Enjoy this moment for this moment is your life.

2011-10-09T12:47:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday Sydnie!!!

Well as usual I am behind on my posts. But this very long post will officially catch me up. Starting with most recent first. My little Sydnie turned 4! I can't believe my little baby is already 4.

Sydnie has been such a fun little girl that I get to call mine. She is so loving and full of smiles and laughter. Even when she gets in trouble, which she does her fair share of the time, she tries to soften things by laughing or smiling, truth is sometimes it works, certainly better than crying and throwing a fit would. She is so generous with her hugs and compliments. Of course I have to laugh when she tells me I look beautiful when I am dressed up in one of my crazy outfits for contest photos, but I'll take it anyway. When I brought the balloons home for her birthday party she ran up to me and said "Thanks Mom! You are the BEST" then she grabs my hand and and yanks on it and says "Mom, I need to give you a hug" It's times like that I wonder where this little girl comes from.

Some fun things about Sydnie at 4 years old is: She loves penguins, she has penguin stuffed animals penguin books, penguin figures, penguin movies and even has a special penguin walk she does. She wants to be a penguin for Halloween but I am trying to talk her out of it because I already bought a Rapunzel outfit. She also loves Rapunzel but not quite as much as penguins so we will see if I can change her mind. Sydnie also loves the color orange, she always has since the time she was little, she even had a special name for the color, wish I could remember it, I think I wrote it down somewhere but I can't find it. Anyway she loves anything orange and if she had her way she would wear the color orange everyday.

We had a family birthday party and went to Artic Circle to celebrate and play on the toys. When we got home we opened presents and she blew the candles out on her Penguin birthday cake.

Sydnie opening her presents

Yay! a Rapunzel doll

And a cute little dog from Grandma:

A few days earlier we had a friends birthday party for her. She invited 3 of her cute friends and we went to a place called Kangaroo Zoo. They have a bunch of blow up slides and bounce houses the girls had a great time running around for an hour.

When we got home we had pizza and blew out the candles on a donut cake made with Orange donuts.

Sydnie with her cute friends and two sisters

Josh and Jenny come to visit

We had a surprise visit from Shaun's brother Josh and his family. And as always we had a great time with them. We drove to Strawberry reservoir to take them cray fishing. The trout were biting that afternoon, each of the girls had a chance to reel one in.

The girls checking out their catch:

Sydnies turn to reel one in:

Thanksgiving Point

We have had some really pleasant weekend and have taken advantage of them by doing some fun things with the girls. One weekend we went to Thanksgiving points petting zoo.

Riding the horse drawn wagon:

Feeding the goats:

And of course riding the horses, here is Kaylee she chose the largest horse:

And Brianne, she might have chosen this one because his bridal matches her shirt:

And Sydnie chose the littlest horse and had a great time!

State Fair

The weekend before that we went to Utah's state fair. The girls had fun riding a ride and looking at the animals. One of the highlights was a mother pig that had just had babies. There is nothing cuter than a baby pig, and nothing uglier than a mother pig:

The girls at the fair they each got to chose one ride Sydnie chose the merry go round.

2011-09-25T17:29:00.000-07:00

Sydnie Starts Preschool

I am still behind on posts. Sydnie actually started preschool a couple weeks ago, but I am still playing catch up. This is Sydnies first year of preschool. She is almost 4 but since she has a September birthday and won't go to kindergarten for 2 years I decided not to send her last year. So far she is loving preschool, she is learning to write her name and learning her numbers and ABC's.

Here is Sydnie all dressed up for her first day.

And a close-up of this cute face

Here she is with her friend Tia that goes to preschool with her. By this time they were pretty much done with posing and I couldn't get a cute one of them together. So this will have to do.

2011-09-11T17:44:00.000-07:00

Wedding Visitors

My Nephew Sean got married a few weeks ago and we had family come in town for the reception. The reception was Friday night at my brother Mikes house. We had fun seeing everyone. My Mom and Dad and sisters Nancy and Laura were there and even my brother Greg and his family were there from Colorado. It was fun to visit everyone at the reception.

I had fun taking some pictures of my nephew and his wife during the reception, but before the reception started I practiced by taking some of my own kids. My brother Mikes fountain is always a temptation for the kids. My girls managed to stay dry for a little while. But once the rest of the cousins got there they gave up trying to stay dry and managed to get completely soaked.

Sydnie testing the waters, it all starts with just a toe right?

I just thought this was cute of Sydnie, even though she has purple lollipop all over her face:

Brianne getting a bit more daring in the water fall

I just loved this side view of Brianne.

Ah ha! That is where the purple stains all over her face came from!

Kaylee on Mike's swing set

And the happy couple:

My sister Nancy and her family stayed the weekend at our house. Saturday was a beautiful day. We got up and decided to do a little hike on a path by our neighborhood.

Shaun found a Horny Toad, he always manages to find things like this when we are hiking. Kaylee is the brave one that held him first

Then Hayden gave it a try:

Even Sydnie decided to hold it:

At first Brianne didn't want to hold him so we let him go. Then she decided she really did want to hold it so Shaun caught it again and I snapped a picture of her holding it.

Later that day we headed out to Strawberry Reservoir. Nancy and her family had never been crayfishing with us before so we thought it would be fun for her kids to try.

When Chloe saw the water she had to get right in. She spent most of her time at Strawberry in her diaper

Hayden and Kaylee looking for the crayfish

Brianne and Sydnie throwing their lines in:

Sydnie got daring toward the end and started trying to pick them up.

Hannah loved crayfishing, both her and Hayden wouldn't stop even after it started raining.

2011-09-04T19:12:00.000-07:00

Back to School

The girls started school almost two weeks ago, I'm just a little slow getting these photos posted. In fact I'm really behind again on my posts. But first things first. Kaylee is starting 5th grade this year and Brianne is in 2nd. I don't know why but I am having a hard time believing that they are that old. They sure looked cute all dressed up in their new outfits.

Brianne the second grader

Kaylee the fifth grader:

Brianne and her cute friend Avery, they got matching shirts and both chose to wear them on the first day of school. I'm not sure if this was planned or not. I kind of think it was.

The whole group of kids from our street ready to head to school on their scooters. Turquoise must be the color this year. Everyone but Kaylee was wearing it. Kaylee actually has a couple of new turquoise shirts but she wanted to wear her skirt the first day.

2011-07-28T17:30:00.000-07:00

A Fun Summer

I have been a slacker and I have not been updating this blog like I should. I think part of the problem is I take all of my Photos in RAW format now and they have to be converted to JPEG before I can put them on here. It's just one more step I have to do before posting so it slows me down a bit. I forced myself to sit down today and get everything since the last time I posted. Get ready for a whole bunch of photos. I decided to start with the most recent first and work my way backwards.

Granite (Thornton Family Reunion 2011)

We had a lot of fun this year at Granite. Greg and his family came and we haven't seen them for a couple years so it was good to catch up with them and for the cousins to get reacquainted. These first pictures are of some of the younger cousins, we walked down to Granite Creek so the kids could look for snail shells and to find branches for Grandpa to make willow whistles. Usually you can wade in the creek some but this year the water was so high the kids just had fun throwing rocks in.

Hannah, Haden, Kaylee, Brianne, Sydnie, Izzy, and Trinity. At Granite Creek posing in front of the open door rock structure.

One more in front of the creek

Busy at work collecting rocks

On the last day some of us had the great idea to go on a hike. I must say most of us were ill prepared for the type of hike this was. It was a bit of a mix of mountain climbing and the rest was very steep and slippery with no trail to follow. At one point I thought, "I really don't want to go any further, but at the same time I don't want to go back the way I came either." So I pressed on hoping that we would find an easier way down. Luckily we did, but it wasn't without its hazards, between loose rocks and branches I managed to scrape and bruise my legs up pretty well.

We finally managed to make it to the top. I have to say the view was pretty amazing and there is nothing quite like accomplishing something like that.

Here is the whole hiking group minus myself, from left to right: C.J. , Mike, Sean, Whitney, Brad, Nick, and if you look in the upper right corner of the picture you will see Shaun risking his life trying to get back to a more safe spot on the mountain.

I took this one right after we reached the top, my nephew Sean and I were the first ones up.

This is of Whitney and Nick on our way down from the Arch

We always have a lot of fun at the pool "Granite Hot Springs" This year we got to swim two of the days we were there.
Sydnie with her cousin Katie:

Kaylee doing back flips in the pool:

Brianne just chilin' in the pool:

Sydnie with her Grandma and Grandpa Thornton:

About a week before we went to Granite Shaun and I took the girls up to strawberry reservoir to do some cray fishing. Shaun always tries to catch a few trout while we are there too. Here is Kaylee holding his catch:

Kaylee found a big hook and decided to see if she could snag any crayfish with out any bait. She actually managed to catch quite a few with it. She was pretty proud of herself:

We also took the girls one night to the lake by our house, we don't really have any areas with sandy beaches but they still had fun throwing rocks in the water and swimming a bit.

Brianne and Lu lu:

Sydnie carefully walking through the rocks:

I am the activity day leader for Kaylees age. We took a Field trip to the temple. I took pictures of all the girls. Here is me and Kaylee:

For the fourth we went to Idaho Falls for the first time in several years. We had fun seeing family and going to the parade. We were sad not to be able to stay for the fireworks but Shaun had to work early the next morning so we went and watched fireworks near our home instead.

We sat with the Jacksons and My mom and dad at the parade:

I had to throw these in. Kaylee gets pretty creative sometimes and she decided to make costumes out of construction paper for everyone. Sydnies favorite animal is a penguin so of course she made a penguin costume for sydnie:

Here is all three of them Kaylee is an elephant, and Brianne made her own. I think she was a dog.

For the Huls family reunion we decided to visit Shauns sister Katie in San Diego. The whole family(minus Shaun's two Brothers) Rented a beach house just a couple blocks from the beach in La Jolla. The kids had fun playing in the Ocean, going to San Diego Zoo, Sea World, a Padres Baseball Game and swimming in the pool at Katies apartment. We also stopped at some friends house who live near L.A. and it was fun to see their house and have a swimming and BBQ party.

On the way to San Fransisco we stopped in Las Vegas to spend a night and break up the drive. The girls had fun touring Las Vegas and riding a few rides:

I had to include this one:

We had fun at the M&M factory:

One of the first days we were there we went to San Diego zoo. It was fun it was just our family plus Natalies little boy Kegan. My girls were happy to have one of their cousins come along with them. We were amazed at this peacock who was more than happy to show off his feathers and let everyone come up really close to him.

More goofy photos at the zoo:

while we were in San Diego we celebrated our 16th wedding anniversary. Katie insisted on taking some photos of us before we left. We had a good time eating at a local Italian restaurant and getting some cheesecake to go at the cheesecake factory.

And finally Way back in May Sydnie had her first dance recital. Here is the whole class:

Sydnie was rotten at the dance recital she just laid on the floor during the whole dance and wouldn't do anything. I was worried she would do the same at the recital. But just before the dance started I figured out why she was acting so silly. She wanted to be under the orange light on the stage (it's her favorite color) so I switched some girls around and let her be under the orange light. It worked! She danced her little heart out and even started laughing in the middle of the dance.

Sydnie positioned herself front and center and I couldn't help laughing a little bit at my little show off:

The end hopefully I won't let myself get so far behind again.

2011-04-30T11:15:00.000-07:00

Spring

I have slacked on my blog lately, but I need to get back into it. I know many people think blogs are dumb and wonder why people spend so much time on them. But this month I am so thankful for my blog. My hard drive was broken and I lost all the pictures for the last year and a half ( I know really dumb of me for not backing them up) The only things saving my sanity right now is that I have been a faithful blogger and so I at least have all the pictures from my blogs. Still I didn't post every picture I took so there are hundreds I have lost forever, but at least I have a good representation of all the holidays and birthdays.

We have done some fun things this spring. For spring break we went to southern Utah. Unfortunately, all those pictures are gone. So you will have to take my word for it that the weather was great and we had a fun time hiking around Zion National Park and Bryce National Park. The girls all loved camping and they had fun playing in the river near our campsite.

Easter

On Friday The girls had fun making sugar cookies and decorating Easter eggs:

The Easter Bunny came on Saturday Morning to our house, since church is so early on Sunday. The girls had fun finding their Easter Baskets. Later we had an Easter Egg hunt out in our yard.

Kaylee wanted hers hidden without any clues. The Easter Bunny will have to hide it harder next year because she found it in less than a minute.

Brianne likes to have clues to her basket, kind of like a scavenger hunt. So the Easter bunny left several clues around the house for her to find.

The Easter bunny always leaves footprints for the girls to follow when they are little. Sydnie had fun following the footprints to her basket, and was really excited about the My Little Pony Dolls he had left.

Sunday we just enjoyed church and had a little lesson on what Easter is all about. The night before we asked the girls what they wanted to have for Easter dinner and they decided they wanted hamburgers cooked on the grill. So our Easter dinner was pretty simple but yummy. Shaun made his yummy Finnish Bread and we snacked on that the rest of the day.

This is a cute picture I got of Sydnie blowing her Easter Bubbles. I also have cute pictures of all the girls in their Easter dresses, but I posted them on my photo blog so you will have to go there to see them.

2011-03-16T07:13:00.000-07:00

I Won Another Ribbon!

I have been anxiously awaiting the results of this challenge all week. I had a good score and new I would most likely win something, but I did not expect to win first place! I really loved these photos I took a couple weeks ago, but you never know if others will like them too. I am really excited about this because it is my first ribbon for a landscape. I wrote more about it on my photoblog http://www.jennhulsphotography.blogspot.com/ plus the full sized image looks much better so be sure to look at it there. Also check my photo out on the front page of this website: http://www.dpchallenge.com/ it will be there for the rest of the week.

2011-02-27T18:23:00.000-08:00

"I'M A BIG GIRL!!!"

Potty training is complete and Sydnie was starting to outgrow her crib so we decided it was time to get her a bed. She was excited to get her "big girl bed" and could hardly wait until Shaun got home with it. When it finally arrived, she jumped up and down and shouted excitedly
"I'M A BIG GIRL!"

All of my girls decide that they wanted to have a sleep over in Sydnie's new bed. They insisted it was big enough. They were quite disappointed when I told them it wasn't going to work out. I did let them stay in her bed long enough to get this picture taken and read a few stories.

2011-02-24T22:14:00.000-08:00

My first blue ribbon!

I have been trying for months now and I finally did it! I got first place in a photo contest I entered! I won't re post it. Just look at my Valentine post from last week, it is the one of Kaylee with the hearts in her eyes. If you want to check my blue ribbon out click on this link http://www.dpchallenge.com/.

This week I also had fun taking pictures of my sister Nancy's kids and my friend Amber's little girl Breelyn.

Here is my favorite one of all the pictures I took that weekend, it is of my youngest niece Chloe. I think I am going to enter her in a photo contest. If she doesn't win a prize it won't be because she isn't cute enough that is for sure.

To look at more photos of Nancy's cute kids and the photo shoot I did with Breelyn, check out my photo website at http://jennhulsphotography.blogspot.com/

2011-02-14T19:10:00.000-08:00

Happy Valentines Day!!!

I hope everyone is having a great Valentines Day. This post is late in the day, but I have been working on one of the pictures up until a little while ago. I have been shooting some Valentines photos for challenges I am entering, and thought they would be fun to share on Valentines Day.

We had a fun Valentines Day. Shaun and I both got the girls a some fun little Valentines surprises. Shaun and I haven't done much for it today. We actually celebrated on Saturday, because that was a better day for our schedules. Lucky for me it left me time today to shoot this:

2011-02-09T17:56:00.000-08:00

Hooray! I won at last!

I finally feel like I might be getting somewhere with my little hobby. I finally won a ribbon for one of my photos! I entered this photo of Kaylee in a challenge called "Got Milk" and I got 3rd place! I got this little ribbon next to my picture and my photo is on the front page of the dpchallenge website for a whole week! So check it out http://www.dpchallenge.com/.

My ribbon winning entry:

2011-02-06T15:17:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday Kaylee!

I can't believe my oldest is 10! Where has the time gone? I think Shaun and I are both having a hard time wrapping our minds around this number. Wasn't she just a baby walking around on her tip toes? Now she is in double digits!!!

She had a great birthday, the Friday before she invited a few of her close friends to a birthday party at a place called "Jump on it" they have a huge room full of trampolines, all the girls seemed to have a lot of fun. Afterwards we had cake and opened presents. Brianne was so cute she had about $5 of her own birthday money left over from her Grandma, and took it to the book fair and spent it all on her older sister. She didn't spend 1 penny on herself. She was so excited for Kaylee to open it. She loves her older sister so much. I was so proud of her for being so thoughtful.

For her real birthday we went out as a family to In and Out Burger, and then came home and opened presents. She got a Webkins Ice dragon, Super Mario Brothers for the Wii and some fun things from her grandparents.

We love our Kaylee not only is she getting older in years, she is also starting to act older. She is very responsible, and we are not afraid to leave her home to take care of her younger sisters for an hour or so here and there. She is such a good girl and is always trying her best to do what is right. We love you Kaylee.

Here are a couple pictures from her Birthday. You would think will all the things I am learning about my camera, I would be able to take better snap shots. I think I am getting better with my other photo's, but getting worse with my snapshots. I had to convert these to black and white to even sort of make them presentable. She looks cute anyway.

Blowing out her 10 candles, she had cake for her friends birthday party but wanted cherry pie for her real birthday.

With her Webkins Ice dragon:

2011-01-17T18:47:00.000-08:00

Christmas 2010 finally!

Well it has taken me awhile to recover enough from Christmas to blog about it.

Here is a picture of the Girls in their Christmas Dresses, I can't believe I got one with them all smiling and looking at the camera!

