Hidden Treasures

A few weeks ago I was looking at Kevin's phone, and he has a lot of fun pictures and videos he's been keeping from me and my beautiful blog. I finally got him to send them to me. Here are some of my favorites.

I knew about this one because this is the picture Kevin uses for his Wallpaper.

Lately I've been a little sad about how my baby isn't a baby anymore, so I am loving the baby pictures we have of him.

The boys love Opa's drums.

My kids seem so excited to meet Woody and Jessie. Just look at those faces.

First carousel ride on a horse instead of a bench.

This boy loves books.

I asked Kevin to take this picture, and as soon as he took out his camera, the baby said "Chee" just like his brother and sister do for pictures. He's learning the drill.

This picture is my most favorite. When Rebecca was 39 3/4 inches tall, we tried to sneak her on every 40 inch ride at Disneyland. The ONE ride we got her on was Tower of Terror. As you can see, she hated it. I love how Kevin and the lady next to her are just laughing at her.

And lastly, we went camping in Mammoth, CA for the 4th of July with Kevin's family. There was enough snow that they still had one lift open. We tried to get pictures of the people coming down the mountain on the 4th of July in shorts and bikini tops, but we didn't get a chance since they closed the lift before we got back from town. I took these pictures on July 5th, and that's when I noticed all of these great pictures that were being kept from me. I'm glad I finally got a hold of them.

The Good News?

The good news is that Kevin has a job. A guy in our ward got him a job as a Property Services Officer. He fills in for guys who go on vacation or call in sick who are bellman, valet parkers, and security officers for Park Towers condominiums. He started yesterday, he worked today, and he will work tomorrow through Tuesday. We didn't expect that much from just "filling in", so we are thrilled with how much they are having him work already. And they are willing to work around his school schedule, which is exactly the kind of job he was looking for.

The bad news?

The bad news is that he is not going to be home as much as he has been for the past four months. We've LOVED having Kevin/daddy around all the time. Last year Kevin worked in Sacramento five days a week, and people would say to me, "Well at least he has a job." And I would think in my mind, "I would rather he be unemployed then do this anymore." I got my wish, and I was right. Sure we have been really poor, but I've been so much happier in the past four months in poverty than I ever was when Kevin was in Sacramento during the week and we had money.

But bills must be paid, so he is doing this job AND going to school, and I am back to not having him around all the time again. I'm glad we at least got four months together, and I am grateful to better understand what is most important to me in this world.

Happy Father's Day To The Best Dad Ever

Lately around our house...

...we have a baby with a sock on his hand. When I saw Rushelle's baby at church with a sock on her hand, and Rushelle told me the sock was to help Cameron stop sucking her thumb, I knew that's what I had to do with Braden. It's working so well I think I might strap a sock to Rebecca's hand.

We also have a big brother who fell asleep on the toilet waiting to throw up. I swear my kids have had some kind of nasty stomach bug for TWO WEEKS! I am ready to be done with it already.

And we have a big sister who has done a lot of growing up in the past few months:

Rebecca graduated from preschool in May, and her teacher Mrs. Miki gave her the award for being quick to laugh. She was quite the giggler in her class.

She had her final dance recital with Mrs. Stephanie, and she had zero stage fright this year. Even Mrs. Stephanie was impressed with how she got on stage and performed without getting scared.

And she's been riding a two-wheeler since her training wheels finally fell off her three-and-a-half-year-old bike. It took some time to convince her that she could do it, but now that she has had some practice, she wants to ride her bike all the time.

And that's what's going on around here.

Looks Like I'm Being Two-Timed

Kevin didn't tell me he was a contestant on The Bachelorette this season. Thanks for pointing this out to me, Rachel. I've even watched both episodes, and I didn't notice. I guess all my attention was on the weatherman and Big Sexy Hair.

Girls' Trip 2010

Almost ten years ago, February 2001 to be exact, my favorite girls in the world and I made a time capsule. Jessie was leaving on her mission to France, and the rest of us were all on the brink of doing great things in our lives, so we made some predictions for the next ten years and added some of our best memories from our years as friends.

Last weekend we all loaded up in the family van and headed to Huntington Beach to open up the time capsule and spend some girl time together.

We started our trip with lunch at In N Out.

Sarah is lucky enough to already reside in southern California, so she met us in Huntington Beach. We got to stay in John (Julie and Jessie's brother) and Michele's apartment which was a few steps away from main street and just up the street from the beach. The weekend we picked happened to be windy and cold, but we still found some fun things to do that kept us out of the bad weather.

