How the Other Half Live

Each year I look forward to enjoying the local Parade of Homes. A guy can dream, right? Actually this annual outing is a severe dose of coveting. I'll admit, I am guilty of this commandment and need to work on it. It just genuinely amazes me how some people live. Most of these homes are second or third homes of wealthy individuals who only use them for a few months out of the year. Truly amazing! Click on the picture to take a closer look at the view out this window.

The view from the entrance. No need for hanging artwork when mother nature provides these landscapes!

This is the backyard of the home above. A Microsoft Executive owns this $5Million Beauty at the Ledges of Snow Canyon.

My personal favorites each year are always the incredible homes at Kachina Springs at Snow Canyon. The homes are breathtaking.

Just one of the many amazing backyards in Dixie! Gotta love the views.

This 16K square foot home was the hit this year. Complete with an Indiana Jones themed back yard (theres a hot tub with a huge flat screen in that cave!) The home had an indoor basketball court with adjoining racketball court in the basement. Who says there's a recession in this country anyway?!?!?!

This indoor b-ball court had a climbing wall, putting green, and full weight room off to the left of my picture. I'll bet all the kids in the neighborhood will live at this house! That huge movie screen would make for some fun movie nights!

This is Donna coveting! After the home show we returned to our cramped 3 bedroom apartment and reality set in! We actually like our humble little abode. Its comfy and just right for our little family...but I wouldn't mind that indoor basketball court. :-)

Draper Temple Trip

We were excited to see the newest Temple in Utah so we made the drive to Draper last weekend and took the tour of the beautiful Draper Temple. Our little girls were so excited to actually walk into a Temple. As soon as we saw the temple they burst out in the primary song "I love to see the Temple, I'm going there someday" It was very tender to hear their sweet voices singing that song.


Before we actually toured the Temple, we watched a short video about the importance of Temples. Some of Donna's family came to Draper with us for the Open House. It was fun to have her brother, sister, and parents join us.


The Open House began with the Exciting ride in the Shuttle bus up to the Temple. The girls thought it was pretty fun!


The Temple was beautiful. The Celestial room is truly magnificent. After the tour, we walked next door to the Stake Center and enjoyed some refreshments. Again, the girls were in Heaven!


Here we are in front of the Temple. It was a beautiful sunny day in Salt Lake. We had fun staying with family that we see too infrequently. The girls enjoyed getting to know their cousins and Donna and I enjoyed staying up late into the night talking and laughing with family. Can't wait to do it again!

TGIF

I love Fridays! After a long week at work, I was looking for an activity to let my hair down and relax. Having a young family at home limits ones Friday night options severely. There was only one thing left to do....Ta, Ta, Ta, TWISTER! The girls were very excited to break out the new game that Santa brought.

Before long we were all twisted up and laughing! Here are some ACTION shots.

Nicole was playing with a Poopy Diaper. That really jazzed things up! Here she is with her butt in Jessy's face.

Even the Cat got into it. Left front paw on Blue!

We quickly disqualified Jasmine for breaking the rules by popping out her claws.....I thought she was having fun.....go figure!

BAMA FALLS

WOW! What a sweet victory for the Utes in the Sugar bowl. It was tough but I actually cheered for the Red as they creamed the Kings from the South. Who knew that Nick Saban would have to EAT HIS WORDS! Love it! I can't wait for the 2009 football season as BYU kicks things off by playing Oklahoma in the new Cowboys stadium. With Collie gone to the NFL we're gonna need McKay Jacobsen (no giggling Ashley) to step it up. Just 8 more months till it all starts again!

Clorox Wipes and Pull-Ups

So there we were sitting in room 105: Nursery Room A, approximately 4 minutes after the close of Sacrament meeting. We should have known it was going to be a rough day when we quickly discovered the other Nursery leaders were out of town and WE were the proud recipients of their class. Combining the two nursery classes gave us a total of 18 kids; 7 boys, 9 girls, and 2 kids we were unsure of their gender. Prying screaming kids off of their parents consisted of the first 5 minutes of class. Nothing new here, happens every Sunday. Distraction with toys quickly remedies the problem.

Things were relatively under control until we discovered two of the kids had exceptionally snotty noses. Over the next 90 minutes, Donna and I were kept very busy wiping these runny noses every few minutes and gagging everytime we felt the warm, gooey, germ-ridden SLIME fill up the crumpled toilet paper.

