Hey There

Happy Election Day! Here I go. I'm going to take a deep breath and---update my blog. Whew! I think I can do it. We've had a sickly but beautiful fall. The weather has been warm and sunny and is just now starting to turn cold. We've managed to catch just about every disease that has come our way from stomach flu to strep and I've decided I should get my motherhood status upgraded (maybe to sainthood??) for the amount of throw-up I've cleaned up in the past few weeks. Poor Hallie managed to cover the entire (walls, floor, etc.) east lobby of a theater during a play, and Jake got my entire cart full of groceries at the store last week. One nice thing about having them lose it in embarassingly public places is that the bulk of the clean up goes to the unfortunate employees who happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Mason has been sick for the past couple of days and started it off Sunday night by throwing up all over the table at family dinner over at my parents house. (I know, ew, luckily no one had started eating yet)Other than that he has managed to keep it limited to our house and our car. I miss those employees.... Jake is going in to have his tonsils out next Tuesday, we're hoping that after that we'll all be on the mend. But life hasn't been completely gruesome, here are some of the happy highlights of the past month. Mason and I got to chaperone Jake's pre-school class on their trip to the pumpkin patch.

We went on a wagon ride and ate donuts!

One of our favorite places to end up every Fall (or any other time of year) is Snowbird.

Here is our Dynamic Duo. Jake and Mason were adorable as Batman and Man-Man. I know what you're thinking--he's dressed as Robin. But Mason absolutely loved his costume unless we called him Robin. He insisted his name was Man-Man and ran around the house shouting "To the rescue!" I love Halloween!!!And this is our beautiful Tink. She put her magical party planning powers to use and put on a great party for all of her local cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents. She planned it all out from who to invite, what games to play, and what we should eat. I just followed orders. We sure love our little fairy!

And our other little fairy....

Here are some more pics of Halloween & Hallie's Party.

Back To School

Here is Hallie all ready for her first day of FIRST GRADE! Having her gone all day has definitely taken some getting used to. For the first week or so Mason repeated "Where's Hallie?" almost non-stop and Jake kept asking if we could please go pick Hallie up from school now. Hallie, on the other hand, absolutely loves it. When I picked her up on her first day she said she couldn't believe the day was already over and that she wanted it to go on and on and on.

The funny thing about this next picture is that the whole time I was lining up the kids and asking them to smile, Mason kept glancing over at Jake and trying to mimic him. Until the second I took the picture Jake's arms were folded too.

Jake has officially stepped into the big kid club. He started afternoon preschool three days a week and is loving it. The home his school is in is only about a block away so he has really loved getting to ride his scooter there and back. He absolutely refuses to wear a backpack though. When I asked him why not he looked me in the eyes and said "Because I don't need it." And he's probably right. He seems to be getting along just fine without it.

Mason, on the other hand, loves to wear his backpack when we walk Jake to school. Having both the older kids gone three afternoons a week has given Mason and I some one-on-one time which has been really fun for me. Although, Jake's school is right during Mason's prime melt down time so most days he gets a nice long quiet nap and I get a little free time. Which I'm going to start being really productive with one of these days! Or at least I'm going to keep telling myself that. So far I've just been working my way through my summer reading list.

Pepto Pink

Our blog is going to be shiny white for a bit until I get around to changing it again. I had to get rid of the pink, it was getting to be a bit nauseating.

Itty Bitty Ball

Jake got to have one of his dreams come true this summer when he and his cousin Kevin signed up for Itty Bitty Ball together. He is always having to go be a spectator for Hallie at soccer and dance, Kyle at softball, Kyle and I both at our races. This was his chance to go be the one to play and he loved every minute of it. They had four sessions where they learned the basics for soccer, baseball, football, and basketball. It was a really cute program. Mason could not be convinced that he wasn't signed up too, so he tagged along and tried to do everything he saw Jake doing.
And Hallie took to her turn being the cheerleader with gusto.
Jake was very intense about the whole thing. It was so adorable and so very Jake.
Here's our other up-and-coming baller.

Mason loves to put on Kyle's softball gear and strut his stuff.
And by stuff I mean his rib cage. I swear we feed him!

Birthday Girl!

Hallie turned the BIG 6 this summer. We partied hard on her Fourth of July Birthday with the usual whirlwind of hot air balloons, parades, matching outfits (courtesy of Nana) and, of course, FIREWORKS! Hallie brings so much love and joy to our family, we love to make her Queen for the Day!



This year for her first ever "friend party", Hallie wanted to have a Mermaid Princess theme. She and all of her little friends came dressed up as princesses. They played games, ate Mermaid Cake, and opened presents inside, and then they stripped down to their swimsuits and ran out to play in the sprinklers and pool and break open a Princess Pinata.

Warm at last!

We have had a lot of technical problems lately. In the last month we've had my laptop, the desktop keyboard, the mouse, and then my camera all die a slow and painful death. Kyle has helped me work through most of my issues and now I am up and running again! After what seemed like the longest Spring imaginable, the weather is finally up in the 90's! And yes, that is a very good thing. We have season passes to 7 Peaks this year and I teach swimming lessons four days a week---I need it to be hot hot hot! I am a baby about being cold, especially when I'm living in the water.

