Over the River and Through the Woods.....

To Grandmother's house we go....... Tomorrow we'll be driving to Kentucky for Thanksgiving. It is about 700 miles away (our closest relative by the way) but we'll get there. Today has been a hectic day for me with trying to pack for 5 people, care for kids, pick up Ethan at school etc.... Well, during all the chaos I lost the keys to the van. So for the last 3 hours we've tore up our house inside and out trying to find the darn keys. (I even stooped so low as to dig through our trash! eeewwww!) We looked in the van through the windows with a flashlight, they weren't there. Finally after trying hard to go over in my mind what I did with them after getting Ethan from school, I remembered trying to get Lily out of her car seat (she always stalls) and I must have thrown them on Ashton's booster seat and not realized it, and then shut the door, thus locking them in the car. So, even though we couldn't see the keys through the window I called our insurance and luckily we have roadside assistance (which I guess your driveway also qualifies) and we got the locksmith out here tonight to open it up (with the tab on our insurance), thank goodness for insurance, and the keys had slid behind Ashton's seat. Any way. Any one who knows me knows that when I first got married I literally locked my keys in my car 10 times in a year. I have been so anal about not doing that any more and haven't since today. It's amazing how you'll do dumb things when you're tired and have a fried brain! Any who..... I wish you all a happy Thanksgiving! I'll be excited to come back and see all your posts from your Turkey Day. I had to put up my Christmas "blog decor" now, cause when I come back Thanksgiving will be over and I wanted to have it done now. Hopefully Darren's dad (an amazing photographer) will be able to get some good family shots of us so I can change the header picture. The one now is good, I just wanted a family pic there). Ciao Everyone! I'll be away from the precious internet till Saturday!

Movie

So we went to the movie last night. We didn't take as many pictures as we wanted. I guess we were too excited. I stole the last pic from Debi's blog. There were more of us there, but we forgot to take pictures.
Overall it was fun. The movie wasn't as good as my imagination made the book and characters out to be in my mind, but it was okay. I'll probably watch it again when it comes out and then maybe I'll like it better. I think if they do the 2nd and 3rd they will be better because a higher end budget film company will probably take them on seeing how much money they lost by not doing it in the first place. But the film company who did #1 did a good job considering they don't have as much money as other film companies. Any who, over all pretty good.

Walk Like An Egyptian!

Ethan had his 2nd grade "performance" the other night. He had to go wearing a big white t-shirt with shorts underneath. It is not warm here! He was FREEZING!!! I felt bad for him, but we bundled him up after. They came in doing the egyptian dance to the song walk like an egyptian, it was funny, then they did a series of songs and such. We didn't get really good pics cause we were far back and tried to zoom in. Any way, it was cute. Thought I'd share! Everyone have a good weekend! ;)

Twilight!!!!!

This time is FINALLY here!!!! It feels like we all waited forever for the movie to finally come out. I'm so excited to go see this movie tomorrow night! We're all going to Kate's tonight to make matching t-shirts to go! I have to say, I've never made a t-shirt to go anywhere, so this is definitely a first, but a fun first! If we all weren't tired pregnant mom's, I'm sure we'd be there tonight at the midnight showing! So excited!!!!!!

Recent Pictures

Posts like this are mainly for family/grandparents, but you can endure all these pics too if you want. I had to first include this one of Ashton. He loves to play his dad's computer, you can see he's wearing the humongous headphones, and holding the joystick preparing for his "flight".


The rest of these were taken yesterday before church. We don't go till 1pm, so we have all kinds of time to waste and they were playing outside, so we grabbed the camera and took some shots before church. Here is handsome Ashton


Cute Lily


Mom and Lily


My favorite picture


Dad and Lily


Oh so cute


3 munchkins


Kiddos


Dad and Ashton


Dad and Ethan


My 3 Handsomes. (if that's a word) ha ha.


Goofy Ethan


Ashton and mom laughing. Not very flattering of mom, but owell! :)

Boo!

Any one who knows Darren knows he LOVES to scare people, this includes our children. Every time Ethan comes out of the bathroom, Darren is there to scare him. He gets so sick of his dad doing that, but it's still really funny! I told Darren he needed to get it on video. So enjoy this quick scare! :) I really should find a way to scare Darren and get him back for all the many times! The first few seconds of the clip are dark, just keep watching. Oh, and enjoy our blue toilet! ;)

4th Folder 4th Picture

Tagged by Cara!

Here are the rules...Go to all your pictures (stored on your computer) and in the 4th folder, post your 4th picture and tag 4 friends.

