Kindergartener



Alex started Kindergarten on August 27.  He was so excited!  We were all pretty excited at our house.  He was all ready so we took a couple pictures; he wanted a picture from every angle:)  

 This is our attempt at a family picture with the boys before we went.  We didn't have time to fight the boys to stay still, so this was as good as it got.

 When we got there we had a few minutes to spare before the bell rang.  Alex enjoyed some time at the playground, but when the bell rang, he was running to get in line.

 Mrs. Plotts, his teacher, putting his name tag on.

 "Bye mom, I love you."

The next day I let him get on the bus.  I was so nervous, and so was he.  It was sort of hectic.  They get on the bus on a major road, so the traffic is all stopped and I felt too nervous about it all.  It was weird to watch the bus pull away with my little boy inside.  Alex was nervous too, you can see it in his face:)

We are now two weeks into the school routine and it has been going great.  Alex gets on the bus at 7:45 and I pick him up at 11:15.  He has really enjoyed it so far.  He is sure growing up!

Dallin's skills

Dallin has had a very productive woodworking year.  He made these planter boxes in one afternoon, and I have absolutely loved them.  They add a lot to our front yard.

 Dallin made these shelves to put all my willow tree figurines. 

 And the grand item this year....a new desk.  Dallin worked very hard on this project.  The pictures don't do it justice.  It is absolutely beautiful!  It took the better part of the year, but when you have newborn twins, live in a small town with limited availability to wood/supplies, that's how it works.  We really love it and the best part is, no babies can bug anything anymore.  The CPU is locked up and the printer is in the center upper cabinet.  Dallin did such a good job.

Vacation....gone bad

This past week we had planned a very nice vacation down to Utah.  We had purchased the pass of all passes which will get you into several attractions throughout Utah, with just the one pass.  We were really looking forward to it, but it went south.....really fast.

I'll highlight a few:

We were planning on leaving Friday afternoon.  I had a friend invite me to put a few items into their garage sale they were having on Friday morning, so I had gone through the house and accumulated quite a pile to contribute.  I woke up Friday morning and went to my exercise class at 5:30, came home and jumped in the shower.  The kids were all awake, so I gave them breakfast and got them all dressed and we were out the door at 7:30 to go help at the garage sale.  I spent the entire morning/afternoon helping out.  Miles wouldn't let me out of his sight and was pretty cranky all morning.  Luckily Dallin got off work even earlier than expected and came and got the kids from me.  I got home around 2:00 and fed everybody lunch since the babies had been napping during lunch.  I still had to pack us all up.  My parents, who were traveling through, stopped in to see us.  We enjoyed a short visit from them and then immediately began packing our stuff.  As it goes, packing is very hard.  The babies needed another nap so we were hurrying to get everything in the van so they would sleep on the drive.  We hurried too fast.

About Ogden (2 hours out of Burley) Alex made a comment about being excited to go the water park.  It dawned on me right then....I had left the passes home.  What a pit in the stomach.  It was about 6:00 at this point.  I called the place we had purchased the tickets, three times.  There was no getting around it, we would have to go back to Burley and get the tickets.  Everybody was hungry, so we stopped at Costco and got a hot dog and tried to regroup.  We tried every possible scenario to avoid going back to Burley, but it became apparent that we would have to do just that. 

We got back to Burley around 11:30.  We wanted to get on the road early the next morning, so we woke up Saturday morning at 4:45 to try again.  We got on the road at 6:00 and arrived in Payson around 10:30.  What a ride. 

We decided that afternoon we would go to our first amusement park.  Miles was not having it though.  He was extremely cranky and didn't want anybody to touch him but me.  He was being really clingy, but we didn't think much of it.  We threw him in the car and headed out.  There is some major road construction going on down there, so the drive was very stressful.  Just about to our exit and Miles starts puking.  He is puking like crazy:

 Poor kid, we should have realized he didn't feel good, but we had been so caught up in getting out the door.  Anyways, because of the road construction we weren't able to get off the freeway for a while.  Dallin's little sister was behind us so he and Alex jumped in with her and I took our stinky van/carseat/kid home and took care of the mess.  Dallin and Alex had a good time.

