Where the Party's At

One small step for the house, One giant leap for the Davis'

2012-01-31T23:48:00.000-08:00

You may remember this post, where I talked about the ground breaking and development of Rockwell.

Since that time we've been busy designing house plans, researching materials, talking to builders, re-designing house plans, talking to new builders, re-designing house plans, talking to banks, waiting on appraisals, researching paint colors, solidifying house plans, talking to new banks, scouring through craigslist, waiting on new appraisals, looking at interior house decor, drooling over pinterest, etc.

As was the case with the land acquisition/development, there have been many "yes it's going through/no it's not" moments in this house planning process. We thought we could possibly break ground as soon as the land was developed (July), but it took much longer than expected.

In the mean time, our family took full advantage of all the empty land. We went over 3-4 times a week to run around, play in the dirt, ride bikes, drive remote control cars, throw the ball to the dogs, etc.

Ultimately the delay was a blessing, since it allowed us to find a bank we're comfortable with, an appraiser who knows what he's talking about, and a builder we trust completely- but it has been quite the roller coaster ride

Today we officially stepped off the first roller coaster, "The Planning Process" and got on a new, much more exciting, thrill ride- "The Construction Process".

We Broke Ground!!

We're so happy to have made it to this point and to begin watching this process. It feels like we can finally get excited about a project we've put TONS of time (and money) in to. We're ecstatic to be one small step closer to our house! (Completion is estimated @ 6-8 months from now. So, we're looking at beginning of August- October)

Sunglasses and Superheros

2012-01-31T22:35:00.000-08:00

Everett has always loved to read/look at books. It's cute to see him get so enveloped in the pages. At my moms house a couple weeks ago, he got a book from off the shelf, then went in the other room and climbed up on this chair. He just needed a little alone time for a good read. I totally know the feeling. I love how his little feet are crossed in the picture :)

Everett also loves trying on my shades. He usually says something like "handsome boy" when he first puts them on.

Beckam has been especially in to superhero's lately and he begs all day every day to play lego batman. He's actually really good at the game, and the two of us have a blast playing 25 minutes together every day- just enough time for us to beat a level.

He's also loving his superhero cape/attire and frequently puts it on and runs around the house.

I've been observing kindergartens for Beckam and who knew it would be such a complicated decision- I feel like I'm picking his college and career path, haha. I love that kid so much and it's bitter sweet to watch him grow up- we sure are going to miss having him around all day.

Here Comes the Jackpot Question in Advance

2012-01-11T23:55:00.000-08:00

We celebrated NYE at my cousin Cherryl's house and we had so much fun!

McKane had a bit of a sore throat that night so he took benadryl 10 minutes before we left to the party. (Who does this? It reminds me of the time he took a sleeping pill an hour before we landed in Chile. haha. Not the brightest crayon).

So, here was Mckane the whole beginning of the party:

I pushed Everett on the swing outside for a while and it cracked me up that he could not keep his eyes open for the flash but that he maintained such a sweet smile for the camera :)

Everett with his cousin- favorite babysitter- soon to be neighbor- Emma:

We first visited and enjoyed the grub inside, then we all went outside for some (crazy and cool) fireworks. After a few brushes with death, we sent the kids up to enjoy the fireworks from the balcony, haha.

Chrissy and Eric + Eric's adorable kids made these cute NYE hats for everyone. It made the night feel so much more festive.

At 12:00 both of my boys were still up to ring in the New Year (What- it's only a couple hours past their bedtime anyway :) We celebrated with a 30+ person noise parade down the street and some more fireworks.

The video is dark, but you can kind of hear the ruckus we created- excuse my voice in the video-.

It was such a fun night and such a great start to the New Year. Happy 2012!!

Come on ride the train. . .

2012-01-11T23:24:00.000-08:00

After picking up the kids from Charlie and Jills we went back out to Scottsdale to the McCormick train park. Tiff and I had wanted to do this with the kids before Christmas, but it was so busy we were never able to.

Beckam was so excited to see all of the characters. Everett was terrified and kept saying "scary". But, he still always gave them high fives/knuckles (as fast as he could, haha).

Love Everett's big cheesy grin in this one :)

Getting ready for the Big train ride.

Riding the Merry Go Round

Riding the little train.

Not sure why Beckam made this big dinosaur mouth, but he sure laughed about it afterward.

The cutest little smile from ceej.

We had so much fun and were glad we were able to sneak the outing in before they took down all the Christmas decor the next day.

Scottsdale Staycation

2012-01-11T23:22:00.000-08:00

For Christmas McKane gave me a Scottsdale staycation. Coincidentally, Jill and Charlie gave McKane and I 48 hours of continuous babysitting for Christmas (Best. Gift. Ever.)! We combined the two and had a great little getaway right before New Years Eve.

It was so nice to go out to eat (Caraba's) and not have to worry about hurrying home for the babysitter. The hotel was super nice and had lots of cool surrounding Christmas lights. This huge tree was so cool at night- all lit up and dancing to music.

It is pretty annoying being awoken at 7:30am hearing voices right outside your room. It wasn't until the morning that we realized the sound from the hallway carried into our room so LOUD! We were in a 5 star hotel and could hear every footstep, whisper, luggage moving along the walkway outside, etc. Ugh. To top it off the fire alarm went off at 8am. After getting up and packing up our stuff to evacuate, the alarm turned off. At that point we were wide awake and realized this would not be a sleep-full staycation (one of the biggest reasons McKane planned it). So annoying.

McKane called the front desk and they offered to give us complimentary parking for the night. Really? Thank you (said sarcastically). McKane complained about their meager offer and then they threw in breakfast as well. At first I thought that was cheap too, but when I looked at room service and saw breakfast was $30 per person, I thought it was more fair. :)

We ordered a $65 couples 3 course meal that was delicious (but I would have never ordered it if it wasn't on the hotel- who pays that for breakfast?). It also came with 4 small danishes, orange juice, and two glasses of wine (which I'm sure the bathroom sink enjoyed). Overall- really yummy meal. Worth $65? No. Worth being woken up early and not getting as much sleep? Heck yes.

After eating breakfast and watching some Jersey Shore (I know, who watches that? We had never seen it but were sucked in to it's ridiculousness, haha) we went out on the town for some shopping. We hit up Nordstrom's Rack and H&M before booking it back to Mesa to pick up the kids.

We only used 24 of our 48 hour babysitting credit from Charlie and Jill and I'm already planning out how to use the other half- it was so fun to get away and spend time with McKane.

Chrstmas Eve and Day

2012-01-11T14:32:00.000-08:00

We had such a wonderful Christmas Eve and Christmas Day this year. It was nice to feel somewhat alive again, after being on my death bed with the 24 hour flu. It was also fun to have Beckam a little older and extremely excited for Christmas, and Everett more aware of what was going on. Having children of your own really does bring some of the magic, that you had as a kid, back to the holiday- I love it!

Christmas Eve my family did the polar bear- as they do every year. Here are my brothers 'movin like bernie'. Haha.

Beckam decided he wanted to get in this year, but we didn't bring his swimsuit. I normally have one at my parent's, but I must have taken them all home. So, after searching all over the house, all I could come up with were the board shorts I wore when I was a lifeguard in highschool, haha. Love it.

Christmas Eve night we went to Grandma Jills for a YUMMY feast.

Here are the guys/boys playing with their ipads after dinner.

Charlie had Jill open a present that night and it was the game Wits and Wagers. We played it for a while and had a blast, haha. That game truly shows you how much you don't know.

Tiff give the boys personalized PJs for Christmas. They were SO cute, but slightly small. Beckams PJs are size 4-5T and they totally show midriff, haha.

On Christmas day we had to wake the boys up so they could see all of their presents before church. They were so cute, and Beckam was especially excited about his remote control car and zoobles. Everett loved opening all of his presents. I made my family's traditional Christmas morning muffins and they turned out delicious.

After eating, we hurried and got ready for church. It was a little crazy trying to get there on time, but we loved going to church and being able to worship/celebrate Christ on Christmas day. We also loved that church was only an hour, haha.

We stopped by the Davis' where Jill spoiled us like crazy :) then went over to my parents house for Christmas dinner.

We had a lovely dinner at my mom's and then we all opened presents from each other. The biggest hits were the remote control helicopters/space shuttles and the BB guns that my dad got for everyone. They've already provided hours of entertainment. :)

I made McKane take pictures of my outfits on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. I love being able to wear holiday colors.

Christmas Week

2012-01-04T23:34:00.000-08:00

Christmas week was chalk-full of family fun. Tuesday Night we met Casey and Tiff and their family for dinner at Freddy's. Afterward we went over to a cul de sac in Mesa to look at Christmas lights.

The boys loved the sponge bob themed yard.

(In the middle of the night Tuesday, Everett threw up twice :(. He was SO happy between and after throwing up, and he was acting totally normal, so we thought something he ate just hadn't sat well. Still sad to see such a little one covered in puke- Poor guy)

Wednesday Night we had our Blake family Christmas party. We started off with the Nativity, which was especially neat this year because Bekah played the piano throughout the whole thing. Amazing what background music can do for a performance.

Three wise men

My little sheep

The whole group

Following the nativity, we always have a talent show. Here are the boys chillin during the show.

After the talents, we sing ~16 Christmas songs as a family. I LOVE it.

McKane thinks its a little long (scrooge, I know).

Thursday Night was the Jennings' family Christmas party.

We started the night off with some minute to win it games. The first- get an Oreo from your forehead to your mouth without using your hands.

Everett thought everyone was just smashing the Oreo to their face before eating it, haha.

An adult minute to win it game with Katie and Andy being the first participators- they were trying to get ping pong balls out of a box strapped to their backs. It was funny to watch, haha.

Beck, lookin handsome:

The kids singing Christmas carols and playing jingle bells, not knowing a special guest was about to arrive.

Everett's reaction to the 'Special Guest': crying, saying "Scary Santa".

Once Everett realized Santa had candy, he was a little less traumatized.

And he cheered right up after Santa left, haha

Beckam was excited to personally request"159 zoobles" from Santa.

We had so much fun in all of our celebration!

Thursday night I got SO sick. I was up throwing up from about 2am-10am. It was a MISERABLE 24 hours. Luckily, McKane was able to take off of work and take care of the kids, and me a little bit too. Another plus was the fact that I got sick on the perfect day- the only day of the week that we didn't have something. I had hoped to do some last minute Christmas shopping that day, but for the most part I had everything done and ready for Christmas eve and Christmas day- thank goodness.

After All These Years, They've Still Got It :)

2011-12-28T22:42:00.000-08:00

Monday the 19th McKane's singing group- 259- sang at the Mesa, AZ Temple. They had not sung together formally for a few years, so it was so fun to hear them live again! It definitely brought back memories of when I was a 12 year old groupie- at the 259 concert, with Brig and Bailee, collecting autographs after the show, haha.

Getting ready, Beckam decided to do his own hair and dumped pretty much the whole bottle of Dust It (hair product) onto his head.

All the white powder in his hair made it look grey, haha.

My cousin Chrissy was at the temple early enough to get great seats (2nd row, center). Lucky for us she had 3 extra seats when me and the kids strolled up at 6:50pm. I had no idea how busy it would be but, by the time we got there, the place was PACKED. I was shocked at how many people were there- guess they've still got it ;)

Afterward we went over to Greg and Tammy's house and enjoyed DELICIOUS food (Thank you Tammy! And Costco :) and WONDERFUL company. We had so much fun talking, laughing, watching SNL, etc.

The kids decorated sugar cookies and must have consumed 7+ cookies each. Hey, when you're having a good time you can't be disrupted by things like monitoring the children.

Everett loved every second of the cookie "decorating" (he basically stuck a knife in the frosting and licked it repeatedly).

Probably the best part of the night was the private concert we got at the end of the party. I can't remember what sparked it, but after one song request, we just kept goin. Some of these songs they hadn't sung through in YEARS and they still sound good- even though my measly point and shoot camera couldn't quite capture the coolness of the sound/night.

There is a Meetin'

(ps. the reason the camera goes berzerk in the middle is because I had to get up and dance. Hope it didn't make you too dizzy).

Under the Boardwalk

(love the motions in this one- Greg, Rob, Jeff. Especially love Greg's raise the roof in the middle :).

Davis' Express Christmas (TM)

2011-12-28T17:49:00.000-08:00

The Davis Family celebrated Christmas early this year, since half of the family was out of town for actual Christmas day.

Brittany and Merek brought snowballs and the kids absolutely LOVED it.

We brought puffin, which was also a party hit.

I loved the boys' matching outfits: stripped shirts, skinny jeans, and skate shoes. So handsome!

Not sure what was going on here, but I love a few things about it: 1. The fact that Everett looks so little on that chair, and 2. The fact that Kenz and Eden are so animated in their attempts to amuse Everett.

Jill goes all out every year and plans a big scavenger hunt for all of the grandkids. It's adorable. They each pick a partner and go on a personalized hunt around the house. Everett's partner was Daddy, Beckam went with Dan, and I went with Giselle.

Hidden at each spot is candy or a toy, along with the clue to the next goody.

Everett was so excited to find this bag of cars at his last stop. Here he is telling me to 'opit' (open it).

Jill, reading the grandkids a book:

The jolly man himself stopped by to say hi for a bit. Beckam and the girls were ecstatic.

