Who did this?

Ok so most of you know that our house is back on the market. The other day someone called and said they wanted to show it and would be over shortly. So frantically I was trying to get all the toys picked up and make sure everything was in its place. I run upstairs for a quick second to wipe down the bathroom counter. When I came back down, all I could see was a trail across my nicely mopped tile of spaghetti sauce. After I followed the tail this is what I found,

Haydenn had a jar of spaghetti sauce, that she got out of the trash (YUCK!) and was eating it as fast as she could! Luckily we were fixing spaghetti for dinner so the can had just got put in there.

I was so frustrated trying to keep things picked up and nice that I almost wanted to cry. Until I saw this cute little girl with that cute little face and I had to remind myself that this is life and to just enjoy it! So I grabbed my camera and took a picture!

Setting the Example!

This past Saturday we were able to go to my nephew, Hyrums baptism. Hyrum is the oldest grand kid on my side of the family. He has set such a good example for all of his cousins and I am so proud of him!

Hyrum in his baptism whites!

Thanks Hyrum for letting us be apart of your baptism and for being such a good example! We love you!

We're going on a Treasure Hunt!

The other day Emmy asked if there was something she could help do with dinner. Josh responded with "the biggest help would be if you could keep the kids occupied while we finish cooking."

Emmy took her job very seriously and here is what she came up with.

A TREASURE HUNT!

We had so fun and she was so proud of herself! This is a picture of her map, it went all over the house and lead us from one place to another and eventually to the treasure!

Here is the kids starting out on the hunt in the loft!

Next we move to Emmy's room!

Haydenn was a little sad she couldn't keep up with the other kids! Just as she would get there they would rush past her to go to the next place! Poor girl! It must be that crazy hair!

Now Dad gets into it, trying to figure out where to go next!

Emmy was so cute, she had hid the "treasure in the big Treasure Chest (our coffee table) in our living room. And what was the treasure? Pictures she had drawn, one for each member of the family, and a pack of smarties!

Life seriously does not get any better then this! Emmy was so thrilled that we had so much fun on the treasure hunt that she made up all by herself. And the kids had so much fun doing it! Thanks Emmy for being such a good big sister!

Family Reunion Time Again!

This time we were with the Brown's! (I just won the award for the longest post ever! fair warning!)
Just like the Heap reunion, we always look forward to the Brown reunion. My kids call it the reunion with the barn. We always go up near Eagar and camp at the Crosby's barn. When I was a little girl all the grand kids would sleep in the barn together. It would be wall to wall kids in there sleeping bags. It was so much fun it was like a huge slumber party with all the cousins. But now there are way to many kids to be able to fit in the barn. So most of us camp in tents or campers outside the barn. But my kids love it, just like I did!

This year it rained on us, isn't wasn't to terrible though. Thank goodness for the barn! There was only a couple of times my kids needed there coats during the day. Tucker loved to be outside! I hardly even saw him the whole time!This was the day that it rained the most. After it let up a little the kids put on their rain coats and rain boots and headed outside. They gathered a bunch of wood and made a bridge in the entry way to the barn where the water had puddled so that we wouldn't have to walk through the water. Clever Kids! I think we will keep them around!The barn has this really old wagon thing! And behind Haydenn all along the wood fence it is covered in moss! It is really cool and makes for some good pictures!

Haydenn was having a blast playing peek-a-boo behind this wagon wheel!

I love this little girl! We had so much fun with her at the reunion! It was so much easier now that she has decided to walk! She would just wander around the barn like she was the coolest thing there. Trying to see who she could get to pick her up. She cracks me up she will go to anyone and everyone! Doesn't matter who it is as long as they will pick her up, they are her new best friend!

Rylenn was to busy playing princesses in the flowers to stop and take some pictures but I did get a few!

Still our pretty little princess even with that dirty face!

Emmy stopping to pose with the flowers!

I could hardly get any pictures of Emmy either, she was just to busy playing with her cousins!
I thought it was hard to the girls to sit still for a picture this handsome man was even harder! Tucker with a bunch of the cousins climbing on the water tank. I really don't think they were suppose to be up there and after I took a couple of pictures (cause pictures are more important of course!) they did get down. This poor guy is my nephew Brig! In front of the barn there is some horse corals and him and a bunch of the kids were playing on them. I guess one of the fences swung and hit him right in the mouth and he came away with a nice fat lip. OUCH! This is what it looked like from the inside! Poor guy!

All the girls are always all over my brother Barry. Now if we can just get those girls to be a few years older! J/K! All of my brothers are so good with my kids! They love their Uncles (and Aunts!) so much! But with Barry it's not just my kids that flock to him all of the little girl cousins just seam to swarm him! For hours on end Barry is entertaining the girls! He is going to make such a good Dad some day! Any takers?
Emmy was so excited when all her Aunts and Uncles got there! As you can see she couldn't keep her arms off of them! Poor Barry couldn't even eat his dinner!
Haydenn has Barry, and everyone else rapped around her little finger! It's a good thing she is so dang cute!

Sawyer like always was a huge help at the reunion! She played with, checked on and helped out a number of times with the kids! Thanks Sawyer! Your one in a million!!!

Every where he goes he finds a bull to ride! This is actually a thing they use to brand with, in the shape of a horse, so technically I guess he is bronc riding! Being a goof ball!

Dirty little face!

These 3 little girls are hilarious! To get them to all look at the camera or even smile at the same time was like trying to stop a stampede!

I think they ate a whole watermelon!

