Mother’s Day 2014

On this Mother’s Day I cannot express my gratitude for my beautiful and amazing wife.  I don't know how she shows so much love, gives so much of her time, worries so often, and shares so much of herself. Her life is full of service and kindness towards others.  I am lucky that I have married a wonderful companion who dreamed of one day growing up and becoming a Mother.  She takes amazingly great care of each of our children.  She constantly worries for Treven and Ady when they are not here.  She worries that they are getting all that they need.  She does so much for them and worries and prepares for the times that they will return.  She loves and laughs with our little Jonah.  She helps him to be happy and to make good choices.  The happiness of that little boy should be a testament to what kind of Mother she is.  She loves and cuddles and cares for Wyatt so much.  She makes sure that he is getting every little bit of medical care necessary and she constantly does therapy with him to help him.  She worries about the house and my well-being as well.  She is a supportive and loving companion and I find peace throughout my day knowing that she is home with our children.  All of us are so lucky to have her. She has truly partnered with our Heavenly Father in raising these four great kids.  She seeks his guidance, she follows his ways, and she is doing everything necessary to draw four of his spirits back towards their eternal home.  Words cannot express my love and appreciation for my wonderful eternal companion.

 

My Mother has been watching over us for three years as an angel in Heaven. She earned her wings long before she left this earth by raising all seven of us children. She taught us right from wrong and loved us beyond human capability.  She was tough when she felt it was necessary to see us do our best, but she showed so much compassion and love when times called for it as well.  I do not know how she had time to attend to the needs of seven children.  I have no idea how she found the strength to push forward when I knew she was beyond her limits.  I remember her staying up late to help me complete school projects I had procrastinated.  I remember her contagious laugh and how much I loved being the cause of it.  I remember how sweet and gentle she always was to each grandchild.  She truly is an angel and I cannot wait for the day when I hold embrace her again and tell her how much I love her. 

 

Ashley's Mother has loved me as her own son.  I am so grateful for this second Mother in my life.  There is nothing that requires her to love me this much, but she does it anyway.  I love to be in their home, to share experiences with them, and to laugh with them as well.  I am blessed to have another Mom in my life to talk to.  I am blessed that my children have such a wonderful Grandma.  I am blessed that she has raised such an incredible daughter that I now get to call my wife.  We are blessed by her continued love and support in all that we do.  I love her and am so thankful for all that she does.

Neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt

This morning we went to our neighborhood Easter egg hunt.  We have a big breakfast with everyone bringing food, then we have Easter egg hunts, where different ages go to different neighborhood yards.  Afterwards the kids all cash in their empty Easter eggs for a fun prize.  At the end of the hunt, there are age appropriate games at many different homes.  It is always a fun event and it is great to spend time as a family and as a neighborhood celebrating the Easter holiday.

Christmas 2013

   

This Christmas Season was filled with a lot of love, fun, and excitement.  We went to the Christmas tree lot and found our tree.  We spent some time decorating it and the house for Christmas.  We enjoyed the time we had to relax.  Ady did an outstanding job performing in her Christmas dance recital.  We were all spoiled by Santa.  Mostly, we felt the love of our Savior, Jesus Christ.  We felt his sweet, humble spirit in our lives as we reflected on all of our blessings, and as we had the opportunity to give to others.  We enjoyed being surrounded by family and friends and knowing that we have a loving Heavenly Father and Savior who are always there for us and have given us so much. 

Tigger and Pooh Bear go Trick or Treating

Jonah really wanted to be Tigger for Halloween this year, and we were able to get our hands on a Winnie the Pooh costume for Wyatt.  So, our trick or treating was straight from Pooh Corner.  We went to the ward Trunk or Treat and had dinner and did some trunk or treating.  Then, on Halloween we went to both grandparents homes and trick or treated there.  It was a fun night.  We wish Treven and Ady could have been with us, but they were at their Mom’s this year.

24th of July - 2013

The 24th of July was pretty low-key for us, but still fun.  Ashley is not enjoying the heat, at least in part because she is 8 months pregnant.  Despite this VERY hard pregnancy, she has been a trooper.  We went to our city parade and then were lucky enough to have her family join us and watch our city fireworks.  Jonah loves fireworks and refers to them as “pop pops.”  It is fun to celebrate our state and all that it has to offer.

