Something from Sara

For Lachlan's 3rd birthday I made her a light pink and dark pink tu-tu. It had ribbons and a bow with a button on it. It turned out pretty cute. I wish that I could include a picture of her in her tu-tu, but I didn't remember to take my camera to her party. Sorry about that. Anyway since then, I made one for Brooklyn. It is purple and white and it has sparkly silver ribbons in it and a big sparkly silver bow on the front. She loves it and regularly wears it around the house.

This weekend I also made one for Sierra, while her and Susie were staying at my Mom and Dad's house. I have to say that Sierra's was the one that I most worried about because it was green and yellow, and I didn't know if it would be cute or not. Now that it is done...it is my favorite so far. I glued little yellow fake flowers on it and it turned out super cute! I told Sierra that I made it for her and she was really excited about it for a minute and then said "Actually, I have a pink tu-tu at home already." After we made her try it on for us she liked it though and she was doing her tu-tu dance and bouncing and twirling all over my mom's house. It is so fun to make little girls happy!

Yeah, I ran out of green tulle and so the front of the tu-tu is just plain yellow. It still looks cute, but you can tell when it is on crooked!

Brooklyn loves to take care of people. Here she is "feeding bubby drink water"

Look at how she is taking extra care to support his head, and get the straw in just the right place.

Here is a picture of the leaves changing up Spring Canyon. I call this picture "Land that I Love."

Double Rainbows over GoGo's house. (They were a lot brighter than they appear in the picture.)

So on Monday my dad was up the hills with Tom and my Uncle Bryan and got smashed up into a fence by a horse and broke some bones in his back. I heard him tell someone on the phone today that he "wasn't laid up...he could move from his bed to the bathroom and back." They were just loading the horses up to bring them home, and now here he is stuck in bed all day. I grew up helping on the farm. And I knew that it was sort of dangerous, but I don't really recall anyone getting seriously hurt all my life. I mean we got plenty of scratches and scars and we've all been chased by the mad cow that wanted to kill us, but I never thought that something like bringing the horses home for the winter was something potentially life threatening. Or like when my grandpa got hurt...his job was to stand by the fence and count the calves as they went through the gate...sounds pretty safe huh. Well apparently it wasn't. This accident (although my dad will be fine in a few weeks) really scared me. How can everything go fine all my life and now in just the last couple of years it seem so dangerous? Just some thoughts.
By the way, my sister Rose posted a pretty funny letter to the editor on her blog, you might want to link over and read it.

Tonight when we sat down for dinner I said "Let's say the blessing everyone." And Brooklyn folded her arms and started in on some jibberish, and I said to her "Do you want to say the blessing Brook?" and she said "Yeah." So we folded our arms and she said (with some help) "Heavenly Father, Bless Food" I tried to get her to say the rest, but apparently she was too hungry because after the bless food part she unfolded her arms and started to eat. It was still pretty cute though. Last night we had dinner at my mom's house and while Tyler was saying the prayer she shouted out a "Bless Mommy." in the middle. I think that she must have thought that I would need an extra blessing (she's probably right).

Here is some information that you will need to know before I get started on my story for today...Tyler has a friend that lives down the road we'll call him B. He is in the first grade, but he rides the same bus, is in the same primary class. He just moved in at the end of the summer but they were like instant best friends.
Okay so here is the story. Last week Tyler comes home from school and it was pretty much the usual routine and we were talking about school and he suddenly remembered something and he got all excited to tell me. (Now the tone of his voice told me that he believed that this was the most awesome thing that had happened all day long). "Mom, do you know what?" "What" I said.
"B has his own seat on the bus. And it has a sticker with his name on it and everything!"
Now without even asking I know that this really cool personalized bus seat is the front seat of the bus, and that it is reserved for the naughtiest kids on the bus (when I was in school it was always reserved for a kid named Dutch). I didn't tell this to Tyler. Instead I asked if he had a seat with a sticker on it for him. He said no and I was secretly glad. So at primary on Sunday I was telling this story to another lady (whose boy also rides the same bus) and right as I get to the part about B getting his own seat with a nametag on it, the other boy walks in and says "Yeah! Tyler has his own seat on the bus too!"
I asked Tyler about it yesterday before school and he denied it again, he even said that I could ask the bus driver about it and she would say no too, so I guess that I have to believe him and hope that if there is a real problem the bus driver will let me know.

