A Road Trip!

K so this one day I went on a road trip to see my best friend because she had a new baby. So on the way up to Idaho I am driving along and look over and there is this cute boy in this little Honda Accord with his phone number in the window. I literally laughed out loud. So later I ended up writing my number on a paper and putting it in the window. He texted me and we discovered that he lives in Logan and is going to school at USU. And I of course was "too far away for dinner". But then the next text came in and he wanted to know if could take me to dinner in Idaho Falls. So I stopped and got him and we went to Smitty's. I thought for sure we would never see each other again. However, the next day he kept texting me. I was pretty surprised though. Long story short, we have become pretty close and this is a fun new thing. Dating can be fun and exciting... I didn't know! But life is, for the most part really good and turning corners is scary but I am still smiling!

I am still in school and trying hard to stay focused. It helps that I super love the classes I am taking right now. My professor is really strange, but he keeps life really interesting so I like it.

Gabe and Noah have joined the choir at school and seem to really love it. Gabe is such a good singer and Noah seems to have fun at whatever he tries. They are both also about to start soccer again also and so my days are about to get even more crazy. So anyone bored on a Saturday morning feel free to come watch my boys run!

Triston is talking better and has discovered the movie Toy Story! So now we have to take Buzz and Woody with us everywhere! Not my favorite part. But he is so cute. He is also getting a lot better at not throwing fits and listening. I however, have a hard time still not giving him what he wants! Some days it sucks to be the mom.

Scott is still such a huge part of me and us... and we (the boys and I) talk about him all the time and bring him with us wherever we go. Gabe sounds just like him and Noah looks just like him. So most of the day I just smile and laugh.

Thanks for all the love and support from all my friends and family. And to all the new people in my life too!

New BABY!!!

I just need to start out by saying... I am the new favorite AUNT!! Drew Denning was born on January 2nd! I got to go spend almost a week with this awesome little bundle and I loved every second of it. He is so sweet and mellow and adorable! I love hanging out with Melanie and J.R. They are super sweet and they make the cutest couple and they are already the bestest parents ever! I had the greatest week! Thanks everyone for watching my little rugrats so I could go spoil the new baby... I love having Mel as my best friend!

So now that Christmas is almost here and School has started again for everyone I am back to my regularly scheduled crazyness. It is not super fun and I have to be honest I am all done with this year. I need another one fast. Lucky for me time seems to be traveling at an accelerated speed most of the time. When Triston draws with sharpie marker all over my house and Tucker jumps the wall and scares the crud out of the neighbors or anyone else brave enough to walk down my street then it seems to really drag. But the hardest parts are the holidays. I used to love Halloween but this year was so stinkin' hard to get through. Dunno if it is cause it was Scott's favorite holiday or because I am just flat out of steam? But I am telling the truth, whoever said "time makes it easier" is either a bad liar or they have never lost anyone. Because so far it is only getting harder. However there have been some good things happening:

My Bestest friend in the world is pregnant with her first baby!!! She is even having a boy so I could give her all of my little boy stuff (I may have been keeping just in case for about 3 years now.) and other baby crap!! So she came down the end of September and we had a fun little babyshower for her. My mom and I may have gotten a little carried away with the blanket making, but hey she has no doubt she is loved! She is due in January and I am super excited to go up there and totally spoil this new baby. That is btw how I intend to be the favorite!

School this year is so much easier cause I feel like the schedule is so much easier for me and I am not running around so much. I also have Tuesdays and Thursdays with no class so it has made all the difference. I am even passing my math class without a personal tutor! It's practically a miracle! Next semester I am taking all history classes and I am super excited about it. I only wish Dixie offered all the ones I need. They don't however, so after this term I will have to start at SUU. Hope that goes well? I also have to finally apply to the program. I am super nervous. I really have to keep telling myself that God is on my team and He will help me get through this... along with Jalee and my mom and everyone else I always have to call to help me watch my kids while I am at school. Thanks everyone for that. I luv your guts!

I have also come to the conclusion that my kids are entirely too spoiled. So there are no more big trips planned to parts unknown any time in the near future. I decided they have to earn trips to fun places by helping me around the house and saving our pennies. I just kinda feel like they need to learn to appreciate the things they have got and the fun things they have seen and done already. I guess I just don't want to teach my kids that they get to expect a yearly family trip. They have to earn it instead. I am also a little bit glad that I have so many trees in my yard. They have to help me rake them and they super hate it and I am kinda glad that we have to do it cause I don't like it either but it makes us all earn our keep. I like that feeling.

Gabe has a girlfriend named Daisy now and he asked me the other day how he could get here to like him. I was like I thought she already likes you. He said she told him he was gross sometimes. So I explained that girls don't like to hear boys talk about bodily functions...ever. It will always be funny to boys and it will never be funny to girls. He was like "ohhh" why is that always a revelation for boys? Anyway I can't tell everyone how weird it is to give your 8yr old tips on how to win a girl. I thought for sure he would be older before this happened. OH well at least he is talking to me about it huh.