4th of July - 2013

 

We have had a great time this entire week being with family.  My brother has been in town with his family and we have been able to spend time with Ashley’s family as well.  We went to our ward breakfast for the 4th of July.  Because the city mayor lives in our ward, we often get to have the police escort a little parade around the block and even sometimes get the fire department to hose everyone down with the giant water cannon mounted on the top of their truck.  Later in the day, we spent time together before everyone went to the park to watch the fireworks.  The boy cousins played a pick up game of football, and the girl cousins just hung out while we were waiting for them to start.  We have been able to go bowling and do several other activities this week with family as well.  It has been a lot of fun.  How grateful we are for the freedom that we enjoy in this country.  While the country is far from perfect, it truly is the best system that man has devised to this point.  I am grateful for the liberties that we are able to enjoy and pray that none of us ever take them for granted.

Christmas Dance Recital

 

Ady had a Christmas dance recital the other night.  It was really fun to see.  They did many different dances with many different outfits.  It is fun to see how excited she is to participate in dance, especially after 6 years.  All the girls did a great job.  We are really proud of our little girl. 

The Vacation

 

Planning

We were bound and determined to find the best deals we could for this vacation.  It isn’t that were cheap, so much as we hate getting worked over.  We saved a ton of money by getting discounted tickets to the theme parks through our friends (thanks Tiffanie and Lyle).  My brother twisted our arms to stay with them while we were near Disneyland (not too much twisting necessary, and hopefully a mistake they do not regret too soon); thanks so much for being such incredible hosts.  All that was left was to find our San Diego hotel.  We scoured the internet and looked at what must’ve been hundreds of pictures until we came to this:

We immediately burst out into laughter.  A double-take confirmed it.  This hotel offered a “short stature kit” in its rooms.  Otherwise known as a STOOL!  We almost booked it for that reason alone.  We especially thought it was great that it featured the Mom from the “Little People, Big World” reality show.  In the end, all of these features were not enough to earn our business and we decided on somewhere else.

Day 1-Driving

We left in the morning (barely) of the 26th.  We spent all day driving.  We also stopped to get gas, and go potty.  Three DVDs watched, two books read, many travel games played.  Arrived at my brother and sister-in-laws house at 10:49PM (their time, not ours).

Day 2 & 3 – Disneyland

We loved our two days in Disneyland.  We rode all the rides and were sure to see ALL of the shows.  We even walked through the shops of downtown Disney.  The kids both became Jedis (after a failed attempt or two) and defeated Darth Vader with their light-sabers.  We met The Mouse that started it all, and we had a great time.  Disneyland seems to hold a special magic (at least to me), but it is even more amazing at Christmastime.  They are not afraid to use the word “Christmas” or to celebrate its traditions.  The kids loved all the rides that one might think they would be scared of (splash mtn., space mtn., thunder mtn., Matterhorn, etc.).  The park was busy, but we ended up being able to do everything that we wanted.  While waiting in one line, a British gentlemen asked, “is it some kind of American holiday today?”  I replied, “no, people just tend to celebrate and relax between Christmas and New Year’s.”  He said, “I would have thought you would all be holidayed out with your American Thanksgiving and Christmas so close together.”  I said, “no, we look forward to New Year’s as well.” He just nodded.  I couldn’t help but think that his kind of logic is probably what caused us to win the Revolutionary War.  He doesn’t understand us at all.  We will take EVERY opportunity to relax that is given to us! (the picture of Ady’s face on Splash Mountain is priceless).

 

Day 4 – Playing and Puking

We scheduled a relaxing day with my brother, sister-in-law, and kids for Wednesday, knowing we’d be out so late at Disneyland.  The resting was interrupted by Treven throwing up at around 3AM and not really stopping until 6PM.  We still had a great time relaxing while the kids played with their cousins…..and their washing machine cleaned the mess off Treven’s sleeping bag.  In the late afternoon we said goodbye to our family and set off for San Diego.  We settled into our hotel and went to sleep. 

 

Day 5 – San Diego Zoo

We loved spending time at the San Diego Zoo.  It is so much bigger and better than our local zoo (not that we don’t appreciate ours though).  We loved the double-decker bus tour, the sky ride, and seeing all the different animals.  We especially loved seeing the koalas, polar bears, panda bears, and other animals not available to us here.  While we were there, we also got a call from my brother informing us that our newest niece was born, my parent’s 20TH! grandchild. It was a great day at the zoo.

