Happy Birthday to ME!!!

Well, today is my birthday. The big 2-7. I'm not going to make any comments about feeling old. I decided a long time ago that I wanted to embrace each birthday instead of making it depressing. Anyway, my birthday just happens to be on a very inconvenient day this year. Tuesdays are bad for us. Trev is at school from 8-2:30 and work until 10:30ish and I'm on call @ 5:00 pm until 8:30 am tomorrow. Anyway, not a big deal. We celebrated my birthday on Friday.


Me & my daddy. I sure love this guy!!!

Shel & Julie in the kitchen getting the yummy food ready!

Ky-girl. What a sweetie! I swear she probably gave me 20 hugs & kept telling me Happy Birthday!

Like always, Noah was a big hit...and we all wanted to hold him! Ry is so good with him!

Jace helped me blow out my candle (he gets upset now at every birthday that's not his.). Marc & Shelly are evil and brought over cheese cake when I'm trying to eat healthy. I guess it's okay to splurge on your birthday, right?!

Don't mess with a man & his cheesecake!

The HIGHLIGHT of the night is when Trevor surprised me with a piano!!! (Actually a Yamaha Clavinova). I was so excited and so surprised! We've been looking at pianos and clavinovas for a while now...and I have been so lonely without one for the past 7 years. We've looked on KSL and piano dealerships, and have just been waiting for a good deal and some extra $$$. Well, Trevor SCORED!!! Apparently this piano belonged to Chris Heimerdinger who is a local author here who wrote a series called "A Tennis Shoe Among Nephites". I never personally read any of his books, but thought it was interesting! He got a really good deal, and I am LOVING it! I am beyond words with happiness that I am to finally be able to play the piano whenever I want! It's nice to be able to put on earphones when the babes are sleeping so I can play really loud!

We also got a new camera last week (The Nikon D60)!!! I'm so exited to take nice pictures...and learn more about SLR/Digital cameras and photoshop.

So you would think that I was more than done for my birthday, but no. This morning I woke up to a wonderful candy card from the hubby along with a gift certificate to get a massage. I told Trevor that he definitely wins "Husband of the Year" award!!! I love him so much and am so lucky to have him!! He's always trying to do little things (and BIG) to make me happy and feel loved.

I wanted to get the candy put away before the kids woke up (plus I didn't want the extra temptation lying around!) but I went out of the room and came back to see Brooklyn chowing down on a snickers.

I feel so ridiculously spoiled and happy for my birthday! We were able to go have lunch with Trevor during his break so that was fun! Jace must not have gotten the memo that he was supposed to take a really good nap for my birthday, but it's all good!!!

A little too Scrap Happy

So I've been a TERRIBLE blogger lately!! My excuse? Usually twice a year we go to the Scrapbooking Expo with all the girls in the fam, spend Friday scrapbooking, the night at a hotel, and the next day scrapping again (MISSED YOU, ANG). Anyway, it's a lot of fun. Since then I've been addicted to digital scrapbooking. Every chance that I'm on the computer I'm scrapping away. Why am I not sharing? Because I've decided randomly to start with 2008 (I'm way behind...) and I've already shared most of the pictures. My goal is to get caught up so that I can just scrap a couple pages every time I blog. We'll see...


Anyway, life here is busy. Trevor has to work Sun.-Tues. nights until about 10:30 pm and has school Mon.- Wed. with labs and clinicals on Thurs. & Fri. This means the kids don't get to see him from Sunday noon until Wednesday night and I don't get to see him much more than that! Life is a little crazy but Trevor's doing well in the nursing program and really enjoying it so far. The kids just love spending time with him...and when he is home, the three of them are always playing.

Here's the cool fort Trev built for the kids with the couch, love seat, and chair. The kids loved it and have requested it quite frequently. I've decided it's kind of a pain in the rear to do, so it's something special they can do when Daddy's home! (That way he can have all of the fun!)

Sweet little Brooklyn can stand up in the fort and loves that she can be faster running than her brother can crawl.

Jace & Daddy

The kids love to wrestle with their Daddy! I try to wrestle with them and it's just not the same.

Brooklyn cuddling her Dad. The kids just love their Daddy and love to spend time with him. Even though the quantity of time is not there, their definitely making up for it in quality!!

Trees!!

