Exciting Week

Hope you all had a wonderful Valentines. We sure did and got plenty of candy, thanks grandma!




My youngest brother, John, comes home from his mission tonight. He flies into the SLC airport at 11:00 pm, it is going to be a late night! Ray is going to stay here with Kara and Kyle and sleep while I take Trent and Tyler. My parents and Mitch are driving up and Mike and Tennille will be there too. It is crazy that 2 years have gone by. When he left Kara was 14 months old. We have added Kyle and he is 13 months old.







This is a picture of him in the Czech Republic. We are all pretty excited to see him. I am going to let the boys miss school tomorrow and we are going to go to my parents on Friday. He speaks in church on Sunday, so we will stay for that.

Another exciting thing is my cousin Lacy Schnoor is competing in the Olympics in Vancouver. She is on the US Women's Aerial team. Qualifications are on Saturday(10 am, but I don't know if it is televised) and then the finals are on Wednesday (24th) at 7 pm. I am so excited for her. What a wonderful experience. She has been training for a long time and this is her first Olympics. GOOD LUCK LACY!!

I love facebook and digital images in general because you can just copy them. I got this one off her facebook. She is with some random guy in this one.

just kidding - I know this is Sean White.

My little one year old

Kyle celebrated his birthday a few weeks ago. I know I am slow posting about it, poor fourth child. I didn't buy him anything, but both sets of grandmas and grandpas did so he still got plenty.

We didn't plan anything much since busy season is part of our life again. We sang happy birthday to him and tried to get him to blow out the candle. He was excited and kept hitting the cake, but didn't figure out how to blow it out (does any one year old really know how at one?) Anyway, he enjoyed the cake and the toys he opened.

He is such a cute little boy and pretty much everything he does is so funny. From how he pushes himself up to standing position, to how he shakes his head "no", his smile and teeth are cute too. And he loves to point at everything and yell like he wants it, usually if I am holding him and he is pointing at something I move him closer, but he just pulls his hand back, he doesn't actually want to touch it, he is just pointing at it.

My new favorite distraction to get him to stop crying is the "horses" this has worked on all the kids. We just look out the window and see if we can see them. They are usually way down at the other end of the field , but sometimes we can see them. I took him over there the other day and made some noises so they would come closer to us. I don't think that Kyle knew what to do or think about them, they were right up to the fence.

Kyle is also caring more if things get taken away from him. Usually the culprit is Kara taking one of her toys away from him, he just screams at her and gets mad and then usually cries. My favorite (not really) is when they both won't let go so they are both screaming and crying because they both want it - oh the joys of motherhood!

here is a fantastic picture of the other kids. Do you love Tyler's outfit, what the heck? He wouldn't listen to me and put his coat and pants on.

Excuses . . . . .

Well, here we are, almost 1 month after Christmas and I am just now posting pictures. One of my excuses is the fact that we all had "red eye" in the photo and it takes time to edit 12 eyeballs.

and well, lack of time and enthusiasm.

We did have a good Christmas. We just stayed here for Christmas Eve, it was pretty uneventful. The kids opened their "something to wear" = pj's that I scored at "black Friday" Wal-Mart madness. We also received an unexpected visit from Santa who brought us some yummy popcorn.

here's the kids on Christmas Eve in their new p.j.'s

Christmas morning was fun and the kids enjoyed it.

Kyle looks evil in this picture.

We went down to Randy & Keri's for a Christmas lunch that was delicious.

Then we headed back here to hang out with my parents and siblings.

On Saturday we went sledding and ate lunch at Mike and Ashlee's.

On Sunday 10 out of 15 of us at Mike's came down with the stomach flu or food poisoning, we never did figure out what it was. It was not fun. Kyle and Kara were the only ones out of our little family that didn't get it. Man I hate throwing up and cleaning up kid's throw up!

My baby is walking!

Kyle started walking (semi good) this last week. He is 10 1/2 months old. He has so many bruises on his head, poor baby. I call him bruise baby.

I took some pictures and a little footage of him in action today.

He seems to be at the age that everything he does is so cute. He stared pointing last week and that is just darling. I love when he smiles and I love kissing his cute cheeks. He is mister busy body and getting into everything. He loves to go over to the Christmas tree and I tell him "no, no" and he will shake his head and just point to things on the tree, and try to grab them as well. I moved most of the decorations off of the bottom part (there are still some poinsettias that he loves to get a hold of)

Birthday Boy Trent

Trent turned
8 this month. He had a great birthday.

I can't believe my oldest is 8!

Trent is a good kid and surprises me sometimes how well he catches on to things. Case in point, he got a giftcard to ToysRus from grandma and grandpa. There was a coupon for Saturday, buy 1 Lego set get 2nd one 50% off. We looked online to see which sets they had, he found two he wanted, but when we checked the availability on one it was out of stock at our store. I told him he could just buy the one he wanted and I would use my money and the 50% off from him buying his to get an extra set for my gift closet, then he kind of got mad at me and told me he wasn't going to pay full price just so I could use the coupon.

