Sparkling Sprinkle anyone?

So it was really cold, windy and rainy here today. Okay so the high was 45 degrees, and I am sure many of you are laughing at me right now but for us that is cold, and there was no sun, which I just don't do well with! So my hats are off to all of you who live through cold, sunless winters...I just couldn't do it! I hoped that may be my girls would entertain themselves today and I would be able to catch up on a bit more scrapbooking, but all I got done was one page and I organized some of my scrapbooking papers. But we did get all the Christmas cookies baked...now to just get them delivered!

It's been forever...

since I have posted...apologies to all, or may be you don't even care that we don't post around here anymore! This new calling thing has really taken up a bit of time, but I am grateful for the chance to grow and learn. We have had an eventful past month and hopefully I'll get a few more photos and entries up soon. We were blessed to open our home to Justin's family for Thanksgiving. We had 14 of us living in our small home for about a week...we were extra blessed to have Celeste and family here for almost 2 weeks (and I am not being sarcastic! I loved having them here and pray that can find a job next year out on the west coast). As usual it is late and I have to go to bed!

What will we do now?

The past days, weeks, and months we have spent many hours working on Prop 8 and now it is over, hurray! And even better it passed! I truly call it a miracle and I know that God's hand was with us and the many others who joined forces over the last few months. As you can see even the littlest ones in our family know how to help, as Justin was preparing to paint his last round of big signs, Lyndie ran down the side of the house grabbed some gloves and paint and headed for the big yellow signs.

I am afraid my kids are going to be quite bored in the car now and we'll have to revert back to singing High School Musical all the time as the sign are disappearing and we can't play, "Look there's a YES sign!" game anymore. What really got me was last week when I was driving around in the afternoon trying to get Lyndie to go to sleep, she's learned to climb out of her crib...it makes naptime very difficult!, and I hear her little voice say, "sign" and sure enough she is pointing to a sign. Our kids have been real troopers through all of this and certainly did their part too! I can't wait for this Saturday, we have no plans!

Just let me get through the tomorrow and we'll be home FREE! Tonight was Wonderful Wednesday at church and since my enrichment leader got released a few weeks ago many of the responsibilities fell on my counselor and I. We had a good turnout, we combined with another ward and the ended up inviting the other 2 wards in our city as well. I enjoyed my few minutes in between things when I could just visit with people. Tomorrow I agreed to host a baby shower in our home for a girl that grew up in the ward. Oh well, at least my house will get cleaned! Oh, wait I have to do the cleaning don't I?

Don't be scared if these little kittens cross your path!

What an amazing find!

Today I got a real treat, Justin took the two big girls with him to work. So it was just Lyndie and I, so I decided we would spend a few hours scouring the thrift stores, which is one of my all time favorite things to do! Ever since we have moved in I just haven't felt like our living room/family room/great room was complete. I knew that I needed another chair to complete the room but I haven't been able to find one nor have I wanted to spend much money because frankly there wasn't any money to spend! But since we have several of Justin's family coming this next month and I am hosting a baby shower I have been searching craigslist for another piece of furniture. I found a perfect loveseat but the person won't email me back! I was hoping that may be, just may be I would get lucky today. And I did! I love my new chair, throw (which matches our red couch) and tree! I asked Justin how much he thought I spend and his first guess was $45 for the chair, I told him lower at which he went to $15. Would you believe I got everything for less than $18. I was shocked when I saw the price on the chair $9.95! The guy who helped me take it out said, "Oh you get the chair that put me to sleep last night!" My room finally looks complete, and I can't wait for my mom to come over tomorrow and help me put up the curtains, they've been sitting in the garage for over a year now! I'll post a picture when we are finished.

Vacation...wait, we took children along!

So we spent a week near Yosemite last week, it was suppose to be a vacation but we took children along! I have decided that we can no longer call vacations, "vacations" because we get all excited thinking about days gone past when we got to lay on beaches, sleep past 6am, snorkel...etc. Because anyone who has traveled with little children knows that time spent away from home is not as carefree and relaxful as you think it is going to be. About half way through the trip I told Justin, "it's adventure Justin, we need to call it an adventure, when we travel with the girls." Don't get me wrong we had a wonderful time and I am glad we went it's just not really relaxful when you travel with little ones. We just need to remind ourselves that we need to go at "their pace" and find out what makes them happy...and then we are all happy!

I read this quote last October when we were on our vacation in Utah for Justin's sister's wedding and I actually called the store and had them read it to me so I could write it down. It is:

Enjoy the little things in life, for one day you'll look back and realize they were the big things.

