Our sleeping little Girl Cow!

Tonight Jason called in to me from the living room, telling me that he could hear Claire crying, she had been in bed for about an hour and a half. I went in and asked her what was wrong and she told me, "Nothing, I'm being a girl cow." I asked her what she was doing and she said, "Moo, moo." So there you have it, she wasn't crying, she was mooing!!

Unfortunately our computer ate a bunch of Christmas pictures from our camera card. I am in the process of taking pictures of the kids playing with their gifts as opposed to the ones of unwrapping them since they were "eaten." :o(

Lorenzo playing with his K'nex "dune buggy" car that he and Dad built with his Christmas present from Grandmommy & Grandaddy!

Claire playing with her My Little Pony Tea Pot Palace that she got from Grandmommy & Grandaddy for Christmas!! I had a My Little Pony Nursery playset when I was little 7 or 8. How I wish I still had some of my toys, they would be well played with!

Our baby Girl!

So the ultrasound told us that we will be having another little GIRL. So meet our little Delia Grace :o)

If you click on the above picture, you can see that she is "shhhing" us!

Look at her big beautiful eye!! :o)

It's a girl!!

Coming out of the woodwork in 2008!

(Jason finally was able to get the camera and computer on speaking terms!)

Okay, so it is officially 2 months since I posted last. Sorry!! I know that it appeared that the mere fact of turning 30 made me keel over, but I am alive. :o) Wow, where to start with the ultra busy 2 months that has past!


Tonight we get to go for our ULTRASOUND! We are very excited. Claire thinks the baby is a girl and Lorenzo thinks it is a boy, go figure! :o) Atleast one of them will be right. Part of me thinks it would be fun to not find out until the birth, but Jason thinks that is silly! I guess he's right, plus I am no good with surprises so the suspense WOULD kill me!


Well, the time for us has finally come to join the 21st century and get...cell phones! We will be getting a cricket phone, no contract and unlimited minutes for just $30 plus tax a month. We will be losing our landline, sorry Qwest, but keeping our same number! Jason will be getting a Tracfone just for emergencies. We will no longer be the only living people without a cell phone!

Jason has been working like a mad man since school started the first part of January. He is CRAZY busy! He is working 10 hrs a day with UPS and then comes home and reads, reads and reads. He has at least 2 quizes and a paper due each week not to mention 100's of pages he has to read for upcoming assignments. Then on weekends he is working down in the basement, dividing our long room into 2 rooms. We will be moving Lorenzo down there when the baby arrives. It was funny, yesterday Lorenzo was down in the basement with Jason and told him, "You know Dad, I think it's time that we spend some quality time together, you know, just me and you." Sounds like a "Family, it's about time" commercial that the church puts out! (funny boy)


January 15 was a lame day for me! I was putting groceries in the back of our van at Walmart when this guy in a HUGE white truck tried to park to the left of me and WAY over turned and smacked the back of our van. This is what led us to finally breakdown and get a cell phone! Ends up that Jack Ellis' insurance policy expired in October, so of course, he was uninsured. With much debate back and forth and in an attempt to keep this post less then 10 pages, his son, Jake has agreed to pay CST Paint and Body to have our car fixed and mail us a check for car rental. Keep your fingers crossed for us! :o)

Lorenzo is just really growing up and wanting to take on some responsibility, not to be confused with "chores." He has learned a new skill of making his own PB & J sandwhiches and apple. I think we have gone through a jar of PB and a jar of jam since this first part of January! I'm sure that more lands on his tongue by way of knife licking than makes it in the actual sandwhich!

We have decided to take the kids on a trip to DISNEYLAND!! We will be going March 17 - March 21. We will probably only be spending ONE day a Disneyland and the other days going to the beach, relaxing and DRIVING, blah!! I got us a room at La Quinta in Santa Ana which is newly renovated and has a king sized bed and a sofabed, hopefully it will be a nice experience. We were trying to win a trip via KOSY radio station, until I saw that we would have to claim the winnings on next years taxes and have to pay gift tax on it...NEVERMIND THAT! Every weekday in January the radio station called the winner at 7:00 am to let them know they won. One morning Jason got up at 5:30 am for work, when he went out to the family room Lorenzo was up playing his leapster. Jason asked him what he was doing up so early. Lorenzo told him. "I'm waiting for Disneyland to call!" Too funny.

December 29 Jason took Lorenzo skiing up Alta resort. The towrope is free all day and they got half price off ski rentals for a few hours in the afternoon. I gladly stayed home with Claire in our nice warm house! :o)

December 25 was great day! The kids, Jason and I had a wonderful Christmas. The kids were well taken care of by ALL their grandparents and great-grandparents, THANK YOU to all!

