OuR StAyCatIoN Day 1

So we never officially went anywhere this summer and if we did it was on weekends so Tim decided to take of most of last week and we just went and did different fun things each day.

Monday night we went to the pool and then Ange and Dean (Tim’s Sister) and their 4 boys slept over on their way back home to Boise. The next morning we went to Deer Creak for the day! The kids all had a really good time!!! I don’t have any pictures of it cuz I didn’t take my camera (GASP!) But Ange did so there are some I just don’t have them YET!

Tucker learned a very BIG lesson that day. One word “SUNSCREEN.” He was too excited to be up at the lake with his cousins. Dayten is just a few months older than him and Oakley is a year younger so they have a really good time when we see them. I kept telling/asking over and over to put on sunscreen. Finally I told him “WHEN you get a sunburn I don’t want to hear you whining about it!!!” And he DID get one! Not that I’m glad about that!!!

We were all bushed when we got home that day and just vegged the rest of the day it’s amazing  how the sun gets you so tired!

Stay tuned for the rest of the story……

Big hike little legs

We decided to take a trip up to see the caves at Timpanogos, since they are just minutes away from us we thought 2 years was long enough to wait. At least Porter was old enough to walk now, big enough I’m not so sure :) He did soooo awesome for such little legs he made it further than 3/4 of the way and even after that Tim carried him for only about 20 feet. He walked most of the way back down and got shoulder rides from both Grandpa and Dad.  The hike is 1.5 miles each way and it takes about an hour to go through the caves so that is a lot of walking for little people. Abbey had a bit of a piggy ride near the end from Tim. waiting to go in for our tour, we made better time then they allot for you to get to the top. We were pretty pleased with that :) more waiting…..Tucker was in heaven, the other people in our group didn’t speak much English so it was kind of like a tour just for us and Tucker took FULL advantage of that and asked a TON of questions, I think the tour guide liked answering them just as much as he liked asking them If you look close you will see that Porter wore one of those kid leashes. Grandma informed us at the end that if he hadn’t been wearing it at the beginning she would have take him and the car keys and been back to get the rest of us in a few hours!!! Needless to say that little boy had no fear of those cliffs. At one point we were resting and he started to run after a chipmunk and Tim literally stepped on the leash to stop him just at the edge. Luckily there were trees at that particular spot but it still got all our hearts pumping!

I had to add this picture….dad snapped it just at the right moment for it too look like I’m wearing a little hat. Do you like my new hat  isn’t it cute? When I saw dad bringing his camera I just left mine home, one less thing to carry. ATTENTION: this photo is not photoshopped in anyway! Abbey is such a silly little girl she always wants Grandma to come and never leave but then when she is here she is a little snort to her so we had to get this moment on film!

 

I think Abbey is wondering what Grandpa is doing up in the trees.

And Abbey got a burst of energy knowing that the car was insight!

we stopped at smith’s on the way home to get ingredients for homemade ice-cream which we all deserved!!! It was cake batter ice cream and if you’ve never had you HAVE to try it.

We were so glad that Grandma and Grandpa came with us it was so fun! Tim and I appreciated the extra hands and eyes! And the kids just thought it was fun, hello it’s Grandma and Grandpa!

Train Station

We used to go to this train station when we lived in North Ogden ALL the time. We decided to go there on our way up to Logan a few weeks ago when our nephew Jacob took out his temple endowments. The kids were so excited! As you can see Porter loved it, he doesn’t remember frequenting this place cuz he was WAY to young when we used to go.

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Oh Beautiful Wall

I am sooo happy with my new room!!! I switched where our bed was and then I HAD to do something with this wall and this is the result!!! I LOVE it!!! It took some time to get it all made up and hung and I had to use some serious measuring but it was worth it!!   

I absolutely LOVE how it turned out! I figured if I don’t get a new house yet I can at least have a new wall in the bedroom!!

SOLD

We signed papers today for selling our house!!! We are officially houseless, not homeless ;)

Who would have thought it would take 2 years? Yesterday marked 2 years for Tim working at his job. Now we are free to get a house whenever we find the perfect one, who knows when that will be!

ChEeKs aNd 4-WhEeleRs

So we are driving home from the nitro drag races last night (pictures to come, maybe) and eating our yummy Carl's Jr. burgers in the car (at 10PM) when Abbey comes up with another of her brilliant theories! Had to write this one down before I forgot.

"Cheeks are a very important part of your body."

Now as she says this I'm thinking okay whatever, they are just flabby skin on the side of your face. How important can they be?

"Without cheeks you would just have your mouth and when you ate all your
food would fall out!"

Well now when you put it that way they are pretty important little things these cheeks we have. amazing how those little minds work! So we came to the conclusion that without cheeks we would die because we wouldn't be able to get any nutrition to our bodies.

Porter

walking out of church he looks up at me and says

"Jesus made my 4-wheeler!?!?!"

"No" I said, as I was laughing.

"You made it?" he asked.

"No, some guy made it."

"oh"

that just wasn't as exciting to him. I wish I could have had this on film he was so excited at the thought that Jesus would make him a 4-wheeler. At least I know he heard something in church, they must have talked about Jesus either making everything or giving us everything.

Little Dancer

Abbey had her little dance recital a few Saturday's ago. She was a palace maid in the production of Cinderella. We weren’t allowed to take any pictures during the actual performance because they were making a DVD of it. This picture in the parking lot is the best we got. We were going to do some outside after we got home but as with our June weather it was down pouring by the time we got home. 

Abbey really loved going to dance, but….apparently not enough to do it again. After her recital she said “and now I never have to see my dance teacher again!” So apparently she doesn’t want to take them anymore, that’s okay we’ll do art lessons instead, that is her love!

