Easter Party 2012

 This year we skipped the town Easter egg hunt and set up our own. Last year was just so crazy and crowded at the town square, and the kids hardly got any eggs at all. Chels and I decided to throw one in my yard, just like when we were little and Grandma and Grandpa did one for us grandkids. It brought back fond memories. We invited some friends and their children as well. It was a lot of fun!  The kids got lots of loot and we finished with an Easter Bunny cake that Chelsea made from scratch!

Just Like Daddy!

Mama's Boy

Jordan loves his daddy a lot, but he loves him some mommy time too!

Love my sweet baby boy! I'm wishing he would quit growing so fast!

Catch up

Holy crap, I've been a terrible blogger lately. Gotta play catch up! So here's a quick run through of February:

Hung out with my kiddos in Ogden at the mall. We took a little train ride and went out to lunch. It was lots of fun!

Valentine's Day is always fun at our house! I always get each of the kids a new Valentines Day outfit. I love coming up with cute things for them to wear!

I also went a little crafty-crazy during February and made
these for all the kids' teachers:

These for all my dance students:

These for all the kids in the girls' classes:

And these for everyone else:

Nearly drove myself insane doing all that. Not sure what I was thinking.

Trev and I celebrated V-day a few days later. Mom and Dad came up to spend the night with the kids, while Trev and I went out to my favorite restaurant. Then we went and picked the baby up and headed to the Anniversary Inn. I love it there. We had a pretty sweet room. It was called "Joanie's Diner" and it was decorated straight from the 1950s.

This was the bedroom:

The hallway:

The kitchen/bathroom area:

It had a little booth to sit at. The room included hot dogs and a hot dog roaster, sodas, and ice cream sundaes!

The photo doesn't do it justice - this tub was HUGE.

Yes, we took the baby with us. I'm still nursing, so we kinda had to. But he was a good baby and slept most of the time.

He wasn't quite sure what to think of the room...

It was lots of fun!

On the 25th, Jamison turned THREE!! I can't believe he's so big! Makes me sad a little :(
Both our families came up, which was fun.

Jay got lots of presents! Spoiled as usual!

Jamie with The Papa.

He wanted a car cake. I showed him a picture of one Chels had made for Tailan a few years ago and he said "Yep! That's the one!" So here it is.

I cannot believe he is so old!

Life has pretty much been regular ol' life!
Kenzi is doing amazingly well in kindergarten.
Ashlin's about ready to graduate from preschool, which blows my mind. She got her kindergarten shots the other day and is all registered now.
Jamison got his preschool registration papers the other day, and I hyperventilated a little. Jordan has FINALLY started crawling. But now he's so fast I almost can't catch him before he gets into things! He's also playing pattycake and melting our hearts every day.
Trevor's still working at Walgreens. He's starting back in to school in the next month or so, and he's very excited.
Trev and I got called to be the Sunday School teachers for the 16-18 year olds in our ward. We LOVE this calling. It has been so much fun!
I started selling doTERRA essential oils, which has been amazing for me. I simply love it.
I'm still teaching dance at Dance Illusion, and loving that as well.
I also started up a Cache Valley branch of The Happy Moms club, which has been lots of fun to meet and get to know new friends in the area.
I run my make-ahead freezer meal group once a month, and volunteer in both the girls' school classes which is a blast!
That's about it! I'll try and stay updated more....
but no promises.

Winter Showcase with Dance Illusion

I have to say that this is by far my favorite studio I have ever taught at. I love the girls who teach with me, adore the studio owner and director, and I love all the cute girls I have the privilege of teaching! We had our fun little Winter Showcase on February 7th. It went great!

Me and Hillary. I just love her!

Lisa giving a few last-minute notes before the show starts!

Kenz and her little friend Ellie. They are in the same school class as well as ballet class.

My sweet little Ashlin girl :)

My li'l dancing dollies!

It was super fun! Can't wait for our end of year concert!

