Visit to Levan

The struts in Jim's truck have been going bad for quite some time now.  When you hit a bump in his truck it made an awful, rattling sound.  But, we don't drive Jim's truck all that often.  He drives it to work everyday, but that's only a few miles from our house.  Jim finally decided it was time to fix his truck though.  I made a few calls to different automotive shops in the area to get some quotes to fix his truck and Harmon's in Nephi had the best price--that is if it is Jim' struts that need to be fixed and there isn't something else that needs work, too.  We made arrangements to drop the truck off and leave it while Harmon's diagnoses and fixes it.

We went to Sacrament meeting and headed to Levan after we'd changed our clothes and got what we needed.  We got to Levan just in time to sit down for Sunday dinner.  I served my cake after we finished up with dinner.  It was really moist and tasted really good.  We'll be making this kind of cake for Ryan's birthday cake next weekend :)

After we finished dessert and cleaned the kitchen, we hung out, visited, and let the kids play.

My mom got a cute chandelier to put in her bedroom.  My dad is in the process of moving the electricity, etc. so he can connect and hang the light so he has a ladder in their bedroom.  The boys thought the ladder was tons of fun to play on.

Ryan looks full of it in this picture.

Poor Jake didn't get a chance to climb on the ladder.  Ryan shut the door when he ran out and Jake doesn't know how to open the doors at my mom & dad's house.

We headed back to Spanish Fork that evening.  Hopefully we'll hear from Harmon Tire tomorrow to see if it is just Jim's struts that need to be fixed.

Brown Beard

I'm going to attempt to make Ryan's cake for his upcoming birthday party.  I'm using a new cake recipe so I thought I better try it out before I make it for the party.  We're going to Levan tomorrow so I made the cake to take for dessert.

My boys love helping in the kitchen.  Ryan was so proud of himself when he got to hold the mixer and mix the cake for me.

He thinks he's pretty big :)

Both boys got to lick a beater after the cake was completely mixed.  Ryan didn't get quite as messy as Jake.

Jake had a full on chocolate beard!

Praising the chocolate Gods with his beater, ha ha.

I think he thoroughly enjoyed his beater :)

Snow Storm

It snowed last night so when Jim suited up to go shovel snow, both of the boys had to tag along.

I love this picture of Ryan.  He's plugging his ears because the snow blower was running and it's quite loud.  He also plugs his ears when he is scared :)  BTW, we put Ryan in a diaper to go outside.  I didn't want him to freeze if he peed his pants.  And there would be no way we could get his snow bibs down in time to use the potty, ha ha.

We got a fair amount of snow in this storm.  Jim thinks it was about 4 or 5 inches.

Jakey was diggin being outside.

After I took the above picture of Jake, my memory card was full, agh!  I ran inside to get my other memory card and came back to take some more pics of my kiddos outside and this is what I found...

Jim was blowing snow and Ryan and Jake were following behind him.  I LOVE it!  It reminds me of a mother duck with her (or, in this case, his) ducklings.  So cute!!

They followed him up and down the sidewalk.  It was seriously the cutest thing I've seen in a long time.

Ryan decided he needed to do a little mowing so we got their "mows" from the back yard.

Jake was super helpful and did a little shoveling.

Ryan loves eating snow--not sure if he got the snow he is eating off of the a/c unit or the yard garbage cans, ick.

Ryan was super ticked that Jake was using his snow shovel.  To distract him, I had him come and "fix" the snow blower (he just turns the knob that makes the spout turn from side to side and he thinks he's fixing it).  Looks like hard work, doesn't it :)

Ryan didn't want to wear his underwear until I put them on Jake outside of his pants to be funny.  Ryan was way jealous and wanted his underwear back on so we put them on him.  He wore his underwear on the outside of his pants (and diaper) for the rest of the day.  He was bawling for his balloon that he couldn't reach, but I wanted to post a pic of him in his unders :)

Everyone I talked to or got advice from told me not to give up on the potty training issue.  BUT, today, when we'd even mention the potty Ryan would freak out.  I think he may be a little too young to do the potty thing, and I don't want to make him afraid of the potty either.  We decided to take a break from potty training after less than 48 hours of trying (he never had any success while we were trying either) and try again in a few weeks (or months...or years, ha ha). 

