Here's a couple of cute little snippets of video from the last couple of days!  The one of Matthew is in the rental center which will hopefully be done this week, (She says while crossing her fingers.)  The bit with Emma is something Emma does on a daily basis, she loves to sing!

Do not procrastinate the day of your folding!!!

So, over a period of several days I put several loads of laundry through the washer and dryer.  In the end I think I ended up with 7 loads of laundry that was all clean.  Unfortunately, none of it was folded.  Thus I ended up with a very large pile of laundry that needed folding.  What else to do with that situation, but plop the kids in the middle and take some pictures?  So, here they are:

Emma is not actually sitting on the ground because the laundry would have covered her up entirely, so she is sitting on some of the clothes high enough to see over the top of the rest of them.

Here's bubbers!  Actually, Emma was still in her spot, but I wanted one with just Matthew, so she's hiding!

Here's both of them!  They thought it was pretty fun to be buried in the laundry!

Here's a top view.  What cute little ones!

P.S.  After 2 people spending 1 1/2 hours folding on Friday night, we had all this laundry folded.  However, I still had 3 more loads to wash and fold on Saturday morning.  I think we have too much laundry!! :)

Families are such a blessing!!!

So, we have both been blessed with really good families!!!  As most of you know we have been doing a lot of the work on the rental center ourselves because we are SO over budget.  It has taken a lot of time, but we are fortunate enough to have wonderful families who have helped us. 

Yesterday was yet another gathering at the rental center to do some major cleaning, tiling and landscaping.  So, thank you to all who came yesterday as well as to all who have come on any of the other occasions!  If you have come more than once, then thanks even more, we really appreciate it. 

If you have not come, but have stayed alone with your children (especially on a Saturday) so that your good husbands could come, I want to say a special thank you!  I know how long the days can get when you are taking care of your children by yourself, and we really appreciate your sacrifice in our behalf!

We love all of you and know the Lord will bless you for all of your selfless service.  

Happy Sunday!!!

Lub-lubs

Looking at the camera and smiling while holding still is apparently a hard thing to do for a child!

Here are some more pics that I was commanded by Jenn to blog!  Just kidding Jenn, I really do appreciate the pics and am glad you sent them to me so I could blog them.

K - so I tried the "no layout" option for the pictures on my last post and it turned out random because I don't know how to do it, so I'll go back to the "centered" photo option.

These are pics from last night.  We went out to the rental center to have dinner with Daniel since he didn't get home till late.  Afterwards we went to Mom and Dad's house and visited with them as well as Stacey and her kids.  Here are some cute pics of the kids.

We were trying to get a pic of the 3 of them, but Jenn couldn't get one where they were all sitting still, so we've got one with Brady's foot.  Nice shoe eh?

Emma loves her cousins.  She especially loves it when the older ones play with her.  Thanks Joshie!

Emma's "cheese" face.  You'd think the sun was bleaming her in the eyes!  She's still cute though.

We were trying to get a picture of Camden and Matthew to show their size but we were having a hard time getting them to sit by each other.

Now they are looking, but not smiling...

Now they're smiling (sort of), but not looking...

Perfect!!  Finally looking and smiling (at least one of them is.  I think Camden had just about had it at this point!) 

 Stace and I both agreed that the bending over slouching position that we had to be in to be able to get the babies to look at the camera was not the most attractive thing ever.  Thank goodness for the ability to crop photos, right Stace!?!

Crazy Games!!

I was threatened by Jenn that if I didn't post these pictures, she'd be terribly upset because she stayed up late to send them, so here they are!

We went to Seth and Karla's house to play games last Saturday, and it was great fun.  I don't remember the name of the game, something about curses.  Anyway, there were all these cards that had certain things we had to do on them.  It was hard to remember to do everything on all the cards.  It was hilarious to see everyone trying to do all kinds of crazy things like talking with clenched teeth the whole time, or talking like Mr. T "I pity the fool!"  Anyway, it was lots of fun!

