Ahhh...Shakespeare!

So, I love Shakespeare!! Yeah, Just kidding! I really just enjoy the excuse to go with my mom and sisters on a super relaxing weekend getaway where we can stay up until 2:30 in the morning playing Rook and laughing. We have made it tradition to go to the Shakespearean Festival in Cedar City every fall. Super fun! This fall's plays were Julius Ceasar, Moonlight and Magnolias ( a hilarious play about how the script for the movie, Gone With the Wind, was created), and Gaslight (my synopsis: a play about a disturbed crazy lady and a wierd husband). All were really great,well...one was just interesting(ie: Gaslight)! In the fall, the festival usually only does one Shakespeare play, Julius Ceasar was so!!! good. The actors were great, we were on the front row and noticed they were also professional spitters, too! The other two plays were actually pretty enjoyable. Gas Light was suppose to be this great suspenceful play, and I think we heard so many good things about it that our expectations were too high, it was not my favorite. Last year the shakespeare play was The Tempest, and I was kinda glad when it was over too!

Besides the plays, it was my sister Trudy's 33rd birthday on Saturday, which we had fun celabrating all day. Also, while we were shopping, we ran into one of the actresses, Kate Cook, who had been in two of the plays that we had just seen. She was really fun to talk to. It was also perfect timing for us to be in Cedar City because my cousin, BJ, had this spur of the moment wedding which we were able to attend that Saturday morning. It was nice to see him so happy!

While we were eating dinner on Saturday (at this delicious restaraunt on the side of the raod going to Cedar Breaks), we saw this huge dust cloud zoom by the window. Our server said that it was a groom (not BJ!)who was late for his wedding and he lost control of his car as he was driving up the canyon. Thankfully he didn't hit any oncoming trafic and he left his car in the ditch and got a ride with friends in another car. When we went outside to get in our car, the skid marks were only 2 feet away from my moms parked car!! We were so glad that he and our car were saved from tragedy!

Well. can't wait for our next years little retreat!


This is our traditional bench that we sit on so we can get our picture by William Shakespeare himself!

Fun with the fam!

Everyday I wonder what life would be like without sisters. I couldn't even imagine it! I am lucky enough to have 3 that I love and we are all pretty close in age. So can you imagine the fun? Within the past two years two of my sisters moved back to Utah and now I live within 30-45 minutes away from any given sister. It's Great! We try and get together as much as possible and this Saturday was one of those times. We took all our kids to Bridal Veil Falls. One of my sisters was at the BYU game, so we had her kids too. Between me and my other two sisters, we had 12 kids with us (ranging 2 months old to 9 years old)(and that's with 2 kids that didn't come with us! Gees, we have a lot of kids!) There were 4 on bikes, 2 on scooters, 4 in strollers, and 2 on foot. It was a lot fun trying to keep up with them all! We had packed lunches to have a picnic and then we were going to let the kids play in the water, however the kids on bikes were too fast and we didn't stop until we got to the waterfall. We figured if we walked a little further past the waterfall there would be shaded picnic tables like the ones that we had already passed on the way to the waterfall, but...we were wrong! The poor kids went for a nice two mile walk,ride,or scoot before we finally settled on the side of the trail to eat. Oh well, they had a blast playing in the water and after their two mile walk,ride,or scoot back to the cars, we had some very mellow kids for a minute. Nice! By the time we got back to my sister's house, my other sister was on her way home from the game and brought pizzas over. Just one of those nice relaxing fall days!

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Great start to this school year!...so far

I haven't blogged for a little bit, but I have a good explanation. It's "AFTERNOON KINDERGARTEN IS MAKING ME LAZY!" Let me just say that my kids have always done morning kindergarten and afternoon definitely takes the cake! I only have to get two kids off in the morning -well- really only one because Mckay is 12 and heaven forbid I comb his hair. So mornings are a breeze. Then Tyson and Whitney and I do errands, go for bike rides, and maybe even run to Park City. I've even taken them to play in day care at the gym for a bit while I "enjoy" a spin class. Then it's lunch time and then Tyson goes to school and Whitney takes a nap and...Ahhhh, I have 2 1/2 hours to do absolutely whatever I want. Which is normally sitting on the couch thinking I'd better read and take advantage of this time because this won't happen too often. But apparently it does happen and it is going to continue to happen the rest of the school year, so I've set my mind to do more productive things with my time. Even though I really don't want to.. So we'll see what happens...I'm really not that enthused about doing anything right now...I'm absolutely revelling in all this quiet time!

