Cycle of Life

My mom is down in San Diego right now with her oldest brother, my uncle Rob. He is in the hospital and has been fighting cancer. He was in remission for three years, but suddenly a month ago they found a brain tumor and the prognosis was not hopeful. Well, he is now having some bleeding on the brain and they think it will be a matter of days. Sad times like this always stimulate thoughts on the cycle of life and how short it really is. I wish it was easier to always stay in the mindset to cherish every single moment you have with those you love - the way it is when death occurs.
Uncle Rob's passion in life is music. He can play about every instrument. We will miss him and his unique, philisophical spirit!

INXS Concert Pictures

Here are a couple pics from our quick weekend getaway. Tucker & I, Katie & Ryan, and Tara & Bill all met for dinner at a restaurant in the Mandalay Bay called Rumjungle. It was pretty exotic and fun. I think the server was a bit dissapointed that none of us ordered any of their 150 rums (thus the name), but we had fun anyway. It was quick trip, but nice to have some quiet kidless time. Thanks to my family for watching the girls and especially my mom for taking care of Jordyn who was sick most of the time we were gone.

INXS

For those of you who may not know about INXS (in-ex-ess)...they are a band from the 80's and 90's. Their lead singer died late 90's and last year they did a reality TV show (Rockstar INXS) in which they were searching for a new lead singer. Well, Tucker and I got sucked into that show (not to mention that we both liked the band anyway). Sooooo, we are going to Vegas this weekend for the INXS concert! We're leaving our kids with my family Saturday and Sunday, so it's a weekend away for Tucker and I alone. We're excited. We're meeting one of my best friends Katie and her husband Ryan there, so that will be fun!

Sick Kids

It's amazing how all plans can be HAULTED by a sick child...or children in my case. Thursday mornings we usually run out the door to Harmony practice for a few hours and I was preparing this morning as usual, but both girls woke up with a cough and fountain-like runny nose - the persistant kind where the meds don't even stop it. Oh well, plans can change. So I'm sitting here with a box of wipes and a bottle of anti-bacterial gel next to me. I stand up once every 2 minutes to wipe a nose and then rub hands with the gel! Hope they get better soon.

No Luck Today!

Pictures did not go as well as I'd hoped today. Lexi was too upset and they didn't turn out. I guess the picture-angels were all busy today!

So, now I'm thinking of another option. We had family pictures taken on the beach in Hawaii, and there are a few that could possibly be cropped of JUST Lexi, so we could just use that for her 2 year old pics. The picture I posted is one of the possibilities (don't worry about the writing on it, it's from the preview-only CD from the photographer). What do you all think of it?

Photo Shoot Today

Well, today we're attempting to get Lexi's 2 year old pictures taken at The Picture People. Everyone needs to keep their fingers and toes crossed for us because Lexi has an adverse reaction to the camera!!! Every once in a while, a little angel will come down from heaven and help her smile! ha ha. Please let this be one of those days :-) We're going with Lindy getting Lyric's 1 year old pic taken too, so maybe Lexi will see her extremely SMILEY cousin and get inspired. We'll update after the event!

Universal Studios

While on a visit to California, you may as well visit one of the many exciting attractions, right? Well, Tucker took Maren and ker kids to Universal Studios on Saturday for the day and they had a blast. I stayed home with the girls because they're still a bit young to appreciate a park like that. Here are a few pics from their fun day...

Tucker and King Kong!

Shrek in real life!

and last, but not least, everyone's favorite picture of Jaden RIGHT when they started the huge drop on Jurassic Park the ride! He was NOT ready for it and Tucker was prepared with a camera at the perfect time! Jaden...hope you're not scarred for life! ha ha

Cousin Time!

We have visitors for a few days! Maren (Tucker's sister) and her two kids Jaden and Taylor flew in last night. We love having them here! The cousins all just have a blast together. We're off to see a movie and get some food right now. Hopefully the kids survive, since they wouldn't fall asleep till midnight last night!! Making memories, right?

More Aloha...

(these pics wouldn't fit in my previous post...enjoy!)

*my favorite town ever!

* Tucker got to scuba dive to a sunken ship

* who can resist Matsumotos Shave Ice?

*Lexi loves the sand!

Aloha!

We're back! We had a great trip! The girls enjoyed it much more than I thought they would, which was a nice surprise. They loved our "little house" (cottage on the North Shore Oahu) and our "new car" (our rental Ford Escape) and the "chickens" (all the little birds that eat scraps off the ground EVERYwhere). We spent most of our time on the North Shore, which we love so much. It was beautiful and we were able to go to all our favorite spots/restaurants and I was even able to drive by the "Linoleum House" (my home for a year at BYU-Hawaii 1998-99). Here are some photos of our trip...

