Friends, Friends, and More Friends

During the past two weeks we have been blessed to have visits from some of our favorite AZ friends. What fun we had and how much we realized we missed them all. It all started with the Blomquists showing up a couple Sundays ago. The oldest two daughters were my Young Women during the two years we were in AZ and had been up for EFY. We were able to get a hold of eachother and had a wonderful BBQ Rib dinner night...thanks Jare for the yummy ribs!! We had a lot of fun chatting and catching up on what has gone on during the year we've been away. What fun it was to have my girls around. I miss them dearly and had so much fun seeing how much they had changed within the year.

Me with all the Blomquist girls and all my kids:)
Here we are again hamming it up for the camera!!
Our next visit came when my friend of many years (since good old BYU days to be exact)stopped by the next day. Unfortunately my camera was out of commission so no pics from that visit, but it was our good friends the Zincke's!! Charity and Elizabeth came early in the morning and stayed all day so we could spend as much time together as possible. It was so great to see her and catch up. Charity and I were eachother's backbones while our boys slaved away in MBA school. I can't remember a week that went by that we weren't either eating dinner together with our kids while our honeys were on campus or just spending countless hours talking about what life would be like when we had our husband's back. We had such a great time and for old time's sake we ordered Papa Johns Pizza for dinner!! The kids had a blast playing with Ellie who has grown so much this past year. Sorry Jacks, even though she's younger no prospects of marriage there seeing as that she's not even four yet and she's as tall as you!! They left come nightfall and my kids and I were sad to see them go. 'Till next time:)

Then our last visit just came and went this week. Lanae and her three beautiful red-headed boys showed up and spent a couple of days with us on their way down from Canada. What fun was had when my kids were re-united with hers. Jacks and Ben were inseperable in AZ and it took no time at all to re-establish their friendship within the first five seconds. The boys and Mickey played and laughed and pretty much had a blast the entire time. All boys slept in one room, which led to numerous times of us going down and telling them to fall asleep (well actually just telling Jeff and Jacks to fall asleep, those boys were quite the talkers!!) Mickey was sad no one bunked with her but she pulled her own weight amongst all of them. On the second day they were here Jared was kind enough to take the four older kids for the night and Lanae and I got to go out and have a quick girls night with the babies. Baby Lukey and Alexis were quite the troopers as we spent time at Down East and then ate a yummy greasy dinner at Burger Bar!! For all of those who don't know Burger Bar was featured on the Food Network on Guy Fieri's show "Diners, Dives, and Drive-In's" and it is the yummiest place on earth! We split everything since we wanted to try so many of the things on the menu. Then later we spent countless hours on Photoshop, talking, and simply catching up. They left us on Wednesday and once again we were sad to see friends leave us. Jacks asked me why his best friend had to go away again and insisted we get on a plane to go and visit them next week!! Easier said than done buddy boy:)

Here's a pic Jare took of the kids on his babysitting night. He did make your own pizza night with a movie...classic for winning over children:)

All of them hamming it up with Oreos for dessert!!

The morning they left I just couldn't resist and had to take a pic of all of them together. Lanae and I met with our older two barely as toddlers and our seconds as newborns!! My how the brood has changed:) We love you guys and miss you tons already!

So all in all quite an eventful couple of weeks. Even though we have not gone anywhere we have been fortunate enough to have people come and visit us. All these visits made me realize just how fortunate we are to have such great friends in so many different places. Even though it has been sad to say good-bye to a lot of them as we have continued to move on our way, it is never for very long. And our reunions are always timeless and full of laughter. We love you all.

I did it!

After much hair pulling, forehead rubbing, and just plain ughghg, I finally got one of my very own blog backgrounds to work!! That's right, I designed the background that is currently on here. It is so fun to see the final result but believe me it sure took me a while since I'm just learning!! Thanks Ellie for teaching me some fundamentals of Photoshop, if not for you it would have taken me twice as long to get this background finished:)

More Video Clips

So I'm a little obsessed lately with video clips just because Alexis is at that stage where everything she does I think is super cute. So today Jared was playing with her on the bed and I had to try and capture her laugh. It's not as intense as it normally is, but it's good enough for the camera:) Sorry for the blurry clip at times, I was on the bed too and everytime Jared and Alexis would move I would too. Next time I won't do that!! And since my kids can't be left behind with video clips I had to record them doing their impressions of "Kung Fu Panda" kicks. They loved loved loved this movie and any chance they get they reinact different parts of the movie. So here you get a clip of them doing their kicks and punches! They are too funy:) Enjoy!

