OUCH. Holy crap, all of these sound painful. The most common remedies were rubbing alcohol, vitamin C, and the remedy that I thought I would try. Toothpaste. I got out of the shower and slapped some toothpaste on my lip and went about getting ready. Ashley kept saying, "What's on your face, Mommy?" I think deep down she was embarrassed by me.

Anyways, the toothpaste stung but it also had a nice tingly cool feeling. I wiped it off carefully before I went out and ran some errands but as soon as I got home the toothpaste went back on. Later on I even drove to get Jake from work with toothpaste on my face. I pulled into the parking lot and about 6 or 7 guys were walking out of the gate so I pulled off to the side and quickly tried to rub off the toothpaste. Not cool. Do not rub a cold sore vigorously. It will result in tears to the eyes and foul language coming to the mind. Holy cow, it was stuck like glue. Luckily I removed it before anyone saw.

All I gotta say that wearing a big glob of toothpaste on your face really isn't that bad. What do ya think? This picture is pretty awful. Bad hairday + coldsore + toothpaste on my face = no smiles from me. I must admit that it isn't hurting nearly as bad as they usually do. I am thinking the Valtrex definitely has something to do with it, but lets not discredit the toothpaste. I am a sucker for home-remedies. Let's hope it works.

I ♥ Strawberries.

2010-04-25T14:18:00.000-07:00

What do you do when your husband is working twelve hr. shifts all weekend long? Why you make strawberry pies, of course! I had a boyfriend in high school that knew of my love for strawberries so him and his Grandma made me a strawberry pie for Valentines Day and it was so delicious. How I have forgotten about that all of these years is a mystery, but somehow it came back to my memory and I realized that I had to try and make one myself.

First off, I am slightly addicted to http://www.allrecipes.com/. I stalk this website. I am on it daily looking for new recipes. I love it because people make comments on the recipes and rate how many stars they think it deserves and what other things they might have done to make the recipe better. Sometimes the reviews make me crazy because people completely change the entire recipe and then give it 5 stars. I rely on the stars. If it has four and a half stars or more I will try it.

The pie I made is called Fresh Strawberry Pie and it is delicious. It was so good in fact that I made two more this morning to take to family dinner at my parents house. I made a homemade crust yesterday and it was really good. It was also on allrecipes and it was called Basic Flaky Crust. So after reading many comments I decided to try the Oreo crust and then I made a frozen crust that I had in the freezer because I was short on time since I needed to get ready for church. I am thinking that the Oreo crust will be awesome since it is chocolate and chocolate and strawberries is the best together.

It dawned on my yesterday that my most favorite place to be in my house is the kitchen. I love turning on my favorite music and cooking. I think it helps me to feel a little bit creative since I am not so creative in other departments. Now I tell you what, if I had one of those awesome bodies where I could eat whatever I wanted without any consequences I would be in my kitchen 24/7 cooking. Sadly I was not blessed with that. So I will enjoy baking here and there, not every day. :)

Good day sunshine... (I wish it was sunny)

2010-04-22T14:45:00.000-07:00

I really don't know what I want to write about, but I do know I am sick of seeing my Easter blog on here. I pretty much think that my blog is super boring lately so I need to do something different. I love writing and expressing myself and this blog is pretty lame lately. Now here is a blog that I love reading. Stephanie Nielsen's blog nieniedialogues! I admire her so much. I know lots of you have read her blog and are followers too but I think I must proclaim my love for her on my blog. :) I have read her blog off and on for about a year. I found her blog through my friend who posted about this family that needed prayers because Stephanie and her husband had been in a plane crash and both were seriously injured. I started reading it consistantly to see how their family was doing. Stephanie and her husband survived thankfully, but both were burned. Stephanie was burned really badly and it is so interesting to read her blog and follow her day to day life. Her new life after the crash as she calls is. She is a really inspirational person. She is super healthy, her sense of style in her dress and her decorating I totally LOVE. I just wonder how she does it day to day. I can't imagine having a husband and four little kids and going through so much trauma. I went through a lot of her posts before the crash etc. and she is just an amazing person. She is funny, beautiful, and isn't afraid to write about her life and what's going on in it. You know how you want to write something on your blog and you think, "Should I write that? Is this stupid?" I am guilty of that. I know that this blog is for my posterity, etc. but I also know that other people are reading it so sometimes I feel a little insecure with what I want to express. I have admired that Stephanie really enjoys and posts about the simple little things in life, but she does it in a way that is really entertaining and you can relate to. I want to do that. So here it goes.. A day in the life of Emily Youngdell. I am laughing picturing people logging off of my blog the instant they read that... :) So far my day has gone like this: I woke up and went to get out of bed and I realized that I slept wrong and my neck is super kinked. OUCH. I literally have to turn my body to the side if I want to see something on the right side of me. I then realized when I was getting out of bed that I had a faint recollection that Jake grabbed my pillow out from under my head super fast in the middle of the night and proceeded to bop me in the nose pretty hard. I recall yelling, "What the heck?" and Jake apologizing and going right back to sleep. *note to self* Tell Jake about this and inform him that if he doesn't stop this nonsense I will be reporting him.. :) After I got the girls off to school I got dressed in my workout clothes and headed up to the Oval to walk the track with my dear friend Rachel. I walked for an hour and even ran a whole huge lap at the end and felt fabulous afterwards. Don't mock me folks, I'm not a runner.. If you had a chest the same size of mine I am pretty sure you wouldn't enjoy it either... Afterwards Jake and I decided that since it's payday we deserved something good for lunch. Does anyone else do that on payday? We decided on Carl's Jr. I got my new favorite the Santa Fe Chicken Sandwich minus the huge, nasty chili pepper that's on it, and I had a tiny bit of Jake's fries and a fabulous Diet Coke. How is the cutting back on the Diet Coke going? Um, not so good.... I have good days and bad days. Jake and I watched The Lovely Bones while eating lunch and I must admit it wasn't nearly as good as the book. It was really nice just relaxing with Jake before he had to go to work. After the show was over I had a good 45 min. nap before Jake had to leave to work. Naps are a gift from above. How I love a good nap.. Now the kids are all home from school and I am seriously debating whether to tackle the huge pile of clothes in the laundry room that need to be sorted through. They are all different sizes and seasons and there are TONS of them. It's going to be a big project. It's a toss up though... do the clothes project or go make some banana chocolate chip walnut muffins? Hmmmm, that's a tough one.. I pick the muffins.

Easter fun.

2010-04-06T10:58:00.000-07:00

Last week the girls had the whole week off of school for Spring Break and we had lots of fun. We had family parties, went out to lunch with some friends, had a sleepover with all of the cousin's on the Youngdell side, dyed eggs, ate tons and tons of candy, etc. It was awesome. Sadly it is back to real life today. The festivities are over. :( Last week we had a party with Jake's side of the family for Easter. We had planned on roasting hot dogs outside but since it was snowing we stayed inside and still had lots of fun. The kids did their Easter egg hunt and the adults teased the crap out of the kids. My brother-in-law Jason totally cracks me up. My nephew Parker is terrified of anything in a costume. Specifically Santa and the Easter Bunny. Well Jason kept telling Parker that the Easter Bunny was on his way and Parker would get this terrified look in his eyes and start bolting for the door. Poor little guy, his Uncles tease him mercilessly. Jason and Jake are a bad combo together. Actually they have me laughing the whole time. Hard to imagine, I know.

Anyways, the little girls were in the living room and Jason told them to go downstairs because the Easter bunny was hiding in the closet. They all told him that they didn't believe him and they knew that he was just teasing. Well as they go to leave the room Haley casually walks by the closet and peeks in. It totally cracked me up! We had such a great time with everyone. I love family get togethers. So on Saturday me and the girls dyed Easter eggs and had a fun time together. We did glitter eggs this year and they were really pretty but so messy! I think we'll stick to the normal eggs next time.

Conference weekend was really nice and relaxing. On Sunday Jake had to work at 2:30 which was a bummer, but I'm glad he was there for part of the day. I enjoyed watching Conference with him. Even though he was snoring through part of it. :) I love Easter time and reading about the resurrection. Everytime that I read it I love it more. Jake gave me a painting a few years ago for our anniversary of Mary at the tomb where Jesus appeared to her and it is so beautiful. One of my all time favorite scripture stories. Love it.

After Conference we had a big family dinner at my parents house and enjoyed being together. All in all we had a great week and lots of good family time together. Here's hoping that the snow will go away and Spring will finally be here. Spring is my favorite season and I am so ready for it!

I can do it, I can do it..

2010-03-27T08:46:00.000-07:00

I think it's time. I think I have an unhealthy addiction to Diet Coke and I want to do something about it. I am not going to be some hard core person who gives it up one hundred percent, but I want to get to the point where I can have it on occasion for a treat. This is going to be hard. This is going to be SO hard.

You know what's funny? I hardly ever drank any pop before I got married. I would have it if I went out to eat or something, but that was about it. It really wasn't that important to me. Then I married a man that loves his drinks. Coke or Mountain Dew specifically. I started drinking some of his drinks and then I realized that I do enjoy a Coke every now and then so why not be healthier (haha) and buy Diet Coke? Sadly that is where my story begins.

