I hope they call me on a mission!

My boys Mission Board! On it we are tagging all there grandparents, parents, aunts, uncle, cousins and of course their missions when they go. I love how it turned out!

10/14/14-10/20/14

This week was slower then the previous ones, but we still had plenty to keep us occupied. The kids had fall break this past week, so they only had school 3 days. Those days were just taken up with school homework, and scouts and Young men and women. The YM/YW had a combined activity with all the Mona youth and went and saw "Meet the Mormans" Tay said she liked it, Ki didn't say much. On Wednesday Morning I took our dog Cyril into to have surgery, he got to have his manhood removed. By time I picked him up later that afternoon, he was back to normal, he didn't even need his pain meds. If you didn't know he had surgery, you wouldn't be able to tell. Cyril has gotten out of his honeymoon stage and is showing some of his true colors, but over all he is still a good dog. He likes to bark at any new person coming to our house and doesn't quiet down quickly and he is food obsessed. So we have some work to do, but when the kids are at school he just lounges and sleeps the whole time, yeah for me! During his surgery, I took advantage and got my hair cut and got some Christmas shopping done. Then I picked up a few things yesterday and I think we are done. I love getting done early. :)  On my way back home I picked up Kaya my niece and she spent the night and next day with us. Todd and I helped her make a t-shirt for her Halloween costume, then she just relaxed and hung out with cousins the next day. Thurday we got yard work down, got the explorer cleaned out, and got Tay on her way with Mindy, Roger, Austin, Brayden and the Twins for a weekend in Brianhead. Tay gets to do a few fun things with Mindy's family since she is the same age. She had fun, but decided that hiking wasn't her favorite thing ever. Friday for us was just a relax day. We got work done then watched movies, played games and read. Saturday we got up and got some rocks and landscaping stuff done outside, cleaned up the yard, hung a bike rack in the garage and did some moving around of things in the house. Sunday was Sunday, we had an easy morning, Tay and I were sick, so the rest of the family went to church. So the whole day was just resting and enjoying family time. Monday we decided to play since the kids had one more day of fall break. We got up got the house picked up, picked up Ki's friend and headed into provo/orem area. We picked up Tays contacts, got some lunch at Costco, picked up a piece at Blentec that we broke on our mixer, then headed to Lehi to spend the afternoon at Trafalga. Since the holiday months are looking pretty full and our pass of all passes ends in Dec. I told the kids to use up the rest of their tokens. I think they each had about 600 tokens still. They found the games that game them the most tickets and went about winning as much tickets as possible. They scored some big wins and ended up winning just under 20,000 tickets between the 5 of them. Combined with their previous 5,000+ tickets they had over 25,000 tickets to use at the little ticket redemption store. They had so much fun. We walked away with a garbage bag full of toys and candy. After leaving Lehi, Todd took the boys over to the Orem Trafalga and I took the girls shopping to find Tays Christmas dress. We were successful! Then we meet Todd and the boys at Pizza Hut for dinner. The 3 youngest had earned personal pan pizzas from school for reading, so we choose there to eat ( my kids all decided that they did not care for pizza hut pizza, which is OK with me since it is not the cheapest pizza out there.) It was after 7 when that was all said and done, so we headed home. It was time to settle down for the night and get ready for a fun filled week of school. :)

 New Do, though I don't love the picture. It is shorter in the back with a stack, no hair on my neck! :)

 This is the picture we put on Kaya's shirt. She is being I think Athena from Camp Half blood.

 So this may not look different to most people but, none of those rocks were there, and it sloped down into the next level. We built it up and put the retaining wall there and that is now the  put a potty area for the dogs. We didn't want to have to go all over the yard for potty time.

  We basically did the same thing for this area. It use to be so hard to mow around. There was rocks int he way and there was a big sink hole and it was always a mucky mess, since the 2 younger ones like to get water from this spout for the sand box. This is going to be so much better. I think we will eventually put a drinking fountain end on it as well, since it is house water.

