Asher falling asleep

This is a video I found of Asher that I never posted but is pretty cute.

Asher - 10 months!

Our little monster is now 10 months old and driving me crazy. I can't leave him alone for one second and he is into something. Asher learned how to get through two childproof locks on the TV before we figured out how to finally keep him out. He still loves bathrooms and toilet paper (at least it has been clean toilet paper). We no longer have a need for sweeping or mopping our floor because he eats everything off of it and then drools enough on it that we just have to wipe that up and...wa-la, it's been spit-shined! :) I have had to move everything in the office off the first two feet of shelving - books, paper, magazines, etc., and in from the desk and table about a foot because he loves to reach up and gab everything off them. Let's just say he definitely keeps me on my toes. He is actually quite fun. He is very happy and determined. When we try to re-direct him, by moving him, not just out of the area but out of the room, he just looks up at you and smiles and crawls right back to where he was and what he was doing. :) I guess, those are both great qualities to have, right? I think my favorite thing he does right now is when he wakes up from a nap. He starts banging on the wall for us to come get him. He is so smart and thinks he is so funny, he actually laughs at himself especially when he knows he is being sneaky.

This is him getting caught in the pantry. Look at that face, he thinks he is so funny.

Allison thought it would be funny to put Asher in his toy box and push him around the house. He didn't seem to mind.

Going Green!

It's funny how a little green in the front of your house can make a huge difference. For starters, it feels like we live in a house now instead of a construction zone. Hopefully, we will have less dust, although, I doubt it since we are still surrounded by about 3 acres of dust. Next year we can actually build a snowman in the front yard. Chris wouldn't let the kids build one this year because he said we would just end up getting too muddy. :( Next I can start working on my flowers and bushes. So many choices!

Definitely the longest part of the whole process was putting in the sprinkler system.

Chris showing the kids how the sprinklers work...they actually seemed interested (for a minute, at least).

We have amazing family that always come to help. Here they are laying the sod. Between the three men and a little help from me and my sister-in-law we laid the whole front yard in an hour and a half! :)

I don't have pictures of Chris grading and compacting the yard but we seriously had the flattest yard around. We had several people ask how we did it....take my advice AND DON"T ASK! :)

BEAUTIFUL!!

Ballet class

Allison took her first ballet class. She took it through the rec center so there wasn't a long commitment, only a 6 week class. She can barely touch her toes but she still loves it. :) It looks like she takes after her daddy. Her teacher was perfect for her because she was really "cheesey" and animated and goofy, just like my Allie.

On the last day of class, the instructor told us it was "little sister day" because there were quite a few girls with little sisters that were always there watching. So, Abigail got to join in on the fun. Both the girls loved dancing together.

Bumps and Bruises

I am falling behind on blogging but here are some fun pics to hold you over...Austin and Allison both recently got some nice bumps and bruises. Austin rammed a big metal Tonka dump truck into Allison and gave her a beautiful black eye. Austin was goofing around and fell and hit the corner of the wall and got a nice size goose egg on the side of his head. Luckily, no permanent damage was done. :)


This might sound strange but when I was little, I always wanted a black eye...

This picture of Austin's head was actually after the swelling had gone down a little.

The Most Disgusting thing ever...

The following stories are not for the faint of heart...

First, to make a long story short...when we were living in Logan, and Chris was still in school and Austin was about three he picked up a random coke bottle and drank the contents. He proceeded gagging and throwing up. When I looked to see what he actually drank it was someones left-over chew spit! No, I am not joking, that is really what it was.

Has your stomach stopped turning?

Well, up until now, I thought there was possibly nothing more disgusting than that. Even what I am about to tell you only comes close to topping it.

My sweet little Asher loves to get into everything right now. And I mean everything! My other sweet little child, Abigail, who is still trying to learn the "ins and outs" of potty-training, forgot to flush the toilet after going poo. Well, you can see where this is going. We found Asher with his hands in the potty and toilet paper in his mouth! No, I am not exaggerating. I only wish I was. How do you clean poo out of a baby's mouth?

Both stories completely disgusting but in completely different ways!

Did I mention that Asher means "happy." I have resorted to calling him my "happy" monster. Because every time he is getting into something he looks at me and giggles. Yes, my 8 month old giggles at me.

Sorry folks, no pictures with this one! :)

Asher - 8 months!

Once again a month has passed in the blink of an eye! Asher is now 8 months old. He is crawling ALL OVER THE PLACE! He gets into EVERYTHING! Believe it or not, I have not had childproof locks on any cupboards, drawers, doors, etc. since, well, Austin! Boys! He also pulls himself up to a standing position all the time too. I keep sitting him back down! He is TOO LITTLE to start walking yet! Austin walked at nine months, but I was a first-time mom and didn't know any better then. He also has two teeth.