Actually, I grew up with a family that were heavy drinkers. Not with alcohol, but pop. :) My Mom's side of the family loves Coke/Diet Coke and from the time that I was little I always remember having it around. But you know something ironic I never really cared for it that much. When I lived at home my family would have a coke with dinner occasionally and guess what I would have? MILK. Yes my friends, milk. What happened to me?!

This morning I just randomly decided to google, "Is diet Coke bad for you?" I think I already knew the answer to this, and holy crap there was tons of stuff on how bad it is for you. I think it's time for a change my friends. I do indeed love milk and water so I think I can do this. It's kind of fun to have a new goal to work on. I figure if I write it on my blog that will hold me more accountable for sticking to it. Hopefully that is incentive enough! Wish me luck!

Nine wonderful years.

2010-03-17T14:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was our ninth wedding anniversary! I can't believe it's been nine years. Time goes by way too fast. 2001 seems so long ago in my mind because of all that has happened in the last nine years. We've lived in two different houses, had three kids, numerous pets, callings, etc. We've had lots of big milestones the past few years. We both are now in our thirties. When I got married I was twenty one and Jake was twenty two. We were babies! Seriously, were we responsible enough to be married? Obviously we were since it has worked out so well. Speaking of which it's pretty awesome to think that only after three weeks of dating I knew that this was the guy I wanted to spend forever with. How did I know? It was just that gut instinct. (It didn't hurt that we were already friends and grew up together..) I was one hundred percent myself around Jake and he made me so happy and he treated me better than any other guy I had ever been with. I would wake up in the morning and go out to my car to go to work and it would have all of the snow scraped off of it already. He would come over super early before he went up to work and do that for me so I wouldn't have to. When we were engaged he came over early one Saturday morning and made me and my family a huge breakfast for no reason, but just because he is sweet and giving. He's loves to surprise me with things because he knows that I love surprises. He really is one of a kind. Now, now, before you log off of my blog because you want to gag from all of this cheesiness, let me tell you that Jake isn't perfect. His OCD tendencies make me insane. He is very particular with things and it makes me want to freak out on him at times. He has an order to all things. The way he bathes, eats, etc. It's kind of entertaining actually. Speaking of eating and drinking, I have been known to yell at him in spontaneous outbursts, "Will you quit gulping!!!!" He knows how much I detest that so he has honestly tried to quiet his swallowing. I did indeed quit biting my nails partly because it drove him insane too. See what we do for each other? :) When we were first married we got into an argument when I wanted him to come and help me clean out the shed and he wanted to do it later. Somewhere in that argument I said, "You are such a procrastinator!" and he replied with, "You are so impatient!" It's true. He does procrastinate and I am impatient at times. But... we love each other and we love being together so that's all that matters! Here's to many more happy years together.

Three Birthdays and a Baptism.

2010-03-06T16:46:00.000-08:00

The past few weeks have been lots of fun for our family. We have had three birthdays in the past couple of weeks and Haley got baptized today! Lots of big things going on. Haley turned eight on the 19th of February. She went to see the Chipmunk movie, we went to the Spaghetti Factory for her birthday dinner, and both Grandparents took her out on dates and spoiled her! For some reason my computer won't pull up her birthday pictures. Hopefully I can post them soon. Anyways, Jake turned 31 on the 27th of February and I made him a very happy man. I finally bought him an Xbox. The poor guy has had a playstation 2 since we've been married and he really never thought I would agree to fork out the big bucks and get him something he really, really wanted. Does that make me sound like a cheapskate or what?! I'm not a cheapskate, I'm just frugal. And yes, there is a difference... :)

After I bought it I went in and had him close his eyes and I put it on his lap with a bow on it and when he opened his eyes I thought he was going to pass out. To say he was shocked was a total understatement. He was so excited and that made me so happy. He totally deserves it!

Now is this a happy face or what? So... on the 4th it was my birthday. Yes folks, I am now the big 3-0-! Crazy! I had a really wonderful birthday. When I woke up I went out to the living room and Jake and the girls had decorated the room after I went to bed the night before. So sweet! The girls gave me my birthday presents which were really cute. Makeup, nail polish and tons of my favorite candy. Jake got me something I have been wanting and I was beyond thrilled. I got all four seasons of Lavern and Shirley. (season five and six haven't been released yet). Now, now- don't laugh at me, folks. I started renting these at the library and they were so hilarious that I just fell in love with them. They are so fun and the whole family can watch them together. Needless to say I will be watching hours and hours of Lavern and Shirley. I'm so excited!!!!!

Anyways, on my birthday my life-long friend Marcie took me out to lunch and made me some delicious cupcakes, my parents brought me a pie and a card with some moola, my first counselor Peggy that I love, and consider a really wonderful friend of mine. and her sweet girls brought me some cheesecake too. I felt really loved by everyone. I have some wonderful people in my life! ( Needless to say I will be squeezing into my pants the next few days...)

The day after my birthday Jake took me to Twilite-a teenage vampire at Desert Star playhouse. It was a spoof on the Twilight movies and it was SO funny! We had such a great time together. It was such a fun date.

This is Jake's sexy actor pose. He makes me laugh. :) Me and Jake at Desert Star. I adore this picture. How sweet is that? This needs to be framed.

My Haley Dawn was baptized today! I still can't believe it. I did pretty good keeping my emotions together, but I did get a tad bit teary. My Mom gave her a set of scriptures with her name embossed on them and a cute scripture case and as Haley was hugging her I was trying my best to hold back the tears and not really succeeding. I remember the day that she was born like it was yesterday. I really hate the fact that my kids are growing up so fast. I love that she chose to be baptized and is making good choices in her life, but man why can't they be little for a little bit longer?!

I realized that I didn't get a picture of her in her dress until we were in the dressing room. Ooops! So here's the lovely shower as a backdrop. Me and my sweet girl. I do love this picture despite the fact that hardly anyone is smiling and Ashley's boots are clashing. Sadie thought it would be fun to chew up Ashley's church shoes this morning. :( Anyways, it was a wonderful day with friends and family. I wish we could have invited everyone that we know and love but with our two families it was pretty darn packed! To those who did make it, thank you! I feel really blessed in my life and I'm so grateful for all of you that support me and my family. I love you all.

I ♥ coupons.

2010-02-08T11:46:00.000-08:00

It's official, I am a coupon addict. I am totally serious. I just got into this whole coupon thing at the first of the year and it is so much fun!!!! I never thought I'd say that.. I was the girl that when I would get ads in the mail I would walk directly to my recycle garbage can and trash them. GASP! I know, the thought of doing that now makes me so ashamed. Now when I see my Sunday paper on the driveway I have to run out even when I'm bra-less to go and get it because I am so excited. If I was looking for a line at the store and someone pulled out a wad of coupons I would dash to another line. My how times have changed. I have changed my ways, have no fear. My sister Jodie invited me to a coupon class at her house last December and I really liked it but I thought it was way to complicated for me. I really didn't think I had time for it. I have now found that I enjoy my time with my coupons. I love to sit on my bed and clip them and organize them. I told Jake its kind of like a fun little hobby. Now I am not calling myself a pro, because I'm not. I'm taking this whole coupon thing slowly. I am a beginner. I don't know all of the tricks yet. Though I did experience my first bit of hostility today at Walmart. I went and got quite a few things with my coupons and I had them all organized and ready to go at the cash register. Well I am pretty sure that I picked the SLOWEST cashier in the entire Walmart. There were two Spanish women behind me muttering in Spanish and looking very put out and I guarantee they were so annoyed with me. You know what I have to say to them? Sorry sisters, but it was totally worth the money that I saved! Seriously, what is more thrilling than watching your total go down? It's awesome. I think I get a little coupon high from it. :) Afterwards I have to save my receipts so I can see just how much money I saved and give myself a pat on the back. I'm going to end this becauses I am sounding slightly wacko. Anyways, all I have to say is this- Coupons, it's a good thing. :)

A little bit of this and that...

2010-01-23T09:44:00.000-08:00

I don't know if it's the whole New Years resolution time but I have been thinking about some things that I have finally accomplished in my life. Now these two things probably seem really silly and small to someone else, but to me they are huge. First off.... drumroll please.... I quit biting my nails! After 29 years I finally stopped. I didn't stop because I finally got will power to do so, I stopped because I wore my front tooth so thin that it chipped twice! That was the end people. I was not going to go back to the Dentist and pay big bucks to get my teeth fixed because of something stupid that I was doing. Now let me inform you that I was an addict to biting my nails. Nait biters anonymous could have been a group that I would be president of. I bit my nails without even thinking about it. The minute I would get stressed or nervous I would automatically start biting my nails. I probably looked like a beaver going to town on a piece of wood! I'm sure it was so attractive. I would bite them constantly without even realizing I was doing it. It was a really bad habit that I hated. I was always self-conscious about my hands and would try to hide them so people wouldn't see them. And not to mention that they hurt and were always sore. So, as of last August I have not bit my nails. I must say having long nails is pretty awesome. Who knew that it could be so fun filing them and painting them. I have actually gotten compliments on my nails the past few months and I about die of shock everytime. I think I show them to Jake and least once a week and say, "Aren't you so proud of me?!" He humors me and raves about them for a minute or two. Hooray! I finally did it. Now on to my next big thing. My husband has been working shift work for the past 9 years and it is a really crazy schedule where he will work all sorts of hours. Well I have had a really bad fear of being all alone at night without him. When I was first married my sister Abbey would come and stay the night with me and she was a lifesaver. When I got pregnant with Karly I finally told myself that I didn't need her to come over anymore because I was a big girl and I could do it myself. Well I did stay by myself, but I had my girls with me in my room with the door locked every single time Jake worked graves. I felt safe with them right by me. This went on for years and years and years. It became a habit that I was comfortable with and the girls loved sleeping in my room. Well, the past month I finally said enough is enough! I can be alone without freaking out. So, I am now sleeping in my room alone, well technically not alone cause Buddy and Sadie are with me, but I don't have the girls with me and I must say that the first few nights were rough. I have Jake leave on the kitchen light before he leaves so it's not totally dark. Yes, I am almost thirty years old and I still leave a light on! Don't judge me, please. Anyways, I woke up constantly peeking over my shoulder and out the door to see if anyone was there. I have always been terrified and I know there are reasons for this. My Mom's sister Kathy was raped and murdered a few years before I was born and this has installed a major fear in me since I was young. I don't know how my Mom or her family ever got through something like that. I'm not using this as an excuse, it's just something that happened in our family and I have always been terrified because of it. I have decided that I need to have Faith and not live in fear. Fear really can be paralyzing and I don't want to instill fear in my girls either. So, from here on out I am going to try to conquer my fears and keep moving forward. It really is so rewarding to accomplish something big in your life! So here's to hoping that 2010 will be my year of self-improvement.