I tag Briana, Jen, Ramanda, & Aubrey! (and whoever else would like to play!)

This is a picture taken a few months ago at a place here called Mount Trashmore. Funny name huh? It's actually this humongous old trash pile now covered in dirt and grass. Weird huh? I thought so too when we first moved here, but it's a really cool place to go, they have walking trails, playgrounds, it's really pretty and the kids enjoy going there! And no it doesn't stink! :)

So there you have it, my 4th picture from my 4th file! :)

Deep breath, release.....

Where to start.... Life has been stressful lately. Only those really close to me know of the extent. I guess I'm ready to share some of it. Basically in a nut shell I was tested this pregnancy for being a cystic fibrosis gene carrier (it's a new test, thus being the reason I haven't been tested before). I was a positive carrier. So, next they wanted to test my hubby. And guess what??? He's a positive carrier too! yippee! So we find out that we've basically been lucky or blessed or whatever you want to call it that our already 3 kids haven't gotten the disease. With each pregnancy there is a 25% chance the baby will get it. Long story short, and after many dr. apts and tests, I'm just ready to be done worrying about it all. The only way to find out "for sure" right now would be to do an amniocentesis. It was scheduled for Wednesday, but after much thought, prayer and advise from my brother Jerry the doc, I've chosen to wait till birth to find out. Knowing now will not change anything, they can't fix it if it does have it. It's not a curable disease any way.
Enough about that. Also, in my mind this baby was a girl. No ifs, ands, or buts about it. I have enough boys, I only have one daughter. I've given away all my baby boy stuff, and I have tons of cute baby girl stuff that Lily barely touched. I've loved having a daughter and doing hair (now that she finally grew some), I've enjoyed pink after seeing blue for oh so long, well guess what we see between baby 4's legs? Yup "boy parts". To be honest, I was really sad. It makes me feel bad for the baby that I'm sad it's not a girl. I will love the baby and I will get over it and I'll know in the end that I couldn't of had any other baby, blah blah blah, but for right now, I want to morn. Lily and I are it as far as females go, I know what it's like growing up with all brothers, yes it's fun, but it also isn't at times. All you have is your mom to play with. and the poor baby will be really far about from his brothers, thus being played with and dressed up by his sister. Ahhh, I'll get over the disappointment, I'm just bummed for the moment.
Here are some pics from the ultrasound. The classic bottom looking up shot of the "boy parts" and then the face, which by the way looks ticked off. He's probably mad at his mother for not wanting a boy. I promise I'll learn to love you boy! I promise, just not for another few hours! :) And here's Ethan's 2nd grade pics. He's such a handsome little devil. I love him so much, love them all so much, and I'm eternally grateful they have been healthy despite the recent "findings" of their retarded mutant gene holding parents!


I don't know what else that could be between the baby's legs, it certainly doesn't give room for guessing. I guess I could hope that the baby GIRL is holding her hand down there, but I'm thinking not so.


Here's the hilarious face shot, doesn't the baby look ticked off? The dr. laughed and said, it was just the position and time the shot was taken.

Here's my oldest son Ethan. Cutie pie!

HELP!!!!!

Darren and I were asked to give a fireside to the youth on Wednesday the 19th. Have any of you ever given a fireside as a couple? I'm freaking out nervous! This to me is way more nerve racking than giving a talk in church or anything. It's on Gratitude and Family. Please Please Please, any tips pointers or ideas would help soooooo much! Please help if you have any suggestions or ideas! Thanks so much!

Halloween is Over!!!!

I am excited for the holiday to come, and I'm even more excited for it to go. We're home now, I've loaded the pics and I'll share our evening with ya'll. Our kids are lying on the couches about passed out from sugar. We first did the "trunk or treat" thing at the church, then we hit up a few houses around where we live. The kids had fun, they were ready to be done. They scored a pretty big stash. Darren said that one of his top 10 highlights of having a lot of kids is the "loot" they score on Halloween. I think out of all of us, he eats the most candy, funny.


"Indiana Jones"


"Mr. Incredible"


"Little Red Riding Hood"


The Gang Ready To Go


Let's go!


Check out our Stash!


I don't know what she was pointing at, it was just a cute picture


"Hmmm, let's see, which one?"


"Am I sick yet?"


"Wow, look at all this Sugar!"



I had to add these. Lily is my little mother. As you can see she is
helping Ashton clean off his "mask". She would say, "Hold still
Ashton, I'm cleaning you!"


Washing his hands. He's a good sport, either that or he's too
tired to care! :)

I hope you all had a fun and safe Halloween! I'll be excited to see
all your posts! I just wanted to get mine out of the way, tomorrow
I have a ton of cleaning to do and probably won't get on the
computer! Night all!

