Six Months Later

I can't believe it has almost been six months since I last posted! We have just been super busy so this one might be long. Sorry. First off, we have been busy with house projects. I stained my cabinets and my mantle and our kitchen table dark. I really like it now! The only bad thing is with dark cabinets they show everything so I am washing them a lot more than I did my light ones. We took a little break for Christmas and then started our next project. I found out about this AWESOME sale on moulding last month. They were selling everything for $0.25-$0.50 a foot! We got molding to frame our windows, do headers on our doors, and new base for our upstairs (except the bedrooms). Eventually we will be putting hardwood floor in the main living areas and down the hall so we needed new base to put up over the flooring at who could pass up $0.30 a foot. We also got new ballisters and a railing to redo our stairway. Right now we just have a half wall between the stairs and the family room. We are going to rip that out and put in a railing. I'm so excited because it will open that room up so much. For all of the rest of my projects upstairs we need our hardwood floor done first. I keep saving and hopefully by the end of the summer we will have enough to buy it so by Christmas we'll have it done. That's my goal anyway. On all these projects when I say "we" it is mostly me. Ben and I have a deal that he only has to help for 10% off the project. He would rather higher it out than do it himself and I really enjoy doing it, so he helps when I can't do it all by myself.

Our next project is finishing the room downstairs that itsn't finished. We are making it an office. We organized the storage room with shelves and I sold and am still selling a bunch of stuff that we don't need anymore. In about a month or two it should be done.

Isaac- He had is first birthday in September so he is almost 18 months now. He is still such a snugglie boy. He doesn't talk much so we are teaching him sign language and he is picking it up pretty quick. He loves books and cars. Last week we moved him to a toddler bed and he is doing really well! The first night he went right to sleep. We have learned that if we keep his door shut he will stay in his bed, but as soon as you open it just a crack he wakes up and comes out. In the mornings he wakes up and gets toys to play with and takes them to his bed. When he is ready to get out he calls "MOM" (which is one of the only words he says and you can understand). Every morning there are new toys in his bed.

He loves to go for rides in the car and he likes the dishwasher. I think he likes hearing the water inside so he puts his ear up the the dishwasher to hear it. He is a cutie, but man can he get into trouble!!! He gets into way more things than Max ever did. He is definaltly a little tornado which is funny because he is so sweet and quiet you would never guess. My kitchen drawers are always empty and mostly down the stairs, my floors, walls, and doors are all drawn on with pencil (I try to keep the pens hidden). He has a fasination with plugging things in. At least once a week he will take the toaster out and plug it in the family room. He use to plug in my hand mixer and turn it on. It scared him a couple times so now I have it in a different place. He definatly keeps us on our toes!

Max- What can we say about Max. He is too smart for his own good! Because I tutor kids he wants to be tutored as well. I gave him some of the first grade math pages and he could do the math! They were the first of the year stuff, but still. He knows all the letters and sounds, he can count to 100 with some help. He has a leapster and one of the games he has does times tables and he was doing times tables the other day and getting them right! I thought this summer we would start reading. He loves books, especially Clifford and Arthur.

We got a Wii for Christmas and he loves to play it! It has made for good insentives. He has to be dressed, clean his room , and have his bed made before he plays. He is pretty good at making his bed all by himself. He has gotten very independent and wants to do almost everything himself. He says the funniest things. One day we were talking about what he wants to be when he grows up and he said he wanted to be a mom and a dad. I told him that he could just be a dad. He said okay and then said "I want to be a good boy with lots of pazzaz!" I laughed so hard. Another day I asked him to let the dogs in and he asked me "What does that entail?" I don't know where he comes up with these words!

Ben- He has been working a ton. I know that is the story of his life. He still works and Lakeview and McKay. We are trying really hard to get out of debt so he is working a lot to pay it off. We should be done in about a year and then he won't have to work so much. Ben turned 30 in December. We went up to Park City to the Westgate and left the boys with Tricia and Adam. It was so nice to have a weekend without kids and to be able to see Ben for an entire weekend. That never happens. Ben is starting a new business. I know that's what we always are doing. It is a rental business. He is just getting the website going so all his free time he is working on that.

Brooke- Well, I have been busy not only with house projects, but with my business. This August I started a business with my friend, then she got called the the Relief Society Presidency and doing the business was too hard so she gave me the business. Now the business is going really well! I make table displays for Multi Level Marketing consultants like Scentsy, Mary Kay, etc. I have had most of my success on eBay. I get an average of 5 orders a week. It's really nice to have the extra money and it sure does keep me busy. Ben is really good about helping me paint things and stuff. My website is http://www.ashiningdesign.com/ if you want to check it out. I am also tutoring. I haven't advertised in over a year and I stay full by word of mouth now. That is really nice. I have 4 kids that I am tutoring now. Last week I applied to work at Jet Blue Airlines as a work at home Reservation Agent. Tricia just got a job there and really likes it. I actually got the job there three years ago, but the boundry line was Centerville. They have since moved the line to Layton so I can work there now! I have been waiting since September for a job opening and finally there was one. I am guessing that I won't start until June.

Well, sorry this is so long. It's hard to cram in six months worth of stuff. I'll try to be better at staying up to date!

