Elders Quorm BBQ

The Annual elders quorom BBQ was last weekend, they are always fun for the family.  The kids LOVE riding the horses.

(I love this picture I think it turned out GREAT!)

I tried to get Connor to ride with Megan but he didn't want anything to do with the horse.  Hopefully 1 of these days he'll want to ride.

We got horse rides out of the way and started eating and the rain came.  So everyone had to crowd under the deck, which still dripped between the boards, but we still had a good time trying to stay dry.

The rain would let up on and off and we were able to give the kids a tractor ride.

 I love Connor's face in this picture!

We had a lot of great food, great company & fun.  Thanks to the Chirstensen's for hosting us and letting our kids walk their dirty wet shoes all over your carpet, we have spot cleaner if you need it!

Derby Bingo

Another year of our annual "Derby Bingo" when we invite our friends over to play bingo, wear hats, eat food and watch the Kentucky Derby.  Here are this years pictures. 

Us with our hats



The Kids' in Their Hats

 Our Guest's Hats

(minus 1 family)

Playing Bingo

The kids

The Mom's

The Dad's

The Winners

Every year we do a contest for the best hats.  Last year we picked 1 adult winner who gets the coveted trophy and then we picked 1 kid winner.  This year we decided to go for 2 kid winners.  1 for the silliest hat and 1 for the prettiest hat.  It is pretty amazing what some people come up with.  We had a lot of fun, but I have decided that we need a bigger house to host this party.  Luckily the weather cooperated with us so the kids could go outside. 
It's fun to watch the Derby and cheer for horses and I love playing bingo, something that I have done ever since I was a little kid. 

Thanks to everyone that came and shared in this day with us! 

Can't watit to see who wins the trophy next year!! 

Mother Daughter Retreat

At the end of April I was privelaged to travel out to Utah to spend the weekend with my Mother, 2 sisters and future sister-in-law.  I arrived late Wednesday night.  Thursday was spent at Woman's Week at BYU getting uplifted and inspired.  After  we were uplifted we went and pampered our toes and then joined the rest of the family for dinner to celebrate my little brother's b-day. 

Friday we went and got make overs at Nordstrom and then went out to lunch at a yummy Italian restraunt.  After we were full we started our 6 hour drive down to Las Vegas, just in time too since it started to snow.  We got in late to our hotel after stopping to do some shopping real quick.  We stayed at the Stratosphere. 

Saturday morning we started the day going to the top of the Stratoshpere and checking out the view.  Then we were off to go shopping again, since 1 hour wasn't enough. 

After hours of shopping we returned to our hotel to hit the buffet to eat before we walked the strip.

The hotels in Vegas are amazing.  I loved walking in the hotels and seeing the different environments that they have created.  But I hated walking from hotel to hotel.  My back hurt the whole time and about half way through walking from hotel to hotel my foot started to hurt.  I was VERY relieved when we got a taxi to drive us back to our car.  I wasn't great company while walking as you can see from the M&M pillow that they picked for me.  But do you blame me when you're hurting and your jacket gets stolen?

Sunday we checked out of the hotel and drove 2 hours to St. George dropped our stuff off and headed off to Zions National Park.  This was the part of the trip that I was so excited for.  It was so pretty.  I look forward to being able to go back when I don't have to limp through the park.  I don't think that my pictures captured the beauty of this amazing place. 

Monday we were able to go to the St. George temple and do a session.  And then we at a lunch outside at a little cafe down town, stopped at the park and ate some yummy cake balls and then drove back home.

Thanks Mom for flying me out there to spend some time with you guys.  I wish I wasn't in pain half the trip, but I enjoyed the adventure.  I love you!

Silly Dance

When we go to story time at the library they play this song before they start their craft.  My friend liked it so much that she bought the CD and she is letting me borrow the CD right now.  Connor has really enjoyed dancing to it.  When I ask if he wants to watch a show or dance, he says dance.  And he will dance to it over and over.  So I recorded him dancing to the song.  (Get your kids and have them dance along!)



Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing

Karate

Megan has been taking karate all month and I finally took some pictures on her last week of karate.  She really has been getting into it and enjoying it.  She does very well.  We didn't invest in getting her a Gi or her belt, but she would be concidered a white belt. 

We have learned about karate and the structre of the class.  Before you are allowed on or off the matt you have to bow.  At the begining of each class they always bow to the instructor and start with this...

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing   Here is Megan performing the 8 point blocking system.

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing
   Yesterday Megan learned how to do First Kempo.  This is her performing it with her instructor.
Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing

She has learned a lot so far, and the names of the things are pretty interesting.  Megan's favorite Hand block is the Tiger's claw to the face, her favorite kick is the side blade kick, and she has mastered the 8 point blocking system. 

Easter, Hunts & Crafts

We have been getting very wet here lately, and Saturday was no different.  Soccer games got moved inside, we went to our Church's swap n shop and got SOAKED as we left.  That afternoon was an Easter egg hunt at the fair grounds.  We had gone last year and it was great, you get a lot of coupons for free DQ ice cream cones, and pizzas.  So when the rain let up we decided to go see if they were still doing the hunt.  We parked (in a puddle of water) and headed to the hunt areas.  Megan was in one place and the boys were in another.  Megan got to the horse barn and I walked with the boys down to the pavilion just in time for the rain to start coming down again.  It started with a sprinkle and within 30 seconds it was pouring.  Luckily we were under a roof (with some holes, but kept us dry enough).  The hunt started and the boys piled up their baskets.  Connor picked up about 10 eggs and then just sat down to see what was inside.  Bryson filled up his basket and then came and picked up more eggs to put into Connor's basket.

Before the hunt

picking up all the eggs all over the ground, not many hiding places

Bryson's basket full of eggs

The kids with the Easter Bunny

Megan had to run down in the rain with her 2 friends to come get us.  It was pouring and she got soaked.  She dropped some of her eggs as she was running, her friends slipped and fell and her eggs went flying everywhere.  Megan came to me crying and telling me that this is the worst Easter ever.  This is what she looked like. 

Then when I left to go get the van Megan found one of the "Prize eggs" in her basket.  So we went to turn the egg in to see what her prize was and this is what she got.

It went from the worst Easter ever to the Best Easter ever.  She talked about it all night and told everyone that she found the prize egg and that she found it in the last cupboard in the barn. 

 

Here is a video of the boys picking up their eggs, you can hear the rain pounding on the roof.

Easter Morning

 The kids with their Easter Baskets

 Megan in her Easter dress.

I wasn't lucky enough to get pictures of the boys since they wouldn't cooperate, but you can see them in pictures below of their cute Easter outfits that matched (Bryson has his vest off for the Easter egg hunt)

We celebrated Easter with a few families from our ward (about 8) and we had a wonderful ham dinner and then we lucked out that it had stopped raining for most of the afternoon so we were able to do an Easter egg hunt outside.  Slightly muddy, but the kids had fun. 

 

My Crafts 

 In my spare time I have been making these flower clips that I learned how to make at our Super Saturday last year.

And with my new sewing machine I am re-learning how to sew and I made a blanket for each of the kids for Easter.  I bought the sewing machine since it reminds me of my Grandmother and how she would make blankets for all of the new great grand babies, so my first project was in memory of her and what an amazing woman she was and all of the love that she put into making the blankets.  I am sure that she would be proud of me and the blankets that I made.

Megan's

Bryson's

Connor's

I have to add that when I went to buy the fabric I originally wanted to give Bryson the orange ball blanket since his favorite color is orange.  But Connor was obsessed with it at the store and wouldn't let me put it away.  So after I was done making them we brought Connor in and had him point to which one he wanted and he of course grabbed the ball one.  Then we brought Bryson in and he said that he would take the monkey one cause Connor likes the balls.  I was very impressed with Bryson.  He usually is very stubborn and when he wants something he sticks to it, but this time he was very generous.  I'm hoping that he is learning.  I've very proud.

