More from Heber Valley

There were some more pictures that I found from Heber Valley! Eliannah is eating a cookie smore! Delicious! I was tempted!

Tsadakah prefers not to have smore or toasted mallows, she likes them cold! Yuck!

I also really wanted to post about the awesome swing course. It was a cable swing that was attached to a pulley. Family members ran as fast as they could to pull you to the top quickly and then you had to have the courage to let go and swing back down.

When we signed up for it, because kids were allowed I figured that it was small and not for adults. So we only signed up 2. Eliannah was afraid and didn't want to do it so that left only one for Mike or I. We both wanted to go so we did rock-paper-scissors. I lost! *sigh! So here he is having the time of his life!

I think that this picture sums up the trill of it all! :) He said that it was funner than that one we did the next day. Look at him! He is so happy! I couldn't even be upset that he won. It makes me so happy to see him enjoying himself so much!

Brave lil' Tsadakah did it and she had the time of her life! I love to see her happy too!

And she makes that helmet look good!

This is what the kids did while we were occupied!

MiKaylah fell asleep on Mike's shoulder. Sweet darling! She is so CUTE!This lil girl makes me super happy too! WOW! So I think that she gets over stimulated when we are in public and that is why she sometimes acts up, because at home, most of the time she is so calm and peaceful! She loves to play in her room all by herself. When Tsadakah is at school I think that she is going to want to play with me, but no, she wants to play with all of Tsadakah's toys! She is up in her room the whole time. It is almost as if she is taking a nap! She really is a princess!

What I got out of the Relief Society meeting: "I don't need a To Do list, I need a To Charity list! Because Charity is my WHY!"

Back to School

This is Tsadakah one year ago when she came home from her first day of Pre-School. It was a fun experience for her and the first lil break I had experienced. I liked it, not because I wanted to be away from her, but because Eliannah was such a better child when she didn't have to compete for my attention! lol

And here she is one year later on her first day of KINDERGARTEN! She has been so excited about her new school, new clothes, new back pack. Counting down seasons and events to this spectacular day, her first day of school. As for me, it was not the best experience. I wanted it to be sentimental and special, but MiKaylah and Eliannah were all over the place and there was so much going on in that hallway that I was too over-stressed to feel any other emotion. I snapped these two shots on my phone, kissed her quick and I was out of there!

I felt sad that I didn't even get a chance to feel sad. lol But she was fine! She was happy to be there and I remember her searching and finding her name on a leaf on the paper tree, and wanting to know where to hang her backpack. She is such a good lil girl! She is more than ready for this!

Sisterly sweetness!

I wanted to say a little bit about fall too. I love this season so much! Not only is it when my 2 favorite holidays are (MY birthday + Halloween) but I love the smells and the feel. I love that when I walk down the street on a crisp morning I can smell pumpkins and squash growing in nearby gardens. I love that I can smell grapevines ripening to sweet savor. I also love the smells inside, like when I walk through the front doors of an elementary school and I can smell office supplies, like tape, glue, and crayons. I love the idea of a bouquet full of freshly sharpened pencils from the movie, You've Got Mail, because I too love the smell of pencils.

Welcome Fall! Welcome School! Welcome Good Times and Holidays!

My First Few days In Our Home

I kept telling myself that when we moved into the new house, the first night I was going to celebrate by going down the stairs in a sleeping bag. One of my favorite things about the new house was that it has stairs (3 sets) which I have so been missing! Of course with all that was going on it didn't happen the first night. In fact it didn't happen for many weeks. But the important thing was that eventually it did happen. :)

The girls holding hands in the car was not instructed or prompted. It was a proud mommy moment, where I felt that I had done a good job teaching my girls to be loving.

CUTEST thing! Really, I love this! MiKaylah has been doing A LOT of darling things this last 2 months. So many in fact that I am worried I will never remember them all.

-When she tries to make the pig noise she blows raspberries instead of Oinking. lol

-When she sees a mouse in any book she has to kiss it.

-She loves to buckle her car seat, high chair, and any other buckle available.

-I love her curls in back, but I also LOVE her in pig-tales!

-She squishes my nose when she wants me to say "HONK" and taps it when she wants me to say "BEEP."

-She loves to be nakey! She knows how to take off her dresses and shirts and wants to put on her own pants.

-She pushes out her lips in a perfect circle when she says, "no, no!" I can't help but laugh!

Discovery Gateway

We went to the discovery gateway, thanks Kennecott/Rio Tinto, for family home evening. It was really fun! Tsadakah was very enthusiastic about the house and loved all the little domestic things. I loved it and thought that was great, but didn't take any pictures of that. Instead I took pictures of her in the construction zone. lol I think that the fact that she has her head in the arm whole cracked me up. I just had to take a pic.

