Happy Valentine's Day!

My friend, Wendy, gave me a great idea for a blog posting. Her husband is also deployed right now and she dedicated a post to her husband today which gave me the idea for this post.

I finally found a love of a lifetime...

A love to last my whole life through...

This is how I got him to marry me!

Forever in my heart, I finally found a love of a lifetime!

I can't wait for that homecoming hug!

The Ogden Tree House

The boys and I had a great opportunity to go with one of my best friends, Terra, from High School to the Tree House in Ogden yesterday. It is a really cool place where kids can explore and learn about a variety of different things about the world they live in. We were there for over an hour and didn't see half of all they had to offer. Thankfully we bought a year pass so we can go over and over again. With all of the snow that Utah has been getting it is great that we have a place where the boys can get out and play and release all of their pent up energy.

There is a huge "tree" in the middle of the two story building that the kids can play and climb in. Jamesy and Alex had a great time running around in it.

The Tree House also has a large map of the United States where James found a familiar State and Monument.

James was also excited to find that there was a fire truck with dress up clothes that fit him perfectly! He played on that truck for a really long time and was sad to move on to the next play area.

Alex is really into knights and castles right now. He really enjoyed going into the King Arthur area. He was able to dress up as a knight and play with all sorts of dragons and knights while protecting his castle.

James and Alex also are still very interested in trains. They have quite a collection of trains at home yet they still found time to play with all of the trains at the Tree House too.

Fox and Geese with Grandpa

These two new posts are to satisfy my sister, Bonnie. She keeps reminding me to update my blog. I know it has been awhile, but life isn't nearly as fun to write about when your husband is deployed. You all don't want to hear me complain so I had to wait for something fun to write about. I'll try harder in the future to be more positive and plan fun things to do to make the time go by faster.

We have been getting A LOT of snow in Utah lately, so my step dad, John decided that we should all go out and play in it. He made us a really cool Fox and Geese track in the back yard. James and Alex got to be the geese and John was the Fox. It was a lot of fun watching them play.

After a while, the boys started a snow ball fight. Alex really has a good arm. If you look at John's shoulder you will see a snowball almost ready to hit him. Good shot Alex!

Our dog, Blade, even joined in on the fun. Here is evidence that I do pay attention to my dog! I've found out that a lot of people didn't even know that I had one. Blade has been with us almost as long as little Jamesy has. I guess I just need to talk about him more.

A Trip to the Kaysville Mill

We had a very unique opportunity to take a tour of the Kaysville Mill last week. You might be wondering what the Kaysville Mill is. If you have ever driven down I-15 in Kaysville, you might have seen the huge white grain silos on the side of the freeway. Well, that is the Kaysville Mill. My Step Dad, John, recently was transfered to work there and we were all lucky enough to get a tour from his new boss, Bill, pictured above.

Alex, here, is modeling the wonderful hair nets that we had to wear. He is also holding earplugs that Bill gave them in the previous picture. The boys were all so excited to see the "candy machine" above, but weren't too dissapointed to find out that the machine didn't hold candy because it was full of earplugs that looked a lot like bullets. What fun!

Here is a machine that does something cool, but I can't remember what. Don't I have a great memory? I know it has something to do with sifting flour or sugar or something like that. Alex never did put the ear plugs in, as you can see here because he is plugging his ears with his fingers.

My sister Bonnie and her two kids, Ayden and Chloe, also came with us. The man in the background is my Step Dad, John. He is holding Alex's hand. He is a really cool Step Dad!

This machine was really cool! It shows how the church cans all of their dry goods. It was a lot of fun to watch the process.

I included this picture to show that my mom came too! She's the hottie in the dark gray coat. The hair net really works for her! Just kidding Mom!

I deffinently have two active boys. As we were waiting to see the next interesting machines the boys acted out scenes from Star Wars. Heaven help me!

I had to add a self portrait. I seem to never be in the pictures. I guess someone has to hold the camera!

Here is John and the boys! The boys really had a fun time seeing where Grandpa works.

Jamesy's first ski Trip

Jamesy went skiing for the first time last friday! He has been waiting for the last few years to go with James and I. We finally decided that we could handle taking him when he turned five. He was so excited to go and bugged us as soon as it started snowing this year. A good opportunity finally came up this month when we were all in Utah. We were able to fit in a short trip to Brighton before James had to go back to Rapid City to deploy later this month.

We enrolled Jamesy into a kinder-ski school and we had a lot of fun watching him learn. He kept a great positive attitude the whole time. He was very excited to see his mom and dad near by and talked to us a little too much, so we decided to give him and his instructors a little space.

Here is a picture of him skiing all by himself. We were so proud of him. We can't wait until next season to go again.

Christmas Morning!

Merry Christmas!

When we tried to wake the boys up this morning, Alex refused to even look at us.

Jamesy complained about the Flash in his eyes, but didn't get out of bed either.

The kids finally realized that we were saying that Santa had came, and shot out of bed after about ten minutes of trying to wake them.

With all of us awake and alert we took our traditional Christmas Morning picture and headed up stairs to open presents. I hope you all had a Merry Christmas!

I've been "Tagged"!

For those of you who don't know how this works, here are the rules:
A: Each player lists 6 facts/habits about themselves.
B: At the end of the post, the player then tags people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog for these rules.

