Friday, August 26, 2011

James' 1st Boy Girl Party

Last Thursday a gal in my ward had a birthday party for her little girl that just turned three. (BTW Stephen and I babysat this little girl last year so that her parents could go to the temple and I was super impressed with her speech. She had just turned two and seemed to be already talking in sentences. When her parents came to pick her up the mom, Hollie said, don't feel bad, my husband and I are both speech specialists/pathologists. No wonder she was so advanced. In fact they have a website called "Home Speech Home" I think. I've been meaning to check it out since James is just a wee bit behind in that department, but I know that's common among boys.) Anywho, her daughter Gracie just turned three and they had a fun dance party. Here are some pix.

The birthday girl.

Kids having a breakdance competition complete with prizes.

James trying to breakdance like all the other big boys. (He's the one in the brown shirt.)


These are Gracie's parents teaching all the kids how to dance to things like "Hey Macarina" and "Jump on it".



And more party fun.

Switching topics, I found a little boy last week. I was out doing my daily wogging. (Wogging is walking with little spurts of me trying to jog and then deciding to walk again. This happens many times hence the reason it's called wogging. Jalking is when you go jogging but keep taking little walking breaks from the jog. Just in case you were wondering.) Whilst I was out I saw this little boy walking across the street by himself. At first I wasn't sure because I wasn't very close, and my eyes aren't that great (yeah I need to get glasses). When I first saw him I hoped it was just a shorter than average midget because he was by himself with no parents in sight, in what looked like an oversized dress. Plus, he was walking away from the residential area towards where they/Lehi city are doing building/construction by this business area across from where we live. I started to jog up to see if it really was a little boy when a car stopped right next to him. At first I thought maybe it was just this little kid's parents looking for him. Then this fear struck me, what if it wasn't this kids parents. A couple of months ago Draper, UT, which is just 10 mintues north of us had several reports of a man in a white van trying to abduct little girls on a number of different occasions, all were unsuccessful thank goodness, but they never caught him. At least I haven't heard of them catching him yet. So, I started to go faster and as I came around the bend I see this woman talking to him and then she points at me and then asks "Is this your little boy?" I said "no, but I saw him cross the street from that direction as I came around the bend." She didn't have her cell phone on her, and neither did I, so I said I had a friend that lived in an apartment close by. I think we were both looking at each other kind of suspiciously, not really wanting to leave him alone with the other, it's unfortunate but that's the world we live in. We tried asking him questions but he was too scared. He just said he was looking for his mom. So we went to my friends house, but she wasn't there. (Becca Bell why weren't you home last Thursday at 9:00 in the morning hmmm?) We were about to call the police, unsure what we should do, still not seeing any parents in sight looking for him (He seemed to me to be about 3 and 1/2) when we asked him again what his last name was and his mom's name and finally he felt comfortable enough around us to tell us. I guess this woman recognized the name and said she was pretty sure who the kids mom was and where they lived. I think they might have been in the same ward. At that point she took over and took him home. BTW he wasn't wearing a dress, he was just wearing his PJ's whichwas an oversized shirt.(I think about 80-90% of Lehi, UT is Mormon. So, if you're in Utah minus Salt Lake City and come across an unaccompanied child, just locate the local Primary President and she'll point you in the right direction.) But, all jokes aside, I was soooo fuming about this little incident. This little boy was wondering in the street, right where big trucks go by. He could very easily have gotten hit by a vehicle, or abducted. I just hope that the mom was out looking for him, maybe she'd just gone looking for him in the opposite direction. I do get pretty angry though when parents are not very attentive to their small children. That's the end of my story. Good night!

2011 Swimsuit Edition #2

Remember that swimsuit I made and modeled a couple of months ago? I had mentioned that I had also bought some more swimsuit fabric to make another swimsuit, which also cost me just $4.50 to make. Well...here it is.





I know summer is over, but hey, it looks like it's going to be a warm fall. And, our apartment complex just put in a pool. The only thing is this one doesn't support "the girls" that great either. How the heck do they do that? Make good support on smimsuits I mean.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Last Summer Vacation

Hopefully this was our last summer vacation. I'm a little tired of traveling for now. Stephen and I just got back from going on a campout trip with his family and their ward/Stephen's childhood ward. We had a great time, especially Stephen, he loves camping and we haven't gone since the summer of 2008. I was a little freaked out because the lady in charge of the campground said they had about 6-7 bears that roamed around. Luckily we didn't see any, but their was a gunshot someone said they heard one night, with dogs barking, and then the next morning a garbage can close by our camp was turned over. Probably looking for food, whatever it was. I'm hoping that it wasn't a bear. Needless to say I didn't get a whole lot of sleep until we weren't in a tent anymore. We had a lot of fun swimming in the lake and roasting marshmellows. James had a lot of fun, although I almost went crazy trying to keep him close by. He did have lots of fun playing with his cousin Preston and having water gun fights with the boys. James especially liked his Uncle Micheal. Micheal seems to have a knack for animals and small children. After the campout we spent some time in Loomis, Ca with the Taylors before coming back. It was nice seeing everyone.











