I Love Impromptu Vacations

Last Thursday I decided to drive to New Harmony for a nice Easter getaway. Kevin had work and a side job to do, so it was just me, the kids, and Guillermo visiting Grandma and Grandpa this trip.

Sorry to be lame and post without pictures, but my little weekend vacation was so last minute that I forgot to take the camera with me. Here are a few of the good times we had in New Harmony, Utah:

- After loading all of our stuff, there was room for each kid's bike, so we took the bikes with us. My kids did a lot of bike-riding this weekend. The boys even tried out the steep paved hill next to my parents' house. They came away with no serious injuries, but I think the hill scared them both enough to not try it again on their bikes for a while.

- I figured out the four wheeler, and we took it out on a few rides. Guillermo chased us wherever we went on it. He was a tired little puppy by the time we were finished.

- New Harmony had an Easter egg hunt on Saturday morning. There were four sections roped off for the hunt: 1 and 2 year-olds; 3-5 year-olds; 6-8 year-olds; and 9 and older. Braden had about four other kids in his section, so he really could've cleaned up in the egg collecting department, but he and the other kids his age didn't really understand what to do, so they mostly stepped on and broke the eggs. His section was filled with candy spilled on the ground. The 1 and 2 year-olds were still fun to watch, and Braden still got plenty of candy.

- We went to church in Kanarraville where it hailed while I was walking the hallways with Braden.

- We had a nice Easter dinner with my brother Travis's family, and my sister Denise and her husband Buck. Ham on Easter is great, but leftover ham and rolls with Miracle Whip after Easter is even better. We enjoyed the leftovers for the rest of our stay.

- We took a trip up to Enoch to visit with our old friends the Stucki's. My parents talked with Bruce and Rosalee while I talked with Krista and Nicole and all of our kids played together. And I found out that Krista and I work right by eachother, so hopefully I will get to see more of her!

- Uncle Buck and Aunt Denise invited Travis's and my kids over to meet the new kittens, pet the chickens, and ride one of the horses. My kids were in farm animal HEAVEN!

I didn't expect much to happen on our last minute, unplanned vacation, but it ended up being a really great trip! There were so many fun things for us to do during our short stay in Utah. We can't wait until next time we can go and take Daddy with us.

Proud Mama

I will be bragging about my kids in this post, so feel free to stop reading if you don't enjoy that type of thing.

Rebecca

Rebecca recently tied with another little boy to win the kindergarten spelling bee at her school.

I'm not great at using my scanner, so here's a picture of the Friday newsletter her school sends out showing the winners. I asked her what words she had to spell, but she couldn't remember. She could only remember that "ball" was the word that got her out. She spelled it "bol".

For winning she got a giant Hershey's bar. And she shared it with her brothers. Sweet girl.

She is a great helper with her brothers and the dog. She pours juice and gets cereal for her brothers, and she'll take the dog outside whenever I ask her to.

William

William has always been a mini-Kevin in looks and personality, and he continues to become more and more like Kevin every day. Lately William has become a big tease just like his dad. He especially likes to tease Rebecca because she can't stand it.

Like today Rebecca went in the bathroom and asked, "Who peed in the toilet and didn't flush it?" And William declared proudly, "I did."

The other day at the library I got upset at William for running around the parking lot as we were getting in the car. I said, "You don't run around the parking lot like that, Bub. You'll get hit by a car." He retorted with "Mr. Bossy," said just like Dory in Finding Nemo.

When he's not making smart cracks, he is the sweetest little boy. His teachers at school love him and are sad to see him go when I pick him up in the morning.

And I think he is going to be a music lover like both of his parents, but he seems to prefer my alternative music. Sometimes I'll turn the radio down to call someone in the car, and it's always William who says, "Turn the music back on!" Most times I hear him around the house singing primary songs, but a few times over the past few weeks I've caught him singing Weezer and Cage the Elephant. Yesterday he was singing, "Shake me down. Not a lot of people left around. Oh oh." We hear this song a lot in the car, and it cracks me up that he knows it well enough to get it stuck in his head.

Braden

Braden can be difficult, as two-year-olds are, but he is also so much fun. He's really talking now. He is the best at saying "thank you". I'll hand him something that he wants, and I always say, "Say thank you, Mom." And he always says, "Sank you, Mommy."

ALL of the students, especially my kids, at my school love the music teacher Mr. S. He is the funnest music teacher ever. The other week when Braden was leaving music class, he said, "Bye, Daddy S!"

This morning I was thinking about wearing a dress to church, so I put it on to see how it looked. Braden was in my closet with me, and he said, "A princess, Mommy," as I put on the dress. (We've been watching a lot of Tangled around here since last week.)

Our kids are at fun ages right now. We are really enjoying all of their silly personalities.

Much better

I got my blog book in the mail this week. I asked Kevin how he liked it, and he said, "I like the first one better." He would.

I'm glad some of you got a good laugh out of the first book. I'm still not laughing. I'm sure down the road I will look back and think this whole thing is funny, but not right now. What I'm most worried about is if I received my book cover with someone else's book inside, did someone else get their cover with my book inside? My blog book is for me and my family to have, and I don't like the feeling I get thinking that some stranger might also have a copy.

But two good things did come out of this mishap:

1. I did indeed get my blog book for free.

Blurb credited my account this week with the full amount I paid. They even next-day shipped my book to me once the the right one was finished printing, and they covered the cost of the shipping.

