6-29-11

Last night was Nick's work summer party. The party was at Brigham City Park, this is the half way mark between those at McKay Dee and those at Logan Regional. On the way there it rained but this was a good thing cause it brought the temperature down.
Dinner was yummy chicken, rolls and baked potatoes from Maddox. Everyone brought a dessert. Mine was this yummy strawberry streusel shortcake.

The kids all had turns hitting the pinata then it was time for the games. I don't know what the name of the game is but its a type of tag. Everyone is in a big circle and they link one arm with a partner. There are two people who run, the person who is it and the person being chased. The person who is being chased must run around the circle at least one time than then they may link arm's with anyone. This makes a threesome the person on the other end is now being chased. If the chaser tags the other person then they are now it.
I have seen children play this game and think that I played it when I was a lot younger but I've never seen grown adults play. It way very funny watching Nick with his long legs run around the circle. At one point Matthew was it and chased one of Nick's colleagues Scott around the circle. Matthew was running after Scott, Scott turned linking his arm with another as Matthew went to tag him hitting him right in the "tenders". Scott groaned and bent over while everyone laughed. No one laughed harder than Scott's family. All in  all it was a great evening.

the slow down

Now that baseball is over life has slowed down a lot. Sometimes I think that this is a good thing but other times not so much.
Now that we don't have baseball to fill so many hours of the day, practicing and playing games, I have to find something for all of us to do with all this extra time.
Monday night we had our power go out at about 6:30. We had finished dinner and had just finished popping popcorn to watch a movie when it went out. Now our power doesn't go out very often. I think that it has gone a total of 5 time in the past 2 years and 2 of those times has been this week. When the power went out we all went outside. Since power outages are rare my children were kind of excited and wanted to make sure that everyone in the neighborhood knew our power was out and make sure that theirs was out too. They yelled at the neighbors in their backyards excitedly about our power being out. The little things that make kids happy. We had a small water fight (it was hot). I had the squirt gun and chased the boys around the yard, with Kaitlyn squealing happily following me. While chasing Ethan and Matthew they climbed the 6 ft wood fence trying to get in the front yard away from me. Matthew picked the wrong spot and got stuck at the top of the fence. Now a nice mom would of just squirted their son maybe once but not me lol. With Blake chanting "get him, get him" I drenched the whole right side of Matthew then helped him down from the fence. I love that Matthew is such a great sport and laughed while I hosed him down.
Two hours after the power had gone out we decided that we might as well make the best out of this time and went to the grocery store. We leisurely wondered around the store trying to waste as much time as possible. Driving home we noticed that some houses had their lights on and started to thinking that our power was back on and we would have a cool house to come back too. As we got closer to our house we saw that none of the houses had lights on. I love my garage door opener, it is so convenient, but with the power out you find out how very heavy the garage door really is. 
Once in the house we started the search of flashlights, candles and a lighter. The flashlight was found, but the battery's were dead and we didn't have any new ones (too bad we didn't think about that when we were at the store). I'm upstairs in my dark bedroom and turn around and there's this little thing that scares the crap out of me. Kaitlyn was wondering around the house in the dark like it was nothing.  Its a good thing our cell phones work as flashlights and Nick has that app on his phone. We sent the boys off to bed but Ethan said that he couldn't go to bed with the lights out. That's odd since we always go to bed with the lights out. Funny boy. It is hot in our room so we open the window this helps with the heat but the neighbors are all still outside and talking loud. Nick has no problem going right to sleep but I every time I start to drift off I hear the neighbors make a loud noise and wake up. I'm just about to give up and close the window when I hear them yell yeah and then hear the ac kick on. Woohoo I can close the window.  We have a "smart" blu ray player that is sometimes too smart for its own good. When the power came back on it though "hay we were watching a movie so I should turn back on". When it turns its self on it also turns the tv on. So I had to run down the stairs to turn the tv off before the sound for the movie started and woke everyone up.
Last night the power went out again at the same time. We had scouts pack meeting. We went to the church and roasted inside waiting to go out and do the bike rodeo. Watching the kids all riding around doing different fun activity's on their bikes. Slow race, figure 8, coast race, paper boy and balance beam. Riding Nick's bike with my boys reminded me how much I like riding a bike and that I need to get one of those karts that hook on the back of the bike so we can go on bike rides as a family. While still at the church Blake comes up to me and says "Mom, I pooped fast". Oh no! Poor Blake with the power off he couldn't find the bathroom fast enough and it was pitch black in the bathroom so he had an accident. Time to go home and clean him up. When we got home the power was on and the house was nice and cool. I will forever remember "I pooped fast" that's a much nicer way of saying "I had diarrhea".
I'd like to know the reason for all the power outages. But oh well it does give us some excitement.
Tonight is Nick's work summer party. If it is anything like last years it should be fun and very funny. Imagine 10 people just as goofy as Nick all together and playing funny games like the minute to win it ones. Now you can imagine how funny it is. I'm sure that Nick will take video again and I'll see if I can share them with you.  Today I will be making the dessert for the party and mmmm

