Are you ready for it?

All right...so it's been a while since I've updated. I'm really not the best blogger out there, but I'm going to try to be better. Hopefully this is the last marathon post I'll have to do. So, by popular demand....here is what's been happening with us for the last three months.


In July, we went camping at Willard Bay with one of Les's friends from way back and his family. They have four kids as well. The kids had a great time playing Hide-and-Seek in the bushes and trees that were right by our campsites. We played games, went swimming (even though it was freezing), fished, and relaxed. We all had a great time and hopefully we'll set up another camping trip with them in the future.

Brooklyn finally started dance class. She had been begging for months, so once she turned 3 and the new summer session started, we put her in. She does a little tap and a little ballet and she absolutely loves it! At the end of every class they do a dance called Freeze Dance where you dance any way you want, but when the music stops you have to freeze. Of course, this is Brooklyn's favorite thing because she loves to strike a pose!

In August, Kenzie turned 10 and had a birthday party with her friends. They played Twister, roasted hot dogs, played a karaoke game on the Wii, and watched Coraline. They all had a great time. Kenzie has some really great friends.

In September we had another Cousin Party!!! We had a great turnout and lots of food! Everyone enjoyed playing games and catching up. We have another party planned in two weeks which we're really looking forward to.

Cody started junior high this year. This caused a bit of anxiety on my part. I remember junior high and was nervous to have him be there already. He was pretty excited to be done with elementary, but I don't think he likes the extra work that goes with it!

Kenzie is in the 5th grade this year. She has a great teacher and is loving every minute of it. Kaden also started another year of preschool, but for some reason I didn't take a picture of him...bad mom!

My neighbor invited me and the kids to go to the zoo with her and her kids. They had a great time together. We went to see the animals, but this water globe thing was their favorite part, go figure!

At the end of September we took another camping trip to Yellowstone. The weather was gorgeous. We went with Les's parents and his brother and brother's girlfriend. My parents also came up for a couple nights, but stayed in a hotel. We didn't take many pictures this year since we've been there so many times, but a nice lady by the waterfall offered to take this picture of our family. The kids weren't being too cooperative, but I think it turned out pretty good. I love Yellowstone and I don't think I'll ever get bored of going there, it's just too pretty!

For Activity Days, we had a Daddy-Daughter Hoe Down. It was so much fun! We had dinner and line dancing. It was so fun to see the girls dancing with their dads. The dads were all great sports! Les was the chef for the night, staying home most of the activity cooking our dinner and dessert since you can't cook in the church. He was a lifesaver!

It is official, I am now the parent of a teenager! Does this mean I'm getting old? The only thing he wanted for his birthday was money because he's saving up to buy an X-Box 360. Just what we need, another video game system. :)

Kaden also had his birthday and he wanted a new video game. He sure is starting young with his love of video games, but what can you expect with a dad and brother that love to play. He got a lot of other fun presents and had a great birthday!

Of course, we have done a lot of other stuff in the last three months, but these are the only things I have pictures of to remind me. :) Until next time....happy reading!

We've been busy!!!

Once again it has taken me forever to update our blog. Hopefully after this post, you will see why I've been too busy to do so!!!
















Kenzie has been very busy with dance the last couple of months. She had a performance at the Kaysville Sportsplex and also performed during half-time at the Jazz game. She had competitions at Roy High, University of Utah, and Lagoon. She also had her end of year recital at Weber State for two nights in June. She had a great time and they did very well in competition, taking a few first and second place trophies.















Brooklyn had her birthday in May. The only thing she asked for was a Barbie, so of course she got a few. We had a party with all the family and we had a great time.















Kaden had a field trip for preschool at Discovery Gateway in Salt Lake. Kaden, Brooklyn, and I took the train down to Salt Lake and met Les there and then went with Kaden's class to the museum. Me and Les each took turns following a kid and we had a lot of fun.















