News Flash...

That is Cheyenne with her back to the camera holdings hands with a boy that is also holding hands with another girl that appears to be as tall as Cheyenne.Directly across from Cheyenne there seems to be another girl who is taller. This is huge news in our house, the twins have always been taller than all the other students. Not just taller but leaps and bounds taller than their peers. When we attended their 4th grade program I knew to look for them on the top row because that is where they are always placed since preschool but sure enough Kaity was on the second row from the top and Cheyenne was on the top row but there were other girls there that are just as tall.

It has never bothered them that they are taller and I would venture to say that they kind of enjoy it. I know that they are continually comparing my height to theirs. If they have shoes with any kind of heel on them and I am barefoot they are almost taller than me. Which in all honesty is not very hard to do. I am what you would say mildly vertically challenged; I am not super short but I could use a pinch to grow an inch. Stand tall and proud my once tiny preemies and revel in the fact that you will be taller than your mother in the very near future.

Summer Days....

As it is snowing today and it is May 24th I am going to post summer pictures.....

Quick weekend trip to Huntsville, Utah....where I wish I could afford a home. BEAUTIFUL!

4th of July at grandmas house with the cousins...........

Makenzie having fun in the pools.........

Cheyenne and her cousin Alex

Kenzie playing in the sprinklers.............

Cheyenne posing............

Makenzie playing on the swing set

Twins at grandmas house in Idaho. They do not like to dress like each other anymore... :(...

Lagoon is always a destination we try to get to in the summer. The twins are tall enough to ride everything and they love to ride everything! Except Kaitlynn was not to sure of the newest rollercoaster "Wicked"...it is a little to fast for her I think.

Grandpa Bob being silly......

BBQ..and the smoker. I love summer because Adrian does most of the cooking and I love BBQ!

This is the girls great grandpa. He came to visit from Texas a couple years ago. How wonderful that the girls know some of their great grandparents..

Kaity on the 4th of July playing with the water guns...........

This picture was taken after Cheyenne got her hair cut after her hair cutting incident...

I love this picture! Their faces have ice cream and cake all over it and to me that says happiness!

Adrian with the most adorable baby I have ever seen :)!!!!

This was taken at the entrance of Timpanogos cave. The hike up to this cave is not for the faint of heart. The view from the peak is beautiful and cave feels good on a hot summer day. These kids have grown so much since this picture was taken......

Look at that, it is another picture of the most adorable baby ever!!!!!

Getting ready for fireworks on the 4th of July...mmmmm watermelon!!!

Swimming pool. We have a great community pool close by and we spend a lot time there in the summer.

The zoo seems to be a place we end up a lot in the summer......

Who is that adorable baby?.....I just want to squeeze and kiss those cheeks :)....

Assassination of a Governor...

Today was Cheyenne and Kaitlynn's 4th grade program. They have been studying Utah state history this year. I remember studying state history in 4th grade. I lived in Idaho at the time and I had Mrs. Bolton for my teacher. I must say she was one of my favorite teachers. We had to do a diorama on some topic about Idaho state history. I am not sure why but I chose to do mine on the assassination of Governor Steunenberg. He was killed by a bomb that was attached to his front gate. I did a house with the car out front and the display of a dead governors body.Why did my parents not seek therapy for me at this time? I think a parent should be concerned that their child is fascinated by a brutal murder of someone. They did not send me to therapy I guess they just hoped it was a passing morbid adolescent phase. Seriously, an assassinated governor displayed in a cardboard diorama and nothing was said. We did go to a graveyard for a field trip that same year, I was probably ecstatic over this outing.

On a lighter note in kindergarten for mothers day my teacher had the students recite what we thought was the ingredients to a recipe. The teacher would write down the recipes and we drew the pictures to go along with the ingredients. So most kids did mac and cheese or spaghetti and meatballs. I chose to be practical, I chose toast. I did get a little adventurous and decided to add cinnamon sugar to the toast but in all reality I think mine was the only recipe that was correct. I may have had a fascination with death but at least I knew the extent of my cooking skills so I can say I was a practical child.