school work during summer vacation= big work for this mom

I bought workbooks for Ethan and Matthew to work on threw summer vacation. These books are supposed to help them retain what they have learned the past year and hopefully help them to be ready for the next school year. I haven't done this before but knowing my boys and how long it takes them to get back on track after school starts I decided to do this.
So far it has been like pulling teeth. Today Ethan got his book out without me telling him to and he did his 2 pages without any problems. This made me feel so proud. Seeing him be able to do the work without any help from me. Then it was time to help Matthew. He didn't want to work on his book but once he started his page he breezed right threw it.
I bought this book, Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons" to try and help Blake learn to read. My other boys have had a really hard time learning to read the way that schools teach them and I have seen my nephew reading so well I decided that I would try the book. So far the book has been really strange if it weren't for seeing the proof in my nephew I probably would of stopped by now.
Oh the fun things that I do for my children so that they can have better lives.
As a reward to working I have promised them that I will take them to Boondocks. They love it there!!
wow this is a really  short post compared to the others I have done before.

Last baseball game and broken glass.....

Last night was Matthew's last baseball game. I think he was all done with baseball cause he just didn't put any effort into playing. He did get one of the kids out and thew the ball to a team mate to help get another kid out so he is some but when it was his turn to bat he just didn't try. Oh well its all over. The coach was her typical grumpy self. After the game was over the coach of the other team had a meeting with his kids telling them all how well they played all season and thanking them for trying their best. Matthew's coach packed up her stuff and left. That's all no good bye or anything. Ugh but what should I expect she didn't seem to care or like coaching.
Last year when Nick coached the team we did thing very differently. I'm not saying we were the best, we didn't know what we were doing, but when the parents suggested we try something or that we should do something differently then we did. After the last game Nick gave every boy a certificate for doing just a great job playing baseball and then we took them all out for ice cream. Nothing big but we did something she didn't even say bye. I'm just glad we don't have to deal with her anymore.
After the game we went to Arctic Circle for ice cream, it was so freak'n hot, then went home to plant our garden.
Now the garden has been waiting to be planted because we have had this jungle where get the best sun. We have been working on the jungle for almost 2 years now. I have plenty of excuses for why it has taken this long to get done, let me list some lol.
When we first moved here I was pregnant with Kaitlyn and as everyone knows I get so very sick when I'm pregnant and so I try to not do anything that might make my sick worse. So weeding was not on the list of things to do while pregnant. The next summer my excuse was that Kaitlyn again. She was still so young that she was eating every 2 hours and getting sweaty then feeding Kaitlyn seemed to be a not so nice thing to do to Kaitlyn. I wouldn't want to be that close to me after I'd been in the sun getting dirty for 2 hours lol. So with this limited time not much was done but this summer Kaitlyn mostly feeds herself and we only have to stop for lunch not every 2 hours.  One problem has been weather, all of you here in Utah know that summer just started a week ago. With snow and tons of rain it hasn't been ideal for weeding. Another problem is my kids. When Ethan and Matthew were in school I would take Blake and Kaitlyn out front where they can wonder off and get into tons of things so I was often stopping to get both of then back in the yard. Most of you know how fast Blake can run. I would see him sitting on the blanket playing with Kaitlyn and the next second he would be gone. I'd call for him, look in the house and then we would drive over to the school. The school is only two and a half blocks from our house and yes I know I'm lazy for not just walking there. At the school he would be sitting in the office waiting for me. It takes Ethan and Matthew 6 or 7 min to get to the school but Blake can make it in 2. He just runs so freak'n fast. Luckily the lady's in the office are my neighbors and the Principal is a very nice lady who understands boys. After taking Blake home I'm so unhappy and he is now grounded to the house the weeding is all over. 
Now that school is out it seems to be even harder to get out there and weed. You'd think it would be easier since Ethan and Matthew are home to help me with their little siblings but nope. Ethan gets distracted easily and Matthew wonders worse than Blake. So I've been somewhat limited to when Nick is home and when Kaitlyn is napping. On the plus side my neighbor who lives across the street (who also used to be a landscaper) saw me out in the jungle and took pity on me. While he was helping me we were able to do half of what was left. Woohoo. Last Saturday I was able to get out there and just about finish it! Now their is just a small amount to be done and we can now plant our garden.
So the plan last night was to take advantage of it being a little cooler in temperature and plant the garden but while changing into grubby cloths I hear a strange crash and Ethan "ooo your are in so much trouble". These words are ones I wish to never hear. Ethan then comes to my room and tell me Matthew had just broken some big glass. I think oh no what did he break?
You know those things that your auto insurance person with give you just in case your trapped in your car and need to break the glass? If you have ever wondered if it works well I know it does. Matthew found the one that Nick has on his key chainbandaids, 2 on his foot and the other for his hand. He is then sent to his room.
I am so very grateful for the shop vac and so wish we had purchased a larger one. I spend the next 2 hours sweeping and vacuuming up very sharp pieces of glass. Then sun is completely down and the deck light just isn't helping so I quite for the night.
After breakfast and talks with Ethan about watching Kaitlyn I got back out clean the glass. I'm out their cleaning for probable 3 hours trying to get the glass out of the grass and everywhere else. The glass filled a garbage can. It wouldn't have taken so long if I didn't have to take so many breaks to get after kids. I'd like to know when this stage will be over.
It is now lunch time and I am so very sweaty and dirty and I haven't even started on the garden. Ugh what a fun Saturday I have, I sure hope the day gets much better.
so much for my earlier post saying I wouldn't complain that much anymore, I guess that's what this blog will be all about haha. Sorry everyone guess you know know what to look forward to for the future.

once we are done I'll be posting pictures of the beautiful garden :)

