ATTENTION!

Ok, I really hate to do this but we are going private. I figure as the kids grow older I'll end up doing it eventually so I might as well just do it now and get it over with. The good news is that you are ALL invited to continue reading our blog. If I know you at all (no matter how distant) and you have EVER checked my blog then you are not a "blog stalker" and are more than welcome to continue checking in with us. Please send your e-mail addresses and I'll send out the invites soon. Please don't be shy, I really don't want to lose anyone.

Snow Kidding!

There is nothing quite like digging yourself out after a big snowstorm.

I can't tell you how happy Adam was he got the snow blower last week. This is some serious snow! The kids sure had fun playing in it.

Santa brought them snow pants and they were absolutely thrilled to test them out on snow banks that were a lot taller than they were.

7:23 a.m.

That's what time the kids woke us up this morning. Not bad. I remember when I was a kid my older sister wouldn't let us go and get my parents until 6 a.m. Crazy. I'm very appreciative of my children's ability to sleep in a little later on Christmas morning. Believe it or not Adam and I had to wake the kids up one year at like 8:30 a.m. It was awesome.

Here's the Christmas recap:

Christmas Eve my parents came up and we had our traditional Reuben Sandwiches with potato salad and chips. We also stuffed ourselves with 7 layer dip and the cream cheese/cocktail sauce/shrimp dip stuff we make every Christmas Eve. Super yummy even though it doesn't sound so great when you are trying to describe it.

Adam and I both love Reuben sandwiches. Pumpernickel bread, corned beef, Swiss cheese and sauerkraut. Separately I don't like any of the ingredients (well, except for sauerkraut), but somehow when you put them all together and broil it just so, it is SOOOO good. Growing up my family always had Reuben sandwiches on Christmas Eve.

The kids got to open their one present on Christmas Eve.

New pajamas! (surprise, surprise)

Jenna and Britton loved their pajamas. Korinne was unmoved by the gesture. Why did she need new pajamas when she had a perfectly good black leotard with a red and black plaid skirt to wear over it? She calls it her "ballerina outfit" and wears it almost every night to bed. It doesn't look very ballerina-ee, but seems to work for her. Later on she did decide that Jenna's robe was pretty cool. (I would like it, too, if I was walking around in a black leotard all of the time!)

Christmas morning was a lot of fun. Aside from the fact that it looked like a paper factory exploded in my family room we had no major mishaps and the kids loved their new treasures. Adam outdid himself on the Christmas feast this year.

Homemade rolls, turkey, potatoes, gravy and Christmas jello, of course. My parents and my brother Taylor and his wife Jen ate with us and we had a grand time. The weather isn't great so instead of heading out like we originally planned we are going to stay in tonight. It has been just a nice relaxing day.

The Snow Thrower

Anticlimactic: an-ti-cli-mac-tic (adjective) an event , period, or outcome that is strikingly less important or dramatic than expected.

Adam came home last night with something we have been wanting to purchase for years--a snow blower. The last few days we have had to shovel our driveway multiple times and have even been visited by secret snow blower friends who have taken pity on us and have cleared our driveway with their mack daddy snow blowers (complete with headlights) without our knowledge (except for the fact we heard them and all hid in the windows to see who it was). They just couldn't take watching us shovel a couple feet of snow using the "ancient method" of using a shovel, and not just any shovel, a really cheap shovel at that! So Adam ventured out last night and got a snow blower. We ooohed and aaahed and I helped him get it out of the car and we stood back and looked at it again and smiled and then Adam grabbed the snow shovel and went out and started shoveling the driveway. This, my friends, is what you call anticlimactic. I started laughing and asked him why he wasn't using his snow blower. It was quite late by this time and he didn't have time to read all of the instructions and do all of the initial setup and the driveway only had a few inches so he decided to just get it done. After awhile I looked outside and while our driveway was done I couldn't see Adam. Finally I went outside to see what was taking so long and found him at the neighbors shoveling their driveway with his trusty cheap shovel. It was the home of our secret snow blower friend and he wanted to give back. What a guy.

