Swollowed the Spider to Catch the Fly

Assessment Time

2010-12-16T10:27:00.000-08:00

A little glimps

Brothers and Sisters

2010-12-16T10:19:00.000-08:00

What do you do with this much help. Not sure if this leads to really clean or just really scared.

Helpful sisters

This is like a hot where no one leaves you alone

Big brother's pride

He made it

2010-12-16T10:14:00.001-08:00

She looks pretty good for just having a baby huh.

"Word peeps, I'm here"

"put me back!!!!!"

Happy Birthday Isaac!!!

2010-10-26T11:06:00.000-07:00

Isaac turned 9 on September 14th. It's hard to believe in some ways that he's been with us for over 4 years now. In other ways I can't remember what it was like without him. He's a good boy and he is a wonderful older brother to Rylan. They have a great time playing together. Isaac is really excited to have another brother on the way.

Fall Apple Picking

2010-10-26T10:53:00.000-07:00

We had a lot of fun this year picking the apples from our own apple tree. (The simple things that make you happy- having your own apple tree!) Anyway, each of the kids took turns going up the ladder and picking the apples.

Our little Rylan-boy thought he was so big to climb up the ladder. I think he looks so cute up there in his little man chore boots.

This is what we ended up with in the end. We were pretty pleased. I canned 55 quarts of applesauce and 14 quarts of apple slices from these.

My Little Laura Ingalls

2010-10-26T10:42:00.000-07:00

Jessica went to Heritage school at the beginning of the school year. They take a lunch that they would have had in that time so she took hard-boiled eggs, a cucmber, and a piece of fruit. She took it in that little pail that she has in the picture. I think she looks adorable! I felt like Caroline Ingalls sending her off to school that day. That is, of course, until the bus drove up to take her, but whatever.

First Day of School

2010-10-26T10:29:00.000-07:00

Maleah is in 6th grade this year. She has changed a lot in the past year. It's fun to see her growing up. This is her last year in the elementary school.

Jess is in the 4th grade this year. She is really liking Milford school now and making lots of new friends.Isaac is in 2nd grade this year. He is starting to pick up on reading and we are really happy to see that. His teacher says that he is doing really well in math which is fun to hear also.

Lewis and Clark Caverns

2010-10-26T10:20:00.000-07:00

This summer was a little crazy. Cody was gone for 5 weeks to officer training. We did fine at home. We had a few mishaps, but we had so many people that helped us.
A week or so after Cody left our favorite dog, Soka, (yes the one we got the goats to keep her around) was hit by a car and killed. We were so sad. We just don't have very good luck with dogs. Anyway, she was only about 7 months old, but she was a big dog. I didn't know how I could dig a hole big enough and deep enough to bury her so Bro. Brezenski from our ward came and did it for me. It was a wonderful act of service to me and my kids. The kids wanted to bury her so that night after he had dug the hole we went out and buried her together. I was proud of my kids.
Anyway, a couple of weeks before Cody got home the kids and I drove out to Idaho to spend some time with my family and then he flew to Salt Lake to meet us after his training. We were so glad to see him!!
We went to Montana after he joined us. This was the group of us at Lewis and Clark Caverns.

Cody, his mom, Jess, Rylan, and Isaac coming up the trail. It was a beautiful view from up there.

Tired and waiting to enter the caverns at the top of the trail.
It was a good time for all of us and the caverns were really cool.

Mother's Day

2010-09-26T18:35:00.000-07:00

Well, I have some serious catching up to do. There are a few things that I just don't want to leave off the record. So you'll have to excuse my backing up about 6 months. I started getting behind in my blog (and in the rest of my life for that matter) when I got pregnant. I'm about 7 1/2 months along now so 6 months ago was about when I was starting to feel sick. So as you see my pictures you may notice a house in total disarray and that is the explanation as embarrassing as it is.

This was Mother's Day. My kids did the most thoughtful thing for me. Back in April Diantha let me borrow her shark mop so I could try it out. Well, having a house with all hardwood floors, I fell in love with it. My kids knew this and they went to Cody and told him they wanted to get me one for Mother's Day. He told them it was kind of expensive and he asked them how they thought we could pay for it. Well, I guess they thought about it for a couple of days and they came back to Cody with their solution. They said they were willing to give up their hot lunches for the rest of the school year to pay for it. This probably would mean nothing to kids who get hot lunches every day, but my kids don't. It's too expensive for us to let them all have hot lunch every day so we let them choose a few per person each month and it is a highlight for them. They love it. So to have them make a personal sacrifice to get me a gift they knew I would like meant so much to me. When Cody told me what they did I cried of course. I have very thoughtful, wonderful children. Thanks for being great kids!!!!

A Little Eastertime Jingle Bells

2010-04-08T07:08:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter!

2010-04-08T06:51:00.000-07:00

When the Easter Bunny visits our house he leaves notes that lead the kids on a little scavenger hunt to find their baskets. So here are pictures of the kids after they found their baskets.

This was our Easter dinner. Not very traditional, I know, but we ate around a fire out in the pasture. The Talbots joined us and we had a great time. The weather was perfect, which is a first for Easter in Nebraska. Here are the kids eating peach cobbler out of cups. It was happy!

Easter Egg Hunt

2010-04-07T20:31:00.000-07:00

Cody said this is disgusting and I agree, but the only element that I think he's missing is that it's funny too. Diantha and I hid the easter eggs in the back pasture for the kids. We hid them in waves where the little ones started first and the eggs were easy to find and then it got harder as you went up the hill. Anyway, Diantha hid this camoflauge egg in a lovely dried pile of fertilizer (I'm using my good manner words today.) This was for the older kids to find. And actually the camo eggs were quite the challenge to find. I'm not even sure we found them all.

Here are the big kids waiting their turn to get started.

This was Rylan's first easter egg hunt where he really participated. The first egg he picked up and shook it, then he sat down on the ground and opened it. As soon as he realized there was candy inside he was on a mission. How is it possible that we can think everything this little man does is adorable?

This is Precious

2010-04-07T20:15:00.000-07:00

On Easter Jess took Rylan out to feed the chickens. (These pictures are out of order.) I was doing dishes so I watched as they took a little detour to the swings before doing their chores. At first Jess was pushing Rylan in the baby swing, then I looked out and they were swinging on separate swings together giggling. It was so cute. But this grabbed my heart when I looked out and they were swinging like this. You can see that Jess is talking to Rylan while they are swinging and I thought it was adorable. She adores her little brother and she is a great big sister.
Here they are in the mudroom before they went outside. Gotta love the chore boots on Rylan! He loves to go out and help with chores!!!

This was just another cute picture of Jess. She's growing up so much and she's such a good girl. She loves the animals and is really coming out of herself out here on our little farm. She's very conscientious of taking care of the puppies. She makes sure they are safe in their kennel before we leave the house and she really watches out for them. It's fun to watch her grow up.

2010-04-07T19:26:00.000-07:00

I'm mostly posting this for our moms. I thought these pictures would be fun to see. This is Cody being sworn in as a chaplain in the Air National Guard back in October. It's still a little weird to think that we are a military family, but we felt strongly about the decision and I feel that Cody has a lot to give in this position. So far he has just attended guard drill here in Lincoln once a month and has done a couple of things outside of that here and there. He will be going to officer training in August for a month and that is the first time that we will spend that much time apart. I guess it's nice that we can ease into it kind of slowly even though his deployments really won't be very long compared to some. We were told that they would be 4 months at the longest so that feels do-able. Anyway, he's really enjoying it so far so I'm grateful for that.

Here he is in his uniform. Personally, I think he looks hot!

APRIL FOOLS!!!!

2010-04-01T18:28:00.000-07:00

We had a really fun April Fools Day! This morning when I was packing the kids' lunches I put carrot sticks in some individual size chip bags, wrote and April Fools note and resealed the bags. The kids were disappointed that their chips turned into something less desirable to them, but they were good sports about it. They thought it was funny.

