Steve and Jaclyn Weist and Family

Christmas 2011

2012-01-24T14:15:00.000-07:00

It took long enough, but here I am. And its still not January 25th so I'm within the month after Christmas. That's good, right?

Our Christmas started a little earlier on the Weist side when we went to visit Steve's family at the first part of December. We had fun watching the kids open their gifts from their Grandma and Grandpa Weist. The kids LOVED their gifts and we had a fun time visiting.

This Christmas we had the chance to go and stay in Idaho for a week before Christmas. We went and visited my grandma, aunt, uncle, and cousins in Idaho Falls on Saturday the 17th and stayed in Oakley for the rest of the week.

It was a wonderful break from all the craziness at home. My sister was awesome and wrapped my gifts while I held her baby. It was a great trade for both of us.

Even our guinea pigs made the trip, and they loved the attention they got while there. Georgy (my mom's shih tsu) really liked them!

We made a few trips to Burley and got the last of our shopping done. Below I have pictures from our stop at Dairy Queen.

Once my sister and her family got to Idaho, we headed out to Rock Creek Canyon to see the lights. The highlight was seeing the camels!

Christmas Eve is full of traditions at our house. Bean dip, Egg Nog, movies, and the reading of the Christmas Story. The best part is watching the kids act out the Nativity with the cute little puppets my sister made several years ago. They love to be part of it.

Christmas Morning!! When we were little, we used to meet in my parent's room before going to see what Santa brought us. When my parents added on to the house, it became the tradition to meet in the toy room downstairs. Then we'd head up youngest to oldest. Since my sister did Christmas at her house (before meeting us for presents), my family got to be the first. It was kinda strange!

The only thing that Gavin asked for was a balloon that he could bounce with the rubber band. What a cutie.

Classy

Steve likes his Ninja turtle pants

Ashley really, REALLY wanted a girl ds game.

Heidi loves Minnie Mouse!!

The chair was a huge hit!

Jakob and Andy share these two gifts - and they're not complaining one bit!

I was in the line to check out on Black Friday and saw this pony set from thirty feet away. I asked my niece to grab it because I knew Ashley and Heidi would love it.

Ashley finally got her dress up clothes!

Nothing beats an angry bird for Ethan

Gavin is the child I find with books in his bed each night. I figured I'd feed his hunger.

Gifts from Grandpa and Grandma Hardy

We got Creationary and popcorn from my sister. My kids were ecstatic!

Here is the apron Jakob bought Grandma with his own money.

It was sad to leave but with storms coming, and Steve starting a new job, we knew it was time to go. We hope everyone had a great Christmas and a wonderful New Year!!

Forgetting the Bad, Remembering the Good

2011-12-03T12:11:00.000-07:00

Throughout the last year I've had some intense happy and sad moments. Opening my dream bookstore, closing it, moving to Australia and and then moving home. Anyone that's followed my blogs or Facebook posts can tell me and anyone else that the move was not an easy move. We went through a lot. What do I remember? The good stuff.

Let's look at the bookstore. I have always wanted a bookstore. Its been a dream of mine for a long time, and seeing "You've Got Mail" only made me want it more. And then my dream came true. For a full year I loved sharing books with customers. I loved the selling, picking out books, meeting new authors, and just being among my books. If you know me, you know I love books. I loved the fact that it was part of my job to know what books were about so I had to read the books. I could pick one off the shelf and read it. That's one thing I've missed since I closed. As we closed the store, I had a customer tell me he didn't know where to go to get books anymore because I could tell him which books were good and he didn't get that service from anyone else. Wow. Best compliment ever.

I look at my store with fond memories. Dates stick out even now for when we had author signings and other events. I've ticked off the events in my mind as those date have passed this year. For instance, today was the last time Brandon Sanderson and Dan Wells came to my store. The week before Thanksgiving, I had thirty different authors come, which was amazing.

With all those wonderful memories, I've forgotten the stress. I've forgotten the many hours I spent at the store and not with my family. I forgot how many times I saw the totals for the day, knowing that there wasn't enough to pay even a third of the bills that were due. The tears that were spilt when I decided it was time to close. I've forgotten how many thousands of fliers I sent out, the newspaper articles, the Facebook events and all the different activities in the store that I did to bring people in. Only to have very few people show to any of those events. Its not until I stop and choose to remember those bad times that the memories come flooding back.

The same thing happens when I think about my move to Australia. I miss the beach. I miss the animals there. I miss the people I met. I miss the trains and areas we traveled to. I missed the cities I couldn't pronounce but that I fell in love with anyway. I miss the food and I even miss walking to different stores. I miss the cute little cottage where we squished eight people into a two bedroom house.

Never mind that every house had mold, my kids got sick, we got sick, we searched for houses nonstop for 4 1/2 months and never once unpacked until we got home.

How does our mind do this? How can we look back on events in our lives and only remember the good things? I think all of us are essentially optimists because the good is so much better to remember. Think about the obituaries you see. How many times have you ever seen "that person was the most spoiled rotten trouble maker I've ever met?" I don't think I ever have. You remember the good things - or sometimes at least you pretend to.

The things I'll remember most about the last two years are the things I loved about living two dreams I never thought I'd live. I love my bookstore. I'd do it all over again if I could - only this next time it will be when my kids are older. And I always wanted to go to Australia. I never thought I'd live there and in essence, it was really just a long vacation where everything that could go wrong did, and where Steve worked and we looked for houses. :)

So I choose to remember the good things in life and let the bad pass me by. Onto the next dream. What's that? I want a book published. And quite frankly, if it weren't for those two last adventures, I would not have the guts to even try. After all, I've sat on a book I wrote 15 years ago because I was too afraid to send it in. Wish me luck!! I will do my best and we'll see where that leads me.

Reflections 2011

2011-11-06T00:21:00.000-06:00

Every year I'm excited to find out what the theme for Reflections will be. This year it was "Diversity means..." I couldn't imagine what my kids could do but I was excited to find out. True to form, each of them waited until the last minute to work on their projects. Jakob drew a picture for his. Andy and Ashley both glued different kinds of beans to a piece of cardboard to show that everyone is different. And Gavin wrote a story. I posted his last story about a pumpkin patch. I knew he could have quite the story to tell. This story took a different twist than most kids would have come up with.

Because we went to Australia, Gavin got to experience diversity and being different in a different way than a lot of his peers here. He wrote his story and we turned it in. There weren't a lot of entries in literature. I'm not even sure if there were others in his age group. It doesn't matter though because he won! He was so excited. Here is his entry. I will post again if he goes any further than the next level.

Diversity Means...

Once upon a time we were going to Australia. All the people talked different. People looked different. Everything looked different. We went to the zoo. The zoo was different. We went to two churches and they were different. And we went to different schools. I was in Kinder. We stayed there for a lots of days. I talked different and they talked different so they weren't nice to me. I was nice to them. We decided to leave Kinder because we went to a new house. All the people had black and white faces. And it was hard to be different. And we had a tv in one of our new houses. Ashley did Mathletics. She is my sister. There was lots of moldy houses so we came home. Its nice to be home where we talk the same. I went to kindergarten here. Lots of people would be my friends. And they were good to me. And now I'm learning how to read.

The End.

I love my Gavin. I don't care whether his entry goes any further. I'm just glad I got to hear his thoughts.

Gavin's Halloween Story

2011-10-24T15:45:00.000-06:00

This year Gavin started Kindergarten. I was very sad to find out that homework was different for him than it has been for the three older kids. I was looking forward to his stories to match up with the others. So I decided to do it anyway. Here is Gavin's story:

The Scary Pumpkin Patch

Once upon a time, there was a scary pumpkin patch. And Gavin was in it. He saw a very creepy pumpkin. There was lots of Gavins. And Gavin was scared. And Gavin saw a great big bug. And then a bat came and then a spider and then another bat and then another spider and then a ghost. And then another ghost. and then another ghost. And then another ghost. And then 1 more ghost. And then Gavin ran away from the scary pumpkin patch.

And then he came back to the scary pumpkin patch. And then he picked out a pumpkin and it was not so scary. It just had a smile on its face.

And then he saw a very creepy pumpkin again. And then he ran away again. And then he saw lots and lots of ghosts. Then he came back to his house and he rubbed his mom's feet. He saw lots and lots of stuff under the couch. It was lots and lots of ghosts.

Then he saw a witch on his pillow and there were lots and lots of candy corns. And he put his face on it. Then he threw it up in the air and didn't catch it. Then he started to cry. And then he saw lots of clocks in his house. Then he saw a creeeeeepy picture and ran away from his house fast and fast and fast. Then he ran back to his house. And then he came back. And then he played outside.

And then he looked at his baby's face. And then he saw a very creepy picture again and he ran and ran and ran way way way way far away from his house and then he saw the pumpkin patch. Then he ran away. Then he came back to his house and rubbed his mom's feet again.

The End

I'm out of breath from all that running. I think this our most adventurous one yet but I have enjoyed seeing our children create stories.

Eight Already?!

2011-09-23T17:50:00.000-06:00

My sweet little Andy isn't little anymore. He turned 8 in July, he loves sports, video games, bakugan, sports, and vegging in front of the tv. The poor kid had a small birthday this year but got the best birthday present of us all.

Andy had a rough time with the move to Australia from the very beginning. My boy who was so excited and told everyone about our move, started missing everyone shortly after we got to Australia. The words "I never wanted to come here!" were like a knife to my heart. Mostly because I knew how he felt (I actually had always wanted to go there but I was just as homesick as he was)! He had fun while we were there but he missed his friends and his teachers and his school more than anything else. He would sob because he wanted to go home. All I could do was hug him until he felt better, trying not to let my tears fall along with his.

We decided just a few days before Andy's birthday that it was time to go home. We'd had it with the sickness and the mold and the sickness and the mold. Oh, I already said that. Anyway, I took Andy and Jakob to see Harry Potter 7 Part 2 a few days before his birthday and he was so excited. After it was over, we found out that going home was a possibility and he gave me a HUGE hug. We started getting tickets ready for us to leave and decided to leave on the 19th - the day after Andy's birthday. Andy had his wish come true for his birthday. He got to go home!

We went to pick up Andy's gift from a shopping centre. He got to pick out a Nintendo DS game for himself before we headed home to pack. Andy decided to wait for his cake until he got home because we wouldn't be able to finish it before we left Australia. Plus he had something specific in mind and it would have been harder to do while packing!!

So off we went home, and Andy got to see all of his friends. His best friend was gone for a few weeks so he had to wait to see him but he got to see everyone else and he was happy again.

BUT the best part was that he got to be baptized with his cousin. We had planned that for a year and then we ended up going to Australia. We had set up interviews two different times and tried to get things set up in Australia but it never worked out. And now we know why. :)

The baptism went really well. They got to get baptized at the same time and then confirmed at the same time the next day. I was so happy and so was Andy! We had our good friends come with us to Idaho and they were able to be there for it as well.

Last but not least, we got to make Andy's cake in OUR home in Utah. He had wanted a hamburger cake for almost two years. Last year we didn't do it because we combined birthdays and made one big cake. So this year I went all out. It was three layers think and he was THRILLED with it.

All in all it was a pretty fantastic birthday for my Andy. He even got to be in Fiji for the day two days after his birthday!!

My Five Year Old Gavin

2011-09-11T21:58:00.002-06:00

It's still July right? It seems like it could be. These last few months have flown so fast and I haven't had a chance to blog for a while. I am attempting to blog on my phone with 4% power left so we will see how this goes.

Poor Gavin didn't get much of a birthday. His presents were lame little toys from the grocery store, his cake was undercooked and over buttery and what we had planned for his birthday had to be put off. But to him it was perfect.

Being born on the 5th of July means he can have some patriotic vibes to his birthday. Since we were in Australia we went searching for an American restaurant and found TGI Fridays. We celebrated both his birthday and the 4th. I got my steak, the kids got pizza and Steve got salmon. We even had an American waiter!!

On Gavin's birthday, he got to pick out a movie and he chose Despicable Me. He waited patiently for the rest of the kids and Steve to get back from the store so he could watch the movie. He opened his few gifts and we ate the nasty cake. Then we enjoyed the movie. We had planned to bowl but it's pricey there and we had to do it on a half price night. So that waited for the next night.

We all had a lot of fun bowling. We got the ramp things for Ethan and Gavin and they loved it!! The scores weren't all that great but it was still fun to see the competition between the kids.

I can't believe my little boy is five. He is such a sweetheart with a mischievous streak. He is my Calvin(from Calvin and Hobbes) that I always said I wanted. I love my sweet Gavin!!

Steve's Birthday

2011-07-16T08:26:00.000-06:00

Your birthday comes around each year. You get a little older, a few gifts and a few 'Happy Birthdays!" from your friends and family. Unless you have Facebook and then you get inundated with Happy Birthdays and it just makes your day awesome. But I digress.

Steve got kinda ripped off this year for his birthday. We were in the midst of asthma causing mold issues and were being told to leave the house. I didn't even want to bake a cake or dinner in the house after mold spray was sprayed in and around the kitchen sink and counter. So poor Steve had to forgo his Black Forest cake and we went out for dinner instead. He wasn't too heartbroken. We went and had Chinese food and it was YUMMY. Duck, suckling pig, and all kinds of other yummy foods were served.

DUCK! Really, it is.

Ethan loved the food.

Bok Choy, Mushrooms and Snails. Yummy!

Steve likes his food!

And making faces.

We had him open his gifts. He was happy for his Terry Pratchett books. Even though his wife was a moron and put the books in the same bag as a water bottle that was NOT water tight... a few pages got wet in a few books but luckily it wasn't too bad. He also got a few things for the house and he bought himself a pizza paddle and stone. He also got a rice cooker later and every time we use it, Gavin is happy to remind him that he got it for his birthday. I promised him I would make him his Black Forest cake when we get settled... that hasn't happened yet...

Heidi was thrilled to be able to take the gifts to Daddy.

Posing for pictures.

Now Heidi is REALLY helping.

Its not the sharpest pizza cutter but its kinda cute.

Anyway, now its time to do a little bragging about my husband. You see, I got the best one out there. He cares for his wife and children like you would never believe. He cooks, he cleans, he helps with laundry or whatever else I need help with. He ran the house while he let me live my dream of owning a bookstore. He puts us all before himself.

When we go out on house hunting missions or to the park or zoo or whatever else we might be doing, he makes sure that we have lunches made - which include fruit and a drink before we go. I am in charge of shoes, coats, socks and other items. Guess who usually forgets their part of the deal...

I haven't thanked him nearly enough for what he has done for all of us. We love you Steve and I hope that even though it was a mess, you had a fabulous birthday!

My Little Boy Turned Three!!

2011-06-05T06:24:00.000-06:00

I'm a little behind on birthdays but I think I might have a little bit of an excuse with the whole moving twice since Ethan's birthday thing. So here it goes.

Ethan got to start a little early for his birthday. We went to IKEA the week before and he found a bulldog that he loved "I want to hug its head!," he yelled from across the store. He also informed me that he wanted a blue book as we went to a bookstore. Which was nice that I found a "My Little Blue Book" at Borders!