Later that night, while lying in bed, I began to feel the same kind of sickness which had affected Treven the morning before.  I rushed to the bathroom and took care of business immediately.  Afterwards, I thought a warm shower might help.  When I came out at 2AM, I smelled a not so delightful smell.  I asked the kids, “did someone have an accident in the bed?” A sweet, sleeping little girl, with eyes still shut, simply raised her hand.  The pajamas and undies were a total loss and were promptly bagged and thrown in the outside garbage.  We bagged all the sheets before tossing them in the hall and calling the front desk.  It seriously looked as though our little girl had taken up mud wrestling.  So disgusting and only now funny.  I began to feel okay by morning and decent by late afternoon.  Ady seemed to be fine after 5PM that night.  The only one not affected by this 24 hr. kind of flu was Mom, who instead decided to fight a cold during the second portion of our vacation.

 

Day 6 & 7 - Sea World

Treven and I headed to Sea World on Friday as scheduled.  Mom and Ady decided it might be best if they stay at the hotel and rest (although they were not excited about it).  I was starting to mostly feel better, but I had to push myself.  I didn’t eat anything the whole day, but Treven sure did.  I got him the all you can eat pass at Sea World that day.  He could eat as much as he wanted at any diner within Sea World.  I think we got our money’s worth.  Mom and Ady joined us in the evening after I kept texting to tell them about the amazing shows (it helped that they were feeling quite a bit better by then).  We loved all the shows from the sea lions to Shamu, and the Blue Horizon dolphin show.  We originally were only going to use one day of our two-day pass.  After seeing all there was to offer, we decided to spend the morning of our first travel day back at Sea World as well.  It was worth every minute, although we made sure to stay away from the “soak zones.”

 

Day 7 – First Leg Home

We originally were going to try to drive to St. George before stopping.  After spending time in Sea World we settled on Vegas.  We had no reservations at any hotels.  We decided to do something we had never done before.  Hotwire.com advertises the best hotels at the best rates….too good for the hotels to publish.  The closer you are to your arrival time the better because hotels want to sell their un-booked rooms. Since we were in Vegas, we felt like gambling!  We clicked on a 4-star hotel with all the amenities for our family for something like $55/night (on a weekend mind you).  We ran the card and looked for straight 7s.  We were pleasantly surprised to find we had scored an amazing room at the Hilton Las Vegas.  Our room was really nice and included everything.  We felt like we had beat the house that night.

 

Day 8 – End of the Line

We woke up at our leisure and enjoyed our morning in our hotel room.  The kids especially enjoyed the enormous tub first thing in the morning.  We gassed up the car and headed home.  The trip had been, fun, amazing, tiring, but most of all a great family vacation.  We were blessed with great weather throughout our vacation.  The weather was 63-70 degrees and sunny almost every day except our rest day; when it didn’t matter anyway.  Imagine the shock to our system when we glanced up at the mirror to see 17 degrees smiling back at us, just before stepping out into the Utah air.  It could be that it was less shocking than seeing our gas costs in Utah (avg. $2.71/gal) jump to a $3.25/gal. average in California.  We were truly blessed with no car trouble, great roads, and complete safety………well, except for Ady getting wrestled off the bed by Treven and hitting her head….AND the time Treven jumped off the bed and fell into the dresser at the hotel, but neither left any permanent scarring.  That is what I call a successful vacation!  

• The kids were playing travel size games (guess who?, battleship, connect4) in the car.  Treven kept losing, and he really does not like to lose.  He said, “Hey Ady, how about we don’t keep score.”  We inquired to see if that was because he kept losing, and found out it was.  We explained that we know it is hard to lose, but we need to be happy for others when they win, even if we don’t.  Ady then said, “yeah, Treven, I am happy for you when you win…(long pause)…..sort of.”
• Treven snooped at the hotel bill the moment they slid it under the door in San Diego.  I came in from loading the car to see him reading it.  He asked if hotels really cost that much.  I said “yes”, but explained that he shouldn’t be worrying about things like that.  While driving past the hotel on our journey home from Sea World, I said, “there goes our hotel, see you later.”  Treven piped up and said, “yeah, see you later hotel, thanks for taking $____(the bill amount) of our dollars.