My Amazing Grandma Guernsey

My sweet grandma passed away early this morning, January 24, 2010. I loved her so much. She was such a great example to me. She was adventurous, loved her family, and passed on the love of learning and the importance of education to not only her own children, but her grandchildren too! She never let obstacles stand in the way of something that she wanted to accomplish. She has lived an amazing life and I hope that when I am in my 80's I will have at least half of the energy that she had! She was always supportive of everything I did and seemed to compliment me all the time on everything...from the way my kids looked and acted on a certain day to the complexion of my face...I guess that's what grandmas are suppose to do, but it always seemed so heartfelt and made me feel better about myself! It was nice to look back on all of my pictures that I have of her. I know that she is overjoyed right now to be reunited with her family that has passed on before her, but I also know that I will miss her a lot! I am so grateful that all of my kids have had the opportunity to know her. I was definitely blessed to have had such wonderful grandparents.

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A lot of summing up to do... And Whitney's 3rd B-Day!

Geez! It has been a while! The only way I know how to sum it up quickly is with those wonderful smilebox scrap books so here you go! Anyway the holiday season was really nice. We are so blessed to be able to spend all of the holidays with our extended family. There are so many of us and we all live so close! How often does that really happen? This new year is off to a great start and our only complaint right now is "we need more snow!" Travis, Mckay, and I have been going snowboarding a lot this winter and we just found a super deal for lessons for Kelsey and Tyson. I think that it is such a fun family thing to do. Now instead of wishing I was in Hawaii I really get excited about snow storms. Just kidding, I still would love to be in Hawaii! This past fall Tyson has surprised us at how good he is in his karate class, I love to go and watch him. Kelsey tried out gymnastics and is now beginning piano lessons. She had her first lesson on Monday and has been really good at practicing. Well, its only been three days, so we'll see! Mckay was playing football which ended just in time for snowboarding. He is so athletic and enjoys playing any kind of sport. You can guess which class he likes the best at school and which class I hear the most stories about! He still loves to help his grandpa feed the cows and horses or get wood for him. I know his secret though, it is his one sure way of getting out of our loud house full of little kids! He helps out a lot with Whitney though. It is really cute to see them together! Whitney just celebrated her third birthday and I think I just might cry when she goes to preschool! I tell everyone with three kids that thinks they're done having anymore..."What if you miss out on your Whitney?!" I don't know what we would have done without her. She always makes us smile!

Labor Day:

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Fall Activities:

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Halloween:

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Thanksgiving:

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Snow Fun:

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December Parties:

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Christmas Day:

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The New Year 2010:

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Whitney's THIRD Birday!

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It Was Whitney's birthday on Janury 5th and we had such a fun time. I decided to write a few things (okay, a lot of things) about her. This age is priceless and very entertaining! Whitney loves to sing to Old McDonald Had a Farm and the Ants Go Marching (#1&10 on the CD in my car). She tells me which number she would like to listen to. I think its funny, kind of like everything else she does! She has a little lisp when she talks that hopefully will go away with time, but it is the sweetest thing to hear. She says "Kelthee" instead of Kelsey and she has her tongue out between her teeth when she says it and other words with an "s" sound. Her favorite princess is Ariel (right now anyway) Even though she wanted a Princess and the Frog birthday. She still is not totally potty trained....so close, but I blame me for not wanting to trust her in underware. She is really good at writing the letter w and it ends up everywhere, even Tyson's homework. She is also really good at drawing her version of a face. The teeth are a bunch of lines inside what looks like an ovalish mouth. Her favorite books right now are The Big Hungry Bear and The Very Cranky Bear. She still loves learning new Spanish words from Dora and I keep kicking myself for not remembering much from two years of Spanish in highschool. She also has just started watching Max and Ruby (a...dumb...bunny cartoon with a song that stays in my head for days!) She has a leopard Webkinz that she named Baby Jaguar (from Deigo). Her favorite thing to eat is still chicken nuggets and she really likes to eat dill pickles lately. Sad to say, but she has developed a taste for Coke thanks to Travis and Mckay. Yuck! She has about 3 blankets all of which need to be present before she goes to sleep at night (her green blankey (sometimes called her purple blankey), her pink blankey, and her blue heart blankey). It is a trick to get them into the laudry, somehow they mysteriously disappear from my dirty laundry pile! She loves to play hide and seek, High-ho-Cherry-O, Memory, and Candyland. She is always asking to have a friend over and she is just turning 3. What is it going to be like when she starts going to school?! She (if you haven't guessed) is a little spoiled and used to getting what she wants. So sometimes she cries if something is not going how she wants it, or if someone is playing with something that she really wants. So I am working on that...a little, usually the kids that play with her give it back before I can intervene and tell her to share. Apparently she has taught everyone well! Uh oh is all I can say! She wants to be the one that blesses the food evey time and is just starting to accept that her brothers and sister should get a turn. Even though I think she is not bowing her head but pouting! She has a whole other year to go to Nursury, so I really don't care if she doesn't like it and wants to go with Travis and me instead. What's a few less germs. Lately, when I do go in with her to nursury, I think it is so sweet when she is sitting on my lap, or holding my hand while I fill up the water pitcher, or following me into the bathroom. Time flies by way too fast! I can't picture myself without a little one yet.