Everett, not so much. He immediately started screaming/crying and saying "santa scary", haha:

We also had a talent show, exchanged secret pall gifts that night, and had a delicious chicken taco dinner- yum. We love spending time with the family and loved being able to celebrate Christmas with everyone in the Davis fam, even though it was a couple weeks early :)

Lucky 7

2011-12-28T17:04:00.000-08:00

On the 16th McKane and I celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary. I can't believe we've been married 7 years! I'm so thankful to have married such a talented, dedicated, generous, selfless, kind, loving man.

While McKane was at work, I reminisced at home by watching this video a few times with the kids

After McKane got home we headed up to the ipic in Scottsdale to see Hugo. We took a ton of pictures with flash, and in every one McKane was closing his eyes, haha. This is without flash:

Unfortunately, we didn't purchase tickets enough in advance to get the good (reclining) seats, but the 'bad' seats were far from bad- they were super comfortable and spacious. We ordered a ton of food and ate it in the theater while watching previews.

We loved the movie and the ipic was such a fun experience. Pricey? Yes, but fun for special occasions? Definitely!

The Great Outdoors

2011-12-15T00:39:00.000-08:00

Just a few random things I want to document:

What better way to enjoyed the beautiful afternoon weather than by having picnic at the park?

The boys love playing and being outside.

We took the boys to Paradise Bakery at the San Tan Mall one night for dinner- they loved seeing the lights and running around the play place afterward.

Everett has been giving us this big cheesy grin when we tell him to smile (or whenever he sees the camera, haha). I love it :)

Thankful

2011-12-15T00:26:00.000-08:00

I never posted about Thanksgiving, but I don't want to forget about it completely. We had a very low-key, wonderful thanksgiving day. With fairly large families and extended families, we're used to having LOTS of people around.

But, since Andy's and Casey's families were with their in laws, Lance's family is in Oregon, and Pete went with friends to Six Flags, it was just our little family and my parent's at their house. We missed everyone, but it was also really nice to have such a small, intimate holiday celebration :)

We had fun playing in the kids' room after a very delicious feast. I didn't get pictures of the food, but the image of my mom's sweet potatoes (with brown sugar, butter, marshmallows, toasted coconut, etc) and McKane's mashed potatoes (with butter, cream, sugar, etc) will forever be ingrained in my memory. Yum.

After playing at the house, we met family at the park for the traditional Turkey Bowl.

They had so much fun, but of course it had to end with someone getting hurt. Two years ago Casey broke his collarbone. This year, Dylan broke his nose. :( Saddest. Good thing Casey was there to set it right back into place (yikes).

Here are the cheerleaders who watched from the side lines (+Maryn, who played).

The little boys loved running around and playing at the park while the big boys played football. Everett was at my parent's house sleeping so he wasn't here for this part of the party.

Had to take a silly picture too :)

Sweet Brooklyn looked SO cute in her little hat + bow combo. I could not get enough of that cute face.

The Davis family celebrated Thanksgiving the Saturday following. It was more of the big, busy feast we're used to. We loved spending time with family +friends of family and once again, we ate such yummy food. I only got this one picture, taken right after Grandpa Charlie had a whip cream dispenser malfunction and sprayed whip cream all over the table/Eden, haha. We all had a good laugh about that one.

We're so grateful for all that we are blessed with and for the wonderful family and friends that surround us.

Can we keep him?

2011-12-10T08:13:00.001-08:00

We're adopting a family for Christmas whose only wish is for a puppy/dog. So, for the past week, McKane and I have spent hours on craigslist looking for the perfect pup. We wanted a puppy, and it needed to be a smaller breed- shi tzu, maltese, etc. because of where the family lives. But, every dog we called on had either sold (within hours of being posted), or it cost $300+, which we just couldn't spend.

McKane called me yesterday afternoon saying he had found the dog. A 10 week old shi tzu for $160- that's more like it :). Someone else was going to go look at the dog an hour later so I told kane if he liked it, to buy it asap. He did and brought it home and little puffin/puff/muffin/tux/sonic/pup could not be more adorable. He is a tiny ball of puff, cuteness, and love- I cannot get enough of him. He is staying with us till he gets his shots and a check up, but secretly (or not so secretly) I just want to keep him forever.

The boys love having him around (except when he tries to play and nips at their toes, haha- his little teeth are sharp). Beckam started bawling the other day and, when asked what was wrong, said: "I don't ever want to give Puffin away". I don't either. But I will be happy to not be cleaning up pee all the time, and having two kids, two dogs, and a potty training puppy around the house does get pretty crazy.

We brought Puffin with us to the Davis' "Express" Christmas (TM) celebration we had last Saturday, and the Davis family loved playing with him.

Update: Last night (11/13/11) we took Puffin to the family we got him for. They were SO excited and squealed with joy when they saw him. They were freaking out over how cute he is. They were so nice, gracious, loving, and sweet and McKane and I instantly fell in love with them. While there, I was super emotional- I felt sad to be leaving this puppy who I fell in love with over the last few days; I felt overwhelmed by the family's story and suffering; I felt excited to give them this sweet pup who might help bring some joy into their lives, and I felt grateful for all we've been blessed with this Christmas season. I cried as we said goodbye, for all of those reasons.

I'm so grateful for this season- for the motivation it provides to give a little more, think about Christ more frequently, and continually count our many blessings. This opportunity was truly a blessing for me and our family.

(A shout out to wishuponahero.com where we found this family's sweet/sad/touching profile).

Der Santa

2011-12-01T13:34:00.001-08:00

Beckam came to me the other day saying 'Mom, I am going to write a letter to santa and I'm gonna get a pencil and paper.' I said that that was a great idea and left him to his own devices.
A few minutes later he came in and asked me for a reminder of what the r looks like. I drew it for him on a little stickie note, then after a few minutes went to check on him. He had spelled Der Santa, on the paper already. He then proceeded to write the remainder of the letter (phonetically sounded it out and wrote it down) mostly independent. He asked me what the w looked like and said- is it okay if I just write an m? Haha. He also needed help with the numbers (100 and 59).

"Der Santa, I wont (want) a 100 and 59 zooblebs"

(The a in santa is backward and the z in zoobles is backward. He also ran out of room writing zoobles so he put the l on the line above, and the s (along with an additional b) up at the top of the paper).

Beckam has never been a big lover of writing/coloring but just recently he's taken an interest in it. It's so cute to see him learning and progressing in various areas of development. And to see him sound out/write his first letter just about melted me :)

Now to convince Santa he needs 159 zoobles. . .

29 Gifts

2011-11-25T13:30:00.000-08:00

29 Gifts is an amazing book (probably one of my top 5 favorites of all time) about a woman who suffers with Multiple Sclerosis and is in the depths of despair. After trying multiple unsuccessful treatment methods, the author gets a prescription from an African medicine woman to give away 29 gifts in 29 days. The book describes the change and miracles this creates in her life. At the end of the book she suggests the reader take the same challenge and give away 29 (purposeful) gifts in 29 days.

I started the challenge (and this post) way back in January but I never posted it because officially, I only made it to day 20. I didn't document all of my days very well, but I did document others in detail, and I want to remember my experiences. So, here they are:

- - -

Day 1, Wednesday 1/19/11- Tomorrow is Jackie Howard's (an SLP I work with) birthday. I stayed up late making cookies and getting her a present together. For her official gift? What better than a copy of the book 29 Gifts. Normally I would be stressing about not going to bed on time, but since this is my gift for Jackie, I can handle a little less sleep.

Day 2, Thursday 1/20- Such a good day at work!! After testing a kid who scored above average on all of the language tests, all of the kids I saw for therapy were great and said the funniest things. Celebrating Jackie's birthday was also fun and it was so nice to have a day I really LOVED at work again. Peter came over to watch the boys today, since Beckam's under the weather and Jill can't be around sickness. When I got home Peter was having issues with an online registration thing, which wasn't giving him the correct account access or a sufficient amount of time to complete his class. Instead of watching him deal with it, I got online and chatted with a representative about the problem. Nothing got fixed right away, but they got on it, and chatting expedited the process and minimized the wait time. I was glad to be able to do something to repay Peter, since we SO appreciated him coming over and watching the boys. He ended up staying and hanging out all evening, which was fun.

Day 3, Friday 1/21- I woke up around 9 today and hurried to get ready to go to the gym. I had to get there by 10, to leave by 10:50, to make it back in time to watch my friend's kids at 11. My friend is pregnant and has been having back pain and needed to go to the chiropractor. Even though her kids are wonderful and they get along really great with Beckam, I'm sometimes hesitant to watch others' kids on my day off since I work with 36 kids all day on tues/thurs. Looking at this as a gift for today totally changed my attitude. It actually made me excited to have the kids come play, even if it meant taking on a little more work.

While here, they played wonderfully and actually entertained eachother so well that I got to get some cleaning done. I was glad I had a better attitude which allowed little scuffs/confrontations to not stress me out.

Day 4, Saturday 1/22- I went to my cousins Baby shower today and I put together a few of the things I find most important for new moms. The top one being the book, The Happiest Baby on the Block. It provides such good information on what the womb is like for babies and it gives 5 S's that help drastically with caring for newborns. Some of the information is common sense, but hearing the research behind it or the reason why it's effective is so cool! I am always excited to give this book and was happy to give it again today, along with a cute nursing cover and some yummy smelling baby lotion. The shower was so fun and I was able to visit with my cousins and aunts for a while afterward. My aunt who knows a LOT about houses, also looked over our floorplan, which was invaluable.

Today was also my Dad's birthday, so I got a card and present together for him. He doesn't really NEED/ASK for anything, so I decided to give him a KIVA gift certificate. My dad is such an entrepreneur and has invented products and written software to better the world numerous times. Because of this, I thought it would be perfect to give him $$ to loan to an entrepreneur in a developing country. A gift that keeps on giving :)

Beckam is sick today and we spent 3 hours at the Dr. this evening. He has been so sweet and has taken everything like a champ. Today while we were waiting for the Dr., we left to go pick up food. We saw a fountain and Beckam asked if we could go make a wish in it. I wanted to say no, since I was worried about getting back to the Dr.s office in case we got called. But, I said yes and we went to the fountain to make a wish. Beckam's wish was: "I wish that I can be happy. And that I can obey mommy. And that I can do what mommy says". Awe. How blessed I am to have such a sweet, wonderful child. Had I not given that 'gift', I would have missed sharing that special moment with Beckam.

Day 5, Sunday 1/23- I was up with Beckam a lot last night. At the Dr. we found out he has pink eye in both eyes, an ear infection, and a mean cough and runny nose goin on. Poor guy, it was obvious that he didn't sleep well. When he woke up at 5am, my plan was to give him medicine quick and have him go back to bed. When we got in the kitchen however, he started crying about being hungry. I was so tired, after going to bed after 2am the night before, and I almost told him "No Beck, it's 5am, and it's not time to eat". But then I remembered how my mom treated me when I was sick- she loved me, nurtured me, rocked me, and cared for me all hours of the day/night. And I thought 'this can be my gift'. I found a little patience inside me, and then happily got him some milk and a piece of bread to eat. I then took him into my room and rocked him while he ate his middle of the night snack. Sitting there holding him, I could not help but thinking "I will never remember how many hours of sleep I get. But I WILL remember the time I take to nurture, love, and care for my children." It was so special to be with Beckam and it was such a powerful thought, that I was SO grateful I stayed up to be with him and to discover it. I made a bed for him next to my side of the bed and tucked him in after he finished his food. It was such a good, 5 hr night sleep.

Day 6, Monday 1/24- I am feeding the missionaries tonight. Which means not only do I have to go grocery shopping and make a complete meal (side, main dish, dessert), but I also have to clean my house so that it's presentable. It's going to be a lot of work, but it's my gift and I am grateful to give it.

Day 7, Tuesday 1/25- I made a bunch of YW invitations today. It was fun to create invitations that were cute and that I was happy with.

Day 8, Wednesday 1/26- Took the kids to the play place and auntie anne's today. We had so much fun. I then made a social story for one of my students. Since they can read this 'gift' over and over, I'm especially excited about it.

Day 9, Thursday 1/27- Went to Cafe Rio for lunch today and bought lunch for my co-worker. Fun day.

Day 10, Friday 1/28- I gave multiple little gifts today (being patient with/playing more with the kids, not being irritated to have to go into work, etc). Those gifts were awesome, and helped my day be more smooth/fun. But, I want to document a little gift I gave that was the most interesting. McKane and I went out for a date night tonight and we decided to go Grimaldes Pizza- our favorite pizza that also has sentimental value, since we went there so much while dating. On the way out I grabbed the $5 off coupon we got in the mail last week and was excited to save a little on our meal. When we got to Grimaldes however, the wait was over 45 minutes. We just didn't have that long to wait, so we started to leave. While leaving we ran in to some friends of ours, who were waiting for a table at Grimaldes but were only about 10 minutes away from being seated. We chatted for a bit, which was fun, then McKane and I left to go somewhere else to eat.

As we were walking back to our car, I thought: 'Oh, I could give the coupon to our friends. They can for sure use it, and who knows if we'll be able to make it back to Grimalde's before the coupon expires.' I felt a little dumb walking back up to them and their group of friends, just to give them what felt like a measly $5 off coupon. But I did. My friend was gracious and said she would buy an appetizer to share with the group they were with, which they don't normally do. I felt good and happy while walking back to my car.