Once we started focusing on the little things on our vacations it was much more pleasant for everyone. Like playing in the pool, they loved it, they asked to go in everyday, and I think we made it everyday. Or looking in the lake for golfballs, they then spent an hour or so playing with them in the parking lot...don't worry we were sitting outside with them and not a single car came the whole time. Spending over 2 hours at the children's museum. Finding "glass dolls" at the thrift store. Looking for deer. Riding the little train car on the old logging railroad. But by far I think their favorite was frog hunting. After being at the condo for 5 days we finally made it down to Bass Lake which was a short 2 minute walk from our condo and we were in "frog heaven". Justin and the two little girls came back with one frog, and then the rest of us followed them back down and they had so much fun hunting down frogs and covering themselves in mud! At one point I think Lainey had 20 frogs in her cup of mud!

It was good to spend time together and Lyndie learned she can climb out of the pack n play and has since learned to climb out of the crib too! aahhhh...didn't anyone give her the memo that in our family you are suppose to stay in your crib until you are at least 2 and a half!

Taking a stand...

I have a battle raging inside me, a battle to protect my family, those I love and the plan our Father in heaven has in store for each of us. I still remember sitting in the Marriot Center 13 years ago when President Hinckley began his address at the Relief Society General Broadcast, it went something like this, "Sisters I hope the brethern will excuse for getting out late tonight but I have an important message to share..." and then he went on to read The Family A Proclamation to the World. I knew it was important but not until the last few months have I really sensed the importance of that message, and I think how lucky we are to have a prophet on this earth who can give us guidance and direction. It so clearly stated in that proclamation the role families, of husbands, of wives, of what marriage truly is. And today in my state that I truly love, it's the place that I grew up, it has been redefined. It is no more than a union between party A and party B. There is no man or woman in it anymore and it saddens me. And for that we fight. For the fact that 4 judges overuled what we already stated as the law here. For our children to not be taught in schools what "CA deems marriage to be." To continue to have our religious freedoms.

May be it's a far shot but I couldn't help but reflect as Elder Ballard spoke in General Conference about our pioneer forefathers holding the standard of truth upright that we were doing the same thing here today as we seek to "redefine marriage between a man and a woman". We are striving to see The Truth of God going forth... it gave me strength to listen to his words and to think of those who had to leave their homes and all they knew so that the church could be built. Remembering their strength and convicition gives me power to move forward.

I nearly had an anxiety attack the other night as I made phone calls to talk to people about Prop 8, but somehow I will find a way to do my part. For several weeks Justin and I have walked the precints. Tonight we stood on a street corner near the government center with our signs. There were a few no's and unkind words spoken but overall the reaction was positive. I loved watching people as they read our signs, and then gave us a thumbs up or honked their car horns as they drove by. And I wondered about the conversations that followed after I could see children reading our signs and then turn to their parents to ask I am sure, "what is prop 8?"

We attended a broadcast the other night where several general authorities spoke, it strengthened my conviction in the matter and made me once again realize the importance of talking and sharing with others what I know and believe.

I know there are others out there who feel the same as we do and I pray that the people of my state will realize and understand the importance of this issue at hand.

Check out these sites for more info

http://www.protectmarriage.com/

http://www.preservingmarriage.org/

www.whatisprop8.com

From this to this...

What were you doing on October 2nd?

bet you weren't swimming!

And now it's raining!

The rain is gone, it never stays long here,
and we're back at the pool...it was so hot today!

Even the littlest one stayed in the pool today,
usually I am having to chase her out of the men's restroom!

Someday...

I may get caught up with all my photos but I am not counting on it!

Here are a few pages I did the other night of recent photos.

We love Grandma!

Once upon a time I had time for things like scrapbooking...and I even thought I might be able to get a book done for the big winkflash sale, and then the Lord saw fit to give me something else to consume my tiny bit of a free time...a new calling! So my scrapbooking will probably be taking a back seat for awhile, or may I will just learn to use my time more wisely and I won't waste so much time doing nothing and I'll even get more pages done! However there is no way I am going to get my book finished...I am kinda sad!

These pictures are from last January when Grandma Aleen came to visit and I am finally getting them done!

It doesn't get any cuter than this!

Okay, so I am extremely biased and partial but aren't they so cute! I sure do love my 3 little girls.

I can not imagine my life without them!

Even Daddy's need fun birthdays!

