Tap a Tap Tap

Angela looked so cute for her little dance class I had to get some pictures.

Town Mouse Country Mouse

For school, Natalie had to make a diorama about a book that she read. I was so impressed with how good it turned out! She amazes me with her artistic talent. I did not do a single thing but get the box lid for her and this is what she came back with! Good work Natalie!

Special Dinner Guests

One of our favorite things to do now that we are back is to invite family over for dinners at our house! We had a Winco turkey left over from the Thanksgiving sales and decided to have grandma and grandpa come share it with us. The girls helped out and even decorated the chairs with little pictures. Angela's favorite part was eating the powdered doughnuts grandpa brought.








The evening entertainment was watching Angela eat a powdered doughnut while laughing her head off. (o:

Dance Dance Dance

Look how cute - Angela in a leotard and tap shoes. What could be cuter? That's her bud Abbi with the blonde hair. I was so excited to hear about this great dance teacher from Abbi's mom. She teaches in her basement about a mile from our house and her hour long class includes tap, ballet and tumbling. What a deal! Natalie is also taking the same class with older girls. I have been so impressed with Shelly and her fun choreography. And the girls have learned some really good skills. She is great. I can't wait for the recital in May. I had a cute picture of Angela dancing around, but the girl behind her had a problem with her top coming down and was showing a little too much to share.

Sweet Gracie

Another fun family birthday! Sweet Grace is getting so big. I love how she is blowing out the candles. I'm surprised she got them out! I think sometimes, since Gracie is the one of the littlest ones in the family - the other kids think she is a dolly. (o: My girls love her and think she is so cute. They are right!

Sunday Stations

I think I mentioned this one a while ago, but it is such a good idea and has become such a tradition, I wanted to do another post on it. My friend Tina had this brilliant idea. On Sundays, in our church, we try to keep the Sabbath Day holy and avoid things like watching TV, going shopping, going to movies, playing sports, etc. Not because they are bad - it's kind of a day to take a break from the world and focus on our family and create an atmosphere that welcomes deeper thought and reflection on what matters most. This can be hard for kids who just want to watch Sponge Bob, play their DS games or jump on the trampoline outside. And I'll be the first one to tell you we aren't perfect at this - I don't think we've ever missed a Super Bowl game. Anyway, it is tricky to get the girls excited for Sundays. But Tina had a great idea called Sunday Stations and we totally copied it and love it. It is set up similar to the way we used to do preschool with "discovery stations". I set up 5 or more little stations with an activity - some are religious (like looking up a scripture, solving a book of Mormon puzzle or figuring out how much tithing you would pay for different amounts of money) and others are art, nature, etc. Most of them tie into church topics somehow. (Building a temple with Legos was a big hit.) The girls love this so much and ask every week, "Are we doing Sunday Stations"? It is great because now they don't dread Sundays. Plus, I'm getting to use some of my preschool kits still! We don't have time to do them every week. Some weeks we are visiting family instead, but we do it about twice a month. The picture above was one where I told the girls to draw a picture of the first presidency. I thought it might be too hard, but they all did such a cute job I'm tempted to send them to The Friend magazine. (a kid's church magazine)

Danny's Birthday Extravaganza

We get to do fun things in Utah, like celebrate family birthdays now! My nephew, Danny, turned five this year and we had a fun time at Trafalga with the family. It had a cool glow in the dark mini golf course. The kids and Harvey* also got to play some arcades and hit the jackpot at one of the games. They won hundreds of tickets and bought some silly crayon banks with their winnings. I was not thrilled - I hate those dumb cheap toys, but the girls were so excited. Cute Danny - this kid is going to follow in his daddy's footsteps. We have so many "Andy" stories of when my brother was growing up. He almost killed himself, burned the house down, did major damage to things so many times. They make for great stories now and we laugh our heads off. Now Andy is a police officer. (o: Who knew? Ha! Danny is very bright and has more energy than any kid I've ever known. "No fear" is his motto. Or maybe "140%" I can't wait to see where he ends up. General authority in the church, lawyer, rocket scientist . . . I love this cute kid. Life would be a bore without him in our family. And little Sammy - he's the quiet one, for now. Isn't he adorable?