After spending the summer with hardly any shade at all in our back yard, we finally broke down and bought some trees. 13 trees to be exact. And let me tell you, trees are NOT cheap!! Our house faces North which is not the greatest direction to be, but hopefully with some time we'll have a nice shaded back yard for the kids to play in (they guy at the nursery said we'll be really happy in 7 years with the growth of our trees. Hello! We might not be in our house another 7 years!!) . We took the kids to get the trees with us and let them have a little too much fun. I'm mad I didn't have my camera with me. The kids were drenched in muddy water from splashing in puddles and playing in the mud. Trev & I were ready to pull our hair out by the end!!!

Here's the lonely tree we planted in the front yard. The rest are in the back all along our fence line. Thankfully we have good neighbors who were willing to help us plant most of them!!

The kids were a little too helpful in helping to plant the trees. They loved to play in the dirt, and use shovels and rakes. We did find, however, that they can be easily distracted and entertained by worms. They loved when we dug up any worms, and were thrilled to watch them squiggle around. Kind of gross....but worth it...

Same-ies!

Jace was SO excited to wear the same jammies as Noah tonight. This is just the beginning of all of the twinner outfits they have. Tara and I hit a lot of the same sales together and got Jace & Noah matching outfits (not necessarily on purpose, we just like the same things and got really good deals on them!)



Jace just loves his little "cutie pie" cousin and loves spending time
with him. Lucky for Jace (and Brooklyn) Tara & Wes come over to play every Monday and Tuesday evenings while I'm on-call and Trevor's at work! We're so lucky to have Tara, Wes, & Noah!!!

Change in Venue

Trevor started Nursing School yesterday (YahOoO!) and thus his prison sentence has begun. He's also working part time, and I'm still on-call 4 nights a week, which means we will be lucky to see each other at all during the week.

About a month ago Tara so graciously offered to watch the kiddos so that Trevor and I could spend some time alone together before our lives get crazy. It started out as long weekend to Vegas. Then, I was able to get more time off of work, and we thought about doing something a little fancier (Mexico, Hawaii, etc.). Airfare was so expensive so we went back to "Plan A" and decided to go for a little longer to trip to Vegas. Well, a few days before we were going to leave, Trevor out-of-the-blue said "What if we go up to Canada?". Just like that we changed plans and decided to drive up North. (We did contemplate taking the kids with us, but didn't know how they (or we) would do with two 16 hour car drives in one week. Everyone was very disappointed. I'm pretty sure they'd rather see the kids than us!) So off to Canada we went.


I didn't take very many pictures, and this one isn't the greatest with all of the shadows, but it will have to do! This is what we did almost every night for dinner. It was MUCH cooler up there which allowed us to eat outside without melting.

While we were there we had to have Trevor's mom's fried chicken. She grew up in the South and makes fabulous fried chicken (among other things). She was very patient in teaching me how to prepare the chicken, bread it, and fry it! (I even had to take the back-bone out of the chicken. Yuck!)

Here's our finished product! YUM! I'm drooling just looking at it! (Especially since I'm in the process of losing all of the weight I gained up there as well as the weight I gained while Trevor's sister was in town. Those Canadians sure know how to eat!)

Trevor and his Mom. It was so nice to spend time with his parents. In a way it was kind of refreshing not to have the kids with us because we were able to devote more time with his family. I missed them desperately though!!!

Trevor celebrated his 29th birthday with Black Forrest Cake (his favorite)! We had a lot of family and friends over to celebrate and had way too much good food! Trevor has such a great support system up there. Makes me sad we live so far away...

Trevor and Tom. Tom is Trevor's best friend from his pre-marrital days. They brought the foosball table outside and played like the good ole' times!

We had such a blast! Time went by too fast, although I missed my babies so much!!! Tara & Wes were such troopers watching them for so long! Tara recorded Jace while we were gone so we could see him. It's the sweetest little video and makes me realize how much he's growing up! I must have watched it 10 times when we were up there and teared up almost every time. If you didn't see her blog entry click here. We are so lucky to have such great family! Thank you SO much to Tara & Wes for loving and watching our kids. Thank you too to Trev's family for letting us come and bombard you with such a short notice!!!

Now....back to the reality of life....