Sunday was pretty uneventful.  James was a little cranky and I don't think he felt too good, but it wasn't bad.  We did lose a sippy cup at church which always makes me mad.

Monday we decided to go to Seven Peaks.  We were going to have Beverly meet up with us to bring the twins.  This allowed us to have a little time without them.  When we got there, the park had a sign that they would be closing early due to a private event.  This changed all our plans and the babies didn't get to come swimming which was a bummer.  We did have fun though.

The next day we went to another little amusement park.  Alex had a blast.  When we left the house that morning, we had to return back to the house 3 times for things we had forgotten.  We just weren't on our game for whatever reason.  One time we went back was a blessing because we had a pair of shoes on top of the van that we needed and we're glad they didn't go flying off on the freeway. 

This trip just seemed to be so exhausting.  The good thing is the kids didn't know it.  They enjoyed themselves and had a good time regardless of the stress from their parents.

Here are a few pictures from the park.  Dallin made me go on the bumper boats with the promise that I  wouldn't get that wet.....I got soaked.  Soaked.  It looked like somebody had dumped a bucket of water on me.  I wasn't too happy about that.  Alex didn't like the boats either as we had a family that would just squirt us mercilessly. 

 This summed up how the kids felt on the drive home.

We were a tired bunch.  Tuesday evening Beverly had made a nice dinner that was about done when I needed to go to the bathroom.  I went in and when I came out the door knob broke.  I was stuck in the bathroom for about 20-30 minutes.  So much for a hot dinner.  I had to use tweezers to unscrew the door knob, Dallin was hitting it with a hammer on the other side, and eventually I had to just take the hinges off on my side.  We were laughing pretty good at this point because this was just icing on the vacation.  It had been quite a ride.

I told Dallin on the way home, we learned one thing from this family vacation.  We aren't ready for family vacations.

A few catch-up pictures

I haven't posted in a while, so here are some catch up pictures.



 Same meal.......

 two very different babies!

 James was being cranky, so Dallin turned on some music and let him sit in the office chair with headphones.  He sat like this for 20 minutes without a peep.

 The terrorizing has begun.  James and Miles love to empty cupboards!

 I am sure I will have many more pictures like this in the next 20 years.  Miles loves to wrestle James.  You can tell James isn't so fond of the activity, but Miles will just tackle him to the ground and try to love on him.  It's pretty hilarious!

 We went cherry picking in June.  We picked 30 pounds of cherries.  I bottled them and got 21 quarts.  We will enjoy those all winter long!

This is how the twins enjoyed the cherry picking.  They both ate plenty!

Crazy Days

Yesterday was a crazy day at our house.  We have crazy days often, but this one topped the bill for sure this week.

Every Thursday the library does a program at the park throughout the summer.  We faithfully attend as we live in a small town and will do just about anything that is free.  The program starts at 10:30 a.m.  We were rushing all morning to get ready to get down there in time.  I had both loads of laundry started, with one complete, the kitchen was clean and I was trying to get my hair/makeup done when Alex told me he had a belly ache.  No big deal, I handed him a children's pepto tablet and he seemed satisfied.  My friend had to bring a couple items she bought for me at Costco the day before because they needed to go in the freezer, so she stopped by and gave me the stuff and then said she would save us a spot in one of the stations.  She knew we were running a little late.

We got to the park right at 10:30; while pulling in Alex tells me again his belly doesn't feel good.  I ask him if he just wants to go home, or if he feels okay enough to play at the park.  He assures me that he is fine and can play at the park. (he doesn't like to miss anything).  So we make it to the park, sure enough the friend has saved us a spot.  We carry on throughout the stations which are about the body and have a good time.  Alex is acting a little like he doesn't feel well, but doesn't seem too off, so I don't pay it much mind.

After the program is over everybody stays for the free lunch the schools put on.  We had a group of people from the ward going and then we were supposed to meet up afterwards to have a water party at one of their houses.  Alex was so excited for the water party.  We stood in line to get our free lunch and I was chatting with our friend when I heard it.  The sound of puke.  Two people away from our free lunch, Alex's stomach had had enough.  He was throwing up all over a tree.  I tried to help, but what do you do?  There was a nice little family sitting on a blanket enjoying their lunch right next to Alex's splash zone.  I apologized profusely, and the mother was understanding.  Because Alex was embarassed to be throwing up, he was trying to catch it in his hands....anyways, there was a mess. 