Queen of the Bee

Sometime back in November or December, Sarah told me she was going to get to be in the school spelling bee. It is a funny story how she got to go to the school spelling bee. The classes all have their own "bee"s to pick the students who will get to do the school bee. Sarah actually missed a word in the class bee and was eliminated towards the end, until the final person missed the word. Her teacher asked if anyone in the class knew how to spell the word. The word was 'whittle'. Sarah laughed to herself and raised her hand and spelled it perfectly. When she came home to tell me she was laughing while she was telling me and I didn't understand why. Then she reminded me of our Deep Thoughts book we love to read, including this one: "I remember how my great-uncle Jerry would sit on the porch and whittle all day long. Once he whittled me a toy boat out of a larger toy boat I had. It was almost as good as the first one, except now it had bumpy whittle marks all over it. And no paint, because he had whittled off the paint." We laughed so hard when we realized that Deep Thoughts helped further Sarah's education and offered her a chance to be in the school spelling bee! Thank you Jack Handy! Ha! We got a list of the possible words - I think it was around 400 words, I don't remember. We studied every one and made cards for the ones she didn't know. On the last row there were words I had to look up because I hadn't even heard of them. Some of them were: xanthic, orthographize, incendiary, virulently, nebulosity, doughtily, euphonious, etc. Then there were ones I had heard of, but would need spell check to help me with, like: froufrou, grotesqueness, lackadaisical, elucidate, silhouette, roux, etc. There were funny ones too like: zigzaggedness, uvula, yahoo, crepuscular, ululate, flammeous, etc. As I studied for hours with Sarah (using small piece of dark chocolate as a treat every time we practiced 20 words), I realized that she really has a talent for retaining knowledge. (**funny side note: I always spell check my posts and five of the words above, my spell check doesn't even recognize.) She's always done very well at spelling, but just learns things very quickly and remembers them. I do not have this skill - I have to work harder to remember things. As we started studying, my goal was to help Sarah be familiar enough to make it through the first couple rounds so she could have a positive experience. As we studied, I realized that if we had started sooner, she probably could have had every word spelling memorized. We still worked very hard and she knew probably 85% of the words solid. We had fun spending that extra time together - looking up words and talking about meanings to help her remember and be familiar with them. We came up with some tricks to remember certain words and had some good bonding over practicing these words. I hope she will remember it as a fun time, though it was hard work too. I went to watch and support her that day and couldn't believe how nervous I was. I just wanted her to make it through the first two rounds. I sat by another nervous mom and we laughed at ourselves. I texted Bobby* constantly since he couldn't be there and was nervous too. Sarah was on the last row, so it was a while before her turn came. It was so fun to make eye contact with her frequently as we heard all the familiar words read aloud. So many of them we had inside jokes with our silly ways to remember spellings. It made it fun and we laughed to ourselves when we looked at each other. Finally her first turn came. Her word was "feud" and she spelled it without a hitch. I was so glad she wouldn't have to be sad about getting out the first round. Most of the kids did. Second round, Sarah's word was "counterclockwise" by far one of the hardest of the second round in terms of length. It was an easy one to mess up because of nerves and the number of letters. She kept calm and spelled it just right. I was so happy and relaxed quite a bit after that. She could be proud of making it through two rounds. The third round was brutal. A third of the kids missed their words. Sarah's word was "kanji" - not a hard one if you practiced. This was the round where it really showed who studied and worked hard. I was thrilled as I texted Bobby* that she had sailed through the third round. I also had to text my friend Kim. Her daughter, one of Sarah's very best friends, won the DISTRICT spelling bee in Texas. I knew she'd understand the nerves and excitement of a spelling bee. (o: The next round was a strange one. There were about 10 kids left and every single one missed their word! Sarah missed "chaperonage". But they all got a second chance - lucky for Sarah. Only she and one other girl spelled their next words right. Sarah's word was "phalanx". She was in the final two with a sixth grader. And funny thing - the other girl's mom was the one sitting right next to me! Unfortunately, Sarah missed her next word "virulently" and the other girl got her word right, so that was that. Sarah was second place! I couldn't believe how far she went! She secretly told me she would be so excited if the other girl got sick and couldn't go to the district bee. (o: But she was very excited to have done so well and wasn't too disappointed to take second. The neat thing for her was that now she was getting to be known in the school, not as the new girl from Oregon, but as the second place winner of the spelling bee! Her class cheered for her when she got back to class and her teacher was so excited for her. For a few days, she was a celebrity at school and kids in several grades would say, "hey you're the one came in 2nd place at the spelling bee". She can't wait to go for it next year! Way to go Sarah!! We are so proud of you!!