Alexis Highlights

Well our little Miss has been quite busy this past month and has accomplished quite a few firsts. The first one is that she's rolling over!! This feat she actually accomplished well over three weeks ago!! Can you believe it!?!? At first she wasn't too fond of the milestone (case in point in the pictures below) but now loves to roll onto her tummy and actually sleeps like that most nights! I always go and put her back on her back but within minutes she's on her stomach again!!

This is one of the first time she rolled over and can you tell she didn't enjoy it!!:) But since she's such the camera child she quickly stopped crying and I luckily got one picture without any tears;)
Second, she is loving to sit up! I debated back and forth whether or not to buy this seat called the "Bumbo" because I didn't know if she'd actually like it, but man am I ever glad I did. She loves the chair so much since she can be a part of everything all the time. On Saturday morning she watched Jared cook breakfast from the comforts of her chair on the countertop, and then yesterday she watched Jacks and Mickey get a bath downstairs. Ain't she cute in it:)

And third, she has definitely found her voice. She is so loud!! At church on Sunday I thought I would have to get up and leave Sacrament she was talking so much! Here's a clip below of her voicing her opinions to us this morning:) Enjoy.

Checks and Balances

Not much has gone on this week because low and behold we have had absolutely nothing to do!! Wahoo!! I know that sounds silly but after almost 4 weeks of either vacationing or getting ready for parties or different celebrations, this week was finally empty. Much to my children's dismay they had no more family around to keep them occupied 24/7, which only led to one thing...fighting. Which leads me to the title of my post..."Checks and Balances"...or should I say as we've titled it in our house "Checks and Stars." After two days of doing nothing but tattling on eachother and/or yelling and screaming I had had enough. With no place to run and escape to I came up with this reward system in hopes of keeping Jacks and Mickey from tearing down the house (and my sanity). We started on Tuesday afternoon and I sat them down and said that for every good deed they did for the day, or every time they listened, or did a chore without me asking, they would get a star by their name in my book. However, for every not so good thing they did (i.e. not listening, fighting, yelling) they would get a check mark. At the end of the week we would tally up everything and if the Stars outweighed the Checks then I would reward them on Saturday with mini-cones from McDonalds. Jacks caught on right away and would repeatedly tell me what he had done to get a star. Mikaela on the other hand...well, let's just say that by Tuesday night (remember we started Tuesday afternoon) she had 14 checks and 8 stars!! But by Wednesday she got better and I must admit this system has somewhat worked. Instead of getting frustrated I just tell them "Check" or "Star" and it makes them thin a bit about what they're doing. Of course it's not perfect, yesterday Mikaela adamantly said she wanted the "Check" as she continued to pull poor Loki's tail until I hauled her away, but it is bringing some peace and sanity to me and my home. So for the time being it is working, who knows if it will continue to influence them for good but keep your fingers crossed for me. One thing is for sure, this week they both have made complete 360's and have been playing wonderfully together for more than a couple minutes;)

Happy 3rd Birthday Mickey!!

Happy 3rd Birthday Mickey!! We love you and love all the enthusiasm you bring to our house. Here are some of our favorite things about you:
*That sneaky smile you give when you know you've done something wrong.
*How willing you are to help me with Alexis.
*How much you love to play dress-up!!
*The little sayings you come up with. The two at the moment that make us crack up: (1) "You can't find it now...ha ha ha" (that one is usually said when you hide one of Jackson's toys). (2) "There's a party in my tummy...oh yeah, oh yeah!" (that one is said when you eat something you really like).
*The fact that you love to try new foods. You eat pretty much anything put in front of you.
*How much you love to dance. You are my "Dancing with the Stars" watching buddy!
*The fact that you let me try new hairstyles on you all the time:)
We love you Mickey and hope you have a Happy Birthday!

Then: what a pretty princess.
Now: My how our Princess has grown!

Birthday Party

Here are a couple of highlights from Jacks and Mickey's Birthday Party this weekend. We all had a ton of fun!