What a month!

No, I am not dead, but some days I feel like it! It has been a crazy month! I have been busy helping my sister plan her wedding (1 day left!), celebrating two birthdays, traveling to California for my class reunion (let's just leave out how many years it's been...), housing and visiting with family from both sides, more wedding planning, and trying to squeeze in all of the regular things in life that keep me busy on a daily basis. Here are a few highlights from the 2 months...

Way back at the beginning of June, we went to the open house for the Oquirrh Mountain Temple with the Fosters...We had a great time touring the temple and grabbing some dinner after.

Tyler worked hard all year to earn his Soaring Eagle award at school. Here he is with a few friends who also earned it.

Eric was so excited to go to preschool this year with his friend Tysen. Here he is at his preschool graduation with Teacher Salli.

One of my many acts as Matron of Honor for my sister's wedding was to throw a bridal shower for her when she was here at the beginning of July. Good times! Couldn't have done it without help from my sister-in-law Amy!

The 4th of July was great fun! We hit Lagoon with several of Paul's sisters, his parents, and one brother that we haven't seen for many years. The kids had a blast at Lagoon-a-beach and riding all the rides with their cousins.

Jordan's birthday snuck up on us! I can't believe he is 12! He was excited to take a bunch of friends swimming for his party before his birthday and even more excited to go to California to visit Grandpa for his actual birthday!

The real reason we headed to California was to go to my class reunion. Wow...it has been a lot of years! We will leave it at that! So fun to see good friends and visit my dad. We don't get to see him often enough. Here are a couple of photos of some of good ol' "Yuba Duba's" finest...I wish I had taken more than 4 pictures all weekend! Oh well...

This one is for all of you out there that might actually know someone in the picture...get out your magnifying glass!

We all had a great time visiting with Grandpa. He has several beautiful dogs, and the kids love to play with them.

And last, but not least, the weekend of the 24th of July! We had a great time celebrating with cousins from both sides. On the 24th, the boys went laser tagging with all the cousins and aunts and uncles from my side. Then we had dinner and fireworks with the cousins from Paul's side. We finished the weekend off with a full day of fun with Paul's family. Here they are down below...notice the lack of girls!

There are things I've missed, like Paul's big birthday (we have no photos as he was in Pittsburg for work), and Brett and Justin heading off to EFY for the first time! Tons of fun. They can't wait for next year, and maybe then I will remember to send a camera with him!

Sorry to all who had to endure the long summary of our lives this summer! It's been a good one so far. We are looking forward to another full month of fun this summer!

Temple Celebration

I've decided I am getting just as bad at blogging as I am at journal writing! Kind of like the same thing, so it really isn't such a shock to me! But I am sorry you have been looking at the same lovely picture of Justin now for 2 weeks, wondering what that was all about! As it turns out, it has to do with the new LDS Oquirrh Mountain Temple that has just been built. We are lucky enough to live in that new temple district, and because of that, all of our youth had the opportunity to participate in a Temple Celebration. It was a huge production, involving about 8,000 youth from the Salt Lake Valley here in our district. For 3 months they practiced every week to learn dances and songs to perform in the Conference Center in Salt Lake for the Prophet and General Authorities of the church as well as thousands of family and church members. Each stake was assigned a different dance theme depicting the history and different cultures of the state. Our stake was assigned the Polynesian Culture. They learned the hula, the poi balls, a Samoan dance, the Hakka, and I believe a Tongan dance. Justin, of course, was demonstrating the final pose in the Hakka in my last post. Everyone worked so hard, and the final result was an amazing production! Youth who did not participate in the dances were a part of the choir--2,000 strong! It was incredible! I was lucky to be friends with the gal in charge of the whole thing for our stake, and she asked me to be a captain over some of the youth from our ward. That meant I was at every practice, helping and watching as it all unfolded and progressed. What a great experience, for myself and our youth! Here are just a few pictures from the day of the event.

For the final dress rehearsal and production days, we were assigned the same kids to ride in our cars. I had the best group of the bunch! They were all so much fun. Their excitement and enthusiasm was contagious! Here are a couple of shots of them.

On the way out to the car after the performance, it was so crowded and busy, the girls were afraid we would lose Jordan among all the people since he was one of the shortest there. They decided to be his protectors....oh yeah, he was lovin' it!

Check out my friend Amanda's blog for photos from the actual performance...she was our stake photographer and has some great shots from inside the conference center.

Rounding out the kids talents

May was a busy month for us! It included lots of performances for our family. Tyler loves to sing and has enjoyed being a part of the school choir called Melody this year. They had their spring concert last month where they sang several songs from popular movies. Here's a picture with one of his friends before the concert began.

Jordan is still enjoying playing the violin in the school orchestra. Every spring the school district does a "monster concert" with all of the elementary school orchestras in the district. It's really exciting for Jordan, and this year they did a spectacular job!

Now, we are a little bit worried about the new talents Justin has been developing....



There is a story behind the photo....more to come soon....

Final Soccer Game...

Who knew soccer could be such a dangerous sport?!!!!

