Witch Hunt

For family night last night we met up with my sister and her family at Gardner Village and went on a witch hunt.  All throughout this shopping center (really an adorable little village) are witches that are doing all sorts of funny things and you have to find them all and mark them off your list.  Then you get to turn your completed list into the bakery and get a cookie.  We do it every year and the kids love it!  Last night as we were walking around a mother with her family came up and asked us where we got our lists, my sister told her that you have to print them off online, but we had extra that she could have.  We then became her go to tour guides, giving directions and pointing out where the witches she was hunting for were located.  I wish I would have gotten a picture of our new bestie, but I didn't- just got a funny story to tell!  Alot of my pictures didn't turn out for some reason, so here are just 2 for your enjoyment!



P next to the witch that is pedaling away.

All finished with our witch hunt and hyper off sugar cookies!

Flashback Friday- General Conference

This weekend is General Conference.  When I was growing up my family lived in Memphis, TN so conference wasn't broadcast onto our tv like it is here in Utah- we had to go to our stake center and watch the sessions.  As a kid, my parents would have us choose which session we wanted to go to and it seemed like that session would be 8 hours long!  Then when I left on my mission to Australia, the time change was so different that they would choose 2 sessions and broadcast those 2 for our Sunday meeting and I craved more!!  Now it is one of my favorite times of the year- getting to be inspired by our prophet and apostles is something I still crave and look forward to every six months.  Even though I live in Utah the tickets are hard to come by to get into the conference center.  One year, I think it was October 2005 but I'm so bad with dates, Love and I along with my sister and her family decided to go up to Salt Lake and sit on the lawn and listen to conference.  It was so much fun!  Here are some of the pictures that we took that day.

The Salt Lake City Temple

Thousands of people just sit on the lawn as they broadcast conference over speakers.  Me with my niece and nephews.



Aren't they so cute and little!!

Love and my brother-in-law.  Look how young they look!!

My brother-in-law and two of my cute nephews!! 

Cornbelly's Corn Maze

This weekend we spent the day at Cornbelly's Corn Maze at Thanksgiving point with my sister's kids (minus n/n #1 who was on his first date).  This is the first time I have ever been there and honestly wasn't expecting much, but it was amazing!! There was so much stuff to do for all ages. Here are some pictures of our adventures.

Standing on top of the hay tower.

Playing pumpkin tetherball.

We are off to the races! Bouncing horse races that is.

n/n # 4 driving the royal carriage.  D off to the side wondering where in the heck we are!

My two princesses!  n/n #'s 9 and 11 dressing up and posing with the pumpkin princess.  You wouldn't believe all the dress up clothes they had even for the little boys to dress up in!

P and his dates off to the royal ball.

Princess Story Time!

P wanted to take his picture with her so he could get a candy!

n/n #'s 9 and 11

My little cowboy!  Every time I looked down, he had a piece of straw in his mouth.  He loved it!

Riding the cow train.

D was laughing and squealing the entire time!

These are the duck races, you basically put a rubber duck in your tube, pump the water and it floats your duck to the other end and then someone sends it back to you.  This was one of the kids favorite attractions even for the older ones because they would actually race against each other to see who could get their duck down to the other side the fastest.

Here we are mining for gems.  This was by far the one the kids loved the most.  You would buy a bag of sand and then collect a sieve and a bucket, you would then dump your bag into the sieve and douse it in the water and shake out all the sand and you were left with crystals (or diamonds as the little ones called them).  P, n/n #'s 9 and 11 spent the entire weekend washing and polishing their diamonds.  My cute little #9 niece said she was going to have her daddy poke holes in her diamonds so that she could make a necklace for her and her best friend!

All over the park they had amazing carved pumpkins.  P saw this one and was tickled to death because he is obsessed with the statue of liberty!!

Here is n/n # 3 shooting the paintball gun.

Now it's n/n # 4's turn to take a shot.

Here we are on the train ride that took us through the girl scouts of america maze.

Close to the end of the day we decided to take a final hay ride around the maze.

Here is my D, obsessed with gathering as much hay as he can.  It was such a fun day!!

We did so many other things as well such as:  riding the mechanical bull, watching the pig races, flying down the zip line, climbing the rock wall, trying to find our way through the rat maze, jumping in the bounce houses and on the air pillows, going through the haunted creature (which some of us only made it part with through before they freaked out- you know who you are!), playing pumpkin volleyball, gorging ourselves on snow cones, kettle corn, and carmel apples.  We also did the main attraction which was the corn maze.  This year it was pick your prez and had Obama and Romney's faces carved (I don't know if carved is the right word, but just go with it) out of the corn.  I had Dino in the stroller and the worker told me that Romney's path was more conducive to children (which I chuckled at).  When we got in there, there were signs pointing to the path of Obama and the path of Romney.  n/n # 3 wanted to do the route that we weren't doing so he asked n/n # 4 to do Obama's path with him.  #4 was not thrilled he kept saying " I don't like Obama".  Finally I told him that if he took his path it didn't mean he had to like him.  He said " Fine, just so long as everyone knows that I don't like Obama!"

It was such a great way to kick off our fall festivities!!  Love was jealous that he had to work and couldn't join us, but we might go back again for him!

n/n stands for niece and nephew- each one is numbered according to their age, their number in no way reflects how we feel about them!!