We have actually owned this bike rack for over a year, and just have never gotten it installed. It is so nice to have the bikes up and stored for the winter,

 So, I have been doing a lot of reading and thinking about simplifying our life. I think I have had my priorities all mixed up. So Todd and I have been taking a hard look at our life and the goals we have set for ourselves and decided to put some other things as priorities in our life. One of the things that is being switched up is how much time and money we are putting into our yard and house. We have all these big plans and dreams and have started realizing they are not reality for our life. We have been doing things based on the dreams that we hope that happen. Take for instance our fire pit. Now it was free, took us a few hours to put in, so if it is not used very much no loss. But the point still is the same for what we try to do in life. We put the fire pit in and hung our big movie screen, it hope that it would give us some great family and friend time. The reality is that our life is busy, the weekends even in the summer because of work is the only time that we can even use it, and it seemed like more then half of the weekends here in Mona are too windy to enjoy a fire and movie. So we used it I think 3 times this year. So we started asking our selves if that is what our yard and house was going o be like. We spend thousands of dollars over the years to get it to a place that is amazing for weddings, pictures, grand-kids just for the reality of life to set in and it never get used.   We can't put our kids and our life on hold right now, and spend all our time and money trying to get ready for the future. The reality is that Todd and I need to be financially ready to retire so that we can go travel and spend time with our kids and grand kids. I don't usually have the money to go visit family at this stage of my life, why do I think my kids and their families will. So getting out of debt, cars, student loans and mortgage are going to be priority and spending time with our kids. We are going to make our house and yard simple and nice so we still have several things to do, and we are making a few changes in our house. Like we really do need a little more storage. We thought we were saving up for a good size shed outside. but we realized we have a big unfinished room downstairs that would work great for starage including food storage. So we are moving our boys and TJ up stairs. We have to rooms upstairs. One is used for a TV room, and the other was suppose to be an office, but in reality it is just a dump all storage, we do all our computer work out in the main room. TJ is getting one room and the boys the other one. Like I said we have a little bit of work to get it to finished simply, but we think we can get everything done ove this next year. Then debt and kids are our focus. So the picture above is of our tempory fix for our TV, we got an antenna for conference, so we needed to hook it up somewhere. I eventually want it out of my room, but it works for now.

 Trafalga, my kids love this place, but I am not sure if we will get the passes again this year or not. I can't decided if it is worth it. We will see, but they loved it for the year we had them. 

 \This is our massive pile of tickets. We hit some double bonus and that is over a thousand tickets and there is still about 400 needing to come out. We got lots of fun looks with that huge pile.

TJ, each time we go, gets further up the wall, she made it about 2/3 of the way this time, but still couldn't get all the way up. So close.

 

I don't think you can truly appreciate the amount of stuff we walked away with from the little store but it was a lot and it filled up a black garbage bag.

The next couple of pictures is of us waiting outside of the pizza hut store for our pizza. They barely have standing room in there. There was a little grass area and it was a nice night, so we played and had fun, then ate there before we loaded up in the car to head home.

All in all a great week, with a fun end!!!

October 5th-14th

This past week we we got lot of things done. We tried to get our yard ready for the winter, even though we will probably have to mow again, since we have been having nice weather. We got some weeding done, the grass mowed, the plants I bought for 50% off in the ground and the drip line hooked up to them and we got the tools and yard cleaned up. Monday we took our explorer into the shop, it was making a funny sound and Mindy and Roger are borrowing this week to take the teenagers away for fall break, so we needed to make sure it was sound to take. Some gasket was going bad, so a couple hundred dollars later we have a car ready for a trip. Of course we had General Conference this weekend, that is always fun and we learn alot. On Monday night we went to see Tay's concert choir perform. It was actually all the choirs from Juab jr. high and High school. It was a great show, and my niece and nephew were in it as well. Tuesday I got to be part of an activities day girl day. They were doing a missionary day. They had the 4 return sister missionaries in our ward come and talk about their missions to the girls. They did it really cute, they called the girls to our different missions and did the youth MTC and sent them on their way. It was fun and I got to go done memory lane. I hope I got them excited about someday going on their own mission. Wednesday was my sisters and my nephews birthday. Happy Birthday Minday and Nathan!!