Another pic of Ry in his unders.

I wish I would've got a video of this, but Jake was standing on the rug singing, "Move it, move it" in his rough little voice and dancing.  My boys love to watch the movie Madagascar 2.  It actually has really good music in the movie with one of the songs being "I Like to Move It Move It".  Jake always sings that song and dances around.  I need to get a video of it...

Potty Training Ryan and Dinner with the Girl's

Jim had a pass day today so he got the day off. With it being a long weekend with Jim being home, we decided to take a stab at really potty training Ryan. We've had him sit on the potty here and there, but we've never put him in underwear.

After we got the boys in the tub for the day (it was around 11:30am since I went to the gym and it was just a late day today), I told Jim I was going to put Ryan on the potty in 1/2 hour. It wasn't 10 minutes after getting Ryan bathed and ready for the day and he had already peed his drawers. I didn't get mad though; I took him to his room, got him cleaned up, talked to him about peeing in the potty and not his pants, and told him we'd try again in a few minutes. Between Jim and myself, we put Ryan on the potty every 20-30 minutes but he never had any success. I thought we'd be ok since he'd peed on the potty before, but no, we weren't having any luck.

One particular time, I had just put Ryan on the potty and nothing happened. We went downstairs to do something (can't remember what), but Ryan was sitting on the couch and he started saying, "It's ok mom...they will dry." I didn't clue in for some odd reason so I went to look to see what he was talking about. He had peed his pants again. It went on like this for the rest of the day. I was really dreading the thoughts of him pooping his pants.

We put him in a pull-up while he took his nap, but put him back in underwear after he woke up.  I left around 5:20pm to go to dinner with Lacy, Candice West, and Annalisa.  I told Jim I didn't care if he just put Ryan back in a diaper because I knew he was going to poop sooner or later :) 

Lacy and I picked up Candice and then headed to American Fork to meet Annalisa at Cafe Rio.  Kristy was supposed to meet up with us, too.  BUT, she had a terrible day at work and didn't feel like going out.  We had a yummy dinner at Rio and then made a stop at Smart Cookie--yum!  We did a little shopping and then came home.  I didn't hear from Jim while I was gone so I texted him after dinner.  Jim said Ryan still had not used the potty, ugh.  Jim put Ry back in a diaper and just after he did, Ryan pooped.  Thank goodness he held it and did his business in the diaper, whew.

I had a fun night with the girls--I failed to get a picture of us at dinner :(  I'm glad Jim lets me get away for a few hours and have fun with my friends.  We'll see how this potty training business goes tomorrow...

Happy 40th Jason!

About a week ago, we got an evite from Amy to come celebrate Jason's 40th birthday with them and that it was going to be a surprise.  We were able to keep it quiet and surprise Jason at dinner tonight!

Amy did everything as usual--dedicated a post to him on her blog so he wouldn't get suspicious :)  Little did he know, she had been planning and doing a few things behind the scenes without him knowing, bwah ha ha ha!

The attendees all met at the Outback in Sandy at 6:30pm.  Hayden had won with his science fair project so he and his family attended the district science fair that night at 6:15pm and then had dinner plans at the Sandy Outback at 7pm.

We brought black balloons and wore black to mourn the passing of Jason's youth. 

The reservation was for 30--but we ended up needing room for 12 more!

Finally, I got a text from Jackson letting us know they were at the restaurant and were coming in.  We all got ready to surprise Jason and surprised he was!

Hayden walking in front of the camera--but I like Jason and Amy's faces in the background. 

My mom and dad came to celebrate.

Ryan while he was still enjoying the party :)  It got a bit warm in the restaurant and it was a little past his usual dinner time by the time he got some food so he was a little upset.

Jackson with his friend, Jenny

Jason with his parents, Mary Jane & Howard

Amy & the Birthday Boy!

Some of Jason's co-workers

Joseph & Emilee--Joseph had to pull a silly face, of course :)

Coleman & Kathy

The Roper's friend, Sarah, holding Kathy & Coleman's daughter Ella.

Paula & Casey

Jim, me, and Jake (drinking Coke--anything to keep them happy)

Hayden with his red ribbon from the District Science Fair.  Yay Hayden!

The banner Amy made for Jason.  It was really cute.

Jason's cake with all 40 candles on it.