Jace's First X-Ray

At church on Sunday I was sitting in class and recognized a sobbing little boy in the hall. I got up right away and Jace was in hysterics. His nursery leader was holding him and he was holding his hand up. I immediately saw his poor little finger. I guess he was trying to move his little folding chair over to the table for snack time and got his finger pinched in the hinges. The top layer of his skin was broken and it was already swelling and bruising pretty quickly. It broke my heart to see him in so much pain! We put ice on it, went home & got him some motrin and headed out to find an Urgent Care. Of course, the few that are by our house were closed. So we started calling around. I really didn't want to go through the ER because it takes forever and really, it didn't seem to be emergent. The only place open by our house that accepted our insurance didn't have an x-ray tech on site. *sigh*. By this time, Jace was back to laughing and joking. We decided to just take the kids home, let them nap, and see how he did. When he woke up you would have never thought there was anything wrong with him. He used his finger just fine and was bending it and everything. It was still swollen and the bruising was really starting to show. I finally got a hold of his pediatrician and he said he wanted an x-ray just to make sure.

The only way Jace would show me his finger is if I asked him how old he was. (He's really holding up three fingers, although it kind of looks like two).

Here's another shot. You can't really tell how bad it is, but it looked like a "way big owie", which is what Jace called it.

Here's Jace at the hospital after getting registered. Give him a couple suckers and he's as happy as can be!

Here he is getting ready for the x-ray.

Here's a cheesy grin of him afterwards. He got a cute little elephant and they gave us a copy of his x-rays.

Here's an x-ray of his whole hand, the middle finger is the one in question.

Verdict: No broken bones! I really didn't think it was, but better to be safe than sorry.

Jace is THREE!!!

Today is Jace Man's THIRD birthday! I can't believe it!!! In some ways it feels like he's always been in our lives, but in others, it seems like he was this tiny only yesterday.

Jace at the hospital....so sweet...so innocent...it was definitely love at first sight.

I love his big mouth! When he cried it took up his whole face!!

Here is Jace on his first birthday. LOVE those big BLUE eyes. During my pregnancy Trevor always commented on how he wanted him to have blue eyes. I told him the chances were pretty unlikely considering his are dark brown and mine are hazel. I am happy to have been wrong....

Jace on his second birthday, becoming such a big boy.

Here's my baby today. Not really a baby anymore. It's sad but so fun at the same time. I love getting to know him more every day. He has such a fun personality and always wants to have a good time.

We celebrated Jace's birthday on Saturday while Jen, Kevin and their girlys were in town. Here are the kiddos fishing at the fair.

And of course we had to indulge in Cotton Candy!

Here is the birthday boy at his Mickey Mouse party. All of the fam came over and we ate incredibly good food (spring rolls, dips, spreads, stuffed mushrooms, antojitos, veggies & dip, etc.) and visited.

Here's "Sissy Mouse" (that's Jace's nickname for her....so cute.) in her tutu and Mickey Ears.

Jace was really good at letting Brooklyn help him open his presents. He was so excited with each gift that we had to remind him that there were more to open.

Kylee drew Jace a beautiful birthday picture!!

Jace driving his new Jeep. He caught on pretty quick and can go forward and backwards. We're still working on his steering.....

Brooklyn wanted to take a turn too. She just puts the pedal to the metal and goes until she crashes into something.

Jace blowing out the candles on his Mickey cake. He had a lot of practice this past week with Wes' & Vickie's birthday.

Jen & the Vixter are trying to get kisses from Brooklyn. She's such a tease!

All of the kids enjoyed Jace's gifts. It was fun to see how well Shel's kids got along with Jen's kids.

The "bigger" kids got into it too!

Even though we celebrated Jace's birthday on Saturday, I still wanted to do something fun for him today. I called Tara up and we took the kids to the Kangaroo Zoo. It has all sorts of bouncy slides and toys for the kids to play on. At first the kiddos just wanted to jump at the bottom of the slides, but they got pretty daring and had fun going up and down the slides.

Brooklyn riding the dinosaur/Loch Ness Monster.

It's been a lot more fun this year because the kids are more into birthdays and actually understand the concept of it. We've been discussing birthdays for the past month or so and Jace was really looking forward to his special day. We just love our little Jace Man!! It's nice to have an excuse to celebrate him (not that we don't celebrate him every day) and remember him as a little baby.