For Memorial Day weekend, we went camping up to Clark Canyon Reservoir near Dillon, Montana with my parents. My dad brought his boat and Les and the kids enjoyed fishing while my mom and I had a Scrabble tournament. I was having great luck that weekend and won the majority of the games.















Kaden had his Preschool graduation at the end of May. They had a really cute program and sang some songs for the parents. Teacher Britney told everyone a little bit about each kid. One of the questions asked was what they wanted to be when they grew up and Kaden said he wanted to be a pirate, crazy kid!! He really loved Teacher Britney and had a lot of fun in her class this year.















A couple weeks ago Syracuse had their Heritage Days celebration and we went to the parade that runs very near to our house. The kids got a ton of candy and Kenzie even ended up joining the parade with the PTA float to be with her friend. She was supposed to be in the parade anyway with her dance group, but we didn't get up early enough to get her there.















Last week I was able to take my group of Activity Day girls to Temple Square. We had nine girls and three leaders, so it was perfect. We had each of the girls bring a sack dinner so we could stay a while. We went on a tour of the conference center where each of the girls were obsessed with the water, they just couldn't keep their hands out of it. Then we went across the street to eat our dinners right outside the temple grounds. We took a picture of each of the girls in front of the temple to use in a later activity and then went inside the north visiting center to see the Christus and then it was time to head home.















And last, but not least, we took the kids out to Antelope Island last night for a hike. Cody is trying to get caught up on his scouting and one of the requirements was to take a hike with a first aid kit, so that's what we did. We went to the Fielding Garr Ranch first, which unfortunately was closing about 15 minutes after we got there, so we didn't have much time to see anything. We'll have to go out there again so we can spend more time there. We did our hike at Buffalo Point and it was gorgeous. The kids enjoyed climbing all over the rocks and posing for pictures. We had a great time. The extra kid in the picture is my newphew Bill who is staying with us for the week.

So, as you can see, we have been extremely busy and have had a ton of fun. Hopefully it won't take me so long to update next time.

Easter Camping

For Easter weekend we went camping at Otter Creek with my parents, which for those of you who don't know is down south about an hour north of Bryce Canyon. My thoughts were that since we were heading south, it would be warm. Well....I was wrong!! It was so cold down there, we were freezing! Thank goodness we have a trailer. Even though it was cold, we still had a great time. We spent a lot of time inside my parents trailer playing games, Scrabble being my favorite, but we also got outdoors. Here is a sampling of the things we did.


The kids each got an early present from the Easter Bunny once we got down there on Thursday afternoon. Kenzie, Kaden, and Brooklyn each got fishing poles and Cody got a tackle box since he already had a pole. They immediately had to test them out and had a great time.

On Saturday we ventured down to Bryce Canyon. I had never been there before and it was nothing like what I had pictured. Again, because it's down south, I expected it to be warmer, but I was wrong! They still had snow. It was gorgeous and I'm very glad we went. I would like to go back some day when it's warmer and check out all the hiking trails.

Saturday night we let the kids color Easter eggs. I forgot to check the directions before we went and apparently you're supposed to use vinegar in the coloring, but the eggs turned out fine and the kids had a lot of fun!

Easter morning we told the kids they had to search the trailer for their Easter baskets that the Easter bunny had left for them. Considering the relatively small size of the trailer, there really were not many places they needed to look, but they were still baffled for a while. They each got new outfits and lots of candy.

We had a great time! I hope our next camping trip is a bit warmer, but I'm really glad we went!

"Stay-cation"

Our kids were off track this month and instead of taking a vacation, we decided to save a few bucks and stick around town and have a "stay-cation." On Thursday our first stop was Kangaroo Zoo. The kids had a great time bouncing and running and jumping to their heart's content. My favorite part was that there were separate activities for the younger kids to do so they didn't get knocked over by the big kids. We ended up having the place to ourselves until after lunch time, it was great!!


Next stop was The Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy. It wasn't as big as I thought it would be, but their exhibits were great. The kids really enjoyed it! They even had a stingray exhibit where you could actually touch them. Les and Cody were the only ones to brave that, but Kenzie tried it with the help/coercion of her dad!!

