Picnic

Today was such a beautiful day (I bet it hit at least 60) we decided to take advantage of it and went on a picnic.

The kidos loaded up in the mule ready to go!

Tylinn enjoying lunch.

Dustin, cute as ever!

Our view from our picnic spot. We are SO thankful this is 2 minutes from our house. We live in PARADISE! We came home and clean up the yard, burned weeds, boxes and finally burned all the scrap wood from building our house. It was a great day!

Coupon Shopping!!!

(This is a picture of TIff's van. I stole it off her blog so it's out of order)

Yesterday afternoon Me, Tiff, Nicole and Kelli piled in Tiff's 15 passenger van and headed to Fountain Hills/Scottsdale to hit a few stores for their deals. It was the best. I had to take a picture off all my purchases together. This is everything except my Mayo and some mustard must have gotten mixed up with some of Tiff's stuff. I have never seen deals like this. FREE, $.25, $.50, $1.00 it was FANTASTIC! It's a good thing Tiff has a huge van because it was piled full with all our deals. Each of us had a seat for our stuff. She took a picture of it, I'll put it on here when I get it. Besides the great shopping we had a blast. Girls I think this will have to happen again!

The Grand Total for all of this is:$133.40. That is an average of about 75% savings.

Pony Express

Today was the Hashknife Pony Express at the Post Office. It is the most exciting day of the year there. This year Bruce tried to make it a little bigger deal. Both 5th grade classes and Bridget's 4th Grade class walked down to talk to the riders and to the Post Office to learn about it. All the kids got a handkerchief from them.

It was a beautiful day for them. It seems like usually it is freezing cold with the wind blowing and even sometimes snowing.

The head guy let all the students stamp the hashknife stamp.

The Hashknife Pony Express makes its ride every January traveling 200 miles from Holbrook to Scottsdale, Arizona, and delivering 20,000 first-class letters by horseback. The ride is led by the Navajo County Hashknife Sheriff's Posse. More than two dozen riders in authentic cowboy clothing carry the mail, relaying the bags along the route. The arrival of the Hashknife Pony Express in Scottsdale kicks off the annual Parada del Sol.

Can you find your house?

We were playing on the interent last night and found a fun website to look at. It's maps.google.com - go on and see if you can find your house. Drag the camera guy on the left to what you want to see. We can't figure out how they got all the pictures or got it filmed. We looked at the back of the Post Office here and our car was parked out there. Anyway it's kind of fun to play around with. We looked at the Mesa Temple and lots of people's houses. Some of the little roads aren't on there.

Past weekend

This past LONG weekend was nice. Friday afternoon Bruce, Tylinn, Dustin and Rhett headed with the truck and trailer to Scottsdale. They went to take down a play house that one of Mark and Twila's friends was getting rid of and gave to us. They got it down and went to Twila's for the night. Here at home we played (of course, always have to do that when Dad's gone). Bridget had Torin over for a "late night" which consisted of: playing, talking, making pizza and watching a movie. They had a great time.

Saturday morning Bruce and the kids came home. That afternoon Bruce and I along with Reece and Marinda (awesome people!) took off for the temple. Our ward was cleaning that night and we decided we should do a session before cleaning. We showed up for the 5:00 session and found out it was Spanish. They asked if we wanted a head set for English but we decided we would try it with just reading the subtitles. That was interesting having to read EVERYTHING and hear nothing that we understood. I think next time I'll go for the head set!! After the session we went downstairs to get instructions about cleaning, we enjoyed helping with that. There was a big group there so we finished in about an hour. The cleaning went pretty fast so we went to Eva's to eat dinner then home. We had a great baby sitter that night that had our clean kids all in bed asleep with the house spotless.

Sunday was a typical Sunday (I love 9:00 church) except it was our Ward Conference. It was nice to hear from the Stake Presidency and Bishop. They did all 3 Heber Wards Conference then had a Fireside that evening for the adults. In that Fireside they talked about Taylor Stake's Emergency Plan. They talked quite a bit about neighbors and having a block captain and taking care of each other. This made me very thankful we live in a great neighborhood that we know anybody here would help us with anything we ever needed.

Monday was MLK Day. I am not thrilled about the reason for the holiday but always enjoy an extra day having the kids and Bruce home. Bruce spent most of the day putting the playhouse together. It needs a paint job but it's still cute. The kids love it, spoiled kids!!!

Paige, Tylinn and Kaylee

These picture obviously aren't in order but here is Dustin and Bruce trying to get it set up.

Kaylee has been telling me a lot lately that she is a Mom, she really thinks that now with having a little house to claim as her own!
The kids have been playing outside ALOT lately with the beautiful weather, we are loving it although we need snow on the ground.

This is probably really boring for others to read but it's what we have been up to.

Cutiest Cook Ever!

Finishing Santa's Job

Santa dropped off a swing set at our house but didn't have time to cement it in that night. I guess he knew it was going to be a project. He left a note for the kids and said their Dad would have to do it. A week ago Saturday we got it set up and everything cemented in. It took quite a few days to dry thanks to the cold wet weather we had. Last Saturday (Dustin's birthday) we got the swings on and slide up. The kids have loved it. Here are some pictures of the kids (big and little) playing on it. We love it, good job Santa!

Dustin's B-day Pictures

I guess I got my camera figured out and wanted to put a few pic of Dustin's birthday happenings on here.

Part of the crew to roast marshmallows

Happy Birthday to you!

Dustin and Dad with Snow Boogie Board.