I am so so so sad, this is one of Rylenn best friends in the world, her cousin Koley! Their family will be moving at the end of the month to Ohio. I can't hardly even think about it or I start to cry. I hope we get to see them often so these girls can stay as close as they are!

It is a tradition to have a pinata at the Brown reunion! Haydenn didn't really know what to do and Rylenn was scared to death of it, so I only got pictures of Tucker and Emmy!This was the first year in a long time that Emmy has even got a turn. I guess we have a lot of strong little kids, cause every year one of the little kids breaks it before she even gets a chance. So this year she was pretty excited to get a swing!

After the pinata broke the kids had fun playing with the pieces and making funny cone hats out of them!
Emmy being silly with her cone hat!
This was the day that we were packing up and heading home. Haydenn was just sitting chillin out at the back door of the barn! The color in this picture was all messed up so I played with it a little and came up with this and thought it looked kind of cool!
Haydenn just chillin and enjoying the nice weather!
Here is Koley and Ry and my nephew Bryte! Sharing grapes and soda life couldn't get any better!
Cuties! I'm so glad Rylenn has so many cousins her age, they all seem to get along so good!

Rylenn and Koley found these BB's from the boys BB guns. Someone told them that they were BB's and they thought they said babies. So they packed them around acting like they were the mothers of these "Babies". I was laughing so hard!

There is a great competition at the end of every Brown reunion. My Aunt Shelly, rounds up all the kids and puts them on teams (boys against girls). And they see who can pick up the most trash. The prize, money! The kids love it! All the adults pitch in and give their dollar bills. Most of the time both teams win and they end up with more then just a dollar. Here is Tucker showing off his prizes! Notice he is most excited about the ring pop, and not the 3 dollars he got.

Emmy and her cousin Korby, these two are best buds and have been for years! I just wish we lived closer so we could see them more often!

While we were cleaning up Haydenn though she was so cool hangin out in the back of the truck, that is until the door got closed on her finger. Poor girl, it was fun while it lasted!
My Mother -in-Law gets all the credit for this beautiful flower garden! Every year after the reunion we have to stop by her house to get at least one picture in front of the flowers! To bad we have been camping for 4 days and are grimy and gross!

The power of 30!

I was very lucky the other night and was able to attend a very good enrichment meeting! I hesitated in even going. With Josh out of town, finding a sitter, loading up all the kids to go get the sitter, cleaning my house good enough so it would be OK for a sitter, and then trying to find something easy for the kids to eat for dinner before I left, all that combined it just seamed easier to stay home!


Well things just sort of fell into place and I realized I had no more excuses and should take advantage of the chance to get out and go. So I did.


I was so grateful that I did!!! I'm sure that most of what was said that night was directly for my benefit! It was the power of 30 minutes. 30 minutes of exercise, 30 minutes of cleaning, 30 minutes of food storage and 30 minutes of personal scripture study (I hope I didn't forget anyone!). A couple of the classes made me come away, not feeling over whelmed or bad about myself but with a new sense that "I can do this!"


Scripture study was one thing that I must admit I desperately needed to work on! When do you find the time? and then how do you go from reading to studying? I recently had an experience that confirmed to me that this was something in my life that I really needed to work on! A good friend of mine, compared scripture study to brushing your teeth, when you know the reason you are doing it, ( hygiene, to keep the plaque off, so and so on ) then does it effect the way you do it? Why do we study our scriptures? Because our eternal salvation depends on it! So then does that effect the way we study? It should!


She gave lots of good advice and examples on how to study and when. The things that stuck out for me and that seam to be working are, to study when the kids go down for a nap. I'm sure like everyone else nap time is priceless and I have a list a million things long of things that need to be done during nap time, but again if I understand why I need to study my scriptures (eternal salvation) then the priority of it gets bumped to the top!!! I even set a reminder on my phone, and when it beeps I drop what I'm doing and study my scriptures!


Now, how to study? For me it is so hard to just open the scriptures and start reading and really get into it, my mind starts to wonder. So she suggested to read an Ensign article and go from there. High light the parts that you like and then "study" that with the scriptures found at the end of the article. BRILLIANT!!! This has totally helped me stay focused and I'm learning a lot!


The very night I came home from enrichment, as I climbed into bed I thought to myself, I should read my scriptures. But then Satin starts to work on you and I kept giving myself every excuse, I'll start tomorrow when the kids take their nap, and I'm so tired. Something told me to just do it, no more excuses! So I did! I had my prayers and then studied my scriptures and had an amazing answer to a prayer! This just confirmed to me how we can't go a day without this! The time is now!


I'm so grateful for a Heavenly Father who knows me so well! Who knows the lessons I need to learn and who gives me people in my life that help me to learn them. I'm grateful for prayer and that he hears and answers our prayers. I'm grateful for the power of the spirit and how it strengths my testimony! But most important I can truly say how grateful I am for my scriptures!

The right of passage!

From baby to toddler! Look who has piggys!

So proud!

Man, I love this cutie!

When you can finally pull their hair into 2 piggys that's how you know they are now leaving baby hood and moving into the toddler world. Normally this is a day I totally look forward to. It means I can now do new things with their hair. But today I must admit there were tears in my eyes! Normally by this time there is another baby on the way and so it makes it a little less emotional. But this time is different. No new baby on the way! And the baby I do have is no longer a baby. That is SAD! Although she looks soooo cute and I love her new piggys, I wish I could go back to not realizing how she is growing up so fast, and how sad that makes me! Isn't there a magic formula that freezes them in the age they are for just awhile and then when your good and ready you can go back to normal?

I better end this post before I start to cry to!