this will be some major complaining so beware

So I've talked about Matthew's baseball coach so you all know how I feel about her. This first rant will further explain why I have a problem with this woman.
A few weeks ago was Matthews team pictures. We arrived early, like we were asked by the coach, and then had to sit and wait for the coach to show up. While getting ready for the group picture the photographer noticed that Matthew didn't have his hat. Matthew lost his hat sometime after his first game and we can't find it anywhere at the house so I'm guessing that he wore it to school and left it there. I told the coach that we lost the hat she said "I have a extra hat, here" and gave me the hat. She said nothing about her just letting us borrow the hat for the pictures or that we needed to give it back. After the pictures we had a baseball game so there was plenty of time for her to say something about the "extra" hat.
Last Thursday the 16th we had a game. The coach started having problems with Nick and I when we noticed that she hadn't put enough of our players out in the field (we needed one more player) she didn't even acknowledge us when we asked if we had enough players out. She kept looking at her papers then finally sent a boy out into the field. This shouldn't have been a problem we were just trying to help.  She then glared at us for the rest of the game and wouldn't respond to anything we said.
After the game we passed out the treats and one of the boys couldn't find his hat. Everyone was asked to look at their hats to see if they might of picked up the wrong hat. Nick took Matthews hat off and saw that it didn't have his name written in it (something he learned to do from last year). I tell Nick we lost Matthews hat. This is when the coach remembers the "extra" hat and starts yelling at Nick.
Coach said "you told me at the pictures that you had left Matthew's hat at home, now your telling me that you lost the hat"
Nick wasn't at the pictures and had no idea what she was talking about and therefor could not have told her anything.  Both of us are now surprised by her yelling at us about a hat and calling us lairs. All I can think to say is "I told you we lost Matthew's hat and you said you had a extra". She glares at me so I take the hat off Matthews head and give it to her and we walk away. Back at the car we pack all our stuff in and the family who's son couldn't find his hat find out their son's hat had never left their car. I look back to where the coach is standing. She is standing there holding the "extra" hat red faced talking to her family pointing at us. I so want to go talk to her but Nick says it wont do any good. I just can't believe that she would be so nasty to us over the extra hat the the city sent with the other hats.
Last night Matthew had another game and all day I was worried about going. What if she continues to treat us badly? What if she was rude to Matthew? Nicks idea was to stay as far away from her as we could. But I was worried that if we weren't close to Matthew that we wouldn't know what was going on and the coaches husband likes to yell at the boys on the team when they aren't doing what he thinks they should. So I pick to put our seats right by where the boys will be sitting while waiting for their turn to hit.
Thinks were so odd. The coach acted as if nothing had happened at the last game, she even tried to joke with me. I don't know how people can do that. I am the type of person who has to have closure. I can't just pretend that it never happened. But this time I will because we only have to deal with this coach for only one more game and as long as she treats my son good then I'll just forget how nasty she has been in the past.