1.I don't have the shopping gene. I hate to shop! Unlike Rikki, I probably have under 5 pairs of regular shoes. I mostly wear the same pair of shoes every day with the exception of my Sunday shoes. The pair I currently wear most days I got with the help of Rikki last year. She is definitely the girl to go shoe shopping with. I know, I know, it's time for some new shoes! I also hate shopping for clothes too. My sister Bonnie gives me excellent advise when we shop together. She is brutally honest so I know I will look good if she helped me pick out an outfit. The only problem now is that neither Rikki or Bonnie live in the same state as me. I guess I'll just keep wearing the same old clothes and shoes until the hosts from "What not to wear" come and pick me up.

2. I mentioned that I only have around 5 pairs of regular shoes in my previous fact, but I have over 10 pairs of athletic shoes! You wouldn't know by my current exercise routine, which is practically nothing at all, that I would have that many pairs of athletic shoes. I used to run track and field in high school and even won a full ride scholarship to the University of Utah. Due to my crazy life at the time I never did run in College, but it still feels good to know that I could have, I guess. I used to compete in the Heptathlon which consists of the High Jump, Long Jump, 100 meter High Hurdles, 400 meter/200 meter dash, 800 meter run, Shot put, and Javelin. My favorite events were the Hurdles and High Jump. I was not very good at Shot put and Javelin. I had incredibly small arm muscles, I was definitely built more like a runner than a thrower. I also played soccer and even did a year in gymnastics. I was the tallest gymnast at my gym at only 5'9". I love almost any other sport too, but I haven't been very active in athletics due to the lack of interest from my friends and that most city leagues for women play on Sundays.

3. When I was competing at the Utah High School State Track Meet in the 100 meter High Hurdles my Junior year I had a very embarrassing moment. The Stands were full of people and I was seeded in the top position in my heat that day and favored to win State. I started off okay when the gun was fired and shot way ahead of my competition. I was bounding over my second to last hurdle at least a hurdle ahead of everyone when suddenly I stopped. I didn't know why then and I still don't know why now, but I stopped none the less. My coaches were screaming for me to continue and I finally did, but I came in third in my heat. There were around 20 heats that day and I came in 11th over all in the preliminaries. They only take the top ten to the finals. I missed that spot for 10th by a 100th of a second. Of course I was horrified. I still don't understand it. I guess the other girls prayed harder than I did. I was able to pull my self together to go on to win 3rd place in the high jump later that day though. I still wonder what would have happened if I didn't stop that day. Oh well! The next year I didn't let that happen and I ended up coming in first for my State in the heptathlon at the Great South West Championships in Arizona.

4. Speaking of embarrassing moments, I would have to say that my most embarrassing moment happened when I was 15 on Mother's day. It was raining and church had just let out. My sister Bonnie and I were tired of waiting for my mom to stop talking to everybody in the whole ward(Yes I love to exaggerate!), so we decided to take her keys and move our very ugly, very huge two tone, nasty, rusty Suburban. Can you tell that I really loved that car? We thought it might be funny to surprise my mom. We were wrong. We got in the car and I started it up and saw my mom coming in the rear view mirror. I thought to myself that I should hurry and be funny and make her chase us around the parking lot. (Yes I had a weird sense of humor back then.) What I didn't know was that the gear shift indicator was broken and when I thought I moved into drive I was really in reverse. When I let off the brake the car moved backwards it pinned my poor mother between our Suburban and another car. Of course she started screaming because of the excruciating pain and I was terrified, but luckily I knew that if I pulled the gear shift all the way down at least I would get into a forward motion gear. I pulled forward and she fell like a sack of potatoes to the ground. Her screams brought the attention of the whole ward and thankfully someone called for an ambulance. My mom spent most of Mother's Day in the hospital and the next few months with a severe limp and even now she still has leg pain. I felt terrible and couldn't stop crying. Eventually someone took pity on me and my sister and we spent the day with a family in our ward and felt very awkward when all of their extended family came over for a Mother's Day dinner and they had to explain why we were there. My did mom quickly forgive me and even let me get my license later that year when I turned 16. I will always carry the guilt and embarrassment with me though.

5. I have a habit of crying. I cry when I'm really happy, when I'm sad, scared, and even when other people are crying. I especially cry when I have to get up in front of a lot of people and speak. I have not made it through one talk in Sacrament meeting without crying in my whole adult life. People probably think that I'm crying because I'm really spiritual or something, but the truth is that I am crying out of total fear. Sometimes I can't turn it off and I have no idea why I am crying. I hope one day that I will get a better handle on my emotions, but for now I'm glad that at least I feel. I just tell people that I have the gift of crying. It is somewhat entertaining to watch the expressions on other people's faces when I start crying though. Especially in men, they start apologizing and looking everywhere else but at me. I least I can laugh at part of the situation.

6. I love hot chocolate! I drink hot chocolate all year round. Even when we lived in Texas I drank hot chocolate almost every day. It doesn't really matter what kind of hot chocolate it is. I really do like the Dulce de leche caramel flavor that Stephen's makes best though. I think I'll have a cup now!

Thanks Rikki for tagging me. I am going to tag my sister, Bonnie now.