Then tonight for dinner we had dinner at The Crazy Cafe. (All these ideas came from the idea room site and the family fun site.) Anyway, I'll explain the menu later as I loaded these pictures in an odd order. This was the main course. It was the greasiest cupcake I have ever eaten! They were meatloaf cupcakes with mashed potatoes colored with beets on top. I thought they were awesome! (except the only thing I think I would make sure to do next time is to use the foil cupcake liners like the recipe called for. I didn't have any.) Anyway, I used my Grandma Stewart's meatloaf recipe in place of the one on the site so they actually tasted really good. I hope Grandma is proud of the way I used her recipe!

Doesn't that look tasty?

These were supposed to look like french fries with ketchup. The fries turned out okay but the ketchup wasn't very convincing. They were breadsticks that I cut really thin and rolled in butter and then sugar. The ketchup was homemade strawberry jam. Cody made the "McDonalds" bags and it even looks like the grease is leaking through just like it should be. They were pretty cute.

Here is one of the menus. I'm not a fancy computer person so I just did them each by hand and had more fun that way anyway. And, yes, some of the words are backwards. It seemed to fit with the Crazy Cafe! Anyway the "menu choices" were the food, utensils, and drink mixed up and given different names with a letter to go with each. When they ordered they had to put a letter in the box for when they wanted that thing to come to them even though they didn't know what it was. So they ended up with some interesting combos.

Pictures of my kitchen. Interesting, huh? Come join me for leftovers!!!!!

Actually, the brownie leftovers are pretty good. They rest will be eaten at your own risk.

April Fools Dinner

2010-04-01T17:42:00.000-07:00

Here are the pictures of the kids eating the dinner at the Crazy Cafe.

Here's Maleah's first course. She got garlic green beans, a fork, and a spoon. She didn't have her utensils for the rest of the meal and she chose the one time she had them to eat with her fingers. Go figure!

Isaac's first course turned out the way Cody wishes he could eat all of his meals. He got a brownie, invisible Kool-Aid, and a napkin. All the sweets at the beginning of the meal!! I think the girls were a little jealous at this point because they both had green beans.

Rylan kind of got whatever he wanted when he saw what everyone else had. Here he is with every option and, of course, he's eating his brownie. He was in heaven!!!

This is when we brought out the second course. They all happened to order the meatloaf cupcakes at the same time so it was fun to see their different reactions. Maleah
got her's with a brownie so she thought she was getting all desserts. She was celebrating. Jess was excited until we put it in front of her and then she stopped and said, "I smell chicken." Then she bent over and sniffed her cupcake and this is the face we got after she sniffed it. And Isaac? Well, it took him a little while to catch on to what was going on. He was just confused.

Here's Jess eating her third course. It was actually on of her favorites. Her only mistake she made when she was filling out her menu is she didn't pay attention and she left out one of the letters and put one of the other letters twice. No big deal except for when the one you omit is the brownie!! She couldn't figure out why she didn't get one until we were almost finished eating!

Animal Update

2010-03-31T18:31:00.000-07:00

Diantha brought it to my attention that I never finished our story about the dogs. Well, first I should explain why dogs is plural now. Around the same time we got the other puppy from Albian (actually it was a little bit before we knew about that puppy) a friend of ours called and told us her friend had 10 puppies to find homes for. We made the terrible mistake of going to see them when they were 2 weeks old and since they were so tiny and cute we told them we would take two. They told us we would get these puppies the first part of March (we saw them the end of January.) Anyway, a few days later Cody found the puppy in Albian and decided we had to have her. So we thought we would just take one of the other puppies, but when it came down to it we didn't have the heart. So we ended up with 3 puppies. We are so weak!!!!! And to add to it the mother of the 10 puppies dried up and wasn't able to feed them so we ended up getting the puppies on Valentine's Day when they were only 5 weeks old. They were too tiny and the weather was still terribly cold so I had to go against everything in me and keep them in the house. I kept them in a big rubbermaid tote in the kitchen and they weren't allowed to leave the kitchen area. Well, I only lasted 10 days and I couldn't take cleaning up poop and pee any more so they were moved out to the barn. We put them in the kennel with straw and there was a heat lamp so they survived. They were more likely to survive out in the winter cold than in my kitchen because they just about lost their lives every time they would poop on my kitchen floor. Anyway, I learned to like them once they were staying in the barn.

So back to our dilemma about the dog names. After a lot of conversation and, yes, some fighting between the kids we decided not to use any of the names we put on the blog to vote on. The kids decided to give each of them Star Wars names. The big puppy from Albian is Asoka (and by the way I don't know how to spell any of these names.) The little black lab is Padme. And the black and white spotted one is Sateen. Can't tell us we weren't creative.

Here's Rylan watching the puppies have breakfast.

Our second animal update is about our bunny, Joe. We had Joe for almost 6 years and he died the first part of March. And of course he died on my shift. Luckily Diantha was with me when I found him so she was the one that had the guts to pick him up and haul him out of the barn. The whole stiff, dead thing is still a little too much for me. I think I would have thrown up. So, thanks Diantha! Anyway, long story short, we told the kids that we couldn't bury him because the ground was still frozen so we decided that he could go out like a Jedi. So here's a picture of Cody and the kids at Joe's funeral. And, yes, I did wait until Cody was there to help in this part!

Just Another Day in Paradise

2010-03-31T10:41:00.000-07:00

I don't know if we are still just in the honeymoon phase of farm living, but we absolutely love our little farm. Sure we have some interesting things that happen and I am learning a lot, but we are having a great time. I feel like a tourist. Any time we are out doing something together I have to take a camera because everything is still interesting and fun. Here are some pictures of us going for a walk in the back pasture where the kids have made their own Terabithia. They are having a great time exploring and playing and we feel blessed to be where we are.
This is overlooking the back of our place where Terabithia is.
Just thought this was funny!!! To me it looks like Cody's tongue is really touching Rylan's boot Nasty!!!
This was a happy day at our house!!!!!! After waiting several months for our chickens to start laying eggs Jess came in and proudly presented our first eggs. We were so proud of our hens! It makes my day to go out and collect eggs from the chicken coup. It's like an easter egg hunt for me! It's so therapeutic!!!

Happy Birthday Rylan-boy!!!

2010-03-22T08:09:00.000-07:00

Wednesday, March 17th, was Rylan's 2nd birthday. He was sick that day so I had to take him to the doctor. He had a fever and a sore throat so he didn't feel very well. It was sad! So that is the reason for the pj's and the bedhead and the drool (he didn't want to swallow). Anyway, we drugged him so he was happy for his party. Here he is after he blew out the candles. He was proud!

And I was proud of the cake!! It was an idea that Diantha found on a site called the Idea Room. It was really fun to do and it fit with Rylan's birthday on St. Patrick's day.

He got a little Geotrack train set for his birthday and he loved it!!!!!!

Third times the charm

2010-02-07T18:27:00.000-08:00

Friday the 5th of February Cody drove to Albian Nebraska (2.5 hrs away) and got a 1/2 Great Piraniese and 1/2 Chocolate Lab puppy from a family that was giving it away. The puppy was 11 weeks old and was wonderfully cute. The puppy didn't like the drive home very much and when Cody got her home she would hardly hold her head up. She appeared really car sick. Cody and the kids went to the barn with her to get the kennel set up for her. She was walking very sickly around the barn and wandered over to the door where she waltzed out and then when in the open she ran off.
The whole family was devistated. 3 hours later and after involving the neighbor boy (a very kind 15 year old) and wandering around a 20 acre grove of trees tracking her in the snow we were ready to give up. We were sure we had lost her. We knew she had been living in a place where she and her mother served as the guard dogs for a goat herd so we went to tell our neighbor that she might show up there and had the idea that maybe a goat at our house would attract her back. Maleah and Cody came and told me that they were thinking about buying one of our neighbors goats and I told them I thought that was ridiculous and maybe we could just borrow one. So, anyway, they walked down to talk to the neighbor and called some friends who own goats to ask their opinion. Deciding that it wasn't a good idea to borrow somone's livelyhood they decided that maybe the best idea was to trade a round bail of hay for a goat. Maleah suggested that only one person would know if that was going to work and that they should pray about it. Maleah and Cody knelt in the middle of the dark street near the neighboor's house and prayed. Cody wanted Maleah to feel the importance of her answer and so after praying asked what she felt. She said she felt that they should get a goat. They made the deal and the neighbor, being the great neighbor he was sent them home with 2.
Now back on the farm, they put the goats in the barn separated so they would make lots of noise but not until they had taken one near the grove of trees and let it make a bunch of noise in hopes of getting the puppies attention. After watching for a while with no return of the dog we all prayed and went to bed.
The next morning Cody got up to go to the National Guard and checked on the barn. Low and behold there was the puppy snuggled up next to the pen with the goat just wagging it's tail. He told Jessica who as usual was up playing on the computer at 6am. Jess couldn't keep it to herself and came and woke me up to tell me. She said Mom I have good news and bad news. I said what's the bad news. She said, there isn't any but the good news is that the puppy came back. Needless to say I couldn't get back to sleep and now we are going on 2 whole days with the puppy. Pray for us on this one our track record with dogs isn't so good. (First dog, Lady, we had for only about 6 weeks and then got run over by a wonderful old couple that we love and forgave imediately. Our second dog Sara we had for about 3 months before being shot by a racist psycho neighbor, a story for another day.)