Several of my friends have thrown super hero parties for their boys and I decided that my boy needed one too! It was so much fun, the best part was that it was all a surprise for the "big" boy! And he really is my superhero!

I couldn't ask for a better husband and father for my girls!
One of these days I'll get around to making pages for the girls birthdays too!

shoes....

I took this photo a few weeks ago and meant to write a post for it but I am just now getting around to it...I had a sort of "ephinay" moment one afternoon...it went something like this, it seemed like for the hundreth time that day I was picking up shoes, dolls, blankets, stuffed animals, any everything else that seems to end up on our floor when it occured to me, if my kids didn't own so many pairs of shoes or each had 5 dolls they claimed (3 girls=15 dolls at least!), I wouldn't spend so much time having to pick up after them or nagging them to do it themselves!


I always wondered how the pioneer women got everything done that they needed to and I think I finally figured it out...each child owned one pair of shoes (if they were lucky), one or two toys a piece, a limited number of clothes, and that was it, hence there were not 20 pairs of shoes between 3 children to get dragged all over the house, even if you had 10 kids it wasn't a big deal because each person only had one pair and they had them on their feet unlike my children who leave trails of shoes like hansel and gretel's trail of breadcrumbs.

Stuff...we definitely have to much of it! I've always known it but now that I am the one trying to keep it all under control it is driving me crazy! So I've started it is a slow process trying to weed through it all and resist the urge to buy my girls another cute dress or the never worn pair of stride ride shoes that I find at the thrift store for $3...(okay I did give in and buy them for Malia, but I got rid of 4 pairs when we got home!) but I am making process, if I could just keep the girls out the bags and boxes of things that I am getting rid of...they go through them while my back is turned and drag in all their long lost treasures!

I recently read a post by friend Rachel who is in Columbia with her husband adopting 4 kids where she reccounts her trip to a shoe store to buy her kids shoes, it was touching and heartwarming and reminded me just how truly blessed I am to have so much STUFF in my life!

My new favorite sites...

I love stumbling across a great new website, I found these one night and stayed up way too late reading through them!

I never grew up http://inevergrewup.net/
We have been using some of the alphabet ideas and it has been a great source to find some more kids music to request at the library.

Makes and takes http://www.makeandtakes.com/
we did the paint mixing this afternoon and we're planning on doing the There's a Wocket in My Pocket activity tomorrow. We made the recycled crayons one afternoon, they don't color as well as we thought they would but it could be due to the fact that we have cheap crayons! The Muffin Tin Mealtimes have been a hit at our house!

Small Notebook http://smallnotebook.org/ has encouraged me to try and curb our spending this month and get rid of stuff!

And finally Simple Mom http://simplemom.net/ I love her ideas for dinner. I hate having to try and decide what to fix to eat each night and I thought having a theme for each night of the week was a good idea...I did it last week and it seemed to work and I am planning on doing it again this week. I don't know if I will be able to plan the whole month but at least I've got an idea of where to start!

the littlest pioneer

I just had to post a photo of the littlest one...doesn't she look cute?

Unfortunately it is hard to get her to hold still to get a decent picture!

For anyone who wants the pattern it is Simplicity pattern 3725

My ancestors would be proud...at least I hope!

In honor of pioneer day my sister and I decided that we would make our girls bonnets and aprons...I am proud to say that I did, I am not sure about Christal as I finished mine up tonight alone but they were not nearly as hard as we imagined them to be, and I even sort of understood the jist of the pattern language.

When I was in 5th grade my teacher had us all write down what we were going to be, I said I was going to be a famous fashion designer and seamstress, I didn't know at that time that the lanuage they use in patterns is not English, well besides a few halloween costumes and princesses dresses this is as far as I have gotten on that goal. But after tonight I think that I might just give it a try! Even little Lyndie got one, but since it was 11:45pm when I finished her's I was not about to wake her to pose for a photo! The girls are so exicted for the upcoming stake pioneer activity this weekend!

I like to think that my grandmother's and great-grandmother's would be happy with my sewing abilities, they aren't much but at least I'm trying and I think the girls have caught the sewing bug too!


Here is Lainey working on her pillow, I had to keep a close eye on her as everytime I turned around she was trying to get on my sewing machine!

The hardest part of the whole thing was trying to wrestle my 3 kids in the fabric store, every time I take all of them in there, I say never again, but I always seem to forget!

If anyone is interested in making one let me know and I will email you the pattern name and #, Christal took it home. It only took about an hour to make a bonnet and an apron.