The kids had a couple opportunities to visit with Santa. We went to Tooele City Hall December 1 after the parade (we skipped this, too cold and snowy!). We then saw him again at our Ward Christmas breakfast, what a blast!

I actually survived the shock of turning 30! I felt so yucky that we didn't do anything special, however Jason did surprise me with some store bought cinnamon rolls and peppermint ice cream.

Feeling crummy, tiny heart beat and turning 30!

So sorry that my blog has become very boring. I do have so much to catch up on, the kids have done some pretty fun, funny and crazy things! I have been feeling so tired and so yucky that blogging is not quite at the top of my priority list. Jason has been an absolute lifesaver and has been making dinner and doing the dishes every night without fail and without complaining! :o)

I went to the doctor yesterday, Tuesday, and I got to hear the tiny heartbeat of our little baby. We will find out around Valentine's Day if it is a boy or girl, my money says it's a girl for the mere fact that this pregnancy seems to be mirroring Claire's. I had to get my blood drawn, standard procedure, but the gal didn't get the needle in so great and had to wiggle it around to get some blood. Finally she had to go to my hand to get the blood and by then it was 130 degrees in the room, the room felt like it was on a rocking boat and shooting starbursts were all around me. I was not doing so hot and almost passed out! I hate needles!!

So here I sit less than 8 hours away from the BIG 3 0!! I'm not quite sure how I feel about this milestone. Sorry Mom and Dad that your baby is turning 30, I tried to hold off as long as I could but the calendar just was not cooperating with me! :o) Life seems to be zooming by, especially this year! I can not believe that 2008 is a bit over 3 weeks away! CRAZY!!

Well, tah tah for now. I promise as I start feeling better I will be more faithful and dilligent in letting you peek into our lives!

Thanksgiving Day!

Turkey drumsticks! YUMMY :o)

This cute picture is courtesy of Lloyd's daughter Amber! Thanx!

More to come!

Santa's little helpers!!

Jason found this website last night, we love it!

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=9579101800

Enjoy!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Our little Star!!

I just wanted to post pictures from Lorenzo's debut performance at his kindergarten Thanksgiving Program! He did so well and was just a cute little pilgrim! (check back later when Jason puts up some video of the program!)

Lorenzo nailed his poem that he had rehearsed time and again! Happy Thanksgiving, hooray hooray hooray! Aren't you glad that you're not a turkey on Thanksgiving Day! He practiced it with some actions and did most of them, but I think he was focusing a bit much on the microphone!

We are heading up to Evanston this afternoon to have Thanksgiving with Grandma Dorene and Grandpa Lloyd. We will post pictures of the yummy feast and good times when we get back!

Happy Birthday Grandma Dorene!!

Today is Grandma Dorene's birthday!!! We love you, have a great day!!

Oh what clever kids!

You can teach an old Tooth Fairy new tricks!

So Lorenzo comes in the family room Wednesday evening smiling. He told us that he was going to play a trick on the Tooth Fairy. He said that he put a penny under his pillow to see what the Tooth Fairy would do. "Lightbulb moment!" When I was sixteen I had some teeth pulled and for some morbid reason I have held on to these teeth. When Lorenzo was asleep I took the penny and put the tooth in it's place! He was so shocked the next morning and begged me to let him take it to school. Claire thought his "bone" was so "cool" too.

When Lorenzo came home from school he put the tooth under his pillow to return it to the Tooth Fairy. I asked him if he thought she would give him his penny back. He said he hoped she gave him a toy like she gave this kid at school. I told him she was too tiny to carry toys, but he insisted she had a wand and could zap a toy. "Lightbulb moment!" Jason had requested a free lego helicopter toy from some free website and we hadn't given it to Lorenzo yet and I could give him that. Seeing that Lorenzo would see this experience very profitable and would likely repeat it, I typed up a note letting him know the Tooth Fairy was too busy to come to his home again unless he lost a real tooth and put it under his pillow along with the helicopter. I put some stickers under Claire's pillow so she wasn't left out. They thought the whole thing was awesome!!

Way to go Tooth Fairy!!

Lorenzo never ceases to bring a smile to my face...most of the time!

Wednesday night we went to our very first parent/teacher conference! Lorenzo is doing really well in all his subjects, but is having a tinsy bit of touble listening to the teacher...I feel her pain! :o) She said he is a joy to have in class, he cracks her up...big surprise, and adds a lot to the class. She then told me that when Lorenzo is waiting after school for me to pick him up, he always tells her that he is waiting for his "taxi" to pick him up. She said she asked him if it was that big blue taxi and he said it was. I guess I need one of those "Mom's taxi service" bumper stickers!