Premenstrual monster.

2010-01-09T16:58:00.000-08:00

Ok, I'm sure that aren't any guys out there that read my blog so I think I am pretty safe to vent about PMS. First off, why? Why do we have to have this? I have two monster zits on my face, I can't stop eating crap and I'm moody. Can you tell I am having one of those days? I find that one second I am happy as can be and the next minute I am freaking out at someone in my family. My friend Marcie read somewhere that if you eat walnuts it's suppose to help with PMS. Maybe I should make some brownies with walnuts in them. Therefore I get my chocolate fix, and my walnut fix. I know some people, I won't mention who, who are seriously psycho around that time of month. They scare me. I'm not to this extent, thankfully. I'm the type that will either get really snappy or I will burst into tears over nothing. Today Haley was pushing my buttons and I was trying to have patience with her. She spilled cereal all over and wouldn't clean it up, and then she had the audacity to chug my water without asking me. Oh no you di'int girlfriend! I totally yelled at her. I grabbed her arm and ushered her out of the room while yelling, "This is not the day to mess with me, Haley!" First off, spilled cereal is not the end of the world, now is it? Now I know water is plentiful and easy to access but my water was nice ice water that I was sheltering from my kids and their backwash. Is that so wrong? Please don't call child services on me. I didn't cause her any damage. Thankfully Haley is pretty resilient. I literally closed my eyes and said a silent prayer that psycho lady would leave and then I took out my frustration on cleaning the kitchen. (the only time anger comes in handy) and then I called Jake and told him what I did and he started singing, "Mama said they'll be days like this, they'll be days like this, my Mama said," and that made me bust up laughing. Man, I love him. He doesn't make me feel bad or guilty, he just tries to lighten the mood. Pretty soon I was happy again so I called Haley back into the kitchen and I told her that I was sorry and she goes, "It's ok, Mom. That was actually pretty funny." Boy, I'm so glad someone thinks I'm funny when I act like this. :)

Hello 2010!

2010-01-01T19:54:00.000-08:00

* Once again you might want to read the post before looking at the pictures. The pictures actually start out with Christmas Day and then go to New Years Eve. Someday I will put everything in the right order. * Happy Holidays!! " Jake, let's take a serious picture." Haley gives me the camera and this is what I see...

Karly got this cat for Christmas and she looks and acts real. My family had a great time pretending that she was real. We got some good laughs from that cat.

Kaleb, Bruno the lap dog, and my Dad.

Aaron pretending there isn't a huge stuffed cat on his shoulders.

I was the only one that payed attention to the camera. You've gotta love Travis's face.

Ashley loves playing with Trav. What a cute picture!

Ashley and her new baby. Take a look at the disastrous house in the background. Yikes!

I captured this face right after she opened all of her presents. I think she was overwhelmed and didn't know what to check out first. So funny! Love it!

Cute little Karly Kay with her new baby and Christmas outfit.

Haley looking through her stocking.

Ash and me. I was holding Sadie back from chewing through all of the boxes and wrapping paper. Crazy little pup. I just love her.

Jake and I on New Year's Eve.

Jamie and Payton.

Grandpa Norm and Grandma Debbie.

Mike and his friend Jordan. They had a good time playing video games all night.

Digging in to all of the good food.

Happy New Year! Wow, I can't believe it is already 2010. That means that I will be thirty this year. Eeeeek.... I'm not sure how I feel about that. I think time goes by faster and faster every year. This past year was pretty good. I think it was the busiest one that we've had with my calling and Jake working tons and tons of hours, but I think I learned a lot last year and hopefully became a better person in some ways. Here's to hoping 2010 is a great one!

So, my last post was on Christmas Eve so I need to update since then. Christmas day was such a great day! We woke up and did presents and then we went to our annual Christmas breakfast with Jake's family. It was really nice. After that we came home and relaxed, visited with Jake's family and enjoyed the day. That night we went over to my family house for dinner and it was really fun. We all had a great time together with lots of laughs. My Dad made an awesome turkey that was wonderful. It was a really wonderful Christmas day.

This past week has been busy, but really fun. It has actually been wonderful. The number one reason for this wonderfulness is because Jake has been off of work! It's been SO nice to have him home. He has been so awesome. He's been working his butt off around the house and has given me a much needed break. I'm a lucky girl to have him.

Jake and I were able to go on a date the other night, Jake's had game nights with Jason and his friend Ben, lots of family get togethers, I've got some great alone time shopping and reading Breaking Dawn again, etc. It's been so nice. I don't want to go back to real life!!!!

Last night we had all of Jake's family over for New Years Eve and we had a blast. We ate tons of food and played cranium, cards, and tribond. The kids were really good and hung out downstairs the whole time. It was really fun. Good times with the Youngdells. :)This weekend we are going to take the girls sledding again and hopefully enjoy our last few days of peace. What a fun two weeks!

Our December so far...

2009-12-24T22:01:00.000-08:00

Wow, this month has flown by! I was getting a little overwhelmed thinking about doing a long blog about the whole entire month so I thought I would make a photo collage to show what we have been up to. At the first of the month Marcie, Claudia, Tara and I had our annual Christmas party. We had a delicious dinner, we talked and laughed and exchanged gifts. As always we had such a great time together and I am once again grateful for having such good friends that have been in my life for so many years.

Shortly after that we celebrated Ashley's 3rd birthday. I can't believe my baby is three! She was so much fun on her birthday. We took her to Carl's Jr. for dinner because that is where she wanted to go. We had cake and ice cream and she opened her presents and played with them all night. It was a really great day. We love our sweet little Ashley. She brings so much happiness to our lives and we are so thankful to have her as our daughter.

The rest of the month has been parties and more parties! This month has been really fun but pretty dang busy. In YW we had a really fun christmas party, we went caroling and had some fun activities. Jake got off of work last night and he is off till the 4th of January. I AM SO EXCITED!! Can you tell?! He has worked so much overtime the past few month so I am really looking forward to having him home with us for a couple of weeks. I should probably go to bed soon. It is actually 11:00 on Christmas Eve and I am hoping the kiddies are all finally asleep. Ashley and Karly were out quickly but Haley was too excited so we let her get up and watch a show for a little bit. I'm hoping she's finally asleep so we can go to bed. Oh man, I had so many Christmas's when I stayed up all night with my brothers and sisters because we were so excited. Christmas is so much fun with kids. Merry Christmas everyone!

P.S. Did you happen to notice the beautiful afghan that me, Jake and Haley are cuddling with on the couch? I made that!! Go me! Can you tell I'm proud of myself? It's a good thing that there isn't a close up on the shape of that afghan, but that doesn't really matter, right? It's my first one so I am hoping to get better. :)

What a fun Holiday weekend!

2009-11-30T11:51:00.000-08:00

I pretty much downloaded all of these pictures backwards! So, you might want to read the post first and then look at the pictures it might make more sense. :0) Decorating the tree. Ashley does not look thrilled. :)

Our tree is ugly to be perfectly honest. But we cut it down ourselves and that's all that matters. :0)

Karly opening her birthday presents.

One of the ten cars in the parade.

My Dad and Haley at the parade.

So cute. Can you tell they are happy?

Jake is in love. She is his little baby.

Every little girl pup should have a hot pink heart collar, don't ya think?

Making our advent chains with Jake's family. Good times..

I love my brothers. :)

Abbey is wearing my Dad's glasses from the 80's. Aren't they sexy?

My brother-in-law Shaun, and my niece Parker.

My Mom and Dad. Apparently my Dad is really excited. :)

Aw, I love my family.

Sistery love... can you feel it?

This past weekend was so much fun. We were pretty busy, but it was all so much fun that I didn't mind. On Thanksgiving we went to my family's house this year. We had a great dinner and had lots of fun laughing and visiting. I love spending time with my siblings and my parents. It's funny how you grow up together and you bug the crap out of each other, but when you are older you want to see them more and spend more time with them. At least that's how I feel.... Thanksgiving night we went over to Jake's Aunt Sharol's house and made our countdown chains for Christmas. We do this every year and the kids love it. I was lucky enough to hold my nephew Payton and rock him to sleep for awhile. He is so sweet and cuddly. Oh man, I love newborn babies. No, no, I'm not having one. We did get a newborn, but it isn't a human. We got a puppy!!