Wow that is a lot of complaining so sorry but I feel better getting it out and that's what blogging is about right?
Now I'm thinking that I shouldn't do anymore complaining but the next bit I need help with so ...... here I go.


Last night was really a tough one for me.
Kaitlyn is the perfect baby, but when she does have a problem there doesn't seem to be anything that I can do to help her. So I need help.
Kaitlyn woke up at 11:34pm I did the typical 5 min wait before going into her room. I then stick to the "rules" I didn't talk to her or pick her up. I gave her blankie back to her and turned her sound machine on and left the room. This is usually all that needs to be done (like I said perfect) but it didn't work this night. I got back in bed and watched the clock while I listened to her cry for 5 more min. Waiting for the 5 min just breaks my heart but I know that it works so I hold off and watch the min tick by. I go back into her room and this time I pick her up, hold her close and do the mommy dance. This does nothing to stop her crying and so I know that there will be no sleep for me (been here and so know what to expect).
I now go through the check list.
Is her diaper messy? No.
Is she too hot? No
Is she cold? No
Is she thirsty? No wont drink any.
Is she hungry? No, she wont eat anything?
So I hold her humming lullaby's and do the mommy dance. She keeps crying. I try to lay down with her thinking that maybe this will help. Kaitlyn flops around trying to get comfortable still crying a bit. Finally we are laying still with no crying. I think this is it so I wait till her breathing is even then slowly get up and lay her in her bed and sneak out of the room. As I'm pulling the blankets on me I hear her start crying again. I roll over and look at my clock 1:55am so I lay there listening for 5 min and we start over. In her room I pick her up again and we lay down again, if it worked last time maybe it will work again. Nope she's not going to fall for that one again. So we start at the top of the check list again. This time I am able to get Kaitlyn to eat something and take a few drinks. Back in Kaitlyn's room I lean against the wall with Kaitlyn laying on my chest and hum lullaby's again. Within min she is quiet. I listen to her breathing waiting till she is further in sleep. Very carefully I lay her back in bed and again sneak out of her room. Back in my bed at 3:15am. It feels as if I just fell asleep when I hear Kaitlyn crying again. Now I'm so tired and very frustrated, I roll over and look at the clock, 3:30 am, almost a half an hour sleep. I wait the 5 min and then climb out of bed, stumble into Kaitlyn's room and nearly yell at my poor baby. I immediately feel like crap. Obviously something is wrong its not her fault and I should never take it out on my poor innocent baby. I pick up my baby, hold her close to me and whisper to her "whats wrong Kaitlyn? Tell me what I can do to help you". I sit back down, give her another drink and hum to her again. This time it takes a while for her to fall back to sleep and I don't climb back into bed until 4:47am. I don't wait up again till Nick wakes me for my goodbye kiss before leaving for work (normally I wake when he leaves the bed to shower but I slept through him showering and dressing, guess I was really tired lol). Unfortunately Kaitlyn wakes just before Nick leaves the house. So I don't know why Kaitlyn wakes up and how to get her back to bed quickly and keep her asleep. I need any idea's that anyone can give me. I don't want another night like this and I'm pretty sure that Kaitlyn doesn't want to either. HELP PLEASE!!!!