I always see things around the house that let me know exactly what my kids have been up to. Yesterday I was walking in the entry and found this:

This picture tells me 2 things--1) my table needs to be dusted and 2) Korinne has been here. She always takes one of the wise men or Joseph and lets them have a more exciting, "bird's eye" view of the scene. I keep moving it back only to find it like this again. She cracks me up.

Later on that day I found another one of Britton's football plays on the white board:

I think it is his most complicated play yet. I'm not sure that many guys get to be on the field at one time, but Britton definitely is a man with a plan.

Just a few minutes ago I found this taped up to our pantry door:

"What's this?" I asked. Jenna responded excitedly, "It's our workout schedule! In January we are going to start Yoda!" I smiled on the inside. "Do you mean Yoga?" She giggled, "Yeah, I forget sometimes." She and Britton have been cooking up some workout plans. They see me trying to work out regularly so I can see where they came up with the idea, but to be honest I can't stand yoga (it bores me to tears) so I'm not sure how they came up with their "yoda" plan. What characters! I hope the plan works out for them.

May the force be with you. . .

My Little Elf

We have been hearing about Jenna's Kindergarten Christmas program all week long. Jenna talked about it in the morning, she talked about it in the evening, and just to cover her bases she talked about it in the afternoon. Last night she could hardly sleep she was so excited, in fact, she didn't. She came in at about 3 a.m. and said, "I can't sleep." I don't remember the last time I heard that phrase escape her lips. At our house she is the queen of sleeping. This just goes to show you how excited she was about her Christmas program this afternoon. In their Sunday best they dazzled with poetry, Christmas cheer and even a little kazoo playing. You really can never have too much kazoo playing in my opinion. (Especially when there simply isn't enough class time to learn words to ALL the songs. Really, her teacher was a genius. It was that or she didn't want the kids singing about all of the naughty things the kid does in "I'm gettin' nothin' for Christmas" in which case she is STILL a genius.) Here is a clip of said song. Please note Jenna's dramatic facial expressions during the "Mommy and Daddy are mad" part and if you can figure out what the little boy next to her is doing than YOU'RE a genius.




She was SO convincing that we have been teasing her that she really isn't getting anything for Christmas. "It was just a song, Mom and Dad, it wasn't true!" We might let this go on a bit longer, it's just too much fun.

Jenna with her Kindergarten teacher. I really love her teacher and so does Jenna.

Um, I just realized that Christmas is a week from today. Yikes! I'm so not ready! I guess it is time to get it into gear.

We have a problem

Every winter Korinne, Jenna and I have a major problem with hair static. I know it has to do with our coats, but this year it seems to be even worse and continues long after our coats are off. This is what Korinne's hair looks like on a daily basis:

Seriously, it is only December and we have 3 or 4 more months of winter. I can't take it anymore! Please someone tell me how to get rid of this static forever!

What does a 7 year old boy draw when he has an empty dry erase board and time on his hands?

Football plays, of course! I was working in my "mom office" (the computer room just off of our kitchen) and Britton was in there with me drawing on the white board. He left after awhile and when I turned around I saw this. What a funny kid. I'm not sure how the play goes, but it may just be the game winning play for the Utes at the Sugar Bowl!!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. . .

Our first big snow storm wasn't until December 13th this year. Hey, you can't complain about that (technically I guess you can, but I won't). Adam was shoveling the driveway, or so I thought, when I looked out the back window and saw him and about 6 kids playing in the snow. We have a nice little sledding hill in the back of our house since the lot behind us doesn't have a house on it yet. Adam was pushing the kids down the hill and they were having a blast.

Here is video of Jenna and her friend sledding from our back yard.

All of our errands were put on hold and we spent the day getting the kids in their snow stuff then getting them out of their snow stuff only to get them back in their snow stuff once again. I must admit that I'm not a fan of this process. It wouldn't be so bad if they stayed out for more than 15 min, but the wet mess and the work involved isn't quite worth it for me. (I still do it, but don't love it) I'm hoping that as they get older they will stay out a little longer. I remember playing for hours in the snow with my brother when we were growing up. It seems no matter how long I stayed out in the snow, my brother would always stay out just a bit longer. I don't remember what we did, but we had a lot of fun.