On Thanksgiving night Jake was looking through the KSL ads at puppies because he has literally been bugging me to get another dog for quite awhile. I held strong for a long time. I was not going for it. After he stated his case (Bear would love a friend, the girls will help take care of it, think of how much you love dogs!, etc. etc.) I said that I would look through the ads with him. Well what do you know, a little half boxer half black lab puppy was for sale for twenty bucks!! We called the guy and he said to come on over. Within half an hour we were back home with our two month old puppy Sadie. All I have to say is that she is SO adorable. She is so cuddly and sweet. She is a puppy though... Let's just say that early this morning I headed to the store to get her lots of bones and chew toys. Thankfully she is laying off of the household items and chewing on her bone. She's had a few accidents which is to be expected. Hopefully she will be fully house trained soon. For my sanity I hope it's very soon. She is actually doing pretty good. She is eating like a little pig though. She is pretty tiny so I'm sure she'll fatten up fast.

The day after we got Sadie we went down to Manti with my parents to stay overnight. We were heading down there because we were going to go and cut Christmas trees in Spring City Canyon early the next morning. We had such a great time! We drove down there with the kids and Sadie, (Bear got to spend the night with Abbey) and we had dinner, checked into the motel, and watched a cute little Christmas parade in Manti that night. I think there was a total of ten cars in it! It was really cute. I love the small town life. I wish I could live there. Afterwards my Mom's friend Cathy who owns the motel gave us free ice cream cones from her ice cream shop and we rented some movies. We spent the night watching movies and relaxing. It was nice. We got up early the next morning and waited in line to cut our tree. Let me rephrase that, Jake waited in line while I sat in the car with the girls and Sadie. It was freezing!! We ended up getting a tree pretty quickly and we headed down to Fat Jacks pizza before we headed home. Oh man, it was good. I love Fat Jacks. I refuse to call it Roy's pizza and pasta. It is still Fat Jacks to me. I don't care if it has a new owner. Anyways, I love it. It reminds me of my college days at Snow. On Sunday we celebrated Karly's 6th birthday. I can't believe my little Honey is six already! Where does the time go? She is getting so big and is such a help to us. Karly has such a tender heart and she is so loving. We are so thankful she is a part of our family.

Anyways, we let her open her presents before church and then we had dinner and cake and ice cream later that night. We also decorated our Christmas tree and watched the Elf last night. It was some good family bonding time. All in all it was a really fun birthday weekend. I feel like the Christmas season is going to be busy, but a great one. I love this time of year. I got all of my decorations up this morning and the tree is all decorated and I love it. Hopefully Sadie won't undecorate my tree anytime soon. We'll see about that.... :)

Hmmm, what have we been up to lately?

2009-11-08T13:57:00.000-08:00

The past week or so has been pretty crazy in the Youngdell home. Between Halloween, sick kids, church activities, and fun stuff it's been pretty wild. First off Halloween was good! We took the kids trick or treating before Jake went to work and they had such a great time. Ashley really loved it! Whenever someone answered the door she would say, "I'm a ballerina!" and then she would invite herself into their home. It was pretty hilarious! After trick or treating for about an hour we came home and Jake went to work. (He's still working TONS of overtime and I miss him.. sniff, sniff...) Anyways, Haley and Karly had a ton of fun passing out candy to the trick or treaters and I did my new favorite thing. Crocheting!! My mother-in-law taught me how and I love it. I am making a blanket for Jake for Christmas. I have no idea if it will be done in time, so it might end up being a birthday present. Pictures to come later on. I bet you can hardly contain your excitement....:)

Here's some cute Halloween pictures of us and the kiddies. Halloween was so much fun with them.

I love this picture. Karly is Sleeping Beauty, Ashley is a ballerina and Haley is Hannah Montana.

I love my girls.

What a cute little ballerina. Since it was kind of cool outside all we did for her costume was put on a tutu. Can it get any easier than that? I think not.... This past week Ashley has been sick with the stomach flu and it was not fun. Today Karly has been complaining of a stomach ache and I think she is going to have it too. Oh the joys of motherhood. Looks like I'm on puke patrol again. I swear it seems like everyone I know has someone sick in their family! I'm really not liking this. On to better news.... Guess what I did last night? I went with some girlfriends to dinner and then to So You Think You Can Dance concert! It was such a great night. We talked and laughed a ton at dinner and then we headed to the concert and it was awesome. I really enjoyed seeing the dancers live. They are amazing! We are going to make this a tradition and go again next year.

Dinner at Chili's was tons of fun. Lots of visiting and laughing! Suzie and Rachel.

I got some pretty awesome pictures. Believe me, I wasn't this close. We had pretty good seats but I think it would be totally worth it to splurge and get a really close seat so you can actually see their faces. All in all it was such a fun night and I am already looking forward to next year!

Picture of the week.

2009-10-19T13:27:00.000-07:00

I told Haley that she is far too young to be making fun of me already. Who knew that balloons could provide such great entertainment and fun for the whole family?

P.S. Her shirt is totally filthy in this. I promise I do laundry. Just look at my couch in the background that is loaded with it.

Home is where the heart is.

2009-10-11T19:51:00.000-07:00

Two years ago today we moved into this house. When I think back on that day I think of how nervous I was. I remember Jake and I cleaning out the last few things in our old house and how sad I was. I literally walked through every room and cried and cried. I loved that house. Jake and I started our life there. We literally got married and I moved in that day. That house was really small but it holds so many wonderful memories. I remember thinking right after we were married that we had a three bedroom house all to ourselves! How exciting! Within five years we had three kids and that house was full! We brought all three of our girls home to that house. Some of my fondest memories are of my girls learning to roll over, crawl and walk in that house. We put a lot of work into our home and we made it ours. I loved my decorations, the colors of the paint in all of the rooms, etc. My yard had lots of flowerbeds and the maple tree that we planted the very first year that we were married. It was comfortable and we loved it, but we knew it wasn't where we should stay. It's hard when you've been somewhere for six years and all of the sudden you leave it all behind.

When we found this house it was pretty much a mess. The front and backyard were completely dead, the inside of the house was so old and outdated. I wrote a marathon blog about the first couple of weeks in our house and it was a nightmare. Anything that could go wrong, did go wrong. ( I think it is one of my October posts in '07.) The trials didn't just last two weeks. It seemed like life was really hard for about six months. I remember crying numerous times to Jake and wondering why we moved. I missed our old house so badly. I told my friend that I felt like I broke up with my house. I had that dull ache inside when I thought about it and I found myself driving by it all of the time. I never did doubt our decision to move into this house. I felt complete peace when we found it and looked through it. Jake and I knew this house was meant for our family.

I must say that when we moved in we were welcomed so nicely. We had tons of people bring over treats, bread, apples, etc. We had many people stop by and introduce themselves and welcome us to the neighborhood. I felt one hundred percent comfortable in this house since the day we moved in. With time this house has developed into something that we really love. Obviously we have fixed it up and it feels like home now, but it's more than that. I love the layout of the house, the neighborhood, the view of the valley from my kitchen window. Most of all I love the peace and happiness that I feel here. I am so glad that my sweet husband Jake was inspired to come and look at this house. I know that we were meant to move here and raise our family here. I love this house and I hope that we will stay here forever.

I love my girls.

2009-09-27T17:11:00.000-07:00

This past week has been rough. You know how my last post was all cheery and happy because Jake was working less hours? Um yeah, that lasted all of one week. Last week two Foreman's went on the deer hunt so Jake and the other foreman Simon had to cover for them. Guess how many hours Jake worked last week? Not forty, not fifty, not sixty,.... Did you guess seventy two? Ding, ding, ding! You are correct. Yes my friends, seventy two hours in one week! It's been painful and hard but we are almost at the end of it! Ok, I can't complain and cry because 1. He has a job. 2. Our overtime check was AWESOME. 3. I am blessed that I can stay at home so if he has to work tons and tons of hours at least I can be at home with our cute kiddies.

Speaking of our cute kiddies I wanted to share some funny stuff that they have been saying. Last week Haley was complaining that she didn't want to go to school and Karly pipes up and said, "Yeah, me neither!" Then she paused for a second and she goes, "Oh wait, I love school. Never mind." That gave me a good laugh. Funny how Haley was complaining about school but the other morning I woke up to her nudging me and asking me if it was time to go to school. My first indication was that it wasn't because it was still dark outside.. I said, "No Haley, it's still nighttime. Go back to bed. " She then said, "Oh man, we are having PE today and I am soooo excited!" How cute is that? Who knew PE could bring such joy to a 2nd grader?

Ashley has been sick all weekend but surprisingly she has been in good spirits. This little girl melts my heart. She is so lovable and sweet. She came up to me yesterday and gave me a hug and she goes, "Mommy, you're my sweethawt." (She has followed in Karly's footsteps and can't say her 'r''s yet and I love it. I have to add it to her quotes so you can get the full effect. )

Anyways, it made my day. I loved it. Then the other day we were sitting in the recliner just rocking and watching a show and she gives me a big hug and she goes, "Mommy, you are my big girl!" Ha ha! She's dang lucky she is two and not older or I might have my feelings hurt a bit. :)

All I have to say, is that no matter how hard life gets or how picked on I feel at times my kids always make me smile. What would I do without these hilarious little girls?

