What a Great Day!

I had a great birthday today. It was relaxing and fun. Which is great because I was feeling really PMS-ish this week.

It started off with a spontaneous trip to the salon with my mom! Not planned at all, but it literally fell into place within about 30 minutes! Lindy took Peyton and Lexi for me, and my mom let me get a massage while she got her hair done! That was so wonderful! I sure needed that. Thanks Mom!!!

Oh, and as if the massage wasn't enough, my mom got me something every baker should have! My first KitchenAid! Woohoo, homemade bread, here I come! THANK YOU!

Then Kandelyn took my girls for a few hours and I got to chill with Peyton for a while and get ready for my date with Tucker. At 5:00, the "babysitter" (aka Lindy) showed up and took over. Talk about leaving the house without a care! I knew Lindy would know exactly what to do. So Tucker and I went to Red Lobster and then saw the movie "Baby Mama" (funny).

How it can be....

How it really is!!!

Thank you SO much Lindy, for all your service today! The best gift of all!!! (Although I do LOVE the other gifts you gave me too!)

Thanks for all the phone calls, texts, emails and comments! It means a lot!

Happy Birthday to ME!

(me...in probably 1978?)

My 31st Birthday, to be exact.

(Now I'm officially IN my 30's......

.....and I still don't get how that happened!?

....But it's all good!)

And this morning I awoke to some special presents from Tucker and the girls. He is so sweet & thoughtful, and took them shopping for my birthday (my favorite are the Hannah Montana and High School Musical birthday cards the girls picked out!).

Now....on to the rest of my "big" day :-)

(OH, and please excuse my horrible cell phone pics. I am ALMOST camera-problem-free!)

Things I LOVE in My Front Yard

In the four years we've been home-owners, I've really grown to love gardening. Honestly, before that, I didn't think much about it. My Mom and Grandma loved it too, and I'd always listen to them talk about their yards [I hate to admit this] with a half-hearted interest.


With embarrassment, I remember when we first moved into this house and Tiffany came to visit, I remained a clueless about anything to do with yards. It was the dead of summer and Tiffany kindly ran and bought a ton of flowers for me, planted them in our front yard [and lost about 10 lbs by sweating to death]. I said a simple "thanks" and a few months later I mumbled something about pulling some of the flowers out after they died....only to hear her horrified response of "But those were perrenials!". Oh...shoot.


From that point on, I have been much more in touch with my gardening-self. I genuinely love it, and see it as a form of art and expressing myself. I don't do it as often as I'd like to, but what I HAVE done to my yard I take great pride in.


Here are a few of the little things that make me happy every time I walk up my front sidewalk....

Here are some of the flowers I planted around my new stone walk-way. They are getting fuller by the day and its like a little present waiting for me each time I look!

Another view of the flowers. I always try to include a variety of flower colors - even white. White adds a crisp touch. And "blue" flowers (which usually look more periwinkle or purple) are a necessary part of the whole color scheme. These flowers will all triple in size and fill in nicely in the next few weeks.

This is one of my favorite. I think this is a Blue Larkspur. This is my third summer with these. They are perennials (which means I cut them down when they die, and they come back each spring! Love that!)

This one is extra special. A few years ago, I was visiting my Grandma Anderson in Anaheim, and she was telling me about her geraniums. Then she said, "you want to take some home? Here take this branch home and plant it and it'll grow!". She was right! Now I have a beautiful geranium bush, and I think of her each time I see it.

My mother-in-law Jeannine let me pick this out for my birthday while she was here visiting, and it is a perfect little touch to my yard! I love it!

Finally, I love this Japanese Maple tree. We planted it a year ago and it has been the perfect ornamental tree for this flower bed. Everytime I drive up to my house, it makes me smile!

Reality Blogging

This is how [every single room in] my house looked all day today. And often, for that matter. Usually, I play the whole "game" of trying to keep it clean with the off-chance that I will get that *15 minutes* of "my house looks great!". Only to have it look like this again in record-breaking speed. What else can I expect with a 6, 4 and 1 year old plus cousins and friends frequenting (I wouldn't have it any other way, to be honest).

But let's get back to reality blogging for a minute. I try to repeat to myself things about this being "a season of life" and "I'll miss this when its gone" and "they're just kids, let 'em have fun" and "who cares", etc.

And sometimes those sentiments actually do work and help give me perspective.

But it doesn't mean I don't often feel like a rat running around in a wheel......going nowhere!

Today I resolved to hardly even blink at it all, let the kids and their friends have fun....and then have a family pick-up time before bed. Which, by the way, is working better these days. Having the kids clean still sometimes feels like it takes more effort to instruct them as to how to help and to *keep* helping. But I look at it as insurance for the future. I can already see them "getting it" a little. Jordyn says she sleeps better when her room is clean. I do too.

Gotta love these [MESSY!!!!!] kids, huh?

Love Notes from Jordyn

Jordyn is really into writing notes lately. I remember going through this phase (well, maybe it isn't a "phase" because I think I did it from age 6 up through high school!). But anyway, these are two notes she wrote just yesterday.

This one is cute:

And this one is sort of sad (hits you right in the heart as a parent! this was right after a disagrement with Tucker):

Overnighter!

So last night was the first official "just for fun" overnighter for our kids. Of course we've had overnighters with company, or because (the rare occurance) that Tucker and I were out-of-town. But this was purely for fun.

