Happenings

My brothers and their families came over Easter weekend to visit.  It was a blast.  Sawyer and Ollie had 8 cousins playing with them non-stop, we went bowling, ate out, saw a movie, celebrated Easter, went swimming, swimming and more swimming.  Apparently it is STILL SNOWING in Utah!!  My brother Dan and his family kept extending their trip because they couldn't stand the thought of going back to the snow!!

I didn't get very many pictures this weekend.  I'm in a bit of a media crisis right now.  There's some kind of issue with each of our cameras and video camera.  Boo.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how excited do you think Sawyer is about his Easter candy?

For your general viewing pleasure, blue bunny shaped pancakes for breakfast:

And the Easter bunny was quite thoughtful and got the boys super hero jams.

Just a little more than 2 weeks until quilt market...EEEK!!!!!

Longest ever

I think this was the longest I ever went between posts (except maybe the first couple).  And truth was, I was in Utah for FOUR weeks!!  And although I could (and do) giggle all day long at the photo of Ollie as AquaMan in the last post, it's best I caught up.

UTAH  Snowy.  Family. Cold.  (What was I thinking?!?  I left AZ and it was in the 70's!!)  I got to see my nephew get his Eagle Scout.  I had girls nights.  I crafted, a lot.  I met with some fabric designer people in prep for Quilt Market.  (SO scary, SO exciting).  I got to see friends.  I had lunch with my mommy and watched murder shows with my dad. :)  Here are some pics I know you can't wait to see! :)

Chuck E Cheese, twice.

Playing with cousins

this would make the best band ever, right?  Ollie thinks so.

My brother Rich and Ollie.  My brothers are identical twins and they think Rich and Dan are the same person, that's why they love them so much because they see "him" twice as much as anyone else.  Shhh, I don't think my brothers know.

Seeing friends, sorry Max, Ruby and Simon, we'll make it happen!

sorry Ash, not one I could use of me!!

My sisters, Amy and Heather.

Finished my car quilt, (and now I'm making it over again)

And cinnamon challenges with my nieces and nephew.  Sorry guys.

Basically, you eat a spoonful of cinnamon.  Apparently (see below) it's very hard to do.  I've never tried (ha!).  It was very entertaining, I highly recommending convincing others to do it.

And yes, there was barf involved.

It was really fun.  I was excited to be back in to my own schedule again, but really sad to not have so much family and friends around.

My sister Heather drove the 12 hours back with me and the boys, and then flew home a day later.  How nice is that?!?  Thanks sister.

Get excited, I plan on more posts, maybe even tonight!!!

Is this thing on?

We're back!

And no one was more excited for that news than Mr. E.

The boys and I spent the last two weeks in Utah being soooo busy and having sooo much fun.

Naturally, I left my camera at my parent's house.  My momma sent it today (thank you!) so more snap shots to come.  For now you have to settle for some shots from my photo shoot as they are the only pics I've got.

for you Utahns, this is in Riverton...the mountains are those in Draper, Lone Peak I believe?

he had to have a sippy or fruit snacks, period

We had a lot of fun.  Including:

meeting up with friends for playdates, movies, dinner, crafting

getting my hair done, thanks Rachie!!

family parties

hanging out with my sisters *tear, sniffle*

utah state fair with my brother and family

Sawyer driving a convertible Mustang ie the greatest moment of his life

Park City business retreat (and a pedicure)

lots of late night crafting

movies in the theater room

finishing 2 quilts, almost a third done and a fourth completely planned

playing with grandma and grandpa

getting super sick (all of us)

lunch dates with my brother, sister in law, mommy

watching murders with my dad not real ones silly

killing a GINORMOUS mountain tarantula w/my mom and 2 shovels

Swiss Days craft fair

going to the park with my sister's 9 kids

visiting the 10th kid in COLLEGE!

As for Mr E, he deserves a bit more attention, don't you think?  He's been working at a hospital in his IM (internal medicine) rotation.  It's intense.  He gets his own patients.  He was just listing all these problems a patient of his has, tons and tons.  I asked how old he was thinking he's in his 80's or 90's.  He's 57.  Made me cry.  No I'm not pregnant.

We're glad to have daddy back.

Sorry about my once a week posts.  Not gonna happen.  I will show you if I ever do anything :)

We got callings.  I am the new beehive advisor (eeek!) and E teaches youth sunday school.