Then McKane and I went to Cirraba's to eat. We put our names in and were told the wait was 35 minutes. We went to Kirkland home to look around quick, got cupcakes for dessert, then went back and waited at the restaurant. After a bit we went up to the hostess and asked if our name had been called. She said they had tried to page us and that the buzzer just wasn't working. We really didn't even mind the wait, and we weren't bugged or impatient at all by the confusion. But, the manager immediately seated us and gave us a coupon for a free appetizer because of the mishap.

This morning while thinking about it, I was amazed by the chain of events. I can probably remember 1-2 times in my entire life when I was given a free appetizer. How amazing that the SAME night we gave away our free appetizer (coupon) at Grimaldes, we got a FREE appetizer at another restaurant.

So cool, and once again supports the theory that giving gifts, brings gifts right back to you.

Day 11, Saturday 1/29- We had some of the kids on our street over to play today. My neighbor Denise came over with Brayden, the boy she watches, and we had a good/fun conversation. At the end of our conversation she mentioned how much she likes to make cards. I remembered two card making kits McKane brought home for me a few weeks ago. I love making cards, and some of the things in the kit were SO cute. Part of my 'natural man' wanted to keep it for myself. But, I decided this could be my gift for today and then I was excited to give it. Denise was beyond excited when I presented her with it. She offered to pay, and of course I declined. It felt good to give to my neighbor. As she left she said our visit was the highlight of her day. How fun to be a part of that.

Day 12, Sunday 1/30- After church I decided to text a friend just to let her know how beautiful she is. I really think it every time I see her, but have never told her, surprisingly. She seemed to appreciate the text and immediately texted back that it meant a lot to her :)

Day 13, Monday 1/31- After going to the gym, picking beck up from preschool, and getting ready, I went to a luncheon/open house for my sister in law who is in town. It was fun to see her and to meet little Griffin. He looks like a balder/chunkier version of Lance, haha. Because we were gone all morning, Everett didn't get a nap and he was super tired at this point. I wanted to take him straight home and get him down for a nap. BUT, he is so sweet, and was still acting as chipper as ever, so I went by my grandma and grandpa Jennings' house, thinking this would be my gift for today. My grandparents are old. My Grandma's parkinsons has progressed and her health continues to deteriorate. She's often 'out of it' and is confined to her chair 99% of the day now. Her dependency on my grandpa has taken it's toll on him, and I know they both appreciate visitors.

Both the kids were so good while I was there and we were able to visit for about an hour. It was neat. My visits with them are so cherished because I know their number is limited.

It was special to be able to talk to them and I know it meant a lot to them that I stopped by.

** (This gift means even more to me now that my Grandma has passed. I'm so glad I gave that 'gift' and took the opportunity to go visit and spend time with her.)

Day 14, Tuesday 2/1- I had a conference on Social Thinking/Autism all day today. It was at the Mesa Convention center, an area I'm really familiar with. Instead of slipping away and having lunch at my parents, I invited a friend to come with me and took her to Krazy Sub. The conversation was wonderful and it was so fun to be with her. Then in the evening I helped my mom and two of my sister in laws apply their jamberry nail shields (a gift I gave them for Christmas). It was fun to see their excitement about them. While they applied the shields, I cleaned the kitchen for my mom. There wasn't much to clean, since she's a clean-as-you-go chef, but the little I did I could tell she appreciated. It's been so fun to find little gifts I can give all day.

Day 15, Wednesday 2/2- I pet Diesel extra long today. A small gift, but I know it meant something to him :)

Day 16, Thursday 2/3- I brought a salad to mom's for family dinner. I could tell she was excited to not have to fix one herself when I offered.

Day 17, Friday 2/4- McKane and I watched a documentary called The Cove tonight, about cruelty to dolphins going on in Japan. It was devastating. My gift for today was to order a shirt from their website, to help support their cause.

Day 18, Saturday 2/5- McKane was sick today, he had a cold and wasn't feeling good. I let him sleep till 1:00 PM then I took the kids to the mall play place while he "recouped" watching college basketball alone at home. In the evening, he fell back asleep while I took the kids to the park. I wasn't feeling great today, so I really wanted to be sleeping myself. And I can't say that I was ecstatic about not getting any help on a Saturday, when I wasn't feeling good either, but thinking of it as a gift made my attitude about it 100x better. And at the same time, this gift allowed me to spend lots of precious time with Beckam- wrestling, talking, laughing, playing at the mall and at the park, etc. He has such an imagination and it's so fun to see it in action. Everett basically slept all day, haha. But when he was awake he was super sweet. It was neat to get some one on one time with my boys and to give McKane some much needed R&R.

Day 19, Sunday 2/6- Gave an Amazon gift card to a friend today.

Day 20, Monday 2/7- Mostly did housework today- went shopping, did the laundry, and cleaned the house. Looking at these things as gifts made me excited to do them for my family, who I care so much about.

- - -

Overall, this was such a neat experience. It helped me to have a better attitude about giving and it made me constantly look for ways I could give. It was such a powerful experience- giving can really bring such happiness to a persons life. I feel especially blessed to have been taught the importance of service/giving my entire life- through church and the gospel, and my family/friends examples. I can always work on it though and it was fun to find a new approach/angle to giving. In fact, it was so fun that I might start again on December 1st through Christmas. :)

There's nothing cuter

2011-11-21T20:43:00.000-08:00

than little boys in matching, striped, tight pajamas.

Goin to the Zoo, Zoo, Zoo

2011-11-21T20:17:00.001-08:00

On Veterans Day, the boys and I joined my cousins and their kids for a trip to the zoo. The weather was absolutely perfect and it was such a fun day, even though it was pretty crowded because of the holiday.

Everett had never been so it was especially fun to see his reaction to all of the animals.

Beckam loved it too. He's been lots of times, but it had been a while.

The tiger was awesome and moved around in his habitat and even roared a bit- it was the most I've ever seen the tiger do.

The boys both loved seeing the Rhino.

And Beckam particularly got a kick out of the baboon's pink booties.

We can't wait to go back while the weather stays nice.

A Spooktacular Halloween

2011-11-21T13:35:00.001-08:00

We had a fun ward party/trunk or treat to kick off the Halloween celebration, but I didn't get any pictures, so we will just go straight to actual Halloween.

Beckam and I made these pumpkin rice krispy treats. They looked cute but tasted AWFUL! I followed the recipe from the back of the box to the T and they were as hard as rocks- what the heck?

Beckam was a pirate and LOVED every second of Halloween- hanging out with cousins and random people handing out candy for nothing? Yes please!

Everett was a little candy corn and we thought he looked adorable (even though many people didn't get what he was). It was the perfect outfit because it wasn't too hot for our AZ weather, and it was easily taken off/put back on.

A side view of the costume

Beckam and his cousins, right before trick or treating.

Here they are actually trick or treating. I LOVE Beckam's face in this picture. Like I said- he loved every second, haha. (He did fade fast though. After about 10 houses, he was like 'Okay, when are we going back to Drex and Laura's house?)

Everett didn't understand why everyone kept putting the candy in his bucket. He would attempt to say trick or treat and then the people would put the candy in his pumpkin, and he would immediately look in and fish the candy right out. He just wanted to eat it right then.
And who could resist those cute cheeks?

Of course McKane and I dressed up for the Party too. I had to take advantage of having braces for Halloween so I dressed up as. . . .

Darla from Finding Nemo!

And McKane was the uncle/Orthodontist.

I wasn't sure how I would pull of the headgear, but I found a wire headband that worked PERFECTLY. That was lucky.

We had a fun October and a 'spooktacular' Halloween. But basically, that whole week was a party, since my birthday was the next day.

October (ish)

2011-10-28T01:22:00.000-07:00

We have visited jump street a few times over the last few months, since it's right next to Crossfit, the gym I go to. The boys LOVE jumping and running around and I might just enjoy the tramps as much as they do- they're so fun!

Jumping around reminded me to set up our own bounce house. And where better than the middle of our family room? haha.

Here Everett is practicing his hoop skills

Beckam and our neighbor/his buddy Mitchell:

One Saturday in October, Tiff and I took the boys to a farm down in Lehi. We had so much fun playing around in the corn maze

Riding horses

Going on the Hay Ride

Ridin the 'train'

And posing on the horse (Everett didn't so much love this part- he was pretty scared, even with Beckam holding him, haha).

That same day we went to the farm I canned for the first time ever. My neighbor Denise came over and we learned together how to can delicious Utah Pears- Yum. It was easier than I thought, and I've loved being able to bust them out and enjoy the fruits of our labor :)
Another 'project' I worked on in October, with a tremendous amount of help/encouragement from my mother in law, was this adorable 'SPOOKTACULAR' banner.
It wasn't ready for halloween, since I couldn't find anything cute to string it together with, but when it is ready I will hang it with pride, no matter what season it is.

A few weeks ago, Beckam started soccer. He's liked going to practice, and was so excited for his first game.

Since the 3-4 year olds are together, he gets to be on a team with his cousin CJ.

And his cousin Payt is in the same league as him but is on a different/older team.

The first game Beckam ran around, and was actually doing pretty well. But after playing for a while he started crying and didn't want to play any more. When asked what was wrong he said 'they keep taking the ball from me' haha. He sat on the side the rest of that game.

We took a lot of time after that to talk about the 'fundamentals' of soccer, and sports in general- that everyone is going to try to get the ball, you just have to go get it back. The next game was much better (no crying) and the game after that he scored ~6 goals!! Yay!!

The boys and I have also gone to Tumbleweed park a few times. It's been so nice out and we have had so much fun enjoying the beautiful weather and playing/running around.

Fall. This is why we love AZ.

QT to UT

2011-10-28T00:55:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of last week I flew up to Utah by myself. Having flown alone with two children, I can honestly say the flight up, without kids, was WONDERFUL. It was great to not have to stress about getting the kids through security, keeping them quiet for the flight, etc. Ahh.

I was only up in UT for 24 hours but I stayed the night with our good family friend, Jenny West, in SLC. We had so much fun and chatted the night away, watched a movie in their amazing theater, and even made an adorable skeleton pillow for Halloween.

She was so nice to take me to/from the airport, feed me, give me a tour of her house, let me stay in their attached apartment, and let me use her car for the day! Seriously, so grateful for her!!

I LOVED seeing the trees (start to) change colors.

A few of them were so beautifully vibrant they were breath taking (this one is right in Jenny's front yard)

I also loved seeing this handcart cruising down the freeway, haha. Only in Utah.

But, the whole reason for this QT to UT was to get these bad boys on:

Yup, I've got braces!!

McKane's good friend, Jeff, is an orthodontist up in UT and he is awesome! They have a beautiful office in Provo and he is a wonderful orthodontist. He and his staff were so great putting them on!

After getting my braces on, I visited Krystal, Jeff's wife. I loved being able to sit down and talk with her and loved seeing their beautiful house. It made me wish we lived in UT, closer to them. But ideally we'd just have a summer home up there, because I can't stand the cold. Ya, that sounds good. I'll have that. :)

I flew home that evening with sensitive teeth and the beginnings of some canker sores, but I am so excited to have them on! I've wanted braces my entire life, but have never had enough motivation/courage/money to get them. Now, with McKane's BFF being an orthodontist, I finally decided to do it. I'm so excited to finally fix a few of my teeth that have bugged me forever. Now if I can just get through the sensitivity, canker sores, headaches, and feeling like I look like a 12 year old, haha.

September

2011-10-27T22:10:00.000-07:00

I've slacked quite a bit in the blogging dept lately. I blame it on Pinterest. It's interesting because I technically have more time to blog, since I'm not working near as much, but somehow I can't ever find the time to actually do it.

Lately my spare time has been filled with reading, crafts, every now and then cleaning, and watching shows with McKane (Extreme Home Makeover, Biggest Looser, Project Runway, Documentaries, etc).

Sept was filled with lots of Kleenexes, medicine, and sleepless nights. Both of the boys, and McKane and I, caught croup- one right after the other, so someone was sick the entire month.

Everett's croup hit him harder than the rest of us, and it was scary to hear his inhalatory stridor and more labored breathing. I stayed up till 4:30am with him one night and finally fell asleep next to his crib.

Poor Beckam had a skin tag removed near his lip while he was sick. I had made the appointment weeks prior and didn't want to cancel it. I felt bad when I realized it would be painful to remove and wished I would've switched his apt to a later time. (He had gotten a croup shot the day before).

Near the end of Sept, as we gained some of our health back. my mom and I took the boys up to the Payson Cabin.

We visited Tonto Natural Bridge one day and I was pleasantly surprised with how fun it was. The Davis' have had the cabin 6 years and I've never ventured over there.

The boys loved throwing rocks and playing in the pond at the bottom of the hike.

We hiked under the bridge and explored a bit before hiking back out.

One day we went to the lake and walked around, fed the ducks, and played at the park.

We also hiked around the cabin a bit

and took advantage of the cabin's regular amenities (relaxing, pool, park, golf cart rides, movies, etc.) So fun.

While we were gone, McKane had a grand ole time in UT. He and his lifelong BFF's/fellow 259 members had a reunion trip and had an absolute blast.

They went fishing, went to Olympic Park and did all kinds of adventurous stuff, went to a BYU football game, played the dice game, and sang/reminisced their little hearts out.