Noah is in first grade and is super excited about everything. He gets recess out back with the big kids! He gets to go to school lunch every day! His teacher used to be Gabe's teacher! But then when it is time to do homework... BAM! Excitement is gone! I can't really say I blame him though cause that is how I feel about doing my own homework so what do you do? We just plug away and get it done. He is also super excited about reading too. He is so cute and fun to listen to. I just need more super short books, cause it takes him a while.

Triston is awesome as usual and has adopted "the devil voice" as Aunt Mel has dubbed it, whenever he doesn't get what he wants. I am having to hear it a lot more as he is learning to share and other things that make me the mean mom. But I am stickin' to my guns cause he is already a bit out of control so I am crackin' down and not giving him anything he wants. Thus we are having a lot more fits and I find we are staying home a lot more. It will pass though hopefully and then perhaps we can go places without fits? I dunno I'm not holding out for too much.

My kids are super awesome! I have tons of support and I am thankful for what I have. Sometimes I just wish I could see my love sooner rather than later.

Summer!!!

K so man I got a little busy this summer and I may not have been home for ummm well for most of it actually.

Rome

I LOVE ROME!!! I could seriously spend so much time there. We went and saw everything that we could cram into the days we had. We got 3 days in Rome, 3 in Florence and 2 in Venice. I think Rome was my favorite by far but there was just so many great works of art in Florence it was almost overwhelming. I took meticulous notes, in fact my friend actually has a picture of me writing furiously while the tour guide is talking. I then I would hurry and take a picture of it then keep writing. It was so fun though. Melanie was a trip. She makes me laugh so hard and we had the most fun making fun of the silly things we saw out in public. Venice was just really relaxing. And the Gondola ride was so much cooler than I thought it was gonna be. So I got back from this awesome 9 days out and 2 days later went to

Lake Powell

Oh my gosh it sucked soooo bad! The wind blew and blew and broke shit and kept blowing. We ended up leaving 3 days early. But oh well, I got like two more books read!

Florida

Then I had about a week off and On June 22nd we flew to Florida for like the worlds longest vacation. The first few days we spent at Jody's and Miss Pam's. We went to the springs and the kids thought that was super fun (minus the dang mosquitos) and then we rode the golf cart and jumped on the trampoline and went down the waterslide and tons of fun at Miss Pam's house. Then that first Saturday we had Gabe's baptism in the ocean. He was baptised by Ian Loveland (Scott's best friend who was baptised with Scott). It was so amazing. Then we checked into the beach house and settled in for a week of fun and the sun and the waves. We had so much fun at the beach house. We were parked right on St. Augustine beach and it was so pretty. Gabe even learned how to skim board and he is awesome at it now. We played games and did puzzles and hung out. We even went for a run or two together. I could soo live there. Then we did the fireworks over the old fort with the Lovelands and the Hardees and spent so much fun time together. Then off the Orlando for more adventures

Orlando was super busy after the do nothing attitude at the beach but I was geared up and ready for it. Monday we went for an airboat ride in the swamp and saw some alligators and some cranes and some bald eagles. Then Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday we went to Universal studios and Harry Potter!!!! I loved it a ton! We went in Hogwarts Castle and it was soo cool. They had the eagle that is the entrance to Dumbldore's office, and the portrait of the fat lady and the Gryffendor common room and the classroom where the cornish pixies got loose and the sorting hat and so many other cool things! We all got wands and had butterbeer. We also got to get our faces painted and run and play in the fun water rides. My kids were so good in the lines to wait and we had the most fun.
Then on friday we flew home and I'll tell ya that was a bit of an experience getting through the airport with me and my 3 kids. But they were super patient and really good at following instructions. So we did really well with no major catastrophies. Our flight out of Atlanta was delayed like 2 hours or 3 though so that was a bit sucky. Other than that however, we were a great team. So fare there are about 3 2weeks of summer left. Boo!!

Camping

THis weekend I am off to Bryce to camp with my family. It is always the most fun because whenever Brenda comes she brings more snacks than ever and there is never much to do but sit and eat them. so that is what I do and who wouldn't wanna do that? Gabe is excited because there is a whole forest full of stuff for him to carve with his new pocketknife and Noah is wanting to go fishing with Uncle Michael. I am pretty sure it will be a great weekend.

The last week

My friend Melanie are still deciding how to do this but somehow we will spend a week or so together. Either she will come here or I will go there... but it's in the cards so it will happen. I hope we get to do nothing but scrapbook.

summer is my favorite!

The end is in sight!

Okay so The trip to Rome is booked, half the trip to Florida is booked, the lake powell weekend is booked and school is only 3 weeks from over!!! I am so ready for summer! Turns out my kids are too.

