{ Mike and Desirea’s Wedding }

I am still in my constant catch up mode from last summer even. This house building thing totally threw me for a loop, but I will get caught up! Here are some pictures I took for my brother Mike at his wedding down in Destin, Florida in September. It was so beautiful there, and SO hot. I was happy to get to document this special time in their life. Congratulations! We love you guys!

Their wedding ceremony was preformed on a strip of beach they had rented for the night. It was nice to have a slice of the beach all to ourselves. Mike and Desirea built this bamboo alter, and Desirea did all the flowers. It turned out beautiful!

The whole Family-Mike, Desirea, Tayleigh, and Tori. Desirea also made the girls dresses. They were so beautiful and classy. I love that pink color. Desirea is so creative-I love having such a talented sister-in-law.

This one is one of my favorites from the whole day.

Some of the bride.

It was so hot there that day that by the time it was time to cut the cake, it was almost melted. I love the little twist they did on the regular feeding/smashing-of-the-cake. They were about to feed each other the cake, and the girls were all eagerly looking on as we were kind of heckling them about smashing it into each other’s face. They were about to, but then turned and let Tayleigh have a little cake. She was completely taken by surprise, but such a good sport about it. I think she secretly loved getting to taste the cake before everyone else.

Love those cute little chubby baby hands!

…And they lived happily ever after

{ Destin Florida Trip-Day 2 The Beach }

We chose to stay at a hotel in Sandestin, which we loved. When Aaron and I came to Destin for my birthday last year we had stayed in a hotel here, and it was so nice to be within walking distance of the beach. Our hotel was the very left one on the bottom picture.

We slept in a little, ate a quick breakfast, and then headed to the beach just across from the parking lot. With our room we were able to get a free umbrella rental, which was great with the babies, and also a few hours of boogie board rentals too. The kids went straight to the water, while I hung out with the little boys on the beach. Aaron went to meet Mike and Desirea and their kids outside the resort gate to let them in so we could hang out together for a bit. They were headed to Sea World for a week long fun family honeymoon later that day, but the kids had a blast being able to swim together before they had to head out.

I am so in love with his little curls. The humidity made them super curly all day long. Ryan loved the beach, and was most interested in eating the sand. I don’t what it is with kids and eating sand, but he was eating it by the handfuls.

Ryan and Tori hanging out under the umbrella with Brianna and Desirea.

Erika, Tayleigh, and Abby

The weekend we went, the ocean had tons of seaweed in it. It normally is crystal clear, I felt kind of bad for talking it up so much to my brother, only to have a tons of seaweed there. The place we swam though, had a sand bar out a little ways. If you swam out past this 6-7ft deep part to the sandbar the water was totally clear and bright blue. It was beautiful. We took turns swimming out with the kids, and while we were out there we saw at least a dozen jelly fish. Aaron got stung on his side, and we watched a guy pick up this huge dead one. It was the biggest one I had ever seen in real life.

After we had had our fill of sand and sand castle building, we said our goodbyes to Mike and Desirea, and then went to swim in the hotel pool for a few more hours. We ate a quick supper picnic, and then headed back. It was a super quick trip, but so worth it. Every time we come we say we should come back sooner, and stay longer. I think that will have to be a must for next year.

{ Destin Florida Trip-Day 1 The Wedding }

We planned our trip to Destin for the same weekend that my brother Mike was getting married. We drove down Friday, had the wedding that night, and then spent all day Saturday playing and drove back that night. It was a quick trip, but a lot of fun! It felt like we had just been there with everyone, and I couldn’t understand why the kids were SO excited. I knew going to the beach was fun, but they were beyond excited. When we went back and looked through our pictures we realized it had been almost  5 years since we had been there as a family! Some of the kids hadn’t even seen the beach before. I couldn’t believe so much time had gone by since we had been there. It turned out to be a beautiful weekend for some playing.

We went straight to the beach to help set up for the wedding, and the kids were great sports to “play” at the beach and still staying somewhat clean.

When we got to the beach we had a hard time finding the place that was supposed to be reserved for them. We saw some other wedding parties setting up, and had found our spot by the process of elimination. After we had the bamboo alter, and table for the cake all set up, another wedding party came looking for their spot. The spots were not marked good at all, and we had ended up setting up in the wrong spot. They offered to just set up in our spot, but since they had a lot more people attending than we did and that spot was by the pavilion where they told there party they were, we moved. Mike had rushed back to get dressed and pick up the girls, so Aaron and I moved everything with the kids help. We were totally sweaty! I was glad I was just the photographer/supportive older sister, and not the bride that day. I was happy that Desirea didn’t have to worry about it, and was able to stay looking nice until she got there. It was such a hot day!