Anyway, the day before Ethan's birthday we went to the zoo. He wanted to go on a train and he wanted to go to the zoo. So we did. He LOVED it. He talked nonstop on the train and loved to see the animals. His favorites were the monkeys. He was sad this last week when we went to the Healesville Sanctuary and there were no monkeys...

The morning of his birthday we started a new ward for our new house. Ethan ran right into nursery and was playing with the kitchen when I introduced him. I was told I could go in and out of the room if I needed to but I just let him do his thing. And he was alright with that. I also let them know it was his birthday. I can't believe he goes to primary in January!! Sad.

After church we went home and started the frosting for the 'blue rocketship cake' he wanted and the pizza that Steve was so excited to make. He first made meatballs and then sliced them up and put them on the pizza. Scrumptious!

We had friends over to celebrate. We had a lot of fun talking while the kids burned out their energy running through the house. That is one thing I liked about the house. There was LOTS of space. The food was good. Ethan enjoyed his gifts and he was thrilled to blow out the candles - even though Daddy had to help.

Ethan is very proud to tell people that he is three. He's growing bigger every day and if you peek in on him you can hear him singing anything from "Bad" by Michael Jackson to "We're going up the hill, we're going up the hill, we're going up the hill". He can sing every word to Thomas the Tank Engine, Bob the Builder and "Roarie the Racing Car" which is an Australian show. He also knows the Donkey Kong version of 'Dynamite' and even gets into the teasing with the song "Jakob and Rebekah Sitting in a tree...." which is a riot to hear him try to spell.

My favorite thing that Ethan says that melts my heart is this:

Me: Who's your best friend?
Ethan: You're my best friend!

And it isn't even scripted. I have been his best friend for a few weeks now and I'll take it while I can get it! If anyone else asks, he gets mad and yells NO! Right now, its safe to say that I have myself a little three year old who loves his mommy. Anyway, here are the pictures from Ethan at the zoo and then from his birthday. I love my Ethan!

I asked Ethan to smile. This is the closest I got...

Ethan REALLY wanted a blue rocketship cake. This is what he got. I have some work to do but I sure had fun making it! Not sure what happened to the photo...

Time to blow out the candles!

Jakob's Birthday

2011-05-22T19:31:00.000-06:00

I tried to think of some catchy title but my brain is still in bed for the day.

Jakob turned 10 this week. Double digits!! He likes to remind me that he has less than 10 years before he goes on his mission. Thanks for that. :) But I am so proud of the fact that it is in his plans!! He's getting so tall too. He's already to my shoulders! I knew he would be tall. I just wasn't ready for it so soon.

He played in a soccer tournament last week and his team won four games and tied for the fifth!! He even got to score a goal and he was happy about that. When Steve asked how he felt about scoring the goal, he shrugged his shoulders and said "I don't know." Modest at some moments and cocky at others.

So onto his birthday. Sadly, it was also the last day at his school before moving to a new one. But there was a special program there where the grandparents and 'special friends' could come. Since we have neither quite yet, he had Steve and I come. :) All of us had lunch on the 'lawn'(astro turf) and then the kids showed us around the school. We collected their things and headed off. I had done my birthday shopping with Ethan and Heidi while I waited for the event to start. I had way too much fun at the Borders bookstore but came out with an impressive lack of books. I could have been much worse.

As soon as we got home, I started the cheesecake. Steve had gone back to work for a while for a training so I had time to bake. He got done early and came home so we could start dinner. Jakob asked every 2.7 minutes if it was time to open gifts yet.

FINALLY it was time. He was thrilled with his gifts which I was happy about. His Australian football book was his favorite and he had it read on the way to the zoo on Saturday! Here are some photos from present opening time:

Then, on Saturday, we decided to go on a day trip for everyone's birthday (we have three within a week). Jakob wanted to go to the end of one of the train lines. Below is on the way to Lilydale.

And then Ethan wanted to go to the zoo. We were going to go to Healesville Sanctuary but we would have had to wait for 2 hours for a bus... so around we turned and went back to the Melbourne Zoo. I'm glad we got a membership because we'll have to go back to finish it!

I asked Jakob if he liked his birthday and he told me yes. I guess it was a success!!! Today he starts his new school so we will have more news to share later.

Birthday Time

2011-05-19T20:10:00.000-06:00

Ashley and I share a birthday which is lots of fun. Right now Ashley loves it. Hopefully she'll continue to be happy about that. :) We were in an apartment in a new city for our birthday so we kept things simple. Okay, so we went to the beach the day after as part of our birthday but that's kinda keeping it simple, right?

We also started the kids in school the day before her birthday so she got to stand up during the assembly for everyone to tell her Happy Birthday. She thought that was pretty cool. She wanted a strawberry cake but cake mixes are harder to come by and more expensive here than in the US so she had chocolate cake with sprinkles. LOTS of sprinkles. The boys helped!

Ashley got this koala holding a boomerang from her daddy. So cute!

Jakob had to lay claim on one of the gifts. Of course he picked the biggest one that ended up being a tea set. He said, "I KNEW I wanted to give that one to her!"

Time for the candles! I had to use the gas stove to light the candles. Probably not smart but I was careful. Then I got to walk very slowly over to the table with them. I deleted the picture Steve got of me chewing Gavin out for blowing out the candles...

Heidi really liked the cake!!

And now its beach time! The weather was awesome! It was the last time we got to go to the beach before it started getting too cold. Darn Autumn. This was at Bonbeach and its our favorite of the four we have visited.

On to MY cake. I love this cheesecake recipe. Best one EVER.

One nice thing about sharing a birthday is that there's enough cake to go around that you can keep yours to yourself as much as you want. Everyone wanted Ashley's chocolate cake and I was perfectly okay with that!!

My, How Life Changes Fast!

2011-03-23T07:41:00.000-06:00

Anyone that's followed us on facebook or emails will know that we have had a few changes in our life lately. The bookstore closed, Steve got a job in Australia, and our little one turned 1. With us moving to Australia, we wanted to make sure we visited all of our family because we wouldn't be back for at least a year and half (We're hoping to visit for Christmas of 2012).

Having had the bookstore, we became accustomed to having a crazy life. We had four kids playing sports, one in scouts, three in school and I was put in as 1st counselor in the Primary. When asked how we survived it, we just say "we just did". We even look back at life then and wonder how in the world we did it!!

When it was time to get ready to move, we took the things we learned from the insanity of the store and used to pack an entire house. My sister was a huge help and kept me sane when I was about to lose it! Because hey, I may have survived the year before but that didn't mean it was easy. Plus she was there through all of that too. :) During all of the moving we had to figure out WHEN we were leaving but also how to visit everyone before we left. Steve's parents kept telling us that we didn't need to worry about going down there but I was determined we would make it because we love to visit them and because they're family.

The first visit was to my family. We stayed a little longer so that I could go to the dentist to get a bridge fixed. THAT was fun. Here are some pictures from then:

It was a wonderful weekend. I was sad to see it end. My children had a very difficult time leaving and that made it even harder for me!! A week later I had to go back to get my bridge put in again and it was hard driving past the turn off for Oakley and not get to go. I did get to have frozen yogurt at a yummy place in Burley with my sister and her kids. It was awesome! And yummy - even if I only got to taste it with half a mouth... dumb numbing shots...

On the 28th of February I got a brand new nephew. I was so happy I got to be around when he was born. I was afraid I'd miss him! And the next morning was Heidi's birthday. She didn't get much of a birthday because of packing. But in the evening we stopped for a bit and let her have some of the amazing chocolate cake we'd gotten the night before for a birthday party. Here are photos:

What a happy baby!! She LOVED her cake. And we were all so tired that we forgot to give her the gift we got her until two days later. It was a little princess doll. I still need a picture of her cuddling up with her doll.

After all the packing on Friday and Saturday it was time for a nice break for Sunday. But alas, we kept right on going. We headed on down to St George and spent a wonderful day with Steve's family. We stopped first at the Red Rocks to get pictures. Then we headed over to Steve's sister's house to eat a yummy dinner. After visiting there for a couple of hours we gave hugs and went to Steve's parents' house. It was a fun time and we got pictures. Some are blurry. :(

We were sad we didn't get more time and it was hard to leave. I don't like seeing Steve tear up but I knew what he was going through. Its hard to say goodbye for long periods of time!! I can't wait until we come back to visit. 3 years and 11 months will go by fast and soooo slow at the same time. I'm determined to get as much out of this adventure as I can. But will sure be happy to go home when its all over!! Wow, just realized it really is 3 years and 11 months from today that our visa will be up...

For any of you that follow this blog but don't know about our travel blog, it is www.weistadventures.blogspot.com. That one has pictures and stories about our move to Australia and what we've experienced.

I love and miss all of you!! I will continue this blog for family type stuff like birthdays and holidays. This gives me a hobby and something to do since I have so much time on my hands now! For now....

Christmas 2010

2011-01-21T11:31:00.000-07:00

Now that it's nearing the end of January, its time to post for Christmas...

We got to have a long, relaxing vacation. We were going to leave for St. George on Monday the 20th but because of a coming storm we took off on Sunday. And we're glad we did! There was a stretch of road where we could barely see anything that night and it only got worse the next day. In fact, for the first couple of days we were there, there were flood warnings throughout St. George (there was a stretch of road that was closed by our house!) and there was a dam that looked like it might fail. Crazy!!!

We rented a house this time. So after waiting all day for our Odyssey to get its oil changed and recalled parts replaced, we finally went over to see it. And we were in awe. It was NICE. There were 4 bedrooms, a fireplace, granite countertops, a little putting green and on and on. Which is good because Steve got sick and we were stuck in the house for a few days. They didn't go crazy in the house like they would have in a hotel!!

We also took care of passport pictures for all of the kids, did some shopping and visited with all of Steve's family. It was so much fun! After a rather large mess of getting Christmas gifts (long, funny story that I can't share on here but if you ask, I'll tell you later) we had a fantastic Christmas. We borrowed a small tree from Steve's parents' neighbor and had our own little Christmas. I even made egg nog milkshakes. YUMMY!!

Christmas afternoon we took off and headed home. It was hard to leave because the kids were having so much fun with cousins they don't get to see very often but we needed to make the next leg of our trip. We got back around 10:30 that night and because the kids had slept in the car, we opened the gifts that couldn't fit in the car.

The next morning we went to church and then headed on to Idaho. The roads were not so pretty but we made it and were happy to be there. We opened the gifts from Grandpa and Grandma and cousins. The kids loved it! My brother's family also opened the gifts from us.

We enjoyed our time in Idaho. We played with cousins, enjoyed time with Grandma and Grandpa and just had quiet time. We visited both of my grandmas which was a lot of fun too. I woke up with a cold one day and I was very grateful to have time to just lay down.

New Year's Eve was great! The kids played Twister which was fun to watch. Grandpa spun the wheel and Grandma took pictures. Then we all sat in the hot tub. Around midnight we pulled out the fryer my dad got my mom and we enjoyed mozzarella sticks, french fries, and cheesecake. YUMMY!!! For Christmas we all got a industrial french fry cutter and we tried it out. It is AWESOME. My sister came over after her kids were asleep and we enjoyed talking until 3:30 in the morning.

Then it was time to go home. We got home and shoveled our way out so we could actually make it into the house. Now to see what 2011 brings us!!

Christmas Letter 2010

2010-12-20T12:21:00.002-07:00

Every year I look forward to sending out Christmas cards. And getting Christmas cards. Its nice get something in the mail you actually WANT. I vowed I would never do the email card because its just not the same as getting letters from the mailbox.

So life happened this year and we got to Christmastime without getting to send cards. So you get a blog letter and email letter if I have your email address. Enjoy!

_________________________________________________

Dear Friends and Family,

Another year come and gone and what a year it has been! Between running a bookstore, having a new little one in March, sports, bookstore events, birthdays, school, school events and everything in between its amazing we came out alive!! But here we are and we’re much stronger for it, as the entire experience didn’t kill us... yet!!

Steve recently switched jobs and is now doing consulting for NEC. He loves it and is in between projects right now, so kind of a vacation of sorts. In church he started the year teaching nursery where he enjoyed singing different words to the songs, making up stories, encouraged play-dough tasting and tried to get the kids to color with white crayons. Ethan was the only one who would flat out refuse to take the white crayon. “No, it’s broken!” The kids absolutely loved him, even when he kept giving them white crayons :) He now teaches Sunday School for the 12 and 13 year old class. He has done a great job of juggling being a Dad, Mom, and employee all at once, although sometimes he feels like he needs a straight jacket. He has managed to get kids from school, feed them all and keep our house in order-ish.

Jaclyn has been working at the store non-stop since last November - and loved every second of it. She has had a few breaks here and there where awesome neighbors or her sister would take over (THANKS CHARLOTTE!!!). She will be heartbroken the day the store closes (the 18th of this month) but will be happy to be home with her kids again! She is now serving as 1st counselor in the Primary and enjoys hearing the children sing and everything else that comes with it.

Jakob is still doing his ALL (Accelerated Learning Lab) classes for 4th grade and loves it. He’s enjoying the US and Utah History sections he’s learning. He is also going to be doing Knowledge Bowl in March. He did competitive soccer this year and loved it. He is a wonderful big brother and good helper!

Andy loves his 2nd grade class and does well in school. He’s sporting a big gap in his mouth with both front top teeth missing and just lost another one the other night. His exact words were “Jakob and I got bored so we pulled out my tooth.” Grrrreat! The tooth-fairy actually has written him several notes in response to Andy’s requests to her, where she told him that she couldn’t bring him the $2 that he asked for because she got beat up by some bullies who had stolen her lunch money and then for another one of his teeth, he asked for $15, to which the response was that the toothfairy would have had a broken back carrying that kind of money around.

Ashley is all girl. She loves pink and getting her hair done. She sings non-stop, even if she doesn’t know the right words. She wears her skirts (with shorts) to play soccer - where she scores at least one goal each game. She even scored seven goals when she was in Idaho visiting cousins! They needed another player and she was happy to help out. After the game they asked if she was going to be there the next week! She started Kindergarten this year and LOVES it. She sings all the songs she learns and everyone else ends up with them in our heads!!

Gavin eats up everything he can learn from Ashley when she gets home from school. He can spell his name forward and backward and count to 20 - and back down to zero. His dimples and bright, happy eyes help to make you forget the mischief he can get himself into! He really enjoys drawing on the walls...

Ethan is growing quickly day by day and amazes us with what he comes up with. We got Letter Factory for Gavin for his birthday and Ethan can tell you every letter and its sound! He knows what he wants and I often say he is Stubborn in human form. But he can also be very sweet and his sense of humor is awesome.

Adelheid (Heidi) Pearl Weist was born on March 1st of this year. She is a bundle of happiness and is an amazing little baby. She’s my “bookstore baby” because she has spent nearly every day of her 9 1/2 months in the store with me. She greets people as they come in and I have several people say “Where’s my Heidi?” when they come into the store. She had RSV when she was only 2 months old but by the second day in the hospital she was smiling at all the nurses and back to her cheery, happy self.