Happy Days are here again..

2009-09-09T08:15:00.000-07:00

Ok, so the title seems misleading. We have always been happy, but now I am exceptionally happy! Jake is now working 5 days a week, 8 hr shifts, with weekends off!!!! People, this is huge. My husband has had the craziest schedule for years. When we first were married he worked eight hour shifts and that lasted for maybe two months. Then he got put on twelve hour shifts. Can I tell you how long a twelve hour day seemed when it was just me with no kids? It was insanely long. He has worked twelve hour shifts for the past 8 years so I am totally use to it. In fact sometimes I feel like the twelve hours just flew by... Here are the following reasons for my happiness. a) Jake has weekends off now. He use to work two weekends out of the month and I hated the fact that he missed church. b) He does a three week rotation. One week days, one week swings, one week graves. Not bad in my opinion! c) We get to see him a lot more now! This week he is on days and yesterday I picked him up at 3:30 and he had the entire evening with us. I don't want to get my hopes up because I know they can change their schedule back at anytime, but for now I am going to enjoy having my husband home more! Ü

Oh boy.

2009-08-26T18:39:00.001-07:00

This is what happens when Haley and Karly are suppose to be watching Ashley in the backyard.

Why, oh why, did I think this was a good idea?

2009-08-14T12:54:00.000-07:00

Why in the world did I think it would be a good idea to take 3 kids school shopping with me? UGH!! First off, being the thrifty gal that I am I decided to go and check out the DI before I go to the normal stores and shell out more money. So... we start the morning with all of us up at six thirty to take Jake to work. My girls are so messed up on their sleep schedule so they are going to bed late and sleeping in late. Last night they weren't asleep until after ten. We need to get that turned around quick because school is starting soon. Anyways, so everyone had been up since early this morning. I managed to get everyone bathed and ready, and we went up and had lunch with Jake and all was well. I was feeling good. The girls were happy and I was happy. What could go wrong? Little did I know... We get to the store and we are looking through the shirts for Ashley and Karly and Ashley starts being grumpy. She is letting out ear-piercing screams every time anybody even looks at her the wrong way. This was not good. So I realize that I have gummy worms in my purse from the movies last night. YES! This will work. She powered down the majority of the worms in less than five minutes and then the rest were strewn around the floor. After picking those up I get a great idea to tell Karly to push the cart around so Ashley will be entertained. That didn't work. Ashley is now throwing items out of my cart and off the racks and laughing hysterically. I am losing it. You know when you lower your voice and whisper to your child and people think you are being calm but in all actually you are whispering threatening words to your child? Yes, that was me. I couldn't leave just yet because I haven't found anything for Haley and she would be so upset if we left without looking for clothes for her. I start scanning through the clothes as fast as I can and Ashley is now rebelling in any way she can. Ok Emily, put the clothes down. Walk away. As I was walking up to check out I noticed that I had found quite a few cute things for my girls so that was good. I also found a really cute wreath for my house too so that added to my joy. Sadly, that joy was short lived. We still have the checkout counter. I tell Haley and Karly to go and stand by the doors and I give Ashley my phone to play with. This usually works. She takes my phone and plays with it for a minute and then throws it down. I pick it up and tell her not to throw it again and she says so sweetly, "Otay, Mommy." The next thing I know she's thrown the phone down and the battery has flown out and there's pieces lying around. Now I am flustered because I'm trying to fix my phone, trying to pay, and did I mention that one of the cashiers was getting after my girls for hanging on the doors? That just added to the fun. I was pretty embarrassed. I was just getting ready to tell Haley to quit hanging on the door and the cashier beat me to it. The cashier that I was with was so sweet. She was telling me that she has girls the same age and they are so hard in the store. I wanted to give her a big hug and tell here thanks for being so nice. As for the other cashier, I have no kind words for her. I know she was doing her job, but sheez lady, not a good time. I then lectured Ashley all the way to the car and all she had to say was, "We go to DI?!" I said, "We already went there and you were horrible." She gave me this look like she had no idea what I was talking about. Forgive and forget, right? I have forgiven my wild children, but I will not forget this!

Ahhhh, relaxation is so nice.

2009-08-08T08:37:00.000-07:00

I can't believe it's already August! Where has the time gone? Wow, I feel like this summer has been a whirlwind of craziness. It's been really fun, but pretty busy! I've gone to Girls Camp, two family reunions, Youth Conference, and lots of fun BBQ's. I've had a really fun summer but I'm left thinking, "What happened to the relaxation?" The past two weeks Jake has had work off and he went back to work last night and I couldn't help but think that I didn't get lots of good quality time with him. I know, you're wondering how he had two weeks and we didn't get much time together. Let's just say that the week before was preparing for Youth Conference and going to Youth Conference, and this past week has just been crazy with normal day to day things. Jake was so sweet and didn't mind using a few days of vacation so I could get all of my stuff ready and put together for Youth Conference. We went camping overnight and then the next two days were busy with activities, service projects, etc. The hardest part was cooking for 50. Planning the menu, buying the food, preparing the food, it was exhausting. My counselors and I were talking and we mentioned that it felt like we cooked, cleaned up, repeat. for three days. Everything went really well and we had SO much fun, but I was beyond exhausted when it was over. After Youth Conference was all done and I was laying on the couch in a daze I asked Jake how it was spending three days with the girls by himself? His answer was, "Exhausting. It's so much work. You have to bathe them, dress them, feed them, and then you clean up a room and it's dirty an hour later. Not to mention the dishes. I get them all done and by the end of the day there's another huge pile waiting. " That gave me a good laugh. Welcome to my world! I don't mean that rudely to Jake because he is more than helpful, but it is funny that he gets a little taste of what it's like to be a stay at home Mom. It's not easy. It definitely has it perks, but it's not a piece of cake. Anyways, now that all of the summer activities are over I can finally relax!!! I am going to hopefully enjoy the last couple of weeks of summer with my girls. We went to the Library yesterday and got lots of books and DVD's. I have been reading a few books by Robert Smith and they are so hilarious. I've read Bitten and now I'm reading Love's Labors Tossed. This tells you how funny they are. I will be down in my room with the door closed and the cooler on and Jake can still hear me laughing hysterically. Ok, that wasn't a good example. Those of you that know me are thinking, "Your laugh could be heard across a busy highway. " That is true, my friends. Anyways, all I have to say is that these books are dang funny and I'm loving them. So, here's to the next two weeks. Hopefully it will involve lots of reading, watching movies, and enjoying time with my kids before the busy school year starts again!

Nielsen Family Reunion

2009-07-28T16:34:00.000-07:00

This past weekend we went to a reunion for Jake's side of the family. It was up Fairview Canyon at a place called Gooseberry. It was beautiful up there and we had a really good time. We left on Friday and came home Sunday afternoon. We took out the middle seat of our minivan and packed everything in. I love my minivan. The girls were very excited to go camping. They had been counting down the days. Here are the kiddies squished in the back of the van.

Me and Haley. Jake getting things set up in the tent.

My dirty little Ashley bonding with a baby by the fire. What a sweetie.

One must always wear a bike helmet when roasting marshmallows. :)

Oh man, Ashley and my niece Trinity had a wonderful time playing in the dirt. Ashley was covered, but it was mild compared to Trinity. She had dirt everywhere on her. Oh well, they had fun and that's what's important, right?

Haley and Karly getting ready to go to sleep. The first night was a little rough and cold, but we survived. We woke up to the lovely sounds of cows mooing in a very provocative manner. Let's just say that some female cows were looking for some lovin' and I felt very uncomfortable. :) We were laying there in bed laughing so hard and Jake starts mooing, "Nnnnnooooorrrrmmmm," (his Dad's name) really loud because his parents were in a trailer next to us and that made us laugh even harder. Oh man, it was funny. There were cows everywhere up there. The kids were fascinated by them.

My cute little Haley.

Karly enjoying her smore. I have found out something about myself. I LOVE smores. I have had one every single day since we camp back from camp. It takes about two seconds to roast them over the stove. Jamie introduced me to adding peanut butter to it. HELLO!!!!!!!! Heaven.....

Sisters, sisters, there was never more devoted sisters... What's better than a sisterly hug by the porta-potty?

Here's the whole group of us.

Bear decided to go and roll in a cow pie seconds before we got in the car to ride home. At first we thought he was just rolling around and then when we started to drive away we smelled something horrid!! Oh yes, we quickly found some cow poo smeared on Buddy. That was so nasty. So we wrapped a towel around him to smother the smell and we treated him like an outcast. Sorry Bear...

I love this picture. They were zonked out within minutes of driving away. The girls had such a great time. Jake's cousin Riley played with them the entire time. She was so great with them and they loved her. We had such a great time and made some wonderful memories. Until next year!

The Living Planet Aquarium

2009-07-15T08:30:00.000-07:00

About a week ago we decided that we wanted to take our girls out and do something fun for the evening. We went to The Living Planet Aquarium. When we first pulled up it looked like an Albertson's grocery store that had been converted into an aquarium. Jake and I looked at each other and I immediately tried to persuade my girls to do something else. "Want to go to a play land? We could rent some movies and have a movie night? You can go and pick out your favorite treat?" They weren't budging. They had been looking forward to this for days. I saw a couple walking out so I asked them if they enjoyed it and they said yes. So we went in. It was pricey, I'm not going to lie. But... we had a great time so it was worth it in my opinion. I'm not sure what this is, but it was pretty so I had to take a picture of it.

