Weekend at Grammie's! (May 14-15, 2010)

Whilst Hillary and Marc headed south to Tuacahn with Sonia and Shawn, the girls and I started out the weekend in the manner of every kids dream... playing in the field! I used to love the fields around my home when I was young and it was no surprise when these four kids begged me to play in the field. I even let them take my camera with them and this is what they came back with. We also went to the library. They loved it and all came back with books galore (which their mother returned on their way out of town to San Diego... thanks Hillary!) promising to have them all read but then begged to keep them a while longer when it was time to go. I knew they would want to do that.

After the library trip we went to the Community Park at Kearns Oquirrh Park Fitness Center and had a blast. I walked the short trail while they played. One of the funnest things was to roll down the hill and I'm sure that had a lot to do with why Adelyn slept for 12 hours that night.

The Aquarium

Saturday, January 23rd, I was tending the girls while Hillary was at her clinicals for her nursing course and Marc was in Park City being fabulous (filming at the Sundance Film Festival for Timberland). It was supposed to be a horrible snowy day but it turned out to just look threatening all day here in the valley so Sonia and Shawn came over and we all went to the Aquarium. It was way fun and I want to go back when they have the Penguins which are arriving in March.
All the girls were soaked from 'petting' the sting rays but amazingly enough, were mostly dry by the time we left for home. As you can see by the pictures, there were great photo ops all over. I don't
think the octopus tank was meant to be a photo op but with a little encouragement from 'Auntie', Tasha put her face up to the tank. I've tried to put the pictures in the order they were taken... Enjoy.

Thanksgiving Day 2009

Gotta love this one day a year we get to be thankful for all the blessings (and stuff) we have. One of the things I'm grateful for is all the things my kids make and bring to share. It's all yummy delectable food and goes so well with my turkey, potatoes and best ever stuffing (which doesn't get stuffed). We have tables everywhere with 15 of us. We were down one this year with Marc having been sick all week and feeling sicker still. Sure hope he doesn't have the flu. I even got out my nice china plates and was sad there wasn't really anything that would enable me to use more of the china set. We usually set the food out buffet style so all that was really needed on the tables were the plates. Next time.

It seems like when the family gets together, there are always fun tricks to show the little ones. Usually it's Marc that has great tricks but this year Leland filled in. I have no idea what he's doing with the toothpicks but he surely had everyone's attention!

Once the (Gingell) girls were done with their dinner, they were clamoring for Auntie to paint their nails. Sonia dutifully found my supplies and was more than happy to oblige them.

Then comes the part where we celebrate Roxanne's birthday. Roxanne always has to have her birthday celebrated on Thanksgiving instead of having her own day but she's such a trooper. (No worries, Grandma Petersen had the same problem.) Roxanne got lots of gift cards so I see some new clothes in her future!

As the evening evolved, we had an impromptu photo shoot with grandma and grandpa. First with their great-grandchildren and then with their grandchildren. Everyone was being pretty silly.

As we sat around visiting, Buggie had a great time sliding down her mom's legs. She kept climbing up on the couch and then sliding down Hillary's legs for about 20-30 minutes. Phenomenal.

Happy Birthday America!

Yesterday was the great day we celebrate our freedom and our country. In our family, we also celebrate the day grandpa got shot down in France. (Maybe this has something to do with why my kids are so morbid and think about straps breaking and falling to their deaths while parasailing!) In truth, we are really celebrating that he lived through this death defying event. Matthew summed it up eloquently on Facebook: "65 years ago today, my grandpa Moseley was shot down behind German lines in Normandy. A French farmer risked everything to hide grandpa (who pretended he was deaf/mute to fool German soldiers) for over two months until he could escape to the advancing allied lines. Grandpa (age 88) is still going strong. I have a lot to be grateful for today."

To celebrate, we got together, barbequed, made homemade raspberry ice cream with raspberries out of Roxanne's garden, roasted marshmallows and hot dogs (Addie loved the hot dogs and ate at least three whole ones, maybe four), and set off fireworks. Hillary's kids played in the water and took pictures of anything and everything. This probably sounds pretty much like anyone else's July 4th celebrations but another thing we do is probably unlike most everyone else. Each of us take the opportunity to call or trek over to grandpa's to visit him, thank him for his service and generally bask in the blessing of having him with us.

Here's Shawn playing games on his new Samsung Impression cell phone. He and Sonia got these new phones the day before. I purchased the same phone about a week earlier but didn't know half the stuff about the new phone that Shawn did. Here I was trying out the camera portion and I've also figured out how to send it to my email so I can save the picture to my computer. There's probably an easier way... like using the USB cable that came with the phone?
We also had an unplanned, impromptu birthday celebration for Sami. She will be officially 4 tomorrow. In this picture she has on the new outfit she received from Sonia and Shawn (dress, necklace, flip-flops).