When Ray took him to the store he was more interested in the amount he was saving and not really the Lego sets he was getting. Too funny!

Kara's Birthday

I am a bit behind but I wanted to at least post some pictures of Kara's birthday.

She had a good day and really enjoyed the gifts she got. She played with her Barbie and princess dishes all day.

I can't believe she is 3!

My little girl who refuses to be potty trained

Kara is killing me. She will not have anything to do with potty training. We were at the store tonight and I found a great deal on underware, I told her we were getting some so she could be a big girl and go on the potty, she wanted to hold the package of underware, then when she realized she was going to have to stop wearing diapers she didn't want me to buy them and wanted to put them back. Silly little girl!

She wanted me to tell her a story tonight so I told her about a little girl named Kara that went potty in the toilet and wore underware. She got mad at me and said "nuh ugh".

What to do? What to do?

I asked her if she wanted to go get her picture taken in her new dress that she is getting for her birthday and she said no. Last time she just pulled a giant frown the whole time. I asked her if she would smile for the photographer and she told me tonight , no she would just frown and showed me her frowny face.

At least she smiles for me. I think she is going to be little miss attitude for a long while yet!

Halloween

We had a lovely Halloween week. I helped with Trent's Halloween party at school. It was a little chaotic! I had them make the picture holders and for the most part they did good, but needed a little more help. It probably didn't help that I had Kyle there with me and he was very needy (Thanks Precia for holding him most of the time!) Tyler kept poking me to , mom, mom, mom - next time I think that he doesn't get to come either. Kara went to a neighbors.

We went to Ray's annual Halloween trick-or-treat at his office. It's always fun for the kids to go from office to office filling their buckets with candy (that we don't need).

That night Ray went to the Jazz game and I took the kids to our ward/neighborhood Halloween party. I like to always dress up just to see people's reactions. This was me as a blonde with a blackened tooth (why do I think it is so fun to do that to my teeth, I don't know) It was pretty funny!

The kids had fun trick or treating on Halloween. We went around as a family. Kyle lasted for a while then when we were the farthest away from our house but still in the neighborhood, he started to cry and was ready to eat. So I hurried home and fed him, then we just stayed home while Ray took the other kids around some more. I left a bowl of candy on the porch with a cheesy saying Witchie pooh says take ONE OR TWO, but if you take more you will be cursed
for ever more!
Hee hee hee!!!

It was nice to not have to "man" the door. Or have the doorbell keep ringing. Anyway, I could hear people when they came, hear them reading my note, I came and looked at some of the people through the peep hole(didn't reconized them). There were some girls and I heard them say, we should take more and it looked kind of like they did, then they said "what if someone is watching, so I unlocked the door and giggled the door knob, they said "I only took 2" then hurried off. LOL! When Ray got back we just left everything out there. He looked out there just in time to see some teenage boy taking it all, he opened the door and yelled out to him but he was down the street and gone. Punk! It was crap candy though, so no loss really.

Brad and Reta's Wedding

So like I said in my previous post we went to Albuquerque for Brad and Reta's wedding, my camera died so thanks to the wonderfulness of the digital world we live in, I stole some shots from people I know and some from people I don't know (they were on facebook) Thanks to all those who did take pictures. I believe Randy took several of these because I got them from Keri's blog (hope you don't mind guys).

This is Reta with her dad.

The 8 oldest grand kids. Kyle and Ethan had matching bow ties and outfits but weren't in the precession.

Each of the little girls walked down the spiral staircase and then was met by one of the boys who escorted them outside to where they are standing. They all did a really good job of standing there for at least 15 to 20 minutes during the ceremony

The happy couple.

New Mexico

Well, it looks like I better just go back to my picture blog. (seeing how it takes me forever to ever post anything)

A week ago we went down to New Mexico for Brad and Reta's wedding .(Brad is Ray's brother).

On the way down we stopped at Wilson's Arch and Trent, Tyler and Ray hiked up to the arch. Here is our family picture.




We stopped here over two years ago when Kara was about the exact age as Kyle (9 months)





Fun fun!

Conference Weekend

So this week has been busy as usual. I have been trying to come up with a craft for Trent’s school Halloween party. I have spent way to much time on the internet searching for ideas, and this is what I came up with. What do you think? It is a picture frame. Due to lack of time I am going to have them all painted, then the kids can glue on the paper (that will already be cut to the right sizes). Hopefully it will be something that they will like and won’t be tossed in the trash by the moms.

We had a good conference weekend. It was wonderful to be able to listen and work around the house yesterday. Ray helped me get some things cleaned up and we took all the books off of the bookshelf in Kara’s room and moved the majority of the kid books to Kyle’s room and Trent and Tyler’s books to their room and put the bookshelf down stairs for some of Ray and I’s books that have been in boxes taking up room in my storage room.