2. Any desires I had for plastic surgery in the future are completely gone now.

Most of the people in the plastic surgery book don't look much better in their after pictures. Sure they're thinner, or bigger busted, or put back where they were before having kids, but the scars they have now are NASTY. I'll take what I have over the risk of surgery and the nasty scars that come with it.

I am really happy to finally have my book. Now I don't feel so bad for all of the scrapbooking I don't do.

I got my blog book in the mail today...

The outside looks great!

The inside is a different story.

I was a little nervous when I opened my book and found this page in the front:

It says, "This book is dedicated to Dr. Grant Stevens, who made it possible for me to transform the lives of the many happy patients pictured in these pages." Hmmmm.

So I kept turning pages to find a book filled with these types of images:

These don't really look like posts I've done on my blog, do they? And I don't want to make my blog a porn site, so I'll leave out the 200+ pictures of before and after breast surgeries.

I am trying to be patient about this, but I am so angry - especially after I had to completely start over on my book. And to make matters worse, I'd really like to know how this is going to get fixed, but there is no phone number to call. There is only a place to submit emails. And my email will not be answered until Monday. Needless to say, I am not happy with Blurb right now.

Hopefully this gets fixed and fixed soon. I promise to show pictures of the finished product and be a happier person after I receive the book I put together.

Who has two thumbs and finished her blog book tonight?

This girl right here.

I almost gave up after I had to completely start over on it when we switched from a pc to a Mac, but for some reason I've had the motivation to get it done, and I finished it tonight after two long years of working on it. How's that for a run-on sentence.

It feels so nice to finally be finished with it. I can't wait to see what it looks like!

Losing my brain?

I think all of the blogging and Facebooking (I'm using this word even though I do not consider Facebook a verb.) I've been doing is making me start to lose my brain. That, or it's making me completely careless.

I'm a total grammar and spelling nazi. I hate announcing this because it worries me that people will start scrutinizing the things I write. But I notice detail. I would say that's why I LOVE doing math. I love that you have to get every little detail correct in order to get the correct answer. So I don't go looking for grammar or spelling mistakes, I just naturally notice them. And I'm not saying that I am the best at using proper grammar, but I do try really hard to write things the correct way. I keep my English 1 book from college at my computer, and I use it a lot to check myself. And I also keep a dictionary close by to make sure I'm using words the way they are supposed to be used and to check my spelling.

So you can imagine my horror when I go back and read some of the comments I've left for people on their blogs or on Facebook, and I've used "their" instead of "they're" or some other incorrect homonym. And I misspell words all of the time now! I'm appalled at some of things I've posted for the world to see!

I never took keyboarding, so I never learned how to type correctly. I know that's where the misspellings are coming from, but I AT LEAST used to be good at proofreading what I'd written before I posted it. I spend a lot of time reading about other people, whether it be on personal blogs or on Facebook, and I really like to comment if a thought pops into my head about a person's post. I consider myself an over-commenter sometimes. And I think the past few years of reading blogs and Facebook posts has made me get too comfortable with commenting to the point that I don't check anything I say anymore! I just type and post, type and post, etc.

I want to change. I don't want to be careless with my comments anymore. I'm doing this post because I want to be more aware of the things I am posting FROM NOW ON! Now that it is written, I will try to be better.

Feel free to attack any grammatical errors I make all the time that drive you nuts.

Golden Birthday

Today is my baby's 2nd birthday. Here are a few fun facts about Braden right now:

- He takes a binky like a champ! And I'm okay with that since he sucks his thumb if I don't give him a binky. I get anxiety thinking about trying to get another kid to stop sucking his thumb. Maybe taking the binky away later will be just as hard, but I'm hoping it will be a little bit easier.

- He's a little violent. We call him Brutus sometimes because he's so rough with his brother and sister. We have to keep tennis rackets and William's mini hockey sticks and golf clubs out of Braden's reach because he likes to use them as weapons.

- He has two blanket babies that he loves and has to sleep with every night. If I put him to bed without them, he'll instantly ask for his "babies".

- He likes to try to pray like his brother and sister do, but so far he'll only copy "Heavny Father" and "Amen".

- He's been sleeping in his new big boy bunk bed for about a week now, and he is doing great! Now every bed he sees is a "bunka bed".

- He LOVES all three Toy Story movies right now. He asks for "Stoy Stowy" when he wants to watch a movie. He also likes to say, "To infiny and benon!" with the same inflection as Buzz Lightyear.

- He likes to jump on the "jumpeen" or trampoline, and he knows how to climb in and out of it all by himself.

- He gets to go to school in the morning on Tuesdays through Thursdays and hang out with the big preschoolers. His teacher told me today that even though he is the youngest (he's two years younger than the youngest kids in the class), he wants to do everything that the big kids are doing. A few weeks ago the music teacher Mr. S had the kids play "American Idol" during music time. Each preschooler got to go on stage and sing a song using the microphone. Braden wanted to participate, so he sang the "may me maw mo moo" warm-up song when it was his turn.

- He calls William "Bub" or "Bubba". He calls Rebecca "Becca". And he calls me "Mom" and Kevin "Daaaadyyyy". I love that he calls us all by name.

Braden is such a fun boy. He makes us laugh every day. We're so happy to have him in our family.

Happy birthday, Braden!!