I feel like we are racing through this summer at breakneck speed. We are all staying busy with swimming, triathlons, the yard, getting Kyle's business going, and trying to fit in campouts and fun times with the kids. Kyle and I are doing the Provo Tri tomorrow and I feel like we've barely had time to think about it, much less be prepared. At least we both signed up for the sprint so hopefully we won't have to be carried away in an ambulance. We are doing an Olympic tri up at Schofield in mid-July so we need to start getting busy! That's it for our update, here are some pics of our little Fishies swimming:

Harrrrgh!

Today finds me on the recovering end of a case of strep throat. Since I'm trying to take it easy I thought I would get on and do a little blogging. Another one of our families favorite pasttimes (aside from bathing) is playing pirates. Well...let me rephrase that...Kyle, Hallie, Mason and I play pirates, Jake is a pirate. That boy was blessed with an imagination and for the last couple of months his imagination has been filled with Peter Pan. He is Peter, Kyle is Captain Hook, Hallie is Wendy, Mason is Little Michael, and I am Jane (from Peter Pan II). Every day when Kyle pulls in from work Jake meets him at the car with his sword and they play swords for at least an hour until dinner. Even when the whole family isn't involved, Jake looks and acts the part. No matter what he's wearing or where we're going he almost always has a scarf tied around his waist with a long styrofoam sword tucked into it. My parents brought him a Captain Jack costume from DisneyLand last month and that has become a regular part of his wardrobe (at least twice a week--all day long--it got a lot of great looks at Costco). We love that boy and the way he continually reminds us that we're all just big kids.

Squeeky Clean

One of Jake & Hallie's favorite pastimes is bathing. At least once a day they hop into my tub, I fill it up for them "to the step" which is roughly up to their shoulders, and then they put on their swim goggles and literally swim laps for hours. When the water starts to cool off we pour in some bubble bath, turn on the jets, and....well, here's a picture:
We take our baths very seriously here. Not surprisingly Mason is terrified of the tub and prefers to shower.

BTW...

When I changed my blog around I lost all of my links to other blog sites. I was able to find/remember a few but if you don't see yours over to the right will you pretty please post a comment or email me the link? Thank you!

Happy Easter!

I promised Alyson via Kyle today that I would get off my lazy butt (sorry kids, bottom) and post a post. Today the sky was blue, the mountains were white, the sun was shining... It was still FREEZING! cold (ok, maybe not quite that bad) but I am so thrilled about the changing weather that I re-styled my blog in honor of Spring. Our Easter morning was a bit unconventional because poor Jake & Mason were sick last night and slept in past 8!!!! If you know my kids at all then you know that this is completely unheard of. So Hallie patiently paced the house from 6:30 til 8 and then she and the boys found their baskets and their Easter eggs. Then they all dressed up in their new Sunday stuff (Jake was too sick to go to church but still wanted to wear his) and Kyle, Hallie & Mason hurried off to 9:00 church.

Did I mention that Jake was sick last night? He didn't last long coloring Easter eggs. He's feeling much better tonight.

Mason didn't color many eggs either, he mostly just wanted to smash them.

And here's the Big Hunt...our kids had their stuff found in record time.

And here's a couple pics of them in their Easter Sunday Best. I think they're adorable.I felt the need to add one more pic of Jake looking a little less miserable. Once he got snuggled up on the couch with some juice we was much happier.

I'm Back!

Kyle has worked wonders and for only $5 has gotten our computer to turn on again! The computer has 8 screws less now than it did before but it works anway so I'm not complaining. I've been hard at work today catching up on posting my pictures. I'm doing them chronologically so you'll have to scroll down the page a little to see the new posts. I'll post the rest tomorrow and be all caught up. Yay! Thank you Kyle!

Mexico!

To celebrate the return of my little bro TJ from his mission, my parents treated our whole family with a trip to Cozumel for Christmas this year. Kyle and I met one of our long time goals and finally got scuba certified. We did three dives, a night dive (I don't recommend this for your first ever ocean dive, it was kind of freaky), and two reef dives during the day. It was so much fun! We loved it. My brother Jeff has an underwater camera so for pics of our scuba adventure you can look on his blog. There is a link to Jeff & Alisha's blog on the left side of the page. Here are some of the trip highlights:

The first few day we were there we had the coldest weather Cozumel has seen in years. But that wasn't about to stop my die-hard crew. We were in Mexico and we were going swimming! And by "we" I mean Jake, Hallie, Kyle, and TJ. The rest of us stayed bundled up and out of the water. Hallie was so determined to swim she refused to even admit she was cold.

The cold weather did give us plenty of time to bondin our hotel rooms. The second day down there it was too cold to swim so Kyle and I thought we would go on a walk with the kids and see some of the island. We got about ten yards from the hotel entrance before it started pouring rain. We tried to wait out the storm under a tree (picture above right) but when it didn't show signs of letting up we had to make a run for it back to our hotel. At least it was all you can drink Pina Coladas!


On day 3 we did some shopping and had lunch at Senor Frogs. The kids loved being in a restaurant where the waiters were making more noise than they were. Getting to play on the swings at the bar while we waited for our food was a nice bonus too.

The other exciting thing that happened on Day 3....we saw the sun! We were all thrilled and hurried down to the beach.