Together Forever

5 years ago Mike made me a promise. For our 10 year anniversary we would go to the temple and be sealed. He of course followed through on that promise.

On Wednesday we dropped the kids off at my parents' house and headed down to St. George. We had to stop at the mall to get Mike a suit. We changed in the mall parking lot and headed to the temple. We did the 2:00 endowment session and while we were in there my mom and dad brought the kids down. Mike and I then were sealed. I told him before that this was his last chance to back out. He said he's not backing out. After the ceremony the sealer told us to kiss. Mike gave me a little peck. The sealer then said, come around the alter and give her a real kiss. He was so cute and dipped me down and kissed me. Then they brought our babies in. All dressed in white, they looked like little angels. They were so good. Kaia surprised us by being so willing to do what was asked of her. We were then sealed to our kids. It was the best day ever!

I am so grateful for my little family. For Mike and all the sacrifices he made in order to keep his promise to me. I have the best kids in the world and I get to spend forever with them! I'm a pretty lucky girl...

She's a member!

I am so proud of Jercie. 2 years ago I wasn't sure this day would ever come, but it did and I couldn't be more proud!

I'm also super proud of Mike. He has made many sacrifices to be able to be worthy to baptize Jercie and I am so grateful that he did! He is amazing!

He'll kill me if he ever sees this picture on here :)

Here's what went down. We had to be at the church at 12:30 so they could get dressed. Jercie wasn't a big fan of the jumpsuit. The baptism started at 1:00. Grandma Annette gave an amazing talk on baptism and confirmation. Jercie was the first of 3 girls to get baptized. She was then confirmed by Papa Gary. She was the only one to get confirmed on Saturday. When we left the church we came back to the house and visited with Grandma Annette, Papa Gary, Angela, Andrea and Jeremy and the boys. Mike had to work that night so they didn't stay long so he could have a nap. All in all it was a great day.

Awesome Giveaway! Seriously...

Obviously I'm doing this for an entry into one of the most amazing giveaways EVER!! Go to Today's Mama to check it out.

Mama’s Holiday Wish List Meme

TodaysMama (link to: http://bit.ly/tmwishlist) and GameStop (link to: http://bit.ly/gamestop10) are giving away a sleighful of gifts this holiday season and to enter I’m sharing this meme with you.

1. What is your holiday wish for your family? I really just want them to be happy and understand the real reason we celebrate Christmas.
2. What is your Christmas morning / Hanukkah Nightly tradition? We wake up super early and while the kids are opening their stockings I call Grammy and Papa so they can come watch them open presents. Then we have our traditional Christmas morning Crepes, poached eggs, and bacon.
3. If you could ask Santa for one, completely decadent wish for yourself, what would it be?That's a hard one. Probably either an entire pamper mom day or an entire day with Mike without worrying about the kids.
4. How do you make the holidays special without spending any money? I do the 12 days on the A.R.K. Where I do Acts of Random Kindness for the kids and then on the last day we do something for a neighbor.
5. What games did you play with your family growing up? What games didn't we play? We were a board game playing family.
6. What holiday tradition have you carried on from your own childhood? Christmas breakfast.
7. Where would you go for a Christmas/Hanukkah-away-from-home trip? Hawaii
8. Check out GameStop (link to: http://bit.ly/gamestop10) and tell us, what are the three top items on your GameStop Wish List this year? Jercie wants a DSi I want Mario Kart since the baby broke mine, and Blaze would like any Lego ds or wii game. There are many more I'm sure.

One proud momma

I know I'm a little late posting about this but here it is. I went to the kids' parent teacher conferences at the beginning of the month. Here's what I learned...
Jercie is in the top reading group in the second grade. She reads like no other. She loves the Diary of a Wimpy kid books and Beverly Cleary. Some of the books they send home put me to sleep, but she reads them anyway. Even though math isn't her strongest subject she is still above average. She's a good kid, even if her attitude shadows it sometimes.
Blaze is ridiculously smart as well. He passed all his letters off in 3 weeks. He is on his 7th sight word list. He loves doing homework. We would do it all night if I had the patience and time. His high scores are in math.
I decided last night that the reason I was blessed with smart kids is because of my impatience. Blaze tests it sometimes, but I think he likes to mess with me.
Even though Kaia doesn't have parent teacher conferences I still think she's smart. She counts to 10 and only forgets 5. She loves to run and sing and help Blaze with his homework. She hates having her hair combed so she wears a lot of hats. Well she starts off wearing the hat but within 20 minutes is lost somewhere.

