Photo Time

Family pics 2012 - slide show

Yesterday was family photo day. We got dressed up and went to Thanksgiving Point to use Fotoflyaway again this year. They did another fabulous job and for the first time ever the twins were having a blast and cooperating fully. Faith however did not want any of it. They managed to get a couple cute ones but she let us all know she wasn't happy about it.

We had a very hard time picking out which ones to print and posted a bunch to Facebook as well. But here's all 97 photo's they sent us home with on the flash drive for your viewing pleasure.

Any out of town family that wants to order prints or see the online gallery from fotoflyaway, email me for the code.

Enjoy.

The Pumpkin Patch

This afternoon we decided to go ahead with our scheduled plans despite the rain and cold and hit our favorite pumpkin patch, Pack Farms in Farmington. We didn't stay too long since the kids were freezing but we did some quick pics, quickly picked out our pumpkins and the boys ran through the hay maze a few times. We came out with 155 lbs of pumpkin to carve. Hopefully it will warm up enough for some fun pumpkin pics with the kids in their Halloween shirts.

 This is my favorite pic of the day. What a handsome lad.

 

After the patch, I got on my navigator to find somewhere for dinner and was delighted to find that Bountiful had put in a Salt City Burger Company, one of my fav's. We stuffed ourselves silly and the started the long trek home to warm up and watch a little Nightmare Before Christmas. Another good Friday evening with the fam.

Twice!

So roughly a month ago, I let you know about Mike being promoted to the Corporate Director position over one of the two IT teams in his office. Well due to an unplanned retirement of the other Corporate Director, Mike has been promoted again! He will now be the Corporate Director over both teams (all 3 states) and hire team leads under him to help keep them on task. We are both excited and stressed for his added roles and responsibilities, but are also completely flattered and thankful for him to be given this opportunity.  It's not every day you get promoted twice in a month. Way to go Mike!

----Next stop- CIO ;)

Spookified



Now that our housewarming party is officially over, we decided it was time to get out the Halloween decorations and spookify this place. The boys were so excited and couldn't wait to help. We decided to decorate our outside manor sign and make it a haunted manor with some cheesecloth and some chains.

 And our spider found a place to hang out.

 And these guys are gracing our walk. We also hung some purple lights in the tree behind them.

 And our lantern on the front porch warning those who come to "Be very afraid"

 And inside I took advantage of having more spaces to put a few things. Here's just a few of the decorated areas.

We also have some fun pumpkins in a window and a cauldron that lights up hanging in the other window. I'll try to get a night pic soon to show off how spooky we are at night. We are so excited for Halloween in our new house.

Fall Carnival

Caleb's school usually does a Halloween carnival indoors closer to Halloween, but this year they decided to do it as a fall carnival. It was a beautiful afternoon and the kids got to go play on lots of bounce houses, have a hotdog dinner and finish up with some games and cotton candy. But since it was a school night, we had to head home sooner than they wanted to. A good time was had by all as you can see in the pics.

Change for Love

It was time for a change. It had been so long since I really cut my hair. 2.5 years to be more exact. It was sooo long. I had been thinking about a change for a while and when I realized (a couple hours before my appt) that it was probably long enough to donate, I decided to go for it. Mike and I had occassionally talked about me doing that but it was never really acted on nor the reason I grew it out.  None the less, it felt good to be making the change for a cause.

So here are some pics my hair dresser took during the process and my hair and donation form while I was getting ready to mail it off. My hair is now officially on it's way to Florida to be made into a wig for a little girl somewhere that can use it.

I'm trying to get used to the new shorter style. I wasn't so sure about it at first but it's growing on me.

Night Stand to Lego Table

As most of you know, Caleb is a gigantic Lego fan. All he wants is Lego's all the time and will spend hours building and playing with them. Well, when it came time to move and because new bedroom furniture was coming with the house, we asked him to sell his old bedroom furniture. He was pretty sad about that because he really, really liked it furniture. He was particularly found of the drawers under the bed that housed his Lego's. I offered him cash, I offered him other prizes and the boy wouldn't budge. But once I realized it was all about him having anxiety about where he would put his precious Lego's, I found his sweet spot.....a Lego table. Once I promised him a Lego table sometime after we moved and before his birthday, he was on board with the plan. We sold his furniture to a friend's little boy who also really, really liked it and moved.

