A visit to St George

A couple of weeks ago we headed to St George to visit my parents and the "Sun". My brother Garrett and his family came too. It was a fun 3 day weekend, as we were able to go biking and hiking and get some great sales at the outlets. We were also able to go on a date to Mongolian BBQ and then to the musical, " Singing in the rain." We had a lot of fun. The funnest part was being able to go hiking with the kids in the red rock. We went on a couple hikes that were about a mile long each and the kids were great troopers. They really had a lot of fun exploring and throwing rocks. It is so fun now that they can go with us. Budd and I were also able to go on our favorite bike ride down there that has a lot of downhills and jumps. It was a nice little break from everyday life.

What to do with little boys?

So last week while I was planning Art lessons Spencer was behind me on the floor playing when all the sudden I heard him choking. I turned around and starting getting scared to death and was ready to give him the him lick, when he swallowed whatever he was chocking on. I asked him what it was and he said "that pointy, shiny thing." "What pointy shiny thing?" I asked. He couldn't explain it to me and I was worried about it but wasn't sure what to do, so when Budd got home I told him about it and he got Spencer to show us where he got it and what it was. Spencer proceeded to climb up on the arm of the couch and reach up to the fireplace mantle into a piece of pottery and he pulled out a screw, and not just any screw, a wood screw with a point on the end. "What? You ate that?" I couldn't believe it and we really got worried. I mean how does a kid even think about sucking on a pointy screw, and how did he even find it. Kids have amazing exploratory minds, especially our Spence. We must have dropped the screws in there after hanging something up in the house. So we called our brother in law who is a Doctor and he said we should take him in for an X-ray the next morning, since it was already around 9:30 at night. So we took him in the next morning and TA DA......... this is what we found

That thing is huge, was our first thought, then the doctor said that he was talking to Primary Children's hospital which is the major children's hospital around here. They said because the screw was pointed they were worried about it, so we might have to take him in for immediate surgery. Then the doctor left, and we were kind of freaking out by this time. Then the doctor came back a few minutes later and said, "well, since it is already in the small intestines we don't dare do surgery because it is too risky, so you just need to watch him closely and if he shows any pain, rush immediately to Primary Children's, and then they sent us home. Crazy! So for the next two days we watched Spencer every second and even made him sleep in our room. We kept asking if he was ok, and fed him a lot of fiber. Then finally two days later, on Saturday morning, he finally went #2, and he told me, so of course I yelled, "Don't flush" then I ran in there with my handy big spoon to dish it out and sure enough there it was, a pointy screw that was a inch and a half long. Wow, I don't know how that thing got through his little body, but we sure feel blessed that it all went well and that he is ok. He continues to get into things every day so I have realized that I have to keep an eye on this boy.

Snow Fun

We have had a lot of snow this winter, and instead of not liking it, we have decided to enjoy it. We have a lot of fun. We got both of the kids complete snow gear so they have loved playing in the snow too. We have had fun sledding and Budd and I have had fun Snowboarding. We went up Fairview canyon on New Years Day and Budd started to teach me how to board. I started to catch on, so now I just need more practice. I love winter when we can have fun in the beautiful snow.




Here is our backyard this winter. It is beautiful to see the snow on the trees.

Nativity

We did a nativity with some of our neighbors and friends on Christmas eve and that turned out really fun. The kids loved acting out all the parts and Brinlee and Spencer especially loved being Mary and Joseph and riding the donkey.

Holidays

We had a wonderful Christmas. It was so much fun with the kids both being old enough to really enjoy it. They came out Christmas morning and said, " There are new presents!!" They were so excited. We had fun. Budd got the teenagers living with us boxing gloves so Spence wanted to try them out. Luckily no one has got hurt yet. The highlight of the day were the presents the kids got from Shun, the Japanese student staying with us. His mom sent over really nice presents for the kids. Brinlee got a Japanese doll named Licca, who is like Barbie for them. SHe got alot of outfits for her and she loves changing her mulitple times each day. Spencer got a big Mack truck from CARS that opens up to 3 race tracks. He loves that and all the other cars he got.