We got Lorenzo's school pictures back, his teacher said she had to peek at them and they made her smile because they were "Sooo Lorenzo" ultra cheesy!! Unfortunately they sent us the wrong package and we have to request the missing photos, bug!!

Roadtrippen to Draper and the IKEA adventures:

I have been on the hunt for a cute little table and chair set for Claire to go with her kitchen she is getting for Christmas. I found a cute little pink table on IKEA.com but would still need chairs. After talking with my dad about making some chairs to match I decided it wouldn't be any cheaper than buying a set. So I took the to KSL.com and seriously found the perfect Disney Princess table w/2 chairs for $20.00 out in Draper. I called the lady and made arrangements to pick them up Tuesday afternoon. We got out to her place and the table and chairs were in awesome condition and she had a perfect condition Disney Princess sleeping bag that I got for $7.00! As we left her place I realized that I had to go to the bathroom PRONTO and decided to make a pitstop at IKEA. I swear that IKEA needs a sign on the door warning not to enter if you do not have atleast 1 1/2 hour to spend, that is how long it took us to roam the store, it is so big that it actually has arrows on the floor to help you find the EXIT.

We had dinner at my mom's and dad's, yummy hamburgers with ALL the fixins. Mom and Dad let us take a huge portion of their butternut squash about 15 or so! I LOVE squash. When it was time to go, Claire threw herself on the ground and played dead, complete with eyes closed and tongue haning out, we all busted up laughing, what a character! When we left Lorenzo said that he wanted to drive home with Dad, Jason met us at Mom's and Dad's after work. Claire then decided that she wanted to go with Dad too, I was totally okay with the prospect of a quiet drive home, but then sweet little Lorenzo decided that he did not want me to drive home alone and insisted to come with me. My little tender heart! :o)

Where to start??

Sorry it has been a month since I posted. For awhile there in October Jason and I were over at my sister's a lot helping to get her house in moving condition. With almost 10 kids, they are in need of more space!


Soon we'll be FIVE!!

Well, first things first, we found on Saturday, Oct 27th that we are finally having baby #3!!! We are soooo excited. Lorenzo is convinced that it will be a boy baby, Claire is just so excited that she doesn't care if it a boy baby or girl baby. Both Jason and I feel that it is probably a boy, but a girl would be equally as exciting! This baby is due early July just like Claire. We'll see if it comes early giving us yet another June baby!

SPOOKY and Fun filled October!

Our Den: Cooper Wolfley, Xander Kinsey, Martha Johansen

Brennan Wozab, Noah Brite, Ian Vokt, Nate Johansen, Renzo

Riley Jensen and Claire

Boy was our October packed full of F-U-N!! I'm one of the Bear den leaders in our ward so of course we have many adventures with 9 9year boys! On Oct 11th we had scheduled to go to a JV football game at Tooele High to pass off the Sports achievement, but when we got there we found out that they had changed the schedule and the game and been played the day before. Lucky for us on our way home, we found a swim meet in progress that we were able to watch. It was quite a coincidence to see that it was between Tooele High and Copper Hills, my alma mater!! I had a hard time deciding who to cheer for, so I just decided to cheer for whom ever won!

Carnival O' Fun!

On October 12th we went to Lorenzo's school Halloween Carnival. The kids were so excited to sport their costumes and start Halloween 2 weeks early. Claire was a beautiful...can you guess...PRINCESS and Lorenzo was a karate ninja. The kids had fun playing on the blow-up bouncy toys outside and playing the little games inside. And of course what is a carnival without cotton candy? I believe I once saw on a package of cotton candy that a serving size is "bigger than your head." Looks like Claire and Lorenzo got their recommended serving for the day! :o)


Pumpkin walk or was it Pumpkin FLOP!!

All my hard work, many hours and multiple paper cuts all lead up to this day, Oct. 19th, the Pumpkin Walk. I wish I could say it was a HUGH success and that Jason is now retired, but not so much. I sold a total of, are you ready for this?, 3 cards. No, I did not forget any zeros, and no I did not even use one complete set of fingers. Needless to say, I was bummed! You no it isn't a good sign when you come home with more cards than you went with. To help pass the time I made a few cards, four to be exact, and seeing that I only sold 3, you do the math! The kids however had a blast, they played in the maze with their friend Preston Johnson, and even took a hayride, and Claire played in the little tee pee on display. I ended up packing up a bit before 7:00pm to head home, it officially ended at 9:00, but stick a fork in me, I was DONE. The weather on the 20th was bad, and I did not go back the second day, but it wasn't the crummy weather that kept me away.

