Kate's Advent Calendar

It was bound to happen.  Sooner or later, someone would eat their entire advent calendar in one day.  It happens every year.  I have been very careful for 17 days to let each of the kids open one day on their advent calendar.  They would savor the sweet chocolate found inside and yearn for more.  This morning I forgot to place Kate's calendar out of reach.  She came in my room and said,
Kate:  "Mommy, I ate all my chockits.  Are you happy?"
Mom:  "No.  Not very happy.  You will be very sad tomorrow when you don't have a chocolate to eat."
Kate:  "It makes me happy."

I hope she feels the same tomorrow :/

Emily's Birthday

Emily celebrated her 9th birthday in October.  So sad that I'm barely getting around to blogging her special day.

She LOVES Angry Birds.  There was no hesitation when I asked her what kind of cake she wanted!

She also loves Monster High.  These pajamas were the perfect gift for her.

Emily and Grandma Great

She loves to scrapbook.  A great choice from Grandma Paulette

Tyler made her a survival bracelet.  She was thrilled!

Emily is a very good girl.  She is such a sweetie and has the biggest heart of anyone I know. She is a friend to all and would do anything for anyone.  She is a great student and is finally beginning to love reading.  She loves to sew and has started piano lessons this year as well.  She is a wonderful athlete and especially loves soccer and running. 

Here's a little bit more about Emily:
Favorite food:  Bajio salad
Favorite animal:  Dolphin
Favorite color:  Lime green, brown and white
Favorite song:  Knee Deep
Favorite artist:  Adam Levine (She think's he is dreamy.  Should I be worried?)
Favorite TV show:  The Voice
Favorite movie:  Soul Surfer
Favorite toy:  Monster High dolls

Piggy Back

We came home tonight and found our reindeer like this.  Emily noticed and said, "Oh look, mom.  It looks like one reindeer is giving the other one a piggy back ride."  It has been super windy today so I just laughed and replied, "Yes, it does.  The wind must have blown one on top of the other one."

Pretty funny.  I couldn't stop laughing.

Now who's the jokester?

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

We have been listening to Christmas music today.  Santa Claus is Coming to Town came on and here's what Gavin said:
Gavin: "Mom, this song is lying."
Mom: "Why?"
Gavin: "It says you better not cry."
Mom: "I think it means that you shouldn't have tantrums. Santa is watching and he only brings presents to kids that don't have tantrums."
Gavin: "Well, when I was little I used to cry and have tantrums all the time and Santa still brought me lots of presents."

Oh, the wisdom of a five year old.

Play Ball!

We had another successful baseball season! All thee kids played and I really enjoyed spending so much time at the ball park.

Tyler's team struggled.  It was a bit frustrating for him to have a winless season.  However, he played really well.  He played second base and had some really good hits.

 Good eye, Tyler!

Gavin is just Gavin.  He has a killer arm and can really hit that ball.  But, he tends to get a little bit bored when playing in the outfield. 

 Here is is picking and throwing grass. 

 And here he is again with his best back somersault!  Daddy was so proud ;)

Emily wasn't going to play this year. She had decided to take a year off. However, her soccer coach, whom she dearly loves, talked her into playing on his team. She did FANTASTIC! Teams her age are still playing co-ed and she could definitely hold her own against all those boys. She loved playing catcher and was never intimidated.

 During her last game, she really got a hold of the ball and hit a homerun! I was super excited and wish I could have gotten it on video. 

Here she is, running into home. Awesome!!!!

 

Bad Week

I was having a particularly bad week.  I don't mean to paint a "poor me"  picture, but I was feeling like I was all alone on this journey and that there was nobody that really cared.  After I finished showering one morning, I glanced down at the sink before wiping it out.  Imagine my surprise when this is what I found.  * Note - this photo has NOT been altered *

Absolutely amazing!  It made me realize and remember that someone was looking out for me.

But that's not all.....

Travis and I were watching TV one Friday night.  Around 10:00 p.m., the doorbell rang.  When I went to answer the door, this is what was waiting for me......

