Caught in the Groove

I am a drummer. I have played the drums since I was 14. I took a 12 year hiatus when I moved away to college, but I have recently picked up the sticks. We call ourselves Caught in the Groove, and we love to make music. It feels so good to play again. I love being back behind the drums, it is s beautiful stress reliever!

We got band photos taken, and here you go:

Patrick, Laura, Steph, Gary

And my solo picture. How ya like me now?!

Shooting

Andy and I went out shooting for the first time in a long time. Two years for me, though he goes more frequently. About a year ago, he went to an intense training course at Front Site Firearms Training where he learned how to use the AK47 with great precision. He took me out West of Utah Lake to test it out.

Andy with his AK

I prefer to shoot the M44. That thing has some kick! And the bayonet is pretty bad-a.
This is the awesome target Andy made so we can see how precise we are. After each round of shots we cover the holes with tape, that way we can tell who is getting the kill shots. It's usually not me, but I did get the guy right in the face! Never mind the fact that I was aiming for the chest. He would be dead nonetheless. Yeah, so I need to work on my accuracy. We'll be heading to Front Site soon enough for some classes. Don't mess!

Cowabunga Baby!

We spent many many days at Cowabunga Bay this summer. We got season passes and went there at least once a week. The kids had a great time on all the waterslides and in the lazy river, and I would either read my book or chat with friends. It was a lot of fun for all of us! We had a terrific summer!!!

Back to School...

The girls started back to school! They love their Charter school and that they get to wear uniforms. We all love that. It makes getting dressed in the mornings a no brainer. The girls both got wonderful teachers and were so excited for their first day of school!

Even though it was a warm day, they insisted on wearing their boots and leg warmers. The were hot by the end of the day, but they sure looked cute.
We are grateful they are in the school they are. They have both done very well so far. They love the new friends they are making, and their favorite thing to do after school is come home and tell me what they did nice for somebody else that day. Jess is usually finding someone on the playground who needs a friend, and then goes to them and asks them to play with her. Syd is wonderful at helping her friends clean up their messes, or helping someone pick up something they dropped. Both have made some great friends and love their teachers. So far so good!

Garden Bounty

This was a great harvest day in the garden, especially considering I have hardly done a thing this year to take care of it. I have not had the intense desire to be in the yard this summer. I planted the seeds, they grew, and here is my produce.

Even Dallas loves the tomatoes. He was stealing them out of my bowl.

Precious

My children are so sweet. I was getting some house work done and when I came into the kitchen, I saw this bowl full of tomatoes with this note attached. The kids had gone out to the garden and picked all the tomatoes for me. Then they wrote me this sweet love note to go with it. Being a stay at home mom is the most under appreciated job, in my opinion, but these precious moments make it all worth it.

Jerks

I just want to make some delicious grape juice, don't ruin it!

Man's Adventures

I woke up Sunday morning around 6 to blood curdling screaming coming from Sydney's room. I ran in there to find Kayman at the foot of Syd's bed in severe pain, and Syd apologizing to him. She had accidentally kicked him in the neck while they were both sleeping. He would not move on his own. I carried him to his own bed to lie down with him and try to comfort him a little. He screamed for at least an hour before he was able to drift back to sleep for a bit.

He was not able to lift his head from his pillow. Kayman is usually up around 7 and ready for breakfast. When 9:30 came around and he was still refusing to move, Andy brought him some Cheerios in a bag and a sippy cup of OJ. He was hurting so much. At one point he told me his arms were hurting, and when he turned his neck he said his foot hurt. That made me very nervous, so we got him in the car and took him to Instacare. (A big thank you to my friend Rachel who took the girls with her to church so we could both be with Kayman)

Kayman got a neck brace very quickly after we came in, then an X-ray of his neck. He was a whole new kid once he got the brace on. Here he is being silly with the technician after she gave him a sticker and a sucker.

And who would think we could keep him still for a second? No, I didn't think so. He is unstoppable. The X-ray came back normal, he wore the brace for 4 days, and now he is just fine. What's next?!

Kayman started preschool! He is growing up way too fast. This little man of mine takes everything he does and does it all the way. He loves preschool. He loves his backpack (because it has flames on it and he pretends to burn people with the fire). He loves his school shoes. He loves teacher, Mrs. Teresa. He loves the time with his friends. And I love the time all by myself for 5 hours a week!

Kayman was so excited for his first day of school. He's such a handsome little boy.

