Family Picture preview...

We got our proofs back for our family pictures. Here's a preview of some of my favorites!There are so many good shots that it's going to be hard to choose!

Look who I met...

That's right, Mr. LaVell Edwards! Bryan was given tickets to the BYU/Utah game (which was a terrible game, but we wont go there). While he was in the Will Call line I looked over and saw LaVell Edwards standing in a line too. Rumor has it that he printed off the wrong tickets so had to go pick up the correct ones. You would think that he wouldn't even need a ticket to get into the stadium that has his name on it, but I guess he does. There were a few people asking for pictures so I did too. A lady standing next to me offered to take it with my phone camera (which is why it is not great). Bryan was pretty surprised when I showed him that not only did a get a picture of him but that I was in it too. LaVell Edwards was a great coach and I was honored to be able to meet him!

Summer trip #1

Our first summer trip of 2011 was to Wyoming. I konw, doesn't sound too exciting but we actually had a really good time. It was mostly a church history trip. We went to see Independence Rock, Devils Gate, the Sweetwater River, and Martins Cove. Before we went, we had our kids do little research papers on these 4 location. They shared what they had learned for Family Home Evening. Since they had learned about these places before hand, they were all really excited to see them in person. It was like a mini-trek. We left our house early Friday morning. It took about 5 hours to get to our hotel and another hour to get to our first stop...
Bryan's great-great-great grandfather Perigrine Sessions carved his name in Independence Rock. We walked around the whole thing and couldn't find it. We did see many other names including this one...

Our next stop was The Martin's Cove visitors center. We picked out a handcart and trekked to Martin's Cove. While in the Cove, the Missionary there read us the story of Bryan's great-great-great grandmother Sarah Crossley. She was a member of the Martin handcart company. If you'd like, you can read her story here.
We really couldn't do much with the Sweetwater River. It was spilling over it's banks while we were there from all the rain we had been getting. We did walk on a trail next to it and crossed a bridge over it, but we weren't able to get in to cross it.

The last place we saw was Devils Gate. It's where the Sweetwater river carved a cleft in the rocks. Many pioneers traveling west would stop here to climb around the rocks. After finishing up at the Visitors Center, we drove back to our hotel, swam in the pool, and slept. The next day we visited an old prison in the town we were staying in and then drove home. Like I said, short and sweet, and well worth it.

First day of school

The first day of school came and went with no crying done by me (or the kids for that matter!). Call me a bad mother if you wish but I celebrate and look forward to the start of a new school year. My kids need routines and early bedtimes which are definitely lacking during the summer months. This year Anna is a sophomore, Ellie's in 6th, Tyler's in 2nd, and Kate is in a home preschool group. Here are their first day of school pictures, a tradition in our house! (FYI- Tyler's in the awkward big front teeth stage and doesn't know how to smile with them yet- poor kid!)

Summer vacation...

has finally and officially ended. So I guess it's time for me to get my act together and start posting again. It's in the works, just give me a few days. While you're waiting you can enjoy this lovely picture. My Aunt Trudy visited for a day this summer and we took the kids to the Tracy Aviary. Nutty kids!

You Go Girl!

Ellie was required by her 5th grade teacher to enter the school Science Fair this year. So she did and was one of the winners! Good job Ellie, we're so proud of you!
**PS- I found out today that Ellie has advanced to the Tooele County School District Science Fair. She's dropping off her project right now (she went over with a friend who also won) and we'll go back Friday morning to see who wins.

I scream, you scream...

...we all scream for Ice Cream! Happy Ice Cream for Breakfast Day!
What better way to cheer up the long cold winter then by eating ice cream for breakfast! Thanks Aunt Trudy for telling us about this delicious holiday. We'd been looking forward to it for a few weeks and enjoyed it very much this morning. I made some cowboy coffee cake to go with it cause I couldn't bring myself to just serve ice cream. It kind of rounded out the meal a little.
I had good intentions on making a trip to Salt Lake to get Baskin-Robbins seeing as how that's what I was raised on. My parents owned a Baskin-Robbing store until I was 12, and my grandparents had one too for a while when I was a kid. The Todd family members love Baskin-Robbins and can down a gigantic bucket (the ones in you see in the display case) in no time at all when we're all together. In fact- I remember going to my cousins house in Florida when I was 11 or 12 (so that we could all go to Disney World) and eating Baskin-Robbins Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream for breakfast one day. So Todd family- please excuse the cartons of Dreyers on the counter, if Baskin-Robbins was closer I would have gone.

We can't wait to celebrate this one again next year!

It's not Disneyland...

Last year we surprised the kids with a Christmas trip to Disneyland. Well that didn't happen this year. This year we spent a few days in Logan at my parents house. All of my sisters and their families were there. While there we found out that Beaver Mountain was having a family ski night the Monday after Christmas so we decided to go. Everyone went with the exception of my parents, my little sister Bailey (she's expecting), the little girls (Kate, Scout and Eli- who are all to young), and my nephew Logan who had puked earlier in the day (yuck!). They stayed home and went to a movie instead.