Summer Concert Series...

So there are some advantages to getting to be the one to help organize a youth conference for 400 youth and adults! This past weekend I helped our stake with our multi-regional youth conference that our staked hosted for the first time ever. Through a woman in my ward we were able to get in touch with Nancy Hanson. If you remember back to your BYU college days of Peter Brienholt concerts, I am sure that you will remember Nancy. She is the woman who joins along with Peter for a song or two and sings the "itsy bitsy spider song" about an old flame!

Well she was suppose to sing at our youth conference on Friday evening but getting kids under control at the beach just wasn't going to happen...so she came and sang a few songs before our testimony meeting and then offered to sing for a group on Saturday or Sunday evening.

I offered my house and so Sunday night we hosted a "summer concert fireside" for our family, some friends, and the youth of our ward. It was so much fun! It was just like my good old BYU days when you snuggled under a blanket, under the open sky, with a setting sun and listened to good music! The only difference this time was all the kiddos running around in the background! It sure is good that Justin reinforced the swing set as it got lots of use, by lots of kids!

Her friend Merlin brought up his sound system from the LA area and sang a few songs too. It was one of those nights that you just didn't want to end!

My little climber....

Every family has one, or at least I've been told. My other girls were not climbers, they were active and into things but not at all like this little one! She climbs on absolutely everything. Our chairs now reside in the garage, on the table or laying down on the floor! The piano bench...it has taken up an undefinite residence in the garage, some day it may return but not while this one is around!

A Belated 4th of July to everyone...

I was in charge of the pancake breakfast at the church this year so we were all up way too early. But it was a huge success and I think my plea to my ward members that I wanted to get to the parade with my little ones got most everyone there on time! Amazing how you can get people to the church at 8 in the morning when food is involved...may be we need to start offering food in the morning on Sundays too! Luckily I have a great couple from the other ward who helped out tremendously and even let us take off before it was all cleaned up so that we could get the girls to the parade. The girls had a great time riding their bikes and did a good job not running into the backs of people walking in front of us. Justin and Lyndie met us towards the end of the parade, they watched most of it and Lyndie picked up candy on the street before they came and met us.

We all just kind of hung around in the afternoon and they about 4 the boys started to put the swingset together. I know that Justin enjoyed having some extra able bodies to help him and I was on Lyndie duty most of the time!

We finished just in time to go drive up on the hill and watch the fireworks, the big girls both crashed as soon as they got in the car and missed the whole show. Malia woke up the next morning and said, "Mom, we didn't see the fireworks!"

We made a quick stop at In-N-Out for some all AMERICAN hamburgers.

Project 4th of July: SWINGSET

I am now thinking that I was a bit crazy for wanting a swingset as we have to keep a 24/7 surveillance on the backyard with Lyndie around!

Malia loved working with Daddy, she got pretty good at putting the screws in!

Lainey seems to believe that clothes are optional...

and most of the time they are if you are under 4 feet tall at our house!

Everyone was ready to swing, even the big BOYS!

A Very Happy Late Anniversary to my husband

There are times I wish I could be like some of you out there who are so amazing about posting happy anniversary's on your "actual" anniversary, or birthdays when they happen (my poor middle child, who has yet to have her birthday photos posted), but alas these days this is not me! I had a few spare minutes today so I made this page of my "sweetheart" and I, I am not sure that he will even see it, as he is always so busy working, taking care of us, and playing with his girls! He is always there for me and quickly does whatever I need him to do...like taking down a swing set in a nearby town so that we could get a "deal"! Hopefully this weekend we will get it put back together in our yard. Last night as we went to bed he said to me, "No more looking for big items on craigslist, ok?" He must have forgotten that the trampoline last year was his idea!

Watch out Nancy...

here we come! My girls have discovered the Fancy Nancy book series and love to get them from the library. The other night they decided all on their own that we needed to have a Fancy Nancy dinner party. They let us all know that we needed to dress up and so we did! What a fun night was had by all...the best was to listen to their comments, my all time favorite was Lainey who said, "It's just like eating at a restroom!" I think she meant restaurant!

Photo a day...

So I was all ready to take my friend Laura's photo a day challenge, these are from the 2nd of June, the girls and I had so much fun exploring the fountains downtown, but my camera took an untimely death the very next day! The next day we went and picked blueberries and I stuck my camera in the cooler, where I had a bag of ice and when I finally went to look for it the next day it was soaked! I was so mad at myself. I never put bags of ice in the cooler, I always use the reusable frozen things, there just happened to be a bag from the night before and so I stuck it in there.