Picture of the answer to our prayers

More Sidenotes

2010-01-21T11:36:00.000-08:00

This is the day we started pulling up the carpet. We were so excited! We started in Jess's room and we were really pleased with what we found there. Too bad all the rooms didn't have the same result. Jess's floor was in better shape than the rest of the house.
Jess babysitting Rylan on one of the work days. Playing dress-up.
Our first burning of the stuff we pulled out of the house. It was a good fire! Here are the kids giving the dads (Cody and Curt) a cheer after they got the fire going.
I wish this picture could have gotten more details. This was Trio and me after we spray painted the fridge black. We wore masks and everything, but after we were done the inside of our noses were black, our arm hair was black, it was everywhere. We had to do some serious scrubbing with those green Scotch-Brite scrubbers to get it off.

Isn't this an attractive picture? We were getting a shot of the black up the nose. Nice one, huh?

Fun Little Sidenotes

2010-01-21T11:07:00.000-08:00

Sorry I'm still finishing up from last summer!

Maleah was helping Cody mix mud for the seams in the boys' room and they had everything in the bucket and Cody turned on the mixer and it sprayed across the front of Maleah. She had a really good attitude about it. It was pretty funny!

Here are the kids playing in our mess of a house. This was the only room we had any of our stuff in during the remodeling process so they had some toys to play with and stuff but, Man, was that room a mess. It was literally a foot deep in junk that the kids got out. But this was their entertainment when they weren't outside.
This was Rylan's hair-do after Jess was asked to put sunscreen on him. Yes, all that grease in his hair is sunscreen.
Rylan's sleeping arrangements during the remodeling. Pretty fancy get-up, huh?
This is a really random picture that has a funny memory for me. One of the first days that we were working on the house Cody and the 3 oldest kids came out before me in the morning. I was just 30 minutes or so behind them, but on my way I got a frantic phonecall from the girls saying that there was a bull in the barn. Apparently they had gone out to the barn to play and they walked through the door and found a rather large visitor greeting them. They both ran screaming back to the house to find Cody. Anyway, when I got there I had to get a picture of one of our first visitors before we went out in search of where he belonged.

I Have a Hard-Working, Talented Husband

2010-01-21T10:58:00.000-08:00

I know I've been married to Cody for 12 years but I am still amazed at what a hard-working and talented person he is. It was fun to work along side him on this big project this summer. This has always been a dream for us.

Here he is sanding the walls in Jess's closet.

On his stilts taping the walls in our bedroom
Here's a picture he took when he was at the house alone in the middle of the night after sanding the walls upstairs. It was so muggy he was sweating and making mud on his arms as he sanded it off the walls. Awesome, huh?
I love this picture!!!! He took a picture in the bathroom mirror to show me what he looked like after sanding that night. He's actually on the phone with me. It was about 11 pm and the rest of us were asleep at the Springers and all the fire alarms in the house started going off and it scared us to death. We couldn't figure out why they were going off, though. There was no smoke or fire and we couldn't get them turned off so we called him to give us some ideas. It was kind of funny after it was over, but during the hour that the alarms were sounding we were a bit frazzled. It didn't bother Isaac, though, he slept right through the alarms and the lights. Amazing and scary at the same time. We now have a safety plan at our house that includes the girls going in to get Isaac if there's an emergency at night!
Here's proof of how hard he worked this summer. If you can sleep on a hardwood floor like this you've got to be tired!

I love you, Cody. Thank you for your wonderful talents and big dreams.

More Help from Friends and Ward Members

2010-01-21T10:47:00.000-08:00

We even received service from our younger ward members. Here's Maren helping us scrape old carpet pad off Maleah's bedroom floor. Maren was a good sport when she came out. She came out a lot and was a great help to us.Here we are eating one of Teresa's meals that she brought us. She brought us a warm lunch meal one or more times per week to help us out. It seemed like a small thing to her but it was huge for us. The only thing we had every day other than that was PBJ and we got to where we didn't even want to eat we were so tired of that. So thank you Teresa for your wonderful meals!
In September the young men and their leaders came out and helped us mow the lawn. We hadn't had time to even think about doing that in the 2 months we had been working. It looked so good to see the lawn mowed again. Here's JR and Joseph helping in the yard.
Here's Nathan posing with his mower.
This is the group that helped: Matthew, Bro. Scarlett, Bro. Carlson, Nathan, and Joseph. I still can't believe all the sacrifices people made for us. Thank you to these young men and their leaders.

Stairway and Upstairs Hallway

2010-01-21T09:47:00.000-08:00

No major changes to the stairway. This is just when we were tearing off the last layer of wallpaper. It was fun on this part to get to the wall underneath and there were little pieces of history. There was a note that said "Corey was here" and little scribble marks. I just wondered how long ago Corey was there! I love that this place has some history.
Our stairway now. We still haven't had time to lay the new carpet. We have it rolled up in the upstairs library, but I'm guessing that will be a spring or summer project too.
This is at the top of the stairs between the kids' rooms. There was a false ceiling up here and when we tore it out we realized they had wallpapered the ceiling. That was a chore to get off. It gave me a serious shoulder workout. Here I am cleaning up after Cody re-mudded and sanded the walls. It looks like it snowed!
Here's the end result. No major changes to anyone that didn't remove wallpaper, then paneling , then 3 more layers of wallpaper in this part of the house. This looks wonderful to those of us that saw the scraping process on these walls. I wish I had pictures.

Front Room Continued

2010-01-21T08:45:00.001-08:00

This is what the front room looked like in mid-October. When we moved in Cody just put up a sheet of plywood between the rooms so the kids couldn't come in this room. We finished this room on Halloween.
Cody laying the mud for the tile.
We did a little tile entry way.
This is what the room looks like now. There's still some trim to do and cleaning up to do on the ceiling but it's mostly done.

The Front Room

2010-01-21T08:29:00.000-08:00

This was the front room when we bought the house. We actually planned on keeping the wood stove until we started tearing into things and saw how many problems it had, so we took it out. The roof and ceiling were also leaking so we had to take the roof off. It was quite the project. I guess I should say it was quite the project for Cody because I didn't even help with that. He did it with the missionaries.

Cody is just getting started tearing out the brick. We had no roof for a week or so if I remember right.
This is the view from up in the boys' room where there was still the hole from the old door that was there.
It was interesting when we tore into this room to see the front of the old house before they added this part on. You can see it on the right side of the picture. Cody got the roof put on just before it was dark and rain started to come down the night before we left for Nauvoo. While we were gone our friend and neighbor from our old house, Leo Dominguez, came and shingled and finished off the roof for us. He did a great job!

Current Kitchen

2010-01-21T07:42:00.000-08:00

This is what our kitchen looks like now. We still haven't finished all the cabinet doors, but we will when things warm up. The folding table is to help me with my lack of counter space for right now. We eventually want to remodel the kitchen but that's a few years down the road. I think it will look really cute as soon as the doors are covering my disorganized cabinets!

The one bonus to my kitchen is that when I have friends over they never have to ask where things go. It's all visible!

The Kitchen Floor

2010-01-21T07:32:00.000-08:00

I mentioned before that the floor was really bad. The man that owned the house before us smoked and it left the floor yellow and really dirty. Cody tried to clean the floor with Steve's steam cleaner. It would have taken forever that way, so when we talked to Steve he told us to strip the floor and put a new finish on it.