We cleaned things up, went to the car and used sanitizer, and Alex wanted to return to the park.  I told him he could drink his chocolate milk and see how he felt.  It wasn't too long before he decided he did need to go home after all.

We drove home and I decided to stop at the gas station and get him a Sprite.  I ran in and when I got back in the van, I thought the van stunk.  Maybe one of the babies had a messy diaper, so I just kept going home.  We got home and I had to unload the babies who had not had a morning nap so they were exhausted.  I got them in their cribs and Alex all situated on the couch and returned to the van to get my bag and stuff.  When I opened the van door there was an immediate overwhelming stench.  It was horrible and smelled like poop.  I couldn't figure out what would be causing this.  I opened the back hatch of the van and there on the wheel of the stroller.......a big pile of dog poop.  It had been cooking in my van for the past half hour. 

It was now noon.

Lucky for me the kids all had an appointment for shots at the Health Department at 2:30.  I felt like I had already lived an entire day and should be preparing for bed, but since I had already missed one appointment, decided I really did need to take them in for their shots.

I had an appointment at 2:30, Dallin got off work to help me out thank goodness, or I would have had a breakdown.  We got there and had to sit in a waiting room for 45 minutes.  There were no toys, no books, nothing for children to play with.  So what do three little boys with too much energy do for 45 minutes?  Drive their parents crazy.  Alex did pretty well since he wasn't feeling too great.  He had perked up, but still looked a little gray.

Finally we were called back, which I don't know why we even had an appointment, but it was our turn.  It would have been nice if the lady would have apologized for the wait, or even introduced herself or even acknowledged us or the kids....but no.  She just started talking 600 miles a minute about which shots she was giving who and how she wanted it all to go down.  Let's just say that she was a robot with no heart.  Miles had blood running down his leg to his knee.  Each baby had to have five shots and Alex had four.  It was a less than pleasant experience. 

Bedtime was a relief last night.  I hope I remember all these crazy days we have as we raise these little boys. 

Preschool Graduation

Alex graduated from Preschool on May 17.  He did such a good job with the program, he was very enthusiastic :)  He said his part perfectly in the microphone too which was so nice.

His part was: "We started out with 10 tiny catepillars in a jar, they turned into chrysalisses, then they turned into 10 beautiful butterflies."  He had the hardest part for sure.

 He is hugging his teacher, Mrs. Lori.  She was a great teacher and Alex learned so much this year.

 This is how the boys watched the graduation.  They were a handful and just crawled around the floor most of the time.  This is James saying hi to somebody/something.

 The procession walk.  He looked so grown up :)

Our little family.

Ten Years

I'm a week late, but last week Dallin and I celebrated our tenth year of marriage!  It doesn't seem possible for ten years to go by so quickly, but it seems it has.  All week long we marveled at how long ten years is.  I have been with Dallin now for more than a third of my life.  I can't believe it.

Dallin surprised me with a beautiful bouquet of flowers, a night out at a hotel and a console table he built.  I bought Dallin a lawn sweeper attachment to his lawn mower (I know so romantic).  I also took a lot of time and researched the past ten years we've had together.  I had an envelope for each year we were married with documents, pictures, clipart and other things that represented that year.  The envelope was attached to a balloon and most of them had a trinket on the outside too.  I had a baby bottle for each year we had a baby, a graduation tassle for years we graduated college, disneyland toy for our disneyland trips, toy truck for his new truck, and a couple of other little trinkets.  It was a really neat activity to go down memory lane and really remember each of the years we have spent together.  By the time I got to the tenth year, I was amazed at all we had gone through.  There were good times in the envelopes as well as bad.  We have had a lot of experiences in ten years, with many many more to come I am sure. 

I couldn't have picked a better partner for my life.  It has been a wonderful ten years, not all good of course, but we have really grown up together.  It was funny to see the envelopes evolve as we graduated college, got real jobs, had children, bought houses and cars.  All those major things in my life I have had Dallin right by my side.  I appreciate him so much and know he is what has kept me sane through the years.