The Heist!

Parents beware, 4 and 5 year olds are capable of more than you think... AND NOT IN A GOOD WAY!!
So it's my Friday off and I go with Susi to pick Sophia up from Pre-school. We get home and almost as soon as we walk in the door, Sophia starts to ask me if I want to go upstairs and rest with mommy. Normally, I would think she was just wanting me to spend some quality time with Susi, but my gut (which is much larger than is should be) told me there was a bit more going on. So after she insists and practically pushes me upstairs, I relent and go up stairs. I waited about 10 minutes and did my best stealth mode descent down the stairs to find.... The little girls had been running a clandestine smuggling operation right under our noses!!












Well, you can see the picture. I found both Sophia and Emily with one each. Then I did a little more investigation only to find that they had stashed a fair number underneath the couch. I wish I knew how to photo shop the pictures of them into mug shots, it would have been entirely appropriate! You have to love those little girls. Me and Susi had fun playing bad cop - bad cop interrogating them. Aren't the crocodile tears convincing?

Director, Producer, and Camera Man.

This has been Spencer for the past month or two.

I think he has an obsession. 

I've been contemplating and intervention.

But when I watch all the wonderful memories that he is capturing of the kids and our family.  I realize I don't mind having a video camera in my face  24/7.  I don't mind when he tells every one to freeze and not move, so he can get his camera.  And, it doesn't bother me when we get to where we are going and he realizes he forgot the camera and runs home to get it.  That the first thing  he says when the kids do or say something funny is "Wait! Let me get my camera."  And, "Do it again."  All the while the kids are hum and hawing about "it's not the same," and "do we have to? " The endless complaining and video taping is worth it. Especially when, the kiddos are older and we have all these great video tapes of them doing and saying the cutest things.

Gotta love our family Director, Producer and Camera Man!

The beautiful, complicated, simple, wonderful Susi

I've been contemplating a post about Susi for a while. But there is such a range of things to write about that I would get hung up in one area. I could write an entire novel on all the funny things she's done, but that doesn't quite tell the tale. So I guess I'll just try to make a bit of a cross section of her through the years.

I still remember like yesterday dancing with her for the first time 15 years ago. Then after I danced with her twice in a row (both slow songs baby... oh yeah), I spent the rest of the night trying to chase her down in vain. I was quite convinced that she was trying to run away from me.

I had only known this girl for about a week when she started trying to win my heart via my stomach. To this day, she doesn't have an equal when it comes to cooking.

I'll never quite forget the time we went to the park in Rexburg to read scriptures. It was supposed to be a transcending moment where we bonded spiritually. Not quite wanting to cooperate, Susi uncerimoniously (accidentally of course) blew a monster booger right onto 2 Nephi. She was mortified, but I just flicked it off and laughed for a bit.

She proved very adept at holding up gumballs with her nose, very cool.

There are more funny stories about Susi than I could shake stick at, but they'll have to wait till later.

If there were no Susi:

Who would pack my bags for me when I traveled? (I know, I'm pathetic huh)

Who would put their icy cold feet on me before we go to sleep?

Who would shake there head at every one of my attempts at humor?

Who would constantly complain that I drive like a maniac? (Early years)

Who would constantly complain that I drive like an old man? (More recentl) Funny how time changes things.

Who would be the cleaning Nazi who hunts down every speck of dust with vim and vigor?

Susi get's into what I like to call "the zone" when she'd cleanging. The zone is a very unhappy place. The zone is a place that we like to help Susi get out of as soon a possible. The zone can cause serious emotional and physical damage if overexposure has occured. Just look at me, I'm a prime example. But seriously, I LOVE how wonderful of a housekeeper she is.

Who would be so worried about how they looked for me that they made sure to put on make up every day before I got home?

She has an uncanny sense of smell. Last night, we stayed at a hotel in Bellevue. It was supposed to be a non-smoking room and it smelled like an ash tray. I was able to block it out for the most part, but she was up most the night gagging because of the nasty smell.

All my friends in college loved her. We had a whole list of rules to live by. One of the rules was that Susi had to bring goodies if she wanted to come over. The other was that they all had to get permission from me if they wanted to squish her. She was called the Woogie in college, thanks Mark. So the rule was that you couldn't squish the woogie. The all loved her.

Heck, who doesn't? I am seriously the weak link in this partnership.

I'll add pictures later.

Raptor Reef

I'm really late at posting this, but better late than never.  At the beginning of last month we and the Beebe's took a trip to Idaho, and had the best time ever at Raptor Reef. 


The kids loved the slides and the wave pool.

We even snuck in some fun...

