Cards!

I had some of my girlfriends over last Saturday and we made some fun cards. So here they are for you enjoyment and of course feel free to copy!

Today is the day.

Today is the day my gallbladder is meeting its date with destiny. In other words it will not longer be around to cause me grief. And all I have to say on that matter is woo hoo! For the last two weeks its been causing me a lot of grief. I can't hardly eat a thing without it hurting and causing me to bloat. I will be very happy to be gallbladder free.

Which is which???

I simply could not allow Arianne to corner the market on look a like sister photos, so I decided to post some of my own. One is Katie, one is Lauren, both at the same age, and same dress. Can you tell which is which????? Leave a comment if you think you are smart enough to tell the difference!

Photo A = ??????

Photo B = ?????

Tidy Whites

It was time. Mark has had the same underwear since I potty trained him two years ago. He needed an upgrade.

Last Friday night I took him to Target to choose his new underwear. Being the man that he is, he decided that instead of his tidy white underwear he needed to upgrade to boxers.

On Saturday he put his new underwear on, and every person he met that day was greeted with "I am wearing boxers today." Most responded with a puzzled look until I explained he had new underwear that he was proud to wear.

On Saturday night when Mark was still boasting about his new underwear I told him that daddy wore boxers. He turned to Rick and said "Good job graduating out of tidy whites."

Help in the kitchen.

I have very good kitchen help these days.

She is very cute.

And of course licking must be involved.

Budding Artists

In my house I have two budding artists. Lauren and Katie. Lauren has been taking an art class this summer, and Katie is wishing she was taking an art class.

Lauren's art work.

Lauren's art work.

Katie's art work.

More of Katie's art work.

And at the final piece of Katie's art work, also known as crayon on wood.

I much prefer Lauren's art work.....

We love the Jackson's pool!

The Jackson's went to Hawaii, and we went to their pool with our cousins, aunts, and uncles!

We rather appreciate it when the Jackson's go out of town and leave us in charge of the pool!

Heart disease....

Last Wednesday I went to pick up Lauren from dance class, and had Mark and Katie in car with me. As we were driving Mark informed me "my heart disease is hurting me." Now considering he is six years old I determined that his chances of heart disease were probably minimal at best and ignored him. He continued to complain about his heart disease.

Upon arrival at home he was sitting on the kitchen floor, again complaining about his heart disease, so I finally decided something must be bugging him and asked him to show me where it hurt. He put his hand on his chest right around where is heart is located, and I questioned him if that what hurt. Before he could answer he spewed forth the contents of his stomach.

Apparently it was not so much his heart that hurt as it was his stomach. We will be working on anatomy.

This is what 50 cases looks like.....

While the rest of you are doing whatever it is you do on a Tuesday, this is what I am doing. Fifty unemployment cases. Its a new record for those of you keeping track. (FYI, all these pages you see are my required reading, photocopies of the cases and each page is copied on both sides, do the math...)

Last Tuesday my secretary handed me this stack with a wicked smile on her face....(just kidding, she was actually quite sorry about the case load), so I have spent the last week reading nothing but unemployment cases, and quite frankly I am sick of cases and reading. So next time you ask what the last book I read was and I give you a snarky look, you will understand why....

Katie goes to dance class!

Its tradition in our house that if you are female, and you are three years old, you get to go to dance class. After three years of watching her older sister dance, she was more than ready to be following in her footsteps.

Katie had her first class last Thursday. I was a little nervous about this experience. We discussed it for a few days prior and when asked about what was expected at dance class, Katie would respond "Be nice to the teacher."

I signed her up for a ballet/jazz combo at the studio where Lauren takes dance lessons, and is on the company team. (VIBE it's the best!) Katie wanted to take her backpack, because Lauren takes her backpack every week. She is also quite determined that she needs a pink dance trophy like Lauren. For that she will have to make the company team and compete. (Believe it or not there is a team for the girls her age.)

She walked in the door and announced she was there for her "pink dance class." It was a small class with only one other little girl.

Our next feat, company try outs at the end of June....she will only have three classes under her belt at that time....so this could be interesting, but she really wants that trophy.....