As the year ends, so does our bookstore. We loved every minute of it. We met lots of people, got to know new books and had all kinds of fun events. I got to use my Early Childhood degree by doing story times. I met amazing authors and shared our store with them. It was literally a dream come true. I’m sad its coming to an end. My kids, however, are not. On Sunday I sadly mentioned to my kids that it is our last week. My kids jumped up and down cheering “YAY! Mommy gets to stay home with us!” and continued talking about everything we’ll get to do with me at home.

We wish you the very best in the New Year and we hope that your dreams can come true! Have a Merry Christmas!

Love,

Steve, Jaclyn, Jakob, Andy, Ashley, Gavin, Ethan and Heidi

Stories

2010-11-29T20:43:00.001-07:00

I'm so far behind on this blog... But I wanted to put these stories in first. 2 years ago I posted Andy and Jakob's Halloween stories from Kindergarten. I wanted to do it again this year with Ashley's added to it. Here are Jakob's, Andy's, and then Ashley's Halloween stories. After that will be Ashley's Thanksgiving story about a turkey and 5 pilgrims.

Scary Pumpkin Patch

By Jakob

Once upon a time, a pumpkin named Jack went off to a camping trip. And he saw a bear. And it frightened him away.

He came back and he lived again in the pumpkin patch. All the pumpkins ran away in a storm that came. Then Jack was lonely. Then he found his friends.

When he found his friends, they went off on a bear trip. A storm came and they went on a boat. Then the storm got bigger and bigger and then their boat sunk. They found land and forever they went off looking for treasure.

They found lots of gold. They were filled with joy. And then they went off for another treasure hunt. And then they ended up in a forest. A bear found them. They ran away back into their patch.

The next day they explored again. They explored for giraffes. They found the biggest giraffe of them all.

The End.

A Scary Pumpkin Patch

By Andy

A scarecrow scares you away from the pumpkin patch. When you ask him to let you go, he lets you go. The patch is scary because there are scarecrows all around the patch. And the pumpkins are alive and they stare at you. But they are happy pumpkins because they like to be jack-o-lanterns. There are also happy flowers because they like to be flowers and like to be watered.

A Scary Pumpkin Patch

By Ashley

Once upon a time there was a scary pumpkin that was a costume. He was a boy. And there was a boy that was a pumpkin and he was wearing a pumpkin shirt. There was this little lady that he was in love with. The girl let him play at her house. And they went in to the house and played with some toys.

The girl and the boy went to the pumpkin patch. They were looking for a pumpkin. First they went into the haunted house and then they went on a haystack ride. They were riding for the pumpkins to see which ones they liked. They said stop and one person found a cool pumpkin. And the girl couldn’t find any so the boy went to go find one for her and the boy found a beautiful one for her.

There was big noise that said “WAHAHAHA!!!” The girl and boy were surprised. They ran out of the pumpkin patch super fast and went back to their grandmas house.

The End.

5 Pilgrims and a Turkey

By Ashley

Once upon a time there were 5 pilgrims and the turkey went over and talked to them. They were going to their house. They did stuff in there. And they played toys downstairs in their house. They went back upstairs and ate breakfast. The turkey and the pilgrims went in the living room and played the wii.

Then they went to play outside in the snow. They ate lunch and then they went back outside and played on their bikes. They went back inside and played the Wii again and then ate dinner.

October 2010 (as written in November)

2010-11-07T22:49:00.000-07:00

Well, I skipped October completely and here we are in November. Here is how our October went in a short, condensed version.

The first weekend of October we went to St George to see my mom and brother-in-law run in the St. George marathon and see Steve's parents. It was a great weekend! Except the whole stomach flu part but we won't get into that... My kids love going to St. George and sleeping in the living room. There are a few battles of who sleeps where but then they cuddle up and fall asleep.

Saturday we got up and watched part of Conference before heading over to the finish line. It was HOT. 95 degrees hot. My poor mom had had a cold for over a week but ran anyway. This was her 13th marathon. Ben did great and even beat his time!! He had to leave my mom near the beginning because she knew she wasn't doing well. 6 hours and 10 minutesish later she made it across the finish line. I was so proud of her! And relieved she made it in, unlike the thousands of people that weren't able to make it. Sad! We walked her back to her car and helped her get her shoes off and flip flops on and we headed on to Wendy's for lunch. Its tradition for us to eat there after their race. :) Steve had to run back to his parents to continue working on a project for his consulting job. We enjoyed lunch and then my mom and sister and her family all drove home (in 2 separate cars). All 8 hours after running for 6 hours....

We went shopping afterwards. My kids got to do a little service while we were out and about. There was a big nasty windstorm that came up and they all helped bring in all of the stuff from outside at Down East Basics. And they didn't stop until it was completely done. I was very proud of them. It was Jakob's idea and he did a great job. :) We went and enjoyed a quiet evening with Steve's mom while he and his dad went to the Priesthood Session. It was a very nice night. Oh, I forgot the part about shopping for school clothes (love the outlets so we waited till we were down there) with 6 kids... That was fun. But we got some great stuff!

Two weeks later we headed off to Idaho for a nice, relaxing weekend. We went on the potato harvester, pumpkin patch(where we picked out our own pumpkins!), Ashley played soccer with her cousins (and scored 7 goals), went to the school carnival, had a hot dog roast, played volleyball and relaxed. Know those times when you wish the world would just STOP for a little so you could breathe? I got one of those moments that Friday night. We were outside roasting hot dogs. It had been windy all day. For just a moment the wind stopped and it just felt still and quiet and the world was good.

Halloween was wonderful - except for the part where we couldn't find the perfect Alice dress for me. But that's okay because I was Mother Nature, a princess and an 80's girl at different times during the festivities. Which ranged from Jakob's school's carnival, a party at our friends' house and trick-or-treating. Our poor little Gavin had a fever for Halloween so we did his trick-or-treating for him. And sadly I didn't get any pictures for Halloween!!

Thus ends our October - it flew by quickly! Here are some random pictures from the months of October. I wish I had more in St. George but my poor cell phone camera just doesn't cut it sometimes:

The kids had so much fun in St. George they were just plain tired!! Ethan snuggled up with Grandpa and took a nice little nap.

Here are the kids helping pick up rocks by the shrubs so we could move them to the fire pit for a hot dog/marshmallow roast. They had a lot of fun - the youngest loved to dump the bucket in the wagon!

Here are pictures from the pumpkin patch we went to. The kids LOVED picking out pumpkins by themselves!!

The theme for the Oakley carnival was The 80's. I had fun dressing us all up. :)

Gavin made a 'Snowman'. He begged and asked and yelled and begged for us to go down and see. If you look closely you can see the crayon legs. I love the imagination of a 4 year old!

This was at the school carnival in Saratoga Springs. The kids are gearing up for a donut eating contest.

You would think this is Heidi's Halloween costume. You would be wrong. Heidi had a lovely blowout at the store and I had to find SOMETHING for her to wear until Steve could get to the store. I tried a handkerchief first but it wasn't quite modest. Then I found the cape. It ended up as a dress of sorts. She didn't care. She had a ribbon to chew on! Luckily Daddy saved her from her mom dressing her funny just in time for Kirby Heyborne to show up for his front room concert that night!

AHOY Matey! This is the one photo I have of my kids for Halloween this year. Sad. But he's sure cute!!

Changes

2010-09-10T21:24:00.000-06:00

Isn't it funny how you want blessings through all the messes you go through and then when you finally start getting the blessings, you're wondering when life is going to take a downturn? We have been extremely blessed lately and we almost don't know what to do with ourselves!

Steve has worked at Oracle for the last 6 years. He started with Siebel and they were bought by Oracle. And downhill went the raises - as in NO raises.

We have many reasons to be mad at them such as mess-ups on paychecks, forgetting to turn in time cards on time, no raises, being forced to work graveyards, etc. BUT we have many blessings from his job too. Job security, amazing benefits for medical, dental and vision, and most of all work experience. He has 6 years of experience doing CRM OnDemand that very few people have. He has become very valuable. He even got a really cool trophy for his hard work.

So on to greener pastures. Steve has been given the amazing opportunity to work for NEC as a consultant. He's THE CRM guy. He builds and supports the application for them. That means travel for the next few weeks and then he'll work from home. Best news? NO MORE GRAVEYARD SHIFT!!!

In other news, Gavin and Ashley both scored goals in their soccer game yesterday! Ashley has scored at least one goal in almost all of her games but this was Gavin's first and it was awesome. He ran with a whole group of kids following him and kicked it right in!

Jakob's doing well his soccer team and has done awesome in his ALL class(Accelerated Learning Lab). And he's almost as tall as me.

And Andy lost his front tooth!!! It was hanging by a thread (well, nerve) for a few days and I finally got it out.

Oh, and me? I'm barely sane but hey who needs sanity anyway?

Stuff

2010-08-03T00:59:00.002-06:00

Hello. Its been a while since I last blogged so I figured it was time. Lots has happened. Birthdays, races, Heidi learning to push herself all over in the walker, awesome book signings at the store, flooding neighborhoods (we got missed)... oh, and I was made 1st Counselor in the Primary! We also learned a little about prayer today.

Not to get into specifics, we misplaced a rather large chunk of money. I KNEW where I set it and it wasn't there later. We looked through the whole house, cleaned out the toy room (big mess which needed done anyway) and then prayed about finding it. I went down to tuck my 4 year old into bed and I found a $10 bill and a $5 bill in his bed. Here's the conversation that followed:

Me: Uh, where did this come from? I need to know where the rest is!
Son: .......... ok.

He pulled back his pillow and it was all there - except the bag it came in. That, of course, was under his blanket.

Son: Look Mom! The money bag!

He was so proud of himself for 'finding it.' Silly boy. Anyway, here are some fun pictures that have been taken recently. There are birthday pictures amongst them for all 7 of us (Heidi hasn't had a birthday yet so you got her newborn pictures earlier!) since I missed blogging about them all! The photos are in no particular order.

This picture is after trying to juggle forks, napkins, treat bags, my breakfast and a glass of juice while pushing an umbrella stroller on the grass. I hit a bump with the stroller, my pancake fell on Heidi's head, and I laughed hysterically. My family couldn't figure out why when I got over and sat by them until they saw Heidi - and pictures were taken... What did Heidi do? Nothing. She just took it. What a "sweetie-pie".

Heidi's first time with cereal! She did great and loved it. She ate most of it!

Don't ask because I don't want to know...

This is "Betty Girl", our newest family member that Andy got from his aunt, cousins, Grandpa and Grandma. She is much loved!

Ashley is my little princess! She got this photo taken during Pony Express Days at the park.

Heidi got 3rd in the baby contest! She was in the 3-6 month category - having turned 3 months old that day! She laughed and talked and cooed. It was so much fun!

Heidi's first time swimming! We went to St George in June and had a great time there. Heidi loved the water and I LOVED her new swimming suit!

We combined a few birthdays for this cake - which was YUMMY! Happy Birthday to everyone!

And now its time for bed. Good night!

Our Family Pictures

2010-06-21T14:03:00.002-06:00

This is the last post of our pictures. Then maybe I'll get to our birthday posts!!! These were done inside our store (except the first one that was done outside obviously). Each child got to pick where they wanted to get their individual pictures done. Ethan just plain didn't want to but apparently sitting on his daddy's shoulders worked because he was happy for those!! These are some of my favorites because it shows what our life has been about for the last year!!

My Mother's Day Gift

2010-06-08T14:11:00.000-06:00

This year for Mother's Day we got to do our family pictures. We started up in the mountains behind our house and then ended up at our bookstore. The store photos will be posted later. We did pictures of each child and then some of Steve and I. For some reason the ones of Steve and I being serious didn't turn out - can't imagine why... But the goofy ones of us did. Maybe the camera knows us a little too well!! Have I mentioned that Cherylann does an AMAZING job?! So here they are:

Heidi's Adventures

2010-05-18T11:29:00.000-06:00

We're behind on our blog. I admit it. I had way too much fun with all my pictures. So I'll fill in details.

April passed in a blur of bookstore, sports and more bookstore. We did have life in between though. On the 22nd Steve and I were going to be celebrating our 10 anniversary. Luckily we had already planned for us to go out of town the next Friday because life didn't happen like we'd planned!! Monday Heidi started coughing a little. Monday night in the middle of the night I woke up to feed Heidi and felt like I'd been hit by a truck. My neck was stiff, my throat hurt and I felt AWFUL. I fought that for 2 days among tylenol and motrin. Wednesday night (21st) we took Heidi to the doctor because her cough was getting worse. Then we went to the instacare for me and found out I had strep. WONDERFUL.

So Thursday I woke up and told Steve Happy Anniversary and we got on with life - amid cold sores, strep, and a very sad Heidi. We had a book signing that evening with David Farland. It was great! He's a great, very nice guy and gave Steve some great tips for writing and publishing. I just kinda floated through the whole thing. My sister was keeping an eye on Heidi and was a little worried about her. When we got everything cleaned up from the signing we went home and I found out she had a fever! So I rushed her to the hospital with a hug for Steve as I ran out the door.

We had to rush to the doctor in Provo to get there in time. They decided to send her to the hospital to get her suctioned out. While we were there we decided to keep her there on oxygen. So the next morning Steve came and gave her a blessing and picked up the car(Char brought him as we have only one car...). The blessing made all the difference in the world. She was a whole different little girl. Her coloring came back and she no longer needed oxygen. She smiled at all the nurses (except during the suctioning but who wants a tube shoved up their nose and down their throat?). We ended up staying till Sunday just to make sure. By Wednesday she was doing awesome and by her 2 month appointment on May 3rd she was completely better! Even her TWO ear infections were gone. Here are a few pictures from the hospital:

And what was Steve doing through all this? Lets see, running a store(with help from Charlotte), getting kids to and from school and practice - and that was Friday. Saturday he had to get Jakob to a soccer game, and himself to the store. I have AMAZING neighbors that were very sweet and took my kids while he was at the store. Jakob went with a friend to soccer and was well taken care of. I had other neighbors that took over the store and the street fair which Steve ran between. Then there was another signing that night. Then the next day he took the kids to Stake Conference and let me know what the changes were for the stake (we split). By that time he was able to come and get us and take us home. While I laid back and rested and made sure Heidi was taken care of, he took care of everything else!!

I'm so thankful for an amazing sister, husband and neighbors that were able to help out. And everyone else that was praying for her. She was only 7 weeks old and it was so scary but she was well watched over and recovered in an amazing amount of time. I even had a sister that called before she got on her cruise so she could see how things were!! I felt that we were well loved and well taken care of.

And how did we end up celebrating our 10th anniversary? We went to Burley ID and stayed at a Marriott that my mom and dad got us for our anni-birthday(we have birthdays and our anniversary all close together). Then we got our beef and zoomed home to get it in the freezer. It was wonderful - and my kids had a great time with their cousin while we were gone!