I babysat one of my friend's daughters for a few months while she tried her hand at working outside the home.  I did not want to accept payment.  I believe that there are certain times that you do things to help others out and this was one of those times.  She hung up her career after 4 months and took up creating furniture.  I loved this particular bench and she thought this would be a good way to pay me back.  Thanks, Darcie, you're the best :)

One more.  Travis home teaches the sweetest little lady, Sister Genereaux.  She ties the most beautiful quilts I have ever seen.  She is the one that made Kate her favorite blanket that she just can't get enough of.  He came home from visiting her one Sunday and handed me a quilt she had made for me with the following note attatched:

Dear Sister Barnes,

     I admire you so much.  You are so patient and kind and you are such a great example to me.

     When I saw this material I knew exactly who I should make it for.  Please accept this with all the love and warmth that is in my heart for you.

Sister Genereaux.

Talk about an emotional couple of days.  I am so grateful for a loving Father in Heaven and those that choose to listen and serve others.  I hope that if I ever get feeling unloved and alone again, I will be able to look back on this post and realize that someone out there has my best interest at heart.

Mixed Up

I am going on a blogging marathon during the next couple of days.  Things are definitely out of order, due to some computer problems.  I love to take pictures.  I had so many pictures on my computer that I had NO memory left.  I was frantically trying to back up my pictures when the computer crashed :(  Luckily we were able to have the pictures restored and saved to an external hard drive.  Lesson learned.  So here it goes.......

How old ARE you?

So much to catch up on, but I had to blog this today before I forgot.

I was volunteering in Emily's class yesterday.  I took Kate with me and she was being a bit stubborn.  It had been a long week for her.  The kids had early week all week long and she hadn't had a chance to take a nap.  I'm sure she was exhausted.  Anyway, she ran to the corner by the door, about 30 yards away from me.  I was watching her like a hawk, making sure she didn't try to escape out the door.  A nice lady walked in and spotted Kate in the corner.  I heard her say, "let's go find your mom", sure she was just going to bring her back to me, not really sure why she cared if she was in the corner or sitting right next to me.  She tried to hold Kate's hand and Kate refused, so she picked her up.  She started walking towards me and said, "Oh, does she belong to you?"  I quickly claimed my daughter and this woman said, "You look way too young to have children.  In fact, I thought you were a student here."

For real? 

This reminded me of a couple other incidents.

When Travis and I were newly married, we went to one of his little brother's high school football game.  When paying admission, he noticed that they only charged him for one ticket.  He told them he needed to pay for two tickets and the gentleman replied, "Junior High students get in for free."

Hmmmm.

One more..... when we were living in Roy, I had a salesman knock on my door.  When I opened the door, he said, "Hi.  Is your mother here?"  I just stood there, speechless, sure that he was trying to be charming before he made his sales pitch.  After a moment of silence, I responded, "Nope.  My mom is not here." And shut the door.

More of Gavin......

Gavin was on a roll yesterday. Here are two of my favorite conversations with my favorite 5 year old.

Travis is travelling this week in California. I was explaining to Gavin that he wouldn't see his dad for a couple of days. Here's his reply:

Gavin: "Mom, do you think they have cows in California?"

Mom: "I'm sure they do. Why do you ask?"

Gavin: "I'm just wondering if that's why they call it Cowlifornia."

:)

When Travis is out of town, I let the kids sleep in my bed with me. I fell asleep in my clothes and woke up in the middle of the night, super uncomfortable. I stumbled to the closet and grabbed the first thing I could find. It happened to be one of Trav's t-shirts. I put it on and went back to sleep. When I woke up, I saw Gavin just staring at my shirt.

Gavin: "Wow! I wish I had a shirt like that one."

Mom: "You do? Why?"

Gavin: "It has a pocket on the front. I would love a shirt with a pocket."

Mom: "Hmmm. Why?"

Gavin: "I could put all kinds of stuff in that pocket."

Mom: "Oh really? What would you put in your pocket?"

Gavin: "Oh, like a whole bunch of dice and stuff like that."

:)

Foul Mouth?

Gavin is fascinated with rhyming words. However, whatever word you ask him to rhyme for you, he always chooses a word that starts with the letter B. For example, if you ask him what rhymes with toy, he will answer boy. If you choose a word that starts with B, such as ball, he chooses a word that starts with H, as in hall. He was sharing his knowledge with us at the dinner table tonight. After several different rhyming words, he blurted out, "I know what rhymes with witch.... b%*@!#." I just about spit out my mashed potatoes. He had no idea that that was a naughty word. We all started giggling and the poor little boy started to cry. I really shouldn't think it's funny. But I do ;)

Breaking Up

I was talking to my mom on her cell phone while she was driving up to Park City on Saturday. She started losing coverage and I said, "Oh, mom, you're breaking up." The line went dead and I hung the phone up to wait for her to call me back. I glanced over at Gavin and he had the saddest looking little face I have ever seen before. When I asked him what was wrong, he asked, "Grandma and Grandpa are breaking up?"