Weather

A couple of days ago we had some severe weather.  The weather station had been tracking this storm and we knew it was coming.  This storm was causing a lot of tornadoes across the country and the storm was suppose to be hitting us between midnight and 2am.  So that night before going to bed I made sure that we were prepared just in case we had to run to our basement.  I set out our flashlights, cleared out our "safe spot" in the basement and put our emergency kit down there.  We made sure that the things that we needed to grab were close by the bed.  I couldn't sleep that night so I just watched the storm get closer and closer.  I started to fall asleep when we got a call at 12:44am from the emergency center, waking Josh up, telling us of a tornado warning in our area.  So we started to watch the weather when our power went out so we decided that we should go take cover.  We went and woke the kids up, grabbed what we needed and headed to the basement.  The kids were all hyped up once they were awake, considering the situation you would have thought that they would have been not so hyper. We sat in our "nest" that we made of blankets, pillows and sleeping bags.  We hung out there till about 1:20am when the thunder was further away. The kids had a hard time going back to sleep and Megan ended up sleeping on our floor cause she was still scared. 
I felt kinda dumb sitting down there since it didn't seem like it was that bad out there and was pretty sure that we were the only people sitting in our basement.  The next morning I found out that we weren't the only ones, most of our friends took cover too.  But we also learned a little more about our preparedness and things that we need... like a working radio so we know when we can come out and things are all clear.
So, today I heard on the news that a tornado touched down in my county, my friend just e-mailed me this report and I didn't realize how close it was to our house.  Below is the report... when you are looking at the map our house is in between Esther Way & the North Fork Cedar Creek (where it dips).  CRAZY!!!  I'm just glad that we took cover and that nothing happened to us or our property. 



Oldham County EF-1
DAMAGE TYPE: TORNADO

BEGIN TIME: 12:49 AM EDT
END TIME: 12:49 AM EDT

BEGIN POINT: 1.9 MILES NORTHWEST OF LA GRANGE
END POINT: 1.7 MILES NORTHWEST OF LA GRANGE

EF SCALE: EF-1
WIND SPEED: 90 MPH

PATH LENGTH: 0.2 MILES
PATH WIDTH: 80 YARDS

INJURIES: 0
FATALITIES: 0

NARRATIVE: NWS STORM DAMAGE SURVEY TEAM CONFIRMS A VERY BRIEF EF-1
TORNADO NORTHWEST OF LA GRANGE IN OLDHAM COUNTY. THE TORNADO
DESTROYED A BARN AND SNAPPED HUGE HARDWOOD TREES 30 FEET OFF OF THE
GROUND AT THE BEGINNING POINT...1.9 MILES NORTHWEST OF LA GRANGE. IT
THEN MOVED NORTHEAST DAMAGING THE ROOF OF A HOUSE AND ANOTHER BARN.
THE TORNADO WAS ONLY ON THE GROUND FOR TWO TENTHS OF A MILE BEFORE
IT LIFTED. ESTIMATED WIND SPEEDS WERE AROUND 90 MPH WITH A PATH
WIDTH OF 80 YARDS.

Swimming Lessons

Megan & Bryson finished their swim lessons last week.  They both LOVED it and did so well.  Here are a couple of pictures of them swimming.

Bryson got a lot more comfortable with jumping into the water and swimming.  He still has to use the waste belt in the deep end but can do well when he can touch.

Bryson diving (from sitting position) into the pool. 

Megan did great learning a bunch of different strokes, she learned the back stroke, breast stroke,  free style stroke and the elementry back stroke which Megan calls the chicken, airplane, soilder stroke.  Here is a video of her doing the back stroke.

The kids loved their swimming lessons and would have loved to continue but Bryson started his soccer season and Megan started taking Karate lessons, and we can only handle one activity at a time.

Ski Trip

The end of March I flew out to Cali with my brother, Jacob, for a nice ski trip with our dad.  We skied four days straight and had fresh powder every day.  It was unbelieaveable conditions for spring skiing.  During the four days Jacob and I were there we received around 3-5 feet of snow.  This was an amazing trip.  Thanks Dad for the great time.  Hopefully I will be able to make it out there next year.