This next photo pretty much sums up our Christmas!

It is blurry and not the greatest. Somehow in the chaos of the morning, my settings got all mixed up, and all of the photos came out blurry. You think I would have noticed when taking them but that is the kind of morning we had. Shaun and I were both exhausted from the hospital experience he had the night before, and then to top things off, the first thing Sydnie did after waking up, was to throw up everywhere. The poor thing was really sick and didn't want to have much to do with opening her presents. But after seeing Kaylee and Brianne open a few she perked up a bit and decided to open some. Luckily one of the first things she opened was her pillow pet, she loved it and immediately laid down on it and started opening the rest of her presents. This picture makes me laugh because like I said it sums up our Christmas pretty well: there is Sydnie laying down opening her presents, the puke bucket in the bottom right corner, and my invalid husband in the background. All things considered we actually had a great Christmas. Believe me things could have been a lot worse and almost was!

We got a lot of snow over the holidays, and we had to deal with it both going to Idaho to see family and coming back. But at least it was good for something: Snowmen and sledding and the girls did plenty of that over the holiday.

Here is a cute photo of the girls making a snowman. I used a new technique I learned called "tilt shift" this really isn't the best photo to use it on but it sort of worked. You blur the top and bottom of the photo to make the things in the middle look miniature. It sort of worked. At least it worked enough to make me want to go out and take a picture that this was meant for and do some more experimenting.

As far as the rest of our holiday we had fun just hanging out around our house and relaxing. Shaun had the whole week off of work and it was nice to have some time together as a family. We also spent a few days in Idaho visiting family. We had a great Christmas party at my parents house. Once again my dad made great handmade items for all of the kids, this year was a fun little jewelry box made out of a single piece of wood. The girls love their boxes and have already put them to good use. The next night was spent at the Huls. We had fun unwrapping our "favorite things" gifts and then had great fun watching everyone dance to our new wii game, Just Dance 2.

P.S. I just updated my photoblog. I have some pretty fun photo's this time that you might want to see.

2011-01-08T16:26:00.000-08:00

Two Birthdays!

I am so far behind with my blogging. I am planning on getting caught up in the next week so be prepared to get a bunch of post from me this week. I thought I would start with the Birthdays. We have two in our family right before Christmas. First is Brianne's then the next day is Shaun's.

Brianne had a great birthday. The Saturday before her birthday she had a friends Birthday party. She chose to go swimming for her birthday. So after cake and presents 5 of her neighborhood friends went swimming at the local indoor pool.

Here is Brianne ready to blow out her candles at her Birthday party:

A few days later we celebrated her real Birthday, she turned 7 this last year. We just got invited to the 8 is great meeting this Sunday. I can't believe she is almost old enough to be baptised. (well not for another year, but just going to that meeting reminds me it is getting close.)

Here is Brianne opening up here presents:

Is she all done? Nope there is another surprise dad is bringing up from the basement. What could it be?

Wow! She was surprised I don't think she had any idea she was getting this, just look at her face!

A new bike! Sorry this picture was out of focus not the greatest but the only one I got with her and her new bike.

Happy Birthday Brianne! We love you!

Shaun's Birthday

The next day was Shaun's Birthday and quite a story. It's also the reason I am so behind on my posts. My plan was to post about Brianne's Birthday and his Birthday on his birthday so I would be all caught up for the Christmas posts to come. Here is what happened instead:

Shaun called me early the morning of his Birthday. He has to be to work early and I usually get up early to exercise. He said he was going into emergency room to get some antibiotics for a cold. I wondered why he couldn't just wait and go to an Urgent care later in the day, he said he had time now and didn't want to wait. Well after the fact I think he wishes he did wait. Shaun told the emergency room doctors that he had a bad cold and that he though it was settling in his chest and he was having trouble breathing and even felt a little dizzy. With Shaun's family history of heart troubles the doctors immediately jumped to heart attack. They did a million test and found high levels of an enzyme that only is in your blood stream if there has been damage to the heart.

Well Shaun was in denial and the doctors were very poor at explaining things and we were left wondering what we should do. Should we do all the test they were calling for and miss out on Birthday plans and Possibly even Christmas (Christmas Eve was the very next day.) Or could things wait until after Christmas. After a lot of frustration on our part because of the doctors poor communication we finally decided to go ahead with all the tests. He had an ecocardiogram, x-rays of his chest (to check for blood clots) and finally on Christmas Eve they decided to do an angiogram. The whole family was really upset I had to calm the girls down from crying several times that day. Not only were they worried about their daddy being okay they were also worried about him not being able to be there for Christmas morning. Sydnie kept saying "Daddy's heart is broken!"

Well things ended up turning out okay. We were blessed and all of the test came back negative for a heart attack. He did have to stay in the hospital almost the whole day on Christmas eve. We got home from the hospital around 9:30 that night. Just in time to read the Christmas story out of the Bible and open Christmas P.J's. But we were all happy because it could have been a lot worse.

So Happy Birthday Shaun! It probably will go down in the record books as being the worst Birthday ever, but we are just glad to have a husband and a Dad who's "heart is not broken". We love you!

2010-12-17T21:18:00.000-08:00

Odds and Ends

So I just realized it has been awhile since I have posted. I thought I would catch up before the Christmas photos start rolling in.

Starting with Thanksgiving, we had a fun Thanksgiving, everyone came to Utah and we had dinner at my brothers house. The weather was bad so we didn't know if anyone was going to make it. Luckily, they were all able to get through the storm. I didn't take many pictures just one. Sydnie loves babies and she couldn't get enough of her little cousin Chloe. She loved to hold her any chance she got.

We had our ward Christmas Party last Saturday. The girls all had their turn sitting on Santa's Lap

Kaylee's turn:

Brianne's Turn:

And Sydnies turn:

Sydnie did not want anything to do with Santa. We managed to keep her on his lap long enough to snap this picture.

And last of all I had to add this silly photo. Lu Lu loves to lay in my lap when I am editing photos at the computer. I was busy cleaning the house and doing the dishes, when I turned around and saw Lu Lu sitting here:

I'm not sure if she was just patiently waiting for me to come back so she could sit in my lap or if the computer seemed like a nice warm spot to take a nap. Silly dog.

2010-11-19T07:00:00.000-08:00

Sydnie...

Here is a cute little picture I took of her for one of my challenges. By the way I recently updated my photo blog. So click on the link on the sidebar to check it out.

So, I just had to take a minute and write a few things down about my cute little Sydnie. I love this little girl so much. She has been a sweet little addition to our family, she has been such an easy going happy little girl right from the start. She is so easy to love. There isn't a day that goes by that she doesn't make me smile or laugh, what a blessing that is to have in your life! I don't know maybe I am feeling this way about her because I finally got her completely potty trained.

Here are some cute little things she says or does lately(I've already shared these with most of you but I wanted to write them down so I would remember them):

She was sitting and watching a show with me, and it was a little bit cold in our house. She didn't want to share her blanket, so I said, "Sydnie will you go get me a blanket?" She looked at me and replied, "I'm not the mommy". I guess only mommies do things for people. She did end up getting me a blanket, although it was one of her crib blankets, and so small it only covered up my arms. That will teach me to ask a 3 year old for help.

Lately she has figured out that if she can get me to laugh or smile her punishment is a lot less severe. So whenever she knows she has done something wrong, she always starts by saying, "Is it funny mom?" which is almost always going to at least get a half smile out of me. She usually then adds, "I don't need a spanking mom." then adds a very fake laugh. Most of the time she says this before I even know she has done anything wrong. I can't quite decide if she is not being very smart by telling me in before I find out, after all I might not have even known she had done something wrong. Or if she is really smart, by telling me first, and softening the blow by preparing me that I'm about to walk into a disaster.

At any rate she is generous with her hugs and kisses and "I love you's". And she pretty much has me wrapped around her little finger. I love you Sydnie!

2010-11-14T17:49:00.000-08:00

Reflections 2010

We were excited when we found out Kaylee won first place in the PTA sponsored art contest. She shared first place with 2 of her best friends Tanna and Abi. All three of their pictures move on to the district level.

The theme this year was called "Together we can". Kaylee painted a picture of her and her friends cleaning up, planting trees and doing things to make our world more beautiful. Even the animals in her picture were helping.

They had all the winners come up and display their work. Here is Kaylee showing off her artwork:

Kaylee got a ribbon a medal and a trophy for her entry. I was a little disappointed by this. I felt they should have spread the awards out among more of the children. Kaylee would have been more than happy with her trophy, she didn't need a ribbon and a medal to go with it. I think they would have been appreciated more by someone else.

Kaylee getting her awards:

2010-11-03T19:42:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween!

We had a great Halloween. I have been super busy with getting things ready for my craft show, so it has taken me awhile to post these pictures. The girls looked super cute. I had to take these pictures under our front porch because it was raining. We were a little worried it wouldn't stop for trick or treating. We had to do the trunk or treat inside the church because of the rain. Luckily it stopped just in time to get a little trick or treating in. The girls had fun, Brianne and Sydnie got cold pretty quickly, but Kaylee was tough and stayed out a little longer, she had made plans with her friends to go to a few houses all by themselves. Its hard to think she is getting that old!

Kaylee the Rocker!!!

Brianne the rocker!!! This was as close to a smile as I could get, I guess she was going for the tough look.

And Sydnie our little fairy princess!

Oh I almost forgot, I updated my photoblog. Go check it out, the link is on my sidebar.

2010-10-27T17:47:00.000-07:00

Pumpkin Carving

I thought I better break up these Halloween posts, or I would have way too many pictures for one post. We had fun carving pumpkins as a family last night. Shaun really outdid himself this year, but that left me to tackle the other three pumpkins by myself.

Kaylee getting her pumpkin ready.

Sydnie was a trooper she cleaned out almost all of her pumpkin herself.

Brianne with the pumpkins before we started carving

Kaylee insisted on carving her pumpkin by herself this year. She did a good job, but made her mom really nervous.

Shaun's Creation, it is the terminator. I think he did a great job!

Here are the rest, I helped carve Briannes on the far left, and Sydnies in the middle, Kaylee's is on the far right.

All lit up!!!

Hope everyone has a Happy Halloween, can't wait to take pictures of my girls in their costumes, and see all of your pictures!

2010-10-24T13:01:00.000-07:00

Brianne...

These photo's were actually taken for a photo contest I am entering this week. I was in a hurry, so I didn't even curl the back of her hair. They ended up turning out so good I might have to get some printed out and framed. Here are a few of my favorites. Go to my photo blog for the other ones I liked, plus the other photos I have been working on this week. http://www.jennhulsphotography.blogspot.com

I love her eyes in this one....

This is my favorite, she moved so it is a little out of focus. I love it anyway.

This is the one I am entering for my contest. The contest is called "Mid Day Sun". We have to take a photo of something or someone in the middle of the day. One of the hardest times to take pictures because of the strong light. I think this one turned out well, and is the best example of all the ones I took, for a mid day sun photograph. It is titled...

"Mid Day Dream"

2010-10-17T15:58:00.000-07:00

Another fun weekend in Idaho

We went to Idaho for a couple reasons last weekend. Nancy's little baby Chloe was getting blessed. And then we just lucked out and ended up being able to go to our nephew Layton's baptism. We had a great time visiting family and even got to ride on my brother in law's new Harley. That is all my girls have been talking about since we got home. Shaun took them both on a short ride, and now they want to know, "when daddy is getting a motor cycle?" As if Shaun needed any encouragement. He threatens it all the time. Maybe a dirt bike would be a happy medium. He could take the girls for a ride up in the mountain trials behind our house, and I wouldn't have to worry about him getting killed on the freeway to and from work everyday.

Here is a shot from the Harley.

Here is a shot of the Harley, I was experimenting with some overlay techniques:

Here is a sweet shot of Chloe on her blessing day.

This week I finally managed to get some 3 year old pictures of Sydnie done. I included my two favorites for this blog but to see the rest of the cute ones in full size click on this link and check them out on my photo blog: http://jennhulsphotography.blogspot.com

2010-10-11T18:54:00.000-07:00

Killing two birds with one stone

I was going to post a few pictures from my weekend in Idaho, but I included them all in my photo blog and I am too lazy to repost them here. So if you would like to look at my photos for the week follow the link below or click on the side bar link.

http://jennhulsphotography.blogspot.com

2010-10-03T15:10:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday Sydnie

Sydnie turned 3 this week. I can't believe my little baby is 3. This means she is not technically a baby anymore and hasn't been for quite some time, but I still find myself calling her my baby. She had a fun birthday and had her very first birthday party. It was just a small party with a few kids from our street, and it was a good thing it was small, 3 year olds have a very short attention span.

We started out by making cupcakes, I let each of the kids put one of the ingredients in, and then everyone had a turn to stir. Here is Sydnie happily taking her turn:

Then we headed out to the bounce house while the cupcakes were baking, luckily it was a short day at school and I let Kaylee and Brianne stay home to be my helpers.

Sydnie going down the slide:

I thought this was a cute one of Sydnie, She has got her balloons ready to put into the bounce house:

Finally the cupcakes were ready to decorate, and thanks to Kaylee and Brianne they did get decorated. Most of the kids were more interested in eating there cupcakes than decorating them. Sydnie was sampling the frosting instead of spreading it:

Next we opened presents. I loved her sweet face in this one, but I didn't love the background so I had to edit it:

Here are all the cute little neighbor kids who came to her party:

Later that night we celebrated her birthday as a family. We already had cupcakes, so we decided to put the candles in some of her other favorite treats.

P.S. I updated my photo blog for anyone interested, jennhulsphotography.blogspot.com

2010-09-25T12:54:00.001-07:00

Sydnie first dance classes.

I decided to teach dance again this year mostly because of this cute little girl.....

So far she is loving it!!! If anyone has promise of being a dancer in our family, it is Sydnie. She gets so excited to go to class, and she pays such good attention. She is not one bit shy about trying all the dance steps I show her, as well as adding a few steps of her own for good measure. She definitely is the best dressed little dancer in her class. I have all of Brianne and Kaylee's old costumes and she has had fun wearing them to class. She looked so cute this last Monday, that I had to snap a few shots.

Here is a cute one I cropped to show her tap shoes, she looked so cute in them. I wanted a full length shot but she was pulling such silly faces I decided to crop it. I actually like the effect.

I decided to post this picture as well. We have been so excited about our grapes this year! We have had so many! Here is a picture of the purple ones. We have at least 4 different varieties. Green are my favorite, the purple ones taste too much like grape jelly to me. It has been fun to be able to just go out and pick a bowl full of fresh grapes this fall, I probably should make some grape juice but most likely I won't. I wish I inherited my moms canning and freezing genes but sadly they are lost on me. So instead I have this picture to remember them by, until next fall.

p.s. I updated my photo blog today as well check it out! I posted a link on my sidebar or you can just click on this one. http://jennhulsphotography.blogspot.com

2010-09-19T19:52:00.000-07:00

My 365 Project

So I recently got a bug for photography, and like everything I do, once I start it sort of becomes an obsession until I get it figured out. I have always been interested in photography, but it all seemed too complicated and overwhelming. It seemed easy to put off, because I was busy doing other things. Finally, after talking to a friend, who is also into photography, I decided it was about time to learn how to use my camera that I have had for almost three years now. I have been experimenting with new techniques I have learned and wanted some place to display them. So I spent today designing a new site for my photos. I have heard of other photographers doing a 365 project and thought this would be fun to try. You are suppose to take one picture a day for a whole year. It is a great way to build a portfolio and improve your picture taking skills. So here it is http://jennhulsphotography.blogspot.com/ I hope you will check it out. I really would like to have a whole group of sites like mine linked to each other, so we can share photo's and ideas and knowledge, kind of like a photo club online. Let me know if your interested!!!

Love this girl!!! This is just one of several pictures featured on my new site.

2010-09-15T06:30:00.000-07:00

Fall Craft Show

I've been meaning to post these pictures for awhile. The Mini Bazaar actually started its fall show last week, so we are already into the second week of a 6 week show. I thought I better quit putting off posting these pictures. Here is what has been keeping me busy for the last month.

whoops, I didn't realize until I uploaded this picture that the H had been turned funny. Oh well you get the idea.

I thought these would make good baptism gifts. They are cuter than they look in the picture, they have a glass like overlay on the front, kind of like those cute necklaces you see everywhere.

Same thing with these. They also have that glass like overlay on them.

I took some pictures of the Idaho Falls and Salt Lake City Temples and mounted them with a finish that looks like an oil painting. You can't really see it in these pictures, but they turned out really nice. I think I am going to apply the same affect on my next set of family photos. Not only does it make them look better it also protects them as well.

These have been my big sellers. Only a week and I am almost sold out. I applied the same coating as my temple pictures and they turned out better that I even expected. I did quite a few different sayings but only pictured a few.

These turned out fun. I had a lot of fun working with photoshop on these. It allowed me to do some fun lettering with more detail than I can get with vinyl lettering.

Another version. I've got this one hanging on my mantel.

In addition I also did a bunch of flowers for your hair as well as some cute headbands. I didn't take any pictures. But an example is the one on Nancy's baby Chloe's head. I mostly did them for older kids and grown ups but am working on doing an adjustable headband for babies.

2010-09-10T21:58:00.000-07:00

Chloe Jackson

Nancy had her baby a few weeks ago, and when I was in Idaho last weekend, I got to practice my photo taking skills on my new niece. I have been trying to learn how to use the manual settings on my camera. I still haven't got them completely figured out, but it really helped make these pictures turn out a lot better than what I have done in the past. I was able to adjust how much light I let into the camera, so even though the lighting wasn't the best, I was still able to take some pretty good pictures. Normally, I would have had to use the flash and I just hate what the flash does to pictures.