Here are her 2 pictures from art lessons, that she did all on her own!

Porter is 4!

My baby is 4, He is the cutest little 4 year old I’ve ever seen. He is our little miracle man he started out in this world at a whopping 3 pounds 1 ounce and only 14 inches long. That didn’t stop him from flourishing and coming home after only 20 days in the NICU he grew 3 inches and gained a whole pound before he came home, still so very little.

I remember the week leading up to his birth and I remember thinking that I was going to have this baby on Friday and that I should pack my bags, but I thought I was being a silly pregnant lady, why would I have him 6 weeks early? But somehow I just knew, the Lord seems to prepare us and it isn’t until after that we truly can see that. I never worried that I wouldn’t bring my baby home I knew he would be fine, I don’t know how I just did. I wish I had knowledge like that more often.

I

I think he was so excited and embarrassed to have everyone singing to just him.

 

Porter wanted more dinosaurs for his birthday again this year. I didn’t know there could be such a need for so many dinosaurs.  We had a wonderful little party for him and Grandma’s house on Sunday and I’m so very grateful that we did, the rest of the week just didn’t exactly go as planned. Tim came home from work early and took the kids swimming and made me come along to just sit out in the sun, the kids had so much fun they just LOVE to swim and the weather was finally good enough to go.

 

 

  I finally finished a new “gankie” (blankie) for Porter he has been dragging around his haggard little gankie from when he was a baby, I know he will still love it, but maybe he will grow to love this one before that one turns to complete shreds.

I love that grin!!!

I love you my little man and I hope you had a happy birthday!!!

Warning, honest ramblings.

I really don’t feel like I’m very prepared for the road I’m on right now. I had such hopes that this baby would stay and yet another one has been taken away. I know it’s not “proper” to talk about such things but I don’t care anymore.  I didn’t talk about it much after the last one and I know that wasn’t any good for me so I’m trying this out this time. If one of my other children had died it would be fine to talk about it, but there seems to be this unwritten rule about talking about miscarriages in society. I personally don’t understand it, you aren’t supposed to tell people you are expecting until after 12 weeks because then the fear of miscarriage has passed. well what do those women do when they do miscarry, who do they talk to, who do they cry to, who brings them dinner or a loaf of bread and jam, who folds their laundry for them. Who hugs them and tells them “I’m so sorry”, who takes their kids home with them so they can spend the afternoon crying all by themselves.  Who sends them little notes just saying they are thought of and loved. I know I’m having a hard enough time with all the wonderful things people have done, I don’t feel so alone, how would I be handling it without all of that. Yes I didn’t like having to go tell everyone that my baby is gone, but at the same time it is so nice knowing I’m not alone and that I’m so loved.  So i guess the reason I’m writing this for anyone to read is to say thank you for all your love and support. I KNOW I can’t do this on my own and I don’t want to either. I’m not handling it very well at all. I’ll walk pass a mirror and see my fat belly that is just plain fat now, it was fine 3 days ago knowing it was for a reason but now it’s just plain fat, fat that I never lost from the last one and now more added to it, or I’ll see my puffy eyes and there is another reminder. Or one of my little ones will wrap their arms around me and tell me they love my and I know I’m so blessed and so I cry because I feel I’m acting ungrateful for the 3 wonderful little kids that i do have. Poter has informed me “we’ll get a new one, we will” I know I’m so very blessed to have them and that so many people can’t have any at all, but it doesn’t lessen the hurt of the ones that I have lost. I know I’m not the only one in the world who has gone through something like this but thinking about that just makes me sadder to think that things could be so much worse, you would think it would make me feel better but it just makes me sad for them too. and  I really am so very grateful for what I do have, a wonderful family and wonderful friends and neighbors. I’m just hurting right now and wish it was easy to just move on and forget about it but it’s not possible. It would be nice to do that but it just won’t happen. I must say even just writing this has been very therapeutic, so thanks for the free therapy!

Vegas

We took off to Vegas on Thursday night of the last week of school. Our kids did have school on Friday but it was only for 1 1/2 hours, how crazy is that? So we decided to leave the night before so we would have a FULL day there on Friday. We stayed at Allen’s house (Tim’s brother) There is an awesome pool in his backyard and the kids couldn’t get enough of the water!!!  

 

Tucker loved to climb up the rocks and jump off the waterfall!

On Saturday we got to ride around in this

little car Every time we’ve been to Vegas We’ve taken our picture in the Bellagio gardens. So we have quite of few picture of different kids at different stages taken there. This is Porter’s first time in one of those pictures.

Windows Live Writer

This program ROCKS!!!! If you haven’t tried it out yet you HAVE to!!! Why? you ask. because I said so!!!

you can edit your picture right in the program, move them, crop them, put boarders on them. You can change the font. and I’m a sucker for fonts, I have oh tooooo many on my computer!!! The 2 previous posts were done using Live writer. It made them so much easier to put the pictures exactly where I wanted them. And when you are done you simply press publish and it does it for you, so you can do it while you are not connected to the internet, which can also be helpful.

And you can set it to publish in the future so if you want to do a lot of posts at once and have them publish on different days. it’s in the bottom right corner it says “set publish date” Okay thought I’d share my new find. Hope you try it and like it!

I resized this picture and did sepia and then color pop to make it look this way. If you want your picture to fill in the whole width I’ve done it at 360 wide with the box that says lock ratio clicked. Hope all of this made sense!

Smart Boy

Our smart little tyke FINALLY (well I’m sure he feels that way) has been able to open up the fridge and the freezer. Well what kid wouldn’t be happy with ice cream right in the door of the freezer, eye level, and in their eyes ready to EAT!