Park City condo timeshare

Every year since Alex was a baby we've gone to Todd's parents' timeshare in Park City. They have it for a week and the whole family comes and squeezes in this condo and we eat, play, swim, watch movies, and relax.

Here is Todd playing "Made for Trade" with the boys:

 Nathan's blue blue eyes, dark eyelashes and freckles are the cutest!! (click to enlarge the cuteness):

 We tried to do the same fun things but in a healthier way. We are decorating a healthier version of sugar cookies, and for the frosting I used strawberry non fat cream cheese and added food coloring to make it orange. We decorating with bananas and strawberries and the traditional sprinkles:

 A little too many sprinkles, Nathan:

 Spencer was "cleaning up" the sprinkles:).

 My pretty daughters:

 Katherine said, "Hugs Abbie! Take picture!"

 More "hugs":

 Good lookin' Todd cooking a healthy yummy dinner:

 Here is Alex watching tv. My boys will never just "sit":

 Doing art:

 Todd got a new suit for Alex's baptism (tag still on. Looks like a missionary tag:)):

 The boys carved pumpkins. They kept doing more and more through the week to add to their pumpkins. They now have lightning streaks on the side and scratch marks all over. The boys made a deal with me and for every 3 miles they run/walk, they get a pumpkin. They ran with Todd and Tawnya so we got them pumpkins:

 Alex started doing the "half smile". Where did he get that from??

 Katherine in her new Halloween outfit. There's a huge outlet mall close that we shop at every year we go there:

 Matching Halloween outfits for the girls (Tawnya's MacKenzie, Katherine and Abbie):

 Matching Halloween glow in the dark shirts for the boys: (Tawnya's Spencer, Nathan and Alex):

 Katherine is REALLY in to dressing herself lately. Here she got her shirt on upside down:

 Matching outfits for the girls again. $6 outfits at the Children's Place outlet! I love Abbie's face:):

 MacKenzie has her hand in Katherine's mouth:

 Nathan wanted me to take a picture of him splashing:

 The boys were fish, as usual, in the pool. They could have stayed there all day every day:

 I love it when Katherine scrunches up her nose like this:) :

 Alex playing chess with himself:) (I was playing ping pong with Nathan). Later he found a kid about his age he was playing with:

 Playing ping pong with Nathan. He said, "I think the object of this game is to chase the ball." We weren't so great...  He was talking to Alex and I overheard, "I wonder if Daddy is any good at ping pong. I bet he stinks."

 Todd trying to do his work at the condo:

 The boys zonked out. This picture was taken about 30 seconds after the boys were complaining, "I can't go to sleep!"

While we were at the condo, Abbie was a little fussy. I thought she was getting the ear infection that Katherine had, so I called the dr. and asked the nurse how much amoxicillin Abbie got, and I would just have her share medicine because I didn't want to pay $75 for an ER bill in Park City for an ear infection I knew she had. Well, she kept getting more fussy throughout the week, even with the amox. Then the night of Biggest Loser she cried and cried non stop for hours, so I took her to the ER in Park City. She was still crying when we got there, so they took some blood and gave her a fluid iv because she was dehydrated. The dr. came back and said that a normal white blood cell count is 10,000 and hers was at 20,000, so we were going to ride in an ambulance to Primary Children's in SLC. When the ambulance guys got there, she was really liking one of them, and kept staring and smiling at him the whole time. Then we got to SLC and the nurses came in to get her set up, and then a girl that looked about 12, maybe 13 years old came in. I thought "A little girl got lost from her mommy!" And she introduced herself as the dr. What?? Is this Doogie Howser or something?? (Tell me you remember that show). She said that maybe she had a virus/cold or a scratch on her eye. I'm thinking, ok, why did they just send us in the ambulance for a cold?? I guess a high white blood cell count could be caused by something serious like appendicitis or something like a cold. So the dr. gave her two doses of rocefin, a bazooka antibiotic as a "just in case" and had her stay the rest of that night, the next day and the next night just to make sure it was "just a cold". In the end, it was just a cold--the most expensive cold in history!! I'm glad it was nothing serious, though. It was sad being at Primary Children's Hospital and hear crying kids down the hall and passing the "conference room" (you know, the room where the dr. tells the parents their kid has died). I'm very very grateful for the health of my family! Especially when I read this-- an 18 month old drowned in a canal. The pictures from the hospital look like she was in the same room Abbie was in.