 

Now that we are getting more settled in, we decided it was time to make good on that promise. I searched all over online and couldn't find any that I liked to just order. They were all big and bulky or had very little storage room or just looked flimsy. So of course, I turned to Pinterest where I saw an old nightstand someone had made into one and it seemed so simple. So we were in search of a new night stand/end table. I again turned to the internet and looked at some places to buy a new one to put together like Target or Ikea. But was coming up short, so while we were out and about running errands last Saturday, I decided to stop by the DI and see if they had a used one that we could re-finish. And boy did they. It was the right size, the right price, super sturdy and even the right color of wood to match his new dresser and desk. hardly a scratch on it. So we brought it home and cleaned it up. I then ordered some building plates.

 

The plates arrived this Saturday and Mike went to work cutting the little ones to size and sticking them to the top with some liquid nails. And since the leather straps were looking worn, I shined them up with some black shoe polish..... and viola! Easiest re-purpose ever! No stripping, sanding or painting. It was like that find was meant to be.  So here's the pic of it right after we got the plates glued down. 

 

 

 And let the bulding begin!

 A few hours later.

 I'm particularly fond of the swimming pool with people swimming in it and a diving board to boot.

I'm pretty sure we have the happiest 8 year old boy around these parts this week. He's already talking about many more building adventures to come.

Halloween in the Air and at the House

It's starting to be my favorite time of the year again. Oh how I love fall and everything that goes with it, cooler temps,beautiful colors, football, my birthday and my favorite holidays. With Halloween coming up, we've had some funky stuff going on here at the new house. I think the spooks want to play.

One day last week, I came home in the afternoon. When I went to let the kids outside I saw a dead bird had somehow made itself onto our back porch. It was such an odd place for a bird to die. I have 3 theories, 1. It tried to fly into our glass back door and broke it's neck, 2. a neighborhood cat brought it to us as a prize or 3. it's a deranged housewarming gift from the neighborhood weirdo(whom we've yet to meet)? I called Mike and let him know he was on cleanup duty when he got home and the kids weren't allowed to play out back until it was gone.

We now live across the street from a gas station. Not the greatest view, but it is rather convenient, I must say. Well on Wed night I was craving Sprite (I know, not Pepsi?) and Mike said he'd go get me one. I sent him out the front door and all of the sudden heard a loud "Whoa." I went to see what was the matter and saw his looking at this:

 

A giant tarantula just hanging out in the driveway.Seriously, he was about the size of Mike's palm. Huge.  He was missing a leg and Mike said he was moving pretty slow so most likely a pretty old one. Of course we had to let the boys come out and see and they thought it was the coolest thing, ever! Well being the humanitarians we are, we scooped it up in a zip lock container and Mike took it across the street to the field and let it go. I mean who wants that amount of guts on their driveway?

It's been given instructions to stay on it's side of the street and we'll all get along fine.

 

So I've been teasing Caleb about being Frankenstein with the staples in his head. It was time to go get them out on Thursday and with no prompting from me or statements of the sort at all the Dr. immediately told him they should have been in his forehead like Frankenstein and after removing them, grabbed a marker and did this:



 

I had to laugh since I'd been telling him that for a week. He was a good sport about it, but did ask us to take it off before we left the office.

 

Well later that night Mike took the doggie out for a late night potty break and reported that a pure black cat ran right through the yard. All he could see were the eyes mostly. Spooky.

 

So I guess it really was time to kick off the Halloween activities by taking them to the movie yesterday. The sign in the corner of our yard names this house "Sheffied Manor"........Apparently, it should have been "Haunted Manor". But seriously if this stuff doesn't stop in November, I'm calling a Priest!