I'm not big on overnighters and probably won't encourage them a ton, but this was prompted almost by necessity. Since Lindsay and Jacob are moving in a few weeks, we thought we'd endulge. They've requested this for YEARS. So last night I thought it was cute, they kept saying "this is the best day of my whole life!". It felt good to give them such anticipated satisfaction!

Tucker and I took the 5 kids to our local annual "Family Fun Night", and although I found it slightly boring, the kids had fun at the mini-carnival event. Including a train ride, face painting and other such games.

After arriving home, they immediately dove into a deep playing mode. Finally, at 8:30, I encouraged MOVIE TIME! Thinking it would calm things down. But they picked Shrek the Third, which did not elicit calmness. They laughed with the utmost hysteria at the part where the shrek babies threw up.....and re-watched that part for 35 minutes straight and laughed so consistantly and loudly, that Tucker and I had to pause our show because we couldn't hear it at all.

By 10:00 it was definitely bed time and somehow all 5 kids went down and out fast! I didn't hear a peep from anyone till 6:30 am, so that was great.

Now its 11 am the next morning and the "perfectness" is beginning to wear off a little. Beth is on her way to get the kids and I think my kids are so tired they will go to bed at 5 pm tonight (a mom can dream, right?).

Here are pics of the fun night:

Flashback Friday

(March 2003 - Jordyn 1 and Tucker 30)

Go Utes!

Daddy's been teaching Jordyn the "right" way ever since she was born. ;-)

"Waaaasss Mommy"

One of my favorite things while giving Peyton a bath is her constant request to "waassss Mommy!" (like Wash without the "h"). It goes something like this:

"Mommy!"

"Waaaasssss Mommy! Peeeeeezz?"


Here comes the soap....


Scrub, scrub, scrub!


A little tub-swimming...

"More waaaasssss Mommy!" (and we repeat this like five times)


What an edible, cute (and clean) porcelain doll! We sure love this kid!

F(abulous) - LDS

In light of the recent events with the FLDS church and polygamist groups, I have been increasingly annoyed at the way the news portrays this group as having ANY affiliation with "MY" church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints). I understand the distant link back to the 1800's but SERIOUSLY. Honestly and truly. The beliefs, the lifestyle, what we regard as 'okay' and 'normal' is not even close to related.

I guess I get tired of the lies and the misconceptions about the LDS church. I get tired of other churches having sermons on 'how to save your mormon-friend's soul'. It is so ridiculous. I am so thankful that I do not go to church on Sunday and learn how to "save" my Catholic, Baptist or Protestant friends.

Although I have personally chosen to align myself with the teachings and lifestyle recommendations of the LDS church - and through my own personal path of doubt, learning and prayer have decided that this particular Gospel is the way in which I want to raise our children ..........what I ULTIMATELY believe is that it is absolutely vital to live a Christ-like life, full of love, compassion, forgiveness and honesty.

In that vein, I am actually HAPPY that there are many churches out there to teach these values. I have many family members who are not of the LDS faith, but live good, upstanding, Christ-like lives and I do not for a second believe that they are any less than me, or different than me. I appreciate that they, and many of my friends, have found God and look to him for direction and light - regardless of which organized body of religion they choose to do that with. It does not shake my faith whatsoever in what I have come to believe. I wish there was more of an overall focus on common goals, thoughts and ideas rather than CHANGING eachother.

Back to my original topic, here is what I found on a website about the FLDS group:
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (a.k.a. the LDS Church and Mormons) is by far the largest denomination in the LDS Restorationist movement. They regard themselves as the only true spiritual descendent from Smith's original church. They consider the term "Fundamentalist Mormon" as a contradiction in terms, since they don't regard themselves as Fundamentalist, and they don't acknowledge any other denominations to be truly Mormon.

I don't even like that they say we are denominations of the same group because we are SO different now. Anyway, just had to vent a bit.

And for the record, I also hope the government works this out without scarring the poor little innocent children - regardless of how different and strange the group's beliefs (or hair-dos) are.

Quiet Isn't Always Better

The stuff that happens when the kids are quiet for 7 1/2 minutes.....(even at age 4 and 6 and you think they are way past this kind of "fun").

Gam and Pa!

What a great and fun visit we just had with Tucker's parents (aka Gam & Pa!). Since our visits are few and far between, we always soak up the time we get to spend together. The girls think its so fun to have them stay with us!


We had a few fun adventures while they were here. First off, we always try to fit in a round of golf. (This action shot make me seem like I know what I'm doing....which is not the case!). And Tucker is always determined to beat his dad, which hasn't yet happened!






Our next adventure was to visit a national historic site in Fresno called Forestiere's Underground Gardens. I've lived in this area most of my life and had never heard of it (thanks Dad for the idea). But we thought we'd check it out and it was really cool! I won't go into the whole story on this post, but here's the site: http://www.undergroundgardens.info/ Basically, an Italian immigrant dug over 10 acres underground - by hand - back in the early 1900's and lived there. He planted lots of fruit trees and....well, it was just incredible! Here are some pics.

This was my view of the crew in the back of the van!

Then Jeannine and I made a yummy Sunday dinner - she even made her amazing crescent rolls. I convinced her to make a double batch (72) because we LOVE them, and low & behold we ate all but 5 of them with dinner! (Dane and Beth and my family came over too!).

Tucker and Neal were really into the basketball game (can't you tell).

Jordyn hanging out with Pa.

Tucker and "Gam" playing What Were You Thinking - love that game.

Peyton doesn't take long to warm up to Gam and Pa.

Thank you guys so much for coming and spending time with us! It's great to make memories and have lots of fun together. We love you!