All in all it was a very FUN weekend!  The kids had a blast! And the adults didn't have a bad time either. Thanks to the Beebe's for just being COOL!  We loved spending time together as families.  Looking forward to next year!

The many masks of my hubby...

I came across these pictures the other day, and about fell off my chair laughing! 

Spencer has decided to grow his beard ( because he says you can see his double chin without it) and one night he got tired of it.  so he decided to do this...

He totally looked like a Harley riding, beer drinking, 4 pack smoking, biker.  All he needed was a tatoo of myself on his arm and my  name on his chest. 

I have always wanted to know what he would look like with just a mustache.  So he shaved th rest and this is what we got...

Ha!  He's the guy that pulls you over when your speeding!!!

Pity Party!

Just having one of those days...
  

You know...where you wake up in the morning, grudgingly trying to pull yourself out of bed when all you really want to do is pull the covers over your head and lay there wallowing in your suckiness. That is me today.

Last night, I went to a Relief Society Stake Conference thing, and met up with some of the sisters from our new ward. (nothing against the sisters in our new ward, cuz they are AMAZING, but I miss my friends from Yakima 2nd, and I feel I can be myself around them, and I don't have to watch what I say, because, I know (at least I hope) they won't judge me, if I say something totally stupid. And I hate making new friends because beleive it or not I have a hard time doing it ) As I was sitting there watching the re-enactment of the parable of the 10 Virgins to music, I had this over whelming feeling of inadequacy.  Usually I leave those kinds of things uplifted and full of the spirit, but sad to say last night was not one of them.

I felt inadequate in every way... I was having a pity party.  And it has spilled over on to today.

I feel that I'm not doing everything spiritually to grow my testimony.  I have kind of slacked off when it comes to spiritual stuff.  Saying prayers, scripture study, yada, yada, yada, etc...

And this morning as I was blog stalking some of the sisters in our new ward, I felt even crappier. 

So, as I'm sitting here crying, trying not to do it out loud ( cuz then I would have to come up with a lie for Emily as to why I'm crying.)  And thinking of all the ways I'm not smart enough,
 skinny enough,
 creative,
 spiritual,
 determined,
 pretty,
 clever,
 funny,
 musicaly inclined,
 sporty,
 geeky,
disciplined,
a chef ,
crafty,
and witty enough.  I'm sure there is a lot more that I'm not good enough at..I just can't think of any right now.   Just keeping it real. This is how I feel today.  Tomorrow will probably be different, but today sucks!  And to top it off, it's Kaden's 10th Birthday.  Usually I go all out with amazing parties, that his friends talk about for days, but today party preparations are slow to nonexistant.  I feel like a big crap hole! and I'm having my bi-monthly pity party.  No one will probably comment on this post.  So I guess I'll go eat worms!

Sophie Sophie Sophie

We were having a roundtable discussion at dinner yesterday when Brianna started talking about being four. She thought for a second and said,"I don't remember being 4". Kaden chimed in by also noting that he had no recollection of being four. Right after that, Sophie said, "I don't remember being 4 either". As you all know, Sophie is four. We all fell out of our chairs laughing.

Tonight, Brianna got after Sophie for messing with Kaden's Pokeman Cards. Two strange things about that one, Sophie being interested in Pokeman Cards and Brianna caring about anyone doing anything to Kaden's stuff in general.. but I digress.. Anyway, Brianna sent Sophie up to her room and she went wailing all the way. About 10 minutes later, she walks up beside me whilst I'm working on the computer and get's my attention (no small task while I'm on the computer). She says, "Daddy, I just wanna go be with Jesus". This definately piqued my interest and I asked why she would want to do that. She said, "I just want to be with Jesus because everyone's mean to me and wants to send me to my room". There are equal measures of cute, funny and sad all mixed in there. She was soo pathetic when she said it, I still chuckled just a little bit.

A couple of other funny Sophieisms:

It's not spaghetti, it's sgabetti (pretty normal for lil'kids)

It's not trampoline, it's jumpoline

It's not sprinklers, it's squirters (my favorite)

It's not copy, it's coffee (not sure where that one came from)

Also, her pre-school teacher told Susi the other day that she was concerned that Sophie wasn't learning her letters as well as she could. Susi asked Sophie why she hadn't learned her letters, Sophie informed Susi that she wasn't old enough to learn her letters and wanted to wait till she was older to learn them... She's such a smart little stink that she ought to be able to learn them in a day, she's just decided she doesn't want to yet.

She also loves to ride her bike and play out side as long as we'll let her.

We love our Sophie, don't know what we'd do without her.....