On a more fun little side note: On Saturday the ROTC on Dixie College Campus had a little obstacle course. I thought is sounded super fun so I found 3 willing participants and we all went to try our best. I thought there would be 4 or 5 obstacles. I may have been a little off. So Delina, Kelly, Joy, and I get there and they hand us a map of the course. There were 13 obstacles! So come with me on the ride for this was such a funny adventure for us.

First was the rock climbing wall. Not too bad and we got through it pretty quickly. Then comes the one rope bridge. You know the kind you have to hang from upside-down and shimmey from one end to the other holding on with your feet and hands. But again, not too bad.

Then we come to the litter carry obstacle. K not our favorite obstacle. We are already a little tired and our arms are getting a bit floppy. So we have probably about 150 pounds to carry around the water fountain. I tell you it was such a long way around! So we get done with that and our arms are limp. We cant even hold them up in the jogging position to jog to the next obstacle. So we are running along all floppy arms and out of breath like..."come on we can do this".

So then we have to make 8 baskets with these small little basketballs. Which I'm proud to say we did successfully without anyone's arms actually falling of! They felt like they should at any second.

Then we have to do 100 push-ups and 100 sit-ups. Let me clarify before you get all wound up... it was to be split between the 4 of us. So 25 each. Or we could opt for one person to do more but they could do no more than 50. So when we first got there we did a little walk through of the course and Kelly and Delina were like, "oh 25 that's not too bad. We can totally do that no problem." I was like.. uhhh fat girls here. I think I could do maybe 3?

Well so we get there and pump through them pretty good but then we get to the sit-ups and Kelly was like oh my gosh funny!

After the sit-ups we get to move tires. Not car tires or even truck tires. Semi-truck tires is what we get. two of them. So in teams of two we have to move them about 100 yards down and 100 yards back. And we can't pick em up and roll em, we have to up-end them over and over till they pass both lines. Now please keep in mind our arms are screaming at us at this point in the game.

Then just to make sure we have not missed any possible bit of upper body muscle that has not yet been abused in some form or fashion we get to move water jugs, (about 25-30 pounds each) one on each arm, down and back. Kelly made it most of the way and we had to go help her a bit. But man we were a supportive team right!

K so then it is off to the mine field. We have to maneuver through a grid pattern and not get totally killed off. We managed this actually pretty quickly and then off the the low crawl!

The low crawl was it's own little piece of heaven! We had to low craw under these ropes with a weapon and to top it all off they went ahead and filled the pit with mud and about 4 inches of standing water! YESSSS! Joy was so annoyed there was no warning. She may have taken off her shoes and shirt. But she did put a different one one. Whew! After you get out of the muddy pit you then crawl through 2 covert things and then hand your weapon off. So I crawl through the mud (completely soaking my weapon don't worry) and then I look down the tunnel and throw my weapon to the other end and half crawl half midget step through the tunnel. I then repeat this process for the second tunnel. I thought man I'm glad this isn't for real cause the enemy would surely have heard that and gotten to my weapon way before me!

We then get to throw grenades! k not real ones.. I know right where's the fun in that. Well the pit we had to throw them into was a fair way off. So we all pick up a grenade and throw it at the pit. Mine goes in, so I throw another and it goes in too. I then turn to see the very best retarded girl throw from Delina that I have ever seen! She is like wow who gave me this thing? I better not throw anymore. So they give them to me and I hurry and lob them in. But is was so far away that I am having to Happy Gilmore them in.

Then we have to run from one end of the complex to the other. Please let me paint this picture of B - E- A- U - T - Y! There is Joy with a white (well used to be) t-shirt on that is hanging off her like a wet rag and no shoes (she didn't wanna get them ruined in the mud) Kelly and Delina are no better and they have their shoes still on. Then there is me with these capri sweat pants on that were cute before the bottom half was filled with water and little rocks. So we are jogging and with every step you hear us squishing and water is squirting out of the bottom of my capri sweats and running in little brown streaks down my shins. We were beautific!

We then have to shoot this gun and knock all the bottles down. So me and Joy just pick up the guns and start shooting. We were like whatever, hope there is plenty of ammo! ping ping ping ping! It was so fun!

We had so much fun and when all was said and done we got second place overall!!! We got trophies and everything! We laughed about it so hard. When I get the pictures I will post some. We were awesome!

See weekends can be super entertaining

 

School and the Expo

So I love that everyone is like, "so how is school going?" and I am like well it is still going weather I wanna go or not. Turns out I am all done! I just don't want to go anymore and there is still over a month to go. BOO! But the good news is that the scrapbook expo is this weekend!!! Not only do I get to go there and make fun of all the super strange ladies that are clamoring over one another for the next free item, I get to spent the whole weekend with my very best friend!!! Melanie, ready or not here I come! (complete with diet coke and chocolate!)