He is so sweet! And he was very relieved when I explained that Grandma and Grandpa were sticking together :)

The Dirty Dash

I organized a team to participate in the Dirty Dash and the long awaited day finally arrived! 16 of my friends ended up running. My friend, Windy, dropped out at the last minute, so Dustin took her place. At the first of the race, there was a contest. The first one to run to a certain point up a muddy hill, back down again and slide home-run style was the winner. Guess who won? (Hint: Not me!)

Joe came up with our team name, Skid Marks, and we had some awesome shirts printed.

Here's a before shot:

Front row: Amy Gunn, Kevin Spraker, Steffanie Barnes, Kim Knudsen, Amber Barton

Back row: Maggie Arave, Dustin Barnes, Jennifer Barron, Anne Ringle, Kaylene Spraker, Jamie Moline, Shaylin Cunningham, Brittany Christensen, Gary Bowers, Joe Christensen, Shantel VanWagoner

Our race time was 9:20 a.m. We had to leave at 6:45 on Saturday morning. When we first got there it was pretty cold. When I saw this...

it made me a little bit nervous. I didn't know exactly what to expect. I definitely didn't expect to have the most fun I have EVER had!

The first obstacle was a HUGE mud hill that we had to climb up. There were tons of hay bales to jump over, walls to scale, tunnels filled with mud to crawl through, swamps to wade through, balance beams to cross (but it was more fun to crawl through the mud below), cargo net walls (this one was a little scary), rope swings. I had two equally favorite obstacles. On the first one, they had a series of blue tubes that most of the people were straddling and flopping over. My team decided to go underneath them. It was so unlike me to do something so crazy, but it was super fun! The other one was a huge blow up slide. Before going down, they squirted you with dish soap. I ran, slid on my stomach and zipped down the slide so fast. It was a blast!

Here's our group approaching the finish line. This is the same puddle of water as above. I was wishing at this point that we could have done the 10k. I was having so much fun, and I didn't want it to be over.

I absolutely LOVE this picture. We look like a bunch of sea creatures emerging from the swamp. So much fun :)

Post race portrait!

Shantel, Kim and Amber

Shay, Joe, Brittany and Jamie

Shay and Jamie

Kaylene

This is a race that encourages costumes. There were lots of crazy, creative and just plain weird ideas. I could have sat there all day long and just watched. These guys were definitely my favorites. Probably not the best costumes I saw, but they were the most fun! I was tempted to give them a big muddy hug.....

I love this picture of Jamie after her shower. Showers were available after the race, but they were ICE COLD!!! I washed myself off the best I could, but the cold water made my head hurt SO BAD! I still had mud all over my face, but there was NO WAY that I was putting my face in that water.

I had so much fun with this race. I am so grateful for such a fun group of friends. I cannot wait until next year!!!

Kickin' Back

I put Star Wars on for Gavin to watch while I showered. When I came out to check on him, he was kicked back in the La-Z-Boy watching Star Wars, eating his breakfast. I asked him why he was not eating his breakfast in the kitchen. He replied, "Mom. I wanted to watch the show, relax and REALLY enjoy my breakfast."

This kid makes it REALLY hard to enforce the rules ;)

Sweet Conversations

Another sweet conversation with my sweet 2 year old.

Me (to Kate): "What's your name?"

Kate: "My name is Kate."

Me: "What's your last name?"

Kate: "My name is Kate the Great."

I cannot get enough of this child :)

Labor Day

We decided to spend Labor Day fishing at Mirror Lake. We got up bright and early and arrived at the lake around 9:30. We had tons of fun fishing.

Kate was a little unsure about the fishing, but she sure enjoyed her cream soda!

I would have to say the highlight of the day was when Gavin got a big bite while we were all messing around and not paying attention to his pole. The monster fish drug his pole right into the water, about 10 feet from the shore. Gavin was in tears and Travis immediately rolled his pants up and went in, shoes and all, after Gavin's pole. He saved the pole! What a hero :) Unfortunately, we never got to see the fish.