This was the first wedding that I had photographed and I was super nervous. I was thrilled when I saw the pictures-they turned out so great. I was really happy for the experience, mostly to help me appreciate how much work being a wedding photographer would be. It’s a tough job for sure. The kids were great to let me take some quick pictures of them. They were SO hot. Our nice wedding dress turned out to be sweaty hair, sticky clothes, and red faces.

I usually say “Just one picture”, knowing I can get quite a few out of them. Not today. One picture meant one picture for them.

Brianna 13 Years old

Austin 11 Years Old

Brooke 8 Years Old

Erika 6 Years Old

Abby 5 Years Old

Scott 2 1/2 Years Old

Ryan 10 Months Old

After we finished taking the wedding pictures, we changed clothes and went out to eat at one of our favorite seafood places-Joe’s Crab Shack. It was super busy there, but we were hungry for crab legs we were willing to wait. We had such a big party that we ended up waiting for about a half hour to get in (which wasn’t bad), but then had to wait at our table for another hour. It was almost 11:30pm before we got our food. It tasted even better since we had to wait so long. We used our time being a little crazy with the crab crackers…

..and feeding the kids tons of saltine crackers. They were so tired by the time their food even came. 

We ate and then crashed hard at our hotel.

{ Abby’s Pizza Box }

A few weeks ago at Abby’s school they organized a creative fundraiser for the PTA. I feel like I hardly ever support the PTO thru the usual selling activities they do- selling coupon cards or wrapping paper, I just have  a thing about my kids soliciting money from neighbors, family, and friends. Anyways, I do love to support the kids school, so when they have some other fundraiser like Bookfairs, carnivals, and other family activities I am on board.

The idea they worked up was pretty genius-especially for busy parents who would love a night off of cooking and to just order in pizza. They had all of the Pre-K and Kindergarten students decorate plain pizza boxes with the most colorful, creative fun spring pictures they could think of. Each student put their name on the box, and then one night they had set up that you could have your pizza order delivered in the box your child had decorated. Who doesn’t go nuts over their own kids artwork? The school got a portion of the proceeds, parents got to enjoy their kids artwork, and families ate yummy pizza.

It worked out good for us that they had it on a soccer night when we needed a quicker meal. Abby came with me to pick up the pizza, and was beaming when they pulled out her box.

 

Abby has brought home some artwork from this year, but most of them seem to be projects with gluing and glitter, and not just artwork with her own drawings on them. I loved seeing her five year old drawings.

Abby’s favorite part-“When I was drawing the flower”.

{ Starting Some Decorating-My Gallery Wall }

I am so excited that I have finally been able to do a little decorating in this new house. I don’t know why it seems like it takes so long to get all the way unpacked and settled. I feel like I am constantly finding random boxes that keep popping up in the strangest places with a big sign on them that says “UNPACK ME”, and it stresses me out until I do. Since I don’t have a lot of time during the day without my little helpers, and nights are packed full with all the kids activities, the “UNPACK ME’s “ sits lonely for quite awhile, all the time while I stress out about it.

I decided a few weeks ago to just go ahead and put some of those little “UNPACK ME’S” out of their misery. Three or four of them were hanging out in my room and were filled with picture frames. I had quite a few pictures in various places at the other house, but just hadn’t decided where exactly I had wanted them to go here. Our main living area floor plan is VERY open-which we LOVE!! It’s what made us originally pick it, and we even altered the plans to make them even more open. The one downside to that, is that there is not a lot of wall space to hang stuff on. I tried to convince myself I was okay with that while we were building, but as I am trying to decorate it is posing a bit of a challenge.

A challenge I was up for though. At our other house we had a gallery wall above the couch in the family room, but here there really isn’t any room for it. The other thing was that I love to see my pictures. I love to walk by them during the day, it makes me happy to see those cute family faces smiling back at me. The small walls in the front room aren’t really very visible to me from the kitchen or the hallway.

I still loved the gallery wall idea, but I knew I wanted to add a little more punch to it. Our front piano room had a great wall to try out my experiment on. Here is the wall I am talking about.

We ended up moving our piano to the other wall after Christmas. I really like it here so much more. It fits the room better being opposite the big front windows, and left the wall the piano was on open for pictures that I could see easily each time I walked past.