Have you ever seen a bright blue frog before? Me neither. It was awesome.

Haley loved this spotted stingray. All of the creatures were so beautiful.

My most favorite part of all. The sting rays!! Have you ever had the desire to pet a sting ray? Neither had I, but after petting one I would do it again in a heartbeat. They let you pet the stingrays, and the fish. It was so fun. I told Jake I wanted to take one home so I could sit and pet it all day long. He gave me a strange look for some reason... I think we spent the majority of our time sitting there watching the sting rays. They would even come up out of the water when you were petting them.

Jake and the stingray.

This fish looked like it was covered in orange glitter.

This eel scares the crap out of me. Princess Bride and the screeching eels always frightened me, but after seeing one in real life with this scary face I am even more afraid.

The girls were totally soaked when we left, but it was worth it.

Here is Ashley in front of one of the aquariums. She loved watching the fish.

I'm not sure what we were looking at, but this picture makes me laugh. Haley has a serene peaceful look on her face and I look totally mesmerized. It was awesome, what can I say?

This octopus was huge!! I could sit and watch that thing for hours.

Pretty cool picture of the jellyfish.

All in all, we had a really fun time. I don't think we'll head back there every week. Frankly, we don't have that kind of money. But, we will definitely go again. Ü

Family Reunion Time!

2009-07-08T20:17:00.000-07:00

Jake has been off of work since last Friday and we have had such a great few days together. Last Friday we went down to Gunnison for a family reunion with the Filby's and Quilters on my Dad's side of the family. We drove down to Maple Grove to a gorgeous campsite and had a BBQ with everyone. I wish so bad that I would have gotten more pictures with everyone, but sadly I wasn't that smart. Next time I will be better with my camera. I think I was too busy enjoying all of the wonderful food to think about taking pictures. You see where my priorities are.. Anyways, here are some photos that I did get. Aaron doing a fabulous job at making me laugh hysterically.

Me and my Dad.

This is a nice side profile of my Dad with his cousin Katie.

My Mom and my precious little niece Parker.

This little creek ran right through the camp and the kids had a blast playing in it. One little cousin decided to strip down naked and try to play in the creek but my Mom caught her in time before she was fully skinny dipping. It was pretty funny. :)

The mountains up there were so beautiful. After the BBQ we went back to our motel in Manti. Also known as the Manti Motel. My Mom's friend Cathy owns it and it is a super cheap motel right in front of the Manti temple. We had a really fun night. We didn't make it to the fireworks in Gunnison, but we did have fun visiting with family and hanging out.

What a gorgeous view! I love Manti. It bring back so many memories of when I went to Snow College and I love the little town feel to it. Haley and Karly all ready for bed. This is sad, but my girls have never spent a night in a motel so they were very excited. Me and Jake.

When we woke up the next morning we hung out with the family for awhile and then we went to the Gunnison Fair for maybe 10 minutes. It was hot and crowded and we were all tired so we decided to hit the road. But... we had to stop at the Malt Shop before we went home. The Malt Shop was one of my favorite restaurants when I went to Snow College.

Here is Ashley striking a pose while taking a nap.

We got home around three in the afternoon so we went and got some groceries for a little BBQ and I made a very patriotic cake. My first patriotic cake I might add.

That night we watched fireworks on the back of our deck and had a really great night. It was a great weekend.

Embarassing moment of the day:

2009-06-26T12:43:00.000-07:00

This morning I woke up bright and early and I went out to the living room to talk to Jake because he just got home from work. He was trying to fix a fishing pole that Jason was going to borrow to go camping this weekend. We talked for a minute and then I walked down the hall to my room and grabbed a t-shirt, some pajama pants and my bra. I started to walk down the hall and back into the living room to talk to Jake again. By the way, did I mention that I was only in my G's?! Oh yes, I was. So... I go walking down the hallway with my clothes in my arm and guess who I see sitting on the couch? My brother-in-law Jason. We locked eyes, and I let out an ear-piercing scream for some reason and ran down the hall yelling at Jake. "Why didn't you tell me he was here?!" They are both laughing and Jake said, "I thought you heard us talking." Apparently I did not!! So, here comes the hard part. Do I hide in the room and pretend it didn't happen, or do I go out and face the music? I went out and faced the music people. Jason and I get along really well so I knew we could just laugh about it. I went out and said, "Here I am, fully clothed. Sorry about that. " He insists that all he saw was a flash of white running down the hall. Hmmm, I hope that's all he saw. Let's just say I am VERY glad I had clothes in my arm so he didn't get an entire view of me in all my glory. Ok, word of advice to myself : Sleep in pajamas!!!!!

Good times at Rough Camp!

2009-06-20T11:42:00.000-07:00

I went to Rough Camp last week and I have been trying off and on to post this but my computer has been acting up. So here I finally am getting around to it. So, as I said we had Rough Camp last week and it was awesome! The weeks leading up to camp were pretty stressful and crazy though. I am SO glad I am not the camp director. I shouldn't say that though because I just jinxed myself. Anyways, to make a long story short we had a last minute change of plans because of all of the rain. We always go up to Camp Everett. It's just past Park City. Well last Sunday some leaders went up to check it out and there was mud up to their ankles and it was raining and hailing. Hmmmm, not good. So Monday morning all of the Camp Directors got together and they found Jolley's Ranch up in Springville had an opening so we ended up going there. It was gorgeous!!!! I really love that campsite. Sadly it was super expensive so we probably won't be going back up there. :(

Anyways, their theme was "Be loyal to the royal within." So every ward had something to do with medieval times. It was really cute. Our ward did a Princess Charm school and everyday they would have little lessons and things to go alone with the theme. Super cute. I was only able to go Thurs. and Fri. because of Jake's schedule. I got there on Thursday around 11:00 and the girls were doing activities like jousting, making armour out of aluminum foil, etc. They also were having a marshmallow fight with marshmallow guns and we had a great time making fun of everyone with marshmallows stuck on their bums, etc. Did we tell them that they had marshmellows stuck to their bums? Heaven's no. What's the fun it that?

I'm not sure who came up with the idea of doing rag curls, but they had a great time doing it. Lots of our girls had gorgeous curls and you know how important it is to look good at girls camp. :)

My Laurel Advisor Cherish, who I adore, has so many awesome pictures that I wanted to copy, but since my computer is being a brat that isn't going to happen. :( I would have loved to have shown you our pictures of playing volleyball and the dramatic poses that we made everyone do while we took pictures. There were some goodies. Maybe someday I will figure out how to post them.

Anyways, that afternoon we had tons of fun playing games and relaxing. I am pretty sure that we spent the majority of the day laughing and just having fun together. That night we went up and had a dinner that the Stake provided and a speaker came and spoke to the girls. Afterwards we had ward testimony meeting and it was really awesome. We have a new Beehive in our ward that is a recent convert and her testimony was really good, but a bit interesting to say the least. She said some really insightful things and then she started to go off on a weird direction. She was talking to the girls about how they should feel good about themselves and she said, "Whenever I am feeling down I go and look in the mirror because I am so pretty!!" She was totally serious by the way.... Anyways, everyone started giggling and that just egged her on. She went on and on, and on... and it made everyone laugh harder and harder. Finally Ashley the camp director told her to wrap it up. I am still laughing about it. :) It was a memorable testimony meeting to say the least..

I love the Young Women in our ward. They are such good girls. We honestly had no drama at all. We had a beehive that was somewhat obnoxious and drove everyone crazy, but that was about it! All of the girls got along great and considering there were 18 young women in our ward that went I think that is a great accomplishment! I also really enjoyed hanging out with the Leaders. I am so glad that everything turned out so well and that camp is over!!!! Ooops, did I say that?! Now we get to plan Youth Conference.. Wish me luck.

Am I alive? Did I really make it through last week?