Ummmm?

Well I really have nothing to post about. We did finally get a camera the other day and I'm thankful. It will just be Darren and my early Christmas present I guess. I'll be glad to be able to take some pics of the kids in their costumes on Friday. Here are some pumpkins the kids helped us carve. The pics we took of them carving were on a disposable camera, so who knows if and when those will get developed. Oh, and has any one ever tried to carve a small pumpkin? It's like carving a cement block. Hence, the square eyes, nose and simple mouth. That thing took me forever, I was literally using a hammer to hammer in the knife each time. It was like carving a bowling ball! Seriously, Lily will have to pick a bigger pumpkin next year, cause I'm never carving a mini ball of steel again! :)



Lily was my target practice using the new camera. She's into pulling odd-ball faces now. I wonder where she learned that from..... wouldn't be her 2 older brothers now would it?



"Look! I'm a fish!"

I think that's hard enough Lily. "I can't breath!" says the dog!

Tag 5 Questions

Okay Jen, you got me! :)

5 most important qualities in a person:
* Honest
* Loving
* Unselfish
* Thoughtful
* Humorous

5 things I cannot live without
* My family
* Electricity ( I hate it when the power goes out)
* Internet
* Toothbrush
* Family Memories

5 foods I love
* Shrimp, Seafood of almost all kinds
* Chinese Food
* Homemade Bread
* Chocolate
* Pizza, Italian, oh, I love Mexican too!

5 places I want to go:
* Home to Vernal to visit (haven't been there in 3 years!)
* On a Cruise
* Prince Edward Island (Anne of Green Gables Buff!)
* Tour Europe
* North Pole to Santa's workshop!

5 random things
* I hate having a stuffy nose. I refuse to sleep with my mouth open!
* I have been sewing on a Christmas tree skirt for 5 years now, and I'm dedicated to finally finishing it this year!
* Like Jen, I love listening in on my kids conversations, they are hilarious! And you can hear your "parent sayings" come out in their conversations, if that makes sense.
* I still love to color in coloring books, I think I buy them for my kids, with an alterior motive of being able to color in them too! :)
* I can't think of a fifth! My brain is fried!

5 people to do the same...
Kate
Debi
Briana
Heather
Ramanda

Stuff

Since our camera is busted I can't post what would have been some priceless pics. This morning Lily decided to sneak and get into the Desitin. She also decided it would be great for her hair. Have you ever tried to wash Desitin out of a girls hair? It's very difficult and took like 5 times of washing it, and it still looks gross. Any way, that was not the worst of it. She decided to take the tube and get on the top bunk bed which is Ethan's. Needless to say, his sheets, blanket, pillow and stuffed animals are all getting a big bath in the washer today, hopefully they'll be done before he gets home from school. He would not be pleased to know his gorilla had diaper rash cream all over his head.
I also wanted to share the lesson from our family home evening last night. It was a huge success with our boys, and if anyone has boys who like super heros, they'll like this one! It was fun and the boys actually listened and sat still. here's the link Click Here. (sorry for any non-mormon bloggers, just ignore that, or try it too. ) :)
A couple other silly odds and ends I wanted to add:
About a month ago, my brother Stewart called me at about 8:30p.m. I had gone to bed, (any one who has been pregnant knows how freaking tired you always are!!!) Ethan answered the phone and said that I had gone to bed. Stewart said: "Is she okay?" Ethan said: "No, she's pregnant".
I laughed so hard when I heard that. Kids are so honest and he was so matter of fact that I was not okay and he still is convinced that I will not be okay until this baby is born.
And a funny Ashton-ism. Any time you do anything that he does not approve of he will state:
"you're not my best friend any more". He thinks that is just the most devastating thing he can say to us that will just crush us to the core. So one day after he said it, I started to pretend to cry, he was so perplexed that he had made me cry and he came rushing over and said, "it's okay mommy, i was just kidding, you are my best friend." To which I started laughing and said "oh thank you!"
Any way, those are some silly odds and ends.
I'm already soooooo sick of my Halloween background. I don't know if I can make it last till Halloween! I want to change it so badly! :) have a good week all!

Pumpkin Patch

First Off, I appologize for the poor picture quality. There is something wrong with our camera and it just started. Of course this is so convenient so close to the holidays. Any way, here are some shots of the kids at this farm here in Virginia Beach.
If you want to see any of them bigger, just click on them.











I had to include this one of Lily's toes. Can you tell who painted them? :) Again, sorry the pic quality is so poor on these. Bummer.