Sayings...

from my kids..

Hannah as I pushed her on the swing, "Push me higher, I'm smiling at Jesus".

Cole looking at our bathroom mirror that has random pics (one of our engagement pics, one of Cole and Laura when they were 3/2) that I find and just stuck up there and there wasn't one of Hannah, there happens to be one of the temple. So Cole says, you need one of Hannah up there, then thinks about it for a minute and says with a sly grin, "If you want our whole family up there you need a picture of the temple and of the Earth."

And Laura has said something, but it's not coming to me right away..next time, I gotta write these things down!

More updating to come :).

The pre-shoot shoot

This is Laura's spontaneous pre-shoot to pics for her baptism. My friend Mary had this idea of taking pics of her daughter in her dress to display at the baptism(and for the cake..those pics coming), so Laura indulged me to give it a shot, just for fun. This was all way overboard for my taste and usual doings, but it was fun!

Regata

It's so funny to look at the pics when we're sweating like pigs when the very cool weather is sneaking up on us.

This was the Regata, Cole built a boat with Gary K.'s help and blew on the sails, I failed to get good pics that were focused on him instead of the background.

Caught Hannah being a good friend, I love this pic!

And we're

Anya was here for the first day, loved having her.



trying to hop back into the blogging thang! I would put a little synopsis in one post, but the pics really tick me off, it really should be easier.

So here goes :)

School started...
and all of my kids are in school, Hannah is going to prek4 at the same school Cole and Laura went to and she likes it. The first few days, just before dropping her off I would feel a ton of guilt for sending my baby to school and then a huge sigh of freedom as I was pulling out of the parking lot.

Such a weird thing to have spent nine years everyday with someone calling me mommy 50 times a day (although I'm sure that quota is still met, just more condensed). I often go back and forth on the home schooling/sending to school thing. I miss them, I would love to somehow give them the best of both worlds, but I know for now this is the best way for us. We'll definitely revisit the situation for middle school (aka as scary spice).

So far we love our teachers. Ya never know what you're gonna get in a teacher and this year is pretty good, nobody can be perfect. Cole's teacher this year might be close to it. Laura's teacher is on her game, I was sitting the class today, playing school (stapling papers) and she had the kids broken up into groups and had three different groups come to her and she explained the same thing to each group, I would have no hair left. I swear next to mother's, teachers have to have the toughest jobs. They barely get to go to potty, forget about going to lunch! I appreciate them! So school is going pretty good...moving on.

Life and timing.

Life...
has a way of passing by rather quickly. My sweet Hannah turned four on Friday. FOUR. I realize that seems kind of young, but she was just my little baby using gurgling sounds to talk to me at four months and she was just saying dinder for dinner and musiket for music...I miss them both . Could be the age, but she is so much fun and such a challenge, but more fun than challenge. I love her love of music. We were in the grocery store and Hannah goes I know this song and neither Laura nor I even knew there was music playing, you could barely hear it..I love that. She will try to sing a song even if she doesn't know it. She has sung in her sleep. She's happy go lucky, sometimes, you can offend and she'll just shrug it off. She give the best loves and I think that's what I'm going to miss the most, Cole and Laura are kind of there, not much snuggle time. Hannah will just let me kiss all over her sweet face and that's coming to an end.

Time to have another one? And in comes timing...we have terrible delivery times of our children..more on that below Hannah's bday pics!

Our kids were not surprises and we're apparently poor or just plain non planners...

in all fairness they were all late so the scheduling should not have been so bad but here goes...

Cole's bday is the day after Christmas, nuf said, he's so sweet to embrace it though.

Laura's is the weekend of General Conference and three days before mine. She may never have a party the weekend of her bday..well we've had it on Friday night before, but still this year her bady was on a Sunday..a Gen Conf bday :). And as she gets older that's going to be a real winner.

Hannah's is the day before our anniversary, so there will always be juggling of celebrating those two. This year Mom came to Hannah's party and then took the kids for us to celebrate ever so romatically by repainting our kitchen cabinets..doesn't get much better than that, eh. We worked, but we laughed and had fun too. It was a great anniversary.