We are now the owners of a ping pong table. Adam was helping a family in our neighborhood move and they asked him if he wanted it. Yeppers! We love it already.

Sunsets & Santa

I'm not a great photographer, but even without a fancy camera and any picture taking talent you can tell that this was a gorgeous sunset!


I took these pictures from our back deck. I've always wanted to live in a place where I could watch beautiful sunsets from my home. Ah, I love it!

The ward Christmas party is over! Adam and I were in charge of the food and the day of the party was absolutely crazy. I must admit I didn't have time to enjoy one thing about the party, but the kids did enjoy their meeting with Santa so it's all good.

Last year Korinne didn't like her meeting with the big man in red one bit. What a difference a year makes. Speaking of big men in red. . Go Utes!! It's Sugar Bowl Time!!

Pumpkin Carving

We're not normal, we carve pumpkins in December. We had two pumpkins from Halloween that we never got around to carving. They have been on our porch for the better part of 2 months looking every bit as plain as the day we put them there. Last night I was looking at our Christmas wreath on the front door and noticed that it kind of clashed with the pumpkins. I turned to Adam, "So, do you happen to have a pumpkin plan? They aren't quite in keeping with our new Christmas theme." As we pondered what to do with 2 very large pumpkins Britton decided that we should cook the seeds (something he learned from school, no doubt). It wasn't exactly on my to do list for the evening so I was secretly hoping he would forget about his idea. I went upstairs for a few minutes and came back to this:

Why is it that Korinne feels the need to be on the counter for every project? While Britton was busy getting all of the pumpkin seeds out Korinne and Dad were coloring the other pumpkin.

Once we had a big bowl of gooey pumpkin seeds Adam and I kind of looked at each other and said, "So, what do we do now?" I vaguely remember trying cooked pumpkin seeds in the 4th grade, but even then I wasn't around for the actual preparation. We did what every parent would do in our situation, we put in a call to Gramma and decided to wait for further instructions. (Of course, now that I think about it every parent in our situation would most likely just look it up on the Internet) After school today we listened to Christmas music while boiling the seeds for 5 minutes and baking them at 275 degrees until done. (Thanks Gramma)

We live in a cul-de-sac now. There are 4 of us in the circle and 3 of the houses are totally decked out in Christmas lights. I bet you can guess who the "bah humbug" house belongs to--yup, that would be us. When the first neighbor put up their lights we thought, "Oh, that's nice." When the second neighbor put up their lights we thought, "Um, I hope the Benson's don't put up lights or we're in trouble." When the Benson's put up their lights we realized we were officially THOSE neighbors--the ones who don't have a Christmas clue. I tried to compensate by putting a candle in each of the front windows. At least they know we tried. I bet they are just happy that our 2 large pumpkins finally disappeared!

The parrot

"I'll be there in just a minute."

"Just give me a few minutes."

"One minute please."

"Please stop"

These are just a few of Korinne's latest phrases. Hmmm, I wonder where she got them? It is always eye-opening to hear yourself through the voice of a 3 year old. Well, at least she is completely calm when she says them. She always uses these phrases after I say something like, "Korinne, we're late! Hurry and get in the car right now, OK?" She calmly replies, "I'll be there in just a minute." and then continues to play with her toys. This is why she is usually without socks, in a strange outfit, and has hair all over the place whenever I take Jenna to school. By the time I get her to cooperate and actually get in the car the time to groom has long passed. She changes her clothes so many times during the day I have no guarantee that she will still be in a matching outfit when I'm ready to run errands.
"Korinne, why did you change your clothes?"
"My shirt was wet"
"But why did you change your pants?"
(At this point in the conversation she is running down the hallway laughing.)
"Korinne, let's get you some pants that match your shirt."
(more laughing)
"Hurry Korinne, we need to go to the store"
"I'll be there in just a few minutes. . ."
I think you can see how this usually works. If you ever run into me at a store and Korinne has a "unique" look, you will understand why. I've taken her out in public with some pretty interesting outfits.

Oh, one more thing that I wanted to write down, Korinne always says "I'm hun-gee" whenever she is telling us she is hungry. It's pretty cute.

Ahhh, Thanksgiving!!