Here are a couple pictures of the process.

Disgusting, huh?!

This is how the floor looked afterwards.

The Gift of Service

2010-01-19T11:31:00.000-08:00

The end of July Cody and I went to Youth Conference to Nauvoo. We were gone from Thursday until late Saturday night. It was really fun to go, but we were really stressed and overwhelmed by the house and it was hard to leave over a weekend when we could get so much done. We experienced proof that when you do what the Lord asks your little sacrifice brings blessings that go above and beyond your little sacrifice.

This is how we left our kitchen when we went to Nauvoo. I was so stressed about it I was even dreaming about it while we were there. When we got home late Saturday night we went to pick up Isaac and Jess from Diantha and Curt's house around midnight. They told us some story that Paul had been out to the house for something and he noticed that the window in the shop door had been broken out (that actually had fallen out before we had left) and he was worried that someone had broken in and he wanted us to stop out there and check on it before we went home. So we stopped out there and saw that everything was fine with the shop and we weren't even going to go in the house, but when we were turning around the head lights went across the back door and there was a big note on it. I told Cody to stop and I went to see what it was. It was a note from our ward.

These pictures are what I saw when I went inside. (It still makes me cry to see these pictures!)

I came out of the house crying and told Cody that he needed to come inside.

This is what we saw when we came in. Our kitchen was nearly finished! Maleah's room was mostly done. They had worked out in the shop on the cabinet doors for the kitchen. They had helped clean all the plaster mess in Jessica's room and helped to strip more wallpaper. One of the sisters cleaned the bathroom that was so nasty I had wondered if I would ever be able to use it. Our laundry room cabinets were even painted. Another one of the sisters had brought her baby and couldn't work inside because of the vapors from the primer so she held her baby in one arm and weeded the flower bed and patio area in the back of the house with her other hand. From what I understand there were people from our ward out here working on our house every day that we were in Nauvoo. Our friends estimated that there were over 100 hours of work (probably more. I think it made up about 2 weeks work for Cody and me) put in during the time that we were gone. One of the nights the priesthood brethren came out. Another night the Relief Society sisters came and on Saturday more people came back to help. There were also people that watched other people's kids to allow them to come out. It was a wonderful service to us from our ward and it's something we will never forget.

Trio and Diantha were the ones that organized everything. They knew what the plan was so Trio had a list of to-do's for each day and people just came out and worked. Diantha spent most of the time out in the shop in the heat and humidity (I guess it was like that in the house too because we didn't run the air conditioning) overseeing the cabinet doors. I can't express what this has meant to Cody and me. I hope our friends and ward members know how much they blessed us.

The Kitchen

2010-01-19T10:59:00.000-08:00

This is what the kitchen looked like to begin with. From the pictures it doesn't look too bad, but it was nasty!! The cabinets aren't actually oak they have and iron-on veneer that was peeling off and bubbling in some places and the whole place was covered in grease and tar from cigarette smoking. The floor is supposed to be white, but it's also yellow from tar. It was pretty gross!!!

Here's what it looked like as we were getting started tearing into it.

Diantha and Trio spent hours and hours in the kitchen with me trying to get all the nasty veneer and adhesive off the cabinets

Our refrigerator is really old and gross. We didn't have the money to buy a new one yet so Trio had the idea to spray paint it black with appliance spray paint. I didn't even know there was such a thing. Anyway, we covered the floor with newspaper and cardboard and went at it. It was really fun and it turned out really looking really good!

Our Bedroom

2010-01-19T10:11:00.000-08:00

Our bedroom had 2 big closets taking up a big portion of the room and we really didn't like the way they were made so we took them out. We like that the room is bigger now, but we still haven't had time to build armoires yet so our bedroom currently has some storage issues.

I got these pictures backward once again. The one below shows where we tore the closet out and where the plaster was bad and had to be replaced. The new problem we ran into in our room is that they glued paneling to all the walls, so that's what that nasty brown stuff is on the walls. So we had to scrape that down, but there was no getting it off all together, so Cody put a layer of mud over the whole room to smooth it down.

These are the pictures of what we have now. Same thing as the rest of the house, we need to refinish the floor and trim.

Jess's Room Continued

2010-01-19T09:53:00.000-08:00

I wish this picture was better. There was so much dust in the air that the camera picked it up and I couldn't get a better picture. Anyway, this is Trio after she finished painting Jess's wall. I love it and so does Jess! Trio is so creative and talented and I'm grateful that she's been willing to share her talents with us during this whole project. She made my kids' rooms darling and she's the one that helped me pick all the other colors in my house. She has part ownership in our house after all the work she has put into it. She was such a great friend and support during this crazy process.

Here's the finished product of Jessica's room. It turned out really cute, I think.

Jessica's Room

2010-01-19T09:21:00.000-08:00

Jess picked this room because of the wallpaper border. It has a bunch of colorful hats. It didn't really work for me so we compromised. She got to choose the colors to paint the room in the end. Her room didn't look like it was going to be much trouble until we got into it.
These picture are backwards, but here is Jess and me priming her room. She loved being part of the painting and she did a really good job.

This is right before Cody put all the mud on the seams. Needless to say he had a lot of mudding to do in her room.

Jess's room was like Isaac's with 5 or 6 layers of wallpaper, the only thing that made it harder was the slanted ceiling/wall. It was a really hard angle and I was exhausted whenever I would work on it. It took me days. The saddest thing is that once I got almost all the wallpaper off we realized the plaster wasn't good underneath it so we ended up just tearing the plaster out. If I had known that I wouldn't have even had to touch the wall paper on that wall. I was a bit frustrated!! Anyway, this shows when they were just starting to sheetrock that wall. Paul Springer and the missionaries helped us with that. Jess's room was another thing the ward members helped with while we were gone to Youth Conference. They cleaned all the mess our of Jess's room. That was quite the job!!

Here is the last layer of wallpaper to come off in Jess's room. It was BRUTAL!! We had to scrape for everything we're worth to get that off! Another thing that came up in Jessica's room is that the old chimney for the house went up through her room. They put plaster directly over the brick of the chimney. We think they must have had a chimney fire or something at some point because the plaster that covered the chimney was baked, brown, and cracked. Cody had to put a new layer of plaster over the whole outside of it.

Maleah's Room

2010-01-19T08:54:00.000-08:00

This is Maleah's room before we did anything to it. Her room actually ended up being one of the easiest for us for a couple reasons. There was only 1 layer of wallpaper, but the biggest reason is that we didn't even do most of it. Our ward came in and did it while Cody and I were gone to Youth Conference the end of July. That is a story in itself, but I want to post the whole story later. The only other thing in Maleah's room was that there was a huge hole in the ceiling of her closet that I never got a picture of. It took Cody some work to get that taken care of. Other than that her room was quite simple.
I got very few pictures of all the people that came to help us and that makes me sad. Here's Doug Abbott helping the girls finish painting and taking off the tape in Maleah's room. He and his wife, Mary, came to help us several times. They helped me paint the finishing touches on Maleah's room. Mary helped me paint the boys' room and they helped me paint the cabinet in the family room downstairs. They did so much for us. It was wonderful to have their support. They are great friends to our family.

Just a picture before we got everything cleaned out to pull the carpet up.

Here's her room now. Trio did the flower on the wall and she did an awesome job. Maleah absolutely loves it!

Boys' Room Continued

2010-01-19T08:36:00.000-08:00

Here's the boys' room now. It still needs trim and the floors refinished, but that will happen a little at a time. My favorite thing about their room is the little mural that Trio painted on their wall. Rylan especially likes it. He loves to tell you about the tractor and the barn. The night after Trio did it Rylan was going to bed and he was so excited to see it and he cried when we turned off the lights. It's really cute!
The head of Isaac's bed is where the door to the roof used to be.

This shows the closet. We still need to make a door for it, but it's nice to have a closet. We really lack closet space in some of the bedrooms.