2009-06-07T06:22:00.001-07:00

The past few days in the Youngdell home have been pretty bad. No, we are not having marital problems. No, the kids didn't get hurt. Yes, everybody had the stomach flu last week. Yes, EVERYBODY. Within three days this horrible stomach flu wiped out all of us. Let me give you a timeline so you can kind of grasp how crazy this was. Ok, Tuesday. Tuesday was a pretty good day. I dropped off Haley at school and me, Ashley and Karly went walking with Rachel and her kids. The kids played and had fun and so did we. Afterwards we went to my Mom's house and hung out for awhile and all was well. I came home and got Ashley to sleep and Karly falls asleep which isn't surprising. She is my awesome kid that will take a nap pretty much everyday without me even asking her too. Anyways, she wakes up from her nap throwing up. I was totally surprised. I asked her if she had been feeling sick and she told me she hadn't. Hmmm, that's strange. Well she continued to be sick (I will say that instead of saying throw up a million times cause it's just nasty) all day long and had a really miserable night. The next day she started to feel better, but was still exhausted. So.... Tuesday night at midnight. Guess who comes into my room and is sick all over my floor? Karly? No, no, no. Try again... It was Haley this time! Yes, Haley was sick now. So, Jake gets up to take care of her and I pretty much forced him back to bed because he had to go to work at six am and I could handle it. So all night long Haley was sick over and over. Oh, and did I mention that at 3:00 am Ashley woke up sick? Well, she did! I couldn't do two sick kids at the same time so I had to wake up Jake. So we were both up with Haley and Ashley all night long. At six Jake's alarm goes off and I notice that I am starting to feel really achy and not so hot. So, once again, guess who's sick this time? ME!!! Yep, it hit three of us within a six hour period. I am literally in the bathroom crying and telling Jake he has to call in. There is no way I can do this by myself. So, he leaves to work to start up his crew and he is home within a half hour. Hallelujah!!!!!!!!!! Jake never calls in. I was so grateful that his boss was so understanding. Anyways, all of Wednesday I felt like death. Literally it was the worst flu that I have ever had. I will spare you guys the details. Let's just say that I called our answering machine from my cell phone in my room because nobody could hear me and it is the most pathetic message I have ever heard. I am keeping it on there purely for entertainment purposes. Anyways, Haley and Ashley started to perk up around Wednesday afternoon and by Wednesday night I was able to function a little bit better. I still felt extremely exhausted though. Well on Wednesday night guess who woke up sick.... Come on people, who's the last person in the family that hasn't had it yet? Yep, it was Jake. So all night Jake was up sick and that triggered Ashley and she was up sick the rest of the night too. Luckily I was feeling good enough to take care of them somewhat. Jake was obviously on his own. Don't get me wrong, I got him drinks, etc. but I wasn't up all night rocking him in the chair and watching Dora with him. Ashley obviously needed her Mommy. Friday was not fun. Jake was sick, I was still feeling really exhausted and did I mention irritable? Hmmm, can't figure out why I wasn't feeling very chipper? Alright, finally some good news. By Friday evening everyone was doing better. Saturday we were all Ok but still feeling weak and dizzy. It's a really strange flu. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy by the way. Ok, let me give you guys a little picture of how my house looks. Picture mountains of laundry, dishes galore that need to be done, and three kids that have had free range of the house for two days. SCARY..... Let's just say that the kids lived off of toaster strudels (I had a wicked craving for those) and chicken nuggets. My house literally looks like a tornado hit it. Oh well, at least we are getting better! Here's to the coming week. May we have no sicknesses, and may I have the strength to tackle this disaster area that I call my home. Cheers.

Some very random thoughts from yours truly.

2009-05-25T12:55:00.001-07:00

Some interesting things have been floating through my mind . First off, blogging vs. facebook. I never thought I would be a huge fan of Facebook. I really didn't. I knew that my sister Abbey had it and to me it was confusing and for the younger crowd, if you know what I mean. Anyways, she introduced me to it a few months ago and at first I didn't really check it that much because I only had a handful of friends. Then as I checked it more I started to get in touch with a lot more friends and a lot of great people from my past. Now I find myself liking it very much. Now I post the cute little funny things my kids do or say on my Facebook and not my blog as much. I am a traitor!! I love blogging. I love keeping a journal and since this is a type of journal it really appeals to me. I am just at a loss of what to write. Hum dee dum. Let's see, what's been going on lately? Well, Karly is finished with preschool for the summer! That makes me very happy. When I went to pick her up on her last day I got teary. I am such a baby. I am very happy though that I don't have to make 4 trips a day to the school. Yes people, four trips a day!!!!!! Now just twice a day for Haley. Young Women's is busy, busy. You know what, I really love my calling but man is it a lot of work! I am really learning a lot though. I'm finding that I have better leadership skills than before and I can handle stressful situations better. I use to be the queen of worrying. No kidding people. I would be the type of person where I would say to myself, "What was I worrying about? Oh yes, ...." and I would find something to worry about. With this calling I find that I have to be super organized or things will fall apart quickly. This is where my cell phone comes in handy. I program any and everything into my calendar. Every time my calendar goes off Jake laughs and says, "What do you have on your calendar now?" That little calendar is my lifesaver. I really enjoy the challenge of this calling, but there are some days when I dream of not having so much responsibility on my shoulders. For now I will enjoy the chance I have to work with the Youth. They really are so much fun. Anyways, our garden is starting to sprout little plants all over and that excites me very much. Jake has been really cute about our garden. Everyday he goes out and inspects the garden and makes sure that it gets watered enough. Who knew a garden could be so fun? I planted some more flowers in my yard and I LOVE them. I have wild flowers in my big flower bed around my tree and I have rose bushes, petunias and geraniums in the flower bed under my front window. My rose bushes are so close to blooming. I'm sure I will have pictures up soon. I am obsessed with my roses. You will find me sniffing them multiple times a day. I love this time of year. I am really excited for summer. It will be a nice break. Now just wait for a post in a couple of months saying that my kids are fighting tons and I can't wait for school to start. :) Hopefully that won't happen anytime soon. Ok peeps, I'm done rambling. Thanks for listening.

This is my 200th post!!

2009-05-14T17:37:00.000-07:00

Holy cow, this is my 200th post! That is pretty dang cool and kind of unbelieveable. Whoever came up with blogging is such a genius. I love it and I'm so grateful that I can have this for me and my family to enjoy! Anyways, life has been pretty crazy the past couple of weeks. We've had lots of fun BBQ's and family get togethers with Jake's side of the family. One with his parents and siblings for Mother's Day and then we went to another BBQ for Jake's Grandpa Nielsen. His wife Joye passed away about a month ago so he moved back down to live with Jake's Aunt Sharol and her family. It's nice to have him live down here because we get to see him a lot more. So... on to Mother's Day! My Mother's Day was fabulous. I really had such a great day. My sweet husband gave me something that I've been needing for a long time.......

Scriptures!!! I have had the same scriptures since I was sixteen. The spine was broke, but I really, really loved them because they were all marked up and worn in. Anyways, I love my new blue scriptures. Actually I didn't realize that getting new scriptures would actually help me to read them more. Heck, I should have got a new set a long time ago! Anyways, they are beautiful and I love them. You know what I love the most? They are the scriptures that snap on the front so you don't need a case for them. Bonus.. Jake and the girls also made me chocolate covered strawberries and gave me some gorgeous yellow roses. So sweet. I love being a Mom to three of the cutest little girls. I feel really blessed.

Me and Haley on Mother's Day. She refuses to smile normally in pictures. She thinks she needs to pull a funny face in every picture. :) I wanted to get a picture of me and all of my girls on Mother's Day but it didn't happen. Oh well, this will do.

After church everyone went to my Mom's house for dinner and we had such a great time. Jodie and I did a combined gift for my Mom that she loved. It is an old antique window that is covered with cute material and chicken wire. Totally rustic and country. My Mom loved it! Now I need to find me one..

We had such a great time with everyone. We had a great dinner and had a great time visiting and laughing. I love when all of the family gets together. Abbey, my Mom and me. Abbey made us laugh hysterically with these wigs. She cracks me up. She's a special girl, what can I say? The Filby's sure do know how to have a good time. All you have to do is pull out some old wigs and lots of fun is to be had. After my parents house we went up and saw Jake's Mom for Mother's Day and we had a really nice visit. We gave her a framed picture of our girls and a cute photo album full of pictures of the family from a lot of the family get togethers that we've had within the last year. She really loved it so that made me happy!

So, this past week has been pretty crazy! We had the dumpster come to our street so Jake and his friend Ben got our whole backyard cleaned out and it looks a million times better! We actually have grass all over the backyard this year. Last year we had sporadic patches and it wasn't too pretty. Jake has been working so hard on the backyard this week. Today he tilled up a little area for us to plant our first garden! Yay! I am really excited. I am crossing my fingers that we get some good vegetables. We planted lettuce, spinach, cucumbers, parsley, basil and tomatoes. We really aren't the master gardener's so hopefully we will have good luck...

Anyways, life is good! I am so excited for this warm weather and we only have three more weeks until school is out. Hooray for summer!!!

What a week..

2009-04-30T18:10:00.000-07:00

The past week has been painful in more than one way. Last Thursday Haley came home from school looking pale and coughing. She ended up with a fever and the flu all weekend. Actually on Sunday she was feeling better but Ashley woke up with a fever. So we stayed home from Church and she was Ok. She was warm off and on and had a little cold but that was about it Well Sunday afternoon I had just got done getting everyone bathed and ready for the day and I was heading into the kitchen to make lunch and Haley was trying to squeeze past me for some reason and I ended up falling into a heat vent that didn't' have the cover on. OUCH!!! (Ashley love to take the covers off and throw stuff down them. Gotta love 2 year olds.) I grabbed my foot and blood was pouring out of my big toe. I wiped it off and I looked at it and I knew that I needed to go and get stitches. Of course Jake was working and everyone was at Church so this presented a dilemma. Luckily I text Abbey at church and she saw it and came over and watched the girls while I went to Instacare. Thanks, Ab. Love ya.. Anyways, I got into the Dr. pretty quickly and he looked at it and told me that I would for sure need stitches. I thought to myself, "Ok, I can handle this. I've had three kids, what's a few little stitches?" He then says, "Do you have anyone here with you?" I said, "Nope. Just me." He goes, "Well this is pretty painful and you will probably wish that someone was here for some moral support. The Novocaine shot is really going to hurt. You can scream if you want to." I laughed and thought, "Sure... I can handle it." Ok everyone, that was one of the most painful things I have experienced. I think the most painful part was that my cut had already started to close so he had to open it back up and shoot the Novocaine inside of it. I didn't scream, though I really wanted to. I did gasp a few times and I was squeezing my own hands so tight they hurt. So, after the shot he started to stitch my toe up and I started to feel woozy. I am such a wuss! I literally had to talk myself into being calm and to think about something else. Let's just say that a career in the medical field will never be an option for me. Anyways, they wrapped it up and all is well. That stupid toe hurt like the dickens for a good three days. You don't realize how much you appreciate your toes until they aren't useful anymore. I will definitely chalk this up to an interesting life experience.. Wow, isn't that a beauty? Well Haley went back to school Monday and Karly has been home with a horrible cold since Tuesday. She has a barky cough and she coughs and gags till the wee hours of the morning. Of course Jake is working graves when all of this happens so I am a lone woman taking care of three sick kids. It could be worse though.... Karly has been super cute though. She has an obsession with potato bugs or "tomato bugs" as she likes to call them. She keeps finding them under rocks outside and then she keeps them in a box and literally plays with them all day. Actually she goes through quite a few a day because they keep mysteriously going to sleep and not waking up. Hmmm, it could be the constant mauling from Karly. Today she said to me, "Mom, I am going to put these tomato bugs back outside." I said, "I think that is a good idea. They like being outside." Then she said in her cute little voice that can't say 'r's, "I'm going to keep one tomato bug because fwee are way too hawd to take care of." How cute is that? She has been such a good little Mommy to her little tomato bugs. Wow, what a week! Here's to hoping the next one will be filled with a little less drama.