It's what twelve years does to you. And this man I married, I'm sure I've said it before, but I really did not fully understand the treasure of a person I was getting. I am awed continually.

Exhibit A. Picture below.

He's obviously receiving loves from Hannah, but you can barely see the spiked up hairdo Laura had just spent 30 minutes perfecting and mid left you'll see a black game card. He's playing a game with Cole and I that he's not really enjoying (I didn't find out until after the fact).

So in honor of being married to such a great man for 12 years I thought I'd give 12 great thoughts/memories.....

1. I'll never forget the way he looked at me during our sealing, not dreamy, but the happiest I have possibly ever seen him.

2. Our first or second Christmas being married, on a Friday, he came to my work to take me to lunch. We stopped by our house which was close by then he said we needed to go get my Christmas present. I was so surprised, so we get on the interstate and we drive past the T'ville exit and I think we're going to Madison to pick up some piece of furniture. Nope it turns out he arranged for me to get off of work, had my sisters pack my bag and had a hotel in St. Simon's Island, GA. We had the best time.

3. The next year I surprised him by getting on the interstate and he thought we were going to Orlando and we were but to fly to Idaho for Christmas...so much fun planning surprises!

4. Sunday afternoon naps in our little living room, watching him sleep in the recliner (cause he always sleeps longer than I do) and really appreciating our life together.

6. I remember telling him we were expecting Cole. He was thoroughly shocked because it happened very quickly. And then telling our parents with Easter baskets.

7. I remember how after I had Cole I had serious post delivery problems and he took care of me in every way possible. It became a little unhealthy as I remember wanting only him to help me in the recovery process even though other people were available, but he was better than any nurse I could of asked for.

8. His love for our children and their love for him amaze me every time. From watching him sing Song Sung Blue to Cole as a baby, calling Laura little one so affectionately, tummy kissing Hannah, to watching the complete devotion they have to him because of who he is.

9. Getting through the tough times. It's possible we had more than others, cause I'm kind of complicated, but I remember being mad at him because he wouldn't argue with me and I realized somewhere along the way how wise that was.

10. His sweet sweet eyes, they are what drew me to him the first time we had a conversation and I noticed how sweet they were again yesterday..you know how you go about life and don't notice everything all the time..

11. I remember telling my mom when we first started dating that one of the things I liked so much about him was his confidence. He is who he is. I of course have come to know he's not as confident as I thought he was, but I wasn't too off the mark. I love that he would never let me get away with something that he felt strongly against. Even though sometimes he lets me think he would.

12. Recently he went to Idaho for a weekend. I missed him being gone more than other times. I like to think it's because life is so good for us, our relationship has matured into a warm cozy blanket. We know each other so well (and he still likes me) and we don't agree all the time but that just makes it better. Twelve years has us in such a good place, looking forward to see what's next.

Summer fun

We don't have very many pictures to prove it, but we've had a good summer.

The bad stuff first though...we had to say goodbye to three families.

The first to depart were Matt, Ann, Emma, Ben, Kate and Will who took off to Illinois. They are one of the funniest couples I've met..I laughed all the time when I was around them. At the end of their time here we got together a couple of times to play rockband. Funny stuff. And their musical talent is amazing. Ann can sing...and Matt can too, Bon Jovi ....and I'll miss free Prism tickets from Matt :(!

Then Tricia, McKay, Cameron, Jessica and Thomas had to go and fly the coop to Pennsylvania, which isn't all bad cause they're super close to NYC (my bff) and will let us come stay..evenutually ...for a day or so ...maybe. They are the smartest people I've ever known, really, hands down. Also one of the nicest. Thomas was one of our regular play dates and we will miss him and Tricia is a wonderful person/friend. I learned a lot from her and wonder now who will keep me grounded. Ah well...there are six new families moving into the ward. Tricia replaced Misty so I'm sure Heavenly Father is sending a replacement.


During the holidays we would gather with McKay, Tricia and crew for a white elephant Christmas party , but since we won't be able to make it to PA this year we held a Christmas in July party and did our white elephant exchanges. It was fun, apparently too much fun cause we have not pics...but here's a pic of them I stole from their web site :).