We went to The Mayan that night for dinner where we enjoyed a great show and yummy food, it was way fun!!

Unfortunately, Thursday night 4/6 of us ended up with a stomach bug and Friday was spent laying around the house getting better. Les made us some wonderful chicken noodle soup and we watched Pirates of the Caribbean (the first one) that night and had about as good of time as we could hope for.


By Saturday morning all was well with the stomachs again, so we headed down to Thanksgiving Point and went to the dinosaur museum. We had never been there before and I was pretty impressed. The kids had a great time. I think the favorite was the sand/water table. We also watched a 3D movie about dinosaurs that was pretty cool. Also, while in Lehi we checked out Cabela's and ran into my mom and dad. The kids thought that was great and they actually wanted to head home with them, but we talked them out of it so we could take them out to dinner. We went to Tucano's at Gateway and had an excellent dinner! That night we watched the second Pirate's movie and called it a day!



Next up was the Hogle Zoo. The weather was perfect and there was hardly anybody there, it was wonderful!! Of course we got the traditional pose with the gorilla photos, gotta love them!! We had a great time. After a very long day there, we went to PF Chang's for dinner and had some excellent food, although one of the dishes suggested by our waiter was a bit spicy for our taste! We ended the day with the final Pirate's movie and that ended our weekend of fun!!

I'm so glad we decided to do this. It's funny how you can completely ignore all of the fun things to do around your house and take expensive vacations elsewhere. I'm sure we could do this kind of "vacation" several more times and still not run out of things to do.

I've been tagged

5 things I was doing 10 years ago:

Living in Washington Terrace in our third apartment
Raising a 2-year-old
Just found out I was going to have another baby
Loving being a stay-at-home mom
Scrapbooking my little heart out

5 things on my to do list today:

Work
Take Kenzie to dance
Fix dinner
Watch last night's American Idol
Fold laundry

5 snacks I love:

Popcorn
cheese and crackers
Chips and con queso
Gardetto's
Chocolate

5 things I would do if I was a billionaire:

Vacation more
New vehicles
New trailer
Decorate my house
New wardrobes for everybody

I tag:

Linda
Kathleen
Brooke
Christi
Eva

Kenzie's Christmas dance

Well, it's been a while since I've updated. I guess I enjoy reading other people's blogs more than updating my own.

Kenzie had her Christmas recitals for dance and tumbling this last week which were really fun to watch. She did tumbling on Monday, jazz on Wednesday, and ballet on Saturday. Most of our pictures didn't turn out too well because of the movement, but here's a sampling. She's turning into such a pretty dancer!!

Back to the land of computers

It's so funny how much I rely on my computer nowadays. It used to be that the computer was something I played Solitaire on once in a while and now it has turned into something that I use on a daily basis for something or other. First of all, I work at home doing medical transcription, so I use it for work, I read the news online rather than watch it, I check the sale ads on Pinching Your Pennies rather than read the actual sale papers, and then of course there's Facebook, blogs, and e-mail to keep up on.

So, for the past week I have been unable to be on a computer at all because of a nasty virus. It hit my computer last Sunday while I was working (I guess that's a sign I shouldn't have been working on a Sunday right:) So, we thought we could use anti-virus software to get rid of it, but not so. Les decided our safest route was to completely reformat the computer. Yikes!!! We had to order an external hard drive to back up all the files we needed and then wait for it to arrive. It came Thursday and we finally got everything set back up yesterday. It's so hard to get everything back to the way you had it before, but so far I think it's pretty good.

So, you may ask, what did I do this week without my computer? Well, I caught up on laundry, cleaned up the house, took the kids to the library, read a book, made new watchbands for my interchangeable watch, played a lot of Scrabble on my cell phone, and tried to start potty training Brooklyn.

Apparently I spend way more time on the computer than I had originally thought because I sure accomplished a lot this week!! Maybe this week will teach me to balance my time better, who knows, but I sure am glad to be back online!!!