About 15 minutes into class, the smell of "Poopy Diaper" began to wift ever so gently throughout the room. At 16 minutes into class, the smell was suffocating the room and Donna happily discovered the lone window in the nursery room was fastened shut with bolts. Those DARN black bolts deprived us of precious gulps of fresh air. I quickly hit the ground and began sniffing every one of those 18 bums. The "Poopy Diaper" smell was so thick that it sabotaged my sense of smell and very soon all bums smelled the same. So we were hopelessly stuck in the room without knowing who the poopy culprit was. I totally felt like we were Jon and Kate Plus Eighteen! A few breathtaking minutes later we finally caught the little stinker and off we went to the bathroom (there is a small bathroom conveniently located inside the nursery room). Only problem was, the kid was wearing pull-ups and Poop does not do well in pull ups. Needless to say, I soon had poop on my right hand and was desperately searching the cupboards for Clorox wipes....gagging all the way. At this very moment, a child who shall remain anonymous but looking very much like the punk in the picture below, went postal and began hitting every child within reach.

Donna sprang into action and practically tackled the tike in midair as she lept across numerous kids playing on the floor. Three children immediately began screaming after being hit by this bully. I couldn't do much to help as I had crap dripping from my right hand. The three toddlers wailed in unison as the instigator of this beating quietly went back to playing with his toy train. I'm sure the Bishop wondered what the heck was going on in the Nursery Room!

Coloring time quieted the children down and the activity was a success with the exception that one child thought it would be fun to use a purple crayon on my nice white dress shirt. Things certainly couldn't get any worse....right? Well, this just wasn't our day because shortly after the kids stopped coloring, a lovely two year old girl began.....THROWING UP! Oh, you don't even know the fear I have of puking! It is truly one of the most traumatic trials of this mortal existence. So there I stood, drippy snot on my left hand, poop on my right hand, purple crayon on my white shirt, and vomit on my right shoe. I felt like showering in 409 disinfectant spray just as soon as I made it home from Church. Lucky for me a woman walked in and cleaned up the mess on the carpet. She surely was an Angel from on high because HE knows I don't do well cleaning barf out of carpet. For all you soon-to-be parents out there, you've got a special time awaiting you when your kids get sick! Well, I'll close this dramatic story by saying that We've got six days to recover and recuperate before we walk into room 105: Nursery Room A to do it all over again.

We have a kitten!

Sorry I know it's been a long time coming but here are some pics of our new family pet!

It's a boy! Yes, we finally have a boy in the house. We named him Casper. He is so cute and sweet when he is sleeping! He loves to play with all of the girl's toys............okay, okay so this was our first cat. I guess there is a reason we have no boys in this house. Our little Casper was kind of crazy. After we had him for a few days we figured out that he really didn't like to be petted. We tried to hold him and all he would do is bite us. I know that kittens like to bite and play a lot but my gosh we couldn't sit down without being attacked. I remember seeing Nicole running for her life with Casper nipping at her feet; that was the last straw. I marched over to my neighbors house(that's where we got the kitten from) and picked a different kitten. I decided to be safe and pick a girl, sorry Ry! Here is our new kitten......Jasmine



As you have noticed Ryan loves to tease our little kitten and put her into various objects.....okay so I am guilty of laughing too. Jasmine is a little bit more mild mannered. While she does like to play she seems to know the difference between us and our girls. It's a little hard to get used to having a pet in the house though. Sometimes I wonder if she likes to be stepped on or kicked across the room. And the attacking us at the bottom of the stairs...there's some awesome jumps and leaps going on in our house. I'm sure there will be many more blogs to come with our new family pet!

Jessica's 5th Birthday!

I have picked certain years that my kids get to have big birthday parties ( friends, decorations, etc.). So this is Jessy's first big party....Her 5th birthday! I decided to be a little bit better and actually theme her party. Poor Kaitlyn has the oldest child syndrome, I try everything out on her. Anyways the theme was "Under the Sea".
I had Kate invite a little too many friends last year and I was a little overwhelmed so we kept it to how ever old you are is how many you invite. She was really excited for all her gifts that she got (yeah more teeny tiny toy pieces to clean up).
When she as done opening all her presents I sent them all on a treasure hunt to find the goodie bags. I had typed up these clues and decided to make them look like "real old" clues. So I got my BBQ lighter to help authenticate these clues. Yeah, so computer paper burns really, really fast and when you have a large flame trying to blow it out doesn't work ( sorry I was blonde when I was younger). Thank heavens I was by the kitchen sink for a quick extinguish. I think I singed my eyebrows though; I hope they'll grow back!
In the goodie bags were these earrings so I lined everyone up to show off their earrings. It kind of turned into a goofy pic. I guess some of them thought I was taking a mug shot!
Don't gasp in awe, I did not make this cake. I did that last year with Kaitlyn's and this year I thought better of it. Jessy totally loved this cake, it was really cute and yummy too (Ryan really enjoyed the yummy part)!


FYI: I now have two 5 year olds and they are not twins! What a fun thought!