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So as far as new things this month goes, Tyson has lost 3 teeth and 1 more is loose just in the past month! Yes, he brushes, and he loves milk, I just think it's strange! Also he and all the other 5 year old boys on our street decided to toss the training wheels out and ride a two-wheeler! It's funny how when a child decides he wants to do something it just happens! He learned so fast! He's now my Two wheeling, Toothless, Tyson! He is so proud of it too!

Kelsey is really enjoying 2nd grade, and it's really nice to finally have some girls in our neighborhood in her class this year! She's at such a fun age now, too, we can enjoy shopping together and doing just girl things. We went dress shopping - just ther two of us- last Saturday, and then went to our favorite place to eat (Kneaders) for lunch. We had such a good time! It's pretty cute to see some of the habits that she has totally picked up from me. The other night she came in my room and climbed in my bed while I was reading and she had her own book with her. She said she couldn't sleep yet either, so we both read our books cuddled together on my bed.

Mckay is doing pretty well in 7th grade (yikes! I remember being in 7th grade!). He seems to never have homework and gets it all done before he gets home, so he says, we'll see when the grades are posted. But really, he's always been that way and just sails through school. He's such an easy kid! He, through the fault of his mother, is not playing football this year. But he has been taking golf lessons and has been golfing a lot with his dad and grandpa Smith. So I hope he doesn't hold a grudge that I forgot to sign him up until the last minute when the football teams were already way too full. He has been staying busy with golf, friends, and his favorite pass time - hanging out with grandpa JL helping out on the farm and doing other side jobs JL has for him. It's interesting how he loves to work and help grandpa, but if I ask him to take out our trash that's a big deal! Oh well, at least he's mostly perfect.

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Whitney is just getting cuter and cuter, and since she's my last, even the things she's not suppose to do are cute! She's now my little escape artist, which is SCARY! Last Sunday night my mother-in-law came over to visit and said "so where's Whitney?" Travis and I answered, "Oh somewhere playing" Then she said "you mean by the trash can in front of your neighbor's house on the street in the dark?" and I said "Oh!" Thank goodness they came over when they did because who knows what would have happened! Then a couple days later I couldn't find her, even though I had seen her just minutes before, I went outside and Mandy was holding her. She said that she looked over at our driveway and Whitney was zipping down it in her little pink stroller screaming at the top of her lungs, so Mandy ran to her rescue. Thank heaven for neighbors! So now I'm looking for door safety things that will fit our front door. Anyway Whitney is a hoot and hopefully I can keep her safe! She is now in love with Cinderella and Dora. She can point and name the princesses on her pajamas, which is priceless! Then she finally got a Cinderella costume and would not take it off all day, even the crown was hard to coax off of her. I guess she knows that she is our little princess! She tells me "I don't like it" or "I don't want it." Pretty princessish lingo I think!

Here are some of the things that kept us busy this summer.

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Our 24th of July was fun, we spent it with our families.

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Other fun pictures from August and September...

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Cribless!

I can't believe it! My house is now forever cribless! All of my babies have grown up! Ahhh! Whitney came home from California and dicided to crawl into Kelsey's bed for a nap, and thats when I knew it was time. Usually I wait until my kids are 2 or 2 1/2 to switch them over to a toddler bed, but obviously she was ready to have her own bed. She is our last baby and I don't know why she is in such a hurry to be a big girl! Anyway, she's very proud of her bed and had to show it off to everyone the whole first week. "Mere, my bed!" she said and made them come into her room to check it out. Except for a few nights that she ends up at the side of my bed wanting "up", she really likes having her own bed to sleep in. Now if it were only that easy with her bottle! It is a wierd feeling knowing that she is my last baby (well, big girl now), I almost feel old or something.