Grandma and Grandpa are going away on a mission...

So, today it is official!! My mom and dad will be leaving soon to serve in the Illinois, Nauvoo mission!!! I am so excited for them and hope we will be able to visit while they are there. I am so proud of my parents who continually serve (usually without even asking for the opportunity). Most couples put in mission papers, my parents are randomly called by random people. This time it was their good friends Dean and Kathy Hughes. They are such great examples and I love them so much and will miss them SO much! Thankfully, this will not be a long mission :) Way to go Mom and Dad!

Happy Birthday to my Honey Bunches!!

What more can I say except that I am one LUCKY girl!! I mean just look at this catch!

I really am so lucky! I have a super fun, loving, thoughtful and wonderful husband! Here he is rocking an intense dodgeball game. Serious stuff!
Not only is he great to us, he is very hard working (when his boss has work for him!!) Besides the Electrical job and school, he is also partners with a great friend in a company called Faction Custom Mouthguards (www.factionmouthguards.com). They make awesome mouthguards and are doing great and staying busy! I am so proud of him for sticking with a great idea and making it happen! Here is one of the mouthguards they just sent off this week.
Here he is in Arizona at a fight event, HARD AT WORK. I mean it really must be tough! All those stinky fighters, I mean silicone, I mean he is working hard :)
Another fight event, before the fights. He and Brian really have done awesome stuff with the company and with help from their friend Preston who helped them start the company.
Kelly, Dana White (UFC President), and Brian
With his crazy schedule he still finds time to play with us. He is such a great and involved dad. Here is Kelly and my once baldy baby Casen.
So, again... Happy Birthday Baby!! I love you SO MUCH!! Here's to another great year together!
If we have to grow old, So glad it is together!!

A beautiful day and a science fair

Yesterday was BEAUTIFUL!! We had to take advantage of the awesome weather and head over to the river to play. This is Casen's pose every time he is asked to say cheese.. I love him!

And Cheese again..
My Keagan and his new found favorite treat, the muddy buddy. He is in love!
So the river is a little low, and the result is loads of super gooey squishy mud. Little boy heaven.
Shortly after this shot was taken, Kaiden was sitting in the mud and quickly became a walking swamp monster. Unfortunately my camera died, but if you happened to drive past my house last night you would have seen lots of muddy handprints all over it as evidence. Awesome!
Boys, boys, boys...
This one is a bit intense, all the time!!
We quickly cleaned up and headed over to the school for the science fair. This is Kaiden with his "Rusty Nail" experiment.
And Keagan (and Casen) with his "Dirty Penny" experiment. Just now noticing that the s is backwards. No question that he put the board together by himself :) (after I cut out the letters on the Silhouette of course)
Hurray for Kaiden, he won first place for Kindergarten. They gave gift bags to 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places for each grade with medals, a certificate, ribbon, t-shirt, and gift certificates to a couple local places. So proud of him. Next he goes to the district science fair. The big show :) Not that there were loads of Kindergartners, but at least 3 I guess.
The boys with their awards. Keagan the science guy was kinda bummed that he didn't place, but he still got a certificate and a ribbon. Happy kiddo.
Afterward we headed over to McDonalds (kids choice :( of course) for some celebratory happy meals. Way to go little scientists, even Cam made some crystals. Oh the joy of learning!

paper muses retreat

As I am starting to get food ideas together for the upcoming retreat in March, I decided maybe I should post pictures from the retreat that was in November. It was awesome and I highly recommend the retreats to ANYONE, scrapbooker or not, they are the BEST!! Lori and Lindsey are awesome and the location is amazing! Check it out at www.papermusesretreats.blogspot.com

I got up early one morning, no huge surprise, and this was the beautiful sunrise. So pretty!! I'm pretty sure this is about 30 min after the last scrappers went to bed :)

Here they are in full force, scrappers everywhere!! There is tons of fun music, lots of snacks and food and so much fun and relaxation to be enjoyed!

Lori, workin away

Here are some of the classes, so stinkin cute!! (this is lori's mini album)

(lindsey's layout)
(lori's layout) There were lots of other cute classes as well.
And lots of fun to be had!! Lori had never done the rockstar hair pic. Obviously her hair is way more rocker than mine!
And then you have to look as scary as you possibly can, I did pretty well I think :)
Love those collagen injections! We are hot!
The ladies
The cooks
The scary retreat invader! Seriously this racoon was HUGE!! That garbage can was not small and this guy was stalking all the doors just waiting to run inside and scratch our eyes out!! My mom and I decided to leave last minute pretty late Friday night and the BEAST wouldn't let us out the door! I had to grab a handful of snacks and throw them another direction just to get his big fat face away from the door. We made a run for the car with all the girls screaming that he was under my car, I was seriously freaked out! Then as we finally pulled away I looked back as one of the girls was kneeling down calling the racoon to her so she could pet it, rabies, yes please!