Happy Birthday to Jercie

I'm just not sure how this sweet little tiny baby

turned into this sweet sassy 8 year old...

Happy Birthday Jercie Girl!

Time Flies!

Has it seriously been a month since my last post? So much has happened since then. Some really big stuff too! Blaze learned to ride a two-wheeler. He had his friend Bryler over to play one day. Bryler can ride a two-wheeler. A couple days later Blaze told me he wanted his training wheels off his bike. I took them off. Mike told me he would want them back on within the hour. We went out front and I started to help him ride. He wanted none of that. He tried and tried until finally he was riding all by himself without tipping over. He still needed a little help getting going though. That was Sunday, by Monday he was off without any help whatsoever! Then last night he lost his very first tooth! It's been loose for a while now. His adult tooth is already almost all the way up. I asked him how things were going and if I could check it out. I wiggled it and told him I bet daddy could pull it out without it hurting too bad. So he went and asked Mike to pull it out. Mike told him that if it hurt too much to let him know and he would stop. Blaze told him it hurt but by then it was too late, the tooth was out. He was so excited. He kept saying I can't believe I lost my tooth. The toothfairy came and left $5. It's a first tooth special ;). He is also learning to read! I can't believe it. They did a 6 week program to learn all their ABC's and numbers to 30. He had it done in 3 weeks. He got his first "sight word" list and knows almost all of them.
Other things that have happened...I turned 30. Mike requested to get off the weekend shift. He will be back to swing/grave after the long wall move in January. It's a little bittersweet. I kind of like having him around during the week, but it will be nice to be able to do stuff as a family on the weekends again.
Kaia keeps getting these pesky bladder infections. They suck so bad!! I took her to the doctor on Monday and got her on antibiotics. At 2:00 Tuesday morning she started throwing up. Mike, being the amazing husband and dad that he is slept on the couch with her. She finally started feeling better after noon sometime. The doctor thinks it was because the infection moved up into her kidneys. If she keeps getting infections we will have to have an ultrasound done to make sure everything is okay. Hopefully they don't continue.
Jercie is doing really good in school and church. When we had our primary program she had to sing a verse of Follow the Prophet all by herself. She did such a good job! I was very proud of her. We have parent teacher conferences next week so we will see how well she's doing in school. If her homework is any indication she's doing well.

We also had our family pics done. I love them. Kaia was a turd as usual and wouldn't smile at all. It was freezing cold but we were done in 45 minutes and we got Jercie's baptism pics done at the same time. Here is a little peek at them...

 Is that a smile?

 2 of them? The end is near ;)

Thoughts...

Last Thursday evening I got a phone call asking if we would be available on Saturday for Elder Leavitt of the area 70 and President Cottle to come visit with us. Even though it would be right in the middle of Mike's nap I accepted. How could I refuse? I was so nervous. I couldn't figure out why on earth the stake president and an area 70 would want to visit us. Everybody I asked thought maybe we would get a calling, or because we are planning to go through the temple.
I scrubbed the house for 2 days straight. It was spotless. I baked cookies and made sure I had cold water in the fridge.
Turns out they just wanted to visit with us. It was amazing. The kids were crazy as usual, but he was so good with them. He would stop talking to Mike and I and give his full attention to them when they wanted to say something. He even ate a half eaten cookie that Kaia gave him.
If I could change one thing about the visit, I would have asked Elder Leavitt and President Cottle to give Mike a blessing to quit smoking. Oh well.
Elder Leavitt asked us what made us come to the goal of wanting to go through the temple. I wanted to write it down because I know one day I will forget and it's kind of cool. Well it is to me anyway.
I have always wanted to be married in the temple. I kind of put it on the back burner because it didn't seem like something Mike really wanted to do. Then after Dillon died we talked about going through on our 10th anniversary. There wasn't much talk after that about it. Then about 2 years ago, I was sitting on the couch feeding Kaia. I had this feeling like we should go back to church and start working toward our goal of being sealed. I went outside where Mike was playing in the sandbox with Jercie. He looked up at me and told me he wanted to start going to church. I told him that's what I was coming out to tell him.
It just goes to show that Heavenly Father has a plan for all of us. We just have to listen to what he's telling us to do. I'm so glad we listened (for once).