Anyways, the program went well. We had to do a diorama of the county that they were given. Cheyenne was given Iron county which is Cedar City area and Kaitlynn had to do Daggett county which has a population of 600 so that proved to be a little more challenging considering there is not a lot in that county to display in a diorama. We had thought about doing a mobile home with a redneck hanging out on the porch with his fresh killed deer but we thought that would not be the most appropriate of displays but on the other hand I did display a dead governor in my 4th grade diorama.....

Chores

These are my tired and un-pedicured feet at the end of a chore filled Saturday. Some Saturdays are meant for play and some are just meant to finish up those things that you run out of time to do the rest of the week. My lawn was on the list of things to get done but I did not make that far today. With a family of five there seems to be a continual mess of shoes, toys, dishes, laundry and other miscellaneous things that seem to stray from the place they are meant to be.

I dust and two days later there is a new layer of dust. Where does all this dust come from? Doesn't this dust know I do not have the time to dust three times a week? Why do my children run their fingers across the dust and make it very noticeable that I need to dust?

My back porch is always covered in sidewalk chalk, scooters, yard equipment, and tools. I like the sidewalk chalk. I never wash it off I let mother nature take on that job, I think that is fair since I clean up her dust in my home. This message was written for grandma that will be visiting in a few days. We will see if stays long enough for grandma to see it.

"sigh"... the bathrooms. I clean and wipe down the counter tops and sure enough there will be toothpaste in the sink, hair, or whiskers. There will be water splattered up the mirror or a pool of water on the counter. Wet towels left on the floor and dirty clothes left after someone takes a shower. Written messages or smiley faces found on the mirror when steam from the shower consumes the bathroom...."sigh" ...the bathroom.

The dreaded spare room. Grandma is coming to visit so that means I have to clean all holiday decorations, spare clothes, craft items and boxes that seem to accumulate in this room. I tell myself everytime I clean this room when a visitor comes I will leave it this clean but as time goes on it becomes my room of laziness. I say laziness because the items that end up in this room have a place to go but I am to lazy to put them in their right spot so I throw it in this room instead. I will call it my temporary placement room from now on because I like that word better than lazy.

Laundry is a never ending process. When I have finally folded laundry and have it put away there is a hamper full of new laundry. The lost socks and clothes that I swear nobody wore but somehow they got washed. Some people find doing laundry enjoyable, I am not one of those people. I hate to iron and if it is a shirt that requires ironing I take it to the dry-cleaners. Really, who are these people who find laundry cathartic...sick...sick people!!!

I found time to make some jumbo M&M cookies today but this is not a chore to me. This is where I find peace. I love to cook and bake and try new recipes. I don't always have the time to cook like I used to but when I get a chance to be in the kitchen I am in my element. I cook things my children love and someday when they are grown and gone I will cook for just the two of us and I look forward to those days.

I am in this moment now. Dirty hand prints on the wall, backpacks and graded homework left on the kitchen table. Wet naked barbie dolls left in the tub and fruit snack wrappers left between the cushions of the couch. Band-aids placed on scraped knees and kisses on the forehead when it is time for bed. I have a list of chores that I perform everyday. I have chores that keep my home clean, or a meal on the table, or clean clothes to be worn to school the next day but ultimately all these things I do for my family and my family will never be a chore..............

" I wouldn't eat that"....

End of another term and I didn't come out smelling like roses this term just a wilted carnation. It was a rough term with a lot of bumps and bruises. I will give myself an A in effort but between the professors and the difficult subjects my mind seemed to short circuit a few times with what I think will be long lasting ramifications to my mental health. With numerous hours of study and 15 plus hours of studying a week placed in one class alone I was an emotional wreck by the end of term. My failure at an A in any class set me into a ravenous food binge that I quickly regretted the next day. I have been on a diet that has restricted my fat and sugar intake so the ingestion of numerous large chocolate covered shortbread cookies resulted in what could have been a perfect example of a Pepto-Bismol commercial. I thought to myself, not only is it harder for me to retain and remember information at my age resulting in my having to study twice as hard as that 19 year old college student next to me, but that 19 year old student probably can ingest vast amounts of baked goods from Costco and not have irritable bowel syndrome the next day.