  Here's Daniel and me.  I had to hold that card with both hands and keep my hands in fists.  I am looking at all my cards before I start my turn to try to make sure that I don't miss anything.  Of course I did miss something anyway, because there was too much to remember.  Daniel is pretending to talk through a walky talky!  Fun, fun!

Here's Daniel reading to Emma.

She loves her daddy!

                                          

Matthew doesn't 

like to be on his 

tummy very much...obviously

       

My two handsome boys! 

  Matthew is a little happier here!

Scriptures of Mormon

I was sitting on the couch with Emma today.  She was playing with her little Book of Mormon that we read at night and she said "It's my Book of Scriptures Mormon."  Then she kept saying, "I need my Scriptures Mormon."  It was so cute!

I love dancing! ~sigh~

It is interesting.  I have found that often, when I am doing something enjoyable, I have started thinking about blogging and how I  want to write about it.  Maybe that is just because it's so new to me.  At any rate this was one of those times.

Daniel and I went on a date on Friday!  (Thank you to Tamara for watching our children.)  We went to BYU's World of Dance performance.  For anyone who doesn't know, that is a program where each of the dance teams at BYU get together.  They each perform 3 numbers.  It is always interesting to see the best of what each department has to offer, but I thought this year was the best I have ever seen.  Several of them had music that was a little more modern than they sometimes had and that made a huge difference.  There was a clogging number to the song "First Night" that was incredible.  Daniel even liked it and that is saying a lot because Daniel doesn't like clogging.  Needless to say, it was awesome.! The whole thing was awesome!

So, why the ~sigh~  in the title of this post you ask.  Because I miss it so much!  As I was watching the dancers on stage I was reminded of how much I truly love dancing and how much I miss doing it.  Honestly, I do know that raising my children is the most wonderful  thing that I could ever do, and I am so grateful for the opportunity.  However, it does come at a price.  I guess that's the whole giving up what you want at the moment (dancing) for something that you want even more (children).  Maybe that doesn't really work here, but that is kind of how it feels.  Hopefully, with the opening of our dance studio next  month, we will be able to dance a little more.  That would be wonderful, but until then, I suppose I will just enjoy being a mommy to the fullest since in reality, as enjoyable as dancing is, being a mother is in actuality 10,000 times better.  Possibly more!  :)

That was intense!

K - so we got family pictures taken yesterday.  I'm not talking about just the 4 of us in a nice little picture.  We did do that, but first we had pictures taken with everyone in my family.  That was 38 people!  It was a moment.  There was crying, running, scowling, laughing, smiling, frowning and jumping.  And if you think that's bad, the kids were even worse!  :)  In reality, for that many people things actually went pretty well.  We haven't seen the final pictures yet as they won't be ready for about 2 weeks, but here are some pics that Jenn took.

Emma kept sucking on her lip.  I don't know if we got very many of her smiling because she was bugged every time she had to stop playing with her cousins.

Wow, Matthew is half smiling.  Too bad Emma's got a funny face.  I guess I'll have to photoshop that one.

Now we've got Emma smiling and Matthew scowling.  Matthew was so beyond tired here.  At least I had time to feed him before this picture.  He was even more bugged for the large group shot.

Just the boyz!  Don't they look handsome!

Matthew, the 1 armed bubbers!  He really liked the grass here.  It was hard to get him to look up.

At least Daniel is looking in this picture.  1 out of 4 isn't too bad is it?

Here's one of Emma doing what she wanted to do the whole time instead of taking pictures, running!

Unfortunately, Emma wanted Jan to hold her the whole time.  Too bad Jan wasn't wearing a black shirt.  Then I could have just had her sit in for me in the picture and photoshoped my head on.  Then at least Emma would have looked happy.  :)

Emma running.  I don't know if I'm chasing her or not, but she sure does look like she's going pretty fast.

Before the pics.  Matthew is so ready to start crawling!