These pictures bring me great happiness. Ü

2009-04-19T17:49:00.000-07:00

I love this picture. He looks like all he needs is a drink with an umbrella in it.

Jodie came to our family dinner dressed up like this and nobody had the heart to tell her that it was casual dress. Sorry, Jod..:)

This is Jake in Haley's Halloween cat outfit. He kept it on all night and answered the door for the trick or treaters. Most people were a little frightened. A grown man dressed as a kitty isn't something you see everyday.

Abbey, Travis is one lucky guy. Words can't express the joy that this picture brings me.

At my birthday party I made everybody take the camera and pull an awful face and Mindy had to leave the room so she could get the full effect of this face for us. This picture kind of scares me..

This is my sister-in-law imitating her dog, Stella.

In Marcies words, "I look like a transvestite!"

Ange, this picture scares me a little. I'm not gonna lie..

Oh Rachel, you are my special BFF.

Just looking at this picture makes me laugh so hard I have tears. Thank you for sharing this with us Rachel.

This is Kaleb's happy face.

This is Aaron's interpretation of Curious George.

This is Jake with an Easter bucket on his head.

This is me with the same Easter bucket. It doesn't take much to entertain me and Jake.

This is my Dad. What a sexy man.

This is Bear looking like he is heading out to a tea party.

Oh Abbey, your faces are the best. Who else can I sit on the couch with for hours taking pictures of awful faces and laughing hysterically?

Karly looks like she belongs on Girls Gone Wild. Woohoo, Party time! Jake's growling face that he likes to pull out every now and then and scare children with.

Why this dog doesn't hate me is a miracle..

One day the dogs got into trouble and this is where we found them.

This is Jake's profile picture on Facebook right now.

Thank you to all of those who participated, and I hope you will still talk to me after this. :)

I feel good... I knew that I would..

2009-04-07T11:39:00.000-07:00

I do feel good. There are a few reasons for this. #1- It hasn't snowed in a few days and I see daffodils all over! Sadly, not in my yard. They look really gorgeous in other people's yards, though. #2 My friend Rachel and I have started walking together every morning and I love it! Ok, so today was a little rough to be honest. I have a little head cold and I felt exhausted but I stuck with it. We have started going up to the park by the Oval and we walk 3 miles. I push Ashley in the stroller, which she totally loves and Rachel pushes Shalece, a cute little girl that is Ashley's age that she tends. The older kids play on the playground and we walk and talk. It's great!! When I was growing up my Mom walked every weekday morning with 2 of her girlfriends in the ward. I was always envious of her after I became a Mom. I thought that I could never work something out with a friend with Jake's schedule and one car. Surprisingly, Rachel and I have made it work. We are going to do it day by day and if our time has to change, then we'll work around it.

I tell you what, exercising is good for the soul. I know you hear that all of the time, but it really is. It really is rewarding. I love going because then I don't feel that constant guilt of, "I'm not exercising. I think I'm gaining weight. Were my pants this tight before? I swear I have another chin.." Wow, I think I let you into my mind a little too much. Anyways.... it's been really great. It's also nice to visit with a friend. We noticed that we can talk on the phone for hours while sitting on the couch, so why not do something useful while talking? Go figure.. :)

Have I mentioned that I love Spring? I really do. I have decided that it is my favorite season. I love Fall too, but there is something about Spring that I just really love. I love when it starts to get warm and you can see people in the neighborhood outside playing or doing yard work, etc. Yesterday I actually heard a lawnmower! That was exciting. I love it when Cherry trees blossom and they are such a gorgeous pink. It makes me happy. I find that the older I get, the more I enjoy nature. Is that weird? I have always enjoyed being outside, but now I find that I really enjoy it and I want to be outside more than I ever did before. I think I take for granted how beautiful it is here in Utah.

I am hoping to be able to do more in my yard this year. The front yard was the focus for us last year, and now the backyard is our new focus. I really want to plant a garden. Nothing big, just some tomatoes and some other herbs. We did tomatoes last year and I think we got a total of 5. I was stupid and planted them in a shady place. DUH.. Obviously, I had never gardened before. I am also excited to plant some flowers in the flowerbed in my front yard. I always get stumped though on how to group flowers. What looks good with what? What flowers are pretty and hardy? I don't want wimpy flowers. I need flowers that can handle a little neglect.. :) If anyone has any suggestions let me know!

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood..

2009-03-28T16:00:00.000-07:00

What is more fun than swinging? My girls can swing for hours.

I'm hoping Haley can still have children after going down the slide this way. Ü

Aw, sisterly love.

Sweet Karly Kay.

Isn't that a gorgeous view of the mountains?! It would be even prettier if the snow was gone. :)

Today was such a gorgeous day! I really don't want to mention that it is suppose to snow again tomorrow, but it is, so I thought I would walk down to the park with the girls and get outside while we can. The kids had a great time swinging and going on the playground. I saw a girl from our stake that I recognized, Paula, and we had a great time chatting. As we were chatting Ashley decided to eat some dirty snow and then chase a tiny little puppy around. Ok, no big deal. Oh no, now she has the puppy in her reach. Now she is petting the puppy.

"Ashley be soft. Don't pick up the puppy." What does she do? She picks up the puppy. "Ashley, let her go. Let go of her neck Ashley." Not letting go. I make a mad dash off the bench and rescue the poor puppy that is being strangled. I then head back to talk to Paula and as soon as I sit down I look over and Ashley is weaving in and out of the swings (while children are being pushed and parents are diving to catch them before they plow Ashley down) chasing the puppy. I barely catch her before disaster happens.

I pick her up and she is the tiniest, cutest puppy ever!!

So, being the dog lover that I am, I have to stop and ask the owner the puppy's name and how old she is. Princess, nine months. She was SO tiny. And, so sweet. Not a good combination for a two year old. I quickly realized that it was time to head home. It was so nice to get out of our house and play. Also, I have a new friend! The park is a great place to meet people. I am so glad that we got outside and enjoyed the weather.

My sweet Haley.

2009-03-23T09:20:00.000-07:00

Seriously, what is cuter than that? We were sitting in Sacrament meeting yesterday and she was writing something for quite awhile and she wouldn't let me see it. Finally she handed me this paper with the biggest smile on her face. I love her notes and all of the pictures that she draws for me. She is so sweet. What is better than getting a sweet note from you daughter? Not much in my opinion!

(If you can't understand it, she said, "My mother is pretty, nice, funny, cute and she is a hard worker with the Young Women." ) So stinking cute.

Happy Anniversary!

2009-03-16T00:00:00.000-07:00

Eight years ago today Jake and I were married in the Salt Lake Temple. It was by far one of the best days of my life, with the exception of having our babies. Marrying Jake was the best decision I ever made. He makes me so happy and he is my best friend and my partner. I wanted to put up a few pictures from our wedding day. This is my favorite wedding picture. I love the temple in the background. Jake and I dancing at our wedding. We totally didn't plan on dancing at all until our song came on, (You look wonderful tonight) and Jake grabbed my hand and said, "Let's go dance." I am so glad that we did because it is one of my favorite memories from our wedding day. The blizzard! It was so snowy, but really beautiful. My hair was not so beautiful though..

Pictures to prove that we did take Bear on our honeymoon. He thought that he needed to be on the bed at all times. That was interesting... ha ha..

We came home to our entire yard and house like this! Jake's family did this and it was so much fun. I have better pictures than this, but I don't know what album they are in and I am far too lazy to go and search for them. If you look closely you will see that there is a certain "wrapper" tied in the mix. Wow, that was embarrassing.. Ü

The past eight years have really been the best eight years of my life. Marrying Jake and having a family with him has been the greatest blessing in my life. Ever since I was little I always wanted to be married and have a family and Heavenly Father has blessed me with both of these things. These three little girls have definitely brought us great happiness.

I hope we have many more wonderful years together. Happy Anniversary, Jake. I ♥ you.