Anyone in need of some cute Christmas and other occasional cards? I'm pretty sure I know where you can get some! :o)

Ward Trunk or Treat:



Sheri, Kayson, Shaylee, Marick and Makinzy came for the weekend of the 27th. Sheri and I had to run to Les Schwab to get a new tire, since unfortunately she got a flat on the way down. Bummer! They were able to come with us to our ward Trunk or Treat activity. We all had so much fun, and the kids got way too much candy! We had dinner there, it was a chili cook off! Yummy!! The kids all slept down in the basement, Lorenzo and Claire were up until 11:00 pm with the others already asleep. Claire ended up getting tucked into bed in her room for the night and Lorenzo finally fell asleep too. We had a nice Sunday, Lorenzo's teacher sure had her hands full with 3 visitors! Sorry!! We had delicious lasagna that Sheri made for us and then celebrated Jason's 29th birthday. We had strawberry shortcake, his favorite! Sheri was so kind and bought some of my card supply! Thank you, thank you!!

Creepy food for Halloween!

In the second picture, Claire is saying "goblin guts" in her spookiest of voices!

Lorenzo is saying "Monster fangs!"

For Halloween I made our traditional breakfast of gooey Goblin guts with blood, ghost toast, boo juice & monster fangs. For lunch we had slimy pumpkin sandwhiches, blood soup and eyeballs! Doesn't that just make you hungry thinking about it?!?

Echo location:

In kindergarten, leading up to Halloween, Lorenzo learned about bats. They made this adorable bat out of an old black sock. The following is what Lorenzo told us about bats.

"Bats use echo location because they don’t have big eyes, they have littler eyes than most animals even they can hear better than us because they have bigger ears even that they hang upside down. Echo location tells them that if they go boink to the wall then they have to go someplace else. Vampire bats drink blood and stay up in the night and sleep during the day they kill animals that kill our plants and that they eat insects that eat our plants and that bite you."

There you have it. Hopefully it doesn't take you a month to read down this far, but if it does, maybe you'll be finished in time for my next post!! Ha Ha! I'll try to be more consistent in the future!

Here I am!

After much anticipation, I'm back. I have great news; tonight I finished my last Christmas card of 250 that I have made in the last 3 weeks for the Pumpkin Walk. I still have some misc. cards that I will be making and selling individually, but my necessary cards are complete! (doing the happy dance!!) And more great news, I beat my sinus infection with only doing my nasal rinses, yeah no antibiotics needed!! Bear with me here, you are about to enter my week in review. If you don't have 10 minutes on your hands to catch up with me, you may want to check back later! :o)

CONFERENCE WEEKEND:

Boy what a cold, dreary day it was on Saturday. It was 61 in the house that morning. He set up the space heater to warm up the family room and it sure did work!

Jason and Lorenzo started off conference weekend by taking our ward's turn to clean our church. They were in a class room cleaning when Renzo saw pictures of the First Presidency on the wall and point and said "That is President Hinckley." Then a little while later they were down the hall of the other ward's bishopric. My brother David and brother-in-law Greg are in the bishopric in that ward. Renzo was looking at pictures on their bulletin board pointed to a picture of David and said, "Hey, he is not a president; he is just a silly guy that can take his thumb off!" So now we know that having the ability to take your thumb off is not as important as being president of the church!

It was so nice having a stay at home day; the kids really enjoyed it too. Jason and Lorenzo played The Game of Life, and Lorenzo stomped Jason. Lorenzo ended up with $1.165 million dollars, twin boy & girl and then another boy, Jason had $620,000 and had boy, girl, boy, boy. Lorenzo, a millionaire at age 5, top that one Bill Gates!! :o)

I spent the day...can you guess??...making cards!! I always am able to pay attention better when I have something hands on to do while listening to conference. I was touch most by the talks from the Elder that spoke before Elder Holland, Sister Beck and Elder Eyring.

It was really cute. Claire would lead the music during conference. I got a few pictures of it; I just wished our camera wasn't on the fritz. It seems like whenever I get a cute shot ready to go, it loses focus and then I have to wait for it to refocus and then the shot is gone! Phooey on it!

RED RIBBON WEEK/COLUMBUS DAY:

Monday was to start of red ribbon week. Lorenzo got a cool drug free red and purple bracelet to remind him to be drug free. He was a bit confused and thought anything that was "unhealthy" was a drug. He told me that his teacher said he couldn't have any of our candy corns because he was drug free. I had to explain a little more what drugs were, I think he gets it a little better now. He and Claire decorated the pine tree outside with berries for the Red Ribbon Festival they were planning.

