Kids Say the Darndest Things...

I know...kind of a lame title for a post, but I wanted to share some of the things that keep me laughing every day.

We were playing Simon Says with Jordan:
Josey: Simon says put your finger in your nose
Jordan thinks about this for a minute and his finger is getting very close to his nose, and then he says: I can't. I don't want to get germs on it because I just washed it.
(Lately Jordan has become a huge germophobe and is obsessed with washing his hands. They are raw and bleeding.)

Jarrett's nursery teacher asked who wanted to say the prayer in nursery and Jarrett raised his hand. When she chose him he said, "I'll do it to the best of my ability." She said all the other nursery kids were just staring at him, thinking What??

The other morning I sent Jordan to his room and Jarrett gets this evil little grin on his face and says to me, "If we had a locker, we could lock him in his room!" Amazing how my sweet little boy could come up with such a mean punishment for his brother.

Thank goodness these sweet little boys give me something to smile about every single day. I'm blessed to have such good kids. They have their bad days like all of us, but for the past 2 weeks, even when they were both really sick, they really have been angels and I am so grateful!

I've been meaning to update my blog for awhile, but then I never quite get around to it. This post may be a lot of talking and very few pictures, since I don't have many.

So what's been happening with us? Well, if you haven't heard by now, I'm going to have another baby (due in June). We are very excited, and I've been feeling okay - not great, but okay - and since the first trimester is officially over, I think I'll be rounding a corner any day here now in the energy and nausea department. My biggest complaint is my sore hip, which has prevented me from running more than about 3, maybe 4 if I'm lucky, days a week. I'm not 100% sure what's wrong with it because I never went to the doctor. I know what his diagnosis will be: stop running. I know, I know! I need to stop, but some days during the first trimester running was my lifesaver as it helped me feel like I had some energy and just helped me feel more like myself. My theory is that the inflammation in my hip was brought on by hormonal changes that came with pregnancy because that is right when it started and I had similar weird things happen when I was pregnant with Jarrett. It's a bummer, and eventually I will have to stop running to give it a rest, just not quite yet. Running has definitely not really helped with the weight gain thing. I'm only at 13 weeks, but I definitely look a lot more pregnant than that. And I will not post a picture.

We spent Thanksgiving this year in Montana, and during the whole four days we were there, I took about four pictures. We had a great time, as always. I'm so blessed to have such awesome in-laws.

Here are a couple of snow pictures. We've had a good amount of snow, but it hasn't been the kind of snow that's very good to play in. Plus, it's hard to find a day when it's not blowing so hard that it makes it miserable to take the kids out. One Sunday afternoon after church, it was a very nice day and the kids wanted to play in the snow so I bundled them up and bundled myself up and we went outside. Then I decided to take them on a little walk, pulling them behind me in the sled. I really haven't been up for a lot of activity since this pregnancy has wiped out a lot of my energy, and since I was feeling really good this day and actually wasn't tired, I decided to take them sledding. So we started walking to the sledding hill, when Jordan's little mind starts working and he tells me, "But mommy, we're not supposed to go sledding on Sunday." Talk about guilt and living a double standard! But I just told him that mommy felt good that day and it would be okay to go sledding. Hopefully he doesn't remember that lesson from his mommy in the future. I don't know if I would even consider us really breaking the Sabbath (Josey might), but it was nice for my 4-year-old to point it out to me that we were.

Josey has been really busy coaching girls' basketball (the team's not doing great so far, but hopefully they're improving), so we're really excited for Christmas break. I'm sure Josey's very excited to see what I got him for Christmas. Unfortunately for him, I already know what he got me and I'm going to LOVE it. See, here's what happened. He ordered a present for me the other day on Amazon and it said it would be shipped in 5-9 days, so he wasn't even sure if it would be here by Christmas. Usually when we get something here by UPS or FedEx, it doesn't get delivered until about 9 or 10 p.m., so he probably figured he would be home. Well, it didn't quite work that way. While he was at school the other day, the FedEx man made a special delivery. I was surprised when I opened the door and found a box labeled "Masseur In-A-Box." (It is a massage mat that lies flat and gives a really good back rub.) He really should have paid the extra $6 to get it gift wrapped, but he was too cheap. (And if it had been in a plain brown cardboard box, I would have just wrapped it and put it under the tree.) But now the surprise was already ruined, so I figured I better give it a try. It was awesome! He has a knack for picking out presents that I would never consider getting for myself, but I always end up enjoying them way more than the clothes I thought I wanted. I love you Josey! I promise my Christmas is not ruined, and now I better go get a massage.

Even Superheroes Pick Their Noses

We got the kids dressed up in thei costumes for our ward Halloween party the other night. Jordan really wanted to be a superhero this year, but it was really hard for him to decided which one he wanted to be. He changed his mind about a hundred times, so finally I just ordered The Flash costume for him because it seems to fit: The Flash is really fast and Jordan loves to run and be fast. He's loved it, even though not everyone knows who The Flash is. Jarrett wanted to be The Hulk. After Josey sprayed his hair black, we read on the can to be careful of using it on light or thin hair, so I was really worried that it wouldn't come out, but it did. These boys are my cute little superheroes. I just wish I could have got some cuter pictures outside in the fall leaves, but we've been covered in snow for the past couple of days. Happy Halloween!

I Have No Pictures, but...

Yesterday WHILE JOSEY WAS WATCHING THE KIDS (yes, that is an important point), Jordan managed to climb onto the roof of the house. Josey was doing some roof repair and had left the ladder precariously perched on a table so that he could reach the roof, and I guess Jordan thought it would be fun to try and climb it. He is a brave little boy, and a good climber. Apparently, he got quite the scolding from his daddy about how dangerous this was, but luckily he managed to survive with no falls. Life is always an adventure with these two.

So, next time Josey gives me a (very) hard time when something like this happens while I'm watching the kids:

I'll just remind him about the time Jordan climbed onto the roof under his care!

Each time I update my blog, I tell myself I'm going to come back in a week or so and update again. I'm going to take more pictures and remember everything, but then about a month passes and I'm kicking myself for not updating more often. So I'll do my best to remember the highlights of our last days of summer, but I didn't take very many pictures.

Last week, Josey and I went down to Salt Lake to watch the U.S. national soccer team play El Salvador in a World Cup qualifying match. When Josey originally told me he wanted to go to this game, I was a little surprised, because usually we just do one thing like this each fall, and that is for a BYU football game. But he insisted, and so I don't know if we'll make it to a BYU game, but he said this was worth it. I have to agree; it was so fun and exciting, and who knows if we'll get to see the national team play live again anytime soon! I played soccer all my life, but I've never been into watching soccer that much. Josey has been following the U.S. team since a little after we were married, but lately he's gotten into it a lot more. The atmosphere at the game was unlike anything I've ever been to before, probably because we were sitting by a huge section of El Salvador fans. And they were NOT NICE! If Americans would walk by some of them, they would flip them off right in their face and yell things at them. Bad swear words. So that wasn't so fun, but what was fun was that the U.S. won 2-1. And then we rushed out to the car to find out that BYU beat Oklahoma! It was a great day overall, and a fun date.

At the end of August, I ran in the Top of Utah Half-Marathon. My goal was to beat 1:40, and I ended up running it in 1:37:27 (7:26/mile). This was 6 minutes faster than my time at this race last year, so I was really happy. It helped that I knew the course, and knew what to expect. I went down with a couple of friends from Kemmerer, who I also trained with. Kayla (on the far left) is a high school senior and one of Josey's track stars. She's a sprinter, and she says she will never do another distance race. We'll see about that. Amanda (center) has become one of my really good friends, and I think we'll continue to run together when we can. Her little boy is one of Jordan's really good buddies so that is fun. This race was going to be my last of the season, but I might decide to enter the Pinedale Half-Marathon at the end of this month because I really love races!


Just a picture of Jarrett being his goofy little self. This boy loves to be a clown, and some days I don't know what to do with him. He thinks everything is a joke. But since he's so cute, I guess it's okay for now.


One night we went with another family to catch crawdads in the Ham's Fork river. I had never seen them before, but we knew the boys would have fun. Josey says he used to catch them when he was little. He read on the internet that they eat meat and you can bait them with hot dogs. Well, this didn't really do any good because he just caught them with his hands. But while he was looking he still had the hot dog (just a small piece) tied to a string that he was pulling through the water. When they had been in the water for about a half hour or so, Josey noticed the hot dog was suddenly missing. He asked Jordan if he ate it. Of course he did, "because the crawdads weren't eating it"! YUCK!! Luckily, he did not get sick.

Jordan has mastered the art of the monkey bars. Here he is on some rings doing his thing. He will swing on the monkey bars until he has blisters. I'm very proud of his skills!

Summer Fun

We've been so busy this summer that I haven't taken much time for blogging. We've just been having too much fun I guess. What have we been up to? Just the regular summer stuff...we've gone to Bear Lake a couple of times, slept under the stars, and played in the water practically every day (Josey has spent practically our whole monthly entertainment budget on water guns for the boys, trying to find just the right ones; he keeps going back to the store for more). Josey's been working on his golf game and I've been running a lot. I'm planning on running the Top of Utah half marathon in Logan at the end of August, so I've been training for that. I've also found someone to run with. I'm so excited! I've been trying to convince anyone to run with me, and I finally found a friend who is getting back into running and is also training for the half marathon, so it's been fun to not have to run alone every day.

We spent the last week up in Montana with Josey's family. We spent a couple of days in western Montana at Flathead Lake, which was beautiful. Then we spent a few days in Lewistown. Unfortunately, we forgot our camera so I didn't get any pictures of this entire trip.

I'm going to try to take more pictures and update my blog a little more regularly, but for now, here are some pictures from our summer.

Jan managed to get some pretty cute (I thought) family pictures of us while she was visiting.

Here's Josey giving me a kiss after we got into a water fight one afternoon, and got totally soaked. It's pretty hard when your opponent is a foot taller than you. He always seems to have the advantage.

Josey usually soaks the kids when they want to have a water fight, and this time Jordan didn't want to get wet, so this was what he put on. His dad still showed no mercy.

Yes, I'm the mom who puts the white pasty sunscreen on my kids, but they don't seem to notice yet.

My buff hubby at the lake.

S'mores!

Last week Lyle & Jan came to visit for a couple of days. While they were here we decided to have a fire and make s'mores. I think the pictures say it all. (Except you might not be able to tell from the pictures that Jordan decided he didn't like s'mores because they were way too messy, and Josey enjoyed his Reeses Peanut Butter Cup s'more WAY too much.)

Warning: Picture Overload

We've been enjoying a couple weeks of summer break so far, but the weather hasn't been much like summer. It won't stop raining! I really can't wait until the sun comes out. (At least it's not snowing like it did last year in June. I remember posting about it on this blog.) So what have we been up to?

Jordan "earned" his new bike. I had really been wanting to get him a bike this summer, but he had to earn $50 by being a good boy, $1 at a time. When he was naughty, he got a ticket and had to pay depending on the offense. The idea worked really well (meaning he exhibited REALLY good behavior) for about 3 days, and after that the novelty kind of wore off. But after about a month, he earned his bike.




We also hit another deer with our old brown car. Luckily, this was on our way shopping for a new car, but it was still disappointing, especially because it totaled our car and we got ripped off by the insurance company. (If you look closely at this picture, you can see the mirror hanging off. Josey wouldn't let me take a picture of the car with all of the deer poop splattered all over the side. He thought that was gross. Also another gross sidenote: when I tried opening my car door to inspect the damage, all of the icky deer hair flew in on me. And after suffering through that, my door wouldn't even open.) Anyways, when we found the new car we wanted (actually Lyle the car-hunter spotted it at the back of a dealership - exactly what we were looking for), we decided to get rid of our old red car too. I've had this car since my sophomore year at BYU, and it has served us well, but it's just not that safe anymore for Kemmerer driving in the winter. Luckily, it made the drive to Salt Lake just fine, and we got a little play money out of it.


So what did we do with our play money? We decided to blow most of it by spoiling the kids with a day of fun at Boondock's to kick off the summer (And once we have more than 2 kids, we will probably never return because this place is a money-sucking pit).

It didn't start off being too much fun for Jarrett, who was totally exhausted.



Jordan got to ride with his daddy on the bumper boats.


Jarrett managed to wake up for the giant playground. What kid wouldn't?




Me & Arielle took a ride on a roller-coaster simulator. I wanted to be excited and a little bit scared, I really did. But it wasn't even close to the real thing.

And while me & Arielle were having all the fun, Josey got to let the boys use all their tokens on the arcade games. He was not happy about this. He kept getting so annoyed because they would choose games that were way too hard for them (duh, they're 4 and 2) and lose in about 2 seconds. Oh well; they were still having fun. They probably would have had just as much fun pretending to play the games while Josey used all their tokens to have his own fun.


Here are a few more pics of what we've been up to:

Almost burning the house down with all of Josey's birthday candles.


Picking mommy flowers. (I just couldn't resist posting another picture of this cute little face.)

Running through the sprinklers on a day when the sun broke through for a couple hours.

And finally, Daddy torturing Jarrett.

Vain Repetitions

Every time it's Jordan's turn to say the prayer (family prayer, dinner prayer, whatever), he never fails to ask Heavenly Father to help us "be nice and share our toys." He doesn't really seem to put much thought into it, so this morning I told him that today when he had trouble sharing, we were going to try to remember to ask Heavenly Father to help us. So today when he wouldn't share his precious monster truck with Jarrett, I had to intervene and try resorting to the prayer. I said, "Remember when you prayed this morning for Heavenly Father to help you be nice and share your toys...?" Before I could even finish the sentence, he interrupted with, "Yes, but I'm not going to pray for that anymore."

Happy Birthday to Me!

I guess it's about time for another post since it's been a month. In that month, we've been pretty busy. Arielle, me, Jordan, & Jarrett took a trip to Montana at the beginning of May to surprise her dad for his birthday. We showed up at about 11:00 at night as Lyle was just about to fall asleep, and I think he was pretty happy to see his grandsons and daughter. It was a fun little road trip and as always, fun for the boys to see their grandparents. We had some funny moments with all of Jordan's jabbering, but we really enjoyed the peaceful times when the boys were sleeping. Here we caught Jordan with a huge amount of drool and we thought it was gross, but funny, so we couldn't resist taking a picture. (You might have to look really closely to notice the drool.)

Josey's been busy every weekend with track. I've visited my parents a couple of times while he's been gone to try to get a dose of warmer weather. This past weekend it was the Richmond Black & White Days celebration. (That's the town where I grew up, and it's a Holstein cow show, not the most racist town in America, as Josey likes to claim.) It was fun to take Jordan & Jarrett to some of the things I used to think were so awesome when I was a kid, like the parade. I also decided to enter the Cowabunga race, just for a chance to run. I thought it was a 5K, but it ended up being only about 2 miles. I did win the female division, and took home the prize of two free tickets to the horse pulls. Too bad I had to go back to Kemmerer before the big event.

The Wyoming state track meet is this weekend in Casper, and I'm going to go with Josey and leave the boys with my parents. I'm a little nervous about this because I've never left them for more than a night, but I think it will be fun to enjoy some time with Josey and get to see some of the athletes he's been working with without trying to make sure my boys are not trying to run onto the track.

And finally...happy birthday to me. Yesterday, I turned 27. Can you believe I'm that old?

The best thing about my birthday? The beautiful weather! It was the most beautiful day of the year. I've been waiting for this, and I really hope it stays for at least a few days. My sweet sister-in-law and husband made me a delicious breakfast in bed. I can't show you any pictures besides this one because I look horrible, but just suffice it to say that it was delicious, and I didn't really need to eat for the rest of the day.

Josey also made dinner and got me some flowers. We have a little issue with flowers because one year for our anniversary (5 years ago), Josey bought me a dozen roses from this little flower shop, and I don't think he knew in advance that they were going to cost $100. Seriously, that's how much they cost. I flipped out, and since that time he's never bought me flowers. I guess he decided to try again. (I haven't seen the receipt yet.) I appreciate the gesture, and they are beautiful. My friend also made me some cupcakes. I thought that was really sweet.

I always feel spoiled in May because it's Mother's Day and my birthday. I am lucky to have a sweet husband who likes to do thoughtful things. This Sunday, it's my turn to spoil him because it's his birthday. Well, today is another beautiful day so I better stop blogging and go start enjoying it!

I Hope He's Not Allergic...

Today while Jarrett was napping, I was upstairs doing something and Jordan was downstairs where he was supposed to be resting and watching a TV show. When I came downstairs, I noticed our very large can of peanuts sitting on the couch next to him. I said, "Jordan, what are you doing?" He just looked at me and said: "Well, I was hungry, and I wanted a snack, and I thought peanuts would be a good snack." Okay, good logic. (I know this might not sound that funny, but if you got to listen to the way he said it, you would be laughing too.) I was a little concerned that half of the can was gone, and I just opened it yesterday. Later today he complained to me about a canker sore. Hmm, I wonder where he got that from.

Later he wanted a drink and I guess I wasn't fast enough because I noticed him drinking from the milk carton. He said "Mmm, it tastes good like that." Drinking from the milk carton is a definite no-no in this house, and I told him so. He said, "well, daddy does it sometimes." Oh, really? Now Josey's secret is out, and I'm not too happy about it.

Spring Break Recap

Last week was Josey's spring break, so he had a week off from school. Since Arielle had knee surgery on the previous Thursday, we spent the week at home, and Jan came down to help Arielle out. At the end of the week, Josey's brother Jesse also came down to spend some time with us. So we didn't do too much, but it was nice to have a little break. Here's a little of what we did:

The boys found a new best friend, their uncle Jesse. After spending the first day with them, he asked us if they were like this (energetic, hyper, etc.) every day. Yes, they are!

We went swimming at the Kemmerer pool. We do this at least once a week, but this time I took a camera. I would take them more, but the pool is FREEZING! They are fine with it, but I am not.



We visited the Easter Bunny that "lives" at the Fossil Country Museum.


We decorated Easter eggs!


The boys played with their new baseball "mittens" that the Easter Bunny left them. Yes, it was still too cold and windy to play outside. Maybe by next week it will be nice enough.


We decided to brave the cold and wind to try and get some family pictures. It didn't work too well! Maybe in a couple months we'll try again. I just have a good feeling that spring is almost here in Kemmerer, after this next snowstorm blows through.