So cute!

(This picture was NOT posed. She saw him and just laughed and started to hug and snuggle him!)

We get to watch Lucy Lowry every Tuesday and we love it. The kids just adore her and treat her so great and as you can see she loves them back! We love our Lucy!

Andrea's baby shower

My cute sister in law Andrea is 8 weeks away from popping! We are so excited for her little girl (with the mystery name, hoping for Brandi) to be born. She had a tough time getting this baby here, so I am sure she will be very special. Since there are so few of us, we decided to just meet up for lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. It was so yummy and a great time.

(Andrea, Song, Me, Jana (Steve's Mom), Edrie-Ann (Steve's Sister) and Ashton)

Can't wait to meet my new Niece!

Making Babies [pictures included]

Pardon my boring blog. I know it has been dull as dirt. But, I've been busy! Making babies. Lots and lots of babies. Well, at least I hope.

Just to give you an idea of what is happening here (I know the suspense is killing you) this is not your traditional baby making. It is much different, and honestly I am pretty ashamed to admit that I have been involved in this strange activity.

I have a feeling that a lot of people who are a lot smarter and more skilled than me will be laughing at me. I bet I have been wasting my time. But if it does work, and babies start popping up all over the place you will be jealous of my baby making skills, if you aren't already!

So it started here with some plants and a dream. All I wanted was some yummy cucumbers. I have definitely grown some amazing plants, and they are something to marvel at. There are SO many flowers. All I am missing is the fruit. So I decided to play matchmaker. If these dang plants are going to start getting some action going I am going to do it for them!

I read online... I know famous last words... that sometimes you need to pollinate the flowers. You know, touch there inner flowers together. I laughed so hard. But desperate times call for desperate measures. So I was out to the garden to make some magic happen.

So I was really ashamed. I was doing this in total private. If anyone would have caught me doing this I would have died! (so here I am writing about it on my blog, duh?) I made magic that day. Those flowers had a pretty good time as far as I could tell. Then I waited. Today I went out and saw this little baby cuke! I was so excited, sadly. I hope that there are many more coming my way. And yes, I know it could be a coincidence, but I like to feel like I made that baby! Nature just wasn't doing its thing!

On a side note do you remember my really dead tomato plants? They love me now!

Solitude Lake

We went on a really fun hike up to Solitude Lake. It was a gorgeous day, and we had a really great time.

On the way up Carson got car sick so we had our usual puking session. I have decided that I DEFIANTLY going to have to get the kids on motion sickness medicine for the cruise! Puking is so nasty!!! Glad it is Steve's job to deal with it not mine!

We went with Grandpa Johns and Steve's cousin Cassie's two little kids. My kids loved having some fun new cousins to hang out with!
Once we got to the lake, which I have to say we weren't sure if we would make it due to a bike race going on, we found tons of squirrels eating nuts that someone had left. They would come right up to the kids, it was great!


Coren found a tree to climb as usual. He is my monkey boy!




Me and a couple of the boys ran down the mountain and I think they had fun, I know I did. We waited at the bottom and then found out that Grandpa had fallen, along with Coren a few times. It sounds like we missed out on lots of sadness! Coren survived, and hopefully Grandpa did too!!

It was a great hike and a great day. I think it is so wonderful to get out and enjoy nature in the summer, we live in such an amazing place!

Wills Baptism.

And to end off the Vegas trip we went to Will's Baptism. Here we are with Will after the big event and all of the great food. It is so crazy to think that Carson will be getting baptised next year if he chooses to. These kids grow up too fast!

Lake Mead

We went to Lake Mead and it was so perfect. It was about 110 out and the water was so warm. I didn't get many pictures because I was too busy floating around in the water, but it was a blast. There were these big old catfish swimming around and the boys were all trying to catch them. Pretty funny! We had a great time. I love baking in the sun!

CUTENESS!

These boys are just so dang cute. We missed Makenna, she loves staying at hotels. WHICH REMINDS ME, our cruise is getting SO close. I can't WAIT!

The Strip

We are huge fans of "The strip" in Vegas. It is one of our favorite places to go. Everything there is just amazing. The boys LOVED it. Here they are touring all of the cool things there and even getting a fun souvenir.

Vegas

We went to Vegas for Will's Baptism. The kids spent most of the time in the water, but honestly it was so HOT you kind of had to. They had a great pool in their backyard, so the kids just swam and swam.

It was really cute because Vivi has a little pool that she never lets anyone get into and she let Coren in. I thought that was really sweet!

Road trip.

Can you say ROAD TRIP? Oh man, a long drive with the kids. BUT... never fear I had a brilliant idea. BOOK on tape, or CD these days. Carson never spoke. Maybe 20 words the whole way. Coren didn't do as well, but with time I think he will. He was a little antsy at times, but it still held him over for a few good hours! I missed my DVD player, but this was a lifesaver!

What a hike.

Finding a place to hike in Price was not very easy... so we decided to hike up this big hill and try to get to the weird rock thing on top. I started out with the kids and if you look closely you can see us going up the hill, which was not easy I must add!