Alright I'm done and will promise to not do this much complaining ever again.

Dentist

I took Matthew to the dentist this morning at 7am. We get there to find all the lights are out and no one is there.  I start to worry that I have the wrong day cause I didn't get the usual day before reminder call from the dentist. So I call the dentist's recording and find out that they don't get into the office till 8am. Crap guess I entered the time in wrong on my phone.
Poor Matthew, I woke him up early and now we both get to wait for an extra hour without any food.
We took a drive down to Costco in Bountiful, filled the gas tank on the durango ($63 ugh) then drove back to Farmington and stopped at the Smiths so Matthew could pick out his pudding and jello for afterwards. Back to the dentists office 10 min early for his appointment, I pay the bill, ouch and then we wait. and wait and wait.
One hour after the scheduled appointment they finally give Matthew his medicine (love that he helps him deal with the dental work hate what he is afterwards). 15 min latter he is back in the "no parents allowed" room getting his work done. 20 min of work and we are out of there.
Now this medicine that they give his is versed it makes him ...... well drunk. At least he sure acts like a drunk person. He thinks he can do anything and everything, plus he is supper whinny. Matthew can't walk without falling and running into things. His brain isn't on full power so when trying to get the pudding on the spoon and into his mouth most of it lands on his shirt and then he cry's about it. I spend hours making him sit back down and helping him back into the recliner after he falls out. An all out exusting day when you add that I also have 3 other children to take care of. It is now 1pm and I'm hoping that now that the medicine is just about all out of  Matthew things will start getting better.
oh and I will be going to bed early tonight lol

party, party, party, sleep

Friday the family all got together at Crystal and Jon's new home to celebrate Jon's graduation from collage.
The Mann's treated us all to Chinese food (so very nice of them). I tried a little bit of everything and it was all so good.
After dinner we all sat around visiting while the kids got to play, then Crystal suggested we all play rock band. At first I just watched everyone, very funny. Scarlett sang, Ethan was on the drums and Nick and Crystal on guitar. It was so much fun watching everyone and man can Scarlett sing. :) Thank you so much for having us over it was great.

Saturday was a very very full day. At 11 we had to be to the park for Ethan's baseball game. The boys did an amazing job. Everyone got a hit and they really hustled out on the field. But we they got their butts kicked. Our team is made up of all 3rd graders (all but 3) and this is their 1st year on machine pitch. The other team is all 4th graders on their 2nd year of machine pitch. The game was unfair right there then you add that their coach had tough them sneaky, bull crap things to do. The official even yelled at the coach about the crap they were pulling. But I got to say the boys were amazing and played their best.

That night was Nick's collage friend Shannon's wedding. We hurried and checked into our hotel The Homestead and found out we had a double queen and couldn't get a king room unless we wanted to spend $60. Not wanting to spend more we just took the double queen. This room was not nice, it was just a little better than the one we stayed in at Karney Nebraska and that room only cost $65. We figured that since we didn't plan on staying in the room much it didn't matter.

The wedding was at the Zermatt resort in Midway. Wow it was beautiful. The wedding was outside with the mountain's surrounding us.

After the ceremony the guests sat on the patio next to the carousel having drinks and hos d' oeuvres while the wedding party had their pictures taken.

After this we went upstairs to the ballroom for the formal dinner and dancing. Dinner was yummy. We really enjoyed visiting with the people at our table, very nice people. Then the toasts, both funny, then the cake cutting. Both of them behaved themselves and their was no cake smashing. Dancing was fun, we didn't do a lot of dancing but it was so much fun watching everyone. I don't think that I have ever stayed to the end of a reception but we did for this one. We had so much fun I can't believe it. At the end we made new friends and now have even stronger bonds with the ones we already had. The next morning our new friend called and this is when we found out that the room we had must have been lead lined cause we had no reception at all in the room but if you walked outside we had full bars. So our new friend told us that his poor wife was locked in the bathroom because the doorknob had broken off. She spent 30 min locked in before the hotel staff was able to get her out. lol what a fun way to start the day.