Enjoying is birthday dinner!

Happy Birthday to my Dustin!

Today is our little Dustin's 9th birthday. His birthday celebration started last night when he got to go with Bruce and I on our date. He picked the Rim Ranchhouse to eat at. He was so funny, he ordered a big hamburger with french fries, hot chocolate. He just got started on his burger and was full but he was determined he was having dessert. He wanted ice cream of course but wanted cheese cake too. So that's what he got. We have some really cute pictures of him from last night but my camera isn't cooperating so we'll have to wait in the pictures. This morning we started with some work so we could play. He got a Snow Boogie, which was his favorite present, a new scripture case, toy army guys, cars, money from Gr. Flake, shirts, knife and flashlight from Gr. McLaws.

After opening presents we finished Santa's job of putting together the swing set he gave us and didn't set up (pictures will have to be later thanks to the difficult camera). In the afternoon some neighbor kids came over to roast marshmallows. He ended the celebration with pizza and a movie, Space Chimps.

Dustin is a great kid. He tries to please others, loves to make people laugh, if somebody is crying he does whatever it takes to get them stopped. He loves electronics, outdoors, cooking, and doing anything with his dad.

These are just some fun pictures I found on the computer of him. He is a very special boy!

I love you Dustin!

Funny Tylinn

For Christmas we gave Tylinn these roller skates that have elbow and knee pads with them. Today she came walking in the bedroom with everything on except an elbow pad and says "Mom, can you help me find my arm pit"!

She is a fun little girl!

Snow Day!!!

Everybody knows snow days are the best, yesterday was no exception! The kids got one more day on their Christmas Break and we were very excited about it. It was beautiful weather yesterday and we took advantage of it. When school is called for a snow day I wish Bruce was a school teacher so he could stay home and play with us.

This is a Caterpillar the kids made at the Weber's house. Several neighborhood kids got together to build a snowman but they got their snowballs too big and decided to make a Caterpillar instead.
In the morning before the snow melted too much I hooked this saucer and sled up to the Mule to pull the kids. They had a blast. They would have done it all day if I would have kept pulling them. The 2 kids who weren't riding on something would sit in the back of the Mule and try to get snow to throw snowballs at each other. Here is Dustin ready!

Bridget and Rhett on the sled

Tylinn buried in the snow in the mule

New Years Day 2009

New Years Day was not the typical New Years Day for us. It wasn't the funniest in the world but we needed to return a few Christmas things and Bruce needed to use a gift certificate he got for Sheplers. Our first stop was Cabela's. We have only been to this store one other time. I knew how this store was and that Bruce liked to look around a lot and take his time in this store. I decided before hand I was going to be very patient and keep the occupied so Bruce could do what he wanted. Holli and Katelyn met us there after us being there for about an hour.

The kids sitting very patiently while Dad was trying on shoes.

Dustin using his tokens at the shooting game, they loved that of course.

We took time to look at all the animals and walk through the rocks and look at everything. We rode the escalator up and down about 10 times. After about 2 hours I was done, and the kids were done. We stayed for another hour because Bruce was "ready to go". Finally me, Holli and the kids left and Bruce left shortly after with Holli's car.

We finished our returning things and headed to Grandma Nena's for the night.

I have many good memories of staying and spending the night at Grandma Nena's house. One thing is playing tether ball. We used to play this by the hours.

Here is Tylinn taking her shot at tether ball. Kaylee was playing with her but kept getting hit in the head with the ball as it went around.

Another is sleeping in the family room with the kitty sleeping bags. She still has these for all the great grand kids to use. The highlight was being able to watch TV at night and in the morning. We had an antenna at our house growing up but it was really fuzzy so to be able to watch Double Dare on Nick was quite a treat. We used to eat Lucky Charms while we were there too. It seems like we could have them about whenever we wanted them, this must have been where my love for Lucky Charms came from. To this day I still love those. Grandma Nena has the best oranges ever. Every winter we love to go to her house and eat oranges. She really has the best ones I have ever tasted. Good memories at Grandma Nena's house, I want my kids to make their own memories of staying there.

New Years Eve

We had a blast for New Year's Eve. We didn't have any plans so we were thankful when the Martineau's invited us to their house. We went to the 4:30 temple session I love going to the temple with my Eternal Companion. We knew quite a few people there and enjoy those sessions more than when we don't know anybody. We headed home to the kidos and off to the Martineau's we went. We played games, ate food, talked and laughed and laughed and laughed!

Bridget and Eva had fun playing together.

Tylinn was trying not to freeze outside!

Tylinn and the boys playing Uno, I think the boys were playing and nice enough to let Tylinn watch.

Some of the kids sacked out before the New Year hit!

Nicholas, Brandon and Bruce putting on a show for the rest of us. They had lots of fire crackers and I'm not sure what else. It was a good entertainment watching them play.

Jami and her hot date!

Nicholas and Carly - so cute newlyweds!

Me with my Honey!

Tiff and Brandon - You guys are great! Thanks for the fun night and for putting up with us, we had a blast!

2008 is gone. It was a great year, I am very thankful for all we have been blessed with. I'm thankful to live so close to the temple and for the time I was able to spend there this past year, although I hope it can be more next year. I am thankful for living so close to family and getting to spend more time with brothers, sisters and parents and for the kids being able to play and make memories with cousins. I am thankful for our home we have in Heber. We love our home, we love living here and we love all the great people we have gotten to know here. Thanks to all who bless our lives!

2009 here we come!