We tried riding bikes the second day. He loved it, until he got about 2 houses away. Then he got tired and decided he was done riding. He got off his bike, sat on the grass, and refused to get up. With a little coaxing I was able to talk him into making it the rest of the way to preschool. The ride home was the same story. He also did not want his picture taken.
Kayman insists on wearing his snow boots with everything, he loves his sunglasses, and he wore his last wristband from Cowabunga Bay for nearly 2 weeks. He's also quite the Cowboys fan.
He picked out this SWAT team uniform for his Halloween costume from Costco. We love Costco, by the way. He wore this for 2 days and still tries to handcuff everyone who comes close enough. It's pretty hilarious to watch this kid ride around on his bike in this uniform blowing his whistle at everyone. Here he is looking pretty tough.

Cousin's Campout!

When I was a kid, my mom used to have all of my cousins over for "Cousin's Campout" once or twice every summer. It was the best tradition, and we all loved it! I got to know all of my cousins very well and my mom always made sure we had a fun night. Sometimes we camped out in the backyard, sometimes we slept on the floor in the Family room, but we always had a great time! I decided I want to start doing this. It's a great opportunity for the cousins to spend some time together, and I love having them over!

There are 14 kids on Andy's side and most of them live out of state. We did get together for Lake Powell, but when I finally got around to having the cousins come out for the night, only one from out of state was still here. So we only had 7/14 of the kids, but we still had a good time.

After eating pizza for dinner, we headed outside for a fire and some S'mores. Mmmmmmm!
This would be Uncle Bob...aka Micaela.
Izy looking gorgeous in her hat! :) I love that hat!
Ava is SO excited to gobble up that marshmallow!
Kennedy just chillin' by the fire!

The little girls slept on the trampoline an Kayman went to bed while the older girls and I came inside to watch Tommy Boy and eat lots of popcorn and soda! I love having the girls over to hang out with me!

Jess turns 6!

Jess turned 6 on July 11! She is all decked out in a new outfit, purse, barrettes, press-on nails, bracelets, and lip gloss. What a beauty!

The only thing she wanted, and talked about for months before her birthday came, was to go swimming at the Rec Center on her birthday. So, we did! Here are the kids having a great time together!

They enjoyed swimming for a couple hours, then we went home, showered, and headed out to buy Jess some birthday surprises! Jess and Kayman played with some toys while Syd and I picked out some gifts we knew Jess would love. Yes, this is called procrastination. Birthday shopping on the afternoon of your child's birthday with your child at the store with you. I know. But hey, she ended up with a lot more than she otherwise would have, so it was good for her int he end. After buying her gifts, we picked up an ice cream cake at Baskin Robbins on our way to Nana and Papa's house for dinner.
They didn't have a cute pink cake with the mint chocolate ice cream that Jess wanted inside, so she picked out this blue one. She didn't care about that as much as I thought she would. She loves ice cream cake! After singing happy birthday and giving Jess our wishes for her, she got to open her gifts! She got a bunch of fun things, her favorites being this sparkly silver purse,
and a new Barbie!
We celebrated a few days later at Grammy and Grandpa's house with another cake! Lucky girl got 2 birthday cakes!
Jess is such a sweet girl. She still really loves to play with Barbies and watch movies. She plays with friends as much as possible, and loves to play outside. Swimming, jumping, and riding her bike are a few of her favorite activities. She is also a star reader and is reading near a 4th grade level. (she is going into 1st grade) Jess loves to write notes to her friends and draw pictures for them, sell things (lemonade, homemade toys, etc.) on the corner in the summer time, go to the movie and eat lots of popcorn, and play pretend with her brother. Jess is our little princess, we love you sweet girl!

Girls Night Out!

College was an amazing time for me. I had a ton of fun with the wonderful roommates I had. I was lucky enough to get really great friends out of it who I still keep in touch with. Kami lives out of state, and Tanisha and I both live in SLC. When Kami comes to town we like to all go to lunch together. We decided this time to go out and do something a little more exciting. We went out to dinner and then to the Dark Arts Festival. Like I said, something exciting. Very different from what we are used to. And, needless to say, we met some interesting people...

This is a picture of Kami, me, "Vyle", Tanisha, and Sharyl. We kept seeing this crazy looking guy and decided we had to have a picture with him. While Kami and Tanisha were talking to him, I met this beautiful woman Sharyl who jumped into the picture too. Kami, Tanisha and I had a fabulous and interesting night. Gotta love girls night out!

***Sharyl has a very interesting story I could fill an entire post with, but basically she is a model/artist in San Jose, from Orem, UT who has been fighting MS for a few years now and has found amazing ways to deal with it. She did a photo shoot depicting how it feels to have MS. You can paste this link into your browser and see her photos on this if you are interested. It is very moving. I think you have to be logged into facebook, then paste the link. If you can't get it and are interested, let me know. I can send it to you in facebook.

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.154997567862444.27432.100000566041010

Watch your toes!

These pictures are not for the weak stomach peeps out there. Be warned!

