Happy Birthday Lizzie!!!

 One year closer to 16!  This girl is growing up way too fast.  I remember this tiny little baby in my arms with a perfectly round head, so beautiful, just thinking about what she would be like when she was older.  In Kindergarten she was the smallest child in the class and her skin was so light that her teacher said she was afraid the other kids would break her because she looked like a little porcelain doll.  Now she is a Sophomore in high school!  She is so happy and loves to help out where ever she can.  She is planning for her future which is wonderful and scary at the same time.  I love seeing the woman she is becoming even though it means my little baby girl will leave the nest sooner than I like.

 She has had the black and white cookie decals and candles since the week after her last birthday.  She was planning a black and white theme this year until she saw the really cute Pooh cupcake.  She is a HUGE fan of  Winnie the Pooh so she decided to combine the two this year.  I love her creative thinking.

Happy 15th birthday Lizzie!!!!!

Of course the little ones find more fun in the container than than they do the fun that came in the container.  I just love how these two can make me laugh.

Oreo Birthday

I can't believe it's birthday time again.  Especially since this means that my little Rebecca is 14!!  She will be a freshman in high school this year!  That just blows my mind.  I am happy for her though because she is growing into such a beautiful young woman inside and out.  She is super helpful to everyone, loves her brother and sisters, tries hard to do her best at everything she does and really enjoys her young women activities.  I love you so much my sweet Rebecca!!

She has been dreaming about and planning this cake for almost a full year.  Her favorite food in the world is Oreo cookies so she couldn't wait to make her giant Oreo cookie cake.  I tasted as good as it looks.  Great job Rebecca.

You have to wait for the singing just like everybody else crazy girl.

Happy 14th Birthday!!

The last of the tile is IN!!!

This has been one massive undertaking but it feels really good to be able to accomplish such a big project together.  We've always talked about projects but this is the first time we have really been able to do one.  Anyway, here is the finished floors in the laundry room and the bathroom.

CJ showing the new laundry room floor.

Just need to put the trim back on and we can put the laundry room back together.  I was going to paint in here, but I think I am done with painting for now.

Here is the new bathroom floor.

Here are the colors in the bathroom. 

The cream on this wall is what was intended for the hallway...unfortunately the cream turned out to be yellow because I was still so new at picking paint colors for the wall.  Chris did a nice job though and the bathroom looks great!

Putting our house guests to work

My sister Christina, and her husband Jose came to stay with us for a bit while they attend trucking school.  It didn't take long for us to put them to work.

Christina actually jumped at the chance to paint the bathroom.  I must say, she did a fantastic job and she was quick too.

Joe is an all around handy man so he was able to help on all the detail work to help get us finished.

We are so close to the end of this remodel I can hardly stand it!

"Big" Birthday Surprise

A few months back when the girls and I went to the Women's Expo there was a new company there that I had once thought of starting.  It was a company that has large rooms with game systems hooked up to projectors so that you are playing your video games on huge 20' screens (just the white wall, but it was really cool.)  They were signing people up for two hour play time for a really good deal so that they could get the word out about their company.  It was a deal I couldn't pass up since one of the days available happened to be CJ's birthday.  I thought this would be a really fun place to spend his birthday so I booked the building and told the girls to keep it a secret.

This morning we acted like nothing was different than any other Saturday morning.  We made no hint that it was Dad's birthday.  We all got in the car and headed towards Orem to run some "errands".  What CJ didn't know was that the errand we were running was going to the Big Game Center to play video games on gigantic screens.  We pulled into the parking lot and he wondered why we were there.  We all yelled, "SURPRISE!!!!" and let him in on the secret.


We all had a great time!  We had the whole building to ourselves for two hours.  We played all kinds of games from dancing to hunting to rock band and more.  He thought it was a pretty cool birthday present. To take the pictures I had to use the flash but without the flash the games really were cool.

CJ had fun trying out all different kinds of games on the XBOX 360 with Kinex.

Xander playing with his Dad.

Xander playing with Rebecca.

Dakota in the huge room all by herself.  Don't get her wrong though...she is enjoying every sibling free moment she can get right now.

Rebecca sporting her knew knee high boots.

Poor Alexander.  The sensor bars were just too high to see him for nearly all of the games that he wanted to play.  He finally just gave up stared finding ways to entertain himself.

Lizzie had fun just switching back and forth between games.  You can see, we worked up quite a sweat.

It was really fun at the Big Game Center.  I'm just glad though that CJ had a really good time considering this was his birthday present.

After games we went home so the girls could make their dad his birthday cake.

The girls made a special cake for their dad.  They like to try and be creative with his favorite flavors.  This year they made a two layer marble cake with white chocolate mint icing.

Here's the old man with his camp fire or a cake.  You should have seen the amount of smoke in the air after the candles were all out.  (Okay, so it probably didn't help that the kids got him re-lighting candles that create more smoke than normal.)

More floor work

So on to the bathroom we go.  I have never taken a toilet out before thinking it to be complicated.  Admittedly, it was much easier to remove the toilet then I thought it would be.  Ripping up the floor was the pain in this room.

The last room in the house that we are tearing up with this project is the laundry room.  It isn't a big room so it wasn't too bad.  The tiny linen closet was a pain but by now it's just added to the list of difficult areas and dealt with.

