Tonight we had my Great Aunt June and Great Uncle Buck and Great Uncle Ronald over for dinner. My mom and Sam and Lauren came also. And hey, look, I didn't take any pictures of people eating! The above picture is me and the kiddos with My Great Uncle Ronald. He is 87 years young.
Sam entertaining the troops with his magic.
Ronald, Buck and Steve all settled in to watch the game. It was ummm, uuuhhhh, the one with the orange ball where they run a lot. Yeah, that was it. Steve was nice enough to turn the volume up so we could all be sure to hear it wherever we were in the house.
It's official. We made it through another school year. And the kids made it through their first year at a new school with brand spankin' new friends. There was a school closing ceremony at the school today. During the entire ceremony Aubrey and her friend (above) were being so cute, holding hands, hugging, laughing together.
As for the title of my post, I will leave it to the readers imagination as to who is doing the screaming, me or the kids....
Yesterday Steve and I celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary. Whew! We made it through year 13 with hardly a scrape. I have to tell ya, I was a little nervous when I realized that we would be spending our lucky #13 year of marriage building a house. I had heard so many horror stories about couples building a house and then getting a divorce when the house is finished because they hate each other so much by that time. OK, I wasn't really that worried. I knew we could pull it off and come out in the end, not hating each other, but loving each other even more. And HOORAY! We did.
I love this man with all of my heart. And I know he loves me right back. We gotta good thing baby!
Friday, after the kids got out of school, I knew we needed to add some variety to our lives. Spice things up a little. Step out of the hum drum. It was hot. We were tired of being in the house. We have no yard. The kids wanted to play in the sprinkler. We have no sprinkler. I said, OK, get in the car, we are running to the store to get a sprinkler. We drove to our local neighborhood grocery store. On the way in to buy a sprinkler, we passed this lovely plastic pool that was on display. It was on sale for $17.99. How can you pass up a deal like that? Apparently you can't. So we left the store with sprinkler and blue plastic in tow. We were set for hours of wet 'n wild fun in the sun. The kids loved playing in their little water park erected on the concrete driveway. We invited the neighbors over. They played in it for hours that day, and woke up Saturday morning yearning for more. Let the summer days begin!
So, Addy's new favorite thing to do? Lock doors. She has locked us out of the house before. Locked herself in the car. But her very most favorite locking trick to do is lock a door on her way out and then close it. We have had some very close calls of people needing to use the facilities and not being able to get into the actual facilities. Good thing this is a new house and we still know where the little tiny "key" things are to the bathroom and bedroom locks. Otherwise we'd be in a heap of trouble.
I had this thing this weekend where I was talking in a southern accent and I couldn't stop. It lasted for days. I was really getting on every one's nerves, including my own. I don't know what it was, but I just couldn't control it. Yesterday we were at my mom's house and Sam kept saying, "STOP! You don't have an accent." And I was like, "Well, I AM from Texas. I really COULD have an accent. What if this WAS my normal way of speaking? Then what would you do? Huh?" Emily decided that she was going to yell everything she said if I was going to southern accentuate everything I said. Steve thought that was an excellent idea. He told Emily not to stop yelling her words until I stopped accenting mine. I was like, please. I have been listening to her yell everything she says for nine years. I think I can beat her out. Thankfully I woke up this morning speaking in my regular old voice. I seriously had no control over it.
Aubrey is obsessed with loosing teeth. Oh my gosh. I know that the only reason she lost her first tooth is because she was wiggling it for 2 whole years before it fell out. She is convinced that her top front tooth is about to fall out any minute. She keeps making me wiggle it. I'm like, Aubrey, I don't want to stick my fingers in your mouth. And she gets all exasperated and says, "MOM! JUST WIGGLE IT! LOOK! IT'S SO WIGGLY!" So I wiggle it. Or I put my fingers on either side of it and move my fingers (there ain't no wiggle ta that there tooth) (whoa! I thought that accent was gone). Anyhoo, I "wiggled" it and she said, "See mom. How long do you think it will be before it falls out?" And I'm like, "I'm sure it will fall out anytime in the next (cough) year or two.
