1/2 a Man

Ten years ago today I delivered fat little 9lb. 2oz. "man child" Dallin!!  Now, he is as skinny as ever, but he is still a "man child" (that is what my brother always called him!) in a way.  His feet are now, at 10 years old, as big as his moms.  He stands only a head shorter than I do and is still growing like a weed.

 Dallin is an incredible kid.  I love him to death!  He is such a great kid and my VERY BEST helper!  Anytime I need a job done he is seriously the one I ask because he just digs in and does it.  (He sometimes whines along the way.....not gonna lie. ;) But he works hard and that says alot about him!)

This year for his birthday he wanted a .22 gun.  Oakley got her's for Christmas when she was 10 yrs old, so he thought this was the age to get one.  Ryan bought a .22 years ago hoping to one day give it to his boy so it worked out great.  Ryan was happy.....Dallin was happy......so I am happy!

 Dallin also wanted a remote control car.  He just so happened to get two remote control cars.  He went birthday shopping with his grandma Hawkins last night and came home with one remote control car and I had already bought him one for this morning.  Usually grandma and I talk before, but this time we didn't even think about it.  Oh well!! Two cars is better than one!:)

And the last present Dallin got was an electric blanket.  He sleeps upstairs and it gets fairly chilly at nights already and it isn't even dead of winter yet.  He thought an electric blanket sounded nice and cozy and has been asking for one.  We teased him that he can come home from school today and take a nap to try it out!

What a blessing Dallin is to our family.  I had a miscarriage after I had Oakley and was DEVASTATED! It was a horrible time in my life and I really struggled with it.  It wasn't too many months after my miscarriage that I found out I was pregnant with this big guy.  I sure don't understand why we have to go through all the trials we do in this life, but as terrible as my miscarriage was I can't imagine having had that baby at that time and maybe missed out on having Dallin when I had him.  He was like a ray of sunshine in my dark world.  I appreciate a loving Heavenly Father who knew I needed Dallin when I needed him.  What a blessing he is to our lives...then, now and forever!

Happy Halloween 2012

I SERIOUSLY can not believe October is over!!! Where has it gone?

 We celebrated Halloween this year with the ward trunk-or-treat! Same as usual!!!  Oakley was Iron Man (more on that in a minute) Laiklie was the cutest little pink skeleton, Dallin a rodeo clown and Rhett a white lego.

Oakley and 5 of her friends all decided to be the avengers this year for halloween.  We seriously have never seen the movie and have no clue who the avengers were until this past week.  Oakley either chose or was given Iron Man.  They all made these tutu skirts to match whomever they were suppose to be.  This is her and her 3 best friends and a little cheerleader friend joined in the picture too.  They had a good time making the skirts and being together!  Oakley went to her 1st halloween party that night.  AHHH!!! Ryan and I are not ready for that kind of thing.  We were one of the party pooper parents that made her come home early.  It didn't get over til 10 on a school night.  No thank you!! She had 6 tests to take today so she had to come home just before 9:30.  She is growing up on us for sure!

Cousins

 We had the chance to have our little cousins Fallon and Aniston come spend one night and a couple days with us last weekend! SOOO FUN!! I loved getting to see their little personalities.  We don't get to see these sweet girls very often and had a BLAST playing together!!

Young Womens

I have been the young woman's president in our ward now for just over a year and we just had our big Young Women in Excellence program.  I am SO IN LOVE with the handout we gave the girls and the presentation that I had one of the speakers do that I wanted to share.

 The theme for the night was "I'm Going There Someday."  We had the girls make these temple cans (idea from my aunt's ward) a few weeks ago and inside we put a Preparing for the Temple pamphlet, a temple recommend holder, a white bracelet the girls made to hold their temple name, a white hankie with a poem and letters to them from their parents telling them how proud they are of them for choosing to go to the temple.  These cans are saved by the girls to be opened the night before they go to the temple.  I LOVE the way they turned out once I spray painted them and covered them with burlap. 

I heard of an idea from my sis-in-laws ward about a lady who told a story of a YW she knew who made wrong choices that kept her from the temple.  All simple little decisions that slowly pulled her down the wrong path.  As the lady told the story she started cutting up the wedding dress next to her.  So....I LOVED this idea.  I bought this wedding dress (pretty for $50 right?!!)  and we used it and another gorgeous dress from a lady in our ward as part of our decorations the night of our program.  I then asked the stake yw pres to do this same type idea.  As she started into the story and told the girls of this yw's first bad decision she grabbed a pair of scissors and cut the sleeve off of this dress standing there next to her.  You should have heard the gasps from my yw....and if you could have seen the looks on their faces.  It was a perfect object lesson.  She continued to cut and cut with each bad decision and by the end of the story the dress wasn't near as beautiful.  She of course covered repentance, but also told the girls the importance of making the right decision FIRST! It was SO GOOD and SO POWERFUL!!