I love Thanksgiving! The family festivities commenced once again in Blackfoot, ID and were replete with the usual Thanksgiving activities: turkey, homemade chocolates and candies, eating until your stuffed, napping, the annual bowling tournament, fireworks, a turkey pinata. . .you know, all of the usual stuff. (Next year we are considering adding a turkey egg hunt done in costume, and a cotton candy machine.) The weather was wonderfully mild this year which made the fireworks all the more festive.

Here is the spread before we dug in (minus a few salads that were placed on the table after I snapped the photo). Every year it is pretty much the same and every year it is AWESOME!! Seriously we look forward to the food frenzy all year long.

This year we had my parents, my Aunt Kathy and Uncle Brent, my 2 cousins Dustin and Jake and their families, my sister Heather and her family and our family. Here is a quick picture of the kids before the start of the annual bowling tournament:

We always go bowling on Thanksgiving night and the competition was fierce this year! Adam won the men's side with a whopping 162. I am always super happy if I can break 100 (it has only happened a few times over my long and distinguished Thanksgiving bowling career). Libbie called in her score from Vermont earlier in the day--121. Ouch, the bar was set high. Well, the results are in! My Mom ended with a 117, Marci L. had 124 and I managed to do the impossible, I got a . . . drum roll please. . .

I had to have evidence to support such a sensational claim. I bowled a 135!! That's me "HC" and that, my friends, is MY score! (I have plenty of eye witnesses) After 20 plus years of bowling defeat I have claimed the title of all titles--The winner of the women's DI trophy for the year 2008. And it would be all mine. . .if we could just find it, that is. (We are pretty sure it was lost in 2005 or 2006.) Anyway, I am determined to live it up because I know it will never happen again!

Now, moving on to the Settlers Tournament. We played 4 games in all with the quote of the night being, "We are not here to make friends." It was intense.

Hilary won 2 games,

Adam won 1 game

Dustin won 1 game

Jake, Marci, Larah, won 0 games.

None of us made any friends, but we all had a lot of fun.

That leads us to the fireworks portion of the evening (I'm just moving with the natural progression of things here). We didn't have any cops show up this year, that is always a good sign. (I'm kidding, of course. . .well, kind of. .)

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the Turkey Pinata (that was smack dab in the middle of my official Thanksgiving nap, sorry), but the kids had a lot of fun.

The boys playing wii.

We had a great time and missed everyone who lives too far away to attend. Hopefully we'll see you back one of these years. Until next time. . .

Happy Birthday Korinne!

My baby isn't a baby anymore. Korinne turned 3 years old yesterday. She would only smile really big when I wasn't trying to get her to pose for the camera.

Aunt Kim made her an awesome cake. My sister Tiffany and her daughter Abigail and my parents were passing through town and came to Korinne's big party. Kim (Korinne's BFF) came for the whole birthday weekend.

In this video Korinne makes it very clear how she feels about our singing:

I didn't think we were that bad.

We were excited because the Utes won the big BYU/Utah football game and are off to a BCS bowl. This was the ice cream we had for the party:

Korinne is excited to be 3 but still tells people that she is 6. She was with me at the store when I bought her #3 candle and she said, "Mom, not three, six!" I explained to her that she was only turning 3 so we were getting a #3 candle. She was a little miffed, but accepted her defeat. Jenna is turning 6 soon and Korinne wants to be just like her sister. They love to wear twinner outfits whenever they can:

We love our girls!