And here are the total two pictures they took the entire trip, haha.

Love this one of the guys (thanks krystal).

This Guy

2011-08-30T23:46:00.000-07:00

We finally took Everett to his year check up last week and got his stats at (now) 17 months:

Height: 33in (80%)
Weight: 24lb 3oz (35%)
Head Circumference: 19in (70%)

We just can not get enough of this kid. He is so fun to have around and is just so dang cute. His language has really exploded lately and he labels everything- it's so cute to hear his little productions of words (my recent favorite being 'Yes', said with the final s- it's adorable). He LOVES swimming/water play and requests the 'pool' constantly when he's around one. About 15 times a day he opens the pantry door, pulls out a cereal box, and requests "cracker". 20 times a day (or pretty much any time he sees our, or someone else's, Ipad), he requests 'baby' meaning Baby Signing Time. He loves being around Beck (pronounced Buck) and acting like he's one of the big boys. He loves his 'papa' (Grandpa Gordon) as well as his other grandparents, daddy, and he loves him some mommy time :).

He has been saying 'No' frequently and has learned when to use it with assertion, haha. He has started combining words and he understands and follows simple commands really well (put it in the garbage, go get ___, give it to ___, bring me ____, etc.). Today while playing with an animal sound app on the Ipad, I asked him to push on certain animals in a field of 12, and he pretty much got all of them right. It's cute to see him receptively understand and follow more complex language.

Although he had taken steps prior, he started walking really efficiently in June, while we were in California this year, at 14.5 months old (not the earliest in the walking department). It feels like he hasn't sat down since, haha. He loves to climb- onto chairs, couches, tables, etc (the other day I walked in to the picture below- he had climbed from the chair to the table to this desk in our hall- yikes) and he catches the ball pretty well when we throw it to him. He still takes his binkie at night and for naps, but he doesn't seem as attached as Beckam was at this age. He sleeps from about 8:00pm till about 7-8am. At that point, we give him a bottle/sippy cup of milk and he goes back to bed till about 9:30. When at home, he takes a 2.5-3 hour nap but when trying to nap other places, the length varies.

Everett rarely is upset, but he does get frustrated when he wants something he isn't able to have, and when Beckam takes something from him. He's also not a huge fan of getting his diaper changed or getting put in his carseat. When he is upset, we can usually distract him pretty quickly with a new toy, a song, or pointing something out to look at.

In addition to his occasional outburst, we have also had a few bigger scares with this kid. The first 'episode' (in July) I was home by myself with the kids and I was getting dinner ready in the kitchen. Everett was eating small pieces of an apple and playing with Beckam in the other room. I heard Everett start to cry so I went in the family room to check on him. I picked him up and tried to calm him down but he had started the cry and was not taking a breath in. I started to worry about him choking on the small piece of apple in his mouth, and at that time he went limp and passed out in my arms. My immediate thought was that he was choking so I started giving him the infant Heimlich. I remember yelling "God, No!" and yelling at Beckam (who had to observe this all, poor guy) to "Call 911". After hitting E's back for a while and not hearing anything clear, I did the finger swipe and noticed his tongue was stiff. I flipped him over and saw he was breathing (rapid, short, shallow breaths, but still breathing- which was comforting). I noticed his eyes had rolled back in his head and he was twitching/convulsing in his hands and feet. I could tell he was having a seizure.

Everett has scared us before with starting the cry and not breathing in for FOREVER, to the point of turning blue around the mouth, then after what feels like hours, FINALLY breathing in. So, I had done some research on breath holding spells and I had read that passing out/seizures could occur. When I realized it was a seizure, I actually was really relieved. The paramedics soon showed up and checked all of his vitals and everything looked great. We took him to the Dr's after hours care and luckily, the doctor there knew a lot about breath holding spells and seizures. She comforted us and told us it's pretty common and we shouldn't be worried.

McKane and I fasted and prayed about the breath holding spells that Sunday. Miraculously, at church that same day, Mckane was put in charge of a musical number with a Pediatric Neurologist (the exact specialist you see when your child has a seizure). To me, this was such a miracle and such a testament that God loves us and will answer our prayers. In addition to the experience being faith-building, the neurologists' words of expertise were also very comforting. Basically he said seizures are the body's way of resetting itself when it doesn't get enough oxygen. And, because the seizure was event-triggered (crying and not taking the breath in), it was not a concern. There are no long term side effects and they usually outgrow the spells by 3-6yrs old (lets hope closer to 3 than 6).

Everett did the breath holding spell -> seizure one more time about a week and a half later. It was while we were up at the cabin in July and luckily, Mckane and Drex were there with me. It wasn't near as scary, since we had talked to experts about it and knew everything would be okay. But, at the same time, it's never fun to watch your child be in that state. :(

Luckily, there haven't been any other episodes since then, even though I've been paranoid of them LOTS (like at the Dr. when he had to get shots-ugh).

Other than these traumatic events, Everett has been such a sweet, easy going, fun child. We're so glad we're not having to deal with anything more severe or threatening. And if nothing else, it's made us truly appreciate his preciousness. We're kind of obsessed with this little man.

_ _ _
For my documentation here is Everett's 17 month word inventory, though since he's hit the word spurt it's hard to write down all of them (+ indicates he knows the sign): Airplane, All done/gone+ (ahduh/ahguh), Apple, Baby+, Ball, Bath+, Bear (Be), Beck (Bock), Bee, Binkie, Bird+, Bite, Blanket, Boat+, Book+, Bubble+, Button, Bye bye, Car+, Cat+, Clock, Choo Choo, Cracker+, Dada (though he hasn't been using this one lately- he's been calling McKane mama, haha), Do (used to request Monkey see monkey do- a favorite youtube song of his), Dog+, Down, Eat+, Eye, Fish+, Go, Goat, Happy+, Holdit, Horse+, Hot+, Hurt+, Jump Jump (juju), Light, Milk+, Mama, Mouse, Night night (nai nai), No, Nose, Off, Open it (owepit), Papa, Play+, Please+, Pool, Poop, Pop, Run Run (ruru), Sheep (seep), Shoe (Sue), Snake, Star (tar), Strawberry (beebee), Stuck, Toes, Uh Oh, Under (said while trying to walk under my legs), Walk, Watch, Water+ (Wawa), Work+, Yes, Yuckie (kuckie)

He knows the animal sounds, but not the names for: Tiger, Elephant, Frog (bibit), Dog, Cat, Cow, Pig, Chicken

Signs without words: Lettuce (thank you signing time. I would have never taught this sign, haha), Sad, Sorry

Brigitte's Baby Shower

2011-08-29T22:41:00.001-07:00

Last weekend we threw a baby shower for one of my best friends, Brigitte (Porter) Duncan.
We decided to go with a vintage baseball theme and it turned out so cute. On the menu were hot dogs, peanuts, cracker jacks, bazooka bubble gum, baseball cookies, chips. Then veggies, fruits, goodie bars (Brigitte's favorite) and another yummy oatmeal chocolate chip cookie. Yum.

My mother in law helped me a TON with the decorations. I went over to her house one afternoon and we made the pennants sticking out of the food jars pictured above, and the cute banner below. She also gave me a foam board which I used to make the concession chalk board (with chalkboard paint) pictured above.
While at my mother in laws, we also made little tags for the cracker jack 'to go' boxes. They were little baseballs that said "thanks for coming" (if you zoom in on the picture you might be able to see them).

The guest of honor:

The party planners/throwers:

Jenny and I seriously talked like 10 times a day about the shower, haha.

The hosts:

My mom helped a ton with the shower- cleaning to get the house 'shower' ready, setting up, making food, etc. My dad also helped a ton by helping set up the night before (he used hangers to get the pennants to stick out of the food- so clever, right?) and by grilling the hot dogs the day of the shower.

The guests:

Friends since 7th grade, Carson Junior High:

Heritage Ward YW and YW leaders:

We really had such a good time throwing it and so many people came that love and care for Brig. I was so happy with how wonderful everything turned out. :)

A Sunbeam

2011-08-25T17:13:00.001-07:00

Beckam's teachers at church are A-mazing!! They always send him home with THE cutest stuff.
Some of this 'stuff' has included: A jar with plastic bugs in it (Beckam absolutely LOVED), a reward jar with suckers inside for doing work around the house, tons of cute craft activities, like:

This cute baby to teach how to help with a little one:

This family picture (not sure why there is an Everett and a Rhett, but apparently Beckam was insistent on having them separate in the family, haha)

This bird costume, which came with little paper bugs to 'eat'.

And thiscute lamanite costumeThey really are the best!

Ways we enjoy the cleverness of my father

2011-08-25T16:47:00.000-07:00

We've enjoyed my parent's house and company lots this summer. We've also enjoyed their pool- pretty much the minute we get over to their house, Everett starts saying 'pool' repeatedly till we take him swimming. This kid.

Last week my parents got irrigation. As we were getting ready to go out and swim I overheard my dad and Beckam talking: Beckam asked my dad what irrigation was and if anything was in it. My dad explained irrigation and answered that indeed, people had reported fish coming out of the irrigation drains.

So I walk out to the pool and see a trail of grass/dirt going from the irrigation to my parent's pool. I ask my dad: 'Whats all this?' and his response is: 'It looks like something got into the pool from the irrigation'. Confused, I look in the pool to survey the scene and this is what I see:

Freaked me out! I screamed 'DAD!' in a panicked voice. haha. It looked so real!! Almost immediately after my scream of terror, I realized it had to be fake, and that I was set up. But boy did it scare me for a minute, haha. Apparently my mom saw it at the pool store and just HAD to have it, so she asked for it for her birthday. Who does that? haha.

After the Alligator scare my dad busted out his snorkel gear to clean out the big leaves from the bottom of the pool. He then showed Beck how to snorkel. He said B was 'a natural'- he got the breathing thing down quick and since the child mask didn't have an attachment, my dad just had to hold up the snorkel. Beck loved being able to stay under the water and swim without the nuisance of coming up for air.

After we swam a bit the boys, my dad and I ran around in the irrigation.

My dad busted out the boogy board after a bit, which was just brilliance.

The boys LOVED going for rides, and I got lots of exercise.

Pretty much Baywatch, I know, haha.

Sum Sum Summer Time

2011-08-25T01:51:00.000-07:00

We've filled the rest of our summer with lots of fun outings.

Near the beginning of summer we celebrated Payton's birthday with a boy cousins trip to the Dinosaur museum.

Payt and Beck loved exploring the sea creatures.

We also went bowling with Payt and CJ a few times. So fun.

At the beginning of June I went to girls camp with my ward. It was so fun and was such a neat experience. I love girls camp and was so glad I got to go again as an adult.

You may have seen this on facebook, but it makes the cut for the blog as well. Beckam has been getting himself dressed in the mornings and this particular morning I woke up to him wearing this- a muscle shirt and Everett's size 6-12mo shorts, haha. Nice.

We met some of my childhood friends at Chick-fil-A at the beginning of the summer. It was so good to see them, and crazy that we now have children the same age as we were when we were BFFs.
We had a junior high/highschool Girls Night Out in July. It was so fun to see all the girls- funk visiting from UT and Jennifer about to depart to HI.
A few weeks ago the family went to visit Grandma Jennie for her birthday. She was excited to have so many visitors and said multiple times how grateful she was for the birthday party :)
She also mentioned how much she loved my hat, so a few days later we went and got her her own, thank you Charming Charlies. Doesn't she look so cute in it?

Before school started we had Payt over for a spend the night. Since we're so cramped in our house, and I didn't want to put the boys in with Everett, they slept next to our bed. They stayed up late making up and telling each other stories. It was sweet.
My cousin Kim and I took the kids to the Children's Museum of Phoenix. After reading other people's blogs about how cool it is, I had to check it out. Verdict- I totally agree- what an awesome museum!! If it weren't for naps, we could have stayed all day.

The kids (mostly Beckam) especially loved the 'car wash' tricycle area.

As much as we've been out and about, we've also spent a lot of time inside at home. Here are some cute pictures from around the house:

Why hello there, Diesel.

Everett absolutely loves books and he requests them MULTIPLE times a day 'book. book. book. book'

Yesterday I walked into the kitchen to find Everett up on the table. I got the camera out and Beckam immediately climbed up next to him for the picture.

Cute boys. Fun Adventures.

Payson

2011-08-25T00:22:00.000-07:00

Back in July we went up to the cabin for about a week with some of the Davis fam. McKane, Drex, and Charlie came up for the weekend and then me and the kids stayed up with Jill for an extra few days. We had a lot of fun and loved escaping the heat.

Everett and Beck spent many hours outside filling up this watering can and watering the 'flowers'.

We went on some hikes (walks) around the cabin and found some cool things, like- the exposed roots of a large tree

and these glasses.

Everett enjoyed the ride, but this particular day it was pretty hot to be hiking in the middle of the day.

The boys loved spending time with Grandma Jill, especially before bedtime when she read them stories.

While the men were there, Drex played so cute with Everett and Beck. Since his wife and kids were in MN, he was solo this trip.

'Beckman' and Drex playing super hero. Beck won the arm wrestle every time- crazy.

His hat and cape were the source of his power.

Beckam also loved playing with the 'Cars' cars up there. He gave each one a step on the stairs and did not want Everett moving or touching them, haha.

One day we went to the lake to feed the ducks. Of course, Beckam had to wear his superhero cape, you know, just in case anyone needed saving.