Soon we will have tile floors in ALL areas of the house!  I can't wait for this massive project to be over.

Abracadabra!!

Our friends Brian and Rebekah South own their own business.  It's a business that they started and it is unlike any business that we have ever thought of.  Brian is a professional magician.  He doesn't perform anymore (except for us since he is our Home Teacher and his lessons always have a magic trick that illustrates the message very well) but he does invent magic tricks for other magicians to perform.  His business is selling those magic tricks to magicians all over the world.  One of the tricks he invented uses a magic wand that increases in size.  We were asked if we would be willing to make some of those wands in four different sizes for them, the catch is that they needed thousands of them.  I don't think it took our family 2 seconds to say yes.  We were so excited to be able to help "make" magic with them.  

These are hundreds of tubes of pipe insulation that will be cut down in to individual wands.  This isn't even all of the tubes that we used.

Dakota couldn't wait to play in the pile of tubes.

After the tubes were cut into the proper length we would stuff them into a "sock" and sew the sock closed.  We had to be ever vigilant with Megan and Alex because the boxes of socks were just too tempting for them.

Alex burying Megan in the wand socks.

Who needs sand and a beach to have fun being buried up to your neck.

This is what happens if you take your eyes off of the kids for even a minute.  They are just as fast and damaging as a tornado.  ( There were four different sizes of socks organized in that box they mixed together.)

One of many piles of wands that we made.

Again, Dakota couldn't wait to get in the middle of the huge pile of wands.

Strawberry jam...I think

I went with a friend to a grocery store in Salem that had a killer deal on strawberries.  I bought 5 flats of strawberries for next to nothing.  I couldn't have been more excited.  The plan was to do all things strawberry...jam, frozen berries, fruit leather, etc.  I was in the preserving mood.  Well, if I had just done one or two flats of strawberries it probably wouldn't have been so bad but I jumped right in and got 5.  It took me FOREVER to process that many strawberries.  I think I have learned my lesson.  My fingers are permanently red and I am hating the smell of strawberries right now.  I got a bunch in the freezer but not as many as I thought I would.  I made 6 pint size jars of freezer jam.  I would have made more but I guess I processed the strawberries a little too much because it's more like an ice cream topping than jam since the stuff just rolls right off the bread, and don't get me started on the fruit leather.  I got out my dehydrator and happily filled the trays with my strawberry slurry that tasted pretty good but to my dismay I kept burning every batch. I am still new to the dehydrator but come on.  Nothing I tried seemed to work. I tried drying the slurry in the oven hoping to get at least one good batch of fruit leather to put away...no such luck...I burned it too.  I give up.  I am going to have to beg one of my friends to come help me next time I get in the preserving mood so I can learn all the things I did wrong.  Unfortunately the way I'm feeling right now, that may be YEARS down the road.

5 flats of strawberries on my table.

They looked so good, I was so excited.

I rarely get to use my processor.  I used it a ton that day.

Prepping the strawberries for the freezer.

This is only a small amount of the slurry that I made.

Megan's First Dental Visit

Is she cute or what in this big chair?!

She was totally nervous at first but after a lot of patience from the Hygienist she consented to the check-up.  When she saw that she could watch TV while she was in the chair, she was completely sold.  The best part is that she has no cavities.  Great job Megan!

Build Time Again

Last Saturday was the first Saturday of the month again and we took the kids to Home Depot.  The kids look forward to it all month.  This time they made planter boxes.

Xander Man was not happy that he had to wait for the package to be opened before he could begin.

CJ and Megan working together.  What a team.

I think Alex had another project he needed to complete before he could start on his planter.

Busy, busy, busy.

Dakota loves building hers all by herself.  She does a great job too.

Talk about ADHD.  He loves to paint but he kept getting distracted every two seconds.

Megan wanted hers to be pink and purple because those are Princess colors.

Dakota putting her artistic skills to work.

All finished.  Now to get some flowers.

But he got his immunizations for this!

Alexander has had a strange last few days.  He had a fever and some irritation a few days back but bounced back rather quickly.  The next day he got a spot in his diaper area that I thought looked like a chicken pock...it looked like a zit with a blister on top.  I have seen it many times before.  I ignore it because he has not been around anyone with the chicken pox and he also had the immunization shot for it.  Over the next few days he gets a few more of the blisters and a rash breaks out on his legs.  I am seriously thinking he has chicken pocks but the spots don't itch and I keep thinking back to his immunization.  Finally I hear that one of the neighbor's babies had chicken pox about 2 weeks ago and he had been to our house during that time but I didn't see any blisters on him.  I check on the internet to see if it is possible to get chicken pox even though you have been immunized.  I knew that the immunization does ware off over time but not until about age 10.  Turns out that it is still a possibility but the breakout of the chicken pox as well as the itching will be far less severe.  I didn't know that.  If I had known it I would have stuck to my first instinct that it was indeed chicken pox and kept him quarantined from the start.  Anyway, I am keeping him from others now and he isn't having a hard time with it like I remember chicken pox being so I am grateful that he did get the shot.  He is the only one of the kids to get them so the immunizations are definitely doing their job.

Poor buddy.  The rash looks worse in person.
(All of the blister pox are in an area that can't be photographed. lol)