Alex's Baptism

Today Alex was baptized! After he got dressed, he asked me, "How handsome am I?" He also asked that to Tawnya:). At the condo I asked him what he felt about getting baptized, and he said that he'd have to have more talks with his dad. He said he'd talked with daddy about his baptism, but mostly about the food:). So Todd took him on a walk this morning. After his baptism, we went out to eat. Then, Todd took Alex on a date to the BYU football game. Todd talked about baptism, and he talked about names and taking upon us the name of Christ. Then I played my flute while Nathan sang "I'm Trying to be Like Jesus." I asked Nathan this morning if he wanted to do it, and if he wanted someone to sing with him, and he just wanted to do it by himself. There were a lot of people there but he did it and afterward said he wasn't even nervous. I asked him if he wanted to say something first, and he said he would if he knew what to say. So I gave him some ideas and he ended up saying that he wanted to give Alex a baptism present, and it's singing him this song.

Pictures we had taken of him at Fotogenix:

very disapointed

I'm very disapointed and in a bad mood.
1. We can't move to the east coast. It was a golden opportunity and the kids and I were so excited about it.
2. The condo we go to in Park City every year in the fall probably won't work out this year.
3. I went with Alex for his date to go up to Sundance and ride bikes and it was closed for some event.
4. Katherine peed on the floor.

excited about...

Things I am happy/excited about right now:

1. Katherine went in the potty by herself two times in a row today!!!! yeah!!! She's never gone in the potty be herself before. The going has been a little rough so far with her potty training. This morning I found little poops on the floor--good thing we have laminate and not carpet!! By the way, this is so far THE WORST thing about parenting--potty training.

2. I got a backpack someone was selling- a brand new picnic backpack- for $5!! This weekend I'm taking each boy on a date to ride bikes at Sundance and look at the leaves and have a picnic. I can't wait!

3. The boys have "boys club" in the homeschool group, and I'm starting a "littlest girls club" for Katherine's age. I'm just starting to do "school" stuff with her so I think it would be fun for her to play with other girls about her age. It'll be more parallel play, but I think it'll be good for her to start friendships with these other girls as they grow up together.

4. We have the possibility of moving to the east coast for a year! Someone wants to rent out our house (someone we know well), and since we homeschool and Todd works from home, we could do it! Todd just asked his boss if it would be ok if we did it, and he's going to get back to us. I want to go SO bad!!!!

5. Todd is now working from home, so he's doing school with us!! He is now the boys' math teacher. He is a perfect teacher for them and the boys love love love doing math with him. They look up to him so much. It's also good because Todd wakes the boys up at 7 and they brush their teeth, get dressed and go to the table to do math, and the girls and I wake up and I can get the bottles, change diapers, breakfast, etc. and then we do scriptures all together and then Todd does his work. This gets our day started on time (the hardest part of the day) and makes the rest of the day run a lot smoother. The boys are so lucky!

6. This is our third year of doing homeschool, and it has gone SO well so far, the bestest year yet! I felt really really strongly that I should homeschool the kids this year (I was leaning toward public school with having 2 little girls). I felt Heavenly Father would help me, and He has! I have so many ideas that pop into my head and Todd got this job working from home, and Abbie is such a great baby now that we switched her to soy formula, and everything is just falling into place. The boys start this Friday doing "public school" once a week. Through the local public charter school, the boys can go to their school every Fri. and do fun classes. They are doing violin (the school is paying for their violins and they get to KEEP them!), art, piano (no piano for us though:)), karate, etc. They can stay all day, or just do the classes they want. Alex wants to go all day, Nathan may just go half day. And it's free- no paying for violin, piano, karate, and art lessons! and no driving them everywhere to those expensive lessons all week!

mothers

We were reading the part in the scriptures about Heleman and the 2,000 stripling warriors and I almost lost it when they were talking about how good they were, and that their mothers taught them. Their mothers had prepared them for fighting these Lamanites. I am preparing my kids for the big battles they will have to fight in their lives. It's so important for mothers to give their kids the weapons and the shields to fight the battles they will have to fight in their lives.

P.S. After reading this, Nathan said, "I want to play that game!" (pretending he was one of the 2,000 young warriors fighting the Lamanites). He was playing and then came to me and said, "What kind of weapon did Heleman had?" I said, "I don't know, but I bet he had a lot of different kind of weapons." Nathan said, "Do you think he had one of these?" and held up a pie server. "Yes, Nathan, he probably had one of those." And Nathan said ok, and ran back outside to play his game with Alex.

Alex is manly

Alex turns 8 tomorrow, so I thought it was time for him to learn to do some manly things:

He did a great job!

It helped to tell him about how uncle Ryan earned mega bucks in the summer mowing lawns when he was a kid:). I didn't tell Nathan that story or he would be BEGGING me to teach him how to mow!

a summer baseball game

Todd's work had a work party tonight: hamburgers and then tickets to the Orem Owlz baseball game. It was fun.

Look at those beautiful mountains!:

They gave the kids a treat bag. Here is Katherine "blowing bubbles" (aka sticking the whole wand in her mouth):

Beautiful Katherine and her mommy that looks like the Trunchbull from the Matilda movie--scary!!: