Huge American Idol Fan

I AM IN FRONT OF THE TV WATCHING AMERICAN IDOL EVERY TUESDAY AND WEDNESDAY. I CAN'T MISS IT!

Okay, I've been going back and forth for awhile now- cause I like both David's. However, David A blew it away tonight!! :)

so,

GO DAVID!

I HOPE YOU WIN!!!

WHAT A CUTIE!!

Briana Turns 12

My, oh my! How time flies. Didn't I just give birth to this child? :) So, Briana turned 12 on May 9th. She had a few friends over for a sleepover. Did you notice the Giant Cupcake? I found the cake mold at Williams-Sonoma and just had to have it. The cake looked much cuter at the store, but it's still alot of fun.

Briana got an IPod Nano. She's already put 130+ songs on it. The young women at church came over on Saturday morning and surprised her with balloons and chocolate covered strawberries. They are so cute. So overall I'd say she had a very fun birthday.

Happy Birthday, Briana!!

Happy Cinco De Mayo!

Happy Cinco De Mayo!
(I wish I would've posted that yesterday, though when it was actually Cinco de Mayo. )Anyway, this day used to hold only one anniversary... now we have two anniversaries on this day. First of all, Ronnie proposed to me on Cinco de Mayo 15 years ago! :) And now we have a new reason to celebrate- we moved into our house on Cinco de Mayo one year ago! So last night we had chicken enchiladas- my favorite- and chips and homemade salsa. We also had sparkling grape juice to toast with the girls. That was fun and they think it's pretty cool. Briana offered the toast. It was quite silly and I don't remember exactly what she said. But it was cute and sweet.
So HAPPY CINCO DE MAYO!!

Ooops- I forgot to tag someone else!!
I'm tagging Amy G and Jeanine N. :)

Seven Random Things

Okay, Christy Peake. I accept your tag. I've been gone so I'm just getting around to it~ so here are my 7 Random things about myself:

1. I'm very quiet in a big group of people (like 5-6 people or more) and then when it's just somewhere between 1-3 people, I can talk their heads off! For example, in Relief Society or some type of class, you won't see me say a word! But poor Ronnie, I can talk his head off.

2. I'm a tad chlosterphobic. Examples: I will not get in a crowded elevator. I will gladly wait 15 min. for another one if I have to. If too many people start to crowd around me, I'll escape where I'm out of the way. When my children all pile on top of me, they are quickly thrown to the floor. (gently) I guess I just need my space.

3. I too, like Christy, my tagger have a hearing loss. I had tubes in my ears when I was younger. I cannot talk on the phone with my left ear. If someone leans over and whispers in that ear, I have NO CLUE what they said. I will turn my head so they can whisper in the right ear.

4. I love to shop. If you call me and I'm not home, most likely I'm shopping! Maybe that's why I loved Chicago so much! :0

5. My biggest social pet peeve... people who interrupt me when I'm talking-- to try to tell me a bigger, better story. It's rude and they're really not listening. Clearly, they're more interested in themselves. LET ME FINISH MY SENTENCE, DANGIT!! Ughhhh!!

6. I am very forgetful. I swear I was never a child... I don't remember hardly anything. I forget dates, times, etc. etc. If it involves a number or the past, I won't remember it!

7. Okay, one last thing: I asked my family about some quirks that I have... here are their responses:
from Briana- I laugh too loud and it is sometimes embarassing for her. (gee, who hasn't ever embarassed their child before?)
from Ronnie- I walk like a duck, especially in heels. (thanks, honey!)
from Brooke- I cry alot. That is true. I cry watching tv almost every night.

Don't Hate Me...

But I just got back from a long weekend at Chicago. FUN... FUN...FUN! Me and 6 other women from church went and ate at great restaurants and shopped until we dropped. We also saw a musical called The Drowsy Chaperone. It was hilarious. We laughed all the way through it. If anyone ever has a chance to see it--- GO!! It's worth it!!
(I forgot my camera, so no pictures until somebody else from our trip sends them to me.)
Now I need a long weekend with my mom, sister, sister in laws and cousins and my favorite aunt. Now THAT would be fun!!

Great weather

I just have to say that I was outside most of the day today because it was a whopping 73 degrees! Yippie!! Last weekend my nephews were literally walking on the frozen pond behind our house (the ice was thin, but it was still frozen). And this week it's been beautiful and warm. All the snow is gone, the pond isn't frozen anymore and the kids are actually outside riding bikes, walking around in flip flops and short sleeves. Halalujah! Spring is coming... finally! As I was weeding out old, dead leaves, I could see new green buds underneath. The excitement was overwhelming. I didn't expect to see green yet!

Having fun in the snow

Jase has never seen the snow!
Lili having fun in the snow.
What is this stuff??
Love this picture!
Jeff with Jeff Jr. :)

My Baptism Day

The Cutest 8 yr old on the planet!

Mommy and Me
Daddy and Me
Kissie Kissie!!