Everett was more interested in feeding himself than feeding the ducks.
Since it even gets warm in Payson, we enjoyed lots of pool time. Up there swimming is even more refreshing because the pool water isn't the temperature of a jacuzzi.

We drove the golf cart to the pool most days. One day I wanted to get a picture of our drive so I snapped a pic. Look at what I caught on film- that kiss was totally impromptu/candid. SO sweet.

Jill watched Everett one night while Beckam and I had a night on the town. We went to the movie theater and saw Cars 2 and then got ice cream afterward. What a handsome date. :)

Many afternoons, thunderstorms rolled in. The temperatures would drop and the rain was so fun to watch, listen to, and play in.

At night, after the boys were in bed, Jill and I watched movies (chick flicks). While watching, I made cards from card kits and it was so fun- I felt productive and was entertained, a perfect combination.

It was rough coming home to the brutal heat but it was fun to see McKane again, and we had lots of fun to fill the rest of our summer.

The Golden State

2011-07-06T22:30:00.000-07:00

It just so happened that McKane had a work convention in San Diego the week before our annual Blake family Cali trip. Remarkably, we were also able to book our time share for an additional week (even though we scheduled our main week two years in advance). So, the stars all aligned and we were able to be in California for two whole weeks in June.

We brought my cousin's daughter Emma with us and we were so glad we did- it was so helpful to have an extra set of hands, she played so cute with the boys, and she was easy and fun to have around. We love Emma!
My dad also attended the convention so he and my mom were with us in SD for the two weeks. It was fun to be there with them for so long.

Everett absolutely loved the beach. It was so cute to see him take on the waves like it was no big deal. He loved playing in the sand and would just dive in it (see collage below). He probably consumed more sand than food while we were in CA.
My uncle Michael is the master of Sand Castles. I remember building sand castles with him as a kid. He always uses this technique where he digs out a bowl in the sand and then allows it to fill with water. Then he uses the wet sand to build globby towers all over the castle.
Everett could not resist sitting in the water hole. And even when the tied came higher and the cold water was up to his chest, he remained steadfast in his new-found pool.

Beckam enjoyed the beach, but most of the time he would've rather been at the pool. He did love jumping and running from the waves, boogie boarding with grandpa Gordon's help, and playing in the sand with his cousins for limited periods of time.
This was Beckam in California at Everett's age. As you can see, he was not a huge fan of the sand.

Beckam absolutely LOVED the pool and would play in it for hours. With all of the swimming that he did, he really perfected his swimming skills and by a few days in he could swim the distance of the big part of the pool independently.

Most of our trip consisted of going to the beach and hanging out at the condos. It was SO fun for Beckam to have so many people to play with. The first week, before the rest of the family arrived, Beckam would wake up every morning and walk down to Grandma Lindy's condo. He loved this independence and made the walk multiple times a day. After the family arrived, the kids were constantly playing together- moving from condo to condo in a constant progressive party. SO fun!

My mom and I took long (2-3 hour) beach walks most days. Every year we look forward to these walks and to have two weeks of them this year was just bliss. We saw some cool things (check out how bright that fish is) and as always, we had some great conversations.
One day my mom and I walked down to a park in Del Mar and McKane, the boys, and Emma met us there. We had a picnic and played in the grass and then played on the beach in the waves. It was so fun!
Beckam, after being reminded multiple times not to get his shorts wet, got soaked and had to play in just his undies for a while (see collage above).

Another day we drove down to la Jolla and went to Seal Beach- it is crazy how close you can get to the seals. Free admission to see seals in their natural habitat? Great! Beckam was a little concerned with how bad it smelled though :)
While in La Jolla, we also went to lookout point. It was such a beautiful view of the coastline and surrounding city.
A few days after we got to California, I woke up with my left eye sealed shut. I made an appointment with a Dr. in Encinitas, but was an hour late to the appointment because it took us 1.5 hours do drive 6 miles on the California freeway. Crazy!!

The Dr. confirmed that I did, in fact, have pink eye and I was put on an eye drop antibiotic. This minor ailment was extremely annoying for two reasons:

1. I could not wear contacts, had to wear my vision glasses all the time, and therefor could not wear sunglasses. To the beach! There should be a law against this.

2. The few drops of antibiotic I put in my eye daily, made my skin SUPER sensitive to the sun. While I was taking it I got a bad rash on my legs, feet, and shoulders any time I went to the beach or pool. Who would've thought that an eye drop could do that? Not me.

In the middle of our two week stay, all of the Blake family joined us in CA. It was so fun to have them there. Sunday was fathers day and we went with my brother's family and my dad to the Mormon Battalion center.

The presentation was SO cool- extremely engaging, interactive, and very informative. I didn't realize I would love it so much. Afterward the kids got to do things like pan for gold, wash clothes on a wash board, and pump water. Also, right next door was a big grass area and beautifully restored historic San Diego homes.

We went to the temple one day and my cousin, who leaves on a mission soon, went through for the first time. It was so neat!

Because Emma was with us we had her watch the boys a couple times while we went to eat. One night we went out on a double date with my parents to a Restaurant in Del Mar. It was delicious and was such a beautiful setting.
We also hit up some other yummy restaurants including an amazing donut shop in Cardiff, Swamis in Encinitas, and the Fish House in Carlsebad. Yum.

On Saturday, before driving home we visited Scripts Aquarium. The kids loved seeing all the fish and they especially loved the ginormous aquarium.

We had such a fun vacation and even after two weeks, we still didn't want to come home :)

Emily Davis, MS SLP-CCC

2011-06-10T01:30:00.000-07:00

This year I officially completed my ASHA Certificate of Clinical Competence. It's been a long, 8 year road (4 years getting a bachelors, 2 years getting a masters, and 2 years working as an SLP CF "Clinical Fellow"), but I FINALLY got my CCC's!!

I'm so excited that I am officially, official. With my CCC's I can work anywhere and any amount of hours that my heart so desires :). With this freedom, McKane and I decided that I am not going to work in the schools next year. I may work a few hours a week at a clinic or in home health, but I am ready to be a (mostly) stay at home mom and be home with my own children more. I am SO excited for this next step in my life, but saying goodbye to all of my school kids and the teachers was sad.

We had an end of the year water bash with one of the classes and it was a blast. Here, all of the kids are going down the big water slide together. Looks safe, right? haha.

Retty and I, just after he discovered his 1 true love- Watermelon. I think he ate about 12 slices that day.

Beckam braving the slide.

This is the picture of our Speech room/ half of a portable. I had a little desk in this room and did all of my paperwork here, but most of my therapy I did out in the SPICE/resource classrooms.
Here I am (the week before school got out) with Jackie and Becky, the main SLP and SLP-A at Gilbert Elementary. I love these two so much- they were so helpful, welcoming, loving, and wise- just what I needed for my first two years in the field.
Here I am with some of my boys on the actual last day of school. Interesting fact: Out of my 36+ clients/kids, I only had 4 girls.

Me and Angi, one of the SPICE II teachers.

Me with some of my other kids, either the week prior to the last day, or on the last day:

At the end of the year luncheon banquet/ceremony they called me up and thanked me for my work at Gilbert Elementary. The Principal was so nice and talked about how I truly had a talent for working with children and for doing speech therapy. He also said he was impressed with my patience with the children (now if I could only have that same patience with my own children ;). Meryl and Angi, two of the SPICE teachers I worked with also said a few sweet words- I remember them talking about my friendships with them and mentioning how I always have a smile on my face :). Nice.

Prior to the banquet I had expressed worry to my coworker Becky multiple times: "I don't need to say anything, right?" She had assured me that I didn't, and no one else said anything when they went up, which eased my concern. When the microphone was being passed right by me however, I found myself intercepting it and giving a speech, haha. I guess when it came down to it I felt I needed to thank everyone for such an amazing 2 years at Gilbert El. I really loved the campus, loved the staff I worked with, and I loved the kids there. Good thing I'm so close I can visit.

Velma Babes and the power of a Hand Squeeze

2011-05-22T22:13:00.000-07:00

Me and Gram at Debbie's Cabin

My sweet grandma Velma Jennings passed away on May 18th, 2011 at the age of 83.

Display at Gram's funeral- Old pictures and letters from my Grandpa

As a child, I remember spend the nights with my cousins at my grandma's- drinking pink milk in her old-school sippy cups and eating perfectly cooked toast, sprinkled generously with cinnamon. I remember taking baths in her sunken square bath tub and giggling at the saying above her toilet: "Be an adult, not a kid. Hit the toilet, not the lid." We always tried on Grandma's square dancing skits, amazed at their fluid beauty as we twirled around. We would play Sorry, Dr. Mario and Tetris in her guest room, or play in the backyard- on the swing set or playing some type of sport with my brothers and cousins. Often when we spent the night, my Grandma would take us bowling, to see a movie, or to the mall the next day. Growing up we had a tradition of going to my Grandma's house every Sunday. This family outing often provided motivation for me to go to church, because if I was "too sick for church, I was too sick for Grandma's."

I remember me and my cousin Kim calling my Grandma "Grandma Silly" for a period of time. Grandma humored us by responding, but she would often request "Call me Velma Babes, instead". My grandma always had a witty, fun, and playful sense of humor. Growing up I always felt loved and cherished by my sweet Grandma.

Grandma's bowling ball and trophy, her beloved pepsi, her mission plaque, many books my mom read with my grandma, and her square dancing pictures with my grandpa and attire.

My Gram was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease almost 20 years ago and her motor abilities slowly deteriorated from that point forward. She went from agile and mobile- a square dancing diva and bowling machine (she once got 7 strikes in a row and won a trophy for highest game), to moving slowly, with associated Parkinsonian feet/hand tremors and muscle rigidity.

Most of my more vivid memories of my Grandma are from this stage in her life.
As we still visited my grandparents every Sunday, I have memories of visiting with my Grandma as she sat confined to her chair. Also, hanging out with cousins in the back bedroom as all of the adults talked in the family room.

In the summer of 2005 I got the opportunity to work with/for my grandma and grandpa. Since they needed extra help around the house, and I was in need of something to fill up all my spare time, it was the perfect fit. I helped my grandma get on the treadmill, massaged her feet, "flapped" her arms, cleaned out and organized her cabinet next to her chair, cleaned the house, and picked up lunch for me and my grandparents. Family Feud was always on around lunch and we watched that show religiously. My grandma and I always had such fun conversations and she was always so interested in me and my life.

At my Aunt Debbie's cabin, enjoying the beautiful weather

Up until the very end, my grandma always had such a wonderful sense of humor and was very cognitively intact. Aside from a decreased volume, her speech production was never severely affected by her Parkinsons. She was always right in the conversation, joking and laughing with everyone.

Pushing Beckam and Grandma around at Debi's cabin.

The Sunday before my grandma passed she had a stroke and lost most of her remaining physical and verbal functioning. That day I was able to go visit for a few hours. It was painful to see her like that, but it was also a sweet day to spend with her. At one point as she laid in bed, I thought of different low-tech communication strategies I could use with my Grandmother to help her interact with us. I tried having her blink, which worked a bit, but it was difficult to decide whether her responses were intentful or merely a reflex. After a while I held her hand and said "Grandma, if you can understand me, I want you to squeeze my hand". I wasn't expecting her motor abilities to allow such an action, but sure enough she squeezed my hand precisely and with intent. I then asked her to squeeze my hand twice, which she did. I cried when this happened, as it felt like I was able to communicate with my grandmother again, even if just through hand squeezes. We were able to get her to answer some questions through hand squeezes about her comfort level and what she wanted/did not want. As I left I asked for one more hand squeeze goodbye and she gave me one. It's amazing the power- the connection you can feel to someone, with a simple hand squeeze.

Grandma with Beckam

Grandma with Everett

She was such an example to me and the rest of our family of love, kindness, fun, humor, and family values. Her viewing, funeral, and burial services were sweet as we celebrated the long and wonderful life that she lived.

The Pallbearers- Grandma's Grandsons

Easter

2011-04-29T00:10:00.001-07:00

Easter morning the boys woke up to books, a few "Cars cars", a sand toy set, and some Easter candy.

Apparently the Easter Bunny was slacking this year because Beckam, after seeing his loot, asked "Is there something else hiding for me?". I responded "no", to which he got a little teary and said: "I didn't get any things". haha.

We'll have to write a note to the Easter bunny telling him to step it up next year.

After eating a few pieces of candy however, Beckam perked back up.

Everett broke into an Easter egg and thoroughly enjoyed it's contents:

Church was really neat on Easter and the speakers had some really incredible stories of forgiveness.

Here is a picture of Beckam, after church, in his Easter attire:
I couldn't get a picture of Everett in his Sunday best, nor did we get a picture as a family. With 8am church there was no way we were getting a picture before church. And McKane ended up bringing Everett home early and putting him down for a nap, so by the time Beckam and I got home from church Everett was already changed and in bed. But here's another cute one of Beckam:

In the evening, we had my parents and brother Peter over for a yummy Easter feast. Ham, salad, rolls, and sweet potatoes. Yum- I'm salivating just typing it. I forgot to get a 'before' picture of the food, but here's a 'during/after' shot.
Before eating, we watched this video and listened to this song, which helped bring the spirit of the true meaning of Easter to our feast.