Syd was playing with some friends and was standing right in front of the door when it was opened. It caught her toe just right, or just wrong I guess, and ripped her toenail off. There was blood everywhere. It filled her shoe and got all over the carpet in the church. Gross. She wasn't even crying, not much anyway. This is how it looked after we cleaned it up as much as I dared.

I didn't want to touch it for fear of causing more damage, so I wrapped a paper towel around it and we went straight to Instacare. Syd got her first ride in a wheelchair!
She enjoyed that. She thought it was pretty cool. The Doctor irrigated beneath the nail and put it back where it belongs. Even though it was only attached in one corner of her nail bed. This worked for a while, but then got all dried out and became difficult to deal with. The nail would catch easily if not wrapped up very well, and we were headed to Lake Powell. Luckily we have a Doctor in the family who removed the toenail on the houseboat the first day there. Thanks Unc!

Here is Syd just after getting wrapped up at Instacare. She stood up to walk out and immediately turned white. We had to lie her down and give her a popsicle for a few minutes. Then she was much better, but she got a wheelchair ride out to the car.

Syd learned not to stand right in front of a door that may open at any moment and rip her toenails off. Too bad she had to learn the hard way.

I need some Vodka!

I walk into the liquor store. I have no idea where to go, as I have never been in one before. I know I need one thing. Vodka. The cheapest biggest bottle I can find. Two of them. And I need them now. Before it's too late.

Why?!

Because I am making homemade vanilla extract and my vanilla beans just arrived in the mail! I have got to get them soaking soon so the vanilla is ready around Christmas time!!! Here are the beauties:

I have learned from the lovely woman at www.heavenlyhomemakers.com how to make my own vanilla, so here I go!

What you need:

1 gallon of Vodka

3/4 lb fresh vanilla beans

1 gallon jar

...and that's it...

Then when the glorious vanilla beans come, you cut them up the middle (to let the beans out) almost to the tip, leaving the very top connected. Put them in the jar.
Dump the 2 huge bottles of Vodka into the jar. All of the vodka. No saving any for other uses. You'll mess it all up.
Then seal the jar and place in a dark area for 4-6 months, and then you will have your very strong, very yummy vanilla! It will make great gifts. And even greater cooking addition. When we make homemade vanilla ice cream, we usually put in twice as much vanilla as is called for. With this we won't need to, because apparently this vanilla is much stronger than the junk you can buy in the stores. Which doesn't have much actual vanilla in it anyway.
I'm pretty stoked about my new little project. Partly the fact that it took all of 20 minutes to put it together and now I just wait until it's done. And partly the fact that now I know my way around the liquor store. :)

Caught in the Groove

I am now officially in a band. I am a drummer. For real. We even had a gig! Ok, so we didn't get paid, but it was awesome nonetheless. I had some wonderful family come and support me too, so that was awesome. Here I am in action:

This is the whole band. Gary, Laura, Quinn, me, and Patrick. We are a very diverse group who meshes together beautifully! We do cover songs ranging from Abba to Colbie Callet, to Van Morrison. We love the same music, and we all are so chill that everything runs very smoothly. I love my new friends. I love making music. I love that they need me. I love being part of something that is important to me. I love doing what I love!!!

Drummer chick

There are a lot of things I have been up to lately, but here is a video of my most recent obsession. I'm jamming out on my old drum set. Ignore the mistakes, and enjoy! :)

Mother's Day

I had the best Mother's Day this year. My kids threw me a Beach Party! It was the sweetest thing ever. They worked so hard making palm trees, a sunset, ocean, seashells, and crabs out of paper. They colored it all, made the palm tree all the way up to the ceiling, put the seashells on the carpet, which they informed me was the sand. Kayman helped them color everything. It was the sweetest thing I have ever had done for me. They spent hours preparing my beach party, and it was so appreciated.

I am so grateful for my family! They are the best thing for me and I love them all dearly. Their gift to me (aside from the beach party) was a new iPhone 4! I am very excited about it. I love it! Mother's Day was incredible. I definitely struggle, daily, with my mothering abilities. I have little patience, can't quite keep the house where it should be, don't play with the kids enough....and I'll just stop there are my list of faults. But luckily I have a very loving and forgiving family who loves me anyway. I do try, and I hope to continue improving my "skills". Being a mother has been the most difficult, yet the most rewarding part of my life. I absolutely love my children. They bring me so much joy. I am very grateful to be a mother and I pray I can teach them well and lead them back home.

Happy Birthday to me!

It seems like forever ago now, but my birthday was 2 1/2 weeks ago and I am now 31 years old. I had a very difficult time with my birthday last year, turning 30 and all, but this year was much different. I quite enjoyed it, actually!