Also on Wednesday was Stephny's baby shower. I was planning to go to that but ended up needing to pick up Todd andour car. While out there we decied to go to another animal shelter. We have gone to a few cause we are trying to find an adult dog. We have not had luck with keeping animals around and Tay is so amazing with animals we wanted to get her another one. I knew that I could not handle a puppy, so hence the shelter looking. Well, we found our dogs, yes I said dogs. Todd fell in love with two. They so far have been pretty well behaved. Both potty trained and fairly quiet. The bigger dog does like to bark at new people coming to the door, but I can work through that, since all the puppy stages are done.. My kids are so happy.  Thursday was dentist appt. and blood drive. We didn't have much luck at the dentist, 8 cavities that have to be filled. Yuck!! Thank goodness the blood drive went a little better. Both Todd and I donated. Friday and Saturday, was haircuts, training, yard work, and visiting my grandma at the hospital, and seeing my dad who came home from his mission for a few days to help take care of some stuff with my grandma, since her health is failing and some steps have to be taken to make sure she is taken care of.  We have a full fun Sunday. First off in the morning we went to Turner's baby blessing, then we came home gathered stuff together and went to visit my grandma again, then left from there to go to Corbin's baby blessing, who is Todd's sister Louises baby boy. We got to visit with family. Jim and Gayle, Karen and her kids were all here from CA. That was a lot of Fun. We also found out that we may get to see a few of them for Kelten's ordination in a few weeks. Also Nathan got his Mission call to Texas and is going into the MTC on Nov. 12th. He is going to stay with us from the 10th until that afternoon. I get to go to the temple with him several times and I get to send him off. I get to be a proxy missionary mom for my siter-in-law. I am excited to spend that time with him. The last couple of days have been kind of relaxing, just catching up on things. I also got to watch my great-nephew today, that was a lot of fun, though I realized I am not a young mom anymore, sore back. He made up for it though by giving me lots of smiles. I do love babies, but I think they are even more fun when they are someones elses. I really enjoy my kids at their different stages and I will admit I am glad to be out of the baby stage. :)

So here are my few pictures!

 On my mission, Presiden Hinckley came to visit the saints there. We also got to have a missionary meeting with him. It was amazing! While he was there the Church News did a news article on Waterford City. I happened to be serving there, so I got to be in the church news. I was so young then. Can you find which one was me. My boys got it wrong! :)

  Our new dogs.

The little Chihuahua is 1 year old and his name is Meeko, the other one is 5-6 years old and his name is Cyril. He is a mut. A mix of terrier, poodle and mini pincher, so they guess. They are both doing good, and being loved.

Knightin was enthralled with GG. He told her she could not go to heaven yet. He also had to stay with her and push her wheel chair until she was settled in her new room. We were over at the hospital before she was transferred to Stonehenge assisted living.

The group that visited GG after she got settled into Stonhenge.

 5 generation picture!!

It has been fun watching the construction of the Payson temple, it is getting so close. They have the outside lights working now, it is fun to drive by it at night and see it shine.

Though Turner is not why dad came home for the weekend from his mission, it was a bonus. He even got to be there for his blessing. Isn't this the cutest picture!!

This was the cute little boy that I got to hang out with today. He made my afternoon by all the cute little smiles he was giving away. He is just a sweet boy, but I can make believe that he loves his Amee and was happy to be with me!!

My brother-in-law Jake was in the bishopric in his old ward, they are moving this week. So he was conducting this Sunday for his sons baby blessing. This is the first time that we have seen Jake with facial hair. My daughter told us that he could not shave it off because he looks like Tony Stark. There is some resemblance. There was definitely faces that he made that was even closer. But we couldn't get him to pose for the camera.

I thought this was a cute picture that my daughters friend took of the 2 of them.