The Boys' Room

2010-01-19T07:38:00.000-08:00

I forgot to take a picture of this room before we got started. The day we bought the house we were so excited we came out to the house and started tearing wallpaper off that night and their room is where we started so I didn't get a picture. But here's Cody tearing off wallpaper. This was one of the worst rooms to get the wallpaper off. I think there were 5 or 6 layers and they were OLD!!! I felt like I was traveling back in time with each layer that I pulled off. You can see behind Cody where the ceiling is slanted the plaster was coming off so we started pulling off plaster and it was falling in huge chunks.
Here's a picture after we took off all the bad plaster. This also shows the door that we took out. The opening is barely showing to the left of the door leaning against the wall.

We also added a little closet in this room for the boys. Here it's just framed in.

This is when we were almost ready to start painting. I was so excited at this point!!! It almost looked like a place I could consider living in.

Remodeling the Dining/Family Room

2010-01-19T07:11:00.000-08:00

Here is a picture of the dining/family room before we worked on it.
These middle 2 pictures are backwards, but here is what it looked like after we got all the layers of wallpaper off and everything. This picture is after we cleaned the room. There was 6 inches of wallpaper covering the floor. And that hole in the wall at the other end of the room we think was one of the windows of the original house before they added on the back little room. That was a lovely little surprize we found when we were tearing off wall paper and realized that they had wallpapered directly onto a piece of sheetrock that they had put over the old window. So as we were tearing off the wallpaper we were tearing apart the sheetrock as well. That needed to be replaced.

Here's Cody, Jess, and Isaac helping tear off the last layers of wallpaper. We knew wallpaper removal was kind of a pain, but we didn't realize that we had 4-5 layers of it in most rooms.

Here is what the room looks like now. We obviously aren't finished, we have some trim work to do and the floors need refinished, but it feels much more like home to us. We love it!

And some day I hope to get it decorated!!!

Some Remodeling

2010-01-19T05:53:00.000-08:00

Here's a picture of the front of the house. When we bought it there was a door in the boys' room upstairs that went out onto the roof. We didn't think that was a very good plan so here is a picture of where it was. There was also a chimney that came out the lower roof on the front and blew smoke right into the windows of the upstair. The roof on the front part of the house leaked and ruined the ceiling in that front room so that whole part of the roof was torn off. Here is a picture of that process.
Here's how it looks after. We haven't repainted or anything, we just painted the parts we added and repaired. Hopefully repainting the house is in the plans for the summer. We'll see.

Our 2009 Overview

2010-01-18T06:57:00.000-08:00

So this is what took all our time,attention, energy, and MONEY the last half of 2009. We bought this place that's about 5 miles out of Lincoln. It's a cute little farm home with some land. (I have to say "we have land" not " we have an acreage" because Cody said acreage is a city people way of saying it, so I'm trying to learn!) Anyway, the place has needed and continues to need a lot of work but we absolutely love it!
Here's the view from the hay field up to the back of the barns and the house (the house is hidden by the barns.) Anyway, this was in May and everything is so beautiful and green. It's giving me spring fever big time to look at these pictures.

Here are the kids running up and down the hill in the field. This was their favorite thing to do every time we went to see the house. Abbie, Eliza, and Katie were there with us this time.

We went out to see the place a lot before we were able to get it. It was a major long process to get into the place. We sold our old house and moved out the end of May. We were SUPPOSED to close on this house the first week in June so we ended up renting Katie and Steve's apartment for a month after they moved just to give ourselves a little time to close on the house and do some fixing up, but things did not go that way. Long, messy story short we ended up not closing until July 10th and we didn't move in until mid-August a few days before school started.
It was a very hectic and exhausting summer, but we had so much support from good friends and ward members. Our wonderful friends, the Springers, let us move in with them for those 6 weeks from the beginning of July to mid-August. They are such a blessing to us and, yes, they are very brave people! We had 11 people living in their house and actually things went quite well. The kids did great and we really enjoyed the time that we had with Paul and Trio. Things went as well as they can go with 2 families living under 1 roof. They are great friends and that was tested and proven this summer after living together for that long and we still really like each other!!!

Dump Truck Turned Wheelchair

2010-01-17T18:31:00.000-08:00

Rylan loves Isaac's big dump truck! He sits in it and has the kids push him across the dining room and family room. When he couldn't get anyone to push him, though, he figured out how to get himself around. This is how he does it. It is hilarious to us!

I had to get a recording of him saying "Merry Christmas" too. He doesn't even try to say "merry" he just says "Christmas light." I think it's adorable!

Christmas Day

2010-01-17T18:10:00.000-08:00

We did a crazy thing and brought back Cody's old drum set from Montana at Thanksgiving time. For Christmas we put it up in the basement. The kids love it! I don't mind it altogether, but there are times that it gets a little interesting. The day after Christmas I got the flu and I laid there all day listening to a lot of beginners trying their hands at drumming. This is Rylan's first time on the drums on Christmas day.
Maleah got a new camera for Christmas. She has really enjoyed it. She takes pictures of everything and she is really getting good at using the different settings and taking some really fun pictures. I can't believe how big she's getting. She's such a fun person to have in our family.

Jess loves Webkinz. Here is what her letter to Santa said this year "Dear Santa, I have been good. Will you please get me 3 lil'kinz? It costs $30 dollars. I'll give you some ideas: I definitely want a chihuahua and a bird last one a surprize. It says chihuahua on the back of the code paper." I thought it was pretty cute and smart to make sure Santa knows EXACTLY what to get. Jess has grown and changed a lot this year. It's fun to visit with her and see how she sees the world. She is a very kind and sensitive girl.

For Christmas Isaac got REAL tools to work with his dad in the shop. He thinks it's pretty cool to be like dad. He also lost his 2 front teeth at Thanksgiving time. He looks really cute! He's grown and learned a lot this year too. He is learning to speak better every day. He is a fun little boy and a great big brother to Rylan. Rylan adores him and no one can make him laugh like his big brother does. It's so fun to see them have a good relationship.

White Elephant Continued

2010-01-07T09:26:00.001-08:00

Diantha brought this gift for the exchange also. Maleah thought it was great. She slept with it that night.
Isaac got these delightful glasses that I think Diantha and Curt got for their wedding 17 ? years ago.

This is a quality gift for Cody, our cat lover!!!!! Can't you see the pleasure on his face?
Actually, I think the highlight of this picture is Cody's pants. We found these in his dad's shop when we were in Montana. I was with his brother Matt and I told him not to show Cody for fear of Cody actually wearing them and of course Matt promptly showed Cody the pants and here we are. Aren't they beauties?

Curt got Rylan's gift. A very fitting gift also

White Elephant Gift Exchange

2010-01-07T09:07:00.001-08:00

We started the white elephant gift exchange tradition with Steve and Katie a couple years ago and this year since they are gone we were glad the Diantha and Curt and their kids were willing to do our silly exchange. The rules are that you have to get something from your house and you can't purchase anything. We all draw numbers when we are together and #1 picks a wrapped present first and #2 can either take #1's present or choose a new one from the pile. But we leave the gifts wrapped until we are totally finished and then you get what you get when you open your gift at the end. Here are some of the final results:

Here's Maren with the gift that Jessica brought to the exchange. Jess was laughing her head off when Maren opened it she thought it was a brilliant gift! What could be better than a saw blade for her friend?!

Here's Jess with a pair of capris that Diantha brought to the exchange. They are actually quite cute and my size so they may end up in my drawer by accident one of these days. Jess has assured me, though, that all gifts have to be exchanged fairly and if I end up with her gift she gets mine. (My gift was actually quite nice. A couple of nice picture frames. So I'm going to have to think about that deal.)

Here's Alcy with the gift that I brought to the exchange. She was quite cute about it. Here she is giving it a nice pat. I don't think her mom and dad were as excited about the gift because it is still sitting in our shop. BUT not to worry, Diantha, we know who the rightful owner is and we will be sure to return the gift to her!

Christmas Eve Festivities

2010-01-06T15:37:00.001-08:00

We did the nativity with Diantha and Curt and their girls. Here are all the kids taking a bow at the end of their performance.

The three wise men.

Joseph, Mary, the shepherd and a little black sheep!

These picture are kind of backwards, but this was Christmas Eve morning. Our tradition is to make candy cane pancakes (candy canes crushed in the batter) with chocolate chips smiley faces. Why is it that it's not a holiday unless our kids have a sugar rush ALL THE TIME? We did have a great time, though.