Poor Brett really did get smashed in the face during the final soccer game of the season while playing goalie. I think he took a cleat to the face, to be more accurate. Not only did it mangle his glasses (which luckily got repaired), but it left quite a bloody mark on his face, that unfortunately won't heal quite as quickly as the glasses got repaired! Justin, on the other hand, was reclining quietly in the big rocking chair during the final soccer game due to the fact that he had surgery on Monday. As many of you know, he was born with a club foot. Thanks to an amazing doctor 14 years ago, he walks and runs and does everything else just like any 14 year old boy. However, one of the things that can happen with a club foot is that his feet, calves, and leg lengths tend to be different. To avoid future problems, the doctor put some staples in the growth plate of his right leg to hopefully allow the left leg to catch up to it in length. After they gave him his valium before taking him off to surgery (see pictures below--too bad I didn't video it--he was hilarious!), the doctor came in and talked to us about putting a screw in the growth plate of his left ankle to help even out the growth there as well as help bring the joint more parallel to the ground. Right now it rolls in by about 9%. We had talked about it before, but we didn't know going into the surgery that he would decide to do both things that day! We agreed to it, and I didn't think too much about it until Justin was finally coming out of the anesthetic and asked what the heck had happened to his foot! (It was wrapped up.) He apparently was too doped up when the doctor talked to us about doing it to remember the discussion and was completely cluelss when he woke up! Poor kid! He came out of the surgery just fine, and we were lucky to be able to come home that same night. He is slowly improving each day and is hopeful to make it back to school tomorrow or Friday for the last day or two of school (probably in a wheelchair).

All doped up right before going off to surgery...they give every patient at Shriners a teddy bear...his got lost somewhere between the holding room before surgery and returning to his room after surgery.

After 3 hours in surgery and recovery, he finally came back to the room. This picture is about 3 hours after that, when he finally looked like himself again.

I am woefully behind in posting events from May, but I thought I'd get this one posted so you would all know that the surgery went well, and he is on the road to recovery...hopefully very soon!

Oquirrh Mountain Temple

This is our new temple here in the valley. It is beautiful, and oh so close to us! Paul and I had a chance to volunteer and be ushers last Saturday for part of the open house for the contractors and their families. I ended up stationed in the mechanical room of all places. Pretty cool...none of you will ever see it, I'm sure! It was only open that afternoon so all the contractors and construction workers could show their families where they had been working. It was fun to tag along with their little private "tours" and learn a lot of interesting stuff about all the machinery. It's amazing to me what it takes to run a small temple! Oh, I almost forgot that thanks to a friend of mine that was also working down there, we stumbled upon the "secret" door to the bottom of the baptistry. It was cracked open just a little, and being curious to know where it lead, my friend opened the door and found herself face to face with one of the oxen! When she looked up, there were people on the regular tour looking down at her from the baptistry waiting room! Needless to say, she closed the door very quickly! Pretty funny! When we finally figured out the latching mechanism (gotta be smarter than the door!), we opened it back up at the end and took a little look and stroll around. Pretty cool. On a final note, another cool thing happened on Sunday when I was invited to sing in one of the choirs for one of the temple dedication ceremonies with the prophet and apostles. I am honored to be asked, and I am really looking forward to it! I hope those of you around here get a chance to attend the open house! The temple is very unique and beautiful!

Mother's Day Surprise

So, I know Mother's Day was almost 2 weeks ago, and I am a little late with this post, but I would be very ungrateful if I didn't give a belated shout out to my 4 cute boys! (The 5th one is pretty cute too, but he didn't get home until the surprise was made!) Saturday night I jokingly said to Justin, "So what are you making me for breakfast tomorrow since Dad will be gone to meetings?" He looked a little startled and said, "Umm.....toast?" You see, none of my boys know how to cook much of anything. I think the closest they could come would be throwing some pizza rolls or chicken nuggets in the microwave. There was one time they actually tried to cook cup of soup in the microwave without any water (not a pretty sight or smell!). I don't think that actually qualifies as cooking! Anyway, he said, "If you show me how to make an omlete tonight, I'll make it for you in the morning." I didn't show him anything, but I did mention how to do it. The next morning, I woke up when Paul got home from his meetings and told me to come out as the boys had a surprise for me. They had a full on breakfast prepared that each of them had made part of. It included an omlete (though creatively cut so we all had a piece, it was one of the lightest and fluffiest I've had!), toast, sausage, waffles, and juice. Pretty cool. They were so proud of themselves. I figured it required documenting it in photos, and definitely a spot on the blog along with a big thank you!! When I got up last Sunday to see Justin making omletes again, I began to wonder why I have never taught him to cook sooner!!

After breakfast, the surprises continued with a dozen beautiful roses, some of my favorite treats, a couple of fun gift cards, and a new phone to replace the one I've been yelling about for weeks. Thanks guys! You are the best!

After church, we met up with my family and Paul's folks for dinner. It was a great day! I hope all of you mothers out there had an equally fabulous day! I know you all deserve it!

Paul with his mom and dad.

My brother, mother, and myself.

Girls' Week in Nashville

Right after my fun weekend with the girlfriends, my mom, aunt, and I flew out to Nashville to visit my sister for a week! It was a great couple of weeks for me in April! Many thanks to my hubby for being a good sport and playing Mr. Mom so I could get away! Our girls' week started a few years ago when the three of us flew out to D.C. to visit Denise while she lived there. We try to do it every year, and luckily, Denise always lives somewhere that is fun to visit. Besides D.C., we have gone to L.A. and now Nashville a couple of times for a week of total fun and laughter! This trip was no exception! We had a few new people who joined us, and it was a lot of fun. My Aunt Pat joined us as well as my sister in law Michelle and her mom. We also were able to meet and probably terrify Denise's boyfriend, Dale. Great guy, and such a good sport to hang out with and chauffeur a bunch of loud, crazy women around for a week! Our week was busy and full of fun outings. Here are a few highlights:

Visiting 2 plantations dating back to the civil war...

Browsing the booths and eating yummy funnel cake at the street festival in Franklin...

Enjoying yummy meals--many of which I didn't have to prepare...

Rocking out at our very own private concert featuring Dale of the "Stupid Dogs" band...Oh yeah...

Competing in some serious foosball games (note the intense look of concentration on my face!!)...

But most of all, enjoying time with my sis! Can't wait for the next girls' week!