Here is the announcement I made for Nancy, with some of the favorite pictures I took.

Obviously, this was one of my two favorites, since it was featured prominently in the announcement. I was excited to finally take a picture that I didn't have to edit the heck out of to make it look decent.

Here is my other favorite. Again not much editing, just a little in the background. I had to make it darker, because the cloth we used to bundle her in was a little see through.

I just loved the composition on this one.

Here is a fun overlay I tried. The picture was cute without the editing, but I thought this technique turned out kind of cool.

This one I decided to crop and put on a background, because it just wouldn't crop the way I wanted it to otherwise.

This one I put a old paper overlay on. Its kind of hard to see the effect with it so small but if you click on it you can see the detail of the effect.

Here is one more editing technique I was experimenting with. I like it, but I like the original better I think.

Here is just one more, I love her face, so sweet, but the lighting wasn't the best. When I cropped it in close it went a little grainy. So I decided to go with the grainy look, and applied the old paper overlay, to make it look like we did it on purpose.

2010-09-09T16:19:00.000-07:00

Trip to Idaho

I had to set up for my craft show so we went to Idaho this last weekend. I set up for my show most of the day Saturday, (I hope to post some pictures soon). Then on Sunday I took pictures of Nancy's new baby, (I am still in the editing process but will be posting those pictures soon too.) We went to the Eastern Idaho State fair on Monday. We have never gone on Labor day before, now I know why, it was so crowded. You even had to wait in line to go to the bathroom, we managed to have fun anyway.

Before the fair, we went up to Grandma and Grandpa Huls house. The girls had a good time exploring on Grandpa's farm. Here is Kaylee with an egg she found in the hen house. Shaun scrambled them up later and I had a bite out of curiosity, people say fresh eggs taste so much better. My tongue couldn't taste the difference.

Grandpa's pig just had babies about a month ago. The piglet screamed so loud when Grandpa took it out of the pen that Sydnie was a little nervous to pet it. She finally came around.

I just thought this was kind of funny. Lu Lu is so used to being man handled by these girls that she doesn't even try to resist anymore. She just patiently held on to the trike while Kaylee wheeled her around for a good 5 min.

Here are the girls at the fair, one of the horse stalls also had dogs for sale, they were letting people hold them. John and Natalie and boys are in the background. We had fun following each other around the fair. The girls always like spending time with their cousins.

2010-08-29T14:14:00.000-07:00

Shaun's Trip to Oregon

Shaun went with his Dad and Brother Josh to the Oregon coast this weekend. They had a great time. They had a great beach house with spectacular views of the ocean. It made me a little jealous I love Oregon too and haven't been for over 5 years, but mostly I was glad Shaun had a great time, and got to have some much deserved time off. He has been having to work way too many hours at work for the last few months and I think a little guy time was just what he needed.

They went salmon fishing at the mouth of the Columbia river. Shaun's dad managed to catch the biggest fish of the day: a Sardine.

Actually the fish he caught really looked a little more like this. I don't know which fish is which but I know they all got a good one.

The next day they went crabbing and had a great time. I don't love seafood but crabbing is so much fun. If you have never been it is really worth the money to rent a little boat and some crab pots and spent the day in a little bay catching crab. They tried a new spot this time and had great luck. Here is Shaun's dad holding up one of the unlucky ones. I guess they hauled in some fairly big ones.

First Day of School

Back at home we had an exciting week as well. I sent my Girls back to school on Wednesday. They were so excited to go they had their outfits picked out and laid out several days early, and the night before we made headbands to match their outfits. They both loved their teachers and had a great first day. It is a little weird to just have me and Sydnie around the house all day. She has had a little bit of a hard time with it. Luckily I organized a little playgroup for her with some really cute little 3 year olds from the neighborhood. We start that in a couple weeks and so she will at least have that to look forward to twice a week.

Kaylee is in 4th grade this year and feeling quite grown up all of a sudden. She really eats up any comments anyone gives her on how grown up she looks. I don't know if I am prepared for this yet.

Brianne is going to first grade this year. It is a little weird having her gone all day. But I know she was excited to be going with all the older kids in the morning to school.

Brianne and Kaylee looking cute with their matching skirts, one of the only things I let them get the same this year. P.S. sorry about the washed out pictures, I have been messing with the manual settings on my camera and I was in such a hurry when I took these pictures I forgot to check what setting I had it on.

2010-08-22T13:37:00.000-07:00

As Summer Ends
Even though we start school on Wednesday, we managed to squeeze a few more fun things into our summer. The girls have been saving money from doing chores around the house since spring, so that they could go to Lagoon. They finally saved up enough, and we went last Thursday. I realized when we got home, I have not been for almost 20 years. Lagoon has changed a lot since I last went. We had a great time.

Kaylee and Brianne in the sky ride.

Kaylee loves roller coasters. There wasn't one she didn't want to try, even ones I wouldn't ride, like the Samurai. Shaun finally found one she wouldn't go on, but after some bribing she finally rode the Rocket (pictured above). After the ride she decided it wasn't very scary, but it wasn't very fun either. Her favorite rides were Wicked and Colossus.

Sydnie and Brianne had fun on the kiddie rides. We talked Brianne into riding the Colossus, she was just tall enough. She didn't cry and said it was fun, but that was the last roller coaster we got her to ride that day. She and Sydnie especially liked this car ride, they rode it several times. Brianne said her very favorite ride that day was the Turn of the Century swings. Sydnie was very daring and happily road any ride we put her on, even ones that most kids her age would have screamed their heads off on.

Sydnie's first Birthday Party

Sydnie had her very first Birthday party last Monday. She has watched her sister go to many parties, and she felt very grown up finally getting to go to one herself. I was a little worried that she wouldn't want to give up the toy I got for her to give. But when the time came, she put her present in a bag without any trouble, and seemed very excited to be giving it away to her friend Bailey.

Brianne learns to ride a bike (finally)

Brianne is so timid around bikes. It may be all the hills in our neighborhood, our street is particularly steep, and can be very intimidating. She has barely even wanted to ride her bike with training wheels. So I was surprised when she requested Shaun teach her how to ride without training wheels. She wants to ride her bike with the other kids to school, so she was bound and determined to learn.

Shaun followed behind her a few times, but it didn't take long for her to take off on her own.

Soon she was riding up and down the only level street in our neighborhood. She has a bit more practicing to do before she is ready to ride to school. She is still a little shaky on her turns and hasn't dared to try downhill yet (a must if she wants to ride to school) but I'm sure with a little more practice, she will be ready to ride to school with the rest of the kids.

Sydnie and Lu Lu

This is an old picture, I have been holding onto for awhile. Sydnie and Lu Lu have had a long road to becoming friends. Sydnie likes to treat Lu Lu like her little doll or stuffed animal, and Lu Lu has had a hard time figuring out how to deal with it. But as she has gotten older she has become much more patient with Sydnie, and almost puts up with anything Synie dishes out. Including being put in doll cribs, and packed around by Sydnie like a stuffed animal. We love our little dog Lu Lu, she has really become a part of the family. We haven't regretted for a minute getting her. I think the secret to our good experience is being prepared by other family members who had recently gotten dogs on what to expect, and just in general being at a stage in our family life where a dog was a fun addition to our family and not an extra burden.

2010-08-08T13:21:00.000-07:00

A few more things we did this summer...

Here are a few pictures I have been meaning to post. Shaun has had to work just about every Saturday this summer, so it has been a pretty uneventful summer. We have managed to do a few fun things.

First the Moultons came for a visit from North Carolina. Audrey and her kids came to spend a couple nights at our house. The girls had so much fun playing with their friends again. Audrey and I had fun digital scrapbooking and catching up. We will miss them, Audrey is pregnant so it will probably be a whole year before we get to see them again.

Everyone taking a break from playing. From left to right, Brianne, Sydnie, Isabelle, Micheal, Maddy, Kaylee, and Lu Lu.

Sydnie and Micheal taking a much needed bath. I took this picture to embarrass them with someday.

A few weekends ago, Shaun finally had a Saturday off, so we went up to Strawberry Reservoir to go cray fishing. We had a lot of fun. Their were so many Cray fish you didn't even need a pole, you could just scoop them up in bags and nets. Shaun even managed to help each of the girls catch a fish.

Kaylee and Brianne holding a sample of our catch, the rest are in the cooler.

Sydnie reeling in her fish, she got it to shore but it got away before I could get a picture of it. It was just a little guy.

Brianne holding her catch.

Kaylee reeled in the biggest fish of the day, but not quite big enough to keep. Darn it! My girls love fish, but I hate them, especially trout.

Finally, this weekend Shaun had to work, so I took the girls on an outing to the Salt Lake Temple. I wanted to take some pictures for my craft show. The girls had fun playing in the water fountains while I took pictures. Then we went to the visitor centers. The old tabernacle was open too. I haven't been in there since they reopened it it was cool to see the old organ again.

This is my girls favorite part of the visitors center. Kaylee says its just like walking up to Heaven.

Here are the pictures I took for my next craft show. I am going to develop them and mount them on wood. I think they turned out pretty cool looking, I'm having trouble picking which one to use. Maybe I will do a few of each.

2010-07-31T11:43:00.000-07:00

Thornton Family Reunion 2010 at Granite Hot Springs

We spent 4 days last week camping with my family in Wyoming. It was good to go back after a five year absence. It is so beautiful up there, one of Gods great masterpieces. I wont write a lot, I will let the pictures tell the story of what we did there. I apologize in advance, there are a lot of pictures, and I had a hard time editing down to just these ones.

We arrived Wednesday night just in time to put up tents and make dinner. Thursday was our first full day there. We went swimming in the morning and then a few of us went for a little nature hike. Here is the whole crew at the start of our hike, minus Shaun, he was taking the picture. From back left to right: Me, Abby, Alexis, Whitney. Bottom row left to right: Hayden, Brianne, Hannah, Kaylee, and Brad.

We found this cool water pump on our hike, Shaun decided to see if it worked. After a lot of pumping he finally got the water to flow.

The kids had a turn next. It took all of them to get the handle to pull down. With Abby's help they finally did it.

Along the trail on our hike.

This is a cool little water fall we saw along the way. Back row: Abby and Alexis. Front row: Hayden, Kaylee, Hannah, and Brianne.

The hike ended at the swimming pool. This is the bridge that goes over the creek to the pool. It is such a pretty view from the bridge. We were suppose to meet everyone there to go swimming again, but we got there early and ended up just walking back to camp.

On the way back we hiked around Granite Falls. Here is Kaylee and Shaun at the top of the falls, where it just starts to go down.

Then we hiked to a little spot, kind of in the middle of the falls. Here are Kaylee and Brianne getting at close as I would let them to the edge.

We finally made it back to camp and headed up with the rest of the group to go swimming. The water is so warm it is best to go in the morning then again at night, and that is just what we did. Here is Hayden and Kaylee jumping into the pool.

Friday morning we got up and got ready for rafting. It is such a high elevation there, that a fire is a must both in the morning and at night. From left to right: Izy, Nick, Sydnie, Hannah, Brianne and Kaylee.

We had a great time rafting the Hoback (Snake) river. The first part of the run is pretty calm, just a few small to medium sized rapids so all the baby's went along for the ride. It was a little cold that day, so when the first splash of water hit the babies, they all started a chorus of crying, that lasted the rest of the 20 min they were on the boat. All the kids from left to right: Brianne, Kaylee, Hayden, Izzy, Alexis, Trinity, Sydnie, and Hannah.

We were all glad to get the crying babies of the boat and get to the real rapids. I talked Kaylee into going on the big rapids. This is a picture I stole off of a Jackson Hole photographers web site. We are just heading into the second wave of Kahuna. Click on the picture to enlarge it and look at Kaylee's face to see how much she liked it. P.S. Nancy if you go on this website there are more pictures that show Hayden's face a little better. There is also a funny one of Heath losing his hat. I posted them on Facebook, too bad you are not a member.

On Saturday we had breakfast, broke camp, and went to Idaho Falls. We arrived just in time to clean up at Shaun's parents house, then head over to watch the Blue Angels at an airshow they were doing that day. Shaun's brother Josh and his family were there, and Grandma Huls and Katie and Jeremy showed up a little later. It was an amazing show. Shaun went fishing that night with his brothers. All in all we had a pretty fun weekend.

2010-07-18T14:12:00.000-07:00

Granite
I thought this would be the perfect week to write about one of my favorite childhood memories: camping with my family at Granite Campground and Hot springs in Wyoming. We are going there again in a few days with my family, and I haven’t been in over four years. I am very excited, and I thought it would be fun to post some old Granite photo’s this week, and then do a post next week with new photos from granite.
Okay, get ready for a huge post sorry. I just love Granite so much I couldn’t limit myself. This is mostly done for the benefit of myself and my family members so feel free to skip this one and will do a regular post later this week of what we did this weekend.
Every summer my family would prepare for my favorite time of the year next to Christmas. Each year we got to spend five days camping at Granite Campground in Wyoming. People always ask me where it is, and the closest city to Granite is Jackson Hole, but even that is about an hour away. Granite isn’t one of those campgrounds you can see from a busy highway. It’s about twenty minutes up a lonely highway that runs along the Hoback river, then another six miles up a dirt road that runs along Granite creek. Once you get there, you are pretty much in the middle of nowhere.

I loved the weeks and days just before we went to Granite. My mom had a whole list of things that needed to be done. One of my favorites was cleaning out the camper. Nancy and I would help my mom wipe out drawers, and wash the utensils but mostly we would play and pretend we were already on our way. My mom would spend the whole week before making cookies and cakes that we would take to Granite for treats and deserts, and then a few days before, we would go grocery shopping for Granite. The cart would be piled higher that usual with food and treats for the trip, and the one thing I was always excited about, because we hardly ever got it, was: soda pop. My favorite was “Sprite” and I was so excited to know that I would get to drink pop anytime I wanted for the whole time I was at Granite! Soon the day arrived and my mom would keep us busy and entertained by loading the camper. I was just happy to be doing anything that would get us on the road sooner. Finally the camper was loaded on the truck and all the kids would get in the only space left in the camper, the bed above the cab of the truck. Then it was a waiting game sometimes up to an hour before we would finally get going, there always seemed to be something that would go wrong a break light on the camper wouldn’t work or someone forgot to fill up the water, or my mom forgot something on her list. But finally we would be on our way! The bed had a big window that faced the front of the truck and we would always fight who would get to be in front of it. It wasn’t until Nancy and I were older that we finally got our turn in front of it, instead we had to make do with our little side windows. Now a day people wouldn’t dream of letting their kids ride in a camper, I can’t imagine what would have happened to us if we had gotten in a wreck. But somehow we managed to all stay safe. Secretly I was terrified of the camper falling off the truck and tumbling down one of the many mountain roads we would drive on. Sometimes, I would get so scared I would have to close the curtain on my side so I couldn’t see and just try and fall asleep. Here is a picture of our camper. My brother Greg is the one farthest back, then Lisa Dinsdale, Me, Nancy, and Lisa's Friend:

Once we finally arrived at the campground there was always so much to do and see. First we had to set up tents and arrange sleeping bags. Once the camper was unloaded from the truck my dad would be off to find firewood for the week, and we would help my mom set up camp. Once we were finally settled it was off the visit the creek. The creek could be quite rough and deep in places but by the campground it widened out and had lots of shallow places to wade in. Almost everyday when it got to hot in the campground we would head off to the creek to cool off. There were always lots of fun things to do at the creek besides playing in the water. We would pick flowers, find snail shells, and if we were lucky we even would find a friendly water snake or bullfrog to take back to camp. The creek bottoms were full of willow trees, and we would always beg my dad to make us whistles. Finally, after a lot of begging he would walk down with us to find the perfect willow branch to carve into a whistle. It had to be just the right thickness, strait, and no knots. It seemed like forever before he would find the right one. Once he did, he would cut it off a little longer that whistle size, make notches for the air to come out, and then he would tap on it for a long time to get the bark to separate from the limb. The bark had to come off in one piece for the whistle to work. Once he got the bark off, he carved the inside of the whistle and slid the bark back on. And then we had our willow whistles. I am sure it was quite noisy after we all got our whistles, no wonder he would wait so long to go down and make them. I didn't have a picture of the creek but here is a picture of the campground area. I just love it because there are so many trees. In this picture Shaun is having a water fight with some of my nieces and nephews:

The next morning we would get up and go to the pool. It was about a mile away from the campground up a rough road that dead ended about a quarter of a mile before the pool. The pool is owned by the forest service and is a very rustic looking pool somewhat carved out of the side of the mountain and fed by a hot spring. There were no bathrooms and only a very roughly build log cabin to change in. Often moose would come to visit the salt lick just below the pool. And at least once a year we would have Mother Nature come to visit us in the pool in the form of a water snake or a bat. We loved the pool best of anything else at Granite; we would swim almost every day and sometimes twice a day. We loved to play on the painted boulders that jutted out into the pool and sit by the waterfall where the hot springs poured into the pool. At one time there was even a diving board to jump off of, until someone died from hitting their head on the bottom. Then we had to just have fun jumping off the sides. Moss also grew on the bottom of one section of the pool, it sounds gross but it actually was one of my favorite parts of the pool, you could dive down and carve pictures or your name in the moss. It was fun to see what other people had carved. One of my very favorite things to do was to just sit and look at the amazing view you had of the creek and the mountains from the pool. Here is a picture of the pool. Its just a random shot but it gives a good view of how the pool just kind of juts out of the side of the mountain:

