Girlfriends Rock

I love girlfriends! It dates back to my sisters.

When we added 4 more sisters when I was in 7th grade and the girlfriend love grew. This is us at my bridal shower.



In highschool, I had some amazing girls that helped shaped me into who I am today. Cristina and I knew each other since we were babies. This is us in Hawaii last year.I am taking the picture of some of my girls when we went to New York our Senior year.My college girl friends were cool beyond words. I just tried finding a good picture of us and realized, as I am sure they already have, that I am doing something obnoxious on all the pictures.
Here we are at Nat's wedding. I was due that day with Simeon.

Here is my other best friend from college. What a gem of a girlfriend. Isn't she beautiful?


More Recent
I love love love my sisters in law! Emily definitely challenges my weirdness and she is awesome!
On the right is my girl Amia. She was my life boat when I started making babies. She has so much wisdom and I could still be my crazy self around her. We bonded deeply going to the temple weekly when we lived in Provo.
Here are some fun friends when we lived in Huntington Beach. Don't let the spiritual picture fool you. These were crazy girls.


This all brings me to the girls I live around now. These girls are also priceless to me. This is a small group of us at the beach where we had so much fun without kids. Again I am a dork in the pictures but apparently that is who I am. These girls are helping me raise my kids literally and also help me be me which is hard to do so deeply entrenched in kid world. A few of us sang a group song in Sacrament meeting today and it only helped deepen my love for them. I truly feel blessed to be around such down to earth beautiful inside and out girls. I love my girlfriends!

PS- If you are in my crazy pictures and don't want to be let me know

Smelly Kelly

This is so not cool. Smells are making me so sick! Before you say"Duh!" let me tell you that I have always kindly lost my sense of smell when I was pregnant. When Rory was a bug in the belly I would make Roger smell JT's diaper to see if it was full of junk. He would practically barf saying "Yes! that smells so bad" and I would say "Oh, something smelled a little tainted but I couldn't tell what it was".
So here I am in all fairness with a heightened sense of smell that has always plagued women and I am not so happy.
My worst offenders
-left over spaghetti heated up in the morning for the kids lunches
-my new dishwasher detergent
-the rag on my sink that was newly out of the drawer last night
-washing dishes in general
- my DO for my BO
-wiping Simmy's bum- that is a given though right?
-the leather cleaner I used on my car
No yacking yet. Just the intense desire.
You can not even say that that means I am having a boy or a girl just that this is my 4th and its my turn.

Instead of Cookies

I vetoed cookies and made these Doughnut Holes. They actually made me late to pick them up. The recipe called for strawberry jam to be squirted into it. My bag got a jam in it and a hole appeared spraying jam on my shirt. The kids forgave me when they saw me holding sugar. Yum!

1st Day of School

The day has come. I just dropped my kids off at school and I am not very happy about it. They are as you can see.

Rory is in the same class with a few of her closest school friends including this young man that she really bonded with last year. When I mean bonded, I mean this is the boy that she kissed. They managed to get past that and be really good friends.

She got a teacher that I have heard is Mormon so that is cool but I don't know her so that makes me nervous. There are a few kids in the class that if I could have picked her to not be in a class with I would have been happier.

Josh is in the same class of a boy he sat next to all of last year and they get along really well so I am happy about that.

Josh managed to get the same teacher as last year (he was in the combo class with her and she was a second grade teacher) I am ok with that but not ok that the 2nd grade bully is in the class too.

I was up at 2am for a couple hours unable to get back to sleep. I tried to get over the kids that were in their classes and the worry of how I was going to take a picture of both kids going into the classroom at the same time on different sides of the building while keeping an eye on the disappearing Simeon but my brain would not let it go. I woke up tired and the morning went a little different than I imagined.
My kids did not get- (with which I feel a little guilt)

• a good night sleep. Soccer went until 7pm- dinner was from730-8 and School blessings lasted until 9pm
  
• a mother who was showered and ready before they got up. Instead I threw on some workout clothes to not be in PJs. I tried to get Simeon to go for a walk after but he did not want to.
• a nice healthy breakfast. I was too tired last night so I did not work up a batch of Cinnamon rolls nor did I feel like making eggs or french toast this morning. Josh had Honey Smacks and Rory had oatmeal.
• new clothes neatly laid out ahead of time. Their drawers are full of hand me downs from friends so I did not buy new clothes or shoes. Rory put on a hideous ensemble so I went upstairs and found that no cute clothes were clean. I went to bed before finishing the laundry. Josh tried to wear nice shoes with shorts and a school t-shirt. When I vetoed that he chose to match the nice shoes to nice clothes instead of throwing on some tennis shoes.

My kids did have

• The making of a nice lunch. We did take time to make up menus and buy good food. They had fettuccine alfredo in their thermos, mandarin oranges with a vanilla pudding dip, a salad in their nifty salad containers, a danimals and crackers.
• a mom who was nice. I fought freaking out because of emotions and a need to hurry
• a prayer and a kiss

I am not happy to be back on this schedule and to have the summer be over. I am not thrilled that they will be gone for 6 hours a day. I am nervous about how to fill the time alone with Simeon with out the TV being on too much. I need to clean up after this morning's tornado because my dad is on the way. I am sick and tired. Will it all be ok? Let's see if I can manage to make cookies before they get home so we can sit down and talk about their days.