"I'm Hot Stuff!"

2010-01-06T15:27:00.000-08:00

A couple weeks ago Rylan told Cody, "I'm hot stuff!" Cody didn't know where he picked that up. I guess that on Sunday when he wore this outfit to church our friend Diantha taught him to say that in nursery. He does look like quite the little man in his outfit (Grandma Judy got it for him). I especially love the addition of the cowboy boots. Rylan thinks he is awesome when he wears them. He struts like a champ!

Rylan's Run

2010-01-06T13:44:00.000-08:00

This is just a little silly video of Rylan. This is the way he runs around the house. I'm not sure where he got the thing with his arms, but that's always how he runs. It's quite funny! And you have to love his blowing the kiss.

White Christmas

2010-01-06T12:40:00.000-08:00

We have had a lot of storms this winter so far. The week before Christmas we had a big storm come in and we had school canceled for 3 days. This is what things looked like afterward.

This is what our trees looked like outside our kitchen window.
This is the view of our back barn. I was standing next to the front barn when I took this picture. I just thought this looked so pretty.

We are still Alive

2010-01-06T12:27:00.000-08:00

Well, we have not dropped off the face of the earth, though at some points during this year it felt like we had. We had a crazy but exciting year and things are finally starting to mellow out for us. I want to update everything that has happened this year, but I first want to put some things on here about Christmas.

This is a picture of us sledding the week before Christmas. We had a big snow storm the week before Christmas and so the snow was perfect for sledding. We have a great hill on the back side of our property so we got bookin' on the sled. We had a great time!

The Happiest Place on Earth (Yes, it trumps Disneyland)

2009-05-19T12:28:00.000-07:00

I think Cody and Steve look like Rocky and Apollo Creed, except they share the love of food and not boxing

Steve, Katie, Cody and I share an intense love of indian food so we chose to have our "last supper" together at The Oven before they moved to Kentucky last week. It's been fun to live close to them for these 5 years and become great friends. We are really going to miss them!

Cody would be offended if I didn't display THE FOOD!

Maleah's Spring Concert, cont'd

2009-05-18T17:09:00.000-07:00

Maleah did a great job in chorus this year. It has been fun to listen to her sing her songs around the house. She has a very pretty voice.

It has been fun to watch Maleah improve playing the violin this year. She has done a very good job. Here she is in action.

Maleah's Spring Concert

2009-05-18T12:49:00.000-07:00

Spiderman Walk

2009-05-17T19:33:00.000-07:00

Rylan does this silly mix of crawling and walking. I think it's a genetic flaw because I think it was something that I did when I was his age.

Cheese!!!

2009-05-17T19:30:00.000-07:00

Here's another cute picture of what Rylan does when you pull out a camera. He thinks he's pretty hot stuff and so he should . . . . we think he's pretty hot stuff too!

Rylan's Bedtime Party Ritual

2009-05-17T19:29:00.001-07:00

Rylan is usually pretty good at putting himself to sleep but it's not always without a pretty decent mess. Cody went in to check on him before we went to bed one night and this is what he found. These were baskets full of Rylan's socks and onesies.

The Mayor's Run

2009-05-17T19:07:00.000-07:00

I love to run the Mayor's Run with the kids every year. It's a 1-mile run around the capital building. Cody is usually not available to go with us (I'm starting to think that he schedules himself on purpose!!) but we have a great time. Here we are just before we left the house.

These are some of the kids from our school that ran. The lady to the right is Mrs. Brandt the wellness teacher.

Here we are at the starting line for our first time through the race. We were about to run with Maleah's age group.

This was after our second time through the race. Between Maleah's and Jessica's age-groups I added a couple more kids to my team. Abbie and Eliza joined us because Steve had to work for a couple hours and Katie was out of town. So I did round two with six kids in tow. It went quite well. We were proud of ourselves, especially Abbie because it was her first race!!

WE SOLD OUR HOUSE!!!

2009-05-17T19:00:00.000-07:00

After almost a year of having our house on the market we finally sold it!!!!! Here are the kids celebrating that they don't have to keep their rooms clean "in case someone wants to see the house." Little do they know I'll find another excuse to motivate them (I hope!) We are really excited to be moving, though. We are in the process of getting finalized on a new (new to us, not NEW) home. Cody said I can't give any details because it will jinx (sp?) us and everything will fall through. SO, more news to come on that!

Multi-cultural Night at the Church

2009-05-17T18:29:00.000-07:00

The beginning of May we had a multi-cultural night at the church. We represented "team Brazil" along with many other families in our ward. Here we are in our brazilian uniforms. You need to notice Rylan's face in this picture. This is what he does when he's in front of a camera. Quite the CHEESE! The other little guy isn't ours, but we would claim him, he's adorable. Ryan decided he needed to be in the family photo.

Just a cute face!

Rylan and Norah helping take down the tables after the party

2009-04-01T10:15:00.000-07:00

Here's a clip of Maleah's performance. It's not very good I was borrowing Diantha's camera and I didn't know how to work it that well. She starts out on the left side of the screen, and I hope you can find her when I zoomed in a bit. She did a really good job!

Maleah's First Gymnastics Performance

2009-04-01T10:00:00.000-07:00

Here's Maleah getting ready for her first gymnastics performance. It wasn't a competition. They just performed a dance during the state competition for the older girls. It was really fun to watch her and see how much she is learning. I also think she looks sharp in her leotard!

At the competition she helped flash the scores for the uneven bars.

At the Devaney Center

Here she is in position to start the dance

Here's the end of the dance

Rylan Playing Ball with Dad

2009-03-30T19:29:00.000-07:00

Once again, just thought this was cute!

Crazy Dress-Up Day

2009-03-30T19:20:00.000-07:00

Here are the kids on Crazy Dress-Up Day at school. Cody did the girls' hair and helped Isaac with his get-up (Notice that Isaac's leg is coming out of the hole in the knee of his pants!) Maleah was embarrassed to walk to school with Isaac because he looked so funny. I thought it was hilarious!

Maleah's Sleeping Mask

2009-03-30T19:16:00.000-07:00

Cody and I just thought this was cute. Maleah got this sleeping mask for Christmas and it has actually turned out to be quite functional for her. She and Jess share a room and Jess likes to have some lights on from the hall or something so it's not totally dark and Maleah wants it to be pitch black, so the mask has turned out to be a decent compromise for them.

2009-03-30T18:49:00.000-07:00

Here's Rylan demonstrating his sweeping abilities with his new broom on his birthday. He really gets into it!!

Rylan's 1st Birthday

2009-03-30T09:35:00.001-07:00

Here Rylan is posing with his gifts and his birthday sign. He was clapping for himself. And, yes, that is a broom with the gifts. That was one of his favorites. He has a broom obsession. Any house that we go to he has to search out their broom to play with. We are raising a future janitor!!!

Enjoying the cake!

Proudly using his broom to help in the kitchen.

We weren't able to celebrate Rylan's birthday on his actual birthday so I took Rylan over to the school to have lunch with each of the older kids and we had some recess time with them too. Here he is with Jess and her friends during recess.

Happy Birthday Rylan!!!

2009-03-30T09:18:00.000-07:00

Here's our big one-year-old enjoying his birthday cake. He actually liked it! We put Cool-Whip instead of frosting and the cake was a homemade banana cake so I think it was a little less sweet. It was so cute to watch him.

Rylan's First Attempt at Walking

2009-03-30T08:01:00.000-07:00

This was the night before Rylan's first birthday. Jess was filming this and she was so excited it was hard to keep her focused, but she did a good job. I love how Rylan smiled for the camera after he was done. He was so proud of himself! He definitely knows what the camera is for.

2009-03-25T19:20:00.000-07:00

I just thought this was cute!

Rylan's Thoughtful Gift

2009-03-25T19:12:00.000-07:00

I had this gift sitting on my living room floor that I was getting ready for one of my good friends that just had a baby. We caught Rylan after he had so thoughtfully added a few handfuls of dirt to the gift. You can't see, but somehow he got a bunch under the sweater and it was in all the folds of the bag, so it didn't survive. He's such a little munchkin!