As if all those things aren’t enough to make Granite the best place in the world to go camping. It also has some really magnificent falls. The falls are situated almost exactly halfway between the campground and the pool. And we would often stop on our way up to the pool to see the falls. The creek is really rough and rugged in that spot and the falls are no exception. You can walk right up to the base of the falls, and even walk out onto a log that has been there ever since I can remember, about half way into the stream. It makes for really cool pictures, but is a bit of an adrenaline rush. There is also a trail that leads to the top of the falls. It’s a beautiful view but not for the faint of heart. When we got older we would tube from the base of the falls down to the campground it was a fun ride but a little scary at times. Here is a picture of Granite Falls. You can see the big log I was talking about in the background. In the picture is my Niece April, my nephew Nick and next to him my Niece Joy:

My parents had Kayaks. The good old fiberglass kind, but not so sophisticated as the ones you see the professional kayakers in now. We usually would take one day to drive down to the Snake river to watch my oldest brother and his friends go down the river in them. One really memorable experience happened to me while watching them go down the river. We had all gone to a place where you can hike down the side of the mountain and watch the rafters and the kayakers go over the biggest rapid on the river called Lunch Counter. I was too little to walk down the trail by myself. It was a super steep trail that ended at some very rough water. My oldest sister Laura who was probably around 16 at the time volunteered to carry me down. We hadn’t gone very far when she lost her footing, and we both started tumbling down the mountain. I remember seeing the water below and thinking I was going to die. No matter how hard we tried Laura and I could not stop, we kept grabbing onto grass and weeds, but it was so steep and gravely that the weeds and grass would just pull out. I remember saying a little prayer that somehow we would be able to stop, and just then we saw a tree in front of us with a branch low enough for me to reach up and grab onto. Laura saw the tree too, and told me that when we passed under to reach up and hold on with all my might. We did and we were able to stop. I still remember clutching to that branch with one hand while my dad and a family friend came down to rescue us. We were both pretty scraped up. It may not have been as dramatic as my little 5 or 6 year old brain made it out to be. But I do remember feeling strongly that my Heavenly Father had been watching out for me and my sister that day.
When I was about 8 we traded our kayaks in for a raft. We spent many summer days going down the snake river in that raft. Usually one whole day of Granite was dedicated to rafting. While other families spent their Saturday afternoons on a lake behind a speedboat, I spent mine on a river. Here is a picture of us on the river in the early years. My dad is in the front in the yellow life jacket, my mom is right behind him and you can just see mine and my sisters heads in the front seat in the front:

And finally Granite would have never been Granite without the Dinsdales. They were my parents best friends, and when I was younger, and before everyone started getting married, and grandkids started coming, we all went to Granite together. We usually got two campsites right next to each other and shared everything from campfires to meals. The Dad, Darwin Dinsdale, was my favorite. He always seemed to be happy and joking. He knew lots of silly campfire songs (he must have been in the scouts a long time). At night we would all gather around the campfire to roast marshmallows and we would beg Darwin to sing us a song. I still find those songs popping into my head sometimes, and if my girls are really lucky I will sing one to them. I just wish I could remember all the words. I managed to find the lyrics to two of my favorites by googling them. Isn’t the internet an amazing thing!

The Thing
As I was walking on the beach one bright and sunny day,
I saw a great big wooden box a floating in the bay.
I pulled it in and opened it up and much to my surprise. . . .
Oh! I discovered a (clap, clap, clap) right before my eyes!
Oh! I discovered a (clap, clap, clap) right before my eyes!

I picked it up and ran to town as happy as a king.
I took it to a guy I knew who'd buy most anything.
But this is what he hollerd at me as I walked in his shop,
"Oh! Get out of here with that (clap, clap, clap) before I call the
cop!" "Oh! Get out of here with that (clap, clap, clap) before I call the cop!"
I turned around and got right out a running for my life.

And then I thought I'd take it home and give it to my wife.
But this is what she hollered at me as I walked through the door,
"Oh! Get out of here with that (clap, clap, clap) and don't come
back no more! "Oh! Get out of here with that (clap, clap, clap) and don't come back no more!

I wandered all around the town until I chanced to meet.
A hobo who was looking for a handout on the street.
He said he'd take most any old thing he was a desperate man.
But when I showed him the (clap, clap, clap) he turned around and
ran! But when I showed him the (clap, clap, clap) he turned around and
ran!

I wandered on for many years a victim of my fate
Until at last I came across St.Peter at the gate.
But as I tried to take it inside He told me where to go,
"Get out of here with that (clap,clap,clap) and take it down
below!" "Get out of here with that (clap,clap,clap) and take it down
below!"

The moral of this story is if you're out on the beach,
And you should see a great, big box and it's within your reach,
Don't ever stop and open it up. That's my advice to you,
For you'll never get rid of the (clap, clap, clap)
No matter what you do! For you'll never get rid of the (clap, clap, clap)
No matter what you do!

The Quartermaster's Song

There are snakes, snakes, snakes Big as garden rakes,At the store! At the store! There are snakes, snakes, snakes, Big as garden rakes, at the Quartermaster's store.
Chorus: My eyes are dim I can-not see. I have not got my specs with me. I have not got my specs with me.
There are mice, mice, miceRunning though the rice,At the store! At the store! There are mice, mice, mice, Running through the rice, at the Quartermaster's store.
Chorus
Continue with each of the following:

3. lice - living on the mice.

4. rats - big as alley cats.

5. roaches - big as football coaches

6. watches - big as sasquaches

7. snakes - big as garden rakes

8. bears - but no one really cares

9. beavers - with little meat cleavers

10. foxes - stuffed in little boxes

This is a picture of Darwin and Deanna Dinsdales. This was taken just a few years ago, my parents still try and go up to Granite with them every once and awhile:

2010-07-05T15:07:00.000-07:00

Happy Independence Day!!!!

Or days, as it was in our case. I kind of like it when the 4th falls on a Sunday, it spreads the celebration out further. We had a fun one here is what we did:

We got up at 5:30 in the morning on Saturday to go watch the balloon fest in Provo. Only 3 of the 30 balloons got to launch because of the wind conditions, but it was fun watching them blow the balloons up.

After the balloon fest, we went to my brother Mikes house. Jenny made us a great breakfast, and afterward the girls had fun playing in their fountain.

We took it easy for the rest of the day. That night we had a little BBQ with just our family. Shaun grilled some awesome steaks we got from Costco, and I made french fries and strawberry pie. When it finally got late enough, we threw a bunch of blankets and cushions in the back of Shaun's truck, and headed to Thanksgiving Point to watch the fireworks. I'm sure it wasn't as impressive as the Stadium of fire, but we had fun watching them from our comfy seats in the back of the truck, instead of some hard bleachers.

While we waited for the fireworks to start, we enjoyed natures fireworks. What a beautiful sunset!

On Sunday we invited a few of our neighbors over, and lit our pack of fireworks we got from Costco.

This is how Sydnie watched most of the fireworks.

I had been promising the girls I would sleep out with them for the last few nights, but the weather would not cooperate. After the fireworks on Sunday, the weather looked good, so we set out our sleeping bags on some pads on the lawn. We had fun watching for shooting stars and satellites. We also had fun locating some planets and constellations. Quite different from when I was a kid, I brought my lap top out and found this cool website http://skyandtelescope.com/. You could type in your location and it would show you a map of the sky in your area. We were able to located several planets, stars, and constellations.

2010-07-04T14:01:00.000-07:00

Happy 4th of July! We had a great one, I plan on posting about this tommorro, when I have the rest of the pictures together. So for now enjoy my Childhood memory post.

Memory #4
Horses

My best friend when I was little was Krista Thomas. She lived a couple houses down, we both had pastures in our back yards. My Family used our pasture very practically, and raised a couple calves each year for meat for our family. Krista’s family had horses. We would beg and beg our parents for a horse, but every time the response was, “horses are too expensive and we don’t have a barn.” Luckily we were able to ride Krista’s horses just about anytime we wanted, and many summers were spent daily on a horse’s back.

I wish I had some pictures of us riding horses but there are none to be found so I included some stock photos of horses that look a lot like the ones we used to ride. The one on the top looks like "Lady" and the one on the bottom looks a lot like "Patches". Now just try to imagine three little girls riding on the back with no saddle, cut off shorts, and barefeet and the pictures will be complete.

I really don’t remember how old we were when we first started riding horses, I do know we were probably not as old as we should have been. We started out by just going out and looking at the horses, feeding them grass and oats. Then we got a little braver, and would go out to the field and try to round up the horses so we could sit on their backs. Once we finally chased the horses into the corral, we would tie them to the fence, crawl up the fence, and onto the horses backs. We spent hours pretending to ride them, and dreaming about when we really could.
The next step was field riding. I’m not sure we were suppose to, because it seemed like Krista was always looking over her shoulder when we did it. We would corner the horses in the corral, put on their bridals, and ride the horses bareback around the pasture. Luckily, Krista owned about the most gentle horses around, they were short too, so the fall was never that far, (and we fell plenty of times). When we were young, Krista always rode a young and a little more spirited horse called Patches, and I rode a very old and gentle horse called Lady.
Finally at about the age of 8 or 9 we were given the okay to take them out on the road. We were quite the sight: cut off shorts, no shoes, and we almost always rode bareback. At first we were only allowed to ride Lady so the three of us: Krista, me, and my sister Nancy would all climb on one horse. Poor Nancy, she was the littlest and lowest in pecking order and always had to ride on the back. She had a very bumpy ride on the horse’s rear end, and would often just slide right off the back, occasionally taking me with her. Our most common destination was the town square that also had an arena in one corner of it. There we would gallop around and pretend we were rodeo queens. If we were lucky an old cowboy named Tom Shirtliff would show up on his horse, and then we were in for a real treat. His horse was the smartest horse we had ever seen. We loved to watch him perform tricks with his horse.
Eventually we were able to take two horses out. I would ride on one and Krista the other with Nancy riding behind on one or the other. Occasionally, we would get all fancy and put saddles on the horses. Those naughty horses would puff their stomachs out, so even when it seemed we had cinched the saddles down tight, after a block or two down the road the saddles would be falling off to one side or the other. On one very memorable occasion my horse got spooked and took off with me on it. My saddle started to slip to the side. I was so busy trying to stay on the horse, that I couldn’t do anything to get control of the horse. As we ran over a patch of grass, I decided my best option was to bail off the horse while I had a soft spot to land on. I bailed, and the horse kept running, now with the saddle practically all the way under it. I think we stuck to bare back riding for awhile after that.
Other memorable horse stories were: once we made homemade bridles for our horses. We thought we were so smart. We found some extra bits in the barn and fashioned the rest of the bridle out of twine used to bail hay. They seemed to work fine at first, we arrived at our destination, tied our horses up and started to play. Our knots must have been horrible because when we got back the only thing left of the horses were their bits and a tangle of twine. We were so scared that the horses had run off and we would never find them. We ran home to get help, and there were our horses patiently waiting to be let back into the gate of their pasture. Naughty horses!!!As you can imagine I didn’t play much with dolls or play dress up very often. Even when we weren’t riding horses our play was centered around horses. We had horse figurines we loved to play with, our Barbies were always riding horses, and more often than not we were horses. Needless to say I can do a really good horse whinny.

2010-06-30T15:28:00.000-07:00

Weekend in Idaho

We went to Idaho this weekend. We had fun seeing family, some of them we hadn't seen since Christmas. First we went to the extended Huls Family Reunion, it was nice to visit with Shaun's Aunts and Uncles and see Great Grandma Huls. After that we went to my parents house the girls had fun on her water slide and slip and slide. Even Lu Lu had some fun getting to know her dog cousin Harley. It was fun to watch them play, neither dog had ever had the chance to play with another dog. It took them a while to get used to each other, but after that they wore each other out chasing each other. Sunday we went to a double baby blessing. Two of Shaun's sisters had baby girls in May. They are both darling little girls and will never be lacking in clothes or accessories. I remember I was a little the same way with Kaylee, now Sydnie is lucky if she gets out of her pajamas before nap time. As always the girls had so much fun seeing their grandparents and playing with cousins.

I was lazy and didn't get my camera out as much as I should have. But I did manage to get a few
shots after the baby blessing:

My girls with their new cousins: London on the left, and Macey on the right.

Morgan and Kaylee getting twisted on the swing by Grandpa Huls

Sydnie and Grandpa Huls

2010-06-27T16:53:00.000-07:00

Childhood Memory # 3

Three Ringed Circus
I was going to dedicate this post to memories of our trampoline, but when I started to remember things about our trampoline, it made me think of a few other things we used to do for fun in our back yard. We didn't actually have a circus in our back yard, but this title seemed to fit considering some of things we did for fun back there.

Ring #1: The Trampoline
We were the first kids in our neighborhood to get a trampoline. We had kids from who knows where lined up around that thing waiting for a turn to get on it. There were three rules, no shoes, only three kids on at a time, and you had to have a signed permission slip. My mom had a whole cupboard full of signed permission slips, and I remember being really annoyed that I had to wait my turn to jump on my own trampoline. Just a funny side note: one of my best friend’s mom would not sign a permission slip, she thought trampolines were too dangerous. So, when the rest of us wanted to jump on the trampoline, we would haul out my moms small exercise trampoline, and she would pretend like she was having fun jumping on it, while the rest of us had real fun on the big trampoline. After the excitement died down and other people started getting trampolines, we finally had it to ourselves. We figured out some really fun games to play. We of course played the usual crack the egg and dodge ball, but we had a special trampoline that led us to invent some unique games that other people couldn’t play. Our trampoline was round and stitched together in three pieces leading to some nasty trampoline burns, but the lines it created in our tramp made for some fun games. Here is a picture of our “tramp” with its unique stitching.

One game was called “sharks”, the shark would be in the middle section and the two outer sections were safe and we would jump across the middle section trying not to get touched by the shark. One of the best things we would do on our tramp was put the sprinkler underneath it to cool ourselves off in the summer. We had railroad tracks that ran behind our pasture; there was a freight train that ran those tracks everyday. Whenever we would hear the train coming, we would stop whatever we were doing, even if we were inside, and go on the trampoline and jump the “snake” as we called it. I don’t know how or why this started and why we thought it was so fun. We also had many slumber parties on the trampoline. We lived out in the country, so you could see the stars really well. I loved to look up at the night sky. We saw many shooting stars, one so close that it had a rainbow tail behind it. We would watch satellites zoom by, and try to find constellations, and even made up a few of our own. There is just something about stars that make you think about God, and I spent many nights falling asleep trying to take it all in.

Ring #2 Stilts

The next act in our circus was stilts. I forgot to mention this invention in my last memory, but my dad made us several sets of stilts. I don’t have any pictures of them, but I found this funny Norman Rockwell picture that looks a lot like the stilts my dad made:

The smallest of the set of stilts was just a foot of the ground, then there were several more sets that got increasingly bigger, until the tallest that was about six feet off the ground. I remember watching my older brother walk on the tallest set, and wish I was brave enough to do it. So, I started with the smallest set, and when I got comfortable, I moved to a taller set, until I finally got brave enough to try the tallest set. They were tricky because you had to balance them up against the trampoline to get started, then climb up on them, and finally hold your breath as you took your first step. I was always afraid of falling back down onto the bars of our trampoline. The first 20 tries were pretty unsuccessful, just a couple shaky steps before letting go and jumping down. After a lot of practice, I was finally able to make it across the yard, and then able to walk circles around the yard. I still haven’t a clue what prompted my dad to make those things, but they sure were fun, and I bet not many people can include stilt walking in their resume.

Ring # 3 Barrel Walking
To complete our little backyard circus, we happened to have a couple fifty-five gallon metal drums in our backyard, every once and awhile we would tip them over and try to balance on them. Pretty soon we figured out you could walk on them, and make them roll. We would have contests to see who could get the farthest without falling. We also would try walking two at a time. That always ended in giggling and falling after only a few feet. Whenever we did our barrel rolling tricks, I thought of my great grandpa John Thomas Thornton he had a traveling skating exhibition. He was a professional roller skater (must be where I get my moves) and he had an act he did on a barrel while on his skates, and another act where he roller skated on stilts (Maybe this is where the my dad’s stilt idea came from). I included a picture of him just for fun.

My Great Grandpa John Thomas Thornton posing for some pictures in his skates.

2010-06-24T15:36:00.000-07:00

Yearly Photo Shoot With the Girls

This Saturday I spent a couple hours curling hair then drove to Thanksgiving Point to take some pictures. I was really happy with the setting, but I wish I got there about an hour earlier. It was about 8:00P.M. when I finally got there, and it was just a little dark. I was tempted to go out again this week and if it wasn't for all the hair curling I probably would have. But with some creative editing I salvaged a few good ones, I tried a new photo editing technique I just kind of stumbled upon while trying to figure something else out. I like it, it gives kind of a retro look. Family photos are scheduled for next week. Wish me luck!

P.S. I finally figured out how to make your photos bigger on your blog! I would tell you here, but it is way to complicated. I shouldn't say that, once you change the HTML code it is actually very easy. I looked up how by googling it, then of course as always, I had to make my own little adjustments. If you wan't to know how call or e-mail me.

This pose was one of my favorites, you should have seen how many shots I had to take to get one with all of them looking at the camera and smiling. Sydnie was just being a tease and doing all kinds of naughty poses, Brianne won't look at the camera to save her life, but Kaylee just poses and smiles till her cheeks are ready to fall off.

P.S. you can't make wide pictures bigger just long pictures. The wide ones are already as wide as they can be and you just end up cutting off part of the picture.

This is another rare shot with them all smiling. I loved this fence and got some great shots by it.

I love this shot of Sydnie I just wish she would have been smiling instead of smirking. She was being such a little monkey that night.

This is my all time favorite of all the pictures I took that night. Such a sweet picture. It was one of the rare ones that looked good even unedited.