Some highlights from our trip:

• After we got there and met up with Sarah, we walked down to the pier. We were greeted by a group of pro-pot protesters.

One of my favorite protesters was this man:

Notice the oxygen tank. Looks like smoking marijuana hasn't been too kind to his body, but he was still out there fighting for it.

My other favorite protester was this girl:

Jessica borrowed this poster just for us to get some cute pictures for our blogs.

• We attempted to go to the beach, but it was FREEZING outside.

Instead we did some shopping and tried out Ra Sushi, which was recommended to us by our host Michele.

Our picture didn't turn out great, but the sushi was awesome.

And I can't forget about the McGyver/MacGruber job Jessica did on our way to Ra. She fixed Sarah's window with salad tongs and some playing cards:

• We opened the time capsule:
  
  

Yeah we opened it a little early, but with Jessica starting her residency in Atlanta and Sarah maybe moving back to England, we had to pick a time when all of us could make it to the opening. Life gets more complicated when you have to grow up.

Here's a collage of some of the embarrassing things we found inside. Hopefully the pictures are small enough that you can't really see any of them.

This is just a tiny fraction of the stuff we had in there, but these were some of my favorites. There's a ticket to No Doubt which was the best concert Julie, Jessica, and I had ever been to, some pictures from the Idaho ranch and Jackson Hole, a picture from Julie's supermodel days, and an oldie of me running with my Super Big Gulp that had to have come from our favorite 7-11 on Russell and Mtn. Vista.

And most of our predictions looked like this:

This is Jessie's. Notice 7 kids for me. In ten years. Seriously? And I'll be living in Utah? Everyone said this...except me. I knew better. No snow for me thanks. And poor Sarah got picked by all of us to have the ugliest kids just because she's English and the men she gets to choose from have notoriously bad teeth. Jessie even drew a picture of the bad teeth in case we didn't quite understand. We were pretty mean with our predictions ten years ago, so we made some predictions for our trip in 2020 that were a little less harsh.

A lot has changed since ten years ago when we were all in college or finishing college. Julie got married in December the same year we put the time capsule together and had Riley two years later and Ridge four years after Riley. I left BYU at the end of 2001, which was not something I had ever planned on doing. I met Kevin about a month after leaving and got married in August 2002. I then had three kids in five years. Jessica graduated from UCLA and went off to Baltimore to do her pre-med schooling. She just graduated from Emory University as a doctor and starts her residency in anesthesiology right now. Jessie finished her mission in France and got home just in time to be a bridesmaid at my wedding. She met Chris and married him after turning down proposals from the rest of the world. She finished law school, passed the bar exam, and had three kids in about four years. Sarah went back to England after graduating from SDSU. She did well there but always felt the ache for her American home in San Diego. She came back to SD a year and a half ago but plans to go back to England since things aren't working out for her to be able to stay. If we could just find someone to marry her for a couple of years, she wouldn't have to leave. But we know she'll be back as soon as she makes her money from the business she's inheriting from her grandma.

And that's our lives in ten years in a nutshell. I'm excited to see what adventures await us in the next ten years...

My William is 3

Today my son is 3. We took him to Chuck E. Cheese to celebrate, which he has been asking for since his birthday there last year. I didn't get any pictures from his little party, but I did get a video of my future hockey player playing air hockey:

A few fun things about William right now:

• He is still very sensitive. If his sister even looks at him the wrong way, he cries.



• Going along with being sensitive, he is not aggressive at all. Lately his baby brother likes to hit him and his sister with toys, and instead of hitting back, William stands there and takes it while saying, "Don't, Braden."



• He has been potty trained for a couple of months now, and training him was a breeze! We knew he was officially potty trained when we took him to Disneyland in April and he had no accidents.



• He's still my little lover. Whenever I'm sitting or resting, he likes to climb into my lap or lie next to me:

• Lately he wants Kevin or me to read to him every night, and he likes to sleep with the books after we read them to him.



• He loves Cap'n Crunch. Whenever we have it, that's all he wants to eat all day long.



• He's becoming pretty good friends with his baby brother. Recently Kevin caught them "talking" to each other in their room after he put them to bed. I'm sure as soon as Braden starts talking, they'll stay up late having some fun conversations.

I'm sad my boy is growing up so fast.

Happy birthday, Bubba! We love you!