This slide is of Brandi with our family having cake, opening presents and just plain 'ol having a fun time. (Sorry Brandi for making you take a shower before our party. Now all of our pictures are with wet hair and pajamas! :) Well, at least we know you're clean!!)
Thanks everybody for coming to see Brandi and us. We had a blast! We appreciate your sacrifices to be with us on this special day!!

Happy Birthday, Brandi

The best easter picture ever!

Okay, the story behind the first picture:
It's Easter morning, we're already running behind because we had to see what the Easter bunny brought everybody. All morning, I'm yelling, "hurry up, hurry up... or we're going to be late to church!" So I run up the stairs to see how everyone's doing about 45 min. after being awake... Brooke's sitting in front of her dresser pulling out blue jeans. So of course I freak out, pull out a dress for her, tell her to put it on, and to .... HURRY UP! So 10 min. later I walk up the stairs to do her hair, and I take one look at her and she's got everything on BACKWARDS! So we have to get dressed... AGAIN! Anyway, not a good morning, because mom was in a major PMS mood anyway-- not in the mood for the easter bunny that day, but what do you do?? Try to not kill anybody, take lots of deep breaths and remember how precious and wonderful they are! So anyway, in an effort to be nice, I wanted a picture before church, now Brooke's not in the mood. She truly tried to stop crying before I snapped the picture, but just broke down and couldn't help it. Poor girl. It's so true, if mama's not happy, aint nobody happy! We hugged, kissed and made up. :)

Happy Easter!

Brandi's favorite outfit

I had to post a picture of Brandi and her favorite outfit. She thinks she looks really cute... and I have to agree with her. :)

Restricting Access to Blog

Hi! I've decided to only allow my friends and family to view our family blog. I just want to be safe. I kind of creeps me out knowing that some stranger could possibly be lurking in on my family's life. If you have an alternate email address, just let me know... I'll fix it.
Anyway, this week is going to be fun. We're preparing for everyone to come this weekend for Brandi's baptism. See ya'll soon! :)

Updates

Seems like time just flies by before I even think about posting something new to the blog. So to everyone out there that has been checking and checking and nothing new... Sorry! Life seems to go on without thinking about this blog ! :)

We have been, as always, pretty busy around here. We've been battling colds and fevers this past week. I think I got hit the hardest. I haven't been sick in so long, so this has been miserable!! The kids seemed to recover within a day- I've been trying to recover now for 5 days!My really sweet neighbor brought over some chicken noodle soup and homemade breadsticks and some cupcakes tonight for dinner. Yummie

Let's see... since the Christmas letter I posted, I have enrolled Brandi and Booke in gymnastics class and they are loving it. I haven't taken the camera to capture pictures, but I will soon. Brandi is really a natural. I'm impressed by her posture and her flexibility. I knew she'd be great, but didn't really realize how great! Now there's even more flipping and cartwheels at home. Just what I knew would happen. :) Brooke is just funny with it. She's mostly in la-la land during class. Hopefully this can help her hone in on her attention span. Okay, maybe not.

This month I also threw a surprise party for a lady at church who turned 80! That was fun. We had a big turnout of all her friends. We had a nice lunch and then she got to open presents and eat birthday cake! How fun was that?! I wonder when the last time she had a birthday party and got to open presents?! She's such a sweet lady. I think we really surprised her.

Next... Valentine's Day was nice around here. Ronnie came home with roses. Aw, isn't he sweet? Our present to each other was our new tv we bought the week before.

One thing I should mention, too. Ronnie and I both went in to have a consultation on lasik eye surgery. We both were considered "candidates" but he was the only brave one to schedule surgery. To make a long story short... he couldn't have surgery because they are testing him to see if he has an eye disease called keratoconus. Basically, Ronnie's eye should be shaped like a basketball but his is shaped like a football. The dr. said that it's very rare. Maybe 1 out of 100,000 patients are diagnosed with it. They did say that there are other factors (like severe dry eye) that mimick keratocanus and hopefully he doesn't have it. We think dry eye makes sense- it's so dry here during the winter. He'll go back in a month to see if there's any progress. We'll keep ya posted. As for me, I'm not having surgery anytime soon. I watched the video and chickened out! :)

Okay, now on to the snow around here! There's just two words to say about that... 'GO AWAY'. It really is getting old really fast. But today was nice... it warmed up to 35 degrees. Yippie!
Well, that's my quick update. Talk to ya'll soon!

Our Cousins

We recently went down to SC and GA to visit our family. Here are a few pictures from that trip. Don't we have the cutest cousins ever? :)

Sledding is FUN

We have a great hill in our neighborhood called "The Secret Hill" because you can't see it from just riding around. It's hidden. It's the perfect size for the girls. We've had so much snow between Christmas and New Years Day that we wanted to take advantage of the winter fun we can have up here. Watch these videos and you can see that it was a blast! This video is the longest, the others are quite short. Enjoy!