Once we got to the top of the hill the trail kind of ran out. We all had gone up farther than we should and were kind of stuck. I managed to get the kids to a good safe spot, but Steve was even farther than us and was way stuck. He did manage to capture this great picture of us before he almost plunged to his death. No really! He could have died.
We all watched Steve nervously prepare to jump from tiny ledge to tiny ledge on the dirt that was so unstable. If he would have fallen he either would have died, or rolled down a huge hill. I encouraged him by telling him he would probably just roll. I think it really comforted him. He got ready to jump, but first he threw me the full water bottle that I kind of missed and it hit my shoulder so hard that I thought it was broken. Oh well, my husband was about to possibly die, so I could deal with the sore shoulder. Right? It did hurt though.

He made the leap and lived. Good news. I was so happy I decided to leave them and run down the mountain. There were these great rolling hills. It was so fun. SO FUN. I want to do it again it was so amazingly fun! Below is me on the road after I ran down.
I am not sure that anyone enjoyed the hike other than me, but it was an experience and we all lived. And that run down... SO GREAT!!!

Demolition Derby

IF you are looking for a good time, head on out to the annual Search and Rescue Demolition Derby in PRICE Utah! The whole town comes out. The good, the bad, the ugly, and those ones that are beyond words, or as I call them, my entertainment.

To be honest I should have spent the night taking pictures of the people because they were so interesting, but that would just be... well rude! So instead here are my party people enjoying the show and LOVING IT! Coren loved it more than the pictures reflect, he was just not in the mood for photo opportunities!




Here is what I realized from this night.

First, and most important, I am a huge fan of nachos with roasted jalapenos. Second, we love watching cars crash into each other. Third, would for sure be that I have the cutest kids ever. Fourth, is that there are some funny people out there who do such out of this world things that it brings me great joy to watch and listen to them. And last but for sure not least, I really do not want to live in Price Utah, but I loved to visit!

This little PIGGIE

My meat eating fool!

Coren loves to eat meat. And lots of it. He spent the night at Grandma and Grandpa's since Uncle Zak was in town. They have missed him like crazy! Well, for dinner they were having Bratworst, or in otherwords large greasy sausages. Coren told Zak to make him three. Well of course Zak thought that Coren could never eat three and made a bet with him that he would cook him three, and if Coren ate them all Zak would give him ten bucks....

So here is Coren proudly displaying the ten bucks that he earned. What you are not seeing is Zak who just lost his last ten bucks, and how Grandmas toilet looked after Coren used it following dinner. Gag!!!

Summer.

We are loving summer. We sleep in until at least nine every day and some of us (Coren) are choosing to stay in our PJ's all day. We play outside, eat outside, and do whatever we want. The kids favorite thing has been making a lake out of the sandbox. It is a total waste of water, and such a mess, but they like it too much for me to tell them no!

I love my cute summer kids!

We be JAMMIN'

I am so dang proud of myself. I made jam! I know to some people this isn't a big deal, but I have never made jam, or canned anything in my life.

I am on a HUGE no HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYPUP thing. It is so bad for you. I have read tons about it, and research shows that it totally tricks your brain, and this may be the leading cause of obesity. It is in everything because it is such a cheap sweetener, but it is NOT GOOD. When I realized that jam had tons of it, I decided to make my own.

I have to admit it was pretty easy and it tastes SO good. I made strawberry first. I did it two ways, freezer and canned. The freezer was way easier, but it has more sugar and my family didn't like it as well.

Then I made raspberry and blueberry. I made the blueberry weird, so it didn't set all the way up. I now call it blueberry syrup and it is beyond YUMMY!

Next I am doing peach. MY FAVE!

Mr. Fix IT!

So Monday FINALLY came and I ran it to the mechanic right next to our neighborhood. He finally called and said that they couldn't figure it out, but the "code" said it was a spark plug problem, so he wondered ft I might want a tune up cause that could fix it. I was doubtful, but agreed. An hour later he called back and broke the bad news to me. A spark plug had basically blown up or something and was all stripped out, and may had caused engine damage. They didn't even want to touch it there. So I called around and everyone told me to have it towed and it would cost a lot to fix.

So I called Steve who IS NOT... I repeat NOT a mechanic. He sat there for a second, then said, "Yeah, I can fix that." I was freaked out, I admit it. I asked him how he would fix it, since he doesn't even change the oil, and he gave me some speech on how he is good at "rethreading" things. So anyways, I gave in. I decided to trust him. I mean what it the worst that could happen? $$$$

So the next day he comes home from out of town and starts to tear into the car. I come out and he says, "well onto plan B". I was like... "here we go". I smiled and walked back inside.

A while later I come out to find that he has taken the manifold out or something. It didn't sound good, or look good.

I went back inside. About 15 minutes later I go out there and he tells me it is fixed. I was cautiously optimistic! Then he turns the car on (I didn't dare cause I thought it would blow up.. and I told him that) and BAM! It freaking works!!!!! Amazing. I love that man!

The spark plug was kind of blown up. Not good!!!
Since he did such a great job at that, I told him to fix the dent from when I crashed into the garbage can. He read about some technique online. Him and Kenna tried it, but it didn't turn out as great as the motor.
Next I convinced him to buy me a new car. So off we went to the dealership and I drove home in my new 2010 Hyundai Elantra that I still need to take a picture of. BUT... I love it. Great deal, great warranty, and we are both happy!