*photo taken by Jordyn!


*Hawaii LDS Temple in the town of Laie

Smart Jordyn

This kid continues to amaze me. She has been extra determined lately to learn how to write her letters. I think the spark really started when one of her 4 year old friends wrote her entire name flawlessly...it really seemed to effect Jordyn's interest in writing letters. So, she practices all the time and gets really mad if it's not perfect (uh-oh). She's always saying "look mom, I wrote a _____!" And she does a great job. Anyway, tonight Tucker was sitting with her and telling her words to write - letter by letter. Soon she said "I want to write Tucker". He proceeded to tell her each letter in his name, and without any help or looking at any guide, she wrote his name THIS good! Isn't that cool? She isn't even four yet! I'm very impressed at her tenacity in learning this. Anyway, it was a proud moment for us :-)

(And by the way, we leave for Hawaii tomorrow night!!!)

REAL Mom

I feel like such a MOM lately. I'll give an example....today we were at Albertsons and the girls were in their "car" shopping cart "driving" while I shopped. They were reasonably good and there were no huge meltdowns, but the entire time I heard myself saying...

*keep your hands in the cart* *don't touch eachother* *stop touching the food* *stop fighting* *look the other way* *be careful* *sit down* *we're almost done* *did you hear me?*

And I could go on. It's just like an automatic mode my mouth goes into. The thing that made me notice it even more is that we kept passing this lady who was peacefully shopping alone and each time we passed her, I was saying something like this to my kids. I thought to myself how grateful she must feel to NOT be in my shoes! ha ha

I think I'm just beginning to understand how MUCH you have to repeat yourself as a mother. And I have only like 20 years left of it!! But in all sincerity, we have great kids and I feel so blessed - even IF it makes shopping more difficult!

(By the way, I typically go grocery shopping at night w/o the kids!)

Loungers

Well, Lexi's arm is totally better! Took a couple days, but it's back to normal.

Last night we had a nice celebration dinner with the family in honor of Mike (Lindy's husband) getting a job. He did it in record time having just moved here three weeks prior. He will be working for Odwalla (they make health drinks/juices), which is owned by Coca Cola. Big blessing for them!

Here's a photo of the girls in their little "loungers"...one of the Christmas items from my mom. They like to sit in them when they watch movies.

Updates...

On Lexi: She continued to not move her arm until the afternoon today. Now she is barely moving it, but doesn't wince at the slightest touch. I think it is slowly healing. Maybe a slight sprain or fracture? It has definitely improved from 24 hours ago though.

On my Christmas Decorations: They are finally in their home - in a box in our garage. I can't stand to put stuff away!! I am such a pessimest in this way that I almost don't want to put decorations up BECAUSE I have to put them away. Tucker helped me and we had things put away and cleaned up in about three hours. Such a relief.

On my recumbant bike riding: I still manage to motivate myself to ride 3 to 4 times per week. I've been doing that since September and have managed to keep a few lbs off and feel a little better overall. It's really the only exercise that doesn't hurt my arthritic ankle.

On our upcoming excursions: We have decided to go to Hawaii! We used our sky miles for a couple of the tickets and just the four of us are going for a short 4 day trip next Wed night. We're staying in a little cottage on the North Shore. We figured we needed a little family get away and what better place to be? I can't wait. Matsumotos, Kua Ainas, little white shrimp truck, pineapple stands on the side of the road, swap meet...here we come! OH, and our other little excursion is an INXS concert in Vegas end of January. I guess this is a month for travel!

Lexi's Boo Boo

Somehow today at church, Lexi hurt her little arm. We're not exactly sure how, but all of the sudden she was grabbing her arm screaming. Luckily, our friend Dane was at church and he is a PA, so he checked it out. We thought maybe is was dislocated (that happened before and was easy to fix) but no such luck. She basically didn't move for about 5 hours after church and cried every time we moved her arm. He stopped by tonight to check it again and put a little splint on it. She seems to feel a little more confident with it wrapped up. It's just so sad to see your little one in pain and NOT be able to make it all better!!!

San Francisco Emerald Bowl 2005

The Utes are victorious! Today was the Emerald Bowl in SBC park in downtown San Francisco. The Utah Utes played Georgia Tech (ranked #24) - it was supposed to be a really close game. As luck would have it, no I mean skill, the Utes dominated! Final score was 38-10. My dad flew down from SLC so we could go to the game together. We had a great day! Tomorrow he gets to go to work with me and get a glimpse of all the chaos I deal with daily. Ha ha.
(post by Tucker :-)

Glinda the Good Witch

Jordyn just informed me over and over that she wants a dress JUST like this one worn by Glinda, the good witch (the girls are really into The Wizard of Oz right now). The bigger, fluffier, the fancier...the better, according to Jordyn! My mom gets a kick out of it because she feels the same way as Jordyn - so she is willing to indulge this desire! Too funny.