Who knew that one of the highlights of shooting off fireworks would be making shadows on the garage door!

Happy birthday America and thanks for having your birthday when it's warm. Happy Fourth of July grandpa, we're proud of you!

Mother's Day 2009

"Mom," I was informed, "you are not to do anything on Mother's Day." And so I didn't really but I did plenty before Mother's Day... such as buy the things James was supposed to get for dinner, shop for the exact right extra table (which I never found), clean a bit and set up the tables to transform the house into a mini-diner. It was really fun to prepare for and especially fun because my in-laws came! Below are a few of the photos that depict what Mother's Day is all about.

Catch-up

It's been forever since I wrote anything and I'm catching up now. On the 25th I joined Hillary, Tasha, Emma and Auntie for scrapbooking. They'd had fun with dress ups and an early Trunk or Treat at Sonia's ward. I got lots done in the scrapping area and I'm caught up with James' books.

Just before Halloween I had a couple days that I did practically nothing. I just could not get motivated. I hate that! Then I look back and think about this or that I should have done, none of which I even thought of while I vegged. I got out of it by Halloween tho and went to Sonia's for a 3 hour Killer Bunny game. And we used to think Monopoly was bad!

With the 1st of November came a ton of busyness. I used part of Saturday to write the missionaries their monthly letters cuz I knew it would get crazy. Then on Sunday I found out that we had a guest coming to the Court of Honor (COH) from the Young Men's General Board. Yikes! The COH was just two days away!! Later Sunday we had the Board of Reviews so two boys could be awarded their Varsity Denali awards on Tuesday which was the whole reason the General Authority was coming. Monday while I was downtown for work, I slipped up to the scout shop to get the awards I needed only to find out Monday night that I'd forgotten one. I went to the scout shop in Carriage Square Tuesday, made a quick stop at Barnes & Noble for a CD I wanted to play a bit of at the COH, then stopped at Harmon's for the makings for Root Beer floats and I was ready. It all went well and I'm so glad that one is done!

After the COH I drove up to Hillary's to be there when the kids woke in the morning. Marc goes to work before the butt-crack of dawn and Hillary had a way early nursing school orientation. I made sure Tash and Em got out the door on time for school... then Sami too but she doesn't go to pre-school til 12:30. Not long after that Addie fell asleep, Marc got home and I headed out. I was glad to get home between snow showers. The trip up was ok but one bridge I went over was all slushy and I couldn't see it until I was in it. Scary! Then when I got home, there was a ton of snow waiting for me to shovel.

Thursday it was up early and back to work for me. I'd gotten my payroll done at Hillary's and just had to print it out. I also had resident funds to process and once that was done I headed into work and was able to get it all done so I didn't have to do job work today. Yay!

Today dad and I took the Vibe into Kearns Auto. License and registration was due last month... oops! We knew it would need a new catalytic converter and those are spendy. We thought we were looking at $1500. Fortunately for us, Ray found a generic one that fit our car so with the inspection, emissions and headlight replacement, the bill only came to $400! That's what I love about Ray and Danny... they do what they can to help you out and not just charge you an arm & leg for stuff you really don't need. Besides, Danny is cute ;>

Sleep-over with Grammie

This last Friday I make the trek up to Syracuse to relieve Hillary and Marc of their parental duties. For some crazy reason they decided to spend their 9th anniversary (a couple days late) at Anniversary Inn. They came home bushed. ;>
While they were gone, Adelyn was so dang cute and as sweet as could be. She never fussed. When I went to get her out of her crib on Saturday morning she looked at me like, "now wait a minute... where's my mom?"
James came up for Friday evening to play and after dinner we all went to the park. There were a ton of mosquitoes as it got dark and everyone ended up with 2-3 bites. James had to leave after that to get home and prepare for his Orienteering competition bright and early Saturday morning. They got 4th place and he felt pretty good about that. He also came home with several dozen mosquito bites!
Friday night I discovered something about Sami, she gets stubborn when she's tired. Saturday morning she was back to her sweet self. Tasha and Emma spent Saturday morning visiting. First to Halley's, then to Jacobs and finally to Tasha's Primary teachers house. I thought it was funny that after being gone all morning, they didn't want me to leave when their parents came home. Silly kids.

McDonald's with Grammie

I was writing another letter to James today and was telling him about the girls when I thought, 'I should send him a picture.' As I was picking out some pictures to print out, and coming across this one of Addie, I thought I should email it to Hillary. Then I thought, but Sonia will want to see it too and Roxanne too. Then it occured to me to put pictures up on my blog for all to see. Yay for blogs! The girls were fun and it was so cute when I let Natasha and Emma have a dollar so they could go by another hamburger all by themselves. Tasha asked me, "are you sure it's ok?" Gotta love the innocence of youth. Addie was so cute... mostly because she was content to sit and munch fries and chicken nuggets.