I was woken up by Jessica, who came in my room and asked me to come downstairs. I assumed she wanted me to help her get breakfast, and I followed her downstairs. When I got down, the whole family was there! Andy gave Syd a signal and Syd started playing a drum solo she had been working on for me! So cute! There were balloons everywhere! The kids had blown them up and colored on them with markers, both pictures and love notes to me. It was very sweet. They worked on that for days.

Andy found a birthday card that has a picture of a little girl who looks exactly like I did as a kid.

Is that eerie or what? The one on the top is me at age 3, the bottom is the card. I have to say, that is one cute little girl on the card! Hehe!

My gift from Andy was going to the Christina Perri concert! We went a few days before my birthday and absolutely loved it. She is so good. The best part is that The Neighbors opened for her. We are officially groupies following The Neighbors around everywhere. We love them!

A lot has changed since my last birthday. I have become a new person in many ways. I have started doing many more of the things I truly enjoy, tried lots of new things, and stopped caring so much about what those around me may or may not think of me. I have developed a much stronger sense of who I am. I know who I want to be. I am striving each day to be a better person. And the best part is that I am having FUN doing it!

So here I am, 31 years old, and happier than ever. I see the beauty in everything around me. I have many new friends, and have re-aquainted with many old friends, and strengthened many current friendships. I have new passions and new hobbies. I am happy! Happy Birthday to me!

And just for fun, a picture of the beautiful tulips in my front yard. They make me happy!

Easter!

Easter. What a beautiful Holiday! A day to celebrate the Resurrection of our Lord, the love He has for us, the sacrifice He made for us. It was a very spiritual day for me this year, which is something I have been yearning for.

We started out the morning (after the kids found their baskets, searched for the eggs the Easter Bunny hid around the house, and ate a TON of candy) with a little Easter lesson. The kids were concerned that we were having Family Home Evening, but it was still morning, so we called it Family Home Morning. That seemed to keep the whining down. :) Kids!

Syd and Andy taught the story of Jesus's death and resurrection. It was great! The kids understand that Easter is about Jesus, not the Easter Bunny! They also got to sing some Easter songs at church in Sacrament meeting, and Jess gave a talk about Easter in Primary. I was able to go see some friends of mine sing a couple of beautiful songs about Christ's resurrection in YW at church, and the Spirit was so strong in there. I was bawling! I am so grateful for the pain and suffering Christ went through to save us. It's unfathomable.

The night before Easter, we colored eggs. Here are the kids having a great time with each other!

After church, we headed to Nana and Papa's house for Easter dinner. We had a delicious ham dinner with lots of family, and it was a special day for our family. After dinner, the men went out and hid all the easter eggs so the kids could have another easter egg hunt! They each ended up with SO much candy!

The race is on!

Syd, Jess and Kayman with their cousins from down under...Micaela, Izzy, and Ava. We have been anxious for them to move here from New Zealand, and are so glad they finally made it to Utah! Now we just have to convince them to move to Herriman so we can see them often!
Happy Easter!!!

April Flowers

I have SO many beautiful flowers in my front yard, but it's so cold outside that I rarely get to enjoy them. I am afraid they are all going to die before it's warm enough to just lie on my grass and stare at them. So, I cut some and made my own bouquet!

Now I can enjoy them inside! They are so colorful and smell divine. I have spring fever SO bad! I just want to be out there in the garden, beautifying, smelling, enjoying some of God's beautiful creations! Hopefully I won't have to wait much longer.

*Don't mind the "Saturday doo", it was a lazy day and I never did get to the make-up...or the hair. This is leftovers from yesterday. :)

Just slow down!

Kayman has had his cast for 2 weeks now. He had a very hard time when he first got it. He was unable to walk, mostly due to the fact that it was still painful to put weight on his leg, but also because it was very awkward. He spent a week crawling around with his casted leg sticking way out. (Helping him go to the bathroom was quite interesting)

Kayman was frustrated.

Kayman is heavy.

Kayman required me to carry him everywhere.

My arms turned to jello.

My back started giving out.

Then, after a week, he started walking. Ahhh, what a relief that was. Kayman is a much happier now that he can get himself around. He can almost keep up with the girls! They were out on the trampoline tonight and he wanted to jump too. I told him he could sit and bounce, and this is what he started doing.

He had a great time! We go back in tomorrow to get his leg checked out. They will x-ray and see how the bone is healing, and possibly re-cast it, depending on the wear. Now that he is walking, the bottom of the cast is slowly shaving away. Also, now that he is walking, he is pretty much back to normal. Energetic as ever.

Once he gets the cast off, I am sure it's going to be another learning curve for him. He's going to have to learn how to walk again on his weak leg that took 5 weeks off. Hopefully he gains the strength back quickly. I sure love my little man, he has been a really good sport through this challenge.