The boys are medium about nursery.  Actually Ollie is fine, Sawyer has started having a hard time with it.  I can't believe he will soon be a sunbeam.

Did I mention that my boys are fighting more than ever? 

Hopefully it was just Utah, but Ollie has started getting agressive.  He throws things at Sawyer. Aims for the head.  Head butts.  Boys?  Brothers.

 Getting late, and I'm getting random.

freckle sisters

Happy Happy Birthday sister!!

I have two older sisters, Amy and Heather, and today is Heather's birthday! She really is the greatest big sister in the world, and we have way too much fun together. We talk on the phone, everyday, sometimes for hours...on our bluetooths. We write quilt patterns together and run our Fresh Poppy blog as well. We are practically the same person, except she's a little better at everything than me :)

These pictures are from a couple years ago when we went to California to go celebrity stalking. It was so much fun. Just us girls, we stayed at my parent's house, and by night we went to Hollywood. One of the first places we went was The Ivy and Heather walked up to it first, turned to me laughing so hard tears were in her eyes. She couldn't talk. There was a celebrity. Dawson Leery. As in Dawson of Dawson's Creek.

We were starving that night so we decided to go get some pizza (later we were convinced the pizza guy laced it with something to track us down later...). We were trying to hit some other hot spots when we saw an ambulance heading to a big club. Our hearts were racing. We knew it had something to do with Lindsay Lohan. We found a spot right across the street for perfect viewing, sat on the sidewalk and ate our pizza. There was a sleeping homeless man about 10 feet away. It was awesome. We can't be for sure, but our hearts still tell us that Lindsay was there.

We knew our night was over when we were standing at a street corner and a guy yelled out his window as he was zooming by, "You're @%@$% hot!!" In a panic we raced for our car, while on the way Heather got propositioned with a large wad of cash.

Anyway, I love my sister! Even when I was little, she has always been my friend and never made me feel left out. We've done many ridiculous things over the years, including way too many choreographed dances for our family. But like I say to her, at least she's always 7 years older :)

Happy Day FiFi!

40 years

My parents just celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary! I made this video that was shown at an adult only surprise dinner for them when they returned from an overseas trip. The invite list? All of my siblings, their spouses and my parents, everyone but us :(

For those of you who will be looking for me in the photos, there are seven kids and three sisters in my family, and I am the very youngest of all, so I am only in a few of the last full family pictures.

Also, one of my dad's jokes is to say, "I can't believe 60 years ago I was three." You'll get why I added that when you see the video :)

To our mothers

Happy Mother's Day

We love you both so much enjoy your day!

Daddy

I've been looking for an excuse to blog about my dad, and I have one. This past weekend he flew out alone to see all of us and come to Oliver's blessing. He's a busy guy, a bishop, real estate agent...and he sacrificed 6 days altogether for us, wow am I lucky! To say that I adore my dad is an understatement. I think he is the greatest. He is funny, friendly, happy, helpful, smart...I could go on and on. I'm getting sad because spending evenings with him watching murder shows and talking was so much fun, since E is intensely studying right now. Ask anyone, my dad has the best stories. I always tease him that it sounds like he grew up in the 1800's. He grew up in England, he had a headmaster at his school and he remembers having no phone at home. Stories he has from growing up are so sweet and charming, I could listen to them over and over. I guess I can't put it all into words, but I absolutely LOVE my daddy. Since we lived with my parents for Sawyer's entire first year of life, when we moved it was incredibly sad especially for them missing Sawyer. My dad was nervous when he came that Sawyer wouldn't remember him at all. We talk about Grandpa a lot, sing his songs and point to his picture. When we opened the door and he was standing there, it was like not a day had gone by! Sawyer started laughing and hiding behind me, poking his head around, it was so sweet. Within minutes they were play fighting. It didn't hurt that my dad gave him his own bag of Hershey kisses :) These two had lots of growling matches and watched a lot of Toy Story. Right after my dad got there we were eating dinner, and my dad leaned against the counter and folded his arms. Sawyer stopped eating and immediately folded his arms too...he continued to copy everything my dad did. So sweet.