Today is going to be such a great day. My favorite day of the year. Not only is it Shane's and my anniversary but it is also the day of the Biggest Loser Season Premier! Who could ask for anything else. It is also Tyler's picture day at school, if Grandma Jeane were still alive it would be her 85th birthday. I'm pretty sure that I instead of going out for our anniversary (I already vetoed any plans for tonight) we have decided to take a little vacation to Las Vegas to see the new baby twins. So for tonight I will cook up an easy to clean up meal for all of us so that I won't be stuck doing dishes when My Show comes on! (Real romantic isn't it!) I love you Shane, Happy anniversary!

I remember when Chris was a baby. He was only about two months old when he would get really sick after I would feed him. He would cry and cry. So my dr. told me to get some liquid maalox and give him a dropperful of it and see if it helped him feel better. My dad was working at the Smith's branch of the bank and so I called him to bring me home some Maalox. To my horror he brought home the Strawberry flavor and it smelled as bad as I thought that it would. It just killed me to give it to my tiny baby and he kind of had to choke it down, and I thought that I would probably gag on just the smell of it....Who knew that only two short years later I would drink that exact entire bottle of Maalox (Minus the few dropperfuls that I gave to Chris) in less that one week, and go out and buy more!
So lately I have become really aware of exactly what stresses me out. How? Well I get sharp burning pain through my stomach every time that I get stressed out. What is on the top of that list? My kids waking up crying in the middle of the night. I don't know why but they will sleep really good for a couple of months and they they will wake up every night for a couple of months. Right now, while I have an ulcer they happen to be on a wake up every night schedule and it sucks. Last night I had to get up three times with them, and I had to take my Maalox two of those times just so that I could maybe get back to sleep. Apparently watching "Sept. 11 relive the WTC towers falling" TV shows is another thing that stresses me out because Shane watched that last night and I hurt so bad when it was over. Making phone calls to people I don't know, or only slightly know is another one. I sure hope that I can get rid of this thing soon because I just don't like it.

The three houses next door to my mom's house have been for sale all summer long. The first (and smallest) of the three was sold sometime around the beginning of the summer to Shane's ex girlfriend and her husband. Well recently the second (still not the biggest, but pretty big, also known as "Thad's house") was sold to some out of towners. Well the rumors are that the new neighbor is the lead bass player for Bon Jovi! So for the next little while I am going to post an all Bon Jovi playlist in honor of my new neighbor. Hope that you all enjoy it!

So lately I've been getting these burning stomach aches. They kind of come and go. Mostly they hit around 8:30-9:00 at night and last all night. Or if I get really hungry. Then a couple of nights ago, it kept me up all night and it lasted all day long. So I sucked it up and called the clinic and got an appointment. I felt pretty silly sitting there answering her questions. Do you take any regular medications? No. Have you been eating lots of new foods lately? No. Are you under a lot of stress? No. Have you been taking a lot of Tylenol or Asprin or Ibuprofen lately? No. They went on and on. I don't think that I answered yes to any of them. In my mind I was thinking that the lady was going to tell me that I was crazy.
I was wrong. She thinks that I have an ulcer. So she sent me home with lots of prevacid and told me to double up with the maalox for a couple of days until the prevacid could really take effect. I didn't wake up with a bad stomach ache all night long! It was so nice to finally get a good night's sleep. So it looks like for the next eight weeks I will be taking the prevacid and hopefully my ulcer will heal and I won't have to get it scoped (she said that would be a worst case scenerio).

Well here is a picture of one of the chokecherry trees that is up Spring Canyon. The choke cherries are huge, ripe and there are thousands of them. And they are so easy to pick. They practically fall off of the tree. It only took us about 15 minutes to fill a five gallon bucket. I have tons of good pictures that should be posted along with this one, but apparently they are not meant to be posted because I have tried several times to get them uploaded and they just won't. So this is all that you get. But we had a good time with mom and dad and we didn't even get rained on. We went up on Sunday afternoon. We did ride up the canyon a little farther and it was a really good ride. Mom and Dad were in the jeep and they left before it started raining. Unfortunately it was only about two minutes before it started raining and they got SOAKED on the way home. Mom has made batches and batches of Chokecherry Jelly and it is absolutely delicious. When I ask Brooklyn what she wants for breakfast in the morning she always says "Nanny Jello" That means Toast with Chokecherry Jelly on it.


These are for Erica. If you'd have been there with us, I would have nailed you with one of these fat boys for sure!
We were going to go to the zoo on Monday. When we got to the city it was pouring down rain and we couldn't go. So we took the kids to Cabella's instead. They have lions and zebras and bears just like the zoo...only not alive, so it was almost the same. We bought some fish food out of the dispenser and let the kids throw it into the pond and they had a pretty good time anyway.