Zion's National Park

This year for spring break we stayed close to home and just went south to St. George. All we were really looking for was the sun. My sister Kerry and her family came down from Spokane Washington and spent a few days with us in St. George. They have had a very similar winter to ours.

We spent a day in Zion's park hiking. We had to ride the bus around to each spot. This is a picture of Kayla, Elsa, Amanda and Kate on the bus. They loved it.

This is a picture of Anna, Zach and Abe at the Zion's lodge. We stopped hear to eat lunch.

This is Kayla, Elsa, Anna and Abe taking a break during our hike up to the Emerald pools.

This is a picture of the lower Emerald Pool.

Amanda did really well hiking almost the whole way by herself. She loved the water falls onto the green rocks below.

40 Isn't Really Old

The dreaded birthday finally came. Craig turned 40. He was a little depressed about the whole event. I opted not to have a big celebration but just have a get together with family. So we went to my sister's house for dinner and games. Her son's birthday is the same day so it was a double celebration.

I did bring his favorite cake from costco...which is carrot cake...but I forgot the candles so we improvised.

I personally don't think he looks this old, for one thing he still has all of his hair and he is as good looking as the day we met. There are lots of reasons I love Craig. For one he will always be older than me. Some how that makes my birthdays a little bit easier. Craig is alway quick to help anyone anytime. Even though he works at least 50 hours a week and is taking 12 credits at Utah State. When he is home he tries to make my life easier by helping with laundry or cleaning the house. Or taking the kids with him to run an errand so I can have a break. He always is worried more about me than himself. He doesn't get much sleep but he doesn't complain.....although he can't manage to stay awake at church. He decided a few years ago that he didn't want to do what he was doing for the rest of his life so he started back to school. This has been a very long process and he is set to graduate in December. He stuck with it even though there were many times that it would seem easier to give up. He loves spending time with the family and tries to be to all of the kids important events at school and sporting activities. I could go on and on but really all I want to say is Happy Birthday Craig and I am so glad that I have spent the last 17 years with you!!!

Easter 2008

Here are my annual easter pictures of the kids in their new church clothes. Since we don't do the easter bunny the kids alway look forward to their new clothes. We do have an easter egg hunt with the cousins.

I decided to try my camera at taking close up pictures of the kids. I think they turned out really well.

This should be Anna's last easter with braces on. She is supposed to get them of next January.

Zach had me cut his hair right after this picture was taken. I showed him a picture of me when I was in 4th grade and we look very similar. I had glasses (all though very ugly and big ones) and My mom kept my hair really short because she didn't know what else to do with it. After Zach saw the picture he wanted his hair buzzed.

I love this picture of Kayla. I am not sure how all of my other kids have blue eyes and Kayla has brown.

Mandy looks so very innocent in this picture. You would never guess that she is such a pill and loves to stir up trouble whenever possible.

Has It Really Been 20 Years?

Yesterday my best friend from college was in town and stopped by to visit. It seems like forever since those carefree days at BYU. Of course at the time they didn't seem so carefree....we were newly out on our own and it seemed like all of a sudden I had all of this new responsibility. Looking back now those were definitely the carefree days. I met Carrie not too long after I started school. She lived in the upstairs apartment in our dorm. I can't remember exactly how we met but I remember it was with some comment she made about me and my roommates being hermits. Anyway from that point on we were basically inseparable. When we weren't in class we were together. As I was looking through my old scrapbooks I found that there wasn't many pictures from my first two years that Carrie wasn't in. I have included a couple of scrapbook pages from then. You have to remember that this is the 80's and scrapbooking was glueing a picture to a page. On the first page is pictures of us and the christmas card she gave me that first year. Reading it makes me laugh and I realize I really haven't changed that much. All my kids are very familiar with Abba, Enya and the Messiah. I sing in the Messiah in my mom's stake almost every Christmas. I still wear mostly hoop earrings. I spend many hours straightening my kids hair but don't really have time to do my own. My ideal vacation is still Disneyland and when ever a song from the 80's comes on I make Craig guess who sings it and then I tell him what it reminds me of. (He hates that game.) I still love fortune cookies and Craig always lets me have his when we get chinese food. Since we bought our home 10 years ago there has not been a year that I have not made Craig get up on the roof and hang christmas lights and of course it isn't really Christmas unless there is snow. Last but not least my freezer always has a box of otterpops in it all summer long.

This next page is also from my scrapbook. It contains many pictures from pictures that we took in a booth at the mall to dances that we doubled on to Carried's wedding. All are great memories. College wouldn't have been the same without Carrie.

Before she left she suggested that we take a picture together. ( Notice that I am not the only one that is wearing hoop earrings!) Which gave me a great idea for a blog. So here we are 20 years later. Me with 4 kids and she with 5. Life has taken us different places but we are still good friends and it was fun to see our kids playing together and having a great time. It is not something I imagined when I was 18. But when you are 18 who ever thinks about what life will bring when you are 38.

Into the Wild

Last Sunday we got home from church and noticed this hawk on our front lawn. It had just caught another bird and as you can see was just sitting on it. So I grabbed my camera and started to take pictures.

We thought how "cool" it was to watch this bird out on the lawn until it started to pluck off the feathers. My kids were just fascinated with this until it continued to eat the bird. The whole time this bird (that is being devoured) is just screetching. As it got bloodier and bloodier I stopped taking pictures. It was one of those things where you wanted to stop watching but just couldn't. My kids were the same way saying how gross this was as they continued to watch out the window.

A half hour later when the hawk finally left the only thing left on our front lawn was a ton of feathers and a huge blood spot. I made Craig go out and shovel the snow into the garbage can because it looked like something very bad had happened on our front lawn.

Snowflake

In Amanda's dance class they were supposed to pretend that they were snowflakes floating around. This is Amanda's imitation of a snowflake

My Crappy Week

Dede was kind enought to find a picture that kind of describes how I am feeling about this last week. After being sick for almost a week my husband talked me into going in to see the Dr. I went (on Valentines Day) but only because I couldn't stop coughing....which is directly tied to my gag reflex and some lower bladder muscles.....anyone who has had 4 children I am sure can relate. I went in and found out that I have pneumonia. The good news is now I am starting to feel a little better but very tired.

Now for the worst part of my week. My stake decided that it was time to redo the boundry lines for all the wards in our stake. I knew this would not be a good thing for us. We were put in the 2nd ward about 8 years ago. At the time the boundries did not make much sense. So we knew it would only be a matter of time before it changed again. But we were lucky and for 8 years we were in the best ward I have ever been in. I had lots of really good friends and I felt that my muscial "talent" was really put to use. Even though for the last week I knew that this was probably going to happen and I tried to prepare myself....when the announcement was actually made....well we will say I am a little sad. I know that this doesn't erase the friendships that I have but I also know that things change and I am now out of the loop. Which is the part that is the hardest for me....I loved being a part of the 2nd ward and it is not easy to start over. So to all of my friends ...I haven't moved and we still have bookclub and hopefully there will be other occasions to get together and chat. I am still hoping to play piano and flute duets with Emily....so if the 3rd ward needs a special musical number....just let me know.

As for the new ward I am hoping that new experiences await and I will find my place in this ward and who knows maybe my place won't be behind the piano or organ. I love all of you and you will never know..... (except for Dede who has had to listen to me cry the last couple of days,) how much I lean on your friendship. I promise that my next entry will be much happier!!!! I will have Dede find my a picture of a sun!!!!