Brianne is so camera shy. She has been since the time she was born. But I do get some sweet little looks out of her sometimes.

I love this one too. She is already a beauty at only 6.

Sydnie and Brianne are tough to get one good shot out of them but Kaylee loves the camera. However, she has gotten such a fake smile lately that it is hard to find one of her with a cute natural smile.

I like this close up of Kaylee too, but the photo editing technique I used on Briannes and Sydnies photos didn't translate as well on Kaylee I think it is the color of her dress, it is cute but too dark for this technique. Oh well I still like it anyway.

2010-06-20T12:51:00.000-07:00

Happy Fathers Day

So I thought I would kill two birds with one stone this week. Post a childhood memory, and say Happy Fathers Day to my dad. I chose to write this week on memories surrounding my house, mostly because, as I mention in my last memory, my dad is full of inventions, and when I talk about memories of my house, I can't help but talk about all the fun and interesting things my dad made for our house.

My House

I was one of those rare people who lived in the same house from the time I was born until I graduated from high school. Since I was one of the youngest in my family, my parents had already done all the moving around before I was born, and settled down to this house a year or two before I was born. I loved my house, it was big enough, but not too big. We had a big yard and a pasture. There was plenty of room outside to explore and let our imaginations run wild.

This is a picture of our house from the front. My mom always kept everything nice and neat and always had beautiful flowers planted all around our house.

Here is a view looking out the back door. This is obviously in early spring so everything is pretty barren. As I mentioned before, we had a large yard with a HUGE garden, yes that whole dirt patch in the back is all garden! The front part had fruit trees and it is where we grew pumpkin and squash, and decorative gourds. It also had a root cellar, that you can't really see. It was basically a hole in the ground with a little wooden door. We kept potatoes and carrots in it over the winter. It was super scary, but if you were brave enough, you could usually catch a few frogs down there.

The back garden was where all the major action happened: Peas, beans, carrots, corn, potatoes, tomatoes, melons cucumbers, strawberry's and raspberries were the usual produce back there. Here is a picture of me and a friend and my nephew nick podding a mountain of peas from our garden this would have been just one of many pickings and only a third of what there was to pod because Nancy and my brother Greg would have had their own piles:

Having a garden was great most of the time. Just about anytime during the summer there was something fun ready to eat. You could almost always find some raspberries or strawberries to eat and in the early summer there were fresh peas. We liked to eat them out of the pod or sometimes, pod and all, if the peas were little enough. The bad thing about having a garden was the weeding. Every week my sister and I had to go out and hoe and hand weed 7 rows each and as you can see they were not short rows. We would often race to see who could get done the fastest. It usually ended in tears, with one or the other accusing of cheating or not weeding good enough. I always was so glad when the plants got big enough the weeding got alot easier because the weeds couldn't compete with the big plants. But big plants led to the other drawback, Harvest time, there was raspberries to pick, peas to pod, and beans to snap. My mom was really into canning, so when the peas or beans were ready we would be stuck down in our basement for what seemed like hours podding or snapping. She would get huge bushel baskets full and divide them between my sister and I and we would pod or snap till our fingers were green and sore. One time Nancy and I really wanted to go out and play, so we came up with a great plan: we podded about half of the peas, and then shoved the rest under the podded shells in the garbage. My mom was no dummy, she saw our half full bowls of peas, and found our not so cleverly hidden peas in the garbage. I don't think we got to play that day.

Inventions
My dad was an electrical engineer who worked at the governments nuclear testing facility, but I think he was an inventor at heart. Our house and yard were full of his creations. He was also inventing things to help people, he made a stand for my grandma's easy chair, so she could get in and out of it easier with her bad knees. He invented an electronic device to amplify someone talking, my grandpa had a disease that made it so he could only talk in mumbled whispers so it was to help him communicate easier. He also helped my brother invent some equipment for his bottled water factory. Around our house he invented: a weight machine, rowing machine, an art table for me, It had a top that could be lowered flat like a desk or raised up like an easel. We even had a solar collector that took up a big portion of the back of our house, it collected solar energy and heated the water in our house (that is when it was sunny, the rest of the time we had a standard gas or electric water heater), and lastly his greenhouses: the earliest one was on the back of our house, it was very tall and had a door you could walk into, inside were climbing tomatoes, lettuce, cauliflower and cucumbers. Later on he made greenhouses that were portable. thet were long domes out of PVC and plastic, they had sophisticated watering systems and people were always stopping and asking about them. I think he ended up even making a few for people.

The most memorable of all his inventions were the following: In addition to the awsome swimming pool that I already told you about, we had a really cool playhouse, which he salvaged from an old shack/farmhouse on the property next to ours. They were going to tear it down, but my dad saved it and moved it to our back yard. He put new siding on it and a new roof. Then one half was used as a storage shed and the other half was our playhouse. We loved that thing and spent hours out there decorating. At one point he even let us paint the walls, and we got the old carpet from our house when my mom got new. We thought we could probablly live out there despite the fact there was no water or electricity.

This last invention was definitely a family favorite, and I have to say I think we all miss it a bit. Since it wouldn't fit into the new house they had to say goodbye to our table my dad invented. I even helped him make it. I remember it was a surprise for my mom and I helped him sand the legs on the benches and watched him attach legs to the table. As you can see from the picture below it was a round table, it had curved padded benches that went all around, and the best part was in the middle. I wish I could have found a better picture, but if you look closely you can see in the middle is a huge round table that spun. My mom would just set food on it then you could spin it to whatever food you needed. It was also great for games, you would just set the game board in the middle, and then you could turn it to move your guy, instead of asking someone else to do it for you. Another fun trick we learned, and I'm sure my dad did not intend it to be used for this, was you could sit in the middle of it and get spun like a merry go round, that was lots of fun, but I'm sure we got in lots of trouble, whenever we got caught doing it.

This is the best picture I could find of the table in my limited picture stash. I think this of a little birthday party my mom threw for me from left to right. Tiffany, Me, DeNiece, Krista, and Nancy.

This is the only other picture I have of the table, I threw this one in because it shows the benches I helped my dad make. Don't you love my awesome pegged pants? This was at a family New Years Eve party. In the background are an assortment of inlaws, my sister Janet, and nieces and nephews.

Weekend Fun

I didn't want to do two separate posts so I threw this one in too. We have been lucky enough to have some visitors this weekend and last weekend. And Shaun's yummy strawberry pie to go with both. Last weekend Shaun's brother Josh came with his wife Jenny and their two kids Braden and Tyler. We tried to go cray fishing, but everything was so flooded that it didn't work out. Later they came for pie and rock band. The girls had fun playing with their cousins.

This weekend my sister Laura and my niece Alexis came to stay. Alexis is getting so tall! She is just two years older than Kaylee but already taller than me. Sydnie thought she was the greatest thing ever and followed her around all day. I didn't get any pictures, but my brother Mike and his wife Jenny came over too, and we had a marshmallow roast and more strawberry pie. Laura had come to go to the Utah Valley home show. It was fun to have her stay.

Sydnie enjoying the pie, mostly the whipped cream. While Josh and Shaun get rock band set up in the background.

I wish I had a better picture of the whole crew but at least I sort of got Braden in this one. You can just see him enjoying his pie (sort of, "well I really don't like this pie, aunt Jenn") on the end.

2010-06-13T13:43:00.000-07:00

Childhood memories

I have recently been reading my girls stories about my Grandma and Grandpa Thornton, (that would be their great grandparents). My dad put a lot of work into compiling histories about as many as my ancestors as he could find. I have read most of these histories, and some of the more interesting parts to my girls. They really love the stories, and it makes them feel more connected to their ancestors. It made me realize, I really need to start writing down a few of my own memories. I also had an activity for my Y.W. about blogs, and how they can be a great way to share family memories. So I am taking my own advice, and for the next few months, I have a goal of writing down one childhood memory a week until I can't think of anymore. Then when I get done, I will print them in hardbound form for my children to have. I have recently found some great sites for doing this. P.S. mom and dad I am waiting to get your histories to add to our books. I know the girls would love to hear stories about their own grandparents.

Our Swimming Pool

I think we were the luckiest kids in our neighborhood, because not only were we one of the first kids in the neighborhood to get a trampoline, I also had a dad who liked to invent things. I just started to list some of the things he invented, and decided that better be a whole other entry, to do it justice. Needless to say, my favorite invention was our swimming pool. We had hours of fun in this homemade contraption. It was six sided, made out of 2x4's, and in the early years we used black plastic for the lining. It was great because it was so slippery, but it got holes in it pretty easily, so later on we started using a big blue tarp. Every summer when the weather got warm enough, we would haul out the tarp and smooth out the sand underneath (by the way, in the spring and fall we had an awesome sand box) then we would staple the tarp to the edges, leaving one side unstapled, so that we could let the water out and clean it every so often. My dad also made a slide out of 2x4's, and covered it with Aluminum sheeting. The slide was burning hot in the summer but we quickly discovered a hose at the top solved that problem, and also made a great water slide! We would zip down the slide and try ski across the slippery plastic, the person who made it the farthest without falling was the winner. A lot of our make believe play was centered around that pool, we often would pretend we were mermaids or wild horses that loved the water. Often, we would have the whole neighborhood at once, and there would be a line to go down the slide. It might not have been the most glamorous looking pool but to us it was the best pool in the whole world.

Our pool in the early years. I'm too sexy poses from left to right: me, one of my best friends DeNiece, our pesky neighbor Ethan, my sister Nancy, and my other pesky neighbor and brother to the first one Austin. You can see part of our awesome slide in the background.

Here we are a little older, having fun with some of my nieces and nephews. From left to right, Joy, I think the next one is April but I am not sure, my nephew nick, then Amber a neighbor and little sister to the boys in the picture above, Nancy, my best friend Krista, and me.

2010-06-10T19:07:00.000-07:00

15 years of Marriage and somebody stole my date!

Today is Shaun and mine anniversary. And I took second place to this cute girl.....

It was a western themed stake daddy daughter BBQ tonight, and Kaylee got to go out with Shaun instead of me. Now before you feel too sorry for me, we actually celebrated our anniversary a couple months ago in Mexico. And earlier this week, to celebrate, we rented out a roller skating rink and played a couple hours of roller hockey, with 10 other couples from our neighborhood. I don't mean to brag, but I was on the winning team all night, and scored 2 goals. Okay, I am bragging, but I'm not very good at sports, so it feels good to win, even though I was playing with a lot of people who had never even roller bladed before.

Sydnie put on some boots, grabbed a red sequin hat, and was all ready to go with daddy and her older sister. This is how she looked after Kaylee and daddy pulled out of the driveway without her....

Poor girl all dressed up for nothing. Mom made it up to her by reading her about 20 books. By the way don't you love how her nose practically disappears when she cries. She has about the littlest nose I have ever seen.

In other news...

Brianne lost another tooth. She bit into an apple and it started to bleed, I think this time she really wanted to have her daddy pull it out. So she tried to leave it alone, but even though Shaun was due to come home in just a couple hours, it just fell out without her even wiggling it. Oh well, maybe the next one.

Brianne with tooth number two. The girls are saving money this summer to go to Lagoon and Kaylee is very jealous of the money Brianne has been making from the tooth fairy. Cute Brianne even gave her half of the money to help her feel better, but much to Kaylee's dismay, I made her give it back. All I can say is Kaylee better be prepared to be a good example to her little sister, because Brianne thinks she walks on water.

2010-06-01T10:07:00.000-07:00

Memorial Weekend

We had a fun yet quiet memorial weekend. Shaun actually had to work a little bit on Saturday, so that kind of cancelled out a lot of more exciting plans we could have made. Instead we stayed home and just did a few fun things around our neighborhood.

You should have seen and heard the commotion the girls had to make to get the ice cream truck to come to our house. It was circling the neighborhood looking for kids. It had made it to about every street but ours. All the neighborhood kids were just about going crazy waiting for it to get to our street. But for some reason it gave up before coming to our street. It was on its way out and you should have heard the commotion all the kids made trying to get its attention to come back. They were yelling and jumping and screaming as loud as they could. It worked! He turned around made about $40 in the process. Needless to say he was back again this week.

Monday night we held the annual neighborhood BBQ/marshmallow roast at our house. We do this every year it is a lot of fun the adults talk and the kids play games, and everyone had fun roasting marshmallows and making smores once the sun goes down. I forgot to get my camera out till the end but there was around 40 kids playing out in our yard at one point.

Even at the end of the party there were still a few people roasting marshmallows. Our neighbors the Shoemakers also loan their yard for the party too, they have all the fun toys for the kids to play on like a trampoline and swing set.

Now that school is out, potty training has officially begun. This is about how good it is going. Wish me luck!

2010-05-27T18:42:00.000-07:00

Brianne lost her first tooth.

This has been a very eventful week for Brianne, and I have been horrible about taking pictures to document it. The first big news was that Brianne lost her first tooth. It looked like it was ready in the morning but I was to nervous to pull it out. I was afraid I would do something wrong and make it hurt, I didn't want to traumatize her, and make the rest of her teeth an ordeal to get out. So I told her to wait for daddy to pull it out when he got home from work. Well it didn't last that long. She wiggled it all the way through kindergarten and came home with it in a bag. There is nothing like loosing a tooth at school to make you famous for a few minutes.

Here she is showing off her lost tooth, she is also posing with her soccer metal. It was her last soccer game that night and of course I forgot my camera, and for every other soccer game this season. So I just snapped this shot when we got home. Other events I missed on camera was her kindergarten graduation. I actually got a few shots with my phone, but it is such a pain to get them off that I don't know if I will ever actually do it. If it is any concelation to her, I also forgot to bring my camera to Kaylee's 3rd grade program this week. It was cute they did a wax museum (they were the wax models) of the Aztec empire. Kaylee was a Aztec woman cooking dinner. Luckily my neighbor was thoughful enough to get a picture of her, so hopefully I will remember to get her to e-mail it to me.

2010-05-23T12:48:00.000-07:00

Create Your own Blogger Backgrounds

So, if any of you have been looking at my blog in the last couple hours you probably noticed, I have been messing around with my background. Well, it took more than a few tries but I finally managed to create my own background!!!! It wasn't quite as simple as I thought, but if you are not afraid to mess around a little bit, it definitely is do able. The best help I found was on http://thecutestblogontheblock.com/ look under blogging secrets, p.s. I also figured out how to change my font there too. However, the dimensions they give for Photoshop were a bit off, so you might have to mess around with that. I found better dimensions on a you tube video, but still had to play around a bit. So if you are ready to try, two things you absolutely need are: Photoshop Elements, and a free account on Photobucket. It is also helpful if you already have some free digital scrapbooking backgrounds and embellishments. I have given the link to the ones I like the best in the past, but I will give it again in case you are interested http://shabbyprincess.com/, and here are two new ones I found: I am super excited about this one http://summertimedesigns.blogspot.com/ and here is another that looks like you could find some good stuff, but it would take a little more searching http://digiscrapdepot.com/ . Anyway good luck and let me know if you need anymore info, I am always looking for people who are willing to listen to me talk about digital scrapbooking without getting that glazed over look in their eyes.

2010-05-23T09:40:00.000-07:00

Recital 2010

Last week we held our little recital in the church. The girls all did really well, I was really proud of them. It is good to have this recital out of the way, they are fun but a lot of work. Now I can just enjoy the rest of the summer. It was a little sad because both Kaylee and Brianne have decided to not take dance anymore, so this was my last year teaching them. On the bright side Sydnie will be old enough to take dance this fall and I have already put together a little class for her. It should be interesting teaching this class, they are all either just turning 3 or not quite 3 when class starts. This is the youngest class I have ever taught so wish me luck!

Kaylee and Brianne before the recital started. They look so cute in their costumes and make-up. I think they like they recital mostly because they get to put on make-up and sparkles.

Brianne ready to tap. She did a tap number to "Putting on the Ritz", and a jazz number to "Girls Just Want to Have Fun."

Kaylee ready to tap. She did a tap number to "Hoedown Throwdown" and a mixed dance routine to a mix of five different songs. The first dance in this mix was to "Fireflies", the lights were off and they had glow sticks on their arms. I think everyone really liked that part, although my favorite was the tap number they did to "Hoedown Throwdown."

Kaylee's class.

Brianne's class minus one, (one of the girls didn't make it in time for group pictures).

My 3-4 year old class. They were so cute. Although I was last in line to take pictures and I think they were done posing, except for Summer the blond in the front she could have posed all day.

2010-05-02T18:32:00.000-07:00

Colorful Weekend

We were on our way to Kaylee's Soccer game at 7:00 in the morning, when we saw one of the coolest rainbow's I have ever seen. It was a full rainbow (I could only fit half of it in my camera lens) and you could see both ends touching the ground. Kaylee was so excited, the end only seemed to be about 20 yards away, and she was sure she could run over to the end of it. Even though we were a little late to the game, I happened to have my camera with me, so I just had to stop and take a picture.

Later that night I went to the Miss Saratoga Springs Pageant. Four of the seven girls in the pageant were from our Y.W. it was fun to watch. When I got home, the girls were busy at work making this colorful creation. Kaylee was sure no one had ever made a Lego tower so tall before and insisted I take a picture. When I finally got the camera out they all wanted to know if I would put this on the blog. I guess our life is now defined by blog worthy and non blog worthy events.

When we were cleaning up Sydnie made this little tower and insisted I take a picture of it too. Who could say no to this little cutie.