This room isn’t that big, but does have tall ceilings. I knew I wanted to take advantage of that and use that whole space for the pictures. After I had collected and unpacked all the frames, I started by taking all the pictures and shelves I was going to use and laid them out on the floor. I was mostly using white and dark brown frames to start, but knew that I was going to add in some pops of color here and there. The one thing I love about the light blue color we picked for the walls is that is becomes such a neutral color and everything looks good against it.

I set the frames out in different arrangements until I got what I liked. I didn’t bother taking any of the old pictures out, I just set them out to get a feel for how the space was being filled. I was happy that I was able to fill the space with all the frames I had, and didn’t need to buy a whole lot more..yet at least. I knew even when I was setting them out that I would end up replacing some with some others that were colorful, but this would give me a great starting point to know which size frames to even look for so I wasn’t buying random stuff that wouldn’t work in the space. I have totally been known to do that. Aaron thinks I kind of collect frames I have so many-he’s totally right. I see a cute frame in the store and I feel like I need to buy it, even if I don’t know where I would use it. This hopefully would help cure me of that… for this project at least.

Once I had it the way I liked, I sketched it out on some paper so I wouldn’t forget the placement, and which frame (brown or white) would go where. Next, I took some brown paper grocery bags, and traced around each frame and shelf. Then I taped them to the wall where I wanted them. It was so much better once I did this to get a feel for how it would look on the wall-not just the floor, without having to nail a bunch of nails in the wall only to have holes everywhere because I didn’t like where things were. A little more work at the beginning, but a huge time saver in the end.

It’s funny how once I got the papers up on the wall how they took up much more space than I had envisioned. I had originally thought I might have the pictures stop with about 30 inches still at the bottom to put a small console type table at, with some baskets underneath, but the frames filled up the space so good without it. I might still put a table in the room by the windows, but I really liked having the pictures go all the way to the bottom of the wall. It also helped solve the problem of the two outlets near the floor. I wanted to be able to cover them up with frames so they wouldn’t be distracting.

Some of the top paper frames  I couldn’t reach because I don’t have a ladder that tall yet, but I knew about where they would go. I was able to do all this in an afternoon, and I was really happy about that. My “UNPACK ME” boxes were happy too. I kept the papers up (kind of-Ryan kept going in there and pulling them down, or the tape would come unstuck and I would feel like I had to start all over again) for a week so I could look at it every time I went by, and see how it felt. I ended up changing around come things, and was able to rearrange some frames to make space for some “other” items I had found at the store and online. One thing I wanted in this gallery wall was some more “artifacts” that told the story of our family.

I am really happy how it is turning out so far. The best part is the reaction I get from the kids. When I pulled all the frames out, Scott was so excited to look at all of them. Some of them have some older pictures of the kids (I am not great at updating and printing pictures) so we were playing a bit of a guessing game about who was who. I could tell he was eagerly looking for pictures of himself as well. A few days later I was upstairs and he starts screaming, “MOM, come here right now”. It was the this-is-an-emergency kind of scream. I run downstairs and he has a huge smile on his face. “Mom, this picture is me!” The kid couldn’t have been prouder, and I couldn’t have felt more guilty that my poor 3 year old only had one picture of himself. Not to mention Ryan who had none!

New resolve for me, get more pictures of my kids off the computer and on the wall!

I am really excited to get this finished up, and finally have a place to see all my families' beautiful faces on this one wall.

{ No-No Ryan …Yes-Yes Ryan}

I am still slowly catching up on all the Christmas stuff, but I am kind of burnt out a bit, so I thought I would post a few more recent things to keep me motivated.

When I was little we loved reading the Family Circus comics. We got the old-fashioned real paper newspaper back then, and it was always the first one I would read when I opened up the comics page. We had tons of the comic books too. I remember my sister and I would read them at night before going to sleep. They were so funny, maybe because they had lots of kids that caused mischief like we did. I remember this one where the girl Dolly thought that her younger brother’s name was “No-No PJ” because that was what the mom always said to him. I thought it was funny then because it had all these pictures leading up to it with naughty things that the little baby had done. Now, my laughs sometimes turn to tears as I realize I have my own real life “No-No Ryan”.

Ryan is 16 months old, and this kid is sure giving me a run for my money. All my kids are smart, but this one..he is SUPER smart. The old out-tricking, outsmarting, distracting games that worked for my other kids don’t even phase him. And with a face like this-

..I have a hard time even wanting to. I can see why the younger kids get away with everything now.