Jason with his cake.

Jason blew out all 40 candles with one blow!  Wowza!!

We had a great time at dinner.  It was fun to surprise Jason and see the expression on his face!

Happy 40th Birthday Jason :)

President's Day

I recently took a photo shop class through community ed and I met a girl in the class that ended up living only a few blocks away from me.  She told me about a group of girls that get together M, W, and F mornings at 6:15 to exercise for an hour.  I already have a gym membership but I don't like the classes that are offered on Monday's and Wednesday's (unless I want to drive into Provo or Orem and I usually don't, ugh).  So I figured I could go and workout with them on those mornings and go to the gym the other days.  They do kick boxing Monday's and Wednesdays' then yoga and strength training on Friday's.  The gal that teaches used to be a gymnast on Utah State's team so she has a good background.  I tried it for the first time on Friday morning and it was really good.  My butt and legs were really sore for the rest of the weekend, which is a good thing :)  It also gets me up and going before my boys get up.

Kierra, the gal that teaches the class, was teaching today even with it being a holiday so I decided to go and exercise this morning.  I was home by 7:20am and everyone was still asleep so I unloaded the dishwasher and jumped in the shower.  I had exercised, got ready for the day, and started my chores for the day all by 8:30am.  It felt so good!

After the boys woke up, Jim included--he had the day off for the holiday, we had breakfast and watched a few cartoons.  Then we got the boys ready for the day.  I put away our Valentine's decor.  When I was done and just chillin on the couch, Ryan asked if we could get a hambow-bow for lunch.  We were all up and ready and didn't have any other plans for the day so we decided to go to Carl's Jr.

We got to Carl's around 11:45am and it was busy but not too busy...yet :)

We found a place to sit and the kids began to play right away.  Jim and I were able to eat in peace while the kids played.  It was quite nice.  It got busier and busier as it got closer to Noon.  I think everyone in Spanish Fork had the same idea as we did to take the kids to Carl's for lunch and let them get rid of some of their energy.

Ryan actually ventured into the play area today.  Last time he didn't dare go up into the tubes of the play land, but he LOVED going in there this time.

Jake still can't really reach to climb up into the play land so he stuck around me and Jim for the most part.  He did see a few trucks out the window so he ran over to watch them.

Ryan would come out of the play land every now and again to get a drink or take a bite of his hamburger.  He would always come down and tell Jim about his adventures :)

Jim showed him another "bubble" in the play land and told Ry he should go and find his way into it.

Jake had a good time blowing bubbles in his drink.  He thought he was pretty darn funny :)

Ryan taking a break from playing to eat some of his lunch.  I think he's contemplating on how he is going to get in that bubble that Jim challenged him to find :)

And he finally found a way to get to it!

We let the boys play until a little after 1pm, then we decided to head back home.  It was getting way busy and Jake was getting sleepy.  Jake didn't make it halfway home before he fell asleep in the car.  Ry was just about to nod off when we pulled into the driveway.   Jake stayed asleep so I put him down for a nap.  We tried to get Ryan to lay down and take a nap, but he wasn't interested.

Jim headed out to the garage to start cleaning it out and organizing.  We moved everything out of our basement last May when we started to finish our basement--the garage has been a mess ever since.  It's been driving me bananas!  While Jim went through stuff and organized it, I went in the house to get a bucket of water to clean out our fridge in the garage.  I heard Jake crying--he'd woke up from his nap, darn it.  SO, both boys came outside to help us clean :)

I wasn't much help in the garage so I decided to vacuum out our vehicles and clean the insides.  Then I went back and cleaned out the fridge.  Jim decided to take our junk to D.I. so I finished up the garage.  Ryan got tired in the midst of our cleaning and went inside and took his nap.

In the process of cleaning the garage out.  Ryan really wanted to go for a ride in his wagon.  It was actually warm enough to take him for a ride, but we wanted to get the garage cleaned up.  We'll be able to go for rides in the wagon soon!!

Starting to come together...

I didn't get a picture of the finished product, but my car is back in the garage!  Sometimes when I go out in the garage, I forget my car is in there and it scares me.  It's oh so nice to have it cleaned out though.  The next project will be to get some cabinets or something in the garage to help organize more.  We'd eventually like to build some overhead storage for all of our junk :)