Heidi's Blessing Photos

2010-05-10T00:15:00.000-06:00

Heidi was blessed on April 11th, 2010. Due to many different things only Steve and Grandpa Hardy made it into the circle but it was still a wonderful blessing. We had a yummy lunch of baked potatoes, salad, cake and all the toppings. It was great!! Thanks to everyone that came and supported us, and to those that couldn't but wanted to. :)

We were finally able to get her blessing pictures done today - almost a month later but I'm THRILLED with how they turned out!! It amazes me how sweet my little Adelheid Pearl is and how blessed we are to have her in our lives.

More Photos!

2010-05-08T23:11:00.000-06:00

Here are pictures of Ashley, Gavin and Ethan from the same day we did Heidi's. They turned out super cute! Next time I post will be photos of our family that we're getting done. I cant wait to see them - when we've actually done them!! Although maybe I should post something about Ashley's and my birthday...

2010-05-04T00:55:00.000-06:00

Isn't she cute?! These are just a few of the photos that were done.

Photo Shoot

2010-03-25T22:48:00.000-06:00

My friend Cherylann does amazing photography. Today she came to our house and did a photo shoot for Heidi's newborns. She also did photos of the other three younger ones as they didn't get school photos. She sent me a sample today and said the rest are coming next week. So here they are! In particular order since blogger wouldn't let me put them in order...

Girls Vs. Boys

2010-03-22T22:17:00.000-06:00

As Ashley has gotten older I've noticed small differences between girls and boys. Well, besides the rather obvious ones. But here are some I've had to laugh at.

If Steve and I kiss when the boys are around, the automatic reaction is 'EW GROSS!!!' and they cover their eyes. On Sunday Ashley was going to show me a picture she colored at nursery. Steve told her "you need to wait, I'm going to kiss Mommy"(he was joking). What does she do? She backed up so she could watch...

Boys watch the movies and quote all the funny or gross parts of a show. Ashley watched Little Mermaid the other day. She would let me know what was happening throughout the movie. After it got done, she came running in "Mommy! She got her voice back and then they got MARRIED!!!" She was giddy. And when she's happy those little eyes sparkle!

The boys are very much in love with their new little sister. They fight over who gets to hold her but are just as happy walking away and going about their business. Every night Ashley prays that Heidi will get big and grow teeth and eat big food and learn to walk. She wants her little sister to play with her!

I have loved my boys and girls and have enjoyed watching them grow up into their own little people. It just makes me more excited to see who these little people will grow to be!!

A Rather Telling Story...

2010-03-14T13:41:00.000-06:00

Jakob was supposed to read a story on different points of view - or something to that effect. The day he was writing went along like any others. And this is the story he came up with (it was typewritten and this is the exact spelling and font sizes he used...):

_________________________________________

Mommy sense we got home from school can I have some
banana balls? No. Monkey I already told you that.
But why not? I’m really hungry! No.

Can I play the wii? No! Please can I?
Stop asking for things!!! But I’m bored.

Noooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

can I play on the computer ? No! How about now?

No! Please? Stop asking!

__________________________________

Now I must say, I don't say no NEARLY that often but to an 8 year old apparently this is how his day goes. And to justify myself I DID let him have the "banana balls" which were actually cheese balls. I might have said no to the other things. ;)

Some Updates and Our Little Heidi

2010-03-04T16:21:00.002-07:00

We haven't posted since we got the entertainment center (except for the vote for us thing that didn't work right...) so here is the last 3 months in review(quickly) before we move on to what everyone wants to see - our cute little girl!

December passed in a blur. We were home or the store where we had some great business. It was fun having everyone come in for the first time to see our store.

Christmas was FUN!!! We enjoyed our time in Idaho with siblings and cousins. Steve and I got to go to the temple the next morning and enjoyed some yummy Thai food while we were in Twin Falls. YUMMY.

For New Years we went to a party at our neighbor's house and had a blast. We played games and ate lots of good food. They let all the kids bang on pans at midnight and it was lots of fun!

In January we were busy getting things ready for an author signing. We got to have Brandon Sanderson come to our store. We had our store packed to capacity!! It was amazing. He is my favorite author so just having him there was great. The publicity for our store was great. :) We were even in the newspaper a few days before!! We sold out of some of his books and its fun to tell people the ones we still have were signed. He's planning to come back and we can't wait!!

In February we started getting ready for the next event. We had 7 authors come in and sign their books. It was fun. While we didn't have as many people show up, it was still an awesome turn out and it was fun to meet all the authors!

Valentine's Day was nice. We went to Cafe El Lago and had a yummy dinner. We'd also gone to a church dinner/ dance a couple weeks before. They did an AMAZING job with it!!

Oh I missed another thing. I was called for the Women's coach for basketball. 23 women signed up. 12 - 14 show up every time. How do I make that many women feel they had fair play and make sure we have fun? Good question. But I tried my hardest. We lost some, won a couple, had a battle or two but its been fun.

So on we move to the main event. Anyone that's been around me for the last oh, 9 months, you know how much I was looking forward to this little girl!!

March 1st I got the call at 5:15 to go into the hospital. I called my sister and she came over to stay with the kids. Jakob was at his friend's house for the night (which he loved but said he didn't fall asleep until 2 AM). We got to the hospital at 6:20 but got set up with pitocin at 7:35.

They slowly moved the pitocin up every half hour and it didn't get hard until probably around 10 or 11. By that time I wasn't having fun anymore. Steve was entertaining me with shows on YouTube and asking me questions about orders for the store. I finally gave in and got the epidural.

It took FOREVER to have it kick in. At about 12:00, I was at 4 and then jumped to a 4 1/2 in 15 minutes. The epidural finally kicked in just as they said I was ready to have the baby. It took more time to track down the doctor than it did for me to go from a 4 to a 10!! 1 1/2 pushes later, Heidi was born.

I thought she looked like Ethan at first but then noticed Ashley's chin. Now I think she just looks like herself... Everything went SO well and I felt better after this delivery than any of my other 5!! It was great from beginning to end (except for the whole epidural not working at first).

So Adelheid (Heidi) Pearl Weist was born at 1:14(Steve guessed 1:38) PM. She was 7 lb 4 oz and 18 1/2 inches long. She's my smallest and has been a joy. My kids love her. Ethan even says her name and loves to touch - which means Mom has to be right by her!!

So here are pictures of my little girl!

Love Your Local Business

2010-01-28T13:30:00.001-07:00

I planned on having something much more exciting for my next blog(I don't even have Christmas on here!!) but I decided this is pretty cool itself.

Intuit that does Turbo Tax, etc has a contest for local businesses where people can comment and vote on the businesses they love. Then they give out grants to the winners.

I just wanted to give anyone the opportunity to vote for us if you love us. If not, I guess that's fine too. :) Just click on the ad, type in the name of our store and the city(Eagle Mountain, UT) and vote.

Thanks! Next post will be exciting. I promise!

Ok, so I learned that that link doesn't work... so try this one instead:

http://lovealocalbusiness.intuit.com/?business_id=f0c47c6b91350463081b4da6dce570bc&vtid=email_conf_sbo

Merry Christmas to Us!!

2009-12-07T15:30:00.000-07:00

Here's an update to our entertainment center dilemma. We were going to look at Knights Furniture because we have gotten great deals there before but decided to check elsewhere first. One of our friends mentioned freecycle.org which I hadn't even thought of! They didn't have anything but it made me think to check KSL.com classifieds. Right there as the first post there was a GORGEOUS entertainment center. It was everything I'd wanted and it was only $150!!! I thought for sure it had to be gone but decided to call them in case - after taking a picture of the picture and texting it to Steve to see what he thought.

We called and it was available!! I was ecstatic. Steve borrowed our pickup we're sharing from my sister and went to Riverton to pick it up. I was stranded at the store for an extra hour but I didn't care because we got a GREAT deal!!!

So here is our Christmas present to ourselves. Woohoo!!!

Jakob's Story

2009-12-03T22:10:00.000-07:00

Jakob had to write story for school. He had to come up with a disguise for a turkey this is what he came up with (with his spelling):

Once upon a time Morris foun out that he was about to get killed! So he thout of a way to get away from them. Finaly he thout that he could steel a football players jersy. So that is just what he did.

So a few days later he found out that ther was a football game that thanskgiveing. So that thanksgiving he went to the game and something was weird. Nobody was trying to kill him for diner. Everybody like him. They were calling him things like Max Hall. So Morris decided to change his name to Max Hall. When the game started Max Hall was all over the place! he had made 50 touchdowns in the 1/4! "he's on fire"! said the anouncer. "that is a new record for Max Hall.! Wait He set a world record!", said the other anouncer. But then he got 100 touchdowns in the 2/4. So Max Hall decided that he liked being a football player so he stayed one.

The End.

Hmmm... a little football anyone? Jakob decided he loves football recently. I'm not sure I'm ready for him to play football but the kid's got an arm like you wouldn't believe so I guess I may have to deal with it!! Meanwhile I'll just enjoy his imagination!!!

What We Want For Christmas

2009-11-29T20:51:00.000-07:00

Steve and I have debated for a few years about an entertainment center. Ours was okay so we never felt the need to get a new one... Until tonight! We needed to move it over a little so we could fit the exercise bike next to it so we could put the tree where we wanted it. Well, it decided to take matters into its own hands and let us know what we wanted/needed for Christmas. It slid and fell and broke! The amazing thing was that the tv stayed on and none of the speakers fell off. I'm just thankful that the kids were out of the way! They all watched it fall. I felt like we were on America's Funniest Home Videos as we watched it fall!! So now its time to decide what kind. :)

Here are a couple of pictures. The first was a few months ago. Nice boxes of books, eh? So glad to have them out of our house in the store!!! The next was right after it fell and the last is from the side where you can see the lovely broken particle board underneath.

Silly Boy

2009-11-15T18:35:00.003-07:00

So Ethan decided to be big today. Steve had to be gone for church today so I was there with all five kids and had to teach Relief Society!! I tried to figure out what to do with Ethan and remembered he was only a week away from going to nursery. I decided to see if it was okay for him to go and they said we could try. I walked in and set him down - and he never looked back!! He went from the fridge to the toys and back several times and didn't look my way once! I backed toward the door and he didn't budge. He glanced at me for a split second but otherwise ignored me. So out I went. I peeked a few times before going to Relief Society and then went to teach - and hoped he would be fine!!

I rushed out of the room after the lesson was over to get Ethan. Did he cry during nursery? They told me the first time he cried was when I came to get him because he finally realized I was gone!! Now if only he'll do that for the rest of his nursery time.... Wish us luck!

Now to explain the picture below. If you ignore the mess behind him (that's my next stop for cleaning), you'll notice he's screaming holding an iron. Don't worry, it wasn't plugged in - since that happens rarely at our house. ;) But he sure wanted to take it out of the office and fought with the cord that was stuck for a good three minutes before we could get it from him. That scream was bad enough - it was even worse when Steve managed to get it away. My silly boy. :)

A Day of Firsts

2009-11-11T23:32:00.003-07:00

Saturday we had a busy day doing errands. But there was something I KNEW we needed to do that night before bedtime. Andy's hair was just getting way too long so I decided it was haircut day. Ashley was a little bummed she wasn't part of it. So while Steve went and stained the countertop at the store, I gave them all haircuts. Ethan got his first real haircut! Man, he did NOT like the buzzer!! He screamed, trying to climb over my leg so he could get away from it. But off went all the cute little curly locks and out came my not-so-little boy!! I wish I could have gotten a picture Steve's reaction. He wasn't very happy that I got rid of Ethan's curls. Here area few of the cute before and afters. I saved the curls but sadly the before didn't get much of them!

The next big thing we had that day was that Andy showed us he is really a shark! He was showing me something in his mouth and I made him open wider. I was quite surprised to find TWO teeth coming in back behind his front bottom teeth!! One was barely loose and the other wasn't at all. Then there was the sequin we found stuck between the two teeth but that's a different story. Anyway, here's a picture. It doesn't show up great but if you look hard you'll see the teeth coming in! One is still barely loose and if you wiggle it, it bumps into the one behind it... So I think we'll be off to the dentist. The funny thing is, I had kept reading blogs about different kids having their first tooth out and wondered when Andy's first would fall out. He had had one that was loose for a long time(although its actually not anymore!). Then I go and find out he has TWO growing in! I guess he decided to do it the unconventional way!

Halloween

2009-11-08T14:01:00.005-07:00

I LOVE Halloween. Its my favorite to decorate for and I'm excited to get out my sewing stuff and sew costumes - even if they also stress me out. :) But they always turn out better than I'd hoped which is great.

The first pictures are the decorating of the pumpkins - and I realized I have pictures of the finished products! Ashley painted her ENTIRE pumpkin so we had to wait a couple hours for it to completely dry before we could take it outside. They all had a blast. I gave Ethan a marker for his. :)

Steve was Scottish holding Ethan who was Squirt from Finding Nemo. The picture is a little dark but hopefully you can see his cuteness. Andy was Spiderman. Ashley was the red Fairy(Rosetta?) from Tinker Bell. That was one costume I fought with but LOVE the turn out! So does Ashley since she wears it all the time - I did get to wash it yesterday. :) Gavin was Diego and he was PERFECT for it. He loved being Diego and was surprised he didn't care that his blue shirt was an inside out shirt because usually he doesn't like that!! Oh and I was a Gothic Pregnant Mommy. Like my nose and lip ring? My kids didn't!! They were happy when I took them off. Jakob was a knight. His costume was a pain - which is funny since I thought it would be easy!! Doesn't work when the neck somehow gets sewn together!! It was fine when it was inside out, but as soon as I turned it the right way it was sewn together. So I plucked it all apart and did it MY way and it turned out awesome! If I do say so myself. :)

My little Girl

2009-10-23T09:45:00.003-06:00

We went to get our 2nd and "real" ultrasound on Wednesday. Poor Steve had to stay in the car with the kids because all kids have been banned from the office thanks to H1N1. The technician said its made a HUGE difference and there has been a lot less sickness. I'm glad for that but sad Steve had to miss Heidi and her gymnastics.

Everything was great. She decided that she was going to roll up into a ball so her feet were clear above her head!!! It was hilarious. She refused to move for a while so it was hard to get a few things like a picture of the umbilical cord but it was sure funny to see her playing peek a boo. She even covered her face with her hands a few times!!

They still have her due date as the 8th of March which isn't quite as good as February 20th but whatever works. I supposed I can wait a couple extra weeks until she's born... HAHAHA. We'll see how I feel then.

Anyway, here's a picture of the ultrasound. I LOVE the picture of the toes!! And just so you know, you want to scan an ultrasound in grayscale and not black & white... works better.

Update

2009-10-13T13:38:00.002-06:00

Just so you know before grabbing the torch and pitchforks, Andy just has a cold. My other kids had one - he decided to get a fever. We checked him out at the doctor today and he has no strep and no flu. We wouldn't have taken him out if he'd had his fever at the time. So don't hurt me. :)

The Money Flu

2009-10-12T23:24:00.003-06:00

Want to know how to get rid of the flu? According to Andy its by winning money... here's how he came to his conclusion.

Last night (Sunday) after the farewell party for the Kelley's, Andy decided to have a fever. And not just a small one. 102 was where I finally just stopped. My kids are great at wearing themselves completely out, end up with a fever and headache and by morning they're up and ready to go. I was HOPING that's what it was.