After the weekend full of wedding festivities on the Davis side, a wonderful Easter church meeting, and a special dinner with some of my family, I was feeling opposite of what Beckam felt early Easter morning: 'I have so many things' to be grateful for. At the top of the list:

The testimony that I have of our Savior and His atonement and resurrection.
The incredible people that surround us that we are sealed to for time and all eternity.

The other Wedding

2011-04-28T21:24:00.000-07:00

Although this isn't the wedding the rest of the world is talking about, it should be. It was shorter, way less stuffy, and way more fun :) But I do wish I had a cool wedding hat.

So, without further ado, The (other) Royal Wedding:

The actual day of the wedding was busy, but really enjoyable. Melanie (Dan's sister) was so helpful and she watched the kids outside of the temple during the ceremony.

The sealing was beautiful and it was so neat to be in the temple so close to Easter; and to see Merek and Brittany so happy and in love.

The Davis family, after the sealing. Love Brittany's dress!

The ring ceremony and reception were held in the same beautiful garden that the dinner was held the previous night.

Retty enjoyed the grass while watching the newlyweds exchange rings.

And I had to document my new shoes while waiting for the ring ceremony to start:

The center pieces at the tables were so adorable. Vintage, beautiful, goodness.

The reception was wonderful- yummy food, dancing (which always makes a party fun), and lots of fun people to party with.

Brittany and Merek moved their reception up an hour so that they could attend the Mumford & Sons concert in tempe afterward. We joined them and were so glad we did- it was so cool to see everyone's reaction to Brittany and Merek, still in their wedding attire.

And Mumford & Sons was amazing live!!
Perfect ending to a great (and SUPER busy) day.

Pre-Wedding Celebrations

2011-04-27T16:04:00.000-07:00

Merek and Brittany Got married this past Saturday, April 23rd. As a result, the whole month was full of fun celebrations for the Big event.

Sunday April 17th the Davis' had a family dinner party at Charlie and Jills with Brittany and her family. We ate yummy food and then had a 'meeting' together where we expressed our advice and appreciations for Britt & Mer. It was so neat and such a special night. I think everyone was crying at some point; we are so happy for both of them and are ecstatic that they found each other.

I posted this on facebook that night:
Reminded today of how much I have to be thankful for- at the forefront of my thoughts: a knowledge and testimony of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and an incredible family. So excited to welcome a new Sister (in-law) Brittany Blackburn to that family this week :)

The night before the wedding they had a dinner with the families of the bride/groom and the wedding party. The location for this dinner was the same as the ring ceremony/reception, as well as the location of Brittany's bridal shower. Let me just tell you, this place was beautiful. It was in the backyard of a home in a beautiful garden and I was obsessed. Can I please have this backyard?

They hung pictures in these frames for the reception, but I even like the look of them empty. This, folks, is what you get when two ridiculously artistic people get married:

We also had a little Easter celebration at the dinner, so we dressed Everett in his Easter colors:

After we ate dinner and everyone said a few words, a special guest arrived. The Easter bunny!!:

Beckam was SO excited:

Everett on the other hand, was terrified.

Literally terrified. It was quite humorous to watch him try to get as far away from the Easter bunny as possible while being held, haha.

After the bunny's appearance we had a big easter egg hunt. Everyone (including adults) had a basket and we all got to find eggs filled with delicious candy. It was so fun and made it feel like Easter :)

The kids loved playing around in the backyard.

And here we are putting the empty picture frames to use:

Such a fun night, and the weather was absolutely gorgeous.

Catching Up

2011-04-27T14:11:00.000-07:00

For St. Patrick's Day this year we went over to my parent's house for a yummy Irish feast- corned beef, veggies, and potatoes. After dinner my dad busted out the sparklers to make it a real celebration.

It was all fun and games until I stepped on a piece of fallen ash and burned a hole in my foot. Haha. Here are the pictures documenting the mishap:

Then, trying to smile as my dad checks out the burn, haha.

One Saturday evening in March we went to the AMOCOCO exhibit at the Mesa Arts Center. It was really cool to see and it was seriously enjoyable for all ages.

Here Beckam poses while we wait for our turn to enter.

Everett loved the colors and had a blast crawling around.

The acoustics were really cool in the structure too.

Also in March, one of my closest friends Jessica visited with her kids. We had a few playdates and even had a girls night out/dinner one evening. Liberty Market + Talking with Jessica = The Perfect Combination.
It was cute to see the two boys together. I wish they lived here so these two could interact more.

At the beginning of April we went up to the Davis cabin. We watched conference (which was incredibly uplifting, as always), enjoyed some really yummy food, and even made a trip to see some Indian ruins (also visited in this post).
As we were hiking around the ruins with Kenz and Dan, and Mama and Papa K, Kenzie pointed out that each couple were wearing the same pair of shoes, haha. Here we are (starting at 12:00, and going clockwise) Mama & Papa K- not sure what brand, but they are twinners, McKane and I- Toms, Kenz & Dan- Chacos. Cutest.

Uncle Dan caught a lizard for Beckam to check out while we were up there. He was fascinated by it. And Beckam liked it too ;)

Throughout the last two months we have also enjoyed a lot of park days and outside play. We have gone to the park pretty much every M/W for the past 2 months, right after we pick up Beckam from preschool.
The boys have also been loving our backyard sandbox lately. As dirty as they get, it's worth it to see them playing together and to have some time to myself to get stuff done.

Gotta enjoy this great weather while we can.

Happy Birthday Everett!!

2011-04-06T17:28:00.000-07:00

Everett turned 1 on March 26th. I still can't believe how fast that year went. When Beckam turned 1, it felt so old. Now that Everett is 1, it feels so little.

During the day we made a family trip to the Riparian Preserve in Gilbert. I thought it would be fun to enjoy the outdoors and walk around the lake as a family. Turns out Everett wanted to GET IN the lake, so just looking at it made him quite frustrated, haha.

When we were there, there was an ecological fair (of some sort) so we got to see lots of cool animals- a possum, a porcupine, a giant rabbit, exotic birds, etc. It was really cool to see, but it was also pretty warm out, so we didn't stay long.

In the Evening we had a party to celebrate this cute little man.

He had his favorite people there: his parents, both sets of grandparents, and his brother.

His cousin Avery also joined the festivities and Beck loved having a playmate (we also enjoyed Beckam having a playmate).

The cute happy birthday banner again. Love it.

After eating yummy semi home made costa vida sweet pork melts, we enjoyed some Designer Cupcakes by April. On the menu: coconut, peanut butter chocolate chip, cookies and cream, red velvet, mocha heath, lemon, chocolate and vanilla. Yum.

We gave Everett a chocolate cupcake with chocolate frosting. He was pretty timid about it and didn't ever really dive in (even though he's only had tiny bits of sugar 2-3 times previous).But he did enjoy himself some cupcake :).

And by the end, he needed a good scrub down.He got some fun toys from parents/grandparents and really had such a good birthday.

Since he's 1, here are some stats:

Expressively says (or approximates), with associated meaning: Mom, Dad, Beck (Be), Up (bup), Light (Lai), Off (ppp), Dog (do), Go (gu), Baby (bebe), Night Night (Nai Naie), No (usually said with pointer finger bouncing up and down), Car (ca), Clock (cok)
Signs: Water, Baby, Eat
Receptively, he understands others (fan, airplane, grandma. . . I can't think of any more)

He's very in to pointing and will point at any random stranger, unabashedly (sometimes this gets awkward). He loves his mom and his grandmas (who both babysit him one day a week). He has his top fangs, one top front tooth, and three bottom teeth. He sleeps pretty good, usually from 8pm-7am when we give him a bottle, then he goes back down till about 9-10am. The last few nights he's been waking up more- teething? He loves baths, being chased, climbing, playing with toys, going down slides (with assistance), and trying to be big like his brother, Beck.

I will post weight/height stats after his next Dr. appointment, but he is the cutest chunk :)

Oh, how we love our little Retty :)

Ask For It (.com)

2011-04-04T13:40:00.000-07:00

My husband (McKane), brother (Andy), and brother in law (Drex), along with a few others, have been hard at work creating a new website: askforit.com. Basically, it is a site where you can ask for anything you've ever dreamed of (inventions, ideas, policies, etc):

After you've asked for what you want (by simply typing it into a box and clicking 'askforit'), you can then share your request with others via facebook, email, twitter, etc, who can join your cause. If you can get enough people to ask for it, the company (and their marketing team) will work to get your request in front of the people who can make it happen. And we all know that anything can happen, if enough people ask for it.

So, if you have always wanted to ask for something, but have never had the platform to do it, now you do.

Here are some of my 'asks':

-Girl Scout cookies to be sold year round. (Click here to join)
-Goodreads to allow half stars. (Click here to join)
-Disney to unlock the vault so that we can download their movies off of netflix. (Click here to join)
-Chipotle to offer drive through service. (Click here to join)
-Walmart to have kiosks so that we can look up where our items are and don't have to search the entire store for an hour. (Click here to join).
You get the idea :).

The site is in beta right now, as they're still working on perfecting it, but head over and join any of my 'asks', create your own 'ask', or just browse (explore) around- there are some really creative asks already.

Another thing I want to add is you don't have to create an account when you get there to interact with the site, but if you want to join/create an ask at this point you do have to sign in with your facebook account- just FYI. And it's 100% free. No strings attached- they won't email you like crazy, give your email address away, search your facebook, sell your soul, etc.

So ask away and feel free to spread the word if you feel so inclined. This site really has the potential to create movements and make change.

Ground Breaking

2011-03-27T22:27:00.001-07:00

Two years ago my cousin Cherryl came to us with a crazy idea- she was going to get a group of people together to purchase a piece of land in our neighborhood that was owned by Gilbert Public Schools. The group would then develop the land and divide it into 14 individual lots, which would be used for families to build custom homes on. She asked if we would be interested, and we said yes, not sure if anything would ever come of it.

Since that time, there have been a lot of "yes it's going through/no, it's not"s, a lot of prayers said, and a lot of conversations had about this here piece of land.

But, all the stars aligned and on March 3rd, 2011 we broke ground on the land. We celebrated with an official ground breaking party. We had speeches by Eric and Cherryl (the people who have done all of the work on this massive project) and had lots of pictures taken.

The name we came up with collectively for our subdivision (after much discussion) is "Rockwell". We thought it was a strong name that could facilitate a cool sign at the entrance of the street. We also like the name 'Rockwell' because we are inspired by the artist Norman Rockwell, whose paintings represent traditional family and American values. Bruce and Cherryl gave each couple a 'Faith of America' Norman Rockwell book, with many of his beautiful/inspiring paintings inside. So nice, we love it!!

We also got these cool custom shovels with our name plaques at the top.

One of the coolest things about the land is the potential opportunity we have to be neighbors with two of my cousins Cherryl, and Lindsay. We actually will be sharing a cul-de-sac with both of them in the not too distant future if all goes as planned :)

We finished the night with a few of the couples going to Liberty Market, a delicious restaurant in down town Gilbert. We laughed a ton and had so much fun with everyone. It was such a fun evening and such an exciting 'development' in this whole process.

Since the ground breaking party, people have been hard at work developing the land. Here is the wall going up around the outside:
And the beautiful new fire hydrant that will be right next to our house at the end of the cul-de-sac.
So fun to watch it coming together!!

And if anyone is interested, there are still 5 lots available and we are currently accepting new applications for neighbors :)

Seriously though, leave me a comment or email me if you're interested.

Happy Birthday Beckam!! + a traumatic event

2011-03-17T15:43:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Beckam turned 4 years old!! We celebrated at Tumbleweed park which has a cool area with roads/city streets, an awesome farm area, and lots of other fun things to do.

My SIL, Bekah gave me this Happy Birthday (+ all of the names in our family) banner for Christmas. It looked so fun and festive hanging up at the party and I absolutely LOVE it. She has an Etsy shop and you can look through more of her banners here. Or, order your own happy birthday banner here.

I seriously tried 4 times to get a picture with Beckam and the banner. In every one his hand, holding up his age number-4, was covering his face, haha.

We had one grandma, two Aunts, eight cousins, and 2 of Beckam's friends at the party and we had so much fun.

Jessica, Bastian, and Luthien (not pictured) came all the way from Massachusetts for the party ;)

The kids loved riding around the 'city streets' on plasma cars and tricycles.

And they all played on the 'farm' playground equipment for a while too.

While McKane was away getting the pizza, Everett gave us quite the scare. It made the rest of the party a somewhat traumatic event for me.

At about 11:30am, I walked away from Everett to grab something or get something ready, I can't remember. . . He's usually fine on his own, so I wasn't too concerned about watching him or standing right next to him. Plus, there were so many adults around so I thought I was safe.

A couple seconds later I hear a big 'smack', hear my mom and Jessica saying "Oh my Gosh", and I see my mom rush to pick Everett up. (I guess Everett had been standing up on the concrete, holding on to the picnic bench. Another child, trying to adjust him, moved him and he fell straight on to the back of his head).

By the time I took Everett from my mom he was in the middle of a cry but wouldn't take a breath in. It felt like hours that he wasn't breathing and this honestly was one of the scariest moments in my life. I remember asking my mom in desperation: "Mom, he's not breathing. What do I do?" I was starting to get in panic mode. At that point a lady ran over and told me "Breathe in his face", which I can't remember if I did, but shortly after that he finally took a breath. He then started crying hysterically. It was a great that he was finally breathing/crying, but I it didn't seem like he wasn't getting very much oxygen and he got pretty limp in my arms. He was crying, he wasn't holding his head up, and he looked like he was trying to fall asleep in my arms. All of the possible scenarios were going through my head at this point and it was just pure panic mode in my head. Even typing about it gets me jittery again.