Eliannah loved the water part the most, but she also did the little house with the play food.

MiKaylah was a daddy's girl most of the evening. She was content to just be with him. She also enjoyed the water!

Heber Valley Camp Ground

For Mike's family reunion we went to the Heber Valley Camp Ground. We had a wonderful time! We did many challenges and courses that really did bring us together as family. I got rather choked up and thought, this is my eternal family and I love them all SOOOO VERY MUCH! I only wish that more of them could have been there. Especially Mike's dad, who was having medical complications at the time.

This one was a challenge where we had to get the whole family across the "raging river with crocodiles" on these "logs." We never made it in the time set, but we always succeeded just the same.

Tsadakah and Jaxton playing "Hy-Ya's" I love these lil cousins! They play so well and rarely fight. Jaxton is such a sweetheart!

WATERMELON! Its Eliannah's favorite! She can eat a whole one if we let her! lol

Eliannah, Xander, Emma. Cousins!

Oh! My! Cute Pout-pout! This little girl has it all figured out! She has the most adorable pout I have ever seen, and I have had 2 other girls.

Joys of camping: allowing your kids to be dirty with food on their face. lol

MiKaylah and Emma. Emma is also a super photogenic girlie! I loved taking her picture and took quite a few!

Tsadakah and Jaxton.

Daddy and baby! Tender. Oh ya, we also got sick! All three of my girls up chucked multiple times all night long. It was the worst night's sleep I have ever had! I can't even call it sleep. I didn't get a wink. And yet it was all still worth the trip.

Gorgeous girl!

Happy girl.

Group shot! My sister in law made these shirts that were super awesome! We all chose different colors. It was fun! She went way out of her way to do it and did a great job. Thanks Lisa!Lovely little lady!Not a big fan of family pictures while camping...can you blame me? I mean really, "Lets take a picture when we are at our dirtiest." The only thing worse than that is getting pictures right after you have a baby. Who wants their picture taken after all that!!

Settling In

August was an extremely busy month for us! I was working constantly to try to get the house in order. I was answering the door all the time for the carpet guys, the RC Willey guys, etc... and I was also on the phone a lot too! Not only that I was cleaning and trying to get renters. Not to mention we had previously commited to vacations every weekend in August so every Thursday I was packing to leave and every Monday unpacking and washing clothes. It was a bit stressful, but we found ways to find joy in the little moments.

Tsadakah and Eliannah discovered the fun of making shadows on the wall! Tsadakah has two turtles kissing.

Eliannah was making a bird, but I caught it to late and she had pulled away. But it was pretty good!

MiKaylah loves our new carpet! She rolls around on it literally laughing from sheer joy!

Tsadakah fell asleep in front of the TV like this! lol

Brought on by the idea from my dad, and the fact that we had so many perfect boxes for the enjoyment, we built a cardboard box castle. Behind Ellie you can see the chimney box! And there were also some that looked like the fortress spires. It was awesome fun, but in the heat of August, they didn't play very long in it. :(

My sister in law, Cristina, came to visit and see the new house! It was great to see her and her kids. We had some good laughs. Tsadakah loves to play with her cousin and they had a tea party in the castle with our picnic dishes.

You can see Eliannah lounging in the back room. lol It really was a cool castle! Hee hee, see the window on top? And we have actually gotten bigger boxes than these since then!

Moving Day!

Boy Was That Stressful! I never want to move again!

First of all, the house that we bought was a short sale. We were told going into it that it was going to be a long and frustrating processes and we were OK with that. It was different then I thought though. I was like, ya we can be fine with it taking a long time in the beginning stages but I didn't think that the end would be the worst of it! Actually the beginning stages seemed to go quite smoothly. I guess that we got spoiled there and started to think that nothing would go wrong after all! sigh! boy was I wrong!

They told us originally that we would sign on the 17th. We decided that we would need 2 weeks to clean the house fully (with re carpeting and other maintenance issues) so we scheduled the move for the 30th. The renters we had found said that they weren't going to be ready to move into the house until August 15, so that gave us 2 weeks after we moved to clean up the Tooele house for the renters. Everything seemed like it was going to go perfect!

Then, to our surprise, the renters called and said that they had a change of plans and that they wanted to move in by the 1st! OK, I can clean the house in a day or two. Then the agent called and they pushed back the signing a week. OK, we can clean the new house in a week. Then he called again and said that it was pushed back again, and again, and again!!! I was really starting to stress! Our window of moving opportunity was getting smaller and smaller until I was about to freak! At one point the dates were overlapping which was totally impossible, so I called ever person I could to push my way into closing on our house! We had to call the renters and ask them to wait a week. (Which is probably why they ended up bailing!)