Nope. 8:00 rolled around and poor Andy still had a fever. This time a little higher. He still wasn't very hungry but ate okay. We kept him home from school like good parents - or so we thought. We got a phone call from the school informing us that Andy had sold the most items in the whole school for Sally Foster!!! So they asked if we would be willing to run him to the school for a 30 second chance in the money machine. He managed to catch $13 but the fundraiser lady gave him $20!! He felt MUCH better after that. We told him it was just enough to get Lego Batman if he wanted it - or he could decide on something else.

The kids went down for a nap with Steve and I went to pick up Jakob. Andy woke up happy, alert and feeling better. So off we went to Jakob's school's carnival. Jakob had a BLAST with his friends and we all enjoyed ourselves. Andy had no appetite but the others ate their fair share of pizza. They played with hula hoops. Here are a few pictures.

I wish I could figure out how you get video on here because I have an awesome one of Gavin doing his hula and a nice little dance in between. They had a blast.

We even tried our hand at the auction. We had a gift certificate for our store that sold for $20 which is cool. I did get a desk and chair set but someone came in after the auction was supposed to be done and outbid me - which is what they saw when they came to "close it." Oh well. Why? Because I got what I REALLY wanted.

With 15 minutes left to go in the auction I sat right by the baby basket I wanted. The principal wanted it for his daughter's new baby and a few others were interested in it. I played the sympathy card and it helped that my round belly is rather noticeable. So no one bid after I did and I got it. After wondering if the basket was worth it we took it apart. We totally got our money's worth and so much more!!! Heidi's going to be in good shape with supplies when she's born - although I'm thinking one package of diapers may not cut it. ;) But I was thrilled.

Afterwards we let Andy get Lego Batman. In the car he declared "I think this was a Money Flu because as soon as I got money I felt much better!!!" What a cute boy I have! Unfortunately by the time we got home and were ready for bed, he was starting to shiver and was slightly warm. Poor kid. Off to bed he went after a happy day in the life of Andy. So I apologize to everyone we were around. We wouldn't have brought him out and about if he hadn't been doing better!

The Results are In...

2009-10-05T23:22:00.003-06:00

So here is where I would put the cute little ultrasound picture to help us show what we're having - except that our scanner has gone on strike and won't work...

The answer is: 64% of you were right! We're having a girl.... Or at least we about 95% positive we are. That little girl wanted to be very modest and we could only get glimpses. But there were certain parts that were definitely missing. The technician even tried tickling her with the ultrasound tool to get her to move around. She sure kicked a lot but refused to show her immodesty. Such a good girl. :)

We also found out that we have to wait an extra two weeks for Heidi Pearl to grace us with her presence!! She is due on March 8th now which is fine because our birthdays in our family will be March, April, May, and July. :)

We will go in again on the 21st to check all the vitals and measurements etc since 18 weeks is a little too early to look closely at her heart chambers, etc. I'm excited to see her again in two weeks. :)

Good job all 64% of you that voted! Only Andy was a little sad to not get a brother but otherwise everyone was very excited. Ashley's SOOOOO excited to get a sister! And I can't wait to redecorate the nursery. ;)

POLL TIME!!!

2009-09-30T09:56:00.002-06:00

Well its that time in, uh, life again! We get to have an ultrasound done on Monday the 5th so I decided it was time to start a poll. Boy or girl? Not sure if I have a prize. I'll think about that part. Now, remember that even though you know what I WANT, make sure you vote for what YOU think we'll have. :) Due date is February 20th.

In unrelated news, we finally have a store for our store. And it should be open by the end of October... we hope. :) Its been a long time in coming but we're very excited and can't wait to get started!! Website is www.dragonsandfairytales.com

Kids are doing awesome. Life is good. Its rainy outside... I'm done. Don't forget to vote!!!

The Wedding Cake (and Wedding)

2009-09-10T11:40:00.009-06:00

My sister got married this last weekend and we wanted to make it a nice celebration for her. Everyone pitched in and did the different preparations. Invitations, flowers, decorating, etc. My job? The cake - which is why I have so many pictures of it. :) I had lots of help and with my sisters and Mom we ended up making a great cake!!! Here are some pictures of both the cake and the wedding.

I made the lilies a few days before out of gum paste. So first a picture of those:

I was going to try the fondant for the two styrofoam layers at home before leaving for Idaho but it was rough because there was too much icing. So off it went and I waited till Idaho. The first layer I had everyone helping me roll out to get the right size before putting it on the cake. Kristen helped me smooth that part out! With help from Mom and Jill too. :)

The second layer I did myself and got the rolling out down better and smoothed it a little easier. With critiques coming at me from family members I got that one smoothed out. It was all in good fun and everything turned out great!!

Then on to the last layer which was the actual cake. I've decided real cakes are SO much easier to put fondant on than styrofoam is! It just plopped right one and smoothed out perfectly.

Next came the stacking and the ribbons. All of us made sure it was all even, and then it was time for the flowers:

And here is the finished product:

The ring ceremony was beautiful and my dad did a GREAT job with his speech and the ceremony part. One that will never be forgotten - by anyone. ;) Jeff and Rachelle looked so happy and Zoe and Emily were adorable in their white dresses with their flower baskets!!

The weather was perfect, the food was perfect, the decorations were perfect. It was great!! Here are some of the pictures from the wedding. Sorry, they're a little smaller than the rest. They didn't want to get bigger for some reason. It was a great day and I'm so happy we got to share it with Rachelle and Jeff. Congrats! We love you guys!!

My Soccer Girl

2009-08-28T19:21:00.004-06:00

We've hoped since last year when Ashley started dribbling the ball between her feet, that she'd be good. She didn't get it from me! Considering I've never played before. ;)

Last week she had a rough time. She didn't like being pushed around but held her own. This week was a different story. Daddy had a little pep talk with her and told her to go for the ball and run. She did!!

We missed her FIRST goal for various reasons. The other team was great at scoring goals in our goal in between. her teammates made several goals. With a few minutes left to go in the game, Ashley decided to take over. One time down the field she got within a few feet of the goal when the other team got it from her and scored - in our goal. The next time down the field she was about to make a goal when a member of the other team decided to pick it up... Whoops!! She decided to make up for it and took off down the field and kicked it in! So the last time down the field she was running after her teammate who was about to score, he missed a kick, she took over and scored. So yep, THREE goals for my little girl!! She just can't seem to stop beating the boys. ;) That's my girl!!

Oh and just and FYI, this picture is from last week. I wanted to get a picture of her adorable pigtails with the orange and blue ponytail holders but she took them out too fast!! We decided they are her good luck charms!!! She also had a super cute orange skirt too. Quite the clash. ;)

Conversations with 3 year olds

2009-08-19T18:35:00.003-06:00

Sometimes I forget how much Gavin knows. He started talking early and his first sentence at 15 months was "don't do dat!" Just as clear as can be.

So today I was trying to get Gavin to eat his spaghetti. He wants a ding dong for his dessert and knows there's two left. I told him he needed to eat fast or someone would eat them. He thought for a second and asked if Jakob and Andy were going to eat them. I told him maybe a monkey would eat them.

He thought again for a second and started eating pretty fast.

G: Mommy, there are no monkeys in the house.

M: They could come through the front door.

G: Monkeys only eat bananas.

M: Well what if they want a Ding Dong?

G: They only like bananas!!

M: Well then maybe a cow.

G: Cows only eat leaves. No giraffes do.

M: How do you know giraffes eat leaves?

G: I don't know. Cows say MOOOOO. Mommy say Moo(he wanted me to put food in his mouth).

A few minutes later he decided he better hurry and eat so that the monkeys won't come. Guess it WAS the monkeys!!

Lightning Fears and Ear Infections

2009-08-13T21:30:00.004-06:00

We've had interesting times in our home lately. Well, with 5 kids and one on the way that's to be expected. Add 3 kids in soccer and getting a bookstore started up, we're quite busy! But that's not what I'm talking about.

Jakob had a HUGE fear of lightning storms for a while. He watched the weather like a hawk and if there was even a slightly dark cloud he would get very anxious. A few Sundays ago I thought he would have a meltdown because of the thunder booming.

We had to talk to him many times and finally starting showing him that while yes, lightning is dangerous, you don't HAVE to be afraid of storms! That started as we were driving to Ikea last week. The weather was TERRIBLE and he was looking at all the lightning. We got out of the car and I had him inhale the wonderful smells that lightning and rain bring. He LOVED IT.

So then comes today. He had a scrimmage for his Arsenal soccer team and it was rainy. Lightning was everywhere and he sat there being goalie just as calm as could be. HE learned to enjoy the lightning. I had to keep telling myself that I couldn't freak out for his sake. It worked for both of us!! The lightning never got close but they did get dumped on. Jakob was great and even stopped a goal with his head!! So I was very proud of my son and his overcoming of his fear. If only I could do the same with heights and spiders...

On to the ear infections. We have gone swimming a lot lately and forgot Ashley needed ear plugs with her tubes. WAY TO GO MOM AND DAD!! The first time we went, she complained about her ear and after that there was no problem. Then we went to the lake last week. I didn't expect her to go under so I didn't worry... I forgot that I have 5 little fish.

A couple days later her ears started draining. I was thrilled because I knew the tubes were doing their job and all was great - until Sunday in St. George when I noticed it wasn't so... fresh. BLECH. So on our way home(We had an AWESOME time in St George by the way!!!), we took her to the doctor and got drops and medicine.

Her ears are finally doing really well after 4 days of drops and medication. One awesome thing came from all this. My little 4 year old can count to 60!!! And I have to stop her a lot of times because she keeps on going. Its because she had to let the drops soak in for 60 seconds so I had her count. For the first few times she missed all the 4's. She'd miss 15 and then 24, 34, and so on. I noticed last night she was counting perfectly all the way!! Probably not the most ideal way to teach your child to count but it worked for her!!

New Table!!

2009-08-05T23:40:00.003-06:00

Today we decided to go to Ikea (sorry Katy, I know you wanted to go!) to check out the bookshelves for good ones for our store. We found some awesome ones and can't wait to get them.

We found a few really nice tables and fell in love with one. $599 wasn't too bad for the size but we knew we couldn't do that for now.

We were down next to the checkout and decided to check out the clearance items - and there was our table!! It was bein

g discontinued so we got it for WAY cheap and we were THRILLED. After maneuvering things around in the car Steve managed to get the whole thing(gotta love Ikea and their do-it-yourselfness) in!!

We got the whole thing put together and it is SO NICE... Here is the table we had before. Don't mind the knife on the table. The kids were in bed and we had to use the knife to open the box...

And here is our new table. the picture doesn't do it justice. Its a good 8 feet long and will be 10 if we put the leaf in it!!! The whole china cabinet and cupboards we were thinking of doing may have to change a little but its so worth it!! Now we just have to work on the folding and patio chairs we're using...

Catch Up Part 2

2009-07-27T23:38:00.002-06:00

My blogger was being lame so I had to save it the way it was. Its probably better that way so its not quite a novel this way!!

July has passed quickly. After Gavin's birthday we had two more parties that week. One for our neighbor girl and then another one the next Saturday for Gavin and two little neighbors. It was fun! We had pinatas and cupcakes and all kinds of fun. It was rainy at first but decided to become blazing hot at the end. I preferred the cloudy!! The kids didn't care because they had good food, a playground and other kids to play with!!

The next weekend was Andy's birthday along with a million other things. It was all fun though. We did some errands and then took the kids swimming. Jakob had another party to go to at the Legacy Center so we took our family to celebrate Andy's at the same thing. It was a BLAST. Ashley was swimming every, Jakob was doing rock wall climbing before swimming, Andy was just playing and Gavin only wanted to slide. He cried if we did anything else. And Ethan? I couldn't get the kid out of the water!! He didn't care if he went under, he just wanted to keep playing. There is a part in the pool that is only 5 inches deep and I had to stay there with him so he could crawl around without getting TOO much water in his face. He LOVED it!!

We went from that to our neighbors(same neighbors as we did for Gavin's) and had a party for their two little boys. Andy didn't care if it was for someone else - he just got to play!! We had yummy food, good friends and warm weather. Nothing better!! We got home late because we stopped by Smiths Marketplace to get groceries and some presents for Andy. Andy did groceries with Dad and Ethan while I took the others to pick out gifts.

The next day we had a party for Andy and a family friend. We had burgers, hot dogs, salad. and chips. YUMMY!!!! I even made a black forest cake and a Superman cake for the party.

I wish I had pictures but I have to get them off my phone - once I find them. :) Right now I think its about bedtime!!!

Playing Catch Up

2009-07-27T23:17:00.004-06:00

I am SO far behind. I'm not really going to try and fit everything in but I'll at least get the big stuff. We missed a few birthdays in there I'm sure...

We went to Stadium of Fire for the 4th of July. We all had lots of fun. We got to go to Olive Garden before and stuffed ourselves. We walked right in, were seated, ordered and served withn 1/2 hour!! It was crazy. The food was EXCELLENT. I was so full I still can't believe I managed to finish a cheesecake slice... but hey, it was cheesecake!

We got to the stadium really early and found great parking. We played some of the games and got a bunch of free stuff. It was fun. I even got to see the Jonas Brothers from 20 feet away. I heard loud shrieking from all the girls in the stadium coming closer so I peeked between two mobile homes under the stage and there they were!! Jealous?! just kidding. Really, I went for my kids...

The kids had a blast. Ashley got into the concert and sang t

o every song. She had fun standing on Daddy's lap and dancing the whole time. Jakob and Andy had fun but refused to dance or sing. Gavin sang along to some of the songs but held on tight for the fireworks. And Ethan slept through the whole thing. Until the fireworks which he LOVED. He kept pointing and giggling. Jakob decided that maybe it was okay if we go again next year... we'll see.

The next day was Gavin's birthday and he was proud to turn 3!! He got bubbles from "the girls"(i.e. the nursery leaders) after church and he didn't want to open his presents from us because he loved his bubbles so much!! We went to a neighbors house and had excellent food and then Gavin got to blow out his candles on his mickey mouse cake.

Revenge of The Bumblebee

2009-07-06T00:04:00.003-06:00

The other day we were putting together puzzles. One of them was Hello Kitty, the other was Transformers. Bumblebee to be exact. So of course I start singing I'm Bringing Home a Baby Bumblebee. The kids are giggling and we have a great finale.

So the next night we were playing outside and the kids were swimming. When we finished dumping the water out I asked Jakob to stack the buckets and head in the house. Next thing I know, he's SCREAMING hysterically and running around slapping his neck. After finally getting him to stop running around, I found the sting on his neck. It was a pretty good size. I sent him in with Steve who put meat tenderizer on it. I walked over to the garage. There, staggering around was a very large BUMBLEBEE!!! My poor little boy. So I lightly swatted it to kill it but not smush it. At least we know now that Jakob's not allergic to bee stings!!

Ethan's First Step

2009-06-11T11:05:00.003-06:00

Steve and I have worked with Ethan to learn to walk. Not constantly. We don't want him growing up TOO fast. But all he has done for us is leap at us. And giggling. LOTS of giggling. There's nothing better than hearing your little one giggle hysterically. So I decided to let him do his own thing - as I've had to do with about everything for him. Stubborn little boy!!!