Then Earl, Bernee, Melainee, Joe, Kenslee, Evee, and Cord headed back to ID after their one year stint here. We loved having them here. More energy in one family than I've known collectively from everyone else I know...for real. They were always on the go and very athletic. Bernee challenged me at the gym and Joe and Kenslee kept me on my toes when they came over. The girls loved their house and thought we were supposed to move into it when they moved..alas not to be.
Here's a pic of Bernee, Rachel and I after the Turkey trot last year...









Good people who are missed...already.


On to the better stuff....

We started out going to St. George Island, with mom, Frank, Carmen, Rachel and kids. We all had such a good time we said we should do it once a month..no..once a week....that really didn't materialize like we hoped and haven't been back since.

But we also went to Wakulla Springs with Bernee and Rachel and kids and it was cold, but so nice. The kids loved it. Laura jumped off the 2nd level jump because Kenlsee promised her five cookies. Cole and Joe caught minnows and made an aquarium. The kids all made a canal from the "beach" to the water and kept turns continually filling up.


We went to Orlando at some point, to the temple. The kids are always so good about going. I think it was just a day trip. We went into a souvenir store just to look and kill time. Every time I turned around Hannah had six things in her hand and had just dropped five cause she couldn't hold it all, it was cute, but we won't be using that as a time killer again.

We met Brandon's work friend Tomas and his kids at Ichetucknee....such a nice place. The water is cold, cold, but in July it's just hot enought to enjoy. I wasn't sure how Hannah would do, but we went down it twice and she did just fine.

My sister Melissa had a baby, Alec Christian on June 23rd (?)...she asked the docs to induce and they weren't crazy about the idea, but Alec came in over 10lbs...so it was all good.

Brandon had a family reunion in ID we wanted to get at least him to and we wanted to see baby Alec, so we got him a flight from Charlotte to UT and we stayed and hung with Lissa while he reunionized. We all had a good time, but parenting is so much funner and easier with him around. But there's also nothing like saying hello again after being apart, such a good feeling. :)
We had such a good time, but of course it's nice being home.

The kids took four days of swim lessons from a nice girl in Carmen's ward. Everyone progressed, Cole swam and floated!, Hannah went underwater and swam with a noodle and Laura was swimming backwards and diving (she didn't like the diving).

I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff. In one week and three days I will send all of the my kids to school (Hannah PK4). It is a whole new chapter of life. I will miss the kids and wondering what on earth I'll do with my time, but am excited for Hannah to go to school, she's going to be so cute and probably make lots of friends and for me to be able to work during the day and our family gets a whole other night of the week back..wow!

Now for the cooler weather to sweep in!

Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose

in choosing books to read, cause you know you can't judge a book by it's cover.....this is how my luck has gone so far this summer.

Say you are one of them...didn't finish this one. I don't know what I was expecting, but it wasn't what it was..It was all bad things happening to children. I'm all for giving a story it's due, especially if someone had to live through it and most likely someone somewhere may have had similar stories, but something I read about the author gave me the feeling he hadn't seen, heard or even come close to experiencing these horrid situations. Probably I'm wrong, but I didn't want to put my emotional energy into reading them. There are five different stories. I read the first two, investigated the book and decided I wasn't going to finish it, but then I thought I should at least read the last story that held the book's title...I wish I hadn't. There's my 2 cents...

Fairest - a twist on Snow White, Cole and I read this together, it was pretty good, there are others by the same author, putting twists on other fairytales, we're going to try those as well

This was on Cole's summer reading list...it is def. a tween book, but a nice quick read that's cute.

Eleven, this was also on Cole's reading list and I didn't enjoy it very much, the blurb (?) led you to expect more from the story...just kind of boring.

And the one I finished today, the kind of book that makes you wish there was more...sort of. It's science fiction and I'm usually not a big fan of that, but a friend recommended Scott Card a few years ago so I decided to give it a go. It's def. not a warm and fuzzy book, kind of the opposite, but you are endeared to the character and there are twists and it was a couldn't put it downer.

I'm moving on to more of Cole's summer reading and there are other's I've read and can't recall right now, but if I do I'll blog-u-ment them ;).