Some of his tricks he likes to pull now:

1. This one seems almost obvious since he is almost always shirtless in every picture I take of him. This kid refuses to wear a bib to eat in. All of the other kids didn’t really mind at all-they were much more interested in the food, but Ryan-he manages to be interested in the food and not wanting to wear a bib all at the same time. The funny part is, everyday I still try. It goes a little something like this-I put on the bib and walk to the island to get his cereal bowl, I look over and he has a mischievous grin on his face and his bib off and in his hands, he waits for me to react, then he laughs his naughty little Ryan laugh, drops the bib on the floor-and so the game goes. Pretty soon, I am tired after the third or fourth time and I just strip off his shirt in hopes of saving it to be clean for at least half of the day.
2. He loves to climb! All my kids have been climbers, but I haven’t seen a better climber since Brooke was little-and now he is surpassing her. Brooke’s tricks topped off at pushing something over to the tall bar stools, climbing on them, climbing over the counter top, walking along the counter to the treat cupboard, opening the cupboard, and eating marshmallows. It seemed to be a fully planned out mission with good treaty rewards. Now Ryan on the other hand, I think he just likes to see me run across the house to get him down from somewhere-it must be some secret 1 year old extreme thrill game he made up, because he sure likes to play it-and most times he wins at it. It started with him learning to climb up on the window seats by the computer by pulling out the file drawers and climbing on them to get to the window seat. Not a bad problem, but the window seat attaches to the computer desk which houses our new iMac. What could be funner that pounding on the keyboard or sitting on the mouse/trackpad? Nothing could get better for him. Less than 3 weeks after we got it, he sat on the trackpad and cracked it. So,… locks were installed on the file cabinets (and not regular locks, he figures those out, but we have to get special ones that can only be unlocked with a special magnet). We thought that would solve our problems. No. Now he goes to get big plastic bowls out of the bowl drawer in the kitchen to stand on to get on the window seat and get to the computer. Locks on the bowl drawers seem to be in my not to distant future. He not only tries bowls, but foil pie pans, toy baskets, books, anything that looks like it has climbing potential he gets to. Needless to say, the is NO computer time most days between the hours of 7:30am and 8pm for me, with the exception of naptime. Definitely not a bad thing, except when I would really love to get caught up blogging.
3. Toothpaste. All the kids have loved the taste of toothpaste. It practically counted as a food group for some of them for the second year of their life-so the fact he loves it is not so unusual, but the ways he goes about getting to it is exhausting. Before we start any FHE or family prayer time, or basically anytime where someone isn’t upstairs with him, we have to do a “door lock down”. Not as severe as it sounds-we basically just have to do through and shut every single door in the house. If not, the bathrooms are the first place we look. He almost always has as many toothbrushes as he can carry and the kids flavor toothpaste in his fist. We already have quite a few blue toothpaste marks on the upstairs carpet from him. Little stinker. He sure loves that toothpaste.
4. Running away. Not unusual-just one I wanted to remember. Ryan can run so fast! It becomes quite comical in the church hallway watching me try to catch this tiny little kid who most days can get away from me.
5. With all his little tricks we have started saying this to him (from kid history which my kids discovered over Christmas. So funny!) “Randy! (pronounce Ran Day in a deep old mom voice) What are you doing?” He thinks it’s so funny. I think it’s so funny. The other kids think it’s so old. Oh well. All day long it’s mostly me, and him, and Scott, so we’ll have our fun without them. Ryan will look at me, and then grin and run away. After I have said it to him many times, and I pick him up, he will do this little hum making his voice mimic the “Randy sounds”, and shake his head to the side.
6. Sometimes when we say, “No-No Ryan”, he gives us this look with one of his eyes brows up really high and one down. It is so funny. I have tried to catch it with my camera too many times to count, but this is usually the look I get-one of more like, “Mom, I can figure out how to get everything I want, do you really  think I’m going to be tricked into having you catch me with my “sly eye”? I’m still determined-it’s such a cute trick.
7. Ryan loves fruit snacks. Every day around 10am we have snack time, and am I usually convinced with a few grunts at the pantry for a pack of fruit snacks. He runs to the table, climbs on the bench, and eats his little snacks one by one. That’s not the “No-No” part. It’s when he gobbles his down, and then starts on Scott’s snacks. Scott starts screaming, and Ryan starts running. His chubby little hands grab those snacks and off he runs through the kitchen giggling and waddling as fast as his little legs can go. He thinks it is SO funny. Scott is always less amused. Once we catch him, return the goods, and say “No more Ry, Ry”, he usually goes to the pantry and pleads some more. He has learned that an open pantry door provides almost as much fun as the open bathroom door, and watches carefully for when it’s left open. He climbs up on our little stool and points to whatever he wants-that’s the ideal. Unfortunately, many times, he just helps himself to what he can reach-chips, the syrup, or the big oatmeal bin.