For some reason, we often find him in the stools. I am not sure what he finds facinating about them but something sure attracts him.

He is so proud of himself.

He also loves the water! He is already trying to swim. :)

You win some, You lose some!

We will start out with the losing side of things. This was Austin's first year in the Cub Scout Pinewood Derby. We were actually naive enough to think that the kids actually built their own cars so Austin did a lot of his own work...although it is really hard to cut it out without the help of an older person. He designed, sanded, spray-painted, and painted the car mostly by himself. He learned a lot and we are very proud of him. BUT when we got to the pinewood derby, we knew his car was not going to fair well against all the "dads" cars. They literally were sitting around talking about what they did to "their" cars. It was kind of funny. But we just had a FHE lesson on having good sportsmanship and so we felt like this was going to be a great night to put it into practice. He placed 14th out of 15. Yikes! He actually handled it very well.

Now for the winning end of things! Austin did the science fair again this year. He did it when he was in Kindergarten as well. In Kindergarten he placed 2nd at the school and 1st at Regionals. This year he placed 1st at the school and 2nd at Regionals. I am so proud of him because he did all (well, most of) the work himself. He had to keep a daily log. He took the pictures, learned how to use Microsoft Word and transfer and resize pictures. He even learned how to use a cricket to cut letters. He was very happy, especially because he won $10 for winning regionals.

Zion Camping

I have to admit, before I had kids, camping was the last thing that I wanted to do. I don't like to get dirty! I REALLY DETEST bugs! I like sleeping in my own bed! I like having running water! Really, the list could go on. But the last few years, I have really come to appreciate what camping has to offer. No hotel room can offer the sights, sounds and smells that being in the great outdoors can. You can't dutch-oven in a hotel room. And have you ever had microwaved smores - I have, and they are disgusting. Plus, my kids love being able to run outside, get dirty, go exploring, hiking, fishing, etc., and that alone is worth it.

We went camping at Zion's National Park this weekend. Our family had so much fun. It was beautiful even though the trees haven't bloomed yet. We went on two hikes, ate yummy food and held an Easter Egg hunt for the kiddos.

Cascading Falls was a new hike that we found online. It isn't a marked hike, so that was a little scary especially when we were taking 11 kids under the age of 10 on it. But it turned out to be a great hike, especially because no one else was on it. There was a tunnel, amazing rocks to climb and pools of water to play in.

That night, we came back to camp and ate awesome dutch oven food. Dutch oven cooking is probably my favorite food. I look forward to summer just so we can use our dutch ovens more. Mmmm-mmm!

On Saturday morning, we hid some Easter eggs for the kids to find.

After the Easter egg hunt, we took the kids on our annual Emerald Pools hike. We hike this every year because it is easy enough for the kids but challenging enough that the adults don't get bored. Plus it is beautiful. I was so proud of Abigail because she hiked it mostly by herself. She had some help from Mom and Aunt Anne but she really did well.

After we got back from camping, we went to Newcastle to spend Easter with my family. The kids enjoyed their THIRD Easter egg hunt! Spoiled brats! J/K :)

Keith, You are Awesome!

Keith has been working hard for the last four years and it is finally paying off. He was awarded Sterling Scholar in Trade and Technology for Cedar High School AND this weekend, spur of the moment, we also went up to Ogden to watch him compete at the Science Olympiad. He won gold in the Elevated Bridge competition and Fourth in the Mousetrap Vehicle. You rock Keith!

Can you believe this teeny little bridge held more than 30 lbs! It weighed barely 20 g!

Abigail is officially a big girl!

My baby girl is officially potty-trained. She was by far my easiest to potty-train. We have been talking about it for a while and I told her that on her birthday she was going to finally be a big girl and go potty in the big-kid potty. On her birthday she got new underware from grandma and we made a big deal about it. The next day, she woke up and we put her new underware on. She went the first couple of times in the potty but then had an accident. Then another one. Then a "big" one. I said "ok, I am done...for now." We waited a couple of more days and she woke up and said she wanted to wear her underware again. She hasn't had an accident since, even at night!! I am so proud of her.

I took this picture of her when we were up in Ogden. She was terrified of using the public restrooms and wanted me to take her home so that she could use the one at home. They were too loud and it scared her when they would flush by themselves. But we finally got her to go and she didn't have any accidents!

St Patrick's Day: A Perfect Day

There are not too many days out of the year that you can say are honestly PERFECT weather days. It is either too cold, too hot or too windy. Yesterday, just happened to be one of those "perfect" weather days. Maybe it was so nice because it was the first day in about 5 months that the kids were able to go outside and play WITHOUT a jacket of any kind. The girls played outside for about 2 1/2 hours and both got sunburned...I guess nothing is perfect.