Activity Day Girls

My new calling in our ward is to be the 10 year old Activity Day leader. We have lots of girls in our ward so there is a group of girls for every age between 8 and 11. I was excited to get to be with Sarah's age group. This picture was taken at my first activity with the girls. They are spunky and definitely not boring! Natalie is our honorary member until she turns 8 this spring and gets to go with her own group. (She is soooo excited - you get to start going when you turn 8.) As it turns out, Angela's dance class is at the exact same time as activity days, which works out good, although sometimes she wishes she could come too. My girls are from left to right, top to bottom: Nicole, Sarah, Sunshine, Kaitlyn, Natalie, McKayla, Sierra and Mandy. Great girls. They are always excited and happy to participate in all the activities. In fact, they are VERY enthusiastic about everything. I love it! (o: We have a good time, though sometimes I have a little bit of a headache by the time we're done!

Natalie Gets High

For reasons I won't go into too much detail over, Natalie's pediatrician had some concerns about Natalie's kidney function. She wanted to rule this out so Natalie had to undergo a test that involved a catheter. Not fun. It was a procedure that required Natalie to be conscious, but parents could opt for the medication that would make her not understand what was going on and most importantly, not remember the trauma of it all. We definitely wanted that option and don't regret it. Ned* took some time off so we could both be there to help Natalie feel as comfortable as possible. We are so lucky to have a Primary Children's very close and were so well taken care of. They even called a few days prior twice to explain everything to me, give me some tips on helping prepare Natalie and then to give instructions regarding drinking, eating, etc. prior to the appointment. Nat was pretty nervous. I knew she would be - she gets worked up over things pretty easily, so I didn't even mention it to her until a couple days before. A promise of a new toy when it was all over motivated her to be brave. The nurses were very sweet and gave Natalie this cute doll to decorate while she waited in her room. Leave it to Natalie to add some realistic detail to her dolly. (o: I'm glad she was in good enough spirits to be silly! Once Nat got her meds, the fun really began. Within about 15 minutes Natalie was as high as a kite and making us laugh until we cried. Don't get me wrong - it is a little disturbing to hear your child to act like someone on hallucinogens - but in a hospital setting under a nurse's care, it is great comic relief. She would reach up in the air and swat her hands and say in slurred speech, "Why is the ceiling moving?" Then, slowly turn her head and say, "Mom, you have two heads." The look in her eyes was so funny - you could tell she was seeing some pretty darn funky stuff. "The walls have colors." "Where am I?" "The lights are floating." During the procedure was pretty traumatic. I think the drugs actually made getting the catheter even worse because Natalie was in no state to understand reason or anything we had talked about at home. It was so heartbreaking for Ned* and I. (Maybe we should have taken some drugs too!) But the wonderful benefit of the meds was that the only thing Natalie remembers is that daddy was wearing an apron with flowers. The nurse handed us aprons (because the test involved an x-ray) and the nurse was being funny giving him the flowery one to make Nat laugh. Look at my poor little baby. Trying to smile for the picture. (I didn't ask her to.) She was pretty loopy for a little while after and the nurses kept a close eye on her to make sure she recovered from the meds before we left. The great news is that the doctor found no problems with her kidney function. I am proud of my brave little girl and I'm so glad that is over with.

Messages From Natalie

One of the great perks of motherhood - finding a sweet message spelled out with Q-tips. (o: Thanks Natalie. "You I Love too" (o:

Olympic Style Ice Skating

We love to ice skate and wanted to explore the Utah venues. Lucky for us - there are some first class facilities here! So we bundled up and headed to the Olympic rink in Kearns. It was incredible! We had a great time, minus one little thing. We bundled up WAY too much! It was warm inside! We definitely looked like out-of-towners skating in our big coats, gloves, hats and scarves. The girls are getting pretty good at skating and want to go again soon!

Welcome Twenty Eleven!

New Year's Eve was lots of fun this year. We invited mom and dad over to celebrate with us. We made the mistake of watching Marley and Me right before they arrived. So we were feeling a little melancholy, but the mood picked up quickly when we ate some of these . . . Frank's* famous ribs. Yum. I could almost lick my screen they look so good! It's not a party without a little Rockband! Frank* got the Beatles Rockband for Christmas and it's been so fun! I catch my girls singing Beatles songs now! We came out at midnight and made some noise. We were surprised how many neighbors came out to do the same. What a fun neighborhood! (o: It was FREEZING so this lasted about 45 seconds.