The hard thing about visiting family though is, after we go see my family we think how nice it would be to live closer to them, and then when we visit Stephen's family we feel the same. So, either we have to get them to move to the same city, hahaha yeah right, or just settle somewhere in the middle. Hello Eastern Oregon, or Western Idaho. Hmmm...I'll still have to think about that one.

James' First Buzz

Buzz haircut that is. I finally got tired of trying to cut James' hair just to have him screaming and moving around so much that the final result is anything but laughable. So, my friend Becca Bell came over and buzzed James' hair for me, since we don't have clippers. Yeah he wasn't exactly thrilled. But, at least his hair is even.





SLC Waterland

This post is slightly belated, like 2-3 weeks, but that's ok. We went with Karl and Megan via trax to SLC The Gateway and brought a picnic while the kiddies ran around in the outdoor waterfountain thingy that they have. It took James awhile but he got used to it.









Saturday, August 6, 2011

Sad News

Stephen and I got a phone call from one of his best friends, Chris Harmon. Many of you are familiar with Chris and his wife Valerie, both of which are very good friends of ours. (Not to mention his wife is pregnant with their second child due in September) Well, Chris called us and told us that his mother, who's an incredibly sweet person, just got diagnosed with cancer. It's spread out throughtout her body, especially around her lungs. She's never smoked but he said that her mom, his grandmother, was a chained smoker and smoked around her when she was growing up. She's at stage 4 (which I believe is the last stage of cancer, the more serious stage) and has been given 6-9 months to live. Please keep their family in your prayers.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Hot Off The Press

For those of you wondering how Stephen did on his ASVAB test h just got home, so here are the results: He got a 135, which is supposed to be very good, he got ranked at the 96th percentile out of 99, so he is in the top 4% percent meaning because his score was so good, he pretty much gets to pick whatever he would want to do in the army. His top choice is to become a helicopter pilot, but for that you usually have to have pilot experience, which Stephen doesn't, but hopefully he can find a way to make it work. Now we just have to get his reference letters, transcripts, etc. turned in. Plus, he has to pass the physical test and you have to be able to do a minimum of 39 push-ups, and run 2 miles in 17 minutes. So, he's working on the physical requirements right now as well. So, keep your fingers crossed.

Hooked

If you want to know something about me, know this: I love murder mysteries. Maybe that makes me sound like a gruesome type of person, but I do. I don't really like to watch the part when they get murdered, usually I just wait for the actual killing part to pass quickly. What I love is the who done it, and why. With that said I should probably say that becasue I am such a mystery fan I love Hitchcock movies (except for The Birds because there is no mystery and nothing get resolved, which I hate it when that happens in movies or books) and Agatha Christie. I know that is so cliche because she is the queen of crime...blah blah blah. I have read most of the Miss Marple books, and quite a few of her Poirot books as well. Just in the last 10 years they have redone the Miss Marple series. (T.V. series that is.) Back in the 80's they did a whole series of them which are good, but you have to check out the new series. (You might want to pase the playlist of music on the side before watching the video.)
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After a couple seasons the woman playing Miss Marple retired and they got someone else to finish her charachter out for the rest of the season. I like the first lady better, but they're still pretty good. My favorite's are "The Moving Finger" "4:50 from Paddington" "Murder at the Vicarage" and "A Murder is Announced". Oh, and "Towards Zero". They are really good, although they tend to have more sexuality, and other things than originally intended in the actual books. (Ordeal by Innocence is actually kind of creepy, I would avoid that one)
I tried to find a preview for Poirot to embed also but had some difficulty, but you can check it out here.

Summer Vacation Prequel

I know this is coming way after the fact, like a month late, but I wanted everyone to see our first vacation of the summer. At the beginning of July Stephen, James and I went to Couer D'Alene Idaho for over a week to spend time with my family. We actually refer to this summertime gathering as "Cousins Camp". We got the phrase from my sister Megan's in-laws. Once a year her husbands side of the family have a week where all the grand-kids ages 5 and up go to their Aunt's house and spend a week with just the cousins, no other adults but the one's that are hosting it. Well, even though at my families we do include all of the adults, we still call it cousin's camp because the purpose of the get together is to do fun things that the kids want to do and give them a chance to see and get to know their cousins. In fact, my mom has a little plaque thing that says "Grandma's House: A place where cousins become best friends." While there we went to a water park/amusement park called Silverwood, and it was a blast. It took James awhile to warm up to the idea of playing where water is shooting out all over the place. We had a lot of fun. We also spent a lot of time in my parents backyard playing water games on teams, and we had a talent show. Here are some pictures:



































It was at Cousin's camp that James discovered his love for water guns. Also, there was a point where all the kids were having a huge fight with the wet noodles and James had so much fun hitting other kids with these giant objects, that unfortunatley now he has brought this home and has started hitting other children with any object he comes across thinking that they are having fun, when in fact he just hurts them and makes them cry. Sorry again, cousin Tamsin!!!