A Good Friday

Yesterday was such a good day. It started off with the kids having no school which meant we could take our time in the morning and Mike could go into work early to get some much needed items done. We lounged around, I did a little cleaning and then after some lunch it was time to start the afternoon-busy part of our day.
I first took 3 of the 4 kids to the baby sitters house. Then Zaric and I went off to his ear checkup.  The Dr. looked him over and reported that his ear looks great 3 weeks after his minor surgery. The patch is still in place and it all seems to be healing properly and he doesn't want to see us back for another 3 months. Hooray! Zaric and I then went to meet up with Dad and snag him from work.
Mike, Zaric and I drove to our next meeting, the closing on the old house! Hooray! When we pulled up to the building Zaric immediately started talking about cookies. We were confused for a minute until I remembered that when I stopped there to pick up the key to our new home after closing, they had in fact given the kids each a cookie. I can't believe he remembered A. the building and B. the cookie, 4 weeks later. We were there for less than 5 minutes. What a kid! He sat very patiently and ate another cookie while we signed and signed. So now we can official say:



I ran by the old house to drop off the keys then met Mike and Zaric to do another quick errand and get the water turned off. Then it was time to pick up the other kids.

We had decided earlier in the day that we wanted to take them to see Hotel Transylvania and I snagged some advance tickets just in case it was packed with there being no school in the area and all. Caleb invited his best friend Morgan ( the babysitters daughter) along. And off we went.

It was a super cute (although predictable) movie and the kids all enjoyed it. The babysitter was nice enough to keep Faith for us longer so we didn't have to entertain her during it, so that was nice. After taking Morgan back home and grabbing Faith, we decided to end the night with a little pizza. We stopped by NYPD Pizza and ate some yummy pizza and garlic knots. Then headed back home for baths and bed time.

I love Friday afternoons/evening spent with the family. And we are so excited for the sale of the old house and having one mortgage payment instead of two. It turned out to be a great day indeed. :)

Staple Head

 

Last Thursday night we sent Caleb upstairs to get his shower in. He loves our new shower so always begs to shower in Mom and Dad's, so since the twins were currently taking up the kid's bath tub I decided to go ahead and let him. Well after about 5 minutes of him showering, I decided to walk in the bedroom and make sure he had taken a towel and the soap and whatnot he needed to get the job done. As I got closer to the bedroom I heard him wailing about something. It had been a long day and quite frankly I had really had it with whining children so I agitatedly said something like, "seriously Caleb what now?".  And he just kept wailing. I decided to go on in and when I turned the corner to the master bath I was met with a boy stepping out of the shower covered in blood. It was running all down his face onto the floor and the shower looked like a battle zone. I asked a bunch of questions and finally got out of him that he had hit his head on the tile corner shelf. I got him back in the shower to rinse off and yelled to Mike that I needed his assistance. He took over with Caleb and I went to get the twins out of their bath. Once I got them out Mike told me what I was already thinking. He needed to go in. Meanwhile Grandma Braska had been Skyping with him and was listening to all this occur from Omaha. Mike had to come down and tell her goodbye and that we needed to go tot the Insta care.

 

After we looked up the closest one (hey, we're still new here), Mike and Caleb set off while I stayed back with the twins and baby girl to get them in bed. They got in quickly and Mike sent me a text right away that they couldn't do stitches, they were doing staples. About an hour and a half later they came home with 4 shiny new staples in his noggin.

 

 

We later got the story from him and asked how in the world he hit his head on the shelf. Only to be met with "I was jumping up and down." We then asked, "Why would you be jumping up and down in the shower?" And because he's 8 and we should have expected it he replied, "because I thought it would be fun."  Oooi

 

 

 

 It sure hasn't slowed this kid down any though. He's just as wild and rough as he was before and when I picked him up from school on Friday he informed me that he didn't tell anyone that he had staples in his head and even played soccer at recess.  Again, I say Oiii.

We will get them taken out sometime this week. Here's a couple other pics I snapped of him over the weekend one of him messing around with a pipe cleaner mustache and another of him being a great big brother and reading to his siblings. We sure do love this kid, staple-headed and all.