Saturday, November 24, 2007

Bliss of Youth



I once recounted how Kairi and her cousins loved to sing the
"Girlfriend" song by Avril Lavigne. Well we had them all together and
the music was playing. This is what was captured. I hope the video
works. Someone e-mail me if it doesn't. Oh, By the way, there is no sound.

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Blog Tag

Okay, so now I am it. Thanks a lot Chandra!!! I don't know that there are random facts about me, let alone 6.... I am kind of an open book. But there is always something new to learn isn't there. Well first I have to tag someone else to leave there own random things and I think I will tag two people. The first is Shawna, my cousin's wife, I don't know you that well, but we have this in common and it would be great to learn something new about you. The second is Juliann. You love to blog, Juliann and we don't see a lot of one another and so I know things have changed. 1. I am very opinionated (perhaps that is not very random:-) however I don't like that fact about me. I have been allowing myself the opportunity to change that. I feel that my opinion hurts people and comes across as judgemental, which is not my intention. 2. I love to take pictures of everything, but mainly to document my life with my family and the things that we do together so that when I am 70 I can look back and recognize how rich my life has been. 3. I try to find the silver lining in the clouds. I think that this is my coping strategy. Otherwise I would pity myself. 4. I love to take chances when I cook. Not much of a risk taker, but with cooking there is always a plan b in the fast food industry. 5. This is for you Chandra. I trace peoples veins as far up their arms as I can. Just to see if I can still find a good vein and identify the places where an IV should go. I will do this anytime, day or night. Anywhere- church, boring places. I did it to my Mom, my dad, brothers, sister, husband, I've even done it to my daughter. The nurse in me has been put on the shelf, but she rears her head in this way to make me realize that it is still apart of who I am. 6. I love to travel. And I married a homebody. I am breaking him in with the help of the medical community and his job that sends him on business trips 1-2 times a year. Then of course there is the trips to Overton. Unfortunately, he is still holding out for the teleportal unit to be repaired to streamline the process. (I know there is no number 7 technically for this, but this is for the girls from high school.) 7. I still watch Days of Our Lives- religiously. I also don't feel bad about it when they talk about how soap operas are bad and we shouldn't watch them, in Relief Society. Will I be meeting the Devil over this?

Dentist


Well we decided to bite the bullet and go to the dentist after 3 years or so.... Juliann don't cringe...... but without dental insurance it hasn't been a priority. However, Kairi has never been and I thought that it was high time that it was addressed. I scheduled all three of us to go in. I would have scheduled Kesslynn, but without teeth there isn't much need for a dentist. Cameron, of course had a perfect check-up. Kairi did also. Me, on the other hand, had a cavity. However, one cavity in three years I consider not bad. Now if I could just afford braces, they tell me that the cavities would improve. I'll let you know when I get the means together for them!!!!!

She's got a Boyfriend now.....


Long story short.... Kairi has a second cousin (who feels like a first) who is in Kindergarten, who has a "girlfriend". He bought this little girl a gift and drew her a picture. His brother is about 6 months younger than Kairi and has proclaimed that Kairi is his girlfriend. In an effort to express his feelings, he followed his brother's example and got Kairi a necklace/bracelet combination and drew her a picture. She just ate it up. It was so cute I had to post about it. His mother and I just laugh and laugh about how cute it is. Even funnier still is that this isn't the first time I have heard that Kairi is someone's girlfriend.........

Disneyland......

Last year I swore that we would be going to Disneyland in November of this year. Our house was supposed to be done. And it would have been a great reward for all of our hard wok on it. A chance for us to regroup as a family. Then Mom died.... and since a) it is the Happiest Place on Earth, and b) my Mom's favorite place to go, I knew no matter what we would go. I got my family in on the action, Dad and Talon, Dave and Sarah, Tenille and Mike, Sarah's Mom and all of us went. Somewhat in memory of my mother. We planned to pass back through Overton on the day she died and have all of the kids go together to her grave. That was a hard day. My little brother didn't join us, understandably, because he has the starkest reminder of her absence. The rest of us went to the grave, shed some tears, or in my case bawled like a baby.... At her burial we noticed that they misspelled her name "Jo" as "Joe." This year it bothered us a great deal and we finally got down in the dirt and rearranged the letters- McGuyver-style, with the help of a dime, a pocket knife, and scrabble-skills. (Sarah you know what I am talking about!!!) The relief of that was enormous and we are looking forward to a permanent headstone soon. Anyhow on a lighter note, we also enjoyed our time immensely at Disneyland. Cameron and I were slower than the others and they promptly split away from us to explore on a more adult level. Cool by us. We spent our time entertaining our kids riding the kiddy rides and watching the great faces that occurred. Kairi really enjoyed the Dumbo ride as well as the Teacups. Kesslynn enjoyed the Teacups as well. We were brave and took her on them with a rich reward. We also convinced Kairi to ride Splash Mountain twice which she still maintains that she didn't like. There was so much to do and because of our slow process we only saw Disneyland. We didn't even touch California Adventure, with the exception of about 15 minutes (which I spent in the Mother's Room.) We highly recommend anyone else being so adventure-some to pay the extra money, stay close to the park and take your kids to the hotel for naps. It killed about 2-3 hours of our day, but the kids managed much better.



Also just for fun: At Disneyland they have a thing called PhotoPass. You take pictures in the park via photographers that Disney employs. They scan your card and then you give this card to any of the photographers you encounter to take your pictures. You come home and can view and print your Disney pictures from home. I love the idea, and I do have a favorite photographer who just so happens to be my Aunt Connie. Here is the link, but if you are going to check it out you have to do it by 12/14/07 because they will expire on that day.

http://www.disneyphotopass.com/photopass.aspx

Sunday, November 18, 2007

All Hallows Eve....





Halloween was a lot of fun this year. There were so many activities that we barely had time for them all. But we had a great time. Kairi decided that she wanted to be a Pokemon trainer, and Kesslynn we decided to let her be Pikachu. For those of you not familiar with the game or show. Little kids have pocket monsters aka "Pokemon" and they train them to basically be obedient... anyway Pikachu is a pokemon. So does this mean that I am allowing my oldest daughter to take her younger sister and "train" her to be obedient. I hope not. Oh and by the way, these kids battle their Pokemon against each other in a type of dog fight type way. Nice. Now that I am putting this in context it doesn't seem as cute, hummmmm?! By the way of note, I guess you can only post pictures in landscape mode and not in portrait mode so you will all have to look at my super cute pictures sideways. Remember to rest your neck every so often to avoid a kink in your neck. :-)

Sleep Over......




My baby girl is getting so big. Okay, not that baby girl, the bigger one. I recently let her have her first sleep over at a friend's house. Olivia is a little girl Kairi has known for years and they have a strong bond. They did each others hair, played video games, watched a movie, played dress up and even had their hair done the same. Even Olivia's little sister, Alli, got in on the action. Anyway we had some really cute pictures and so here they are....