Here's the movie bunch...And here's the ski/snowboarding bunch, all 14 of us...Bryan and I had not strapped on skies for 13+ years. I was a little nervous. Ellie learned to ski last year in school but had not skied since. She hung out with us up on the big hill and did really good for only her second time. Anna learned to snowboard a few years ago but doesn't go very often. She hung out with her cousin and uncles. Here we are after surviving our first time up the lift. Tyler took an hour long lesson along with my sisters and 3 of his cousins. I guess there was frustration and tears at first, but he finally caught on and enjoyed himself. After the lesson Bryan took him up the lift to try out the big hill. And he survived! Overall it was cold, but a lot of fun. I actually hope we get to go again before the season is over

It came and it went...

Christmas came and went. And it was great!

We slept under the tree on Christmas Eve Eve...

We made cookies for Santa...
We ate our traditional Christmas Eve dinner at Pizza Hut with Bryan's sister's family...
Santa came...
Everyone got what they asked for...
The End!

Tradition #3

Sleeping under the tree.

Our kids sleep under the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve Eve (so December 23rd). They can't sleep under the tree on Christmas Eve cause they would be in Santa's, but nothings wrong with sleeping there the night before! This is a tradition that was Bryan's when he was a kid. We turn on the tree lights and put out a bunch of blankets and let the kids try to sleep. I think this will be the first year that Kate will be included in this tradition. They really don't sleep all that well, but it's okay cause then they are extra tired on Christmas Eve. I tried finding a picture from a previous year, but I guess I don't have any. I will definitely get on this year.

Christmas traditions #2

Pillowcases!

I make them every year for my kids and whichever nieces and/or nephews our family "gives" to. So this year I'm making 7. My kids get theirs rolled up in their stockings. I only started doing this about 4 years ago, but it's a keeper. I got the directions from this site, the only difference is that I don't use holiday theme fabric. I use whatever fun/cute fabric I can find. For example Tyler has airplanes, Thomas, Cars, and BYU cases (Thomas and Cars are from his younger years!).

Here's my pile of my different fabrics cut, ironed, and ready to be sewn together...

And here are some of the finished product (I can't show all of them cause I'm not finished!)...

















Homemade gifts are always a good thing. And these are super easy to make. I'm sure we'll send Anna off to college someday with a stack of 10 or so pillowcases that are all her own.

Christmas traditions #1

I guess it's time to put up another post seeing as how my last one was on Halloween! It's been crazy here since my last post. Bryan was working in California for about a month and a half. He would go during the week and come home on weekends. Near the end he was only home on Sundays. But that's done for now- Thank Goodness! We had a great Thanksgiving at the Haymond's house and I survived Black Friday (but just barley!). So now it's time to move on to Christmas. I thought I would share some of our Christmas traditions.

This first one is all for me. I actually learned it from my sister who got it from a friend of hers. I love it, it helps me not go overboard when shopping for the kids.

I buy each of our kids 4 gifts:
Something they want
Something they need
Something to wear
and Something to read.

Now of course there are exceptions to this rule. The first major one is that they also get something from Santa (so now we're up to 5 gifts). The "wear" item is always jammies. That's a tradition all in it's self. These 5 gifts are just for them, we also get family gifts like movies, wii games, and board games. Another big exception is this- last year they didn't even get the 5 gifts. Instead we were surprising them with a trip to Disneyland. So I think they got their Santa gift, jammies, and a book but that was about it. But it was well worth it, I think it has been our best Christmas so far.

So if your not done with your Christmas shopping maybe this will help!

Happy Halloween!

Halloween was a few days ago and I'm happy to report that we survived! It always gets really hectic right before Halloween with costumes to finish, pumpkins to carve and parties to go to.

I think I finished Tyler's costume around noon on Halloween this year (yes- I'm a procrastinator!). I really wanted him to be a pirate since I already had everything for a pirate costume, but he refused. So a Ninja he was!




Kate's was easy- a gnome. She's still at that age where you can pick the costume for her, I don't think it will be that way next year.







Ellie and her friend decided last year that they were going to be nerds together. We made a trip to the DI and found her the perfect pants, suspenders and glasses.






Anna (oops- no picture, what kind of bad mother am I??!) is too old to go trick-or-treating but dressed up anyway to hand out candy. She wore the dress I bought myself for an 80's themed party. It was a gloomy rainy day, but lucky for us- it stopped raining right as we were heading out to trick-or-treat. We even got a big rainbow for a little while.

Club Initiation

Tyler was initiated into a club last night... or should I say this morning since it was about 2:30 in the morning to be exact. He is now a proud (well, probable not so proud) card holding member of the stomach flu club. That's right, up until last night he had never thrown up (except for spitting up as a baby). He's 6 and a half- how does a kid get away with not puking for 6 years? Let's just say that it was a long long night and we are both really really tired today. Let's also say that I've been sanitizing the house like crazy this morning. One puker is enough for me.


Poor kid. It's the "sick eyes" that get to me- they break my heart! While we're on the subject of Tyler... here's some pictures of his from 2 weeks ago that I meant to post about.