In other news...We went for a ride up the canyon where the fire is. It burned right up next to the freeway. Our favorite Christmas Tree hunting spot is gone. So is our favorite campsite. There are so many great memories up there. It made me all teary to see the damage that has been done. Hopefully they can get it under control soon so there isn't anymore damage.

You could win a Kindle!!!

I don't want you to though I want to :). You can go here to enter. It's pretty simple. It would have to be for me to enter :).

Hi, Remember Me?

I have been such a blogging loser lately. I have no excuses whatsoever either. I'm just lazy and boring. Here's a little update on each of us though...
Mike worked everyday from the 16th of August until the 5 of September. It was a long few weeks. I'm glad they are over. He also started renovating our bedroom. I can't tell you how happy I am to have the ugly blue walls gone. Hopefully by the end of the week the red? carpet will be gone too, replaced by brown. Our living room will be getting carpet and paint as well. I can't wait. No more splinters in little feet :).
Jercie is loving 2nd grade so far. She is ridiculously smart. I'm pretty sure she gets that from her dad. She also started her hip hop dance class on Thursday. I was late getting the registration in but luckily the teachers were nice enough to let her dance anyway.
Blaze is loving Kindergarten and he's pretty dang smart too. Even though he drives me crazy when we work on homework. I think he does it just to mess with me though. I can't believe how much he has already learned.
Kaia is awesome as always. She isn't a baby anymore :(. She loves her daddy. Anytime a truck passes that sounds like daddy's she gets really excited and runs to the door. She also loves to run away. She's a little escape artist. The other day Jercie's primary teacher brought her back home, as she was out riding her bike without my knowledge. Thank goodness we live in a little town and everybody knows where she belongs. I don't think a kidnapper would get far with her though. She's kind of mean :).
As for me I'm just doing the mommy thing. I get frustrated sometimes but I love getting to stay home and hang out with my kids.
Here are some pics that Kaia and Blaze took when they stole my camera...

I almost forgot!!! Pam, my most amazing neighbor, finished the girls' temple dresses. She made them out of my wedding dress and I am in LOVE with them.

This is Jercie's and it will double as her baptism dress

This is Kaia's.

It's official

School has officially started here in good old Sevier County. Jercie started on the 25th. I can't believe she is in the 2nd grade. How lame am I that I can't believe my kids are growing even though that's their sole purpose in life?

Mike took the day off to take her to her first day. Her teacher is Mrs. Anderson and so far she loves her.

Blaze started Kindergarten today. He was so excited. Though he really didn't show it much. He never really does.

I took him over this morning. He just ran off without a hug or kiss. No worries I caught him before I left. I got a little teary but I think I held up pretty well. He got Mrs. Elmer this year. Jercie had her in Kindergarten too and we like her a lot. Here's to hoping the first day of school is a good one!

Lions and Tigers and Bears, OH MY!!

We decided we needed to do one last fun thing before school started. It was between camping and the zoo. The zoo ultimately won out over camping. Who wouldn't choose the zoo? We were going to leave around 10 Wednesday morning, but Blaze's belly had other plans for us. He wasn't feeling too hot. We talked about seeing how he felt that afternoon and going and staying overnight and doing the zoo early. We decided to leave early the next morning and get there as the zoo was opening. Okay so that was Mike's idea and I have to admit it was a good one. He has those occasionally.
Thursday morning we got up at the butt crack of dawn and headed to Salt Lake. Kaia and Blaze slept almost the whole way there. Jercie was her usual chatty self.
We got to the zoo about 10 minutes before it opened. I had purchased our tickets online the night before so we didn't have to go to the ticket booth. We were the first people through the gate. Some of the animals weren't awake yet, but we eventually got to see most of them.

We rode the train

This is my attempt at getting our whole fam in a pic. I love Blaze's face lol

We had snow cones as big as our heads

This one is for you Andrea :)

And that was our trip to the zoo. We were home by 5 and Mike had time to take a nap before he had to go to work. It was a perfect end to our summer.

Stay tuned later this week for First Day of School pictures :)