Today I decided our puppy had gotten fluffy enough. She was actually more fluff than puppy. So I decided to give her a trim myself. After all I am a hairdresser how different can it be? Well three hours later, it turns out a lot different! She actually was fairly patient with the whole process, I don't know if it was my clippers, or her extra fine puppy hair, but it just wouldn't cut. I finally got it to sort of work, but I had to go over every spot about five times. And cutting around her face was a nightmare, she didn't want anything to do with that. In the end I got a half decent trim done, maybe with practice I will get better. She does look pretty cute with her new cut, I can't believe how tiny she was under all that fluff.

2010-04-18T13:37:00.000-07:00

Spring Time Odds and Ends

I have a few things I have been meaning to post about. They don't really relate to each other, except that they all happened this spring. So I will start with the most recent. This is what my girls did yesterday:

We are finally getting some nice weather this spring. It has been so warm the last couple days the girls begged me to put up the bounce house. We had a non official swim party with most of the neighborhood girls. Non official meaning: the bounce house is pretty much a magnet, put it up and kids will come. Just a funny note about this picture the first one I took Kaylee was on the swing set playing something else, but when she saw the camera she headed right over. She is the one running on the side of the bounce house, that girl never misses an opportunity to be in front of a camera.

Neighborhood Spring Cleaning Party

No pictures on this one, but I have wanted to post about this for awhile because it ended up being a fun idea. My friend and neighbor Irene came up with the idea to have a spring cleaning party. At first I was reluctant, I didn't know how well it would work, but it ended up being a great idea. This is how it worked: you get together about four or five people, more would be too many and you would probably want to split up, then you take one day and go to each of the houses and spring clean. Of course we didn't spring clean the whole house, but we did the basics like baseboards, walls, doors, and blinds. It only took about 1 hour to do each house, and it was so much fun to be able to chat with friends while you get your spring cleaning done. I haven't had so much fun cleaning blinds.

Basement Bathroom is Finally Done.

This has actually been done for awhile but I've had better things to post about. We ran out of money last fall when we finished part of our basement so the bathroom sat on hold with just a toilet and a tub. When we got our tax return this spring we used part of the money to finish it up. This is how it turned out:

Shaun did a great job with the tile. And now we have got a bathroom to go with our extra bedroom. So now none of you have any kind of excuse for not visiting. We will be expecting you shortly.

2010-04-12T16:34:00.000-07:00

Fun with Photo Shop Elements

When I was in Idaho this weekend my friend asked me to take some photo's of her new baby. We also took pictures of her two boys. I'm only a novice picture taker, with a nice camera. I like all the practice I can get. It seems like the more pictures you take, the more you learn about what works and what doesn't. I mostly learn what doesn't. Luckily even though I've got a lot to learn about taking pictures, I am getting pretty good at Photo Shop, so even mediocre pictures turn out pretty good once they are edited. I thought it would be fun to show you a few before and afters of my photo shoot.

The Before:

The After:

So, mostly I just cropped this one closer and removed the background color, then make the background darker.

The Before:

The After:

Can you believe this is the same picture? Same thing as before: I cropped this a ton, then I used the cloning tool to get rid of any brown in the background. And finally I used Gaussian blur to get rid of the texture in the black shirt and smooth everything out.

The Before:

The After:

This one didn't require a lot of editing: But two things that editing really helped with. First, cropping fixed the off center problem, and second I wanted to point out another cool feature of photo shop: skin tone correction. I use it in all my photo editing, see how much better the skin tone looks in the after pictures. Such a small thing makes such a big difference.

The Before's:

The Afters:

I was really excited about the editing technique I learned in these to pictures. We didn't want the chair red because it didn't really match the boys clothes. So I was just going to remove the color from the chair and make it a grey color. But I started playing around and decided to use the blue from their sweaters to color the chair. Some of these tools are just like magic.

Temple Pictures

I drove by the temple on my way to check on my crafts and decided to take some photo's so I could play with the editing. I've wanted a good one of the Idaho Falls temple to hang on my wall.

The before:

The After:

Okay I showed this technique a couple weeks ago but its a good one, you really should try it.So I cropped it then remove a couple cars. Then I applied the Old Photo affect and added the writing on the bottom.

2010-04-11T19:38:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter

We had a quiet but fun Easter. The weather did not want to cooperate for an Easter egg hunt, but we did manage to color some eggs and the Easter bunny hid the girls baskets with some yummy candy in them. I'm sure we have had general conference on Easter before, but I can't remember the last one. It was nice to just be able to relax at home and listen to a the apostles talk about Christ. My vote is for general conference on Easter every year.

We colored about 36 Easter eggs. Sydnie had fun throwing her eggs into the dye. She cracked all of her eggs, but it is always nice to have a few to eat while you are coloring them.

The Easter bunny came on Saturday morning this year. He left bunny footprints for Sydnie to follow and left clues for the older girls to follow. They all had fun finding their baskets.

The #1 requested candy this year was bubble gum. So the Easter bunny left them lots. Sydnie couldn't wait to did into her bubble tape.

Even Lu Lu had fun on Easter. She had a lot of fun playing with the empty Easter eggs.

2010-03-30T18:21:00.000-07:00

Return of the Tumble Weed

Every year I wonder when they are going to show up. It's usually sometime in March when the wind really starts to blow. Last year they showed up when we were at church. We went to church, no tumble weeds, and when we came home, there they were waiting for us. Today when the wind really started blowing, I knew they were going to show up any moment. Sure enough, I went to Walmart and when I got back there they were. All of the houses on our street look this way, although the neighbor just next to us always seems to get it the worst. If you can imagine anything worse than the picture above. We hate the tumble weed, they are the true tumble weeds too, big balls of thorny twigs. The only fun thing about them is after we clean them up, we get to burn them. You can't imagine the huge bonfire this many tumble weeds creates.

2010-03-27T21:29:00.000-07:00

Meet Lu Lu!
Yes, its true we have a new member in our house! A cute little puppy named Lu Lu. We have been thinking about getting a dog for quite awhile now. We got pretty serious about it over Christmas, but decided that it would be better to wait until spring, when it would be easier to house train it. We went out looking for dogs today, and fell in love with this little cutie.

Kaylee showing off Lu Lu, she it taking over roll of boss of the dog. She makes sure everyone is taking turns and treating the dog right.

In kindergarten, Brianne had to draw a picture and write a sentence to go with it, about why she loved her family. She drew a picture of a dog and wrote, " I love my family because they are getting me a dog." I will rest a lot easier knowing Brianne loves us now.

I don't know if you can imagine a little girl who loves animals more than Sydnie does. She is never without a stuffed animal, and when she sees a dog, even a extremely large dog, Sydnie is never afraid to go and pet it. Her older sisters don't know it, but they have Sydnie to thank for this dog. Shaun never even considered a dog before Sydnie, but seeing how much she loves animals, finally turned him around.

So wish me luck. I know I've got a tough job ahead of me. Especially these first few nights. Not to mention potty training, so far no accidents but its just the first day, so I better prepare myself. Does anyone know of a good cleaner for accidents? I'm sure I will need it. And what about Shaun, the one we had to talk into the dog? He had had to have his fair share of turns holding it, and the puppy took a two hour nap on shauns lap. So I'm pretty sure he likes her.

2010-03-25T08:21:00.000-07:00

Sydnie

I think one of the things I love best about blogging is it gives me a place to write down those silly things your kids say and do. I didn't have a blog when Kaylee and Brianne were little and I didn't get around to writing down all of the cute things they said when they were little, you think you will remember them but even a month later you can't remember exactly how they said it or did it. So here are two cute things about Sydnie I thought I would write down before I forget.

Sydnie calls churches castles. I don't know exactly where she found out about castles, probably from Dora, but one day when we were going to church, she got so excited and pointed to the church saying, "mommy castle". Kaylee and Brianne tried to correct her, but she just kept insisting it was a castle. I of course don't correct her because I think its cute. So when we passed one the other day and she started saying, "mommy castle", I just said, "yep, its a castle". Then she looks at me and shakes her head, "no mommy, church".

Yesterday I caught Sydnie in the bathroom dumping out the air freshener I have for a decoration. This is the second time I caught her doing it, so I gave her a tiny spanking. Evidently it wasn't hard enough because she didn't cry, she just glared at me and when I turned around to leave I felt a little slap on my bum, she decided to spank mommy back. I tried not to laugh, but Briannne and a couple of the neighborhood girls were in the bathroom when this was going on and they thought it was hilarious. So wish me luck with this one. Now in Sydnie's head, spanking mommy equals everyone laughing and paying lots of attention to you.

2010-03-22T19:14:00.000-07:00

Can you tell I'm avoiding spring cleaning?

Three posts in a week. My life must be pretty exciting, or there is something else going on. Could it be that I am suppose to be spring cleaning? Well like it or not I have to get started, but I will do one more post before I do. We did do some fun things this weekend:

Kaylee's first Piano recital

Kaylee preformed in her very first piano recital Saturday morning. She did a good job. She played three songs: I'm a Little Teapot, Bear Necessities, and Campdown Races.

Kaylee concentrating on her piano piece

Taking a little walk

On Sunday it was so nice we decided to go for a little walk behind our house. This is where we ended up:

You can see our house way down below. We didn't go all the way up the mountain behind our house, but we did go all the way up one of the smaller foothills. Kaylee and Brianne have their pockets full of treasure. Brianne thought almost every rock was a treasure, we had a hard time convincing her to drop some of them.

Sydnie resting at the top. The only thing Sydnie brought home was a TICK!!! We didn't find it until it was half way embedded in her neck. Shaun tried to pull it out with the tweezers, but it's head broke off in her skin. I took her to the doctor to get the rest out this morning, and you will be surprised to know, (at least I was) that they don't get all that concerned about ticks in Utah. They say that Lyme disease isn't a problem in Utah and the tick usually has to be in the skin for at least three days for you to even have a chance of getting it. They didn't even take the rest of the tick out. They just said it should come out on its own in a few days. Who knew? Unfortunately I do now.

On our walk (hike) we were on the look for fossils and we really lucked out and found a rock jam packed with fossilized seashells. Not just impressions of seashells but the actual shells. Here is Kaylee and Brianne holding a portion of the rock. Shaun broke it into a few smaller more manageable pieces to take home.

Here is a close-up of one of the fossils if you click on this picture you can get a good view of them.

2010-03-19T17:03:00.000-07:00

Wall Decor Ideas

I have this spot above my bed that I have had a really hard time finding something that I think will fit there. I saw some framed photos at Ikea that I liked, but I just couldn't spend the $50 bucks they wanted for it. I'm a do it yourself kind of girl, so I decided to go out today and just take a few snapshots of some landscape near my house and see what I could come up with. The photos themselves weren't anything special, but I found this really cool editing technique on Photoshop Elements that I thought I would share. It is so easy and it makes just an ordinary picture of a tree seem special.

So this what you do: Open your picture in Photoshop editor(by the way if you don't have a photo editing program and are looking for one Adobe Photoshop is definitely the way to go), then in the photo effects section find the old photo icon and drag and drop it onto your photo. You can stop there, but in the photos below I also dragged and dropped the Sepia tint on it as well, because it matches my room. You can get a 16 x20 print at Costco for around $5. Of course you also have to have it framed, I plan on keeping my eyes open for one at Ross or I might just make my own frame, (I know how I just don't want to). Costco is now printing photos onto canvas, so you wouldn't need a frame but it is pretty pricey, but I think it is a great option for family photos because it has a cleanable finish on it. I plan on getting our next set of family photos printed this way.

Here are a few of the photos I took today:

This tree was just in the parking lot of the place I went to take photo's. Who knew it would be one of my favorites.

2010-03-16T18:00:00.000-07:00

Cancun

Shaun and I celebrated 15 years of marriage last week in Mexico. It wasn't our official anniversary, but we wanted to go to Mexico in the spring, so we decided to go now before it got too far into spring break season. I don't know if it was the hotel we chose, or I was right about going early, but it really wasn't too crowded. We had a great time our Hotel was nice, the food was okay. It was all inclusive, so it was nice just not to have to worry about trying to find somewhere to go to eat unless you wanted too.

Our first day there we went to Salvatica. They have zip lines through the canopy, and then at the end they take you to a cenote (cave filled with water) to go swimming. Here I am at the cenote ready to zip line into the water.

Day two we drove to Telum to see the ruins, we were close to a place called Xel Hah so we decided to go ahead and go snorkeling there. This is Shaun at Xel Hah, he doesn't look too thrilled about getting his picture taken. We had fun snorkeling. There are tons of cool fish to look at out there, but we kept getting sea sick and having to take breaks. Who knew you can get sea sick snorkeling.

Everywhere we go Shaun is wanting to steal fruit. In Florida it was oranges, in Oregon its the black berries, and in Cancun it was coconuts. Here is the thief running with his prize. He opened them in the hotel of course they were still too green to eat.

It was suppose to be cloudy the whole time we were there but the last day cleared up and we had a great day on the beach. We played in the waves, which were actually quite big because it had been windy, found some really neat seashells, even a large conch, and then rented jet skis. We had fun on the jet skis, but I got really sea sick and Shaun had to finish up on his own while I recoverd on the beach.

Our last morning in Cancun we got up early enough to see the sunrise. This was the view from our hotel room balcony.

2010-03-07T16:08:00.000-08:00

Spring Show

I made the long drive to Idaho by myself to set up for my Spring Show. Both Nancy and my mom were gone, so Shaun decided it would be easier to babysit at home than in Utah. So I just drove down in the morning, set up, then drove back home, all in one day. I moved to a smaller booth, so I had a little more to do than usual. I had some new shelves to hang, and the big shelve I made to put in. Everything fit fine and looked good, and what a relief to have this checked off my to do list.

My new booth at the show, I told Nancy I would post this picture so she would have an idea of what it is suppose to look like when she comes to clean up for me. Thanks Nancy.

Here is a semi new item. I discovered some new chalk board vinyl and it has been fun figuring out ways to use it. This is a chalk board and a magnet board.

Another use for the chalkboard Vinyl. These cute clip boards can go on a refrigerator or a wall.

Mini initial blocks, the smaller size is a little more manageable.

My eggs were popular last year so I did them again and the candles are on a block that says "spring has sprung."

I got a little crazy with flower hair clips. I made some cute vintage look flowers, crochet flowers, frayed flowers and some really unique zipper flowers. I am excited to see how they do.

Saying Goodbye
We have a sad day tomorrow. We have to say goodbye to our good friends the Moulton's. They are moving to North Carolina and we have to say goodbye to them tomorrow. Each of us are loosing a good friend, Kaylee and Maddy were best friends from almost the moment we moved in, and Isabelle and Brianne are practically like sisters. They have been friends since they were two, even before the time they can probably remember. And Audrey has been one of the best friends and neighbors I have ever had. Even Sydnie will miss her little buddy Micheal. Needless to say it will be a hard transition for our family. We wish them luck in North Carolina, but not too much because we still have are hopes on them coming back in a few years.

I got to finally use my digital scrap booking on a going away present for the girls. I made a little miniature book of all the pictures of them together throughout our four years together. This was the cover page.

2010-02-14T16:05:00.000-08:00

Look what I did!!!!

Do you ever have those moments when you wish you were a little kid again, when you thought you did something really cool like tying your shoelace for the first time, or drawing a really cool picture. You show your mom and she gives you a big hug, or raves about your picture and hangs it on the refrigerator. Well sometimes as adults we still have those moments, only now we have to pat ourselves on the back and just be satisfied with our own sense of accomplishment. I had one of those moments this week, and I can't help but show off a little. I sell crafts for a boutique, so I know my way around most power tools. However, I rarely attempt to make furniture. But I needed a display piece for my booth at my boutique where I sell crafts, so I decided to give it a try. I was pretty excited about the results, and no Shaun did not help me, except for at the beginning when I had to cut the strips of wood for the shelving on the table saw, and only because it is a two person job. Other wise, I came up with the plan, measured, cut and nailed everything together on my own. I was pleased with the results other than a few misplaced nails, (nail guns are hard to aim), and the finish is a little below my standards (but I will blame that on the cold weather and really horrible polyurethane). Oh well, its just a display piece for my crafts.

Here is the finished product, try not to look at the messy garage in the background. Mom you can print this picture out and hang it on your refrigerator if you want.

2010-02-01T17:41:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday Kaylee!!

Kaylee turned 9 yesterday. I can hardly believe my first little baby is getting to be so grown up. We always make birthdays a big deal around our house. Usually birthday's end up being more like birthweekends. And Kaylee's birthday was no exception. On Friday night we had a big friends birthday party she invited 16 girls and I think all but one showed up. We had a very noisy house that night. Lots of laughing and screaming. She had a Valentine themed party. We decorated giant heart shaped sugar cookies, had a heart shaped pinata, and made heart shaped flowers for their hair. On Saturday we went to Chuck E Cheese with just the family. We spent about and hour there, about as long as the parents could stand. Sunday was here actual birthday, we didn't do too much except open presents and have her favorite thing for dinner, tortilla soup.

All the crazy girls at her birthday party!

Kaylee taking a whack at the pinata.

Tortilla Soup

(Kaylee's Favorite, and one of mine too because it is so easy)

1 family size can of Campbell's chicken and rice soup

1 can corn

1 can ranch style bean

1 can Rotel brand tomatoes Mexican style

2-3 chicken breast cooked and diced or shredded

Precook chicken, I like to cook a bunch of breast in my crock pot, shred the meat and store in cup proportions in my freezer for recipes like this one.

Then just dump all the cans into a big pot add one large can of water, add chicken and heat through. Top individual bowls of soup with cheddar cheese, sour cream, and a couple drops of Tabasco sauce if you like heat. I like to add tortilla chips to my bowl, but some people prefer to dip.

2010-01-09T17:25:00.000-08:00

The perfect Fries

We decided to save a few bucks and make french fries instead of going out. I looked up how to cook french fries on the Internet, because I had heard there was a trick to getting them crispy and cooked all the way through. I tried it out, and it was a little more work, but the fries turned out perfect. I know a lot of my friends and family have gotten deep fryers recently, so I thought I would share the recipe here.