Merry Christmas

I cannot believe Christmas Eve has allready come. Wow what a fast December. We had a fun time this month, going to parties and seeing many friends and family. A couple of the neat things we did this month were to go to a live Nativity, and to sing in the Ward Christmas Program. We found out about a Baptist Church in Layton that acted out the entire "Journey to Bethlehem". It was so neat. The hard part was waiting in line for 2 hours, but once it was our turn, it was well worth it. They took groups of 50 people at a time through the journey. We had a family from Nazareth and they lead us the whole way. 1st we visited the carpenter shop, only to for them to tell us that Joseph and Mary had allready left. There were Roman soliders all along the way, dressed up and with real horses, who stop us many times and made us show our pretend passports so we could freely go through to Bethlehem. We saw the 3 wise men and thier gifts, and their real pet llamas. Next were the shepards, an angle appeared to them while we were watching. Then we moved onto other travelors, who shared their fire with us, so we could warm up. This whole time we are walking through trees and bushes with torches to light the way. When we made it to Bethlehem the Soliders stopped us outside the gate to again check that we were free to go. THen they stamped our passport and we entered the town of Bethlehem. They had it all set up with people selling things like bread, and herbs and they were even roasting a real pig over the fire. They gave Brinlee a fake loaf of bread that she was able to give to the begger in the town. She loved that. Then we were led to the Inn, where they said they had no room, but they had sent Joseph and Mary to the Stable. We walked there where we saw Joseph and Mary with the Baby Jesus and they spoke and sang Silent Night and Oh Come All Ye faithful. There was a real donkey and sheep. It was so neat. IT was a great way to remember the true meaning of Christmas and it really helped our kids understand as we acted it out. They gave us yummy hot chocolat at the end to warm us up.

This past Sunday Budd directed our christmas musical program in sacrament meeting. He got put in as choir director a few months ago. He did an amazing job, expecially since we didnt start practicing for it until Dec 7th. Everyone really enjoyed it. He has brought our choir to a whole new level, and it is fun and educational. Budd and i sang "Oh come all ye faithful" in an accapella quartet and it turned out very nicely, even thought my heart was pounding and i had to skip a note to take a breath so i didnt pass out. Budd also did a mens acccapella quarted of "Abide with Me". That was amazing, my favorite of the program We also played recorders, Budd, Shun and I, for the first verse of "That Easter Morn" We sang another 4-5 songs with the whole choir and a couple with the congregation. The primary children also say 2 songs. It just turned out lovely. It has been such a great experience for Budd and he has been teaching me so much about singing and the recorder and we are enjoying doing those things together now.
MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL AND TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT!!!!

Thanksgiving and More Events

We have had an eventful past few weeks. Thanksgiving was so much fun as we were able to celebrate with Kate's family the Saturday before and then able to fly to Arizona to be with Budd's family for 4 days. We had a lot of fun seeing everyone, especially Budd's family that we only see 2 times a year. The kids loved playing with their cousins. We had a lot of fun in the warm weather in AZ as we were able to play at the park and outside. The highlight for Brinlee was going with all her girl cousins to a place called "Glitter Box" where they all got their hair done like a princess, and they put a lot of glitter on it making it sparkle. I still can see the glitter on her scalp. She was dancing around and having so much fun. All the girls looked so darling. I would have some great pics to put up here, but we had another technical problem with our computer and so we had to reformat again and the disk that we saved everthing on seamed to not work, so we lost those photos. I was so excited to post them and to send them to all the cousins. I am so sorry we lost them. I have learned that I can't put off blogging, I have got to get my pic up as soon as possible in case things like this happen. I was a wreak about it but have decided that all i can do now it write about these memories so we can remember the fun we had.
Spencers highlight was playing with the swords with his cousins. He still talks about how he wants a power sword like Brayden. Luckily the sword he played with and loved, we had allready gotten him for christmas. Spencer is really an active guy and so into swords and Star Wars and tries to do kung fu moves like Kung fu Panda. It is so funny, until someone gets hurt of course, but he has been good about not hitting people. It was so funny, the other day he was playing with a round cork hot pad that I have. I was not sure how he found it but figured it was something he couldnt really hurt. Well, a few minutes later I saw that is was broken in half. He has somehow bent it and broke it. I went up to him and said, " why did you break this?" He looked up at me innocently and said "Because i am the Dragon warrior, Mom." He was so serious about it. I tried to teach him that we dont have to break things to be the Dragon warrior. But we still seam to have something broken every day. The fun of boys.

The week after thanksgiving we had Budds company party. It was so much fun. The had it at a new event center in South Jordan called "Noah's Place" They rented out the whole building, and had activities in every room. They had dinner and a DJ, doing contests and giving out prizes every half hour, and later they had dancing. There were photos with Santa, where they printed out the photo right there and gave it to us. They had 6 different crafts for kids to do, christmas movies in many rooms, wii games on big screens, pool tables, bingo, and they were giong to have ice skating, but it was outside and the weather had been too warm. It was so neat. We met some of Budd's co-workers and we realized what a great company Budd is working for. They are so family oriented. We feel so blessed to have found this company. Budd is really enjoying the job.
Here is Budd and the kids jammin at the party.


On saturday the 6th I did an Art birthday party during the day. We talked all about Van Gogh and did Starry Night. There were more than 15 kids and they had alot of fun. Here are some pics of the great work they did.
That night we had our ward Christmas party. We had a dinner and program which we were a big part of. Brinlee sang with the primary, and Budd is the choir director and we did a couple fun numbers with the choir. Then Budd, Shun and I played "Angles we have heard on High" on our recorders. The gym was loud and did not have good accousitics so you could not hear very well, but it was fun. Here is Brinlee with the primary