Sledding at Grandma's Hill

Just after Christmas, we got some pretty good snow. We heard grandma and grandpa had a good hill close to their house so we planned a spontaneous sledding party! Grandma and Grandpa and Lisa and Kelly and the kids came! It was the perfect hill and there was plenty of room. We had so much fun trying out the sleds Santa gave us. We had a blast and laughed our heads off - all the adults took turns, we tried making trains and we even did a few runs where grandpa counted and everyone came down at the same time! I love Anna's hot chocolate mustache in the picture above. What an awesome day! The girls loved this new winter activity! By the time we were done, we couldn't wait to warm up, but it was fun while it lasted. Sarah must have gone up and down at least 30 times. She was crazy! Cute Cameron! I love getting more time with my sweet nieces and nephews! Natalie was pooped by the end and just collapsed in the snow.

An Old Fashioned Christmas

From NovDecFavorites

Mom had a fun idea to have a party with her family at Heritage Park where my sister works during Christmas and during the summer. It is such a neat park and just gorgeous at Christmas time! It's like stepping back in time. The park is dedicated to the early Utah pioneers and has a whole little village reminiscent of the times when they first arrived. Our party was in a beautiful and quaint building - it was so Christmas-y. (o: We had fabulous food, but even better company. This was the first time I got to see some of my extended family on my mom's side. It was wonderful to catch up and reunite with aunts, uncles and cousins I will get to see more often now that we are here! I was having so much fun visiting, we didn't really get to go out and see the park, but that's okay with me.

From NovDecFavorites

From NovDecFavorites

Angela and my cousin's little boy, Izak are both in kindergarten. Cute second cousins. (is that right?)

From NovDecFavorites

We were privileged to get our very own personal performance by Christine and her fellow Heritage Park carolers. They were wonderful! It's amazing how such a small group can sound so good acapella. Very impressive and fun! (Christine is on the left.)

From NovDecFavorites

From NovDecFavorites

Angela got a big surprise when in the middle of "Up on the Housetop" the carolers got to the "Ho Ho HO - who wouldn't go?" part and then they kept asking, "Who wouldn't go? Was it you?" And Christine scooted right over to Angela, with the rest of the group right beside her and asked, "Was it you? Why wouldn't you go?"

From NovDecFavorites

Angela just FROZE with all the attention drawn on her - it was hilarious! (o:

From NovDecFavorites

My cute cous' Megan and uncle Mike. What a wonderful night and reunion!

December 27

From NovDecFavorites

December is a very special day. It's the anniversary of the day I married my best friend, Clyde*. It's always a little crazy celebrating so quickly after Christmas, but it will be so much easier to celebrate living in Utah. Almost every year we lived in Oregon, we spent our anniversary traveling or hosting visitors for a Christmas visit. (Which was just fine with us!

Before we did our anniversary celebrating, I had a chance to meet up with two wonderful friends that I have known ever since I can remember. Stephanie and Emily. We've known each other since Kindergarten, I think. We went through high school together and have kept in touch all these years. The last time I saw Stephanie was when Sarah was a baby and she visited us in Portland. I think it's been longer since I've seen Emily, but we've e-mailed and kept in touch. We decided to get together while Steph was visiting from Washington. It's funny how good friends are so easy to just hang out with no matter how long it has been. Emily and Steph look so great! Exactly the same as I remember, and it doesn't feel to any of us that we are so much older. It still felt like we were high school friends out for a girls night. Only we talked about different things like kids, travel, and careers rather than tests and boys. I am so grateful for such good friends. I was always blessed with good friends growing up and think I turned out pretty good, in part, because of them. When I look back on my growing up years, my memories are so good and fun, with very few regrets, because I had wonderful friends surrounding me. I hope that my girls will be blessed with the same kind of friends. There's nothing better than a friend you can just be yourself around and who makes you a better person. Emily and Stephanie are those kind of friends.

From NovDecFavorites

What a fun day I had! After a fabulous afternoon with girlfriends, I had a hot date to look forward to with my man. (o: The girls were excited to have a night with grandma and grandpa and we were thrilled to have our first date where the babysitting would be free!

I was so excited when I found out Utah has a Ruth's Chris downtown, just like Portland. So of course, we planned to head there. It's been our traditional anniversary date for years. I am so happy we could continue this tradition. Clyde* made reservations a little later, so we had time to just do what we wanted. We ended up at Emergency Essentials! Now is that romantic or what? We had a great time and spent a good hour there! We looked at all the emergency preparedness stuff, talked about what we'd like to work on getting, bought a few things and sampled some of the flavored milks. It was fun, believe it or not. (o: We must be old. Then we headed downtown and enjoyed a fantastic meal at good old Ruth's Chris. We must have been there for two hours - we got lots of good food and just talked and talked and reminisced. It was a wonderful night. I can't believe it's been 14 years! I am so lucky - it has been a wonderful 14 years and I can't wait for more.