This is what you need:
Russet potatoes cut into 1/4 inch fries (with or without skins)
A large bowl with ice cold water in it
1-2 cookie sheets (depending on how many batches you make) line them with paper towels

First heat oil to 350
In the mean time cut your fries and throw them into the cold water as you are cutting them. The cold water keeps the fries from sticking together and ensures maximum crispness. Leave in water about 10 min, then take out a batch at a time, (aprox. 2-3 handfuls) dry and put in fryer.

blanch in oil at 350 for 3 min. When done, they will still be white and soggy, don't worry. Place on cookie sheet and put somewhere cold like the refrigerator or outside.

Repeat for all batches.

Now heat oil to 365. Take the first batch out of the refrigerator and fry again for 2-2 1/2 min. They should come out golden brown crispy and delicious. Repeat for all batches. Salt dip and enjoy!

2010-01-07T07:26:00.000-08:00

New years resolutions

So I have been thinking over the last few weeks what I would like to accomplish this year and this is what I came up with:
1. Finish my spring cleaning, before spring is over. Last year I started in the spring and didn't get done till the end of summer. So this year I am going to start in January and hopefully it will get done before June.
2. Run a half marathon. This is a resolution I actually accomplished last year and it was actually a lot of fun. I would like to run a different one this year just to switch things up a bit.
3. To get my death in order. Okay, this last one takes some explanation. I just got done reading "Tuesday's with Morrie", over the Holidays. This book has some good basic life lessons from a man who is dying. One thing that jumped out at me was, when he talked about getting your death in order so that you can live. So, that is my new years resolution: to get my death in order, meaning: write a will, and write letters to my children and husband, you know just in case. Not that I think I am going to die or anything, but I have already gotten started by writing letters to each of my kids, and it really does ease your mind. Now I won't be sitting up in Heaven (hopefully) thinking, "I wish I could tell them them how much I love them."

2010-01-02T18:42:00.000-08:00

Happy Holiday's 2009!

I've been trying to think of the best way to do this post, since I can't seem to get myself in the blogging mood, and I was really horrible about taking pictures over the Holidays. So, I decided to just take all the pictures I took over the holidays, even the random ones, and stick them in one big post and get it over with. So here goes......

One of Santa's elves always delivers our girls an early present on Christmas Eve. New Christmas Pajamas! The girls look cute posing in their pajamas. Sydnie has especially taken to the camera lately and any time she sees it, she begs me to take her picture by doing goofy smiles and saying "Cheese". Speaking of, here are a few more of Syndie posing for the camera....

In this one she got so excited she actually fell off the chair immediately after the picture was taken, it still turned out cute.

This one I took just before writing this post. When I got my camera out to upload Christmas pictures she insisted on posing with Brianne. This was one of about 10 shots she insisted I take of her.

Okay, now to Christmas morning. Boy did Santa spoil our girls this year! I don't remember them being that good. Maybe its Santa's way of saying they would be great girls, if they just had better parents. Ha Ha.

Brianne opening a new Christmas blanket. My girls love blankets. I find them everywhere when I am cleaning the house.

Sydnie with the hard to find Zhu Zhu pets. Santa looked everywhere and finally managed to find three just in time for Christmas. I was pleasantly surprised that they lived up to all the hype and my girls have had a lot of fun playing with them.

Fast forward to New Years Eve, I will fill in the rest later. We had a quiet new years eve this year. We decided to not make the long drive back to Idaho and just stay home. It was too late to make other plans so we just stayed home rented a movie and played Rock Band. The next day we went sledding with the girls, then today we went ice fishing (pictured above) I have to say we have had funner ice fishing trips than this one. It all started with Sydnie getting car sick on the way, and throwing up all over her clothes, luckily I had packed extras just for this very reason. Then, when we finally got to the ice fishing spot, Sydnie started crying and would not stop for the entire 2 hours we were there. NO not because she was cold but because she wanted to play in the icy water and I would not let her. We finally gave up after a couple hours of only one nibble. On the way back to our car we must have looked like a sorry sight, because a nice couple stopped and gave us a ride on their snow mobiles. Thank goodness!!! Then on the way home literally within eyesight of our house Sydnie carsick once again threw up. Well, that was just about how the day was going. Once we got home, Brianne(she is a die hard fisher woman) and Shaun decided to try the spot on our lake about five minutes from our house and caught a bunch of little fish, so I guess the day wasn't a total loss.

As for the rest of the Holidays.... We had fun doing favorite things theme on both sides of the family. It was fun to see what everybody's favorite things were. And I have had fun this week trying out some of of my brothers and sisters favorite things, as well as trying out some new recipes. So far, we have tried out Nancy's candy syrup recipe (a big hit, and I have had to talk them out of having waffles for dinner almost every night this week.) We also had, Hawaiian Haystacks (from Greg's favorite recipes), and Beef Stroganoff (from Laura's). I tried out a great cleaner for hard water that Laura gave me, and used a lime squeezer (that Natalie gave us), on a new recipe for white chicken chili. I have also enjoyed reading one of my brother Greg's favorite books "Tuesdays with Morrie". So far, so good, I look forward to trying all the rest of the fun things we got.

Of course I can't leave out one of my most favorite things about the family Christmas parties we attend: that is the fun things my Dad always makes for us. He is a very talented wood worker and always makes all the grand kids fun handmade wooden toys. This year Brianne and Kaylee got a barn complete with fence and hay bales. Sydnie got a cute pull toy with two silly looking guys teeter tottering back and forth when you pull it. Then the whole family got a handmade wooden Chinese checker board.

We had a great Holiday season this year. Thanks again for all the fun things we got from everyone. And to Josh and Jenny for letting us stay at their house and rock out to Rock Band till all hours of the night. We went home exhausted.

2009-12-23T08:02:00.000-08:00

And You Thought Your December Shopping List Was Big....

We have a very busy December at our house. Not only do we have to shop for Christmas, we also have two birthdays to think about. Brianne's was yesterday, and today is Shaun's. Actually is some ways it is nice I usually get all of the shopping done then just decide later which is for Christmas and which is for birthdays. Kaylee's Birthday is in January so I usually get her birthday presents at the same time.

Happy Birthday Brianne.

Brianne was superstar of the week last week in Kindergarten. Her teacher asked me to come and share some special things about Brianne and read her favorite story. I brought pictures to help me show some of the things Brianne likes to do. I also brought a picture of her as a brand new baby, and told about how Brianne was suppose to be born in January, but decided to come 3 1/2 weeks early. We got to bring her home from the hospital on Christmas Eve, just in time for Christmas. She was our extra special Christmas present that year. I teared up when I was telling the kids this, and almost couldn't read the story I brought. Brianne continues to be our special Christmas present every year. We are lucky to have her in our family.

Brianne on her Birthday in the Hospital. This is the picture I shared with her class.

We had Friends Birthday party on Saturday. You might recognize the horse pinata from last year. Only last year it was painted purple and disguised as a unicorn. This year Brianne wanted a Christmas/Birthday party, so the horse got turned into a reindeer.

I thought this was a super cute picture of Brianne. The cake however was a disaster. Half of it didn't come out of the pan and I didn't have time to start over so I attempted to glue it back together with frosting. I was laughing so hard that tears started coming out of my eyes. Brianne wanted to know what was so funny. Luckily she didn't seem to notice that her cake was lopsided. And once the sprinkles and candy canes were on it, it didn't look so bad.

Brianne ready to hit the pinata.

All the kids going for the candy.

Brianne on her birthday. She decided to have donuts instead of a cake. After opening her presents (she got a razor scooter, new snow pants, pajamas with feet, and a jewelry box), we went to Kangaroo zoo.

Happy Birthday Shaun !!!

Shaun probably will wonder why I chose this picture to share. But I thought it was so cute of him and Sydnie. Sydnie really loves her daddy, and it shows in this picture. We are so lucky to have Shaun in our family. He is a great daddy and a hard working husband. We are so grateful for all he does for us. We love you. Happy Birthday Shaun.

2009-12-18T07:42:00.000-08:00

Sledding with the Jacksons

It has been so nice to get a little snow and have the weather turn a little warmer. I was getting tired of the single digit temperatures we had last week. Nancy and her family came for the weekend and just in time it snowed several inches overnight and we had a perfect day of sledding on Saturday. We are so lucky to have a sledding hill just up the street from our house. It is big enough to get a good ride, but not so big that the little kids can't make it up by themselves. Even Sydnie dared to go down by herself this year, although one of us would have to run down the hill after her and carry her back up.

Hayden and Kaylee ready to have Nancy push them down the hill.

Brianne and Sydnie getting ready to go down on the tube. Brianne was a die hard. She would sled down walk up the hill and go right back down again. She must have gone down the hill at least 20 times.

After awhile everyone got tired of going up and down the hill and we stopped to make a snow fort.

Nancy snapped a few shots for our Christmas card. I decided to post it here just in case I don't manage to get cards mailed to everyone this year. They turned out good, but I was disappointed in the quality of the prints I got from Sam's club this year. It wasn't the photo. I checked the resolution on my computer. So it must have been something weird with the uploading or printing process. I am going to send them out anyway. Oh well at least I tried.

Later that night we made apples we made around 80 apples it was quite the production line. I think that is the most we have ever made at one time.

2009-12-09T08:52:00.000-08:00

Reflections contest 2009. Beauty is...

The schools in Utah participate in the national PTA art competition called reflections. Each year the kids are given a theme to model their artwork around. This years theme was Beauty is....
Both Kaylee and Brianne did very well. They both won first place in three dimensional art for their school and got to go on to the district level for judging. They also won second place in the category of visual arts with their paintings of peacocks. They were in different age categories Brianne competed in age K-2nd and Kaylee was in the 3rd-5th grade group.
Then we were excited for Kaylee when we found out she had also won with her three dimensional art on the district level. She now gets to have her artwork judged on the regional level.
We are so proud of our two little artist. We have been blessed with two great artists in our family, and Sydnie is sure to be a third, she is already watching her sisters and working on her scribbles. But with two artist as parents they can't hardly help it.

Brianne and Kaylee posing with their trophies for the three dimensional art, they also won medals for their pictures.

Kaylee posing for the newspaper, with her plaque she won for her three dimensional art on the district level.

The girls with their winning artwork, and awards. Click on the picture to get a better view. They both won second place for their peacock paintings, on the school level. Brianne won first place for her hummingbird sculpture on the school level, and Kaylee won first place for her swan sculpture on both the school level and district level. Good luck to Kaylee! Keep your fingers crossed that she will win on the regional level.

2009-11-30T19:31:00.000-08:00

Writing things down before I forget

Sometimes your kids say or do something that you just have to write down before you forget them. So, here are three funny things that each of my kids have said recently:

Brianne:
I just got some new pajamas on a black Friday sale. I wore them on Sunday, even though technically they are suppose to be Christmas presents. Brianne looked at my new pajamas and said, "Suzanne(my friend and neighbor) always looks cute in her pajamas." So I said, "do you not like my pajamas?" Then Brianne replied very honestly, "Mom I really like these pajamas, but the ones you usually wear are really ugly." She was talking about my garments, I guess I need to start wearing my cute pajamas more.

Kaylee:
I was talking on the phone to my friend Audrey, while I was doing Kaylee's hair for school. I was commenting to Audrey that it sounded like Sydnie was saying the sh__ word. (although since then I figured out what she was saying, and luckily it's not that.) Anyway, I was telling my friend that I didn't think she learned it from me, since I don't use that particular swear word very often. Sadly, I do occasionally use other words. Then Kaylee piped in saying, "I think she learned it from Dad, he says it all the time when he is down in the basement." We just got done finishing part of our basement, and I'm sure that word, among others, were used quite frequently.

Sydnie:
Sydnie is learning so much lately. She is learning new words daily, and is starting to recognize shapes, numbers, and colors. Today she said something that made me smile. I got some oranges from the grocery store today, and she was trying to ask for one, so she pointed to an orange and said "I want yellow". Well at least she is starting to get the concept that things have colors, that is a pretty big step.

2009-11-08T19:40:00.000-08:00

Christmas Craft Show

My favorite show of the year is here again I can't believe it! There is something about Christmas decorations that make it a little funner to get ready for. I don't know if it is the colors or the glitter, but I always find myself singing Christmas tunes while I work on my crafts. I focused mostly on my Holiday stuff this show and came up with a few new ideas, as well as repeated a couple big sellers from last year, my Christmas countdown calendars and blocks. I didn't post a picture of them I figured you could look at last years pictures if you really want to know what they look like. Like every show I am excited to have everything set up and my work is done. Now I just have keep my fingers crossed that things will sell.

2009-11-01T14:40:00.000-08:00

Digital Scrapbooking here I come!!!!

I have been thinking of converting to digital scrapbooking for about a year now. I didn't know a whole lot about it other than it sounded cool, and there are places to go that you can subscribe to a service and pay for layouts and embellishments. But I'm a do it yourself kind of person, and while I don't mind getting ideas from other people, I don't like to be stuck to a certain template. So, when our ward had an enrichment activity on digital scrapbooking, I was really excited. My excitement turned to pure elation when I got there and the girl showed us how to digital scrapbook for free!!! And just when I thought things couldn't get any better it was super easy! All you need is Photoshop elements software version 5 or newer to get started. I had to order a new version of Photoshop before I could get started, my software came Friday and I have spent most of the day today playing around with it. Here is my first attempt at digital scrapbooking.

Pretty cute for a first attempt right? Click on the picture for a close up view. You can read my explanation there, or for those of you to lazy to do that, I will explain and give my sources again here. Most of the cute embellishments and paper I found on these two websites: shabbyprincess.com and freedigitalscrapbooking,com. I also taught myself today how to scan my own ribbon and embellishments into Photoshop. The brown ribbon on the tree was my own scanned in creation. I also learned how to back my photos using colors extracted from my picture, you will notice how the blue backing is exactly the same color as Brianne's sweater! I also learned of a great site for handwriting fonts, kevinandamanda.com. You can download their cute fonts or send in a sample of you own handwriting to make you own personal handwriting font!

I would love to help anyone out who is interested in learning more about digitalscrapbooking. I don't know a lot yet, but I know enough to at least get someone started. I am still learning about printing options. I know that Costco does a 12x12 photo quality print for $3.00 but I am looking for other options. So far I have found a site with pricing between $3-and less than a dollar per page depending on the paper quality. I welcome any suggestions!

Happy Halloween!!!

We had a great Halloween this year, but I was pretty horrible about taking pictures. I kept forgetting my camera or running out of time. Halloween started on Friday for us. The kids have a Halloween parade for all the parents at school, then I helped out at Kaylee's Halloween party at school. Later that night we had trunk or treat at the church. Shaun surprised us by painting his face like the Joker from the latest Batman movie. I am just sick that I didn't get any pictures, he looked just like him. Then on Saturday we carved pumpkins and went trick or treating. Sydnie loved trick or treating. We had really mild weather and she was able to go with the older girls and Shaun for almost an hour. There was no prying her candy bucket from her hands, and she has been walking around with it all day today. She must be excited to have a whole bucket of candy that is her own(although mom and dad keep stealing pieces of candy from it).

Brianne the witch, she insisted on the green face, Kaylee the baby and Sydnie the dog. She wasn't fond of her costume especially when the hood was on, so this picture was as good as it gets.

Sydnie loved being one of the girls when it came to pumpkin carving, she even dared to stick her hand in and get a few seeds out herself.

Brianne and Kaylee cleaning out their pumpkins. Shaun is in the background making carameled apples for the adult Halloween party that we went to later that night. We went as a prom couple from the eighties/early nineties. I was able to fit into an old prom dress of mine and did my hair with mile high bangs and wings, Shaun wore a mullet wig and pegged his pants. We looked Awesome!!!! Once again we were so late to the party I forgot pictures again.

2009-10-24T17:52:00.000-07:00

The Results
I have to say I had a ton of fun decorating this room. I had to try and control myself from going overboard, and decided it was time to be done when Kaylee said "Mom! When are you going to be done making things for our room?!?!" I did make most of the things in their room. I always have been one of those people who think, "why buy it when you can make it?" The list of thing I made included: pillows, the fabric covered headboards, curtains, a chalk board, several frames, magnet boards, and some really cute trees on the wall that matched their bedding. I have a friend who one of her most embarrassing moments was her husband walking in on her when she was pretending to host a cooking show. That probably would never happen to me since cooking is something I do to get the job done, not for fun. But I have to say, when I am standing at my power tools for hours working on craft shows, I often day dream about what it would be like to host my own decorating show. Sadly, this is about as close as it will get, but a girl can dream, right?

As much of the room as I could get in one shot. I actually completed the room a couple weeks ago, but had a hard time finding a time that I could take pictures when their room was actually clean. P.S. the Halloween decorations are not part of the permanent room decor, although they do sort of match.

2009-10-08T06:13:00.000-07:00

White Wall Challenge

So, those of you who watch HGTV's Design Star will know what a white wall challenge is. For those of you who don't, it is a show where Designers compete in several challenges to win a show on HGTV. One of the most famous challenges is the white wall challenge, where they take a white boring room and transform it. I am excited to say the girls room is finally done!!! I'd like to consider myself an armature interior decorator, so I thought it would be fun to show you the before and after of the girls room. The pictures below are of their room with just the white primer on. In a few weeks I will have their room completely decorated and show you the afters. I have already started and am excited about how it is coming along so far! P.S. Shaun did a great job with all the finish work, everything looks great.

Go Strikers!