Jenn,  I'm so tired!  Would you stop taking pictures already!  :)  Just kidding Jenn, if it weren't for you, I probably wouldn't have any pictures of the last 3 years.

What a beautiful day!

Note to reader:  I use this as kind of a journal, so some posts tend to be long.  This is one of those posts.  If you want to just look at the pictures throughout without reading the text, here is a brief explanation of what we did today: It was my birthday.  I went with Emma to the firehouse for her preschool fieldtrip, we then went to Sundance after which we went to Dave and Melissa's house.  It was great!

The whole post:

Today was my 28th birthday, and it was a perfect day!  Daniel, being the wonderful husband that he is regularly takes 2 days off each year, our anniversary and my birthday.  Thus, he was off work today and I got to spend the whole day with him.  Ahh bliss!!

Daniel turned to me this morning and told me it was time to get up.  "Is it 6:00 already," I asked.  He assured me that it was and I instantly realized the near fatal mistake I had made by not planning to sleep in on my birthday.  For anyone who knows me, you know that I am not especially fond of mornings, so to get up at 6 a.m. is bad enough, but to get up at 6 a.m. on my birthday is especially bad.  However, it has been some time since we have gone out to eat breakfast so in a moment of insanity I had decided that I wanted to go to breakfast on my birthday.  Normally this would not have been a problem, we would have been able to sleep in and go to a late breakfast.  Today however, Emma had a fieldtrip for preschool.  They were going to the Firehouse and I had volunteered to drive.  We had to be there at 9 a.m., thus the early waking time in order to make it to breakfast and still be to preschool on time.

I was finally able to drag myself out of bed and into the shower.  As the water poured down I realized that the moment of insanity in which I had decided to go to an early breakfast was indeed near fatal.  Had I stopped to think about it I would haver realized that Denny's serves breakfast all day and thus we could have gone after Emma's preschool.  It was too late now however, as we had already planned to meet Tamara and Jan at the restaurant at 7:30.  I thought several times about calling them and telling them to go back to bed, but in the end, decided against it.  As it was, that turned out to be a good idea because Matthew woke up at about 6:30 anyway, so I would have been up early regardless.

We were able to get ourselves and our children ready despite the sleepiness and ended up at Denny's at the appointed time.  We had a very nice waiter.  He brought us hot chocolate. I asked for a little more whipping cream and he brought out the entire can for us to use to our hearts content.  Then he brought us more hot chocolate, and them some more and then some more.  I think by the time we finished breakfast he had brought about 12 cups of hot chocolate.  It was very thoughtful of him and he was a very attentive waiter.  I hope he doesn't get fired for giving away free hot chocolate because in the end he only charged us for 2 hot chocolates.  :)  At any rate, breakfast was enjoyable and quite chocolaty! 

After breakfast I took Emma to preschool while Daniel took Matthew for some male bonding time.  Emma and I went to her school and picked up a couple of girls then headed to the fire house in Pleasant Grove.  Emma had a very nice time and was even brave enough to climb up on the fire engines and the ambulance.

Emma's preschool fieldtrip to the P.G. Firehouse

Here is Emma sitting in the Fire truck.

Emma standing excitedly in front of the fire engine.

Emma (under protest) trying on the fireman's jacket.

Emma sitting in the ambulance.

Emma's preschool class.  They go to preschool at a dance studio called "The Vibe."  The preschoolers are called "Lil' Vibes."  They are all wearing their Lil' Vibe Jackets and T-shirts.

After Emma's fieldtrip we had some lunch at home and got ready to go up to Sundance.  We left a little later than we had initially planned and then had to make some stops, so we were later getting to Sundance then we had expected.  Just as we pulled in an enormous downpour hit and we all got a little soaked on the way into the gift shop.  We felt it was a blessing however that we weren't on the lift when the downpour hit as that would have been less good. 

We saw the leaves starting to change into the beautiful fall colors as we drove up there.