Camping with the family

Our family went camping the end of September in Mill B. It was beautiful! I have never been camping in the fall before. I think we will have to do it more often. (Just maybe not when Travis is helping to gather the cattle from off the mountain for the winter next time.) The main reason I don't usually go when they are gathering the cattle is because I am incredibly allergic to cows and horses...I get hives...can't breathe..the whole shabang. The association does this every year, but usually Travis just goes up early in the morning and comes home late at night for the whole weekend. I decided that it might be fun to join the others that were camping that weekend. (Which ended up only being Dawnette, JL, Troy, JT and our family in our own camp.) I figured it could be possible to keep everyone that was "contaminated" out of my trailer (Travis would just drive home and shower and change his clothes..I know..how nice). Anyway, it worked really well the first night. The next day after Mckay went with them on the cattle drive he came into the trailer without showering or changing his clothes and took a nap in the back. Needless to say, when we were packing up to go home, my right eye was swollen shut, my whole body was an itchy mess, and I could barely breathe. Fun stuff! Other than that last part, we had a great time!

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I thought our family was a big camping family, but this year we only went three times, and one of those times we only went up to visit other campers! I'm hoping next year we have more time to go. It is the perfect way to get away from everything! This next scrap book is our first camping trip of the year over the 24th of July. We went up with all of Travis's family. The kids all had a super time together!

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The Perfect Day to go to the Zoo!

My sister and I have only one child left at home while the others are at school, and they are not old enough for preschool yet. So we took just them to the zoo. What a relaxing day! I usually have at least three kids I am trying to keep track of. One was not bad at all. It also helps when it is a beautiful day and there are no crowds! Anyway, we had a great time. The baby elephant -Zuri- is darling and we wanted to stay and watch it the whole day. The tiger cubs were cute too, but we couldn't see them very well in the bushes, so I took a picture of their picture (it was too cute not to!) We haven't been there for a long time, and this was the first time we got to go on their animal carousel. You don't need to buy a ticket for the parents if you are just going on to hold your child up (which is necessary because they do not have belts to buckle around them.) Whitney and Cole were excited to see all the animals and played really cute together! It's hard to go to the zoo on such a nice day like that, because I will probably not be so willing to go any other time except September/October when there is no excessive heat and barely anyone there!

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We also had a fun time with my grandma Guernsey over the weekend. The Jamestown assisted living place where she lives always has the funnest things planned for little kids to spend time with the residents. This time it was their fall carnival. The kids had a blast and loved playing the games over and over again to get more tickets, because that means more prizes of course! It was really funny at the magic show (which was interesting at first and then it just kept on going...)I asked my grandma how she was doing and in a really loud voice she said, "Well, I'm BORED!!" So then we left, apparently she liked the games and fun outside better.

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The first day of school, or Christmas?