So then yesterday I walked into the living room and looked over as he was la

ughing at Gavin and took a step. He wobbled for a second and looked at me very proud of himself. He was about to take another one but got too excited and sat down. Among all the giggling and laughing and feeling proud of himself, we couldn't get him to do it again. He did have fun following after Gavin for the rest of the day - crawling.

Then this morning I was washing dishes and thanks to our high counter, I missed seeing him take three steps to Jakob. I thought the "I'll do it myself" phase would wait another year... or at least a few months!

This picture has nothing to do with the post. I just thought it was really cute. I think he's worn himself out..

Way Behind!!

2009-06-06T00:00:00.004-06:00

I just keep missing events left and right. It doesn't help that its all happening within a couple of weeks.

So first of all, Ethan turned ONE on May 22nd. I can't believe my little one is already a year!! We got to celebrate in Idaho. He wasn't too thrilled about the cake but he LOVED his bath afterwards! He got some really fun gifts and his cousins liked them as much as he did!!

Next came Steve's birthday. We spent it visiting cemeteries in my hometown. It was nice and we enjoyed the drive through my beautiful town. The cake below is a black forest cake. I couldn't believe how good it actually turned out!! This is Steve's favorite cake and I decided to go all out with it. My family sure enjoyed it!

The rest of the week was spent cleaning and getting ready for our next event. Jakob's baptism!! It was a very nice experience and Jakob was happy. He has been SO excited for his big day! It flew by. I couldn't believe how fast it was. We had a really nice dinner afterwards with family and a few friends. It was a very nice day.

I could go on but its late, I'm falling asleep typing and this is already long enough. I'll talk about this weekend when its all done. :)

My Little Jakob

2009-05-22T15:13:00.004-06:00

Wait, he's not so little anymore. Jakob turned 8 this week and it blows me away!! Where did the time go when he was my only child and my little buddy who said things like "I can't get my sippy cup, my feets is broken(he was 2!)." Now he's the older brother of 3 brothers and a sister and growing by leaps and bounds.

He continues to amaze us in so many ways. In February he took a 3 hour test for A.L.L. which is kinda like AP school for grade schoolers. He passed! He along with 23 other children from Eagle Mountain, Saratoga Springs and Lehi get to go to a special class where he will take advanced Math lessons. Its actually advanced everything but they focus a lot on that subject. It took him a long time to decide if he wanted to leave his school but he decided it would be best for him to do.

Then just this last week he tried out for the Utah Arsenal Soccer league and made the team for the district!! He has developed a love for soccer and plays it nonstop. He has a great talent for a lot of different sports(basketball he's very good at too!) but soccer is his love now. His season starts in July or August and will keep us plenty busy but this was something he really wants to do so here we go!!

He also started scouts this week. With it being pack meeting this week, he won't have den meeting until next week. He loved pack meeting though and wears his new scout shirt proudly and wants to wear it to school all the time.

And last but most definitely not least, he gets baptized next week!! We have worked with him on getting him to know for himself that this is something he wants to do. He loves the scriptures and talks about different ones he's read and he knows that this is something he wants. He's had the songs he wants sung picked out for months and we're still working on everything else.

And speaking of Jakob, maybe I should wrap this up and go pick him up from school!! We love you Jakob!!! Oh and the picture below is Jakob and Andy with their "trophy" from winning 2nd place in their divisions for the Jujitsu tournament in March!

Making a BIG Jump

2009-05-16T23:55:00.002-06:00

Well, our poor computer has seen better days. It takes FOREVER to load anything - and no, its not the internet connection. It decides its tired at random times and turns itself off. You can't just decide to turn it back on because it freezes up as it loads...

Since we needed a computer for our bookstore, we decided it was time to go for another computer(shhhh! don't tell our dear, old one!). After much deliberation we decided to go to Best Buy and look at the laptops there. We KNEW we didn't want Vista but that left us with one mini laptop to work with.

The first employee we talked to was 100% salesman who talked down to us and tried to get us to upgrade on EVERYTHING. I walked away because I was tired of it (and of course the kids can't resist finding every restroom in every store and needed a potty break). Luckily when I came back ready to look again, I found another guy back by the computers. He was GREAT. He knew what he was talking about, he didn't try selling us anything by shoving it down our throats and he was very friendly and personable. My kind of salesperson!

So what did we get? A MacBook!! We decided to ditch the PC and the need for Vista and all those problems and went for the Mac instead. So far I've loved it but I've had to relearn a lot of things. Its nice to be able to work on the computer while I'm in the living room with my kids instead of locking myself back in the back while the kids rip the house to shreds and have raisin fights... and yes that has happened.

Now to really use it for business and not just for fun. ;)

Happy Anniversary and Birthday to US!

2009-05-09T00:39:00.002-06:00

I'm just a little behind by about 3 weeks. or maybe more...

April through July is a busy time in my family. I have two birthdays in April, 3 in May and 2 in July. And that's just my little family! That doesn't even include all the cousins, my sisters and in-laws, brother, parents, etc. If I included those this blog would be REALLY long.

So first we start with our anniversary. Steve and I have been married for 9 great years as of April 22nd. I can't believe how fast the time has flown. but you add 5 kids into the mix you can see how it would!!!

So how did we celebrate? By signing papers on our business loan to get our bookstore!! Best anniversary gift ever is to open the store I've been wishing for all my life with the man I've loved for the last 10 years(hey we had to date!) and will for eternity! Who could ask for more?

After we got done with that, we took the kids home and they had a babysitter so Steve and I could go to the temple. It was the first time with this babysitter but the kids loved her and she did great - even with Ethan who can be a pill! We stopped at Emmett's and Ethel's on the way home and enjoyed a nice yummy milkshake and fries. A perfect ending to a perfect day - except that Steve had to go to work afterwards... gotta love graveyard shift!

Next comes mine and Ashley's birthday. We had kind of a long, drawn out birthday starting on Monday at the Hannah Montana movie. I admit a lot of it was for me but Ashley LOVED the horses and the songs and had fun. I bawled(I just do that in movies) but otherwise thoroughly enjoyed the movie!

We went and let Ashley pick out the goody bag toys for her party we were going to have on Saturday in Idaho and then went home to hang with the boys.

Wednesday we had a nice quiet birthday at home. Perfect gift for Mommy!!! I had two very sweet ladies in the ward offer to babysit but since Ashley and Ethan were fighting colds we decided to hold off on babysitters. Plus I felt bad leaving Ashley behind since we share the birthday! She got a leapster so between her playing hers and Andy playing his, we had a very quiet day.

And of course we checked out the new Walmart in Saratoga Springs where I got a gorgeous watch from Steve and Ashley got a few things from siblings and from the money Grandma and Grandpa Weist sent her. Besides the "Lost Mommy" incident all went well and we went home to enjoy our chocolate truffle ice cream bars. YUMMY!!!!

I'll post the rest when I get pictures of the cakes and the party with my family in Idaho.

Jakob's Sculptures

2009-04-27T00:26:00.003-06:00

Jakob discovered a new talent today. As all kids are, he's fascinated with magnets. He took this to a new level and decided to make sculptures using drywall screws and magnets. So while my fridge door was bare because he took everything off, he made some pretty fun sculptures. Here they are.

Results Are In

2009-04-09T00:52:00.004-06:00

Well its was a tough race (a whole 16 votes but hey, that's pretty good!). It looked like Fairy Tales and Copy Cats tied with Jac's Box of Books(my personal favorite but that's because I'm the Jac...). For most of the survey Fairy Tales and Copy Cats was tied with Dragons and Fairy Tales. SO we decided to combine them. The name of our store is officially (got the business license and everything!)

Dragons, Fairy Tales and Copy Cats

Bookstore and Copy Center

Steve and I are coming up with a fun logo to put on the sign, shirts, bookmarks, etc. We'll be selling both online and in the bookstore, hopefully to be opening in the next few months! Thanks for everyone's support! We can't wait to get it all started and share our love of reading with all of our friends and neighbors!!!!!!!

Ashley's a Big Girl Part 2

2009-04-07T10:54:00.003-06:00

This morning I decided to see how much Ashley remembered from yesterday. She wrote her name with no help from looking at another page! She then asked how to spell Gavin so I wrote it out and she copied that and then proceeded to ask about each other family member in turn. After that, I asked her if she wanted to learn numbers so she worked on those too. She had a harder time with them because of the curvy 2 and 3 but still did pretty good! I don't have that part scanned though... My little girl is getting so big!!!

My Big Girl

2009-04-06T11:21:00.003-06:00

Ashley has recently decided that since she is going to be 4 this month she wanted to learn to read. She wants to be able to read the scriptures with Daddy at night. While that will be a while from now, she's working very hard. She's been using Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Lessons (By Siegfried Englemann) and did 5 lessons this morning!

Anyway, so after each lesson they have the child write one or two letters. She was having a rough time with s's so Steve decided to teach her A instead. She wanted to know the other letters for her name. I wrote it out in capital letters and then had her try. She wrote it all out on the first try! And the second, and third and on and on. She still has a hard time with the 's' but I was SO happy my little girl is learning to write! The best part is that as I was scanning her first paper(down below), she came in and showed me the paper she wrote it on again - this time without a prompt to show her the letters!!! Yeah, she's still three... for 3 weeks more anyway. :) What a happy day for any mom or dad - and yes, I did burst into tears the first time she did it...

Its Survey Time Again

2009-04-01T11:40:00.003-06:00

We're getting ready to do business licenses and stuff and so we're in desperate need of a name. We've come up with a few but haven't picked one for sure. SO please help us out by voting for the one you like!!! Just click on your choice on the survey to the right of the page. :)

And any other names would be welcome. Here is what's happening in the store to give some ideas:
Books(of course)
Copy center with scrapbooking, laminating and book binding supplies
Games
Toys(not a lot)
Reading time for kids
Book clubs for adults,
Game nights every other Friday

ETC

Thanks! Any ideas for feedback would be GREAT!!!

Gavin and "The Girls"

2009-03-22T19:37:00.003-06:00

It may not seem like much now, but Gavin carried this bag with the now popped balloon EVERYWHERE for the last several days.

He had been having a couple of rough weeks of not wanting to go to nursery for some strange reason. Although with the playdough in there I know I would have wanted to stay!!!

So his sweet nursery teachers decided to come during the week and let him see them outside of the nursery environment to see if he would get used to them and want to come again. They brought him this gift bag with the balloon, crayons and a Spider-Man coloring book. He wouldn't look at them and when he did he was embarrassed and would only smile and stick his tongue out(he does that when he's embarrassed). As they were getting ready to leave he snuck over and looked in the bag to see what was in there and LOVED his gift.

For the next several days that bag did not leave his sight - whether we were at home or in the car! It was a fight to get him to keep it in the car while we went into the store!! Now the balloon is popped and the bag is flattened but he still loves that bag.

Now you're wondering where "the girls" phrase comes in. Whenever Steve and I asked where he got that bag, he'd say "From the girls."

"Well, where do you see the girls?"

"Nursery."

"Are you going to go play with them on Sunday?"

"NO"

This went on for a few days with always the answer of "the girls" and an emphatic NO to the prospect of going to nursery.

Well, the results were positive and he went to nursery today! He did hold on tightly to Daddy's finger for a second but was thrilled to see the bubble machine and life was good! He was happy and grinning when he came to me after church. So thanks to his sweet teachers that went out of their way to get my little boy to nursery!!! Next on our list? Teach him their names. ;)

Blue Bunny

2009-03-15T23:00:00.006-06:00

Now that I've gotten the "our basement flooded again" out of my system, I have some really fun pictures to show. We were in St. George last weekend and went to Blue Bunny for ice cream. We were there with Steve's sister and her family. We had lots of fun and lots of messes to clean up - mostly coming from Gavin's sundae!!

Steve enjoyed his banana split!

Jakob had a sundae with chocolate ice cream and chocolate sprinkles

Andy had about the same thing, only not as much chocolate

Poor Ashley was getting a cold so she was a little miserable but sure enjoyed her "1 scoop" anyway!

Ethan even got in on the action and enjoyed my bananas. He yelled at me when I wasn't getting the bites to him fast enough!!!

And then there's Gavin. Oh how he LOVED his sundae!!! So much that he couldn't wait to get the spoon into the ice cream and up to his mouth - so he just shoved his face into the bowl!!! These are my favorites of the pictures I took that night! Although everyone else was fun too. :)

Oh What a Day

2009-03-15T00:23:00.003-06:00

Today started out like any other day. Wake up, pull the wire off your finger. Oh wait, that's not normal. They had me do an oxygen test for sleeping because I'm always tired. I'm a mom. What more do I need to say?!

Anyway, so we went from breakfast to letting kids play at friends houses, to getting my fruit from a neighbor, to the playground and back home before going to get the kids again. Then we went out and did stuff (yes STUFF) in the yard. Oh and I played lightning with Jakob and Steve. Too bad I can't hit foul shots in a game like I was hitting today!!!

So Steve, Jakob and the rest of the kids (except Ethan who just wanted Mommy) wanted to wash the car. They got everything ready and headed outside and started washing. I was going to get ready to go to enrichment even though I wasn't feeling that wonderful and noticing a loud humming from the nursery.

I knew there was a computer in there and figured one of the kids had turned it on so I was looking all over for the switch. I think my brain was only working at about 1% because it took a while to remember that there IS no switch to the computer since Steve had taken the power supply out. SO suddenly it clicked that they had the faucet on that was just outside that room and I had the impression I better run downstairs. And boy am I glad I did!!!

There was water in the boys room so I ran outside and told Steve we had flooding and ran to the front. My neighbor noticed me running for the faucet and asked how things were. She rushed over to see what she could do to help and her husband came over to see why there was flooding. I wish I'd gotten a picture of the water dripping from the siding!!!

Steve got to work with the shop vac and gave that up and went in with the steam cleaner(thanks Mom and Dad! We love that vacuum!) to get the water out. While he did that I chased kids around the yard getting them away from the things that had been left out in our rush to fix the basement. Finally I got them in and got to soak up the mess in one room while Steve did the other.

We had two guys from the ward show up with fans and they managed to find out where the leak was from and cut a hole in the wall to get the pipe out. Steve rushed to Home Depot( and had to wait for a train) to find the right part. He got us pizza for dinner and then within minutes of him getting back we had our new pipe all ready to go!! What amazing neighbors we have!!!!!!!!!!!!

So here are a couple good to know hints. 1. don't have neighbor kids that like to come by and turn your faucets on at random times. 2 don't leave the hose on your faucets during the winter or they'll FREEZE. I must note that we only did that because of hint #1!!! We figured if they turned it on, it wouldn't go into the basement... so instead the water from the broken pipe will! 3. If you have the problem from #1 and #2, don't keep the handles on your faucets... 4. Always have a shop vac and/or steam cleaner handy. Oh and fans. You never know when you or a neighbor might need them!

