So I love to peruse other blogs and have stumbled across a couple lately that are very interesting. I found this blog from Bakerella she has the cutest idea's for baked goods. You can see she has a ton of hits. I found her through my friend Heidi and then I stumbled onto this other site called Pennies on a Platter very yummy dishes and lots of good tips too. It is amazing how many people devote hours to putting blogs together for others to enjoy!
So I will keep on searching for some new fun ideas and promise to share them as I do.

Adult Time

Now that Tori is weened and a little older Chris and I made plans to take a couple of days and get out of town. We settled on Salt Lake as our final destination. I know not a dream vacation to everyone, but for us it was perfect.
We packed a lot into just a couple of days including attending a session at the Salt Lake Temple, touring the visitor centers, touring both the conference center building and Joseph Smith Memorial. Talk about a tear jerker, we went and saw the Joseph Smith movie and wow what a well done movie and very moving. I would say it is a must see, but make sure to bring a lot of tissue!!!

We also packed in some yummy local food including Thai and Greek to name a few. On Sunday our final day, we went to the live viewing of Music and the Spoken Word seeing the Mormon Tabernacle Choir in person is another must do if you visit Salt Lake and have never done it before...they were amazing. Here is snap of them practicing before the live performance.

To show that we were really there I did take a quick picture, sorry it is a little scary, and yes it is the only one we took all weekend, we will do better next time.

As for the kids they did great, they were wonderful for Grandma and Grandpa and had a lot of fun, they had a visit to Ocean's Discovery in with Grandma as well as the playground and a couple of other adventures.

We loved our time off but were glad to see the kids again.

Curly Hair

Abby has stick straight hair, just as I did when I was a very young child. So I thought that maybe she would entertain the idea of putting curls in her hair after bath. Tonight she did let me put in the curlers and Tori of course needed some in as well.

This lasted all of about 10 minutes before she was ready for me to take them out. I figure that if I start slow, I can build up the time. Then one day she might even sleep in them, but baby steps for now.

The bad and the ugly

Okay, so I promised pictures last time, but I didn't promise of what, so I am now delivering them, but first a warning if you have a touchy stomach, don't read on!!!!



Tori has had toxic poop since birth, so we have resorted to making her diaper wipes, and using a special cream on her. So I like to let her run around for a couple of minutes each night without her diaper on, if possible. From time to time I am surprised by a small puddle if I don't get the diaper on her in time. Well that really isn't that big of deal and easy to clean up, especially if she is on tile. By now I am sure you can see where this is leading...so tonight I did the same thing I always do except I received a bit of a surprise. I was standing in the bedroom and Abby said "Mom Tori pooped on the floor, Mom Tori pooped on her foot, Mom Tori's poop is everywhere." So needless to say I first cleaned Tori up and she cried and cried after she was cleaned up I put her to bed.


I told Abby that I would clean up after she went to bed, and she was really upset. I thought to myself, I should take advantage of her help. Ten years from me, she won't get dead helping me clean up, let alone her sisters poop!!

So anyway here is a picture of the "mess" and also of Abby helping me clean up. I will use this as evidence one day of her love of helping mom, with anything!!

So now the good part (as if there is one) there is this stuff called Quick and Brite that can get out anything, yes anything. This is a must have for someone with children. This stuff will get out poop, vomit, and anything else you can have that is gross. It will get out the smell and leave no stains. We have used it a lot and I highly recommend the stuff. It is a bit pricey, but it lasts for a very long time.

Sick family

I would love to know who got us all sick, because it has been no fun at all!!! First Tori started with it, then Abby, followed by Chis. They all had the cough until you loss it, which I was not sorry at all to miss. Of course this all took place while I was gone, so I thought I had escaped, but alas it was not so. On Saturday I looked like a stoner, my eyes were so red and Sunday I couldn't keep food down. Monday was a bit better, so we will see what tomorrow looks like. I hope that I can make it into work without having one of those great coughing fits and maybe just make it a whole day without tossing my cookies.
Did I mention I would like to know who started this whole thing!!! I don't have many kind words for them.
I promise no more boring stuff and some pictures too next time.