As Everett continued to cry, the lady who ran over told me she had a daughter who just experienced a head injury and she told me all of the signs I needed to look for- pupils dilated to different sizes, did he fall further than he is tall?, did he vomit, etc. It was really helpful to talk to this woman, but her urgency running over and explaining everything to me also freaked me out.

After what felt like hours of trying to calm Everett down, he did stop crying for a little bit. He seemed really tired, so my mom and I nervously fed him cookies and juice to try to keep him alert and awake. While eating, he started coughing a lot and then almost threw up, which I had heard was a bad sign after a fall. However, Everett also has had a bad cough for a while and a few times has coughed and stimulated his gag reflex in the process. So, I wondered about the severity of the near throw-up.

When Mckane got back to the park and heard the news, he was pretty freaked out. Since he didn't see it, it made it especially bad for him. I was asking the lady for advice again and was holding Everett who was fussing in my arms. I think the lady mentioned something about Mercy Gilbert being close which made me think we should take him to the hospital. I asked my SIL what she would do and she responded with "I would take him in right away". So, McKane and I left Beckam's carseat at the park and went immediately to Mercy Gilbert's ER.

As soon as we got in the cool car and I started talking to Everett he seemed better. He stopped fussing so much, he responded to vocal play by laughing and mimicking, and he was visually tracking things. I thought these were good signs, but also was still shaken up about everything and wasn't willing to trust my novice assessment.

At the ER, they got us back super fast. They took Everett's oxygen levels, his heart rate, checked his lungs, felt his head, checked his pupils, etc. After looking at Everett for a while, the Dr. told us she wouldn't recommend doing a CT scan. Since the risks of exposure to radiation are super high for children at this age, and since he was acting fairly happy, she didn't think the signs were strong enough to risk it. So she suggested monitoring him in the ER for awhile. We agreed, and McKane stayed with Everett at the hospital while I went back to help clean up the birthday party.

Here Everett is trying on his Daddy's hat in the ER.

I didn't feel too bad about our absence because Beckam didn't even notice we were gone, and the party continued without us. The kids ate pizza,

sang happy birthday to Beckam and then ate bumpy dessert,

then Beck opened presents. My mom and SIL took pictures while we were gone and I loved looking through his expressions in the photos :)

He obviously loved his birthday party and was thrilled with all of the gifts that he got. The last couple of months he has been particularly obsessed with Littlest Pet Shops animals, so he got quite a few of those. And boy was he excited about that, haha.
After the party, my mom took Beckam home to play at her house. He loves going to Grandma Lindy's and was thrilled at the idea of going with her. They played with his new toys, visited a new colt that had just been born, read books, Grandpa took him on a ride on the lawn mower, etc. Basically, he had the time of his life :)

Meanwhile, I went home and emptied the car and cleaned up the party stuff, while McKane and the Dr's monitored E. I said many prayers, shed a few tears, and called McKane many times to check on their status. After a few hours, Everett continued to seem fine at the hospital, and didn't show signs of a serious head injury, so they sent him home and told us to monitor him. We monitored, and gave him lots of TLC too :)

My mom and Dad brought Beckam home that night and I had the birthday boy open a few presents from McKane and I. He was SO excited about having MORE presents to open, haha.
We also sang Happy Birthday to him and had him blow out candles again so that I could witness that part of his birthday celebration :).

Here are my parents with the boys. These party animals know how to treat a birthday boy right :)

Overall it was such a fun Party and Beckam had such a wonderful day.

But, it was also a pretty traumatic experience for me (and my mom, and Mckane). I took Everett to the Dr for a follow up today and everything looked great. He's acting normal and like his adorable little self :).

Talking with my mom and thinking more about it, I am coming to be grateful for the experience because it has made me appreciate life more. Today I played with them more, was a little more patient, and had a greater appreciation for the sweet role of motherhood. I will never take for granted these children that bring so much joy and happiness to my life. I am so grateful for the opportunity I have to love them, to raise them, and to be their mother, and man am I happy that they are both healthy and safe. There truly is no greater or more fulfilling job in the world.

Just some cute pictures of the Rett Man

2011-03-15T00:53:00.000-07:00

Girls Night

2011-03-14T16:51:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of February, my sister in law Kim came down from Oregon with her sweet baby Griffin. It was so fun to see her and to meet my newest nephew :) He and Everett are so close in age, it will be fun when they're at a point where they can interact.

One night we celebrated Kim's visit with a fun Girls night.

And what would GNO be without some delicious dessert (compliments Max Brenners Chocolate Cookbook) YUM!

and a DIY pedicure.

Even though I put my jamberry nail shields on prior to this night, it was fun being able to help my SILs and mom apply theirs.

I posted about Jamberry Nails back here a while ago. I'm still just as in love with them, maybe even more so now that I know they really do last 6 weeks. So cool

And what a fun night! Can't wait till they come back to visit again.

Oh Bla Di, Oh Bla Da

2011-03-05T21:55:00.000-08:00

Life Goes On. . . .

I'm happy to report that (most of) the craze is over. Though I still have frequent IEP meetings, quarterly reports coming up, and LOTS of kids to see, things have calmed down tremendously. Thank. Goodness.

Thank you so much for your words of encouragement and validation. I kind of wondered if I was just being a baby about all of it, but you guys made me feel tons better. haha. Seriously, thank you.

Back in December my talented brother in law, merekdavis.com, took pictures of our family.

Since I never posted them, and I don't have much else to report on, here are some of our favorites:

Amazing what a good photographer can do, eh?

The craze

2011-02-18T13:43:00.000-08:00

I've said this before but work has been CrAzY for me lately. Pretty much the whole month of January and February have been crazy. I have SO many IEP meetings, many of them 3 yrs, which means testing, big reports, meetings, billing, all on top of therapy. I pretty much have at least 2 meetings every day I work, which is crazy.

Last Thursday was the craziest day. My mom told me to write it down, for posterity's sake. But before I talk about Thursday, let me preface the day with a recap of the days/week leading up to it:

Fri, Sat, Sun: McKane is sick. I'm not feeling great either, but I can function. So I take both kids by myself, pretty much the entire weekend.

Mon: Gym, grocery shopping, laundry, cook dinner, family night, paperwork, go to bed at 1:30am.

Tues: 6:45am- wake up for work. I HAVE to test a kid in order to be ready for his meeting Thursday and he is out sick. Seriously? I work till 4, go to the gym, then come home and my mom says Everett has been fussy. This is very uncharacteristic for Everett, so I get straight in the car and take the boys to the doctor. Sure enough, Everett has ear infections in both ears. I drop off his prescriptions, make dinner, pick up his prescriptions, get the boys in bed, do paperwork, and go to bed after 1am.

Wed: I go to work, even though it's my day off, and test the kid who was absent Tuesday. I pick up Beckam from preschool and then go home for Everett to nap. I do paperwork while the kids nap. At about 2:30pm I find out I have to bake a cake for YW at 7. I never have cake mix at my house so as soon as the kids are up, fed, and cleaned (at 5pm) I go to the grocery store, come home, get dinner ready and the cake baked, go to YW, come home and write the 3 year report. Finally retire to bed at 2:30am.

THURSDAY: I wake up, on 4 hours sleep, and I don't feel very good. I wish I could stay home and sleep but that's not an option, I know how crazy today is going to be. I rush to get ready and get to my first meeting by 7:30am. I'm there, and the meeting goes fine.

After the meeting, I go to test a boy who I HAVE to finish testing to get his report written and in by his meeting on Tuesday, the next day I work. Of course, he's absent. Crap. That's just not allowed to happen. Especially twice in a row! I can't get a babysitter for the kids, or have McKane stay home late again, for me to go into work and not get paid. So, I'm going to have to postpone the meeting. I go talk to the boys teacher and she's obviously not in a good mood. In a rather rude tone, she tells me there's no way to change the meeting. Uggh. I finally figured out that I would have to cancel therapy and test the boy during the day on Tuesday, that would be my only option.

At 3:15, I have a 3yr IEP meeting (the meeting for the boy I finished testing yesterday). Jill, my mother in law, is watching the boys and I forgot to tell her I have a meeting after school. I text her and tell her I'll be home around 4:30. The meeting however, goes super SLOW and the parent has lots of questions. At 4:15, when I should be leaving, I haven't even started my part of the IEP yet, and I have a lot to cover. The whole meeting is pretty stressful for this reason. I need to hurry to get home, so everything anybody brings up I'm thinking "stop talking about that", "We have to hurry", and "I gotta go". Ugggh. I finally get out of the meeting and get home around 4:45/5:00pm. Ouch.

I had set it up to bring dinner to some of our good friends Greg and Tammy, that night at 6:30, so we'd have to leave by 6pm. LUCKILY the boys both play independently and I am able to work like mad from 5-6 to get dinner ready. I make a salad, salmon tacos, and my favorite peanut butter cookies. I literally am running all over the place. McKane gets home at 5:50 and helps for a few minutes. Then, just as we're about to leave at 6, Everett has a blow out. He has THE WORST yeast diaper rash from the antibiotics he's taking for his ear infection. So, the blow out pushes us back about 30 minutes. We have to clean it off, get him in the bath, blow dry his bum, apply medicine, get him back dressed, get him in the car, and then we're finally ready to go. We get to greg and tammy's at about 7pm, and I feel bad it's so late. Luckily they are very reassuring and tell us they normally don't eat till 7 anyway.

Truly, having dinner with these friends is the highlight of the day. Although it was a little stressful getting ready and off, once we are here it is so fun. We love them and always have a blast with them. It is so nice to have some light/fun conversation after such a stressful day. After dinner and desert, Everett gets pretty fussy. He is not only tired, but is in OBVIOUS pain from his horrible diaper rash. Poor guy :( We leave to get him home, but drop off some cookies to my grandma for her birthday. Its neat to see her and let her know how special she is to us.

We finally get home at about 10pm and Kane puts both boys to sleep while I lay in bed. Although the day is over, I still have two big 3 yr meetings coming up on Tuesday, and a child who I still need to finish testing. So, the worst isn't necessarily even over. I am overwhelmed, exhausted, and just done. After crying a bit, I call my mom to talk to her. She always keeps me sane in my moments of instability. After talking, I get some positive outlooks on the day

I'm officially ready to change my work setting. Although I love Gilbert Public Schools, today just solidified the fact that I'm ready to be home with my kids more. Even though i only officially work two days a week, it's bleeding too much into my entire week. I sent a letter to my supervisor saying I would not be working in the schools next year.
I am grateful that it is an option for me to be at home more and work less.
I see Heavenly Father's hand in my life, even in moments of utter chaos- the boys playing on their own while I made dinner, a green light when I really needed it, having the strength to get through the day without a breakdown, my conversation with my mom, etc.
When our thoughts are focused on serving others, we forget about our troubles and can be happy in times of stress.
I am capable of a lot.

Making these mental gains while talking with my mom is nice. McKane also has a nice long talk with me and listens, supports, suggests when needed.

Friday McKane takes the boys in the morning, cleans the kitchen, and lets me sleep in. It feels so good to get rested and somewhat rejuvenated. Friday night McKane watches the boys while I have a girls night with my cousin. It is so nice to get away and just talk with a good friend and it provides a much needed break for me. Saturday, Kane watches the kids again while my brother Pete and I go shopping at Goodwill and Last Chance. It's amazing how much Retail Therapy can cure.

This week has been less chaotic, but still quite busy. I'm glad to have the week behind me and am excited knowing I only have a few more months of this craze.

My Little Edward

2011-02-04T12:21:00.001-08:00

There were signs that Everett was my little Edward from the very beginning- his transparent white skin, his stunning good looks, the way he stares at me. . .

It wasn't until recently however, that my suspicions were confirmed.

His fangs are final proof.

Along with his fangs, he has one bottom tooth. He is crawling all over the place, and is babbling all the time. He frequently imitates sounds like baba or dada, and he signs dog pretty consistently. He also loves to play peek a boo, show us he is "so big" by putting his hands high up in the air, clap, wave bye bye (sometimes with a paired verbal 'baba'), and Everett, like Beckam, loves his baths.

I know it gets annoying to hear this on the blog world, but he really is such a good baby. He never cries, he sleeps great, and he has always had such a chill temperament. He makes me want 12 more babies, he's that good. I love his chubby cheeks, his big blue eyes, and his handsome smile. Oh how I love my little Edward.

2010 in Review

2011-01-20T22:57:00.002-08:00

I started this post back in January, but then I never finished it. So, a little late, but here are our big highlights of 2010.

Spring:

Babymoon to SeaWorld (shh, don't tell my Dr ;)

Everett's Arrival (10 days later)

Summer:

Annual Blake family Cali trip

Wisdom Teeth Removal (brutal)

Cabin trips

Beck learns & says the pledge in front of lots of viewers at a local tea party.
Fall:

Work starts back up for me, and Joy School starts for Beckam.
AZ Grand stay-cation
Family and Friends leave for school and missions (Lance and Kim, Jessica and Rome, Bailee, Robert)
Took a trip to Colorado for Fall break. SO fun.