He's our bloody nose kid. He get's one about once a week. Usually they're not too bad but this one didn't want to stop. That's why he's holding an ice pack on his nose. One of these days I'll get around to taking him to to doctor to see what can be done to help. But until then we'll just keep shoving rolled-up tissues up his nose. I also pulled out the humidifier to use at night to see if it helps.

It's that time of year again

Time to do a little canning. I love taking a few boxes of these...


And turning them into this...

I love making jam most of all. We now have enough peach jam to last a long time!

I've also started working on our long term food storage. Boy is that a chore! We really don't have that much storage space, but we'll make it work somehow. I just couldn't pass up Macey's 50lb bags of flour for $10. I think I'll work on 3 months at a time. Once we have 3 months of all the necessities I'll start building it up to 6 months. Slow and steady right?!?

I like how...

When I asked Kate to clean up these (cause they were all over the floor)...
They ended up here (in the trash can- if you can't tell)...I didn't know I needed to be so specific with a 2 year old.

I wonder what other things she's thrown away that I don't know of?!?! I'm sure that's where some of our spoons have gone. And yes, I did dig them out and wash them off. I guess I should have just cleaned them up myself to begin with.

Out with some of the old...

And in with some new. This post has 2 different stories that will tie into each other in the end.

Story #1:
There is one part of August that I really truly dislike. August is the month that our power and gas bills are adjusted. We are on the "budget" plans, which don't save you any money but do make it easier to plan your bill paying because you pay the same every month. In August they figure out if you over paid or under paid. Well folks, we under paid big time! I guessing it's because this is the first year we've had a finished basement. So we are now paying $7 more to Questar and $12 more to Rocky mountain power every month. That adds up to $228 a year! (I like math by the way)

Story #2:
I was walking around Costco the other day and saw an amazing deal on their compact fluorescent light bulbs in all shapes and sizes. I wasn't planning on buying new light bulbs that trip, but I just couldn't pass it up. I like to think that I'm a little "green" and this is just a super easy way to do it. I mean really, how hard is it to unscrew one bulb and screw another one in. I got enough for the 6 can lights in our basement playroom and for three of our bathrooms (our bathroom has a window so we really don't use the lights that often, the other 3 don't).

So now to blend the 2...
Now that I'm spending over $200 on energy that I don't want to be spending, it's time to make some changes. I hope the new bulbs live up to their claim of lasting longer and so forth. We also turned the temp up on our air conditioner so now it doesn't come on until 80 (I really wish the weather would hurry up and cool down!!). And will probably do the same with the heat for the winter (but down I guess). I've also tried to make a better effort at getting the kids (and myself) to turn lights off as they leave a room. I guess we'll see this time next year if all my hard energy saving work pays off. If anyone has any other thoughts or ideas let me know, I could use all the help I can get with this one!

Once upon a time...

there was a crib. This crib entered our lives when Ellie was born (10 years ago). When Kate started potty training (which is another post for another day!) I started counting down the days until I could finally get rid of the crib. We all know that Kate is the last, and why store a crib that I will no longer need, so it was going to take a nice little trip over to Sweet Pea (a store close by that takes used kid/baby stuff). Maybe I was a little too excited to be done with the crib, or maybe it had hurt feeling at being let go so easily and jinxed me, I really don't know. But the day I called to see if they had room for another crib they nicely let me know that they no longer take cribs. WHAT?!?
Once upon a time there was a crib re-call. Well great! I guess there was a recall on many many many cribs that have drop down sides. So Sweet Pea is no longer taking any crib just to play it safe. The crib I so desperately wanted to be done with is digging in it's heals and refusing to go.
What to do now... Well I guess I could try to sell it, but let's face it- who wants a 10 year old crib. It could go to DI and find a new home that way. Or it could get a make over!
And that's exactly what happened. I turned the old crib into a toddler bed for Kate. I searched and searched for a "before" picture but this is as close as I got...
Tyler in the upper left, Ellie in the lower right, and Kate in the big pictures. There's some rails and bars but no whole crib. And here is the after...Don't pay any attention to the white walls. Sure we've been in our house for 5 years, and you would think that we would have painted by now, but no- white walls it is. Bryan has color picking issues. I know it looks like the foot board is taller than the head board but it really isn't. I think it was just how I took the picture. They really are the same height. So, just in case you're wanting to cut apart your crib and make a bed, I'll tell you how I did it.

First: I sawed off all the legs. See how the foot (and the head) board rest right on the floor. I guess you could leave some of the leg if you want it a little taller. I also filled in most of the screw holes from before and painted it white.





Second: I took a trip to Home Depot and bought some wood. With this wood I made the supports for the mattress. They run between the head and foot boards. I actually used 2 pieces of wood, the one you see in the picture and another one that is screwed onto the bottom half of the back side (so it make a ledge- if that makes any sense).

And Third: I screwed the mattress support from the crib onto the wooded frame.



That's it- you have a little bed! (which, by the way, Sweet Pea will take!)