We had a great breakfast, walked around the beautiful grounds then changed into our swimsuits for a soak in the crater. The crater was neat but not amazing, probably would of been much nicer if we had done the scuba diving. But now we can say we have soaked in the crater.

A super big thank you to Grandma and Grandpa Dragon for watching our children so we were able to go enjoy this wonderful night.
When we got to Dragon's we were able to visit with Mandy and her kids something we haven't done for quite a while. Its funny watching boys that grow up not being around each other and in different settings but they act the same and do the same things. It was so cute watching RyAnn holding Kaitllyn's hand trying to get Kaitlyn to come back on the grass. When they were getting ready to leave Blake asked them to come play at our house, he had so much fun. When we left Ethan asked when the boys would be able to come play again. I hope we can get together again soon.

oh the fun :)

Baseball Fun

Ok so I know that I am really bad at this blogging thing but at least it hasent been a whole year since my last post. I will be trying to update what has happened since my last post.

Ethan has finished the 3rd grade and Matthew finished 1st... they are growing up too fast. I was able to go to field day at their school thanks to Shaylee babysitting for me. It was tons of fun watching them play all the games with their friends.

Our life this last month and a half has been very full of baseball. Ethan is on machine pitch this year and has games Monday and Wednesday. We really like Ethan's coach. He teaches the boys so much and all of the boys like him. He has practice 30 min before every game and on Saturday mornings. During practice before Ethan's second game he threw the ball to his teammate Cole (our back door neighbor) and hit him in the nose. Blood was everywhere. We took cookies to his house latter that night and found out his nose was broken. Luckily both Cole and his mom are really good people and there were no hard feelings. Cole had to miss 3 games but was able to come back and help the team.
Matthew is on coach pitch and has games Tuesday and Thursday. We are not happy at all with Matthews coach. She doesn't know what she is doing (her words) and isn't willing to take any help. We have had practice but because Matthew is fairly good he doesn't get and help. She doesn't know how the boys should hold the bat, stand, hit or how to throw the ball and when I try to share what I have learned at Ethan's practices she gets very mad and says "I'm the coach, if you wanted to coach you should have". Ugh if you tell everyone that you don't know what your doing then you should be willing to accept others help. The second practice there were only 3 players that showed, her son, the worst player and Matthew. The other parents see no point to even come to the practices and we will not be coming anymore. Ok enough complaining from me. Sorry :) I'm just so frustrated.

We have had 4 rain-outs for both of them (it has rained so much this year) so that means 4 make-up games each. Its crazy busy but very fun.
Ethan and Matthew practice very had to become better players. Nick has taken Ethan to the batting cages twice and that last time Ethan hit 22 out of the 25 balls! Way to go Ethan. Matthew had a game where he got a home-run!

Nick was able to go to a conference in Chicago. It was great. Nick was able to meet others and pick their brain's and also share his knowledge. I wish I had been able to go with him but it was for work. I sure did miss him while he was gone. I know how lucky I am that I get to have my wonderful husband home with me every night.

Nick ran the Ogden Marathon relay with the McKay Dee PR team. I am so proud of him. He worked so hard training for it.










Ok so what else has happened......

We went to Arizona in March for the wedding of Jason and Anna. The wedding was truly beautiful.

At the reception it was so fun watching the bride (in wedding dress) and groom playing rockband.

We had a great time but I did miss my children so much. The drive was very long but beautiful.








My wonderful sister Corie and brother-in-law Stryder let us stay at their place. If you remember it snowed in Utah while we were sitting pool side enjoying the sun in Arizona.

                  Corie and I at the Yardhouse.... beer heaven

Nick and I on the bridge near the Grand Canyon. Next trip will be to the Grand Canyon with our kids. Can't wait till we can go!!