Carnival

2009-03-25T18:40:00.000-07:00

This was just a random Saturday night in March that we had Katie and the girls over to have a little carnival. We set up a few games. Here are Isaac and Eliza at the fish pond.

Rylan was clueless, but adorable, as always!
Eliza waiting to catch something!
This game ended up being harder than we expected. Cody made boxes out of tape on the floor and the kids had to roll the ball into them and they got a score according to which box it landed in. It was fun to watch the cheers that went up when each of them finally got the ball in the box.

At the end they had popcorn and played board games. It was cute!

Exotic Holdrege Nebraska

2009-03-25T18:24:00.000-07:00

The end of February we took a weekend trip to Holdrege for Cody to do a presentation. We stayed in the hotel and spent the evening before his presentation swimming and watching movies. We had a really good time. I think this picture is adorable! Cody has so much fun with this little boy and this captured a little bit of that.

I got up early Saturday morning to go running and when I got back this is what I saw. This is how they look in the morning when we let them stay up and party all night.

2009-03-24T09:44:00.000-07:00

Here's a little video of Rylan enjoying the music from Shrek. Sorry it's kind of dark.

Daddy/Daughter Date Night

2009-03-18T19:01:00.000-07:00

The night of February 18th Cody and the girls had a daddy-daughter date night for activity days at the church. It was a 50's night so here they are before they left. They had a really great time.
Here's what Maleah had to say about what they did that night:
"When we got there we played a game where you would get a heart and they would tape it to your back and you couldn't see it and you would try to guess what was on your heart. All the hearts had something about Jesus on them. We also played a different game where the kids took off their shoes and they went behing a curtain and all the dads would have to guess which was their daughter's. My favorite game was 'are you my daughter?' All the girls sat in a semi-circle and the dads would get a pillow and a wooden spoon and they would put it on one of the girls laps and they would say 'are you my daughter?' and the girl would say 'I love you daddy' in whatever voice they wanted to and he had to guess if that was his daughter. We also ate hotdogs, salads and for dessert we had rootbeer floats! After that they read stories about how the parents met and the girls had to guess which parents each story was about. It was fun!"

Jessica said, "I liked when we all sat in a half circle and one of the dads would have a pillow and a spoon and blindfold on their eyes and they would come around and say 'are you my daughter?' and the daughter would say 'I love you daddy' and they would say yes if they knew it was their daughter and no if they knew it wasn't. I liked it when it was my dad's turn and Bro. Talbot got in the circle and said 'I love you daddy' in a high girly voice when my dad came to him. It was really funny!"

I got to stay home with the boys and we made pigs-in-a-blanket for dinner and Isaac thought that was the bomb! Here he is showing which one he was going to eat. The kid LOVES hotdogs. I think he ate 3 before I had to stop him.

Here's Rylan enjoying some pre-dinner mac-n-cheese because he didn't have the patience to wait for dinner to be ready. I just think he's cute!

We ate our dinner downstairs while we watched Shrek. It was a great party!

Valentine's Day

2009-03-17T18:28:00.000-07:00

We have somehow started a tradition of making pink heart pancakes every Valentine's Day. this year we made it a little more fun by putting each child's initial on top. It was pretty fun. Here they are displaying and in Rylan's case mutilating their pancakes

In the afternoon we went over to have a little party with Katie and the girls. Cody took them outside to build a "princess castle" (Of course, Cody's intent was to make a fort, but with that many girls it was bound to turn into a castle.) They had a great time!

After playing in the snow the kids all came in and decorated sugar cookies. Oh, man did we have our kids on a sugar high that day!!!

Isaac's Kindergarten Program

2009-02-17T18:30:00.000-08:00

As soon as he figured out where we were in the audience he was giving all of his show directly to us. It was really cute. He was so proud of himself.

This was before the program lining up with all the kids in the hall. Here is his I'm-embarrassed-but-I'm-loving-this smile.

It has taken me 5 or 6 tries to get this video to download without shutting my internet down. I don't know what the deal is, but here it is. It was so fun to see how much more involved Isaac was in his program this year. He loved this song and sang it all evening after his program. We are so proud of the progress he is making this year in school!

Entertainment at a Cost

2009-02-12T12:14:00.000-08:00

Maleah was banging her head on the door to make Rylan laugh. Consequently our bedroom door now has a big crack in it. I'm not sure if it's a cheap door or if she has a really HARD head . . . . . actually I'm sure it's both!

Her Father's Child

2009-02-12T12:02:00.000-08:00

The other night we had extra kids in the house so Maleah was shifted out of her bed to our room. When Cody and I came in at the end of the night to go to bed we couldn't find Maleah when we came in our room. The bottom picture is what we saw first when we turned on the light. The top picture was after we removed a couple layer. She is definitely Cody's child! He loves to sleep in small places with his head covered. I'm way to clausterphobic!

Isaac's 100th day of School

2009-02-12T10:29:00.000-08:00

Every year at our school they celebrate the 100th day of school. Isaac came home that day with this exquisite pair of "100" glasses that HE MADE (emphasis that he added every time he mentioned them!). So consequently this was the Isaac that we saw for about 4 days following the 100th day of school! He's sure proud of himself!

UNL Basketball Game

2009-02-12T09:19:00.000-08:00

This is our favorite time of year to attend the UNL sporting events because it's Dollar Days!! Yes, we're cheap. . . Anyway, last week we went to a women's basketball game with Curt and Diantha and their kids. We also had Abbie and Eliza with us while Katie went to the temple, so we had a large cheering section made up of lots small people, but we had lots of fun.

Here's a picture of the Dads and the tired babies.
This pictures shares a lot about all the different personalities and temperments that we had with us that night!

Our cheering section

There's nothing better than watching a baby gettin' down!! They don't know what they're doing they're just feelin' it and giving it all they have. Here's Norah sportin' her stuff.

Who Said Letting Babies Feed Themselves is a Good Idea?

2009-02-03T12:24:00.000-08:00

I've decided that even babies have their emergency food storage, they just store it differently than the rest of us. They like to put it in their diaper, in their hair, on their face and in their neck fat. Rylan always has stuff stashed in places the I find later. It's such a treat!
You can't see it very well unless you blow it up in this picture, but he had it everywhere at lunch yesterday and you can see that he was very proud of himself. I love his goofy toothy grin!

2009-02-03T11:12:00.000-08:00

We were doing wheel barrel races for family home evening the other night. We thought it was worth catching on film, but Rylan thought his talent of clicking his tongue was much more exciting than we were.

We Bleed Red!

2009-02-03T10:54:00.000-08:00

We went to a Nebraska Gymnastics Meet on Friday, January 30th. My girls are members of the Ten-O club that supports the Gymnastics team, so we went before the meet and had pizza with the rest of the club members. We had so much fun! We got to sit with the rest of the families of the Ten-O club and cheer on the gymnasts together. Cody, Maleah, and Jess got to be part of the welcome at the beginning of the meet and shoot a "small explosive device" as Cody called it (Men and their explosives!!!) that blew streamers over the audience. They thought that was pretty cool. I forgot to take my camera to the event so here they are when we got home. They looked so cute!!

Rylan's New-Found Talent

2009-02-03T10:40:00.000-08:00

Rylan has discovered that he likes to dance to anything that even resembles music. Here he is rockin' to the radio during breakfast.

Jessica's 8th Birthday

2009-02-03T10:10:00.000-08:00

Getting ready to open gifts. Notice the lovely sign in the background that everyone pitched in to make. It was really cute!

We went to Grisanti's, our kids' favorite restaurant, for dinner after Jessica's baptism for dinner.

The people at Grisantis sang to Jess and Maleah for their birthdays and they each got a piece of cheesecake. Cheesecake makes life beautiful!

Blowing out her birthday candles. She missed several times!

Grandpa Barry

2009-02-03T09:47:00.000-08:00

I saw these pictures and my heart warmed with gratitude to my Heavenly Father for the blessing of still having my dad here with us. To see these pictures reminded me that I have received an answer to many, many prayers that my dad could be here so my kids could know him. I am so blessed to have a great dad that shows so much support and interest in my life. He frequently calls me to see if I'm "still alive" and I cherish the conversations that we have been able to have. Thank you, Dad, for living what you believe and teaching me so that I can pass those things to my kids. Watching you go through so many trials and staying upbeat and strong in your testimony has been a great example to me and my family. You are such a blessing to us. We love you!