Today was good too and I actually was able to listen to most of it and didn't even fall asleep. Kara and Kyle both took naps during the 2nd session so I didn’t have to worry about them and could listen. I love being inspired to just try harder in my role as mother and wife, and be more motivated to live the gospel better.

These are random photos. The one of me and Kara was at our annual Mother daughter Enrichment party.

This other one is of my neighbor"s kids, they were being so cute so I took some pictures. Baby M, sucks her thumb too. Her and Kyle were both sitting on the ground facing each other sucking their thumbs, I ran to get the camera but by the time I got back they weren't anymore.

Birthday Boy Tyler

This week has been jam packed as usual. We celebrated Tyler’s 6th birthday and boy was he excited. He has been asking when his birthday would be for like the last 11 months. He opened his presents before school and got to play for a bit before they had to go to school. After school he wanted to go to Toys R Us and use his gift card from the grandparents. So we went and he found the best toy ever, a Playmobil knights and castle thing. I asked him what he wanted for dinner and he wanted salmon. I make this Lemon Herb Salmon and it is Ray and Tyler’s favorite. So I made that with steamed broccoli, and mashed potatoes and gravy. IT was Delic! We hurried off to Tyler’s soccer game after dinner then came back and sang Happy Birthday to him and had cake and ice cream. I think he had a great day.

I went with my friend, Christina, to pick free tomatoes and peppers. I was going to can salsa, but I had never done it before. I printed off some stuff from the extension office and found the water bath canner, jars and rings. Then I ran out of time, so I had to wait until the next day. I decided I wanted to get a food processor, I had looked into them a couple of weeks ago for shedding zucchini to freeze. Anyway, I decided to just get the one at Wal-Mart, but when I got there they were all gone (3 weeks ago they had like 10) To make a long story short, after an hour of having them look in the computer to see if they had any then digging in the back by the Wal-Mart employees, they found one. But then they didn’t have any of the regular canning lids, so I just decided that I didn’t want to stress about measuring everything EXACTLY to avoid botulism, and decided to just do freezer salsa. It still took me all day, but in the end I think I ended up with 13 quarts of salsa and a GIANT mess! IT took me days to recover from the mess. But the salsa is good. It was still kind of fun and I think I will do it again, maybe even tomorrow, now that I got a recipe from a couple in our ward that shared some yummy salsa with us.

Ray and I went to a play at the Hale Center Theater, with his work one night as well. It was called "Over the river and through the woods". I really enjoyed it. We got a babysitter and Kyle did really good, I was afraid I would have to leave during intermission to come home and feed him.
Yesterday night I helped a neighbor friend who was having a reception for her brother in her backyard. It was a fun night! My friends Christina and Linda helped as well. Ray stayed home and tended all the kids. Kyle once again did really good and went almost 4 hours without needing to be nursed!

Speaking of Kyle, he is getting so old. He is now 8 months old! He isn’t crawling yet, but he sits up really well and is a good natured baby. He loves getting around in his walker, he can go pretty much anywhere and even around corners in the kitchen and to the computer room. He does get stuck in the hall though.

Hello Again

It's been a super long time since I posted. I am not going to try to play "catch up" Here's some highlights of this past week.

We went to the Owlz game on Tuesday for "host family appreciation" night. They had all the host families go out on the field , then they read off our names and had our players come out and stand by us. Each player presented their family with a framed and autographed photo and they gave the "mom" a red rose. Here is us with our players. Kasey and Kevin. We have actually had 4 different players, Marcel was released early in the season and TJ got a blood clot in his arm and has been out for a while as well.

Trent and Tyler are both playing soccer this year, and for some dumb reason we didn't try to have Tyler play up a division (at least I think they allow that) so they are on different teams and divisions. So we have games Tues, Thurs and Sat, plus practice on Wed. 4 times a week is a bit much for me! Saturdays we have two games Tyler in am and Trent in afternoon. So yesterday seemed like I just went to soccer games all day. Ray had meetings during both games so it was me and all 4 kids at the games, we were late to both games. Pathetic!

I picked my final 4 peaches off my tiny little peach tree. I think I ended up getting about 10. Not bad for the first year, they weren't super huge, but I was surprised we got any at all. I had heard it takes 3 -4 years to get fruit.

I have been picking lots of yellow squash and zucchini. I want to freeze it but haven't gotten around to it.

Kyle is getting big. He is also getting another tooth, this makes 3 for him. He isn't crawling yet but gets around really good in his walker.

Oceanside CA - Family Vacation 2009

I haven't posted since May, what is up with that? NO TIME. Always a messy house. 2 Owlz players living here. Coupon addiction. 4 Children under the age of 7 including 6 month old nursing baby - like I said no time.

here are some pictures from our family vacation. We had a wonderful time with all of Ray's family.

on the road.

family pictures on the beach.

The boys with Lego VADER

The finished sand castle

Ray's parents (who made the whole vacation possible, thanks guys!)