So that's the story of why I can't do the photo a day challenge...but if I were to do it here would be my first set of pictures and the story behind them.

The girls and I were downtown at the thrift stores and they asked if we could go to the fountains before we left. I had decided that I would try to take time to "smell the roses" with my girls and so I said yes. These fountains are really not for wading in but how do you keep little girls away from water? I seem to remember my sisters and I wading in these same photos years ago to take a picture for my parents. It was lunch time when the girls were playing in them and it was fun to watch the expressions of all the business people going to lunch who stopped to smile. I realized I had my camera in the car and I made them go back with me to get it so I could take pictures of them playing, it wasn't too hard to convince them to get in a second time!

Beach Photos

These beautiful photos come courtesy of my amazing photographer sister...how lucky we are to have a truly talented photographer in the family! We took these photos a month or so ago and I just love them! I recently moved furniture around in my house and one of the main reasons was so that I would have a place to hang copies of these photos!


When she was taking these photos we kept joking that Lyndie was probably wondering why her sister's were being so nice to her, as they were so sweet with her and just walked along gently with her...which is not always the case!

I love digital scrapping!

So last night since Justin had taken the girls camping I decided to stay up way too late and catch up on a little scraping...I still need to do a few pages for this month but at least I have started. Remember if you want to read any of the journaling on the page just click on the image and it will appear bigger so that you can read it.

The Happiest Place on Earth!

Malia has been asking for months to go to DISNEYLAND for her birthday, in fact since last time when we went to see Justin's family we went to Disneyland first, they somehow now think that if we are going to visit them then we have to go to Disneyland first. Anyhow the other day I got this idea that it would be fun to surprise the girls and make an early trip for Malia's birthday. I knew Justin couldn't get time off and it didn't take any convincing at all to get my friend Mandi to join me (she has season passes). We had a great time, the best was that the girls didn't know where we were going. We are excited to go back to CA Adventure in the next few weeks and use the 2nd part of our 2fer ticket!

More scrapbooking freebies and other cool sites with free stuff

These come courtesy of my friend Laura, we met in college as camp counselors, now each have 3 girls and love to share our scrapbooking finds with one another!

Little Dreamer Designs, home of $1 Wednesday is having a birthday celebration and they are posting freebies
http://littledreamerdesigns.typepad.com/little_dreamer_designs/2008/04/another-day-ano.html

http://littledreamerdesigns.typepad.com/little_dreamer_designs/2008/04/more-party-game.html

Laura also introduced me to using templates and I found these really cool templates the other day,
http://mandagirl.com/free-templates/
if you need help on using templates here is a video that explains it all and gives you a template too!
http://spraguelab.squarespace.com/blog/2008/4/11/photoshop-friday-free-digital-templates-d.html

And last but not least other free stuff, I found this bloggy giveaway thing last year and actually won something, may be you'll find something you want too! I am dreaming of the year supply of ice cream for my husband!

So I guess we can't really be 3 under 3 anymore...and I am beginning to see that there are many out there with more kids than me in a short span of years, how do they do it? So it's finally time for a header update, here are a few of my favorite pictures of the girls from the last few months! I would love a picture of all three of them together, where they are all smiling but I think that is asking for a real MIRACLE!

Justin has been bugging me for awhile to put up his picture with the possum, I hope that it didn't disgust too many of you! And the shoe next to the possum is his...so as you can see the thing was quite large. I personally wouldn't come look at it after he did the deed but he showed me his capture via the pictures. The thing had come to eat the dog food in our backyard so I wasn't too upset that he took care of it as I really don't want my kids to encounter them as they can be quite feisty!

Justin has taken the girls to recycle bottles and metal so I am going to get back to the scrapbook I was trying so hard to finish but never did! Lucky for me, the winkflash sale was extended!

A few months review in photos...

Yummy Frosting!

Hungry Caterpillar Cake

Our little explorers

Look at that hair fly!

Getting her own snacks...

Sunny February Days

All ready for ballet!

Check out this cool fort someone made and left for us!

Malia the make-up queen!

Playing with babies

Lainey's High School Musical Birthday Party

Justin's hunting expedition...in our backyard.

Check out the size on that POSSUM!

Sink baths!

We LOVE visits from Ashy and Scott!

Finally a picture of US!

The great EGG hunters!

Ward Easter Party

Lainey and her new "buddy"...not her "friend"