We finished up at Mirror Lake and drove to Trial Lake for lunch. We sat by a campfire and grilled hot dogs. It was so quiet and peaceful. I loved skipping out on the daily distractions and focusing all of my attention on the family.

Travis drove home barefooted. Thank goodness he didn't get hypothermia ;)

I love my family. This was the best day we've had in a long time!!!

The Letter

Emily found a letter that Fed Ex delivered for Travis today. This is what the return address looked like:

THE CHURCH OF

JESUS CHRIST

OF LATTER-DAY SAINTS

Emily rushed into my bedroom and excitedly announced:

"MOM!!!! YOU JUST GOT A LETTER FROM JESUS CHRIST!!!!!"

Isn't that sweet? I hope it was good news.........

Kate's Booger

The family was playing around on my bed last night and Travis noticed that Kate had her finger in her nose. He asked her why she had her finger in her nose and she said, "I have a booger in my nose." On a side note, I have never heard anyone say the word booger cuter than she does. A few seconds later, the booger emerged from her nose and was sitting on her finger. Travis asked her, "Now what are you going to do with it?" She looked at it for a few seconds and I went to get her a kleenex. When I came back, the booger was gone. I asked her if she had wiped it on my bed. She replied, "No. It's on daddy's pillow!" So funny! We really shouldn't have laughed at her, but how can we help it?

Have you been drinking?

Travis and our former bishop and friend, Mike Palmer, went golfing on Saturday. They had a hard time making golf fit into the busy day and the only time they could both make it work was 2:00. They had planned on playing 18 holes, so I was a little surprised when Travis walked through the door 2 hours later. He looked like he was about to die. He went straight to the bedroom, without saying a word, to lie down. I was a little concerned. I went to check on him and he said, "It was just too hot today to play 18." I was still a little worried and asked him, "Have you been drinking?" As soon as the words came out of my mouth, we both started laughing hysterically. What I meant to say was, "Are you hydrated?"

I am still taking quite a bit of flak from this comment. It still makes me giggle. I thought I'd better write it down. This is one I don't want to forget :)

First Day of School

Back to school. Sigh. It always brings me anxiety. I hate change. I hate how fast time it going. I hate that the kids are getting older. I really wish I could freeze them in time and keep them exactly as they are.

We had the traditional cinnamon rolls. I found a 1 hour recipe that I am very grateful for. I got to sleep in until 6 a.m. The kids were so excited. They were both up at 6:30 to help finish baking. Gavin was up and ready at 7:30. He was sorely disappointed that he had to wait until 11:25 to start afternoon kindergarten.

TYLER

Tyler started sixth grade today. SIXTH GRADE! I cannot believe it. He got Mrs. Adams as his teacher. She is new at Cook this year, so I don't know a whole lot about her, but she seems nice. His classroom is in the computer lab. Kind of weird. They are building a portable for their class, but that will take 3-6 weeks. He has a few of his good friends in his class and came home super excited to apply for student council. Here's hoping.....

EMILY

Emily started third grade. When I took her school shopping, she picked some clothes I never would have imagined. I always thought she would be a t-shirt and tennis shoe girl. Kind of like her mom. She was picking out darling clothes, but they were shirts with scarves attached, long shirts with leggings and fancy boots. Hmmmm. Who would have thought. She said, "Mom. I'm changing my style a little this year." Another sigh. She got Mrs. Price and Mrs. Horsley and loved both of them.

GAVIN

Gavin started kindergarten today. Huge sigh. I cannot believe that he is starting school. What am I going to do without him? I'm definitely the one with separation anxiety. I walked him to his class and he was ready to go. He hung up his backpack, got his blue bin and quickly found his seat. Then he wrote his name on his paper and started coloring a picture. I gave him a kiss and a hug and walked out the door. As I left, I turned to look one more time. I shouldn't have. I saw him sitting there so big just doing his thing. His entire life flashed before my eyes. Then I had to go back in and give him just one more kiss...... I had to remind myself that he would only be gone for two hours.

This is the last thing I saw as I walked out the door.  Now you tell me, would you have cried?

A pretty good looking bunch of kids!

As much as I hate how fast the kids are growing up, I am so grateful for each of them. I enjoy every minute I have to spend with them. I hope they realize how much talent, ability and potential they have. Most of all, I hope they know how much they are loved.