Happy Halloween Eve

During certain holiday's I love to make sugar cookies with my kids. They love it. It's a lot of work, but the memories will be priceless. Sadie and Jayden were very excited to help cut them out. I did the first batch as perfect as I could, because I was going to take them to some families. But when I was through I let the two little ones go at it. They were in heaven.

These are the details I don't want to ever forget. Sadie's little half painting finger nails pushing down the cutters....




and Jayden's tiny little fingers. It is way to easy to forget such beautiful details. Thank goodness for photographs.




Both kids love "the roller" and often fight over it. What fun!! We didn't have time to frost them so we will do that on Halloween Eve.




It's Halloween Eve!!! It was time to carve our $3 Walmart pumpkin:) Alison and Sadie did the dirty work. Notice that Emma's hand isn't in the pumpkin. Her and Jayden didn't like the slimy mess.




I think this picture is so funny. David was having Jayden touch the slim on the lid of the pumpkin. He was not very happy.

Once David cut the slim off, Jayden enjoyed stabing the top with a plasic poker. He's such a boy.

Alison designed our pumpkin and I think she did any awesome job. I would never be able to do anything like that.

Then it was time to frost and eat the cookies. What a busy night.

Why do kids think that sprinkles taste sooo good. Yuck!

All in all, I think our evening was a success. We even watched a little bit of "The Wizard Of Oz" because Sadie is going to be Dorothy tonight and she didn't even know who she was. Poor sheltered child, hahaha.

On A Much Lighter Note

We were given a bag of clothes from some friends in CA and Jayden spotted these Lightening McQueen swimming shorts in the bag. He LOVES Lightening McQueen. In fact his favorite color is red because that is the color of the car. Emma has been sick for the past two days so we have stayed inside. He has choosen these shorts to wear both days. Let's hope that I am able to pull them away from him at some point. He is definately obessed and it's so cute.

Sunday Mornings

On Sunday mornings when church starts at 2 pm, don't you just want to sleep in. Unfortunately when your kids are young it doesn't always work that way. But, sometimes these moments help form the fun memories of having a family.

More Details

I found out more information on Bree today. They found the cancer throughout her body. Spots on many major organs and in her eye bone. They find out Friday whether it is an intermedite or aggresive cancer. They are hoping that it is intermedite. If it is, then the kemo has a better chance at fighting it. If it is aggresive, it may just be too late. Like I said yesterday, anyone can join our ward tomorrow by fasting and praying for Bree and her family. Below is a picture of Bree's brothers and parents.

Life Can Be So Challenging!

This morning I received a phone call and found out that a girl I visit teach, Kari, who has a beautiful 6 month old baby girl, just found out last night that her daughter has cancer. Her daughter all of a sudden had two black eyes and Kari was baffled with how that happened. After a trip to the doctor and then to ER, they found a huge tumor on her kidney, that was in the fourth out of five stages of cancer. The tumor is too big to remove so they have to do kemo, which they hope to start in a couple of days. I have included a picture of sweet little Bree with her two black eyes. Bree has two older brothers. Her oldest brother, who is 5 (I think), has down syndrome (which was a total surprise since he was born to young parents) and then she has a 3 year old brother who is fine.

My heart just aches for this young family, but it also reminds me of how thankful I am to have the gospel of Jesus Christ. It brings such peace to know that they can be a forever family, no matter what happens to Bree. I don't know if I could even bare that type of burden if I didn't have the knowledge that I do have. I hope to be greatly involved in serving Kari and her family. She has a huge ward family that is right here waiting to help. Tomorrow I take them dinner and I plan on finding out how I can help with her boys and what ever needs to be done. I love having a ward family that is quick to care for each other. I know that we are all just waiting to be asked to help. What a blessing. I will keep this situation updated. This family is such a wonderful family. I know I will learn much from them. Our whole ward is fasting for Bree on Thursday.

Are You Crazy?

Back in July I had a girlfriend in my ward ask us ladies if any of us were interested in running. She wanted to put together a running group. I had been wanting to exercise, but I'm never motivated enough unless I am with others. Thus I became a runner once more. I haven't ran long distances in years. We started running 3 miles. I didn't think I'd even be able to do that, but I did and I was happy; although I was extremely sore; for weeks :(. I run twice a week. Every Tues. and Thurs. morning at 5:45 am. On Tues. we run 3 miles and on Thurs. we have gotten up to 5 miles. I love it, except on the days that I don't want to get out of my bed:)

A few weeks after I started running I knew that my 5 year old running shoes were not going to work. I worried about injuring myself, but I didn't have the money to buy a good pair of shoes. I thought and thought of a way that I could get shoes but I just got more frustrated. I then began to pray to my Heavenly Father for running shoes. That may sound funny, but it was something that meant a lot to me and I was lost at what to do. Heavenly Father has always pulled through for me in the past, so I knew if I was patient, it would all work out. A week or two went by when my friend Mary called and told me that Mervyns was having a sale and the first 100 people to get there would get a $20 gift card. I said, "Let's do it." We woke up early on a Saturday morning and got our gift card. I then found $60 running shoes on sale for $40 and I had a $20 gift card. I walked out that morning with the shoes I needed for only $20. I wanted to cry and yes, I did thank my Heavenly Father. I call my shoes, "My Heavenly Father Loves Me Shoes."