Posted by Josh

Back to Life

My life has been so consumed lately with trying to finish my late Christmas presents to my Mom, & Mother in law.  Every year I scrapbook our life and what we did and give it to them as a gift.  So these past few months have been consumed with that, and of course life, but any extra time you could find me at the computer scrapbooking.  So now I'm done.  And I always tell myself that I'm not going to wait until the end of the year to start scrapbooking again, but... life happens and it gets put off until it's too late.  So here are a few pages that I think turned out cute, not in any order at all.

Other things going on in our life:

I have been meaning to post about Connor since he turned 18 months old, but now he is 20 months old, so I guess I will blog about that. 

Connor has been getting into EVERYTHING.  You can't leave him alone for too long before he gets into things.  For example, today I was on the phone, Josh was reading Bryson a book and he got into the crackers and spilt the whole package on the floor and all over the floor.  And when I was in the shower he decided to remove 1/2 of our movies from the movie case and throw them all over the floor. (while Bryson just watched TV ignoring him.)  Another day he got into our room while Josh was showering and broke my glasses.  So needless to say, you can't leave him alone too long before something bad happens. 
He is also a lover of balls.  If there is a ball around, he will wine to get it.  He loves to play catch and actually has a pretty good arm. 
Connor will be starting speech therapy next week.  His vocabulary isn't too big which has been a concern of ours so we have been working to get him into first steps.  The words that he does say are : Mama, dada, ball, stop, bye bye, uh-oh, hello, thank you (with sign) & juice.  He will make signs when prompted for: milk, more, drink, baby, all done, thank you & I can't think of any more right now.  He mainly communicates by whining which gets really frustrating.
Connor also loves to dance.  If he hears music with a beat he will start moving.  He also likes to make us laugh.  If he gets someone to laugh at something he did he will continue to do it.  For example, he was playing with a squirt bottle and he accidentally squirted himself, we all laughed and he continued to do it until we took the bottle away. 
At 18 months we took Connor off the bottle and he took himself off the thumb.  I was really worried how long he would suck his thumb, but he got a sore on his thumb and stopped sucking it, even when the sore went away he didn't go back to sucking it.  I miss how cute he looked sucking it, but am glad that I didn't have to deal with the hard time of getting him to stop.

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I joined a card group in our Relief Society.  This was our first month of making cards and the theme was Birthdays, so here are the cards that I made.  Next month is "Spiritual"... I'm drawing a blank, so any thought would be nice.

Holidays

Here are our pictures from Valentine's Day.  We heart attacked their doors and we made heart sugar cookies.  We delivered a plate to our friend & neighbor.  Josh & I were able to go out on a date the weekend before valentine's day, then on Valentine's day Josh left love notes all over the house for me to find. 

We really don't do anything for St Patrick's day besides wear green.  Bryson made this hat at school so we took some pictures with it when he came home from school.

Megan & Bryson started swim lessons this month.  They are both doing great.  Megan is working hard doing all the different types of stroke, her favorite at the moment is free style.  Bryson is doing great jumping into the water and swimming around in the water.  They both could stay there all day. 
Bryson will start soccer this week and after swim lessons Megan will start Karate.

Clover Leaf 5K

I hosted a running group in our Relief Society and we had our race yesterday, on St Patrick's day.  We had 7 of us run the race, and we designed shirts to wear.  They say "Run and not be weary, LaGrange, KY, Sista Power, 2011."  It was the first 5K for a few of the sisters and I was so proud that everyone finished the race. 

I wanted to beat my last time I ran a 5k, but I hurt my back a few weeks ago and had to stop running for awhile.  But I was still pleased with my time of 31:06.  I ended up placing 2nd in my age category (20-29yr olds), but since it was a small county race of only around 100 people, it could have been that there were only 2 people in my age group to run.  But I'm still proud to have run most of the race and to have gotten second.  I'm hoping to run another race once I get my back better.

My next project that I am going to be working on is re-teaching myself how to sew.  I bought a sewing machine recently and I bought fabric to make a blanket for each of my kids and a pattern to make myself a skirt.  I'm excited to start sewing.