The Alliance

We picked the kids up from school yesterday afternoon and headed to SLC. My parents had 2 extra tickets to the Jazz vs. Suns basketball game and invited us to go with them. Adam's sister watched the kids and we had a great time at the game. Our original plan was to leave at 7:00 a.m. this morning which would give us plenty of time to get Britton to school on time. After talking to my Mom and realizing she had quite a bit of office work she could use my help on we came up with an alternative plan--Adam would take the kids back to school and I would stay and get my Mom caught up in the office and then I would catch a shuttle back to CV from the airport. My parents were picking up my sister, Tiffany, from the airport at 1:30 p.m. anyway so dropping me off to catch a 2:15 p.m. shuttle wouldn't be a problem. What a great plan, right? I arrived in plenty of time to catch my shuttle but 2:15 p.m. came and went and the shuttle never arrived. After checking to make sure I was at the right location (which I was) and talking to a USU student from Hong Kong who was also waiting for the shuttle, we saw the shuttle coming but he never pulled over or even slowed down, he just kept right on going in the next lane over. I thought surely he would circle back around because there were obviously 2 people waiting, but he never did. When we called the shuttle company and they basically said, "Sorry, he must have forgotten you, we will be happy to put you on the 8:15 p.m. shuttle" WHAT !?! That's 5 hours from now! Kelly from Hong Kong had to be to work at 4:30 p.m. and was already using words like, "ridiculous", "not acceptable" and "can I speak to your manager?" They put her on hold and never got back to her. When I finally got through on my phone I spoke to a girl who sounded about 16 years old and was so scared I was going to rip her head off her voice was actually shaking. I was quite calm under the circumstances (I was really mad at this point) and said in my best no-nonsense voice, "Ok, this is what we are going to do, you are going to refund my money right now (we paid for the shuttle when we booked it online). She replied with, "Ummm, I don't think I can do that." "Yes, you can and you will. Get me someone who will authorize this for me right now." (How did I do? Are you shaking in your boots? It is hard work being pushy, I wonder how people are able to do it on a daily basis) By this time Kelly and I had formed an alliance and were already on our way to the rental cars. We got our money from the shuttle back and got the cheapest car we could get and were off. It actually ended up saving us about $5.00 a piece, which is a good thing because we were not happy campers and over an hour off schedule.

With our crisis averted my new friend Kelly and I talked all the way to Logan with the exception of a few moments when I took a call from Adam that went something like this, "Umm, yeah, your daughter got in a little bit of trouble." Knowing Korinne (and I knew immediately he was referring to Korinne and not Jenna), "little" was really code for "BIG." "Well, she found your make-up bag" ( I don't even need to describe the kind of destruction she can do with my make-up bag), then he said, "it gets worse. . .do you remember what you keep in your make-up bag?" I immediately thought of the hair cutting scissors I have hidden in my make-up bag so that we don't have any Jenna self-hair cutting moments and gasp, No! She didn't! (dramatic pause) Yup, she did. He continued, "It was really quiet so I went to see what she was up to and that is when I found the hair."

Finding a chunk of hair like this is NEVER a good sign. He assured me it wasn't as bad as the great haircutting disaster of 2005, but it was definitely noticeable. We just barely had Korinne's hair cut into a cute bob and it was all one length. Now it looks like this:

It's not too bad, it just looks like we are growing out her bangs. . .again. (We just finished growing them out and it was finally all one length). Oh, and to top it off she colored on the wall in Adam's office, just for good measure. And just like Jenna in 2005, she was pretty proud of her new haircut.

Ok, I just noticed that I use way too many parenthesis and quotation marks when I tell stories.

Question. Which bear is best?

Weekend Update

I kept waiting for something blog worthy to happen this week, but each day came and went and I never did get inspired. Now it is Saturday and it has been almost a week since my last post. Since this doubles as our family journal I've decided to record all of the small stuff. Here it goes:

1- Britton has started Jr. Mustangs Basketball. His team name is the Wizards and he loves playing. . .almost as much as Jenna doesn't love having to sit through his games. They won their game this morning and Britton scored a few times so he was pretty happy.

2- Korinne decided one morning this week that she wanted to wear real underwear. Ok, I thought, if she is that excited let's go ahead and just get this potty training thing over with. 4 days later we tallied the score and found she had about 20 accidents and 0 successes-- I'm thinking we'll wait a little longer before we make another go of it. I'm all about waiting until they are 100% ready (this is code for if they can't get it in 2 days or less, I'll just wait). Potty training is NOT my thing.

3- Adam and I were called to be on the activities committee in our ward a few weeks ago (that would be the party planning committee for all of those "Office" fans out there). This week the committee head put us in charge of the food for the ward Christmas party on Dec. 6th with a hefty budget of $250.00 to feed about 300 people. Yes, we believe in miracles.