2011 Family Pictures

My awesome cousin Summer came up last fall to take some family pictures for us. They turned out great! I still can't believe we have 6 people in our family!

Lost that loving feeling....

No, not us.

Just my love of blogging.
Okay, not exactly true.
I still enjoy having a blog.
I still enjoy writing.

It's the lack of motivation that's killing it.

First, both of our camera's broke.
That sucked.
Especially with a cute little newborn in the house and no way to capture the sweet moments.

Then, a few strange turns of events in our lives threw it all out of whack.

Now, I just never come upstairs to the computer anymore.
I know this isn't a very good thing, since my blog basically serves as my journal.
I have a hard time writing on paper in a book every night, but I can easily sit at the computer every few nights and record (with pictures) the on-goings of our little life.
I need to quit making excuses and get my little butt up here and keep it updated. So, here are a few pictures that sum up the last, uh, 5 months or so.

I've been teaching dance. I love it. But the main reason I'm doing it is so my cute little dancing daughters can take dance. I get to be Ashlin's teacher. It's a lot of fun.

Next, we all got sick. Shocker, right?
We all got strep throat and had to be on antibiotics.
Twice.
In one month.

Then, Kenzi got a horrible stomach ache.
It had her writhing and screaming on the floor. It was awful.
I thought she was just sick, but a wonderful neighbor told us to take her to the ER immediately in case it was her appendix. But after several hours at the hospital, they told us it was probably a flu-like virus and to take her home. Something just didn't feel right to me. I knew it was more than that.
The rest of that night was even worse. Fever, chills, diarrhea, screaming and crying. The next morning, we took her back to the Emergency room. After many more hours, the finally did a ct scan. Sure enough, her appendix had burst. They took her into surgery immediately. If they had waited much longer, she wouldn't be here with us today. It was a true miracle. My Grandpa Ernie (who passed away a couple years ago) was there with me through it all. I felt him there and I heard him. He even told me a joke. That would be just like him anyway.
Kenzi was in the hospital for 6 days. She hated every minute of it, poor little thing. But we are so very blessed and grateful that she is here with us.

Next, Jamison fell off a chair and broke his arm. My first child to break a bone in my 6 years of being a mom. Not fun. But man, that little orange cast didn't slow him down one little bit! He's such a boy! No pictures of this. We didn't have the camera, and no one took any that I know of.

Ashlin got strep. Again. And they have advised us to have her tonsils removed soon. Fabulous.

Christmas was great! We were so very blessed to have a family/families do Secret Santa for our family. It was a beautiful Christmas Season.


Jordan is 7 months old now! Yeah, that's how bad I am at staying updated. He was only 2 months on my last post. Terrible.
He is getting so big, but he enjoys being the baby. I'm sure of it. He doesn't care to progress any faster than he has to. He took his time, but he is finally sitting up.

He also started eating baby food a few weeks ago. It's taken him a while, but he's starting to enjoy it now.
He still doesn't have any teeth. This makes him look younger than he is.
No interest in crawling yet.
When we put him on his tummy he gives us the "Really, guys?" look.
He loves toys.
He's the most serious baby I have ever seen.
And so quiet.
I have to check on him more than normal to see if he's still awake.
He doesn't care to smile much.
Or laugh.
I've often gotten the vibe from him that he just feels too important for all the frivolousness of being a baby. Like he feels he has much more important things to do. I did, however get a cute video of one of his rare smiley moments on Christmas night. I'll add it to this post.

One last thought.
Life has thrown us a few curve balls in the last several months. Some even tougher ones that I haven't mentioned here. But through it all, we've stayed faithful, prayerful, and close as a family. We've been through some hard times. But there are surely harder things ahead. The adversary is out there. And he is working on our little family. Hard. But we know we can get through it. We have been extremely blessed by family, but I have learned recently just how much we are cared for by our friends and ward members around us.

I prayed for friends shortly before all of this happened, and guess what? The answer to my prayer was simply "You already have the most wonderful friends in the world."