Pictures

TJ's birthday was fun, we have a bed and breakfast in Nephi that has a swimming pool that he lets people use. First our family ate at the restaurant there, then when the friends got there we did cake and ice cream and some games. Red Rover was a favorite. Swimming and hot tubing followed, and because it was a little bit chilly the hot tub was the winner for the night. Once it started getting dark, there was roasting marshmallows, playing games, playing with the fog and bubble machine, and the tire swing. The little kids also enjoyed the play set. The evening was great and TJ said it was her best birthday ever! ( so much for her princess birthday at disneyland! :) )

My sweet sassy little girl is growing up!!

Taylar and Brigette were torchering Kelten and his friends all night by flirting with them. Kelten and Parker didn't think it was that great, but Cameron is a little ladies man!

I just really liked this picture of Ki. He was not feeling well that day, so he spent most of the night watching everyone else have fun. Poor Guy! :(

 Our friend Helen wasn't able to come to TJ's party and wanted to do something for her. She ended up having an extra ticket to Young Living Farms, they were having an event. TJ loved going with Helen and got to do all sort of activities and see different animals. Seeing the Fairies was a definate highlight for her. I can't find my other pictures from the night, but if I do i will post them later.

These next 3 are ones I found and added in! :)

Taylar has been playing around with my camera, I think she got some fun shots!! 

Maybe we will get a photographer in our future!

Some  of the pictures of I took of KaDi and her boyfriend for homecoming!

Pinewood Derby time. Todd was a little sad this year, because we started with a pre-cut car. He loves making the kids designs himself, but he started to late and I don't love the stress of doing it last minute. They still made it their own, this was in know way like the kit car. He made his truck into a fire truck. We didn't think he would have much chance at winning, it is not necessarily a winning shape, but boy were we wrong. He won everyone of his races except the very last and he might have won that one, but his wheel came off. Darn it! He still had a blast!

 Kelten getting his awards at court of honor. I forgot to take pictures of Ki getting his, I guess Ki was actually taking these. 

Homecoming Week! This is one of Tay's selfies that she took in the ranger. You can she she is wearing the shirts we made for the class officers.

The 4 officers together in front of their decorated rangers, for the parade. 

For homecoming week their is a dress up day every day. The class officers are suppose to dress up everyday. This is the only day I remembered to take a picture. Sometimes I am good at remembering other times not so much!

This was tourist day, they had superhero day, movie character day, PJ day and Spirit day.

These are the apple baskets I made to hand out to Todd's and my Home and visiting teaching people! I thought they turned out cute. :)

Random picture of TJ!

The next group of pictures our from our mini vacation to Brianhead, UT. It was great! I had fun spending time with my husband and my sisters and their spouses.

This is what old people do on vacation after a several hour drive and full bellies. We lounge in front of the fire! Good Times

So the next day was spent hiking and seeing the beautiful scenery. Cedar Breaks National park is right there and is considered a mini Bryce Canyon. It is beautiful and the pictures don't do it justice!

Mindy decided she needed to lay down on each bench along the different hikes. We have severall more pictures, but a couple will give the idea. 

This was one of the pools, pretty green but still pretty in its own rights

There was some left over ice/snow from some of the crazier weather, but it was a beautiful day.

So we didn't realize our phones had a pano setting, watch out world we were having way to much fun with it. We got some pretty cool pictures with it.

This is from our condo porch! Beautiful day!

Here we are taking a group selfie ( I know it is not a selfie at that point) with the pano setting, yeah us, we are such nerds!!!

This was on my mom's birthday and we got to torture her all day long with text and pictures. The resturant we went to that night, someone else was throwing a surprise birthday party, so we took pictures of it and sent them to my mom, telling her we trough her a surprise party to remember her day ! There was live music and everything. We ended the night Facetiming her and singing Happy Birthday!

  We went up to Brianhead point, to watch the sunset!

The next morning we woke up to snow. That put a damper on our hike, but we enjoyed it all the same.

This last picture isn't mine, but I love it. I don't know who took it, but it is from a trail up in brianhead. Just gorgeous!

 Well, that sums up my pictures from the last month and some!