You know how there are some movies that you have just seen so many times that it doesn't matter how long it has been since you last saw it, if you even see just a flash of it when you are changing channels, you feel like your eyeballs are gonna start bleeding. Last night I turned on the TV and there, right before my bleeding eyeballs, was Twister. AHHHHHHH!!!! I could not change the channel fast enough.
You know what McDonalds is giving out in their Happy Meals? Kids Bop CD's. Someone just kill me now. As if some of those songs weren't irritating enough. Hearing a chorus of 20 high pitched kids singing, "Nobody gonna love me bedda. I gotta stick wit chue fo-eva." SHUT UUUUUP!
I just finally got around to watching the premiere of Glee. OH! I LOVED it. How do they expect me to wait for fall for the series to start?
NOTE TO SELF: When photographing an event, take pictures of people doing something other than sitting around the same table eating.
This picture was taken right before we left to drive to St. Louis for Christmas. If you will recall, we decided at the last minute to go to St. Louis and surprise everyone there. My mom, Lauren and Sam came over and we had take out from Chili's. Then we opened presents and Santa even came early and delivered the kids gifts to them.
These pictures were taken right after we got home from our trip to St. Louis. This was New Year's Eve. We rang in the new year with banana splits and a rousing game of "Would You Rather". We had to play the store bought version since Farrah wasn't there to provide us with the home grown kind.
Valentine's Day. My mom and Lauren came over and we had a lovely red dinner and played games after.
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You will notice a lot of red in this picture. Something about the University of Utah in some kind of big deal game. Below: Steve, Aron, John, Nathan, Spencer, Camilla
Sam, Aubrey, Sara, Rylee Also in January my cousin Kathy and her husband Steve came from Texas for a visit. Below: Steve, Aubrey, Lauren, Emily, Addy, Kay, Zac, Kathy, Steve In February we had our friends Preston and Betsy and their family over.
At the beginning of April we had our first official neighborhood activity, type thingy. We had an Easter Egg hunt for the kids. It was really a good thing to do. I felt very neighborly for the first time. We did it with the 2 other families that live closest to us.
We moved into our house at the end of November and then spent the whole winter holed up inside the house. So this was like our official coming out activity. It's been kinda hard for me since we moved here. We moved from the neighborhood we had lived in for more than 12 years. I can tell you who lives in every house in that neighborhood. I can tell you their kids names, pets names, grown children's names, what they all do for a living. What their talents are. Everything. My parents lived in the house I grew up in from the time I was 2 until just 4 years ago. This moving thing has been a big adjustment for me. It was nice to be with our neighbors and know that we are all in the same boat. We are all new. We decided to make the egg hunt an annual event so it is fun to know that we are starting traditions here in our new home with our new friends.
PS: Zac's not in the pictures because he and Steve were out of town. I think they were in Moab, but I can't recall for sure. Guess I should have blogged about it sooner.
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Aubrey and Emily both had birthdays in March. I promised Aubrey, long ago, that when she turned 6, she could have her ears pierced. And she did not let me forget it. So one Friday morning, we ventured to the mall (it was the first time I had been to the mall here at our new location) and got the job done. I warned her that it was going to hurt. She looked at me with a look that said, "Oh, save it mom! Don't ruin this moment for me!" I was like, OK. We'll see. The moment the first earring went in she got this wide eyed surprised look, but she was tough. When we got to the blessed day when she was able to change earrings (I say it is blessed because she asked me 10 times a day, everyday, how many more days it was until she could take them out) we went to the store and bought her several pairs of earrings. She now loves to change them at least 5 times a day, which requires my help. The fun just never ends around here! And sometimes I find her sitting on her bed, just looking at her earring collection.
Lauren's gift to Emily and Aubrey for their birthdays was a trip to see The Jonas Brothers 3D. She and my mom took the girls one Saturday and Addy and I decided to join them at the last minute. I mean, who can resist the Jo Bro's?
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Tonight we had my Great Aunt June and Great Uncle Buck and Great Uncle Ronald over for dinner. My mom and Sam and Lauren came also. And hey, look, I didn't take any pictures of people eating! The above picture is me and the kiddos with My Great Uncle Ronald. He is 87 years young.