Flashback Friday

So I figured out a way to cope with my OCD tendancy of having everything in chronological order. . . Introducing- Flashback Fridays!  Ta Da (jazz hands, jazz hands, jazz hands).  Every friday I will flashback and share one of my favorite memories.  It was hard to think of which one to flashback to first since I have so many, but this one is inspired by the situation I find myself in today.

No this is not a wedding flashback!  This weekend I am watching my sister's kids while her and her husband are at a funeral.  I had all these high hopes for the fun we would have, sadly to discover that they wanted to hang out with their friends instead of their aunt!  In my mind I still picture them as 6, 5, 3, and 1 instead of as the teenagers they have become.  I am so proud of all of my nephews and nieces (16 so far) and the joy that they bring into my life!

Don't feel to sorry for me though, we are still having a blast with the younger ones that still think I'm cool and we have a fun day planned tomorrow for all of us!

Welcome To My World

For awhile now I have been contemplating on starting up blogging again but I was always faced with the dilemia of where do I start!?! With me being a little (he he he) OCD I felt I needed to start at the beginning but that would include 10 years of  STUFF.   Finally I decided to just start and fill in the gaps as I go along, so Welcome!  I hope you enjoy sharing in these brief moments of my live with me.  So you can keep up and because I'm super paranoid we are using nicknames, so here is the list of characters (literally!!!) that star in my life.

This is our youngest- D. He loves to watch what brother is doing. 

This is our oldest- P.  He is super creative, loves to build and destroy! 



This is the love of my life!  He is my soulmate and best friend!  He is affectionately called "LOVE".

Since I'm super sensitive about putting peoples names on blogs, all of our nieces and nephews will be posted by #'s in order of their age. 



4th of July

My dad and I decided to compete in the Freedom 5K Run on the 4th of July. Our main goal was to finish and not finish last. There were 2020 finishers (I think more people ran, but didn't register) and my dad was 1901 and I was 1909. It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be, but we acheived our goal and next year we'll do better.

Thanks dad for running with me, it meant alot to do it with you!

After the 5K we went to the parade. My sister-in-law's family always sits in the same spot every year and they were nice enough to come and let our family crash with them. Every year it is so unbelievably HOT that you can hardly stand it, but this year we got a little rain shower in the beginning to cool us down and it made the rest of the parade pleasant. They have done away with alot of the political floats and people campaining for office (which I hate!!) so I thought the parade was a lot better this year. P did so much better this year than he did last year. He loved the horses, but mostly just loved being their with his cousins.Grandma Dorothy, my baby brother and his dog Mocha waiting out the rainstorm.

My sister's family huddled under a blanket.

Mom and Dad taking shelter under a tree.

P and n/n #9 watching the parade.

n/n #11 enjoying a bagel.

Our parade goers.

This is probably the funniest picture of the day to Love and I. . .While we were at the parade the family next to us had bags of popcorn that they were eating and next thing we knew P had gone over and asked the lady if he could share her popcorn with her. She was so nice and shared with him but I was mortified that he would go beg food off of a complete stranger!

Happy Birthday Love

Happy Birthday Daddy!

While Steve was at work, Preston and I decorated the house and then when he came home we yelled SURPRISE! Preston loved practicing and still will yell surprise whenever Steve comes home from work.

P loves helping to blow out birthday candles. Make a wish!

Hide and Seek

One day while P and I were at the park, he saw some boys climb this tree, so P tried as hard as he could to try and get up this tree, but he just couldn't get a boost!

Crazy Driver

I put this video more on for Love's reaction than for P. Sorry about the quality it was done on my cell phone.

Giant Tie

P needed a new tie for church, so I bought this tie and I swear I tried it on and it looked good in the store, but then when we went to put it on him for church it was so long!!! I still think he looks so handsome though!

Easter Morning

Easter morning P came into our room and we told him that the Easter Bunny had come and left him some eggs to find. When we walked out to the living room he was really excited to find the eggs, then all of a sudden he looked at the fireplace and found his easter basket. The Easter Bunny gave P a new train, Bertie the bus and Harold the Helicopter. He also got the elefun game. He had to bring it down to grandma and grandpa's to show them.The eggs were filled with candy, so every egg had to be opened

immediately so P could get the candy out.

P looking at what the Easter Bunny left in his basket.

P going through the eggs to make sure all the candy is out.

A perfect hiding place!

P on the egg hunt, sorry it's sideways I don't know why it does that!

Birdie House

We bought this bunny house at Walmart, it's just like a gingerbread house but for Easter. So a couple days before Easter we decide to make it, so you have to put the walls and roof on and then let it set, or once you put the candy on, you run the risk of it collapsing. When P woke up I told him that we were going to make the bunny house. So I go to get everything set up and I come into the dining room to find P up on the table eating the roof off the bunny house. Love and I laughed so hard. We had a fun time decorating it with P. P kept telling us it was a birdie house and he would sing a little song that they sing on Mickey Mouse Clubhouse while Goofy is trying to build a bird house. He has such a cute personality! We kept the birdie house for about a week, and P wanted to sleep with it every night, finally after Easter we threw it away, but he still asks us where the birdie house is and we tell him the Easter Bunny took it with him, that we made it for him.P taking a bite out of the roof
A closer view of P eating the bunny house.

P and Love decorating the bunny house.

Putting in the front walk

The completed project

A close up view. Please remember that P is only 2! :)