On Oct. 18 my girlfriend who started this whole thing and I ran in a 10k race (just over 6 miles). Our goal was to pass the finish line alive:) I actually had told myself that I wouldn't walk and I wanted to try and make it under an hour. I had gotten a horrible cough from my kids 2 1/2 weeks before the race. My lungs hurt and I had a hard time breathing without coughing to death. I had only ran twice in almost two weeks before my race, due to my cough. I wasn't 100% yet but I really wanted to run this race. We had worked so hard. I was determined. I finished the race in 58 mins and 58 seconds:) and I never walked. Okay I lied, I had to walk for a second at one point so I could cough without wetting my pants, but then I started back up. Don't laugh, if you have had 4 kids, you would understand:)



Look at that tired splotchy face. I haven't seen that face since cross country in high school.


David brought the kids to watch me cross the finish line. Well, they didn't quite make it in time to see me cross the line, but they just happened to pull up next to me in the car when I only had a couple 100 yards to go. They yelled out for me and cheered me on. That made me very happy. The first thing Sadie said when she saw me was, "Mommy did you win? Do you get a trophy?" I just love little kids.


After the race was over, there were all sorts of free activities for families to do. My kids were very excited. Emma was very apprehensive about climbing the wall, but she loved it once she got up there.

I couldn't help but join my girls on the wall. Although I do have to admit that after I climbed I had to finally lay in the shade and sip water. It was hot and my body had had enough:(

Alison loved the wall the moment she saw it. The workers let her climb it three times even though there was a line of people. Lucky!!

Sadie found a huge parachute that us parents had to lift up and down while the kids ran around underneath. She was as happy as could be.

Jayden was SUPER excited to see a fire engine. The kids got to go inside and also talk with the fireman. Jayden is very obsessed right now with jets, motorcycles, street sweepers, most anything with a big engine, and race cars (especially the Disney Cars movie and all the characters). He cracks me up. He loves to count how many exhausts are on a car. He especially loves to look at his Grandpa Dennis' fast red race car in the garage when we visit. It's so much fun to have a boy.

We LOVE Visiting CA

The second part of our winter break took place in CA. I had 9 photo shoots scheduled and we had a great time visiting family and friends.

We met friends at the park. I ended up visiting instead of taking pictures:( What was I thinking? Just before we left we took some pictures of those who were still there. Our favorite friends the Cope's and our cousins Lauren and Garrison.

Then we tried to get creative!

Jayden was not in the mood to be in pictures. I think he was tired!!

S'MORES

While we were in CA my girls wanted to go camping sooo bad. We haven't gone camping in so long and they miss it terribly. We tried to get our two Grandpa's to take us, but we couldn't get their schedules to coordinate. So as a last resort we did s'mores at the Rich's. Grandma and Grandpa Rich are going to fix up the inside of their home very soon. New paint, flooring, furniture and so on. So we decided to celebrate by doing the s'mores in the house over the old carpet one last time:) We are all very excited for the new changes coming up.

Green Trees, grass, and Temperatures Under 100 In AZ?

My friend, Michelle, was brave enough to invite the kids and I up to their families cabin that her grandfather built. It was located about 30-45mins out of Payson, AZ. It took us a couple of hours to get there (actually more because we made a wrong turn:) and we were sooooo excited to be in a place that required a sweater in the evening. Yippeee!!! It was a two story cabin. It had 2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a kitchen and family room down stairs. Upstairs was a HUGE loft with 8 bed of all different sizes (Jayden and I got the king size:) We all slept upstairs and had a party.

We enjoyed going on walks with the kids each day. The first day we picked apples from wild apple trees. They weren't really ripe, but it was fun to experience it.

My girls enjoyed stuffing their pockets and sweater hoods with apples.

The second day we followed a dry stream bed.

Michelle has 3 boys and then one girl. The exact opposite of me and all of them are close to the same age. (The oldest boy stayed back at the cabin during this hike.) They really enjoyed playing together and Emma said she had a crush on Tate who is in the orange shirt. He actually sits next to her in school. They are in the same class. I need to keep my eye on Emma:)

The kids loved blowing the dandelions that dotted the ground.

We found wild berry bushes and the kids loved snacking on them.

Emma was determined to bring some back to the cabin. She carried them in her hand the whole way back. It took a while for her hand to turn back to color.


One highlight was roasting marshmallows over an open fire. Yummy!!!

They had all sorts of kid friendly activities around the cabin. One was a rope swing.

Sadie loved the swing. She always has. She knew how to pump her legs and swing herself before she turned 3 years old. I'm still amazed.

They had a cool slide that was pretty steep...

...and an awesome teeter toter (if that's how you spell it). Alison was no match for the weight of my big bum:)

So Sadie joined her and that didn't help much:)

Emma had to come to the rescue and help the girls defeat me. Either I weigh tons, or they hardly weigh anything. I'll let you figure that one out.