Aaron and I love this age-we love lots of ages, but this age is so fun. The ironic part is that most of our “no-no Ryan’s” things are the things we love most about our kids-the creativity, the drive, the determination, the humor, the giggles, the constant going, and the big grins! I hope I never get too tired of the “No-No’s” because I know it’s what all the “Yes-Yes’s” are built upon.

Yes-Yes Ryan keep on trying-never give up

Yes-Yes Ryan keep on thinking of new ways to accomplish your goals

Yes-Yes Ryan keep on smiling and bring laughter to those around you

Yes-Yes Ryan keep on bring us so much joy!

{ Our 2012 Family Goals }

For our first Family Home Evening of the year we talked about goals and set some goals as a family. We did our four normal categories: Spiritual, Physical, Educational, and Emotional, but decided to just set our goals for January not the whole year. Many times we set the goals for the whole year, and forget about them after the first month anyways. We hope that this will keep us more motivated and able to achieve our goals. In Sacrament meeting yesterday President Eiland from our stake presidency talked a bit about goals and stressed the importance of setting goals that were achievable. We felt like it would be nice to set shorter goals and reevaluate every month.

Each person got four half sheets of paper with their name on it to write each of their goals, then we taped them up in our family room under each of the four headings. I love that they are posted in a place that we will see them each day and be able to remember each others so we can encourage one another throughout the month.

Spiritual

Aaron-Read January Ensign and Priesthood lesson

Monae-Write at least something in my journal each day-blogging counts!

Brianna-Keep up with my scripture chart and read my scriptures each day  in the morning

Austin-I will read my scriptures before I go to school

Brooke-My goal for Spiritual  is to read my scriptures every morning

Erika-I will read my scriptures every day

Abby-Say my prayers before I go downstairs and when it’s the night, right now, read picture book of scriptures.

Physical

Aaron-Cardiovascular-run,basketball, soccer for at least 1/2 hour 3x/week, Flexibility-stretch 3x/week, Nutrition-1 veggie/day, Strength-core strength 3x/week

Monae-Walk 3 miles at least 3 times a week, do my sit ups and pushups, and leg exercises.

Brianna-My physical goal is to go outside and play for at least 1 hr each day

Austin-In 30 days I will improve my push ups, sit ups, standing long jump, and 1/4 mile walk run

Brooke-My goal for physical is to eat my vegetables each night at dinner without complaining

Erika-I will do stretching exercises every morning at 6:20am

Abby-Carrots are yummy. Carrots are good with ranch dressing. I will eat carrots for a snack

Educational

Aaron-Complete 4 Audio Digests and the oldest 2 allowed AAFP magazines for CME. Attend 4 resident morning reports

Monae-Read at least 1 book

Brianna-My educational goal is to study for my classes. Study every night even if I don’t have a test coming up

Austin-For 30 days I will keep all A’s and study for my Math tests

Brooke-My goal for educational is that I will read more books in school

Erika-I will do my math flash cards every day. (10 minutes 4:00pm)

Abby Pass off word list 1

Emotional

Aaron-Communicate better with my kids and wife

Monae-My goal for January is to say one sincere compliment to each of my kids daily

Brianna-My emotional goal is to keep my temper and not F-R-E-A-K!! out but to work out my differences

Austin-I will write in my journal how I felt that week-which was changed to I will not tease my brothers and sisters

Brooke-My goal for emotional is not to moan at my mom or roll my eyes

Erika-I will not cry when I’m tired and I will just say in words I’m tired.

Abby-I will not be grumpy in the morning

I love that each person tried really hard to think of things that were important to them. Aaron and I wanted them to be sure to pick things that were things they saw as goals, not things that WE saw as goals for them. It was great that they could be honest with themselves and us about what they wanted to improve on. Erika was really diligent in writing down specific times that she was going to do her things-she really wanted to make sure her stuff was planned out good. It should be a great month for goals.