I remember being 16 years old and me and a friend eating cookie dough and drinking massive amounts of Dr. Pepper and then we would finish it off with pepperoni pizza rolls. Just typing that list of ingredients makes my lower intestine cringe a little. Speaking of intestines cringing I know someone who decided to spread their bagel for breakfast with some cream cheese that had been left out overnight and this person said I was silly for saying, "I wouldn't eat that!" I think a food object that is found in the grocery store in the refrigerated section probably should stay refrigerated..just saying. Well the result of this somewhat perplexing decision resulted in this someone spending sometime with the porcelain god.



I would like to at this time continue on with the important subject of expiration dates on food. I am finding that our parents generation is not as concerned with the stamp of expiration on a food product. I could do a whole thesis on the subject but I will keep it short. Now granted I am one of those people who can't take a swallow of milk if it is one day pass the expiration date which though I know logically it is still okay I just can't bring myself to drink it. I do know though that if something has been expired for more than year it probably is not best to eat it. Is it my Generation X upbringing that makes me weary of everything. I grew up in the generation of razor blades in the apple, contaminated Tylenol, e-coli, salmonella, and the list goes on. I feel though that I am safe in my argument that if you proceed to eat a yogurt that is a year past expiration it probably is not going to taste to good yet some in this baby boomer generation throw caution to the wind and try to eat it nonetheless. Anyways, I could go on about this subject because I have done vast amounts of observing the expiration date criteria with my Gen X generation and that of my parents generation but I won't write my novel on that subject tonight.

I am going to conclude tonight by saying what I know about my eating criteria at age 34. I will no longer eat huge quantities of baked goods from Costco even if it sounds like a good idea at the time. I will not eat anything if it is expired for more then a day; I know it is extreme but it is my phobia so deal with it. I do not eat butterfingers,sauerkraut oatmeal,vienna sausages, oysters and brussel sprouts strictly for personal reasons. I will not eat dairy products if left out overnight or if the expiration date is older then my youngest child. I can not eat cold pizza or most leftovers cold, most have to be microwaved. Now if you excuse me I think I am going to go clean out my pantry.....

Sometimes the easiest decisions are the hardest.

So this weekend was probably just as traumatic for me as it was for the kids. This is a picture of Makenzie laying on Molly our springer spaniel. This is is how you always found the kids with the dog and Molly seemed to love it because she never moved or growled and if she tired of them she just moved to another part of the house and found a quiet place to sleep. We have had her for almost 6 years and had become part of our family.
Saturday morning me and the hubby were still in bed and the kids were downstairs watching T.V. and I heard the dog let out an aggressive bark with a growl and Makenzie began to cry and the twins began to scream for us. The dog had bitten our three year old on the face. It missed her eyeball but it got her eyelid and a deep gash was just below her eye. The dog knew she had done wrong and immediately began to shake and ran under the kitchen table. I was in shock at first, she had never...ever...had been aggressive with the kids. Of course I quizzed the twins to what had happened leading up to this event and they said Makenzie had done nothing to hurt her or scare her or anything to provoke such and action. Even if Makenzie had hurt her I knew that the aggressive action by the dog showed that she was probably capable of doing it again.
So I knew that she needed to leave our home. She is not an outside dog, she always been in our home so we knew that her going outside to a kennel was not an option but I did know she could not stay in our home. So through many tears; I think I cried the most, we put her up for adoption to a family that did not have small children in their home.
I had to wonder where I went wrong in the raising of her. Did I not show her enough that she was not the pack leader of Makenzie. I have extreme guilt over the situation and still very confused to what made her do something like that. The decision to make her leave our home was not a hard conclusion to come too but it was one of the hardest decisions that I had to follow through with. I tossed her dog bed and dishes yesterday through many tears. It broke my heart to have to do this but my children's safety comes first. A piece of my heart broke that day and I will miss her...stinky dog gas and all :)........