So anyways, the crunch time came down to one weekend! We signed the papers on Friday at like 5PM! Then we got into the house and I was cleaning like mad! Vacuuming, scrubbing, bleaching, sanitizing everything I could. There was so much to do! Mike and my dad were there trying to put in a new gas line for my new gas range, ripping out carpet, and changing light fixtures. We worked until 10:30. (Which is late for me, alright? lol)

The next day I woke up at 5 and drove straight over to the new house to continue cleaning! Families showed up at the house and loaded the truck. It took 2 truck loads! It was total madness and chaos! I wasn't there at all to help guide or direct people. Things were just done! It was amazing! When people came to the new house there was still so much cleaning to do that boxed had to be stored in the garage and not brought into the house. kids were stepping on staples from where the carpet used to be, and we didn't' have some of the sinks working so water kept spaying all over.

We ordered pizza and thanked everyone so VERY MUCH for their help! Then for the next 2 weeks I was working non-stop! I woke up and worked all day until I went to bed. The poor kids were so in shock and I was too busy to baby them through the transition. It was just a shocker!

But now we are here! We are all Happy! We all sit in awe and amazement that it is ours! We are so so very blessed! We totally and completely love the house we are in. This house was built to be our home!! I truly believe that!

My goodness we have had so many boxes! This is a forte that my dad built for the kids while they were trying to move. It was to keep the kids out. They loved it! Mike hated it! lol Tsadakah told me where the kitchen was and everything e

else. It was a cute and fun thing! Thanks, dad!

This is a picture of MiKaylah in a doll stroller. It was taken the morning after the move. This is what the kids were doing while I was cleaning. lol

We want to thank everyone for their help in this move! It was so nice to have and so needed! I could not have done it without all of you! Thank you, THANK YOU!

Other Things I Did In July

In July we also went to Lagoon with some of Mike's families: Debbie & Cesar's, Jon & Stef's. It was so much fun! We enjoyed it so much! Come to think of it, we also went with these same families to 7 peaks in June. Did I blog about that?

Anyway, it was so entertaining and great to have the help of family! We all took turns with the little kids in Kiddie land so that we could also ride the major ones. We actually rode the Wicked like 5 times! And we rode the Rocket quite a lot too!

Debbie's girls were so much help with the littler kids too! Tsadakah went with the and I felt a bit sad as I watched her walk away with the big kids. WOW, she is getting big! She hesitated for a moment so I had to be brave and put on a happy face to reassure her, but I really wanted to say never mind, stay here and be little and never grow up! lol

I also threw a surprise shower for my good friend, Denelle. She was a stinker cause she told everyone that someone else was doing a shower so nobody would be inconvenienced. That is why it had to be a surprise. It turned out well and she was grateful for it in the end. :) She had already ha the baby so it was a post shower.This was one of the games we played. You have to "birth" the baby by melting the ice around it with only your hands. lol This was the winner.

Here he is! Lil' Tyrell.

Also, to pass the time while I waited anxiously for my house to close I had to find ways to entertain myself and my children so we didn't drive each other bonkers. So I took them to the library's craft hour. Although they don't always have the books I am looking for, they do have great community activities throughout the week.

Tsadakah is my little artist and she asks almost every day if it is craft day! She loves to do anything that you tell her has to do with art.

July Stuff

Tsadakah wanted to help me cook, so I put on her apron. Then she was like, "Wait, Mom, I need my chef hat!" Then she went and got my shower cap. lol

This is what we baked. It is a recipe that we have always loved, but I haven't made for a long time because I went off refined sugars, but I decided to try to addapt the recipe and it worked, thanks to Bountiful Baskets! We used fresh black berries instead of jam, and honey instead of sugar, and wheat flour instead of white. It was so delicious and I was so glad to find a way to make my favorite breakfast cake again.

Mike's company party at the Zoo was so totally awesome! They had free consesions! We got Ice cream cones, popcorn, hambergers, cotton candy, dino sippie cups, nachos, Mrs. B cookies, and soda for free. Everything was free actually and we really wanted to go on the Carosaul and the Train too, but it was thundering so we thought it wasn't safe. :(

But they also had face painting which we loved! The girls got beautiful face paintings, again for free! I think that this is one of the only things at fairs or carnivals that I am willing to pay for. lol

Mike works for Rio Tinto and it is a GREAT company. We are so happy there! They have amazing benefits, fabulous parties, and always the option to work overtime when needed. Can't wait to see what they do for their Christmas party!

MiKaylah learns to swing!!!