Jessica's Baptism

2009-02-03T09:26:00.000-08:00

I can never get this right!!! These pictures are in backwards order. Oh, well, you can figure it out. Anyway, this picture was in the dressing room after Jess was baptized and we got her dressed in her white baptismal dress that Grandma Mickey made for our girls' baptisms. She looked beautiful! I can't believe she's old enough to be baptized. She is such a special, sweet girl. She has a tender heart and she is incredibly thoughtful. Cody and I so frequently find our bed made with a note on it from our "secret admirerer" (written, of course, in Jessica's handwriting!!) She is a wonderful daughter and I am so grateful to have her in our home.

Our not so little family before the baptism. Man, we are getting old!

It was so great to have Grandpa Barry and Grandma Judy there for the baptism. Brandt was there too, I'm not sure how he escaped being in the picture. It was so great to have the support of family for this special day. It meant a lot to Jessica.

I absolutely love this picture! Jess and her dad have a really special relationship. It was so sweet to see them in the waters of baptism together.

Maleah's Winter Concert

2009-01-30T15:02:00.000-08:00

Maleah Announcing

2009-01-30T14:00:00.000-08:00

Here's Maleah at her concert. It's far away, but she amazes me how comfortable she is in front of an audience. I wish I had her confidence!

Maleah's Concert

2009-01-30T10:28:00.000-08:00

Here's Maleah with her chorus teacher after the concert. They did a really good job and had lots of fun.

Maleah with her orchestra teacher.

She's in the zone here!

New Year's Eve

2009-01-29T20:26:00.000-08:00

I just thought this was cute. We went to Curtis and Diantha's house for New Years Eve with Steve and Katie. This was when we put all the kids down on the family room floor to watch a movie and the IDEA was that they would eventually fall asleep while we played games upstairs. Well, being the irresponsible parents that we were that night, we stayed up until almost 2 am and consequently so did the kids. It was quite the party, but we had a lot of fun. We ate all sorts of good food (that in itself is a party to me) and we played games. We're so lucky to have such good friends to have fun with!

Maleah's 10th Birthday

2009-01-29T20:13:00.000-08:00

I can't believe Maleah is 10!!!! She is growing up too fast. She is such a great kid! She has such a kind heart and an enthusiastic personality. She is incredibly smart and talented. She's good at almost anything she tries to do. I feel the Lord has really blessed me to give me the opportunity to be her mom. It's so fun for me to watch her get older and see how she views the world and it's great to see her wanting to do right and watching her testimony of the gospel grow. She is a wonderful person to have in our family. She brings so much fun and enthusiasm. Happy Birthday, Maleah!!! I love you!

On Maleah's birthday we had Elisa (our friend from Brazil that is here for her Senior year of high school) over for a "sleepover". The girls had a lot of fun with her! We also had Steve, Katie, Abbie, and Eliza over and we went to the church and had a soccer game in the gym. It was really fun. Here we are after dinner getting ready to sing "Happy Birthday" and bring out her cake.

The Toys Are For the Kids, Right?

2009-01-29T20:09:00.000-08:00

Christmas evening after the kids were all in bed Katie, Steve, Cody, and I went downstairs to test the durability of the kids new toys. This picture was actually taken with the lights off (because the lightsabers light up and make sound, so the effect was so much better in the dark!) so Cody had no idea what a great shot he had.

Christmas Day

2009-01-29T20:00:00.000-08:00

The highlight of the Christmas presents was all of the Star Wars stuff: lightsabers, actions figures, Star Wars dishes and books. The kids thought it was great to watch Rylan with the lightsaber. He thought he was pretty cool too! You can tell that Rylan is the center of entertainment in our house.

This was Christmas morning. Each of the kids made us gifts at school and that is always one of my favorite things. Maleah made us a ceramic bowl that was beautiful. Jess made us an adorable snowflake ornament with her picture in the middle of it. And Isaac gave us a Christmas magnet with his picture in the middle of it too. We had a ball opening gifts and the kids got a kick our of Rylan's excitement for the paper and boxes. He was actually scared of his gift! It was a ball popper that sings songs and blows balls in the air. It was a little too much for him to begin with, but he eventually warmed up to it.

We had a great Christmas this year. We have the tradition of taking fresh homemade bread to all our friends during the holiday season. And since I can't bake and deliver 15 loaves of bread in one night we do a few per week and it kind of lasts all through the holiday season. We have a great time visiting everyone. It's one of my favorite things about the Christmas season.

Christmas Eve

2009-01-29T19:51:00.000-08:00

This was our Christmas Eve tradition of fondue. We did it at Steve and Katie's this year. We had a great time! The kids made a massive mess once we got to the chocolate part, but that was part of the fun. We did our white elephant gift exchange which is always hilarious. We made the rule that it had to be something you already had and you couldn't purchase anything. So the kids even went through their stuff and they had to wrap it so that no one knew what it was (except usually me because I need to help in the wrapping process for some of them). There were some funny things. Isaac got a "Worst Case Scenario" board game that he was very pleased with! Steve got a microphone and a dancing Santa Claus (well, it used to dance before it broke). Maleah got cloth diapers (that was Rylan's contribution!). Anyway, random stuff, but we had a lot of fun. We are going to miss Steve and Katie next year. They are going to move this spring because Steve joined the military. We have had so much fun living close to them and we've become great friends. We hope they'll be back in a few years for law school!

2008-12-05T17:11:00.000-08:00

Well, I think we threw this picture on about 2 months ago thinking we would get right back to telling about it and here it is almost February and I'm just getting back. I guess there are a few other things that take my attention (like the 4 little people in this picture!)
Anyway, this was the tree that we chose to cut down for Christmas. We love going out to pick out our tree every year. Sure, it's just a tree farm just outside of town, but where else are you going to find a pine tree to cut down . . .in the mountains of Nebraska?

Thanksgiving

2008-12-02T18:49:00.000-08:00

The end result! (Sorry the pictures are in backwards.) Rylan doesn't look as pleased with the turkey as the rest of us were.

Stuffing our bird

This was the first Thanksgiving with just our little family. Well, not just our family, we had a few friends from the ward and the missionaries. But this was our first time preparing our own turkey and we were PROUD! Here is a picture of the kids cutting veggies to go in the stuffing.
We had a really good time.

A Taste of Egypt

2008-12-02T18:17:00.000-08:00

The past couple of months we have been choosing a different country to learn about during some of our family home evenings. This month we chose Egypt (Jess's idea). So last week I was running errands with Isaac and Rylan and we came home to an Egyptian restaurant in the basement. We sat on the blanket and ate rice,couscous, veggies, and kabobs. We ate everything with our hands. (Isaac couldn't pull it off, though. He couldn't handle the idea of dirty hands.) The girls served us and Jessica gave us some Egyptian trivia. We had a great time.

Jess's 2nd Grade 50's Program

2008-12-02T11:54:00.000-08:00

Here she is performing with her class
Here she is waiting in line to do the limbo with Abbie, Eliza, and Isaac.

Here are some pics from Jessica's second grade program. It was really cute. They split it up into three parts. The first part was where we took the video and the picture up above where everyone could join in and dance and do the limbo. I love this video! I've never seen Jess let her hair down in public like that. I was proud of her! The second part of the program was the whole group singing the songs they have learned this year. And then there was a last part where they made a video of a story they had written and illustrated as a class. It was really fun. She was adorable.

Little Hermit Crab

2008-12-02T11:20:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure how he got that on his back, I just thought it was cute.

Climber

2008-12-02T10:35:00.000-08:00

It took Rylan a little while to decide he wanted to start moving around, but once he started to crawl he has started to climb. I feel like we are entering a new realm with a little boy. My girls were never climbers, but I think we're in for it with this little guy. This picture was a few weeks ago. The box that he is on was standing up blocking the bookcase and he tipped it over so he could climb on it and get the rock that he is about to pull off the shelf. I will be cursing this behavior soon enough, but I kind of thought this was cute.