Kaylee had her last game for fall this last Saturday. She has been playing on a competitive soccer team, and has had fun. It has been fun going to all of their games and cheering their team on. Competitive soccer is much more exciting to watch than rec league they actually play positions and know somewhat what they are doing, and its not just a big jumbled mess like rec league. Kaylee has improved a ton since she first started playing. She is going to play indoor soccer to keep her skills up over the winter, and then her team starts regular games again in the spring.

Kaylee "number 6" going for the ball.

2009-09-29T14:01:00.001-07:00

Sydnie Turns Two!!!

Sydnie turned two yesterday, we had a fun little party for her. We invited a couple of our neighbors over for root beer floats and cake. Sydnie had a great time being the center of attention. And playing with all the kids.

I thought I would highlight a few of Sydnie's accomplishments by the age of two. Sydnie is turning into a great talker, I was a little worried about her at the age of one because she really wasn't saying much. But now she has a big list of words and phrases that she used regularly. Here are her favorites:

Don't touch it

oh! there's daddy, or its my daddy

Micheal, or Oh! there is my Micheal.(a little almost two year old little boy across the street.)

Here kitty kitty kitty(Meow)

Oh! there is the doggy(Woof, woof)

Where is my blankie,(then when we find it) oh there it is( with a huge sigh of relief and a big grin)

No! not night night.

Backback, & Dora (both interchangeable for the same show)

Sydnie is a animal lover, she can't get enough of cats and especially dogs. Every time she sees one she just can't let them alone. We were at a soccer game the other day and there was a dog she kept trying to pet, it would get excited and jump up on her, she would start crying and run to me only to want down 2 seconds later and go right back to the dog. She did this about ten times until both me and the girl who owned the dog got tired of it and started avoiding each other.

Sydnie loves her older sisters and loves to play with them, she loves it when they read her books and take her on walks in the stroller. Sydnie loves to go outside and recently has taken to escaping out our front door that never shuts tight(I finally started dead bolting it). I found her three different times, once down the street playing with the neighbors dog, another time across the street jumping on the neighbors dug in trampoline, and once was brought in crying by the neighbor because she wanted to play in the middle of the street. Boy do I feel like a bad mother.

We love our sweet Sydnie, even when she throws her tantrums and poops in the tub. She is such and affectionate little girl and is free with her hugs and kisses. She is also a friendly little girl, she loves to talk even when she doesn't have a clue what she is saying and always makes sure to wave hi to all the Walmart door greeters.

I made a cake for Sydnie shaped like a dog, her favorite animal.

Sydnie had fun opening her presents

But not so much fun blowing out her candles.

Sydnie and the neighborhood kids having fun with punch balloons.

2009-09-20T10:26:00.000-07:00

Three Polka Dot Dresses and a Purple Jumper

I recently took pictures of my three girls. I had an idea of what I wanted to do. I wanted black and white polka dot dresses in a wheat field. Well, I couldn't find any dresses at the store, so I ended up making them. By the time I got them all made, all the wheat fields had been harvested. Who knew they harvested in mid August? I thought I had till September for sure. Anyway, no wheat fields, but the pictures turned out cute anyway.

Kaylee and Sydnie I love the view of their bows from the back

All Three of the girls. This is the ONLY one that turned out that day of all three of them Sydnie was NOT cooperating

Slide show of Sydnie age 2

Slide show of Brianne age 5

Slide show of Kaylee age 8

And a Purple Jumper.....

As I was sewing the three polka dot dresses I was thinking an assortment of thoughts from "I HATE zippers" to "I wonder if my mom made most of our clothes?" Then I thought of a story my mom told me recently about myself. I have been meaning to write down somewhere before I forget it again. Evidently it was such a traumatic experience, that I completely wiped it from my memory the first time. In kindergarten I had a favorite jumper. I think it was a hand me down and I probably liked it because it was comfortable, I was big into comfort in those days. I must have worn it a lot, because one day my mom got a call from my kindergarten teacher. My beloved jumper had practically disintegrated, and was barely hanging on me. I was in tears, and my mom needed to bring a change of clothes. I think the jumper was so old, and had been worn so much, that the seams and cloth just couldn't hold together anymore. But instead of just one seem ripping, the whole thing decided to come apart at once.This is a picture of me in a purple jumper. I don't know if this is the one that disintegrated but it does seem like around the right age.

I am pictured next to my sister Nancy. In the far back is my Mom and Dad off to the right side is our good friends the Dinsdales. I think there are some of their kids mixed in there but I only recognize the one directly behind Nancy, Lisa.

2009-09-17T06:11:00.000-07:00

Fall Craft Show 2oo9

I'm finally getting around to posting my new craft items. Even though my show has already been going for a week now. Fortunately it lasts for five more weeks so if you are in the Idaho Falls go to the Mini Bazaar and check out all of the new fall stuff.

I love my harvest cubes but I have such problems with them sticking together, that this may be the last of them.

This one is similar to ones I've done in the past. But I just love my square pumpkins.

Here is a new one that I am excited about. I also am offering just the vinyl personalize with Initials and names to put directly on your wall. I plan on doing one for each of my girls to stick on the wall above their beds, when they get in their new room.

Here is is again just in different color combo. I also did ones that say welcome and Home. Little girl ones that say Sisters and Princess, and boy ones that say Brothers and Remember who you are.

2009-09-07T21:40:00.000-07:00

A long post with no pictures, but this is what has been happening, and been on my mind lately:

You might be a redneck if:

After this weekend this joke may apply to my family. No we don't have anyone in our family named Cleatis or Leroy, we don't have a old couch and a broken down washer sitting on our front lawn, and we don't park any broken down vehicles in our driveway (although Shaun's truck is well on its way to qualifying for that one), but we sure did participate in some redneck activities over labor day weekend. On Saturday I went to my first truck and tractor pull ever. I was not excited to go, but it turned out to be better than I thought and I found myself standing up and cheering along with "Jim Bob", (who was wearing his sleeveless t-shirt and holding his autographed poster), whenever the trucks pulled that trailer the whole length of the track. On Monday we went to the state fair. I must be a redneck because I really do love the fair. I like the fair food and the art exhibits and my kids love the animals and the rides. Sydnie couldn't get enough of the petting zoo, she ran around giving hugs to all the goats and even an emu. So if you attend a truck and tractor pull and the state fair in the same weekend.... you might be a redneck.

How to have the worst day ever...

Well, Friday was a pretty bad day for me. Maybe not the worst day I have ever had in my life but pretty close. So if you would like to have a day as bad as mine was on Friday here are the things you need to do:

1. While packing up to go out of town discover your 2 year old has gotten into the toilet (that still has pee in it thanks to her older sister) and splashed the contents along with a roll of toilet paper all over the bathroom and herself. CHECK

2. Sigh relief when you get everything cleaned up, and the car packed and are only a few minutes late. CHECK

3. Spend an hour looking for your keys because you only have one set. CHECK

4. Finally find your keys at the bottom of the garbage can covered in apple sauce (thanks again Sydnie)CHECK

4. On your way to check your older girls from school have your trunk fly open and loose half the contents on the road. CHECK

5. Get stuck in two hours of labor day weekend traffic. CHECK

6. Run your battery out while getting some dinner at Artic Circle and have to ask someone to jump your car. CHECK

7. Almost get run off the road by a semi when you pull over to shut a door that one of your girls did not shut tight enough at the restaurant (we don't want to have a repeat of step number 4). CHECK

8. By some miracle arrive at your destination safe and sound who cares if we got there about three hours later than we planned. CHECK

Time to get Political

Okay, so I have to do something that I was taught never to do as a hairdresser, that is never talk to your patrons about two things: religion and politics. But since most of you are not my patrons I thought I could get away with it here. I have been thinking quite a bit about things that are happening in our nation lately, and thinking about what I could do to make my voice heard. I think that some of us regular people, no matter what side of the political ticket you find yourself on, have been made to feel somewhat ashamed. Ashamed that we don't believe in the same things the movie stars and the people on t.v. believe in. We don't talk about things because we don't want others to think we are weird or some kind of fanatical freak. Well call me a freak but this is what I believe:

The current debate over the national health care system has me worried. I don't like the idea of the government having so much control over my life and decisions. Isn't that what the forefathers fought to free themselves from? Not that I think that the health care system doesn't need fixing. I just think we are going at it the wrong way. We are a nation of smart people, you would think we could come up with a better way to fix things than letting the government take over health care.

My generation needs to wake up, and start to let those in charge of changing our laws and constitution know what we really think. Even if you live in a state who has representation similar to what you believe, I think it is a good reminder for them to remember why we put them in office. I'm afraid if we don't become more active in what we believe, we may wake up a few years down the road and realize the things you believe and cherish most have been taken away from you. So, write your congressmen or representatives, its easy, most of them have websites with e-mail addresses. Just a quick note to remind them why they are in office. I plan to, and I hope you will join me.

2009-08-27T18:50:00.000-07:00

School's in Again!!!

So, I'm not and never will be one of those moms who get all choked up thinking about their kid's first day of school. Kaylee started third grade last week, and Brianne went to her first day of kindergarten today. I wasn't sad about Kaylee starting kindergarten and I wasn't sad today when Brianne put on her huge backpack and headed off to kindergarten. What I get is excited. I know you are all thinking I mean I'm excited because they are gone and I get a quiet house. No, I mean I get excited for them. Excited for all the fun experiences I know they are going to have, and excited because they are excited. When you are a grown up there gets to be less and less things that you get truly excited about. Yes, of course you are excited for your children to be born, and excited to go on vacation, but even that gets less exciting the more trips you take. So it is fun to live a little vicariously through your children and remember how excited you were to start your first day of school.

And boy was Brianne excited! She asked me everyday for a week how many more days till kindergarten, and this morning she kept asking and asking if it was time to leave. Then she insisted on carrying her heavy backpack full of school supplies all the way to her school. I have to brag about my Brianne a little. She is such a little smarty pants. Her kindergarten teacher was surprised at how well she did during kindergarten testing last week. And she is such a good little reader it always amazes me how well she does, and how many words she knows when we practice reading every night. I'm sure she will do great in kindergarten!

Brianne next to her huge backback on her first day of kindergarten.

Kaylee on her first day of Third grade.

2009-08-18T08:56:00.000-07:00

Provo Half Marathon

Well I finally did it! I ran in my first official race. I signed up for the half marathon last year, but I couldn't run in the official race because of a health concern. I ended up running it later that year, but somehow it is just not the same when you don't have the number pinned on your chest and the crowds to cheer you on. We had a really great run, the weather was perfect around 75 degrees and my adrenaline was pumping with the excitement of the big crowd. When I got done I called Shaun to tell him I was done, he jokingly asked me if I had won. Of course I didn't even come close to winning, but I felt like a winner! I finished 20 minutes faster than I did last year, and was able to maintain a 10 min mile pace. Slow if you are trying to win, but great for me.

You say, "oh great for her, but I could never run a half marathon." I bet you could! I love to run, but I haven't always been able to say that. Running to me used to be so boring and hard, but I started running with a couple of friends, and I found that running at a pace that you can still carry on a conversation was perfect for me. We started out slow at about 11 or 12 min miles and have worked up to 9 1/2 -10 min miles. I could run faster if I didn't talk while I was running, but what is the fun in that? Besides the runners high is no myth. There is nothing like the feeling you get after a long run.

Thanks to Nicole to being so faithful with running with me in the morning. I've never had a running partner who you can count on being there at 6:30 in the morning every time. And thanks to Audrey. We are a great pair for pushing each other to go a little faster. We are both competitive enough that if one is running a little faster, the other one always tries to keep up no matter how much we are hurting.

My running partners, Me on the left, Audrey, and Nicole. Great job girls!

P.S. Audrey, thanks for the ice cream cone, and yes, I did get sore!!!

Tips to convert yourself into a runner

I used to hate running I thought people who ran marathons and half marathons were crazy. I would occasionally get out and run a couple miles just for a change in my exercising routine but I never really enjoyed it. Now I can say I really love running and I even look forward to some of our longer runs. So what has made the difference?

1. Have a goal. Just running to be running seems pointless when you are tired or sore. But if you sign yourself up for a race you have more motivation to get out there and get it done. The best way to find out about races is to ask your running friends. Not into long races? Then sign up for a 10k or a 5k.

2. Have a running partner or two or three. The more the better then if one can't go with you, hopefully the other one can. Sign up for the same race, then you can be working towards the same goal.

3. Start slow. I love to be able to talk with my friends when I am running. If I run to fast I can't and then I hate it. Here is a good website for easy schedules for preparing for races, its a great site for beginners.www.jeffgalloway.com/training/half_marathon.html This is for half marathon but I think he has schedules for other races as well.

2009-08-07T15:08:00.000-07:00

Neighborhood Fun

Some people in our neighborhood started a fun tradition last year and it was so fun that we decided to do it again this year. Classic Skating in Sandy offers a $10 season pass, then after that you just pay 1 dollar for each activity you decide to do. They have lots of fun things to choose from such as bounce houses, a jungle area, laser tag, skating and our favorite swimming and water slides! Most of the time we just come to swim and I feel so great knowing I only had to pay $4 dollars for my whole family to swim for the entire day! Almost every Tuesday this summer we would meet up with several of the neighbors and go swimming the kids had a blast and so did the moms.

Kaylee going down one of the four slides.

Brianne finally dared to go by herself down the slides the last two times we went. Once she dared to go by herself I didn't see her much for the rest of the time.

All my girls, getting a snack between sliding. Even Sydnie loved going down the water slides with me.

Kaylee and Brianne having lots of fun in the Jungle house.

More Neighborhood fun!

I don't do hair allot anymore. I stay too busy with my craft shows and dance. But every once and awhile I will have a neighborhood haircutting day. When all the neighborhood kids can come and get haircuts. My girls needed back to school haircuts so I decided to block out a morning and invite the girls in the neighborhood to come too.

I should have taken pictures of the cute girls in my neighborhood getting their haircut but I forgot. So here is a picture of the hair I cut off. I ended up cutting off some serious hair. Three girls including one of my own cut their hair from mid back to all the way above their shoulders. I hope I don't have some mad dads when they get home from work tonight.

ta da! Brianne finally decided to cut her hair off without any bribing. I think it turned out really cute, but I am going to have some serious hair to blow dry when I wash it. Her hair is about 4 times as thick as most of the girls in our neighborhood.

A view from the back.

2009-07-31T19:11:00.000-07:00

A week of projects

I finally had a chance to get to my to do list. Looking back on these pictures it's amazing how much I got done in just a week, especially considering I had two sick kids (we had the stomach flue going around our neighborhood this week).

Project #1 refinish chairs and stools

This was one of those projects I definitely was not looking forward to. Anyone who has refinished furniture knows what I am talking about. But my stools and chairs were looking pretty sad. So I sanded put a new coat of black paint, sanded some more, put on a coat of polyurethane(clear protective coat), sanded some more and put on the final coat of polyurethane. I hated every minute of it but they look great!

Project #2 frame for our family photo.

I was more excited about this one. Especially the great deal I got on this moulding. I was on my way to home depot to pick out some moulding and Ross just happens to be next door so I decided to stop in, just my luck I found a beautiful mirror with this moulding on it for only $24 about as much as I would have spent at home depot. I took the mirror home and completely took it apart, I was sort of sad it was a beautiful mirror. I had to cut the moulding down some to fit my picture and glue it back together but the bonus was I didn't have to paint it. You will have to click on the picture to see the detail of the moulding it really is pretty.

Project #3 Valance for my bedroom

This one is trickier than it looks. You really can't see it very well it this picture, but I had to make a wooden frame for it. Then staple batting to it, then staple the fabric over that. So it was more like upholstering than sewing. The trickiest part was hanging the whole thing. I measured like three times, and then held my breath as I drilled the holes for the screws. Thanks to my neighbor Tineka for coming over to help me hang the 10 foot long valance.

Project #4 painting

I finally did it! I got to paint a couple rooms in my house. I think they turned out great! Here is the before picture of my kitchen:

And the after:

Before of my extra bathroom:

and after, I think they both turned out great!!!!

And what was Shaun doing?????

This picture will give you a clue.

Our brother in law John invited Shaun to go to Florida with him for lobster season. They spent a few days spear fishing and catching lobster with nets. Shaun had a great time. This is a picture of John and Shaun headed down with the spear gun.

This is the whole group who went Shaun is on the left, John is second to the right.

Here is a sample of their catch.

You might think I want you to feel bad for me, stuck home with sick kids and a million projects, while Shaun was in Florida. No Way!!!! I was more than happy staying home painting my kitchen and bathroom. Shaun deserved a break anyway. So we both got just what we wanted!!!

2009-07-22T11:06:00.000-07:00

And the winner is.....

I just finished up my spring cleaning, (technically it counts as spring cleaning if you start in the spring right?) I go through each room in my house and do all the things I usually neglect the rest of the year such as blinds, and baseboards. As I was cleaning I was thinking of the things that I just couldn't do without. Here are my top three:

1. Top on my list is the magic eraser, I use the generic kind, they work just as well. And seriously what did we do before magic erasers? They really are magic as far as I'm concerned. They get smudges, marker, crayon, well just about anything off of walls, baseboards, and tables. I used to scrub for hours then just give up and paint over a mark on the wall.

2. Second on my list is a good old toothbrush. They are perfect for getting into those tight spots that nothing else will get into. (just be careful if you have babies or toddlers) Sydnie loves toothbrushes and I caught her several times trying to brush her teeth with one of my cleaning toothbrushes.

3. And finally a pumice stone is my last pick. I used to scrub for hours with lime away to try and get rid of that yellow hard water ring around my toilet. A pumice stone does it in minutes and does a much better job at it.

I would love to hear your favorites! Anything to make cleaning easier and faster I love to hear about!