I am an Open Book

Most of you know me well enough to know I am an open book. Everything
about me is just out there for anyone to read. If you ask the right
questions you can know most everything about my life and I know there
are plenty of you saying "Oh yeah"
Because I am an open book, some of you already know that I am pregnant
so I am done trying to keep it a secret. What is the point anyway?
I am 8 weeks and am sicker than ever before but still not throwing
up(TMI) and fair way better than most.
Our family is very excited to welcome a new baby into our home. My kids are eager to hear each week where the baby is at developmentally and will tell anyone the baby is the size of a blueberry or what not. They have been very helpful.
They start school tomorrow!

Missing Pieces

~~~~~~~~Yuck Warning~~~~~~~~~

I recently read The Missing Piece by Shel Silversten to my kids and they seemed to enjoy it as much as I did when I was a wee lass. Now Rory is thrilled to be missing a piece.

And Simeon is not so thrilled to be missing his piece. Darn piano bench landing on his toe.

Bee Crazy

On our way home we took a side trip to my brother Uncle Russell's home. My kids love their uncles! Rory call his home a tree house which isn't too far from accurate. I wish I had taken a picture of his cabin!

We took an easy hike next to his place. It was beautiful and buggy. Simmy was nervous crossing this bridge so Rory helped out. Simeon asked "Are you nice to me now!?!" She said yes but later let him know she would not be nice all the time. What a realist.

On our way back Roger and Rory raced back to Russell's cabin. Roger went inside while Rory hid behind a tree to scare us when we got near. She did scare us but in a different way. Before we were close we heard her scream. And scream. And Scream! It takes a lot to get me worried, she screams all the time but this was scared or hurt or something. We guessed she saw a snake until she was not stopping screaming. She screamed and ran into the cabin.
I bolted after her and when I was close to his house I was hit, in the back, by something sharp. That clued me in that she was attacked by bees. I ran into the house and saw her on the floor grabbing multiple spots with Roger checking her out. I asked him to take out my stinger because it felt like something was in me. No stinger on Rory or me. By then the boys had caught up and we realized we were still under attack. Multiple bees were in the house and they were MAD! Roger got stung in his arm. No stinger. Rory was attacked again. Roger and Russell attacked and killed those bees. We won! Well not without wounds. Roger 1, Kelly 1, Rory 9. Here are 7 on her back. Yes I realize this is the 2nd nudey picture in 1 month.

What had Rory done? Apparently she stepped on a hive on the ground behind the tree. My photographer brother took this picture with my camera (Well technically Roger's work camera because I lost mine a year ago Remember?) He also saved the day by taking a stick and throwing her shoe out of the pile risking his own physical well being. She was desperate for her $5 shoe!

So what we have come to realize is that this was no bee but a yellow jacket that has a hive in the ground and does not lose its stinger or die when it stings. They are also obviously very aggressive. Aggressive except Russell has never had a problem with them before. Rory just happened to be in the wrong spot. This is the yellow jacket.



This is a bee. See.



We are so grateful that she is not allergic. I had a hard time falling asleep worried she would stop breathing. What would we do? We were deep in the forest with no phone service. She slept in in the morning causing me more worry. She was fine when she woke up though and we had some more good fun.

PS- this has been one of the hardest posts to write. All the words and few pictures were erased 3 times then I had fights with videos changing when I moved them. I also had words turn blue and become underlined which took some work. I think blogger is changing some things and has therefore made my life harder.

Visiting Family

We decided to take one more trip before school starts. The kids needed cousin time and we sure had good fun!

Lost

Here we are with Roger's family. The kids have plenty of room to roam and run free with cousins. There are 14 people in the house talking and playing. One of those people is an old neighbor absorbed in teaching me about his beloved flowers. I am listening when I realize I have not seen Simeon for a while. I try to ask some passerbyers if they know where he is. Nope. Another 10 min goes by before I have to excuse myself and start looking. Last I remembered, he was in the hot tub. Nope. I ask for more help. We search the house, the trailer, the tree house, the cars, the orchard, the street, the everywhere. No Simeon. I jump in the car to start that kind of search when they yell they found him.

Apparently he had asked Grandma if he could take a bath. So glad he was ok. I had started to panic and it takes me a while to get to that point.

Some August Fun

Visiting Roger at work

Swim Team Awards

Fun at another local park

Good Fun!

I Need a Hero

Hero Camp came and went again for the 3rd year and we loved every minute. Here is year 2 and year 1 (scroll down for this one) for reminders. I was able to be much more involved this year and co chaired day one. Roger was amazing and made our Goliath for the week. If you want good details of this year's, my friend posted an entry on her blog that describes each day well. Here are some videos from the last day's songs that the kids had been working on all week. The "I Need a Hero" Song has been used and altered each year making it the Hero Camp song. I don't know how well clicking on the link to the right works. It should take you to a Web Album of the pictures I took and the rest of the songs. As soon as I get a slide show of the week I will post it.
Videos
"I Need a Hero"- Whole Group- I could not find Rory and Simeon until the end so don't try too hard
"Always Remember"- Whole Group
"Go Go Go Joseph"- Rory's Group
"Jonah was a Prophet"- Jt's Group
and um Simeon's Song- Simeon's Group
o C