More Pics...

Just thought I'd post a few more pics of the Christmas holiday time...

Aunt Lyndsy sent Jordyn and Lexi cute little Princess canopies (I guess that's what they're called?) for their rooms. They love them so much!!
These are the cute dresses my mom bought the girls for Christmas day. They looked adorable. Baby Lyric had a matching one too.
"Gam" (what the grandkids call Tucker's mom) sewed the girls these adorable jammies. So cute!

Alyson got to spend Christmas morning with us. Here are the girls just after they opened their presents. The kitchen in the background is their main Santa gift this year.

Obviously, Tucker and I. This is Christmas eve at my parents. Tucker loves to wear his Santa hat! :-)

Shopping Blah

Like most people, Target is one of my favorite stores. I almost can't refer to it as a 'store' because it's such an enjoyable hang-out place for me. If I am in the mood, I can happily browse for hours. So, I left the fam at home tonight for a bit to see if I could catch some great post-christmas steals. But I must have REALLY not been in the mood because I had no interest in digging through the (what felt like) leftovers, and all the people blocking the isles were making me feel claustrophobic. I think (and hope) I can attribute this anti-shopping feeling to the head cold I have. I ran into a few stores and didn't find much, but my greatest find was at Target - a fold out table and 4-chair set on sale for $40. Will come in handy when we have extra guests over for dinner. Hope you were more lucky than me today if you joined the shoppers!

Merry Christmas!

We had a great Christmas Eve last night! We had tamales, enchiladas, rice and beans for dinner and opened all our family presents. Carly and Alyson stayed at our house last night so Santa could (conveniently) visit Alyson at the same time as Jordyn and Lexi. We had a fun, but short Christmas morning as we had an hour of church to attend at 10:00. This picture is our whole family just after church today. It's fun when we can all be together...our family is quickly growing! Hope your christmas is as good as ours!

Mosely

It's really sad to me that a pet has to have such a short life compared to its owner. Our cute little poodle family dog Mosely is gone. At nearly 12 years old, he died of leukemia. He was the best family dog. My mom hand fed him and took amazing care of him his last 6 weeks as he was on a rapid downhill slide. We will miss him a lot! Especially all the little grandkids who love "mo-mo" so much.

3 Year Old Photographer

So, these are the kind of surprise pictures I get every time I download my photos from my digital camera! In fact, I am usually lucky enough to find at least 25 each time! Jordyn is an aspiring photographer and loves to grab my camera any chance she gets! I have to admit she does a pretty good job sometimes.

Tara's Visit

I just wanted to post about my fun couple days with my friend Tara. She and I have been friends since we were 1 year old...so it's much more like a sister type relationship. Our moms are best friends too. We have known eachother through EVERY thing and we have a special bond. She and her husband Bill and two kids Jade and Joshua live in Vegas now, so she stopped through as she was traveling home to Stockton for Christmas. Tara's husband is in the military, so until recently, they have lived overseas in both Spain and Japan. We were able to visit them in Japan four years ago.

Anyway, we had a fun time just hanging out. We didn't even shower yesterday, we just stayed in our comfy clothes and spent time at my house! It was fun. Tara is so creative and talented. When she comes, she always does something to help me. This time, she sewed a hole in the seam of my couch and she fixed Lexi's Snow White dress (which she does wear every single day), and she taught me how to cook chicken in a pan that stays moist!! It was a lot of fun!

Santa Clause is Coming...

Can you tell who this is? Well, this is Tucker's 2nd year being Santa's "helper" at our ward Christmas party. He loves it! He knows most the children by name and they are always very impressed by that! He also loves to get into the details...for example, when the kids would ask for a digital camera, he'd reply "Ok...how many megapixels would you like?". Of course, this really stumps them. Too funny. And the only kids of the whole crowd (maybe 60 kids) who didn't like Santa were OURS! They were absolutely hysterical and crying! Even when he revealed himself and said "it's just daddy!", they were still hysterical! It was so bad that they are probably scarred for life, especially Jordyn. She was the worst!

Take Ten Christmas Party

We had our annual Take Ten Christmas Party tonight. Tucker organized it for our employees (we have about 60 currently). My parents came too, which was nice since they are the founders/owners of the company. It was a nice evening, and some great buffet food!