We were huddled under the back door of the car before we braved the rain to get to the gift shop.

Matthew under the stroller hood trying to see out just before we ran out into the rain.

At any rate, we walked around the gift shop and bought a tasty treat while we waited for the rain to stop.  It finally did stop and we walked around and enjoyed the scenery for a bit.  Emma loved the water and the bridges the most.

Buying a tasty treat.

At the gift shop waiting for the rain to stop.

Emma enjoying the bridge.

Emma enjoying the water.

Emma pointing at the fishies saying, "I like to eat fishies."  Jen:  "Do you eat these fishies?"  Emma: (with a grimmace) "Noooo!"

Matthew enjoying the scenery!  He was quite content the whole time to be pushed in the stroller and sit there looking cute!

Beautiful scenery!

More beautiful scenery!!

Even more beautiful scenery!!!  (Okay, maybe I got a little carried away with scenery pictures.)

Out enjoying the scenery.

After a bit of walking we took a ride up the ski lift and enjoyed a little more scenery.  Both children were exceptionally well behaved and thus never even came close to falling off like Jenn was worried about.  I on the other hand had a few problems.  No, I did not fall off the lift, but my camera did.  Fortunately we were right next to one of the lift entrance/exits, so we yelled back to the guy there and asked him to get the camera.  He was able to find it and put it on one of the chairs behind us so we could pick it up after we go off.  At this point Matthew had not eaten for 4 1/2 hours, and yet he still was not fussy.  What a blessing.  I fed him shortly after we got off the lift.

Emma being a very obedient girl while we were on the lift.

Matthew and daddy.  Matthew loves being outside and was a very good boy!

An attempt to get a picture of all 4 of us on the lift.

We were all getting little hungry at this point and decided to forego our previous plans of roasting marshmallows (much to Emma's dismay) in favor of getting some dinner.  We chose Pier 49 Pizza as a delectable dining treat and got there in decent time.  We ordered and waited for our food.  Jan and Jenn got their food rather quickly.  Daniel and I had been waiting a while when the waitress came out and told us that they'd had some trouble with their computer and she was just going to start our order.  We decided to have Jan and Jenn go to Maggie Moo's and pick up the ice cream while we waited for our food.  This turned out to be a very good decision because when she brought my food she told us that they had messed up Daniel's order and were just making a new one.  Thus, we had quite a wait.  We did finally get our food however, and enjoyed it just as much as we would have had it come on time.

After the pizza fiasco, we headed over to Dave and Melissa's house for a little American Idol Karaoke challenge.  We had an enjoyable time there singing to our hearts content, and for the first time, I won every challenge that I played.  Happy day for me! :)  The girls (Emma and Annika, not Jan & Jenn) played very well together and Matthew loved the little baby swing in the back yard.  He laughed and laughed, despite the fact that he was beyond tired.

Matthew laughing his darling little excited laugh and loving swinging!

Matthew's cute little expression!

Emma and Annika plalying very well together.

We came home a little while ago and got the kids ready for bed.  Daniel gave me my present at this point.  He had it in a bag and when I looked in, I saw several of Matthew's burp cloths.  Daniel said those were the "tissue paper."  I commented on how excited I was to get burp cloths and then proceeded to open my present.  It turned out to be a detachable shower head for our bathroom.  This combined with the toilet I got for Mother's Day made me realize just what a romantic husband I have.  :)  I did like the present very much however, especially because I had told him that was something I would like.

Just before we put Emma to bed, she said to Janice, "maybe when it's your birthday, you can get burp cloths and a shower."  It was so cute!  

It was really the perfect day, mostly because I got to spend the whole day with Daniel, and our sweet little children.  Oh and of course the plural wives.  :)  What a blessed life I live!

P.S.  As I was writing this post, Daniel cleaned the kitchen as well as folded and put away laundry.  Now that is what I call romance.  Blessed doesn't even begin to describe my life!