4- My kids accidentally discovered "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" on TV this week. It is an animated series based on Star Wars. They loved it from the start. When I tried to tell them that it was based on a series of movies made with real people they thought that was too weird and didn't want to watch any of the real movies. Go figure. I didn't mean to have my kids not know anything at all about Star Wars, it just kind of happened that way.

5- I filled up the car with gas today for $1.98/ gallon. It was awesome.

If you just read this whole post, you are a true friend. Until next time. . .

"Fetch" and other random events

Here are some random happenings from this week:

1) A considerable amount of time was spent playing "fetch" with my girls. I'll explain but first let me give you a little bit of background--Korinne likes to pretend she is a kitty. . .a lot. She can be seen crawling around on hands and knees and saying, "meow" more than I would like to admit. She's just a few weeks shy of her 3rd birthday so there are definitely worse things she could be doing than pretending she is a kitty. We have embraced her feline aspirations and actually encourage her if it means she will be more cooperative during the day. I was helping Jenna with her school work one day early in the week and Korinne kept bringing me a plastic CD holder that was disc shaped and easy to "fetch." She would bring it to me in her mouth so I would throw it away from the desk and she would crawl over to it, meow a few times, pick it up with her mouth and bring it back to me. We repeated this process about 100 times. I didn't have the heart to tell her that kitty cats don't play fetch, only dogs. The following night she and Jenna played fetch with each other for the better part of an hour. Who needs pets when they have kids??



2) What is the world's largest dolphin?? The killer whale, of course. Every 5 minutes or so Britton will be more than happy to share such important facts with you. (This is the fact he came in with as I started this post.) Britton can often be found reading books about animals and science and trust me when I say he doesn't believe in keeping all of this knowledge to himself! We all benefit from his studies.

3) Jenna has added cooking to her repertoire. Here she is making her first batch of macaroni and cheese.

She has a real interest in cooking, just not eating. If she could live off of applesauce, macaroni and cheese, and oatmeal she would do it. Getting her to eat anything else or to try something new is like trying to get a normal person to eat crickets. It just isn't going to happen. I keep waiting for this 3 year food battle to end. (Believe me when I say she has gone to bed many a night hungry!) On a positive note she is getting pretty good at making what she will eat all by herself. Hot chocolate? check. Oatmeal? Easy peasy. And now she can make herself Macaroni and Cheese. Not bad for a 5 year old. (No calls to DFS, please. She is properly supervised at all times.)

On a whim we took the kids to see HSM3 last night. It was fun and we enjoyed it, but I was a little disappointed with the wardrobe, or the lack thereof in this case. It made me remember what Britton said while watching HSM2 last year. "Umm, where the rest of her dress??" My thoughts exactly!

Snow Canyon & The "Lava Walk"

The weather was so nice on Saturday we headed to Snow Canyon with Adam's parents and the kids' cousin Kaly for a picnic lunch and some hiking.

Britton had his "animal explorer" hat and walking stick and was spouting off animal facts while studying every rodent hole and sign of animal life. Jenna wore the "cutest hiking outfit ever!" and told everyone how cute THEIR outfits were. She enjoyed writing her name in the sand with sticks and talking to everyone on the trail.

Korinne continues to walk to the beat of her own drummer.

Basically it's like this with Korinne. If you ask her to turn one way, she will immediately turn the opposite direction and then give you a smile like the one in this picture.

Here she is hiking with Gramma.

Here is Britton being a true "animal explorer."

After leaving Snow Canyon we drove a few miles to see an extinct volcano. Britton read a book last week about Volcanoes and Earthquakes and he LOVED being able to see the volcano and lava rock.

He got a small lava rock to take home as a memento. He was so excited and said, "Mom, I have a GREAT idea for the blog. You could take a picture of my lava rock and the title of the post could be 'Lava Walk' instead of lava rock and you could write about walking by a volcano" Very clever. You can see how times are changing when my kids are thinking of headlines to record their daily lives in the form of blog posts.

Quote of the day:

Me, "Jenna get your seat belt on, we are going to go and see a Volcano!"

Jenna, "Is it going to interrupt?"

I laughed on the inside. Erupt, interrupt--very similar. No, I don't think the volcano will be interrupting today. :-)