Then to end the night I had one of my old YW that has a very touching story about losing her baby during delivery come and speak to the girls.  She isn't much older than them and she told them the importance of a temple marriage and a priesthood holder husband and then told them briefly the story of losing her baby.  Also VERY POWERFUL!! What an amazing night!! Sure love my yw and the opportunity I have to be their leader!

All in a week....or...ummm....All in THIS week!!

This week has been one of the CRAZIEST yet this month!  It is spirit week at school so we have been scrounging up outfits all week.  We now have children at 2 different schools with 2 different dress-up day schedules which makes it a little more complicated.  But so far all children have left the house wearing the right outfit the right day! HIGH FIVE MOM!!

 Monday was crazy hair day.  Both my boys were due for a hair cut, so Dallin talked us into letting him have a mohawk for a day and he insisted on ponytails in the mohawk.  Bah, ha, ha!! What a funny kid!!  Ryan told him it was okay for crazy hair day but the minute the bus dropped him off the rest of the hair came off.  Which, it did!

 Laiklie sported little knobby's for her crazy hair.  Rhett is my shy guy and doesn't like to stand out.  So he has laid pretty low this week.  Don't blame him.  I was never one for much of that kind of attention either!

Also this week was the last 3 days of Oakley's deer hunt.  She spent so much time crammed in the middle of that flat bed truck squished between her dad and her crazy uncle Dale.  She shot at several bucks but just couldn't hit one.  Finally on the evening of closing day she decided she better just get a doe so she atleast would get something. 

 I was SO EXCITED to get this picture texted to me from her daddy!  She had wanted to get something SO BAD! I am so proud of her for sticking it out!!  *Side note - her face looks a little funny because she is chowing down a granola bar because of low blood.  She shot the doe....then took care of the low blood. I bet it was caused because of an adrenaline rush!* She now has an antelope hunt and a white tail deer hunt she can start on.  I told Ryan he has to let her get back to school and caught-up for a few days though.  That was my plan anyway.  Diabetes usually likes to ruin our plans, unfortunately!  This morning at 3:30 am she woke me up saying she was going to throw-up.  She did.....about 15 minutes later.  Her blood was in the high 400's and she was MISERABLE.  We had just changed her pump before she went to bed so we figured that wasn't the problem.  We gave her a shot of insulin to get her blood to drop and I spent the rest of the night getting up every 15 minutes to check her blood.  Not alot of sleep around here! Her blood was finally down this morning and she hadn't thrown-up again so we thought we were good.  NOPE! Dumb diabetes!! Her blood shot back up and she was throwing up again around 11 am.  So I decided we better check her pump.  SURE ENOUGH IT WAS THE PROBLEM!! The catheter part hadn't gone in right and she hadn't been getting any insulin for HOURS!! My poor girls body was full of acid and she was miserable! Once we got the pump changed and pumped her full of insulin within about 2 hours she was feeling so much better.  It is SO SCARY when Oakley gets the throw-ups.  She gets SO WEAK! I literally had to help her sit-up to even drink this afternoon.  At one point I told her if she didn't improve dramatically within the hour we were going to be headed in to get an IV.  She bawled and said, "I'd rather an IV than feel like this."  Oh I hate this disease!!  Thank goodness she was back to normal tonight.  She was able to eat dinner with us and kept it down.  She was EXHAUSTED though! Hopefully she can get back to school tomorrow to do the catching-up from hunting and now sickness!

 This week Dallin had to do an animal habitat for school.  Since the running theme around her is deer (Dale also shot a deer - a big buck this week) that is the animal he chose.  He did a great job on it and only needed a little help with the glue gun.

 Here is the close-up!  Rhett also has to do a habitat this week and so today between carnival tickets (tell you about those in a sec) and throw-ups I ran to town to get the stuff for his desert habitat.  He is suppose to bring the stuff to make it at school.  Glad the teacher is taking that on!

So...another part of this week is CARNIVAL TICKETS! Every year I am incharge of the elementary schools halloween carnival tickets.  Every year Ryan swears it is OUR LAST YEAR to do tickets because it takes hours of tearing/stapling tickets each night and hours at the school everyday for a week.  Today and tomorrow are always the busiest days! Today with Oakley on the couch was not a good day to be stuck at the school doing tickets.  She kept texting me things like, "please hurry!"  It is days like today that I think - Ya, this could be my last year and I could be cool with it.  Don't worry....I still haven't learned how to say NO so I will pretty much be doing them again next year! :)

And then THIS......