Here are some pictures of the beautiful boy on his special day. E gave a very sweet blessing and Ollie didn't make a peep, that I heard at least. Here is our Oliver King:

Mommy

My mommy has come and gone :( She arrived the day after Oliver was born and stayed for almost two weeks! It was so great having her here, she was Sawyer's playmate, Ollie's tummy fixer, my daytime friend, the dinner maker, cleaner and just about everything. I am so glad I have a really great mom, and I miss her soooo much. She said I would be sick of her and want her to go home...not true! Come back mommy. As an extra special treat my older sister Amy was able to come visit for the weekend too! She was doing a study with her youngest son, Talon, in St Louis and she will hopefully be able to come twice more in the next year and a half. It was really fun having her here, and the weekend felt like a good old fashioned girls weekend with eating out, a movie and talking. Sad sister, I miss you so much!Here are the boys. Talon is the pale one, of course :) He's 6 months old. Aren't they cute all dressed up and fancy? Ollie is wearing a tie too, you just can't see it.

CryFest '08

Goodbyes are horrible. I think some of the hardest will be with my parents. We live with them and they are part of our everyday life. They are unbelievably kind and helpful and giving and everything. I can only hope to grow to be parents like them. It will be especially sad to not have the everyday interaction with Sawyer. He loves them very much, and I know the sentiment is returned. I love that he is so close to my parents. We love them and will miss them everyday.

We had to say goodbye to our BFF's Ashlie and Luke. Ashlie made us a DVD of pics over the last few years, we've been friends practically since we were both married and then had baby boys practically together. We love our friends and will miss them a lot.

Ernesto's work had a going away dinner for him and a couple of co-workers who were also leaving at Rodizio's. It was delicous and a fun night. There have been a lot of great things about Ernesto's work, and they are really thoughtful and nice. I know E will miss it there.

My parents and family threw us a going away bash. All of the kids were here, and it was a lot of fun to have everyone together. Activities included a treasure hunt, and making adorable cards for E, S and me. (Garen's card had Sawyer and E drawn in brown marker, me with an orange :) And a water balloon toss, which Geoffrey and Lawson won. But Hannah was the real winner, as you can see below:

We had fishing and a bubble-gum blowing contest. Saylor, Lara and Cheyenne had 3 inch bubbles, way to go! Here is my cute niece Savannah doing the bubble gum contest, doesn't she look adorable? For some reason her gum wouldn't work so good to give her a huge bubble, but I've seen her blow them really big before. I sure am going to miss this sweet girl.

We had a jello eating contest. Team #1 won! Wahoo. The kids loved it, example Saylor with the Jello coming out of her nose. While looking at these blonde/brown heads, I thought I was happy to be bringing a little variety to the family.

There was facepainting at the party. Heather and Kasey were the artist (as far as I know) and they did a great job. Here is a sampling: Clockwise: Mckenna, Heather and Saylor, Emily, Rylee CW: Garen, Geoffrey, Cheyenne, Liberty
CW: Hannah, Jasmine, London and Dan's back

We had so much fun at the party. In the end, after some water fights, see below, it was super sad. Thus CryFest '08. To those of you who stuck around to witness, it was quite the scene. I had several nieces crying outloud, and I was bawling as well. It was really really sad, and I was really overwhelmed by how much we're going to be missed. I love you all sooooo much. As I told the little girls, we will still talk all the time and write letters. I will get my address out ASAP, because I will need care packages ;) I am really going to miss my family, they are my closest friends. I see my sister Heather AT LEAST twice a week, and it is going to be really hard to not see her all the time. I love you guys, we'll be in touch as we get there.

Moving is so soon...

All our bags are packed, we're ready to go...but not on a jetplane, a 17 hour car ride :( So I am STILL not thinking about moving because I don't want to be hospitalized...it is just way too sad. All our stuff is gone, thankfully to my parents it's no biggie we just live off of them :) We leave in less than a week. Okay, getting sad. Here are some random pics of fun things going on!

This was just too funny, a week ago there was a deer RIGHT outside the window, even closer than this picture. He came back twice that night to snack on my mom's plants, sorry momma! And Sawyer would "woof" at him.

I just love this pic! He stands on the top deck and moves his little head back and forth and just watches E mow the lawn, how cute is that?

Sawyer loves his grandpa, LOVES! So he's been talking on the phone lately, including calls to Grandma in Florida. First you dial, then you say "Hello." Doesn't sound quite like that, but he does say it! He tries to talk on his food too, so sometimes he will have crumbs at the back of his head at bathtime.

We've been trying to spend as much time as possible with friends and family. We went to a really fun place called Kangaroo Zoo with our good friends, it was really fun. The one of Sawyer on the huge slide so small cracks me up! (He laughed at the bottom, so no he wasn't scared!)