Anyway here are a few pictures. They're not the best but you can at least get the gist. I'm just so thankful to my friends and neighbors that jumped at the chance to help us! We feel loved and blessed!!!

Watch Out World, Here Comes Ethan!!

2009-03-11T16:19:00.003-06:00

My little boy decided to grow up. I'm not sure I like that... I've been happy with him hanging out in one spot, not getting into trouble, not finding me when I leave the room, and not being a human vacuum. But alas, they all grow up sometime!!!

The last few days he's been working hard at crawling everywhere. He has a couple bumps on his forehead to prove it!!

Today he took that big step into heading off to find Mommy. He knew I wasn't in the room anymore so he crawled that very long (all of 10 feet) hallway to come and get me! I was proud and knew I was doomed all at once. :)

While I was washing dishes he was playing quite peacefully in the living room before deciding it was time to go find Mommy again. He found me! And the blueberry muffin Gavin dropped on the floor, and the pencil he liked banging on the floor... Its a whole new world for Ethan!

These are pictures of Ethan crawling out of the laundry from "helping me" fold the laundry. Sorry they're so blurry. Maybe someday I'll upgrade to a real camera instead of just the one on my cell!!!

That One Poll

2009-03-03T00:03:00.003-07:00

Hey,
So the poll ended and 75% were in favor (3 out of 4 votes) of the bookstore. Someone wasn't but I don't know who. :) I'm looking into land (well, more a building) and grants to try and figure this thing out. I also found out that the booksellers convention I wanted so much to go to is the same weekend as Jakob's baptism! So I'll be missing it there as Jakob's baptism is much, much more important. Like, not even on the same scale. I am bummed about not going to the convention though. Just a little. ;)

We got to tear out the surround on our bathtub downstairs today. We'd tried this one a year ago and it was so warped that nothing we did would get it to fit right. SO I finally called the company and they sent one to me free of charge! This one looks like it will work better. However, we found out one of the studs that Centex put in is NOT level and therefore is messing a few things up so Steve gets to fix that before we move on. LOVELY! I'm very excited to get the bathroom done sometime though. Hopefully very soon...

OH and I'm an aunt today! Yay my sister! I'm excited to see my new little baby boy nephew soon.

So those are just a few of the ramblings of my day. I could add more but then I would want to add even more and this post would be 10 pages long. :)

What I Want to Be When I Grow Up

2009-02-21T00:32:00.003-07:00

Today Andy and Ashley were discussing their future plans. I think I changed my plans a million times growing up. I was going to mention one of them but decided not to. Another was being a nurse that takes care of the babies in the nursery at the hospital(which still sounds fun). So here we go:

Jakob: a paleontologist and a basketball player. Apparently he'll hunt for dinosaur bones on the off-season. And hey, he's a pretty good little ball player!

Andy: a substitute teacher and a soccer coach. Why set goals high right? He knew just what he wants... I asked what he'd do when he's not subsituting. He said he'd watch tv and sleep...

Ashley: A cowgirl and an astronaut and she'd have ponies. Oh and a ballerina. So I decided she'll be a dancing space cowgirl... easy right?

And Gavin? Yeah, Gavin wants to be a princess... we'll work on that one.

Which leads me into my next thing. I already tested the waters on facebook and not a lot of my neighbors check my blog(I think) but I decided to ask anyway. MY dream job that has been my dream for years is to have a bookstore. I LOVED You've Got Mail not for the story(although I loved that too) but because of her bookstore. I even had a name picked out and everything while watching the movie with my cousins.

SO I'm having a poll. Do you think a bookstore (with a copy center attached) would do well in the Lehi-ish area? Meaning, is it something you've wanted that we don't have? The poll is on the side bar. Check it out please!

Thanks so much! And watch out for dancing space cowgirls. :)

My New Hobby

2009-02-18T01:06:00.003-07:00

About 2 years ago Steve let me get an artist's easel and paints from Costco with the promise that I'd use it. Well, 2 years later I finally got a chance, a room and a bit of time of my own to try it out. I decided to try the watercolors first since it seems a little more forgiving. What do I know?

So it started out as a cool picture from Thanksgiving Point I'd taken during the summer:

I decided that the whole thing might be a little hard with water colors so I decided to cut out the hills and the sky, etc and just concentrate on the stream which was my favorite part... Well, after learning how to REALLY watercolor(gotta love the internet), I managed to get the grass to look okay and the water to look like water... but I still didn't have it right and by that time it was rather late.

It must have still looked okay because Andy asked if I'd won it in a contest...

Anyway so on to tonight. I decided that I WAS going to make the rocks and trees look right. The painting had other things in mind however. I decided there was just too much green and not enough anything else so I pulled a Bob Ross and added some "happy little trees". Those were fun! I've decided we're destined to live in the woods somewhere because Jakob and I for some reason both love to draw and paint pictures of the mountains and forests. Anyway, after all that babbling, here is my finished project - until I decide I want to add something else. Oh and those brown things are a rabbit and a squirrel. The deer died a painful death in a nice white blur now considered a green bush(which covered the white blur). :)

My Baby's 1st Tooth!

2009-02-16T22:19:00.005-07:00

Okay, so I wish I had a picture of his first tooth but as its small and he's still trying to get the other one too, there's no way he's letting me get a picture of his mouth!! So I'll just show this picture instead. Ethan had been playing with this toy until he got his toy keys. It slid down his chest and landed next to his mouth where he promptly chomped down on it - while still playing with his keys!

Ethan popped out a tooth on February 3rd(I'm a little behind...) and Mommy CHEERED and probably cried just a little. It took SO long for that little tooth to come out and for 3 days he'd had a fever! I felt so bad for him and couldn't do anything!

He's also clapping and loves to laugh and clap when you say yay... And when he's filling his drawers- gross but I'm totally serious!! Hopefully this means early potty training...

He's working on the crawling part and will stretch as far forward as he can without actually moving his knees. He'll roll to get something he wants if he's in an especially adventurous mood...

On to Gavin. He's quite the talker and has been for a while. My favorite sayings have come from the last couple days. He went up behind Ethan and gave him a big hug and said "you're my best friend!" Talk about giving Mom something to tear up about. :) It was so sweet!

Another one was when Ashley and Andy were playing Chutes and Ladders and he wanted to play. He came in said "I NEVER get to play" Yes, he is 2 1/2 !!! He's said many other whacky things but those have just cracked me up.

I would say more about each child but then what would I do for Christmas cards? I'll leave the rest for a little later. :)

Pictures of Ethan and Ashley

2009-02-08T00:32:00.007-07:00

Its really late but I got these pictures from my friend that she took this last week and they were so cute I just had to share them!!! These were taken in my house and they turned out so cute! I had a really hard time getting them down to just these few but she did a great getting it all ready to print! What little cuties I have. :) Enjoy!

Pay It Forward

2009-02-06T00:03:00.001-07:00

I saw this on a friend's blog and thought it would be fun--Here's how it works-the first 3 people to leave a comment on this post will receive, at some point during the year, a handmade gift from me. What it will be and when it will arrive is a total surprise! The catch is that you must participate as well-before you leave your comment here, write up a pay it forward post on your blog to keep the fun going. Then come back, let me know you're going to play and sit back and anticipate the arrival of your gift! Remember that only the first 3 comments will receive a gift from me, so be quick!

Tagged...

2009-01-30T00:44:00.002-07:00

Wow, lots of tags. Okay, actually just two. Or three. So here we go.

Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.
1. I'm sore from playing basketball. Which I only get to do once or twice a week.
2. I don't like exercise unless its running up and down a court or riding a bike. Or swimming... wait...
3. I was born without a thyroid. Cool in some ways(white teeth!), not so cool in others. But we deal. :)
4. I have 5 kids all under 7. And no twins
5. I grew up on a farm and LOVED it. Still do :)
6. I can be VERY insecure
7. I love to bake. I'm still learning and love to try new things.
8. Steve and I had the same favorite books in 2nd grade! And the same pjs. and I have a baby dress that matches a baby shirt of his...
9. I love to eat all kinds of foods. And Steve and I love to try new restaurants to try new things.
10. I would LOVE to be a meteorologist(now if I could spell it). I enjoy watching the weather.
11. I have never been out of the country!
12. I love to watch all the same TV shows my kids watch. Except Yo Gabba Gabba. I totally draw the line there! But generally if its on Disney, I watch it too
13. I CHEERED the day that I got the calling to be a Relief Society teacher - I only hope that everyone else is happy too. :)
14. Hanson has been one of my favorite groups since they came out. And yes I still like them. Hey, give them another chance!
15. I am a terrible clutter person. I'm okay with throwing things out but horrible with setting things everywhere - and am unlucky enough to pass it on!
16. I love to help my kids with homework.
17. I LOVE LOVE LOVE books. I could read all day and be perfectly happy.
18. I can remember birthdays from a lot of my high school classmates - and some phone numbers from them too. Too bad I forget half of what I need to do right now!
19. I lifeguarded and taught swimming lessons for YEARS. I loved the lessons, didn't like the lifeguarding so much. A short attention span and guarding 100's of lives don't mesh. But I never did have anyone need saving so that's a relief!
20. I have always wanted to go on a cruise and to Walt Disney World. I haven't done either.
21. I love to make people happy. Always have! BUT it also conflicts with my being bossy so sometimes the happy part doesn't happen.
22. I love to watch the Food Network with my family. Its fun to see all the fun things they can make. One day it would be fun to be a pastry chef.
23.I love playing sports with my ward. Everyone is awesome to work with and instead of snide remarks and rude things being said, I feel built up and important. Its a good feeling! And makes me want to play better.
24. My mom and dad got to be balloon handlers for the Macy's Day Parade holding Mr Potato Head a few years ago. Because of that, we got to have Thanksgiving Dinner 2 days before Christmas with my family!
25. I LOVE to sing and dance with my kids but won't dance if anyone else(including Steve) is around!

Tags: Anyone one that reads this. :) There. I did it.

Random Pictures of January

2009-01-26T13:14:00.004-07:00

As I sat staring at this blank blog page, I tried to think of what I wanted to post... I could talk about my now clean office - but I forgot to take a before and after shot. Plus no one wants to see the before shot anyway!

So I decided that I would just show pictures that were taken during the month of January. Maybe I can come up with some resolutions from it...

Like, I will try to keep all scissors, pencils, crayons, flesh markers, makeup, etc out of the reach of kids unless I'm sitting right next to them.

I will teach my children manners at the table. Here, they're being good. Usually they're fighting us with the burps and the giggles and the yells and the socks on the table...

I will appreciate in the beauty in everything. Look at the beautiful crystals formed over the snow from the dense fog we've had!

I will try to score as many baskets as my son does in his games! And be a good support to each of my children in everything they love to do - we're coming up on THREE of my children playing sports this year! Ashley made the deadline for teeball by one day and we're so excited!

I WILL get better at sleeping when my little one sleeps. And since the blog of that wonderful night last week, he has slept through the night! YES!!!

I will keep Gavin in BOY's clothes instead of taking pictures when he decides he wants to wear Dora swimming suits or princess shoes or clips in his hair...

We will try to do as many things as we can as a family. This was last week at the Aquarium in Sandy. Since we went, Gavin has begged to "go see the fishies!" every day. That, and they have begged to go visit our friends that moved away EVERY minute since we were there last Friday!

Its crazy to think that January is already almost done but we've kept very busy and had a lot of fun! Hey, that rhymed. Now to start with one of my resolutions and take a nap while Ethan sleeps - oh wait, time to pick up the boys! So goes another day. :)

Its a Good Thing You're Cute!!!

2009-01-20T16:28:00.005-07:00

Look at the face at the top of my blog. Such a sweet, adorable, hilarious little boy. However, with lack of sleep, any little face can seem a little more well, NOT cute. :)

Yesterday I decided I'd be a good mommy and take the bumper pads off the crib like you're supposed to at 3 months or so. Whatever 'expert' decided that 3 months was a good age either has a sense of humor or doesn't have children because after a while they learn to ROLL. And Ethan decided to roll right into the edge of the crib. So as I walked down the hallway at 1:00 in the morning all I saw was 2 legs sticking out of the bars of the crib and a screaming face looking at me accusingly.

So on went the bumper pads as he watched and cried, looking up at the mobile waiting for it to play music. I turned it on and he started laughing and talking - bad sign at 1 in the morning... I picked him up thinking that feeding him with the lights off while I typed on the computer would help him sleep. NOPE

So now he's laughing, talking and trying to grab my fingers. Yeah, not a sleepy boy. I tried tylenol because right now he's a drool bug trying to get those first four teeth in (yeah, all at once!). He liked chewing on the bottle but still didn't help him sleep. So now its going on 2:15 or so. I'd been falling asleep on the computer for the last 2 hours(yeah the math doesn't add up but trust me, its right) so finally I gave in and plopped him in his crib. Bad move.

So while I brushed my teeth and got ready for bed I heard him screaming for mommy. All my other kids were sleeping through the night and crying themselves to sleep at oh, 2 months. Ethan? No way. Too many things to do and see. So finally I dragged myself into his room, picked him up and put him in bed with me. After smacking me in the face about 3 times he FINALLY drifted off only to wake up 3 hours later wanting to eat. And then 1/2 hour later. And then another 1/2 hour later - which was punctuated with Jakob trying to get his siblings to SHHHHH so mommy could sleep. Steve got home from work and also tried to let me sleep... WASN'T HAPPENING.

What was little Ethan's response to all this? To stare at me with big blue eyes and touch my face. And of course my heart melted and all was right with the world. Anyone want to know why babies are so cute? To let their mommies make it through one more sleep deprived day!!!

Now I may sound like I'm complaining(because, well, I am) but I just have to say I've done it with five different children now and I wouldn't go back. Why? Because of the sweet smile, the touch of their hand on your face and the look of adoration that they give only you as their mommy even when they're at their most miserable! Now if I can just remember that tonight as we start it all over again(Oh, I hope not!).

Ashley's new 'do

2009-01-13T14:08:00.003-07:00

You'd think after flour on my floor, marker on my walls(and now carpet) and many other things, I'd remember to be careful where I set things...

Last Wednesday we were getting ready to cut my boys' hair and trim Ashley's. I got the hair cutting kit down and set the scissors next to it before running in my bathroom to grab a comb. The two bathrooms are about 20 feet away from each other.... maybe less.

I came back and noticed a lock of hair laying on the toilet seat. Oh MAN! I could deal with that. Not too bad - until I started combing through her hair to get ready to trim.... and more and more and more hair was coming off! We're talking a good 3 inches of hair! I decided just to trim and see what I could do with it later.

Well, when I got my hair cut a few days later, I had my hairdresser look at her hair to see what could be done... not much! So we decided to do a little bob and it turned out SO CUTE!! It fits her well. She was excited for the first few hours but that night she asked if she could have her long hair back... Nope, sorry Ashley! Gotta wait for it to grow back! I wish I'd gotten pictures of the hair she'd cut but oh well. We have the after photo at least. Best part? While I was trying to fix her hair, Gavin grabbed the scissors and tried to cut his hair! Luckily it was right in front of me so I could stop it. Ah, kids...