The NEVER ENDING STORY OF MY LIFE!!  Home Depot!! We have spent more time here lately than at home! We are still trying to get the rental finished.  It got in the way of Ryan's hunting so it got put off for awhile.  The only projects left are ones I CAN'T DO! So he has got to get over there and finish! We start paying on this house next week so I am DYING to get renters in.  Ryan....not quite in the same hurry that I am.  I keep telling him we will be lucky if our marriage survives this dumb rental.  I tell him that everytime we remodel at our own house too.  We don't see eye-to-eye when it comes to these kinds of things.  Pray that we will be finished with it soon!! :)

Also to the mix of this week we threw in: dance, 2 gymnastics lessons, basketball practice and pack meeting.  I have my young womens Evening of Excellence next Tuesday I have been working on as well, we have cousins coming to spend the night tomorrow night and a birthday party and halloween carnival on Saturday!  Plus - the washing machine is broke!

  I think we can.....    I think we can.....

Our New Adventure

Ryan and I have had a busy....long month.  One of the things that has been occupying our time is THIS....

 We decided (after ALOT of working, talking and definitely PRAYING) to purchase this house.  It sits next door to us.  The sweet little older couple were moving out and we bought their farm years ago that the house sits on and we just decided since we own the farm, driveway, the ditch that runs behind, it just made sense that we own the house too.  We bought it with the intentions of using it as a rental home.

 When we finally got into the home this is what we found.  Rooms with grey walls and blue/green shag carpet. :) Loads of wall paper and LOTS AND LOTS of dust and dirt and spiderwebs.  This home is a super cute little farm house, but it was built in 1905 and there is good and bad that comes with that.  It has some super cute charm....but also things like lead paint. AH!!! Glad we aren't planning on eating any of it! :)

 The house has 5 bedrooms and they all looked similar to the two above before...

 and here is the after!  It is AMAZING what texture, paint and new carpet can do to a room!!  They all look SO MUCH BETTER!!

 This is the kitchen before!  The cabinets weren't bad....I mean....if you like mice infested cabinets that is.  We found mouse poop and decon in SO MANY of them.  If you know me you know that I DO NOT DO MICE!!!  So....out they came.  I was AMAZED at the mouse mess under them.  It was seriously DISGUSTING! P.S.  also note the green and orange wall paper.  NICE HUH! That has been covered with white wainscot.  So much better!

 And here is the almost finished NEW KITCHEN! It looks so nice!  I still have a little staining to do on the cabinets and Ryan has to frame in the bar area, but it will be a great little kitchen when it is finished!

 When you go up the stairs to get to the bedrooms there is this little foyer area.  It was SERIOUSLY painted pink with white sponge paint.  SERIOUSLY!!!  It HAD TO GO!

 And here is the after!  I am still working on the edges of the floor around the millions of door frames, but it looks so nice!

 We didn't even take a before picture of the bathroom.  This is WORLDS SMALLEST BATHROOM!  You seriously have to back in and pull out! :)  We improved it immensely though!  It went from a little tiny pull cord light without a single outlet to THIS! So much better!

 This is the toothpaste green porch!  It has since changed also.  It has been painted and we are working on a new floor because there is mouse interstate under the sink.  Seriously a hole right to the outside.  Duh! No after pictures yet!

This house has really been a project. We found surprise after surprise.  This picture is what I found under the 1st layer of wall paper I pealed off in one of the bedrooms.  Yep! Mold!  So gross!! 

I have been living over there every spare second I have for the past month.  Rhett begged and pleaded on Sunday night for me to PLEASE be home when he got off the bus Monday instead of at the rental house.  We finally see light at the end of the tunnel though.  It should hopefully be done by the end of the week and we have been showing it to family after family.  We have a few that are very interested.  Now we just need to choose who are new neighbors will be.  Not as easy of a decision as you would think!

Uh-Oh!

This is what I heard from Laiklie last sunday as I was fixing her hair for church....

Laiklie: "Uh-Oh Mom! We forgot to get my ears pierced for my birthday!"

 She was right! We had forgot! Oakley got her ears pierced at 6 years old and Laiklie had talked about it for awhile.  Then we got so busy with birthday and party that we didn't talk about it again.  So Monday morning bright and early we headed in to get some ears pierced.

She picked out the same little heart/diamond studs that I had when I was little and that her big sis Oakley had when she pierced her ears.  SO FUN! I love little girls!! She was super tough and didn't even cry.  They were so sore for several days and she even woke-up in the night for medicine a few times.  Poor little sweetie.  She loves them though!