Anyway, we pulled away at about 11 or 11:30 pm and as we left one of the girls said, "please be careful and call when you get home so we know you made it." I also sent a text to my dad telling him that we were on the road and would be home in a few hours. These two thoughts were my only hope as my car slowly came to a stop in THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE at about 1:20 am. I have never been so sure that I would die as I was at that point. Either death by hypothermia or lonely trucker, either way, I was gonna die. You always hear that you can make emergency calls on a cell phone even if you have no service, NOT ALWAYS TRUE!! We probably called 911 about 100 times on each of our phones. My poor mom and I were shaking all over partly from cold and partly from nerves and can I tell you that we beat the world record for peeing in one night. Seriously, how much can one body produce in one night, ALOT! Thank goodness for my close to the spirit mother who completely out of nowhere grabbed a roll of toilet paper and a flashlight as we got in the car to leave. There was snow on the side of the roads as we drove home and it was FREEZING! My mom and I each had a hoodie on and one pair of gloves to share. I had the right glove and she wore the left. I had brought the pleasure quilt, thank goodness and we shared that and draped my clothes from my bag over us. Poor mom wasn't even wearing socks for the first hour or so. Seriously, I have never been so cold and so scared. Every once in a while a big semi would pass and I would be terrified that they would notice us and stop. There were probably plenty of nice respectable guys that passed, but with my luck, we would get the lonely psychopath that would eat us for a midnight snack. We couldn't sleep, so we just shivered and waited. I kept saying, "the girls have to notice that we never called to say we made it home and then they will call dad who will have noticed my text and wonder why we arent home and of course they will come look for us, right?" But no. Girls didn't notice and Dad didn't see my text. Finally when it got a little lighter around 6am, mom let me climb up the hill next to us to see if we could get reception there, but no. I started reading a church book about women that my neighbor Jade let me borrow which helped our mood. Mom told me about an investigator that she has been talking to on the phones at the MTC for months and the things she planned to say to her that day. Thank goodness for my mom to keep me sane. Around 6:30 or 7am we werent as scared and we opened the hood of the pathfinder and stood outside to try and get someone to stop. Two hunters finally did and we explained our situation and asked them to call 911 when they got some cell service. They checked the mile marker where we were and left. Then another set of hunters stopped and offered to jump us. The car finally started and we took off, about 3 miles. As the car was dying we noticed a policeman coming our way so we started waving our arms to get his attention and then the car died. Thank goodness he noticed us and turned around. He said he got the call from the hunters and the mile marker where we were he can't even use his police radio. Totally a dead zone, lucky us! Anyway, he drove us back into town where my dad met us and I had a new alternator put into the car. Huge thanks to my parents for devoting their entire day to helping me get the car fixed, and I got home safe the next day. Yikes!! Sorry for the novel, but it had to be documented. When Mom and I drive home from this retreat in March, I can guarantee we wont be leaving at 11pm and there will be all kinds of people who will know when we are leaving and when we should be home, and there better be a search party!! :)

Oh BOY!! (X16)

My cute friend Erica had a great idea to have a dinner including the moms of boys. There were four families there and each family has four boys (except Erica is expecting baby number 5 in April, gender still to be announced). My wonderful little sister Kellie came with us too. We met at the church and let the boys be boys while we chatted. There was basketball, football, bikes and scooters. Little boy heaven! Then we shared potluck dinner and chatted some more. The other moms had some great advice on how to stay sane with all those little men.

Unfortunately Angel and her little guys had to take off before we busted out the cameras.

Erica said: She uses a dot system on her boys clothes. The oldest has one dot on each of his clothes tags. The second child has two dots, third has three and fourth ends up with four dots. This way when an article of clothing is outgrown by one of the older boys it simply gets an added dot on the tag and is passed down to the next child. Holy wonderful way to make putting away laundry easier! Genius!! I am totally using this idea!

Angel said: She tries to "inspire rather than require." Obviously there are some things that you must require like don't run in the road, etc. This is such a great way to teach kiddos to make good choices because they can see the value in them rather than just because they have to. I need to figure out how she does it. She said she loves a book called Empowering Leadership or something to that effect, I will have to find out what it was really called.

Anja said: She tries to teach her kids with the communication triangle. For example when she was on bed rest she would draw a picture of the bathroom and show them where they should clean, She would explain how to do it, and then show with her hands the correct way to wipe down the sink, toilet, etc. This way they saw the picture, heard the explanation and then watched the motions they were to copy. 3xs greater chance they will pick up on what they are being taught.

I truly love being a mom of boys and I am so grateful to have so many wonderful friends that are also wonderful moms to teach me to be better. Thank you all!!