New Years Eve

2009-01-08T00:00:00.004-07:00

This year we got to brave the weather and head to Idaho. After both of my sisters had to fight the snowdrifts to get home only 2 days before we headed there, I was a little worried. But the day we left was GORGEOUS and the roads were dry except for a few wetter areas. But no ice or snow drifts!

We had a fun time playing at my sister's house the morning of New Year's Eve. The kids played, we talked and then refereed when it was needed.

This is my Aunt Jennie. I had the opportunity to go up and visit my Grandma and visit with her and Jennie for an hour or so. I was fun to see them. I got to help make dinner and wash the dishes, etc for her. That may seem silly that I was so excited but 1. I have ALWAYS loved doing dishes at my Grandma's house for her and 2. It brought back so many memories because she has the same dishes and cups that she did when I was a little girl! Everything was in the same place and it was fun to help out.

After that, we headed off to my brother's house for New Years Eve. We had LOTS of food and fun. Everything was so good and it was nice to relax and hang out with my brother and sister and their families and let the kids play.

Gavin knew where the good stuff was! He loved to climb up(along with every other kid there!) and enjoy the crackers and dips and the other yummy stuff. Did I mention the food was good? :)

Ethan fell asleep around 9:00 and didn't wake up until I took him home at 12:30!! It was nice that he could sleep so well. Even with 15 or so cousins running around. :)

I was upstairs waiting for my mom and dad to get home(they had another activity they had to be to but spent an hour with us at my brother's first) and when I finally went down to go to bed, this is what I found. Everyone was asleep with the light on! So I figured it was a good time to get a picture. Sleep on my little ones! And big one...

I was sad when it ended and it was time to leave because we enjoyed our time there. We had a yummy New Years Day dinner with the family and helped my mom and dad take down their Christmas decorations(first time in 9 years I've been there to put them up and take them down in the same year!). We watched No Reservations which my dad was a good little chick flick. :) Not sure what that meant but hey, it was!

We were going to leave a little later on Friday or possibly Saturday but my dad saw the nastiness of the storm headed our way and told us to take off. We quickly packed and headed out. These pictures were taken on a highway we used instead of going over Sweetzer(5600 ft or so). It was raining like mad where we were but would have been nasty going up and over! The clouds and snow were so pretty and I loved the drive! Except for the nice potholes at the beginning... but we got over those and enjoyed the rest of the trip.

Merry Christmas! A few weeks late...

2009-01-04T18:22:00.004-07:00

I was wanting to do this a few weeks ago but thought I had no pictures of Christmas. Plus I didn't want to go over on texts sending pictures from my phone. So that's why New Year's will wait one more day. :) I did however, find a few pictures from Christmas, so here we go!

This Christmas we decided to go to St. George and spend it with Steve's parents and family. It was the first time we'd spent it with them that wasn't at my house and I wanted to be on their turf to learn some of their traditions. So while I was sad not to be with my family, I was excited for a new experience.

We decided to leave a day early because a major storm was heading our way. We were very glad we did! While everyone got dumped on up here, we got a nice rain and 36-42 degree weather down south. :)

We spent one night with Steve's parents because our hotel wasn't booked for us that night(as we went early). Gavin stayed in the living room with his siblings for the first time! He did awesome and had lots of fun... he's getting too big!

The next day we got everything packed up and hung out with cousins for the morning. We then went to our hotel room and got everything unpacked. I LOVED the colors they used in the room and can't wait to use them at my house. ;) We were going to do a birthday party for Steve's brother but his poor daughter wasn't feeling well so we had a small dinner, did a few errands and hung out at the hotel. The kids fell asleep well that night. Jakob and Andy cuddled up (unknowingly), and Gavin only fell off the bed three times during the night. :)

The next day we had some breakfast continental style before heading over to the grandparent's house. The kids enjoyed more time spent with cousins and then we went to Target to get Ashley's dress and a sweater for my dad. We had lunch at a yummy restaurant called The Mandarin and filled ourself with chinese and mongolian barbecue. YUMMY!

We went back to the hotel and watched part of the BSU vs TCU game at the hotel. At halftime we headed back to G'ma and G'pa Weists for dinner and for me to make a cheesecake as a reward for the contest I'd had to find something to remove the ink marks my Gavin so lovingly had drawn on our walls. We got done really late but they turned out looking and smelling very good! That night we also slept well after watching a little White Christmas.

Christmas Eve we got up early, ate our breakfast and headed off to Susan's house for some good snow time. Like I said, it was 42 degrees or so there which meant we had to head up into the mountains. After having fallen in love with Pine Valley, we went up a little further and the kids played in the snow. The older kids (cousins, not ours!) went on the 4 wheelers and we played until we froze - which in 19 degree weather it didn't take too long! I have gorgeous pictures but they're on my video camera...

We went to G'ma and G'pa Weists for a few hours afterwards before heading back to our hotel to get ready for the Christmas Eve festivities. We had yummy vegetable soup and bean soup that was one of their biggest traditions. It was SO good! Gavin even gulped it all up!!!

We had a wonderful time on Christmas Eve with excellent food(i.e. my cheesecake...among all the others) and then a fun program with music. Grandpa Weist talked about Christmas which was really nice to hear. The grandkids all sang I Am a Child of Godwhile standin around Grandpa(its his favorite song). Then it was time for gifts. We did the exchanges for the grandparents to the grandchildren and then Santa came! Each of the cousins bought something as an exchange and Santa handed them out. It was a lot of fun and the kids were excited for their gifts! They were all worn out by the time it got done and were happy to hop in bed that night so Santa could come.

Santa got to come to our hotel room (I talked about that in the last blog) and enjoyed some cheesecake and milk. Good thing he's not lactose intolerant... Jakob woke up first around 6:40 and looked around before I told him to hop back in bed. It wasn't long before everyone else was awake and we watched the kids look in their stockings before we opened gifts. It was the first time ever that it was just our little family so it was a fun, new experience. We went in order from youngest to oldest and then Steve and I opened ours.

We headed to Susan's for a yummy breakfast and the kids played with each other's toys and visited for a few hours. The rest of the vacation was spent playing with the new gadgets and sleeping and lots of playing with cousins!

We left a day later than what we'd planned because of weather but had great roads so I was glad we waited. We had plenty of shovelling to do when we got home. Here I am shovelling just so we could get the kids in before Steve shovelled the back. I couldnt even see the sidewalk steps to our house!!! We hope everyone had a fun Christmas!!!

Teaching Moments...

2008-12-25T23:20:00.004-07:00

Last night we were driving from my sister-in-law's house back to our hotel and remembered we didn't have milk for Santa. We decided to stop by Harmon's and grab some milk from there. I forgot that on Christmas Eve everyone closes early!! So we sat in the parking lot trying to figure out who might be open for milk. I suggested the little shop ("In a Pinch") in our hotel but it was REALLY expensive. Jakob piped up from the backseat that we could just go to Grandma's and get some from there. Steve and I hadn't even thought of that!!

We started driving towards their house and I was praising Jakob about thinking of such a good idea and he told me got it from me. I tried to remember the conversation to think of what I might have said that made him think of his grandparents.

Finally he reminded me of what happened a month ago. We'd been at Red Balloon letting the kids pick out gifts for each other and were hungry. We'd been trying to figure out what to have for dinner and Steve suggested Cafe Rio. I was all for it! But we both knew we should just go home. On our way out of the shopping center parking lot, I told Steve I was REALLY wanting some Cafe Rio so we turned around and went back into the parking lot. I sat there debating whether to take the kids in or leave them out in the car with Steve while I lugged 6 meals out to the car. Finally my good reason won and I told Steve we should just go home and eat there. Now, for me that's a big thing because I love to eat out. But I knew I needed to be a good example and back away from something that we really didn't "need". We went home, had dinner (chili), went to bed and that was the end.... I just didn't realize at the time that I'd taught my son the importance of saving money!! It made my night and I just hope I can continue teaching him the important things he needs to know in life.

Anyway, I hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and everyone is safe!!! We had a fantastic Christmas and its been fun spending time with Steve's family. :)

Blackmail Material

2008-12-14T22:04:00.003-07:00

Poor Gavin. He sure loves his sister's princess room. He can name all the Disney Princesses and wants the pink cup at meals. Ethan needs to grow up fast so Gavin will play HIM! In the meantime we'll enjoy some of the great photos this provides! our camera is blurry because he likes to move instead of standing still for photos but they're still worth keeping!

Wow, I love the pretty shoes! This is Ashley's church shoe and halloween shoe. The bandaid on his eye was from stitches he got while at a yard sale...

Yes, those are little butterfly clips in his hair. I wish he would have let us take one while he was looking at the camera because with his big blue eyes framed in long lashes he was really pretty. ;) He's a sweet boy with plenty of fight. I guess its good that Ashley has SOMEONE to play with!

Gingerbread Men

2008-12-12T00:38:00.005-07:00

I decided to try something new this year for goodies. I usually do a lot of candy but I wanted to try cookies. So I got a recipe off Food Network and started on it. After having a rough start from not finding my ginger (kind of important for gingerbread!), I got to cut all the men and trees out and bake them. They came out rather crunchy. The three older kids LOVE them and Gavin tolerates them.

For Family Home Evening we did our cleaning of the toys and got rid of a bunch (yay!) and then started our decorating. We had red(well, pink) and green frosting and I let the kids do it. Ashley had fun making dots all over and Andy and Jakob got creative. I just let Gavin squish the bag while I held it. Ethan just hung out and watched everything happening. It was a fun night and we had some yummy cookies to show for it! We even hung some on our tree afterwards!

Andy's working really hard on his! He actually did a pretty good job with the designing and you could tell he was concentrating on getting the eyes and buttons just right! He sure enjoyed eating them too. :)

I didn't quite trust Gavin with the frosting so I decided to do it for him. He did squeeze it like I said before but I did the actual frosting! He promptly licked all the frosting off and left the cookies on the table! Do you like my bow in my hair? :)

He's sure proud of his cookie though! He just loved the frosting even more. Mmm pure sugar!

Jakob had a fun time making his cookie look crazy. He and Andy were both laughing pretty hard at how they were decorating!

Ashley loved her cookie and wanted to keep decorating - so she could eat them!

And here's Steve's. He was holding Ethan and helping make sure that no frosting ended up on tables or floors. Jakob decorated two for Steve and two for himself. It was a great night! My next attempt will be to make a gingerbread house! Wish me luck!

I just went back and reread my post. Man, do I like exclamation points!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MmmmYummy Crackers!

2008-12-03T13:39:00.004-07:00

Ethan was chewing on everything he could find yesterday(and as he was on my lap and has only so much arm length, it was generally my arm or hand...). So I found him a graham cracker which he gnawed to pieces. I realized that as it was a honey cracker it probably wasn' the best so I gave him a teething biscuit (for babies not dogs...) and he went crazy on that one too. Here is the aftermath of the whole cracker meal. A great big mess!!

Thanksgiving 2008 - One For the History Books

2008-12-03T00:18:00.003-07:00

This was one crazy but very fun Thanksgiving for me and mine. We had the opportunity to go to Idaho for the first time in 8 years. Mostly because I've been selfish and kept Christmas with my family(as in my parents and siblings and our 22 kids) to myself instead of sharing our family with Steve's family. :) So this year we decided to reverse the visiting.

We left early Wednesday morning and had an uneventful trip to Idaho. I did get to stop in Ogden to pick up a package for Kristen but otherwise it was pretty quick. Steve slept through the trip and most of Wednesday since he had to work the night before.

Thursday started bright and early at 4:30 when my sister brought my little Andy in to change out of wet clothes(always fun). He was also nice and toasty with a fever and had a croupy cough! What a wonderful thing to wake up to! I gave him tylenol, got him settled and went back to sleep. The poor boy slept most of Thanksgiving and only ate a few bites of Thanksgiving dinner. Gavin was also coughing by that time. GREAT.

We did have a VERY enjoyable, VERY delicious meal. Nothing beats my moms noodles n' gravy!!! You think gravy on potatoes is good? You have no idea until you try my mom's noodles and gravy! Everything else was fantastic and I ate WAY more than I'd planned. But hey, it was Thanksgiving right? The others ate well. Gavin especially enjoyed the corn and stuffing. We got to have my aunt, uncle, Grandma and my brother-in-law's grandma all have dinner with us. It lively and fun to be with everyone.

My uncle took this picture. Yes, there are three tables just to try and fit us all. And that's not even all of us!

We had more family come over and then put all the kids down for naps. I had quite a nice nap myself! We enjoyed Kung Fu Panda as a family and then of course had our pie - pumpkin, cherry and apple oh my! There was blueberry too. MMMMM!!!!!

I tried to get to bed early that night but it didn't quite work out that way. I had just closed my eyes when I remembered I had made the extra trip to my sisters to get the humidifier so I should probalby use it(and I'm glad I did). Plus, I forgot the motrin and vaporub for my boys. So I finally got to bed only to wake up at 2:45 and then again at 4:45 with Ethan. By that time I just got up and went and did the whole Black Friday thing. I got a few of the things I'd hoped to get and 4 hours later I made my way back home.

My dad put up the millions of Christmas lights while I went from helping my mom with decorations throughout the house to checking on my poor Andy. By afternoon his fever had broken and he was getting back to his normal goofy self. We decided to take him and Gavin in to make sure they didn't have strep. We got in pretty quick and they gave us medicine to get rid of whatever it was they had. (I WISH they had swabbed them for strep instead of just giving them the meds because now I'm pretty sure it was just a virus...). We rushed over to Guadalajaras for some delicious Mexican food. So among fighting a whiny Gavin, upset Ashley, Crying Ethan and spilled Root Beer, I had a most delicious meal. Typical family meal. :)

By Saturday morning Steve was feeling a cold coming on so we took ourselves to Smiths for medicine for us too and headed on to Twin Falls to get our sicko family away from everyone else for a few hours. Gavin and Andy had been going crazy staying in one room. But hey, when you have 30 people in one house, you gotta do something! So I took Steve to a few landmarks we'd never been to before. Well, I had. But he hadn't. We looked down into the Snake River Canyon and then headed over to Shoshone Falls. The wind was COLD so we ran the kids over to the stairs, let them look and then ran them back to the car. Steve and Jakob went to another place and got this fun picture.

We then headed over to the mall and checked out some of the stores. We found a few cool deals at JC Penney and then I distracted the kids while Steve went back to get a gift we found. I thought it would be fun to get pictures with Santa. It wasn't until oh, 3 days later that I realized I shared the very germs I was trying to keep away from my family with Santa!!! Hopefully he's better by Christmas Eve. :)

We finally returned to Grandma and Grandpa's house and got to help decorate the tree and have egg nog milkshakes. We also let the kids dress up in the clothes that my sisters and I dressed up in when we were young! The kids had a BLAST.

Sunday was a nice day at church. We enjoyed the lessons, the kids enjoyed nursery and primary and then we got to see our sweet little niece be blessed. We had dinner over at their house before heading back home.

It was a crazy weekend but it was so much fun! I just hope that among all Thanksgivingness of the holiday, we didn't "give" the gift of strep to everyone else!