Halloween: Angry Birds

McKane surprised me with a trip to visit my BFF Amy for my birthday. Amazing!!

Scrapbook.com shoot: Always Sunny In Here
Disneyland

Family Pictures

Christmas

Cabin, January 2011

2011-01-20T22:57:00.001-08:00

We went up to the Davis cabin the second weekend in January and we seriously had so much fun. We read, relaxed, played games, went on walks, went out to eat, played and went sledding & sliding at the park, learned to reject/jerk/dougie, haha. It was so fun and Beckam, Payt, and CJ had a BLAST playing together, as always.

Here Tiff and Payt are getting ready to go play at the park.

The weather was perfect. There was snow on the ground, but it wasn't too cold outside.
The boys first went down the slide on their booties, slow and steady, and had an okay time.
Casey and Kane threw frisbees while the kids played, and Everett chilled with them.

While playing, Casey found a snowboard thing and decided to go down the slide on it. It was crazy fast, and super fun, but also a little out of control, haha. That then triggered Casey's next great idea: Going down the slide sitting on the frisbees.
It was SO fun, and the boys SPED down the hill. We had to catch them at the end to prevent any casualties, haha.

And then they went down the hill on the frisbees

and had even more fun.

After Everett tried to eat the ground/snow 100x, I got his stroller and had him sit in that. He is seriously so sweet/chill wherever.

Some more pics from our day at the park:

Riding Toad back to the cabin.

What a fun trip. We hope we can repeat it in the summer when Casey and Tiff will be LIVING HERE FOR GOOD, and Casey will be an official Doctor of Veterinary Medicine!! Yay!! I can't believe they're less than 4 months away from living here.

Things I'm Loving

2011-01-20T22:49:00.002-08:00

29 Gifts

Such a good read, I'll post more about it later.

Jamberry Nails

I got these for me and my mom/MIL, and all of my SIL's for Christmas. They're nail shields so they have tons of different, cool designs. I wasn't sure how the whole application process would go, since I'm generally not the best at that sort of thing, but it seriously was not that difficult. You find the shield that fits your nail the best, blow dry it (to get it malleable), then apply pressure to stick it on. Then you cut and file to get it to fit the nail. I watched a youtube tutorial before doing it, and it was helpful. They're supposed to last 4-6 weeks. So far I've had them on for 2, but they're still going strong and I absolutely LOVE them. I'm already planning which design I'm going to do next.

Pesto Spread

After eating the delicious Chicken & pesto sandwhich at Joe's Farm Grill last week, I have had a slight obsession with pesto. I bought this spread at Fry's and have added it to sandwhiches (with mushrooms and sundried tomatoes) for lunch, chicken breast for dinner, and ice cream for dessert. Okay, not the ice cream part, but I have loved it on the other two.

Toms Shoes

I got these shoes for Christmas and I love them. SO comfortable and they go well with everything. Plus, the whole buy a pair, give a pair thing is just cool. I want more.

Children's Books

We got this book on our Grand Canyon trip. Even though we didn't get to see the beautiful view, the trip was worth it to get this book, haha. I seriously love it. It's a version of "There was an old woman who swallowed a fly", but all Arizona-ed out. Seriously SO cute and fun. Here it is on amazon.

Crossfit Forever Strong

Mckane went to this gym after his cousin Porter raved about it last fall. Just by going to this gym for 4 months, and changing his eating habits, McKane lost 40 lbs!!! Crazy.

I started going in September and aside from some spotty attendance around the holidays, I've still been going strong. I have also changed my eating habits about 5 days out of the week, haha. Anyway, I have a LOVE/dread relationship with this gym (*hate was too strong of a word, haha).

Dread- it seriously KICKS my BUTT every day, to the point of wanting to throw up/die during some workouts.
Love- when I'm done I always feel so good. I was able to lose the baby weight I gained (and couldn't shake) with Everett, and I have never felt so in shape. For the first time in my life I can do more than 3 pushups, haha.

Body Full Shampoo

Maybe I just used the same shampoo for too long, but I loved switching to this. I can go a little bit longer now between washings. Which, as a mom, goes a long way, haha.

Holidays, Pt. 3

2011-01-20T21:41:00.000-08:00

Just because Christmas was over, didn't mean the partying was.

The Monday after Christmas we went to the Scottsdale train park with Case and Tiff, and Tiff's fam. We love all of the Christmas lights, the carousel, the fun trains, etc.

Everett and McKane lookin handsome on the train.

The Carousel

Rett was obviously a little scared to ride. And CJ was cheesin it up :)

McKane and Casey.

We went to the AZ Museum for Youth one afternoon and had so much fun. We have a membership there but I always forget to go. I need to use it more often. The current astronaut theme is adorable.

Suiting up

Starting the Voyage

Outer Space

Retty, enjoying the baby area with his cousin Madeline.

That night Beckam had his first (non-grandma) spend the night at Andy and Bekah's house. He had so much fun with his cousins. They played, roasted marshmallows, and I'm not sure what else actually, but they had fun. He went to bed late and woke up early (7:30am, that's early for him), but in between he slept sound.

When I went to pick him up from that side of town the next day we went to Jump and Shout over at Riverview. The kids loved it.

We had fun that night Celebrating the New Year with family.

Minute to Win it games
Good/fun conversation
Yummy food

Good Times bringin in the New Year.

Work started for me on the 3rd and things have been pretty busy ever since. I have tons of IEP meetings, paperwork to write, billing to do, materials to make- all on top of the actual therapy. I really do love my job, but after two weeks of partying it was a difficult return.

Holidays, Pt. 2

2011-01-20T00:13:00.000-08:00

On December 20th, a bunch of my friends since 3rd-7th grade got together. It was SO good to see them and to catch up, and we seriously had a blast. In fact, the fun got so carried away that we were told by the people next to us we were "too loud" on a few occasions. Oops.

2003 Year Book Picture
2010 Oreganos Reunion Picture

The Christmas fun continued that night, at our annual Blake family Christmas party/family night. My rad cousin Cherryl allowed us to do it at her house this year and it turned out so nice. My grandpa, the MC, kicked it off:

Like many of you, we always act out the nativity story. This year Everett was baby Jesus (since Griffin, the youngest Blake Boy, is in OR). Everett wasn't quite as small as a newborn obviously, and it caused quite the twist in the story. We all laughed when my aunt narrated: "And they wrapped Him in cloths and placed Him in the mange. . . Ahem. . . And they wrapped Him in cloths and placed him next to the manger". Haha.

Beckam was one of the three wiseman again. And a very handsome, wise-man at that :)

Here's the rest of the wonderful cast:

McKane sang Last Christmas again and this time he asked Beckam to sing the first verse with him. Beckam did great, and although he sang at a slightly slower tempo, he knew all the words to the first verse.
We didn't think through how the rest of the song would go down, since Beck only knew the first verse. But basically, Beckam mumbled in the microphone, trying his hardest to guess/copy the words, while McKane sang. It was quite funny.

This picture is goofy of Retty, but I like McKane and I in it, so it made the cut.

Here are a few cute ones of Retty swingin to make up for it:

Don't you just want to kiss those cheeks?

We had a few other parties that week of which I didn't get pictures. Some of which included:

Temple lights with the YW, where it poured rain, but we got to see Dancers dancing to songs about the Savior and telling the story of the Crucifixion/Resurrection. So moving. We also looked through all of the nativities, which was cool.

The Jennings Family Christmas Party, where we all mingled with family, ate yummy dessert, and Santa Clause visited the kids. Grandpa Gordon also got a few organized and fun games going for the kids, it was cute.

On Christmas Eve we went over to my Mother in Laws house and celebrated with them. We ate a delicious and traditional Christmas Eve dinner, acted out the nativity, and exchanged secret santa gifts. After that, Jill said she had one more present for everyone and she brought in individually and beautifully wrapped boxes for each adult and child. We all opened them up at the same time and found MARSHMALLOW SHOOTERS inside. Jill quickly busted out mini marshmallows and what followed was probably the funnest marshmallow fight of all time.

It was hilarious, fun, and made for one of the funnest Christmas Eve's I've ever had.

After getting caught up in the competition of the fight, I looked to see how Everett was fending. He had about 5 marshmallows in his mouth and was LOVING LIFE, haha. Here he is trying to stock up for winter.
We spent Christmas morning at our house- enjoying presents from Santa and exchanging gifts from eachother. It was perfect.

The big gift Santa left was this bounce house. Beck was so excited and played in it right away.

We went to Charlie and Jills for a bit, then headed over to my parents house.

And what would Christmas be without the traditional Jennings family POLAR BEAR? McKane and I were too chicken, but Beck got in up to his shoulders- Represent!!

After eating a delicious dinner, the kids enjoyed the bounce house

while the boys played Frisbee in the backyard.

Then we did our gift exchange in the evening.

We had such a fun week and loved the non-stop partying.

Holidays, Pt.1

2011-01-19T21:10:00.000-08:00

I've been playing catch up for a while now in the blog world. Things have been crazy busy at work (a million IEP meetings, mostly) and the thought of posting has been kind of overwhelming, since I'm so behind. But, here's a new installment of our December Christmas celebrations. It is always such a fun/busy/wonderful time of year.

The Young Women in our ward went to the Hale Theater's presentation of A Christmas Carol. We loved it. It was such a fun outing and definitely brought the Christmas spirit. Very well done.

_ _ _ _ _

One day, while at my parents house, Beckam asked my dad what a Chimney was. Instead of just explaining it to him, he took him up on the roof to see it up close and personal. Beck loved it.
There's also a picture in the collage of beck kissing me on the forehead. That's one of my favorites because the kiss was independently initiated by him. So sweet.

_ _ _ _ _

We had our ward Christmas party on December 11th. McKane played Last Christmas and sounded great, and Beckam and I showed our talents by holding the mic.

We had a yummy dinner, a good program, and then the jolly man himself visited the party. This was Beckam's expression when he saw Santa Clause enter the room. Precious.

Here we are waiting in line to see Santa.

The boys with Santa. Careful there, Everett.

Then here Beckam is telling Santa what he wants for Christmas, "lots and lots of Cars Cars"
_ _ _ _ _

Beck and his joyschool buddies had a little Christmas music program and gift exchange. It was fun to celebrate the season with all of his friends.

_ _ _ _ _

On the last day of school before the break, we celebrated the birthday of one of the other Speech Therapists that works at my school (there are 4 of us). Here I am with Becky and Jackie (Jackie is my CFY supervisor). I seriously love both of them, they are wonderful. You can also see 1/2 of the speech room, and the cute Christmas decorations that Becky put up.
_ _ _ _ _

To celebrate the end of the semester, The Davis family (-2) took a trip up to Williams, AZ to ride the Polar Express. We enjoyed {most of} the ride- the hot coco, being with family, riding the train, singing Christmas songs led by the EXTREMELY tone deaf "chef" on our cart of the train (haha, that gave us a few laughs).

However, it was pretty squishy in the train in general. Then, with an 8mo old on my lap the whole time, it got a little claustrophobic. Beckam also was extremely disappointed when he realized we weren't actually getting out at the North Pole, and he got super fussy on the ride back. I get it- Why on earth would we go all the way to the North Pole, to turn right back around and go to the Hotel again? Duh. If I would've realized the trauma that would cause, I would've prepped him a little better. McKane wittily called it "The Bi-polar express", after the high, highs and low, lows we got from Beck, haha.

Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of us on the train, so I'll have to get some from my in-laws, but here Everett and McKane are hanging out in our hotel after the ride. I'm sure Mckane is playing angry birds.
The next day we drove to the Grand Canyon to stay the night. On the ride over I had this sweet boy smiling at me the whole time :). Cutest.

Beck and his cousin lookin at the Waldo books on the drive.

When we got to the Grand Canyon we were told by the park entrance guard that we "wouldn't be able to see anything", because it was too cloudy and rainy.

So, we got our stuff in our rooms and then let the kids enjoy the snow (without proper snow attire- Here Beckam is showing how red his hands were from playing without gloves).

Beck and his cousins.

That night we tried to go out to eat and had quite a difficult time. We first got lost and couldn't find the restaurant. When we finally found the restaurant we couldn't find parking. When we finally parked illegally and went in, we realized it was MUCH too fancy and $$$ for us. So we went out of the national park area (where our hotel was) and found some restaurants. Beck and Everett both fell asleep on that drive, so McKane and I ended up going through the McDonalds drive thru while some of the others went to a sit-down place. McDonalds never tasted so good (except in Chile).

The whole dinner experience was pretty funny and we were able to laugh about it rather than be annoyed, which was good. The night got even funnier however, when we returned home and were carrying the kids in from the car. McKane was bringing Beck inside when he ran right into a large man standing at the soda machine (which was right outside our room) In HIS UNDERWEAR, haha. It was absolutely freezing outside too, haha. Seeing McKane totally startled the man and he cussed, to which McKane said: "you're a brave man", and they both laughed, haha. It was quite hilarious.

The next day was overcast again, so we could not see the GC. Even though that was slightly disappointing, I felt worse for the people visiting from out of the state/country. And our stay there, though seemingly pointless, was actually really fun. The kids had a blast playing together, and it was nice to be somewhere that we could spend time together as a family without a ton of distractions and things to do.
_ _ _ _

to be continued. . . (the suspense is killing you, isn't it ;)