Time for grass!!

RAINBOW CUPCAKES

At 9pm the night before St. Patrick's Day, I finally got around to making this cupcake I have really been wanting to make. It is a very festive, happy cupcake that I thought my kids would love, especially around this time of year. I have seen a few different recipes so I combined a couple of things and tweaked it again. And by about midnight, I finally went to bed with them cooling on the stove (no, not frosted, just cooked).

The funny thing about it, is my kids always tend to over-look the hard work I put into some things and really enjoy the most simple of things. So why, then, do I keep torturing myself? Hopefully, one day they will look back and say, "Hey, remember when mom made this and it was so cool?!" A mom can dream.

The colors turned out so vibrant! I love it! Use 1/4 tsp of Wilton's concentrated gel coloring.

See those hands? Have I ever mentioned how amazing my husband is? Well, once again I have to mention that he stayed up late with me to help me finish my craziness even though he has to get up at 5:30am.

Gold at the end of the Rainbow

Bountiful Baskets

I just had to share this great new bargain I recently found. Some of you may have heard about it already but for those of you have haven't, you have to check it out! It is a produce co-op called Bountiful Baskets. You pay $15 and get a huge basket worth of produce: fruits and veggies. Here is a picture of the last time we got some. If you were to buy this in the store you would spend a minimum of $25...probably more than that. I did a price comparison just to see how much I would spend if I had bought this same basket at the store with a few of my last store receipts and here is what I found.

Store prices
Container of Strawberries: $2.50 (that was on sale)
Blueberries: $2.00 (on sale)
Acorn Squash: $1.20 (didn't have an exact price so this is a pretty good guess, probably on the low end)
Escarole (type of lettuce): .89 (didn't have an exact price so used Green leaf lettuce price)
Cucumbers at $.59/each: $3.54
Celery at 1.29/bundle: $3.87
Asparagus at 1.69/lb: $3.85 (on sale)
Braeburn Apples at 1.37/lb: $4.11
Bananas at .49/lb: $.98
Kiwi X4: $2.00 (didn't have an exact price but this is a pretty good guess, on the low end)
Radishes at .69/lb: $.69
Cabbage at .$.49/lb: $1.06


TOTAL: $26.69 (using some sale prices)
SAVINGS: $11.69/per week (over $600/year if you bought all of this weekly, which we do! I don't know about you, but I think I could find a lot of things to do with an extra $600 :) ).

My last two receipts we averaged $25 in fruits and veggies each time.


Everything we have gotten so far has been very fresh and has tasted great...I couldn't be more satisfied if I picked it myself. If you are into organic they even have organic is some areas.

The only downfall to this is if you don't like a lot of different fruits and veggies. You never know what you are going to get - which I think is exciting because it forces you to try lots of different things. And worse comes to worse, you saved enough money that you could actually give some away and still be saving money, or at least breaking even. This program currently runs in Idaho, Utah, Arizona, Nevada and Washington. Oh!, and you can add on different food packs like breads, tortillas, a Mexican veggie pack, etc. I haven't done that yet, but I plan to with my next order. You pick it up at a designated pick-up location at a designated time, usually Saturday mornings. You aren't committed to anything. You can order as many or as few times as you like. You order online at BOUNTIFULBASKETS.ORG . There is a limited window to order for the next Saturday so you have to decide quickly. And the website isn't the easiest to navigate but what do you expect for free labor. :) Hopefully, you find this as helpful as we do!

Asher at 7 months

YAY! I finally got my camera and realized now that I have a good camera that I am not as good at taking pictures as I thought. :) Luckily, the camera does a lot of the work for me so that is OK. We finally got some shots of Asher. He is moving all over the place now. He is so happy. All he has to do is see someone look at him and he lights up. He already loves attention. He loves playing with his toys and his brothers and sisters.

Happy Happy Birthday, Abbie Dear!

It seems like just last week I was posting about Abigail's birthday and hear I am posting about it again. Time just seems to constantly speed up.

She is turning three now. This past year she has attended preschool one day a week with Allison and she loves it. Even though it is only one day a week she has learned so much. She knows her ABC's and numbers. She loves to count. She tries to read just like Allison.

Although she can throw a tantrum like no other, she is loving and helpful and bright. She adds another amazing dimension to our family and I am so glad she is ours.

The cake was supposed to look like a cup cake. I obviously messed it up but Abigail came into the kitchen when I was just finishing it up and she looked at it and said, "I luuuv it!." That made me feel better.

Abigail and Kaley

2 year old

About 18 months old

About 6 months old

Abigail's Birthday