Checking Back in

Well it was a wonderful trip, the weather was great, the hotel, Marriott World Center was unbelievable. It was like a mini resort. I usually don't sleep that good away from home, but boy of boy those beds were comfortable. They had everything you needed there so we hardly left the premises. My co-worker did forget to pack his dress pants so we did have to purchase him some new ones the day we got there, which was an adventure all of itself.
The conference was great too, lots of good information, I even got up for a special meeting at 7AM (that would be 5AM) Denver time, and it proved to be well worth it with one of the top speakers on "the hill" talking about the upcoming election and what each candidate would offer. It was very interesting and goes well with my new interest.
I hope my new employer would find it valuable to send me to the ASPPA meeting in October, but that will just have to wait for now.
As much as I love my family, it was really nice to eat what I wanted without having a child doing all the child like things. It was nice to come "home" to a spotless clean room each night. It was nice to have the whole bed to myself, and it was nice to take a "mommy" break.
All that said I was happy to return home on Tuesday night and received many hugs and kisses from a happy family!

Preparing for the big trip

As many of you know I have decided to leave my company which I have worked for 8 years now and move on to something else, closer to home. I talked to my new boss a couple of months ago about going to a conference in Orlando Florida, sure he would never agree to let me go. To my surprise he said that I could go and I was thrilled. I have always loved conferences and travel to anywhere outside of Colorado. What is even better is that someone else is paying for it.
So now I am only days away from leaving and I was a bit nervous about Tori, because she wasn't weaned yet, but thankfully she started that process on Monday and it was been going really well. I am also concerned about leaving Chris with both girls for 4 days, I am sure he will do fine, but it is really hard to have them all by yourself for any period of time.
I will report back once I get back in a couple of days from sunny Florida!!

Getting involved

I can't say how many elections I have voted in and until this year, did my voting, and never really thought about all the other stuff that went on behind the scenes. Well this year I decided that I really should get more involved and so when they announced the day for the caucus I decided to go represent our family.
Well needless to say they were used to about 5-10 people showing up, so when there were almost 400 of us they weren't sure what to do. Needless to say we did all get to participate in the process. As we stood there waiting for someone to determine that they wanted to be a precinct leader, I volunteered as well as another man. So here were are 2 1/2 hours later counting votes, choosing who would go to the upcoming assemblies and such and not really sure how we got there.
I am excited to go be a part of this political process and how that my vote will matter where it needs to.

Abby's birthday...again

We did our January and February birthday party celebrations today which were Abby, Rachel and Aubree. We had a really good time the kids all played in the basement, which was wonderful, and Abby got a lot of great presents from everyone.

Here is a picture of all the grand kids

The theme for this party was lots of Barbie, Dora and Abby stuff. Here she is with the very popular Barbie movie. Tonight after naps Abby asked to watch it. She was in and out, but I did notice Chris watching it when she wasn't in the room. I am not sure if that is just desperate TV time or he was really enjoying it?

Lastly what party is complete without a bathroom accident and a major injury? Well of course we had to have both and of course they were both my children. At the end of the event, Tori decided she had been left out of the action long enough, saw the open door to the basement and headed down the stairs. Now keep in mind that these stairs are not carpeted and so we don't let her go down them for fear she will fall down them. Well of course she did just that and landed at the bottom, Jakob came running upstairs and said "emergency, Tori fell down the stairs" which I of course came running for. I ran down, grabbed her, looked for blood, there was none, good and took her upstairs. I was holding her as she was crying again checked for blood, none, but missed the huge goose egg on her head. Jakob then said, she has a big bonk on her head, which sure enough, there was a huge goose egg. I ran to the kitchen where Aubree was mixing a solution of oil and salt and then applied that to her head ( a good trick for taking the swelling out) and I was trying to comfort her.

About that time Abby came out of the bathroom with poop on her hands, which she kindly announced to everyone in the kitchen. Unfortunately that was the better part of the situation. Aubree went in to assist her with clean up since I had Tori in hand and when I went in the bathroom it was everywhere (yes everywhere) so I handed Tori to my Mom, Aubree took Tori upstairs to her Dad for some work and I started to clean the bathroom. Abby said she had an accident and was trying to clean it up (at least she was helpful). This is the fun part of having children!!

Needless to say Tori was okay and we got Abby into new clothes after being cleaned up. I took a picture of Tori's bump after about 30 minutes, and it still looked pretty yucky, however within a couple of hours the swelling was all gone and it is just black and blue now. They made a joke about not getting a picture right away, but this will have to do.