Last night if you came ove to my house, you would have thought it was Christmas Eve! For some reason, Kelsey and Tyson were so excited for the first day of school! More than I remember any other year for any of my kids. They were so excited that they were even being excessively nice to each other, it was funny! But I loved it! They sat their clothes out and helped to pack their luches, which they were REALLY excited about, took their showers and got in their PJs way early. Their anticipation for today was contagious I have to say. I started getting excited for them to leave too! Just kidding, but yeah it is kind of nice today. So I hope they have a great day at school and that it is not a big let down!

And away they go, a little early, but they have been awake and ready for the past hour! "Can we go now?" was Tyson's favorite phrase this morning. I wonder how long this will last? My guess...two more days.



Mckay was even a good sport this morning and let me take his picture. He leaves for the bus at 7:15 in the morning and notice those shoes in the background. That is Kelsey, all dressed and ready to run out the door, even though she does not leave for another hour. Funny!






We went to the open house at our new high school on Saturday. Oh my gosh! It is HUGE! And beautiful! I wish I had a big picture of the front of it. Anyway, my kids were really excited to see it. When we got there Day's Market was handing out balloons, free hot dogs, drinks, chicken strips, and ice cream. Who doesn't love free lunch! We had gone early enough that there was barely anyone there. After we ate the kids decided they wanted their faces painted, so we went and stood in line. The lady that was painting their faces was amazing. Of course that meant 10 minutes per child, so the line went very slow even though it wasn't long. However the kids loved the results! She's hired for our next family party for sure! I was blown away at how nice this school is. It almost makes me wish I was a freshman all over again. My kids are definitely lucky to be able to go there. Mckay only has one more year, Yikes!

Whitney sat very still.


Tyson really wanted to be Darth Vader, but apparently that is copy writed or something.


Check out the main gym. I have a feeling it is going to be packed for the first game!


Oh, and there are two other gyms like this one.


This room reminds me of college English, but it is just one of their lecture rooms.


Gold's gym apparently moved in also. Just kidding, but these kids have no reason not to be in shape, that's for sure!


Thought I'd add another cute face panting picture!

Carlsbad here we come!

We just got back from a nice relaxing vacation to my favorite place in California...Carlsbad. I have grown up going there, and I think I talked about it enough to interest my sister in law's family and our neighbor's family to come with us this time. We had such a fun time with the Hatch's and the Bonner's. Our kids kept each other company most of the time and that left us with plenty of time to visit. I posted a few pictures, but the rest are in my smilebox scrapbooks. Here are a few highlights:

This is the reason I went to Disneyland:


Tyson was picked out of the crowd to be in the Dolphin Show at SeaWorld. The funny thing was that last year we came to SeaWorld they chose him to be in it too, but he didn't want to do it. I told him it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. Really, who gets picked two times in a row?


Mckay had a super time because he finally got to go to California with someone his age, well not necessarily, but it was a boy anyway that had his same interests. So the beach was awesome (they would both leave at nine in the morning by themselves and stay way past the time that we would leave) and heck he even had a great day at Disneyland!

















Then, ofcourse, there was the "bad parenting" episode. This happened at SeaWorld also. We had just finished at the starfish pond and were headed to the bathrooms and I realized Kelsey had not followed us. When I went back to get her, I got in BIG trouble from my daughter. She began, in a loud shrill voice, to accuse me in front of everyone that, "that was not good parenting mom! You never leave without all of your children and you need to pay more attention!" Yikes! So I smiled and said sorry so all the people could hear too. What do you do?



This leads me to the biggest highlight of our trip, at least for me...The Beach! We experienced every kind of wave while we were there. Saturday, they were not that great, but by Monday and Wednesday they were PERFECT and a ton of fun! Friday's waves were HUGE, fun too if you didn't mind getting pummeled and thrown around a bit! We found out later those waves were due to some hurricane in Mexico. Either way it was hard to leave the beach and come back to Utah!















Okay, another highlight was the SUN! Everytime we were at the beach, at least by noon the overcast sky turned into beautiful sunny days!
















Enjoy the scrapbooks! All I had with me at the dolphin show to film Tyson was my little camera, so the video is not that great, but it is pretty funny!

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