Renzo also learned about Christopher Columbus on Monday. He told me he was a discoverer and had 3 boats. He remembered the Santa Maria and with a bit of coaxing he recalled the Nina and Pinta too. He is such a smarty pants.

I do kid swapping with my sister-in-law Stacey. I watch Timmy and Sabrina on Monday mornings while she volunteers at school. She in turn watches Claire on Tuesdays while I either clean Pat Treadway's house or volunteer in Renzo's class.

TODAY IS TUESDAY:

Here we are back to TODAY! Claire played at Timmy's while I helped in the Math center in Renzo's class. Wow, kindergarten teachers have so much PATIENCE! I do really great with other peoples little kids, but I couldn't do it all day everyday. I loved being in the Primary, but that was only for a couple hours once a week. Hats off the teachers!

Well there you have it. You are now updated! I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but I can always blog that another day.

whoopsy Wednesday

So I feel bad. I found out this afternoon that TODAY was the schoolwide walk to school day with a "lite breakfast" at Parker's Park. I totally thought it was next week and Lorenzo was so disappointed that we missed it. My brain has been in card making mode and I have become quite spacey lately.

The kids and I went to Cub Scouts today. We had Bro. Reid come and talk about scouts back in his day, we then scrapbooked pictures from their day camp this past summer. Boy those boys are EXHAUSTING!! Lorenzo sure loves being around all the boys.

Sorry nothing more exciting happened, but as they say- no news is good news.

Typical Tuesday!

Today I surprised Lorenzo by picking up his friend Preston from the old neighborhood after cleaning Pat Treadways house. I didn't tell Lorenzo he was coming over, so Preston hid in the backseat of the van when we picked Lorenzo up from school. It was really cute, when Lorenzo opened the van door Preston popped up and said, "Surprise!" Lorenzo said "Oh, Preston what are you doing here?" What a funny little boy he is.

Lorenzo, Preston Johnson and Claire having lunch.

Claire loves her babies. She often suggests that we go to the store and buy a real baby.

If it was only that easy! :o)

What a scary velosorapter !

Lorenzo got to check out a book from the school library and was so proud of himself. It was a book about dinosaurs, and he was so willing to demonstrate them for the camera. He actually wanted me to take of one of him eating Claire, but I talked him out of it.

Lorenzo handed me a piece of paper from school this evening. He explained, "On Wednesday, (next Wednesday) we all need to go to Parker's Park and walk to school together, and there will be a lite breakfast served." I couldn't help but laugh when he told be about the "lite breakfast" at least you can see that he was listening to the teacher as she read the note. He cracks me up!

My little porcupine!

Tonight Lorenzo was sitting on the couch looking at his dinosaur book. Jason was being silly asked Lorenzo, "Why do you smell like a porcupine?" Lorenzo responded, "Because I'm a porcupine boy." He then paused and said, "You're right, I do smell like a porcupine!"

Jason has been a very hard worker both at home and at work. Today he got an amazing compliment from his boss. Faye told Jason that when she was doing the interviews back in June for his now position she was hoping to get someone good, and that he has far exceeding her expectations and would love to start giving him more responsibilities and opportunities. Yeah Jason!!

Random thoughts from a Monday

Lorenzo thought the message from Santa was great. He got so excited that Santa saw his pictures that he started to draw him some more. I'll post them when I have a minute to scan them in.

So today was just your typical Monday. Claire and I went grocery shopping while Lorenzo was at school. Lorenzo went over to Garion's house to play for a few hours which was nice for me, I was able to continue the work on my Chirstimas cards while Claire napped.

Speaking of Christmas cards how ambitious am I? I have set a goal for myself to sell 50 sets of 5 Christmas Cards and 75 occasional cards at the Pumpkin Walk. HOLY COW, what am I thinking? That is a total of 325 cards I need to make by Oct. 19th. I have all my paper and supplies all over the kitchen table, today Lorenzo asked me. "When are you going to be done with your crafts so you can clean up your messy table?" So Lorenzo, it won't be for a couple more weeks. From all the cutting I have gotten scissor hand, I have permanent markings/dent on my thumb now. It will all be worth it right?? Power of positive thinking- if I make them they will sell! :o)

I'm a bit bummed. I have that little scratchy stinging thing going on in my throat. Ahhh!! I hate this "sick" time of the year. Every year I get colds that keep turning into sinus infections. They seem to be never ending. Last spring I was on antibiotics 3 or 4 times in 3 months. I learned about nasal cleansing and that is how I finally healed, lets see if I can be antibiotic free this year!