Memorial Day 2010

I spent Memorial Day weekend in Idaho. It was the first Memorial Day since my dad died, and Ciarran and I wanted to decorate the graves with Loretta, because that is something she always did with my dad.

Unfortunately Loretta wasn't feeling well enough to go out to the cemetery, so Ciarran and I went together, decorated the graves, took pictures, and then took lunch to Loretta and spent the afternoon with her.

Don't we look cute? This is our parents grave site.

This is Bill Green, Loretta's husband who passed away before she married my dad.

This is Grandma and Grandpa Holladay, Loretta's parents.

This is my Grandma and Grandpa Hales, my grandparents.

It was a very nice weekend.

Katie's latest thing.

Lately Katie has taken to sneaking out of bed. She will sit at the top of the stairs, or at the middle landing or even on the stairs. Sometimes she will make enough noise I will hear her, other times I will discover her when I am going upstairs for some reason.

This is how I found her last week.....

Friends!

Last weekend we enjoyed a fun visit from some friends that live in Boise, the Tanners. Darrin brought his kids Issac and Shelby down to Utah to play with us!

First stop, Discovery park. (They have a super fun play ground!)

Here is Issac and Mark walking across a "bridge."

Darrin and me, trying to keep up with five kids!

The tire swing was a popular choice for Issac, Shelby and Lauren.

Mark found a "rocket" and I could not pull him out of the dang thing. He blasted off into space several times.

Katie was out of control, I would see a pink flash run past me and assume it was her. At one point she was on a bridge and a boy about her age tried to push past her. The next thing I saw was her giving him a hard and fast push to the chest and telling him "no!" He was a little stunned by her behavior, but he got the point. Yeah she is going to be fun to date when she is 16....

Next it was on to the Jackson's pool. We only spent 3 1/2 hours there....and even then they whined when we told them they had to get out.

After dinner, we took advantage our our backyard. Lauren and Shelby were moving so fast and furious, all I could capture were blurry pictures!

They liked the swings too.

Issac's new favorite sport is lacrosse, and Mark didn't want to be left out of this activity, so Darrin was trying to show him how to throw the ball to Issac.

Katie got her hands on Shelby's pink lacrosse stick and ball....and well need I say more?

Later in the evening Shelby and Lauren talked me into doing "glitter" nails and then they retreated to the basement for their slumber party which included playing on the Wii.

We wore the boys out, and this is how we found them after we finished doing nails.

We had fun, they had fun. We hope they return!

In the dark.

Last Wednesday night, around 11:00 p.m. I was down stairs in my basement, minding my own business, in other words picking up the mess my children had made, when all of the sudden I found myself in the dark. No power. Now a basement is not the best place to be in the dark, because well it's dark to begin with, and then you factor in no lights what so ever and the fact I set my cell phone down somewhere in the basement, so I could not even use that for light, you get the picture on my darkness.....

I felt my way to the stairs and headed up them. I could tell by the darkness of the neighborhood that my being in the dark was not a result of my forgetting to pay the power bill, because my neighbors seemed to be having similar power issues.

I figured Lauren was probably still awake and probably pretty close to freaking out, so I headed toward her bedroom, and sure enough I was met on the stairs by one freaked out nine year old. She informed the the power had gone out, just in case I hadn't figured that out..... We headed toward the laundry room in search of a flash light. I found one working flashlight, (that would be the fault of Mark and Katie, who like to take my flashlights and run down the batteries in the process of destroying the working parts of the flashlight...grrrrrrr.....) and one working "crank" light.

As we pondered what to do in the dark I decided hanging up the wet clothes from the washer seemed like a good option....(FYI, even if he power had been on I still could have hung up my wet clothes, I am very anti dryer, unless its socks and underwear.)

I made Lauren hand crank the light so I could hang up the clothes. This was not her first choice but when given the alternative of returning to her dark bedroom, hand cranking the light didn't seem too bad... About 20 minutes later, just as I was finishing up with the laundry, the power returned, but it still took me and additional 30 minutes to convince Lauren to return to bed.