August

August was spent getting ready for Tricia's wedding. We had tons of showers for her. We did take a time out and go to our favorite place in Park City, the Westgate Resort! We have been there twice now and we never want to leave. They have activities all day for the kids. Everything from magic shows to making ipod cases. They have four swimming pools. We mostly just swam. The boys loved it! All three of them! It was nice to just go somewhere and relax. It will be nice when the boys are a little older and can do things like the Alpine Slide and stuff. There was a miniture golf course by the Alpine Slide, but it was really lame so we didn't do it.
After Park City we stopped in Heber for lunch at this really cute train resturant. They had a train that you could sit and eat at. Then we went to Seven Peaks Waterpark. Max was so brave. He went down all the kid slides and Isaac loved being in the water. Their favorite part was the wave pool. Since we were so close we went to Tricia's house and she made us dinner.

July

Of course July was jammed packed! We had our annual 4th of July festivities. We went to the parade, which Max loved!! Ben had to work so he wasn't able to stay for dinner or the fireworks, but he did come to the parade. Max loved the fireworks, but fell asleep about half way through. Now when we go to my mom's house and we get a blanket to sit on in the backyard he asks me if we can watch fireworks.The next week we went to Island Park with Ben's family. The boys loved camping. Max just asked me today if we could go camping again. We went to West Yellowstone and say the Bear and Wolf museum. It was kind of lame, but Max liked the bears. I was actually suprised how well the boys slept in the tent compaired to our last camping trip.

We also took Max to the Treehouse Museum in July. It was really neat. He liked all the little houses and all the hands on activities.

We took my friend Joan to the Oquirrah Mountain Temple Open House. It was really pretty. It was fun to see the difference in this temple and the Draper Temple. We went with Tricia and Adam too. We took the boys this time and pushed them through the temple in their double stroller. It was a little strange to be in the temple with a stroller. Luckily we fit through all the doorways. It was kind of fun because we know where all the elevator are now! The Celestial Room was my favorite. We went in the morning so the sun was shining right into the windows. The Celestial Room is all white so it made it just that much brighter! It was amazing.

The Parable of Dolly

The end of June we bought a 2002 Dogde Durango. We got rid of the White Malibu. It was so nice to see that car go! (I think Ben was more excited because he gets to drive the Altima now). We bought it from the TNT Auction. It was a Police K-9 unit. The only way we could tell was it the title was from the Salt Lake Police Department and there was tons of dog hair in the back. We had to do a lot of repairs, but it was still worth it. About a week after we bought it we noticed that the headlights had about an inch of water inside of them. We thought this was weird, but didn't think anything of it. Then one night when I was at my mom's house one of the headlights burned out. The next day the boys and I went to Provo to visit Tricia. It was about 10:00 p.m. when I left. I got in the Durango (which we named Dolly) and turned on the headlights and nothing worked. I had no headlights and no brights. I very carefully left Tricia's apartment and headed home with only parking lights. Driving around the city was fine, but as soon as I got onto the freeway I couldn't see a thing and to make things worse it started to rain. It rained and rained and rained. I think it was the scarest I had been driving. Luckily the boys fell asleep before we even got on the freeway. I tried following cars and staying close to them, but the cars kept getting off the freeway or going places I didn't want to go. I couldn't see the lines on the road and I couldn't see when the road turned. Finally when I got close to Bountiful I called Ben. He was at work and had just gotten off so I told him to meet me at a gas station so I could follow him home. Once I had Ben to follow I was amazed at how calm I was. All of the fear and tention was gone and I finally had peace.

Here is what this experience taught me. In life if we don't have any direction or light of our own and try to life off of someone elses light or follow people that we don't know if they are trust worthly they will lead us to places we don't want to go. They may take us off of the straight and narrow path. When you don't have any light yourself you don't know which way to go, but when you follow the Christ's light you will be at peace and he will lead you safely home.

To finish the story, yes, I made it home safe. We found out the problem was the water in the headlights touched the hot lightblubs and broke them. We drained the water, fixed the wholes, replaced the bulbs and it works fine now.

Bad at Blogging

I have been horrible at blogging. I am hoping by the end of this week to be all caught up. I started a new business and have been spending every change I get to work on the website. If you want to see it the web address is www.ashiningdesign.com. It's still not finished, but it's just about there.

A Full Week!

This week has been filled with a lot of fun stuff. On Monday we left for Smith and Morehouse to go camping. We were excited for our first family camping/fishing trip with Isaac. We got up there and had dinner and right after Ben made a fabulous fire it started to rain and it rained until 1 in the morning. We had fun playing games in the tent. The next morning we woke up to things a little wet, but it was still looking like a great day. I made breakfast and then we went down to the resevior to go fishing. We didn't catch anything, but Max had fun casting and saying "Here fishy, fishy, fishy." We got back to our campsite and had lunch and then is started to rain again. It rained and rained and rained. I didn't have a lot of things for the boys to do in the tent so they started getting a little crabby and started bouncing off the walls. Finally at 6:00 we couldn't take it anymore so we packed up our stuff. About half way through packing up the rain stopped and the sun came out. I was tempted to stay, but Ben was done. He didn't want to go camping anymore and was just done. So we came home two days early.

It was a good thing that we came home early, though. On Wednesday morning I looked out our front window where we have a family of robins and the nest was gone. It had been inbetween our drain pipe and our house, but it was gone. I got Ben and we went outside and the nest had fallen. Ben picked up the nest and there was one baby bird by it so I ran inside and got a box to put it in. Then we started looking for the other three birds. We found two more of them for a total of three, but we couldn't find the last one. ( Later we found it, the neighbors cat got it.) We weren't sure what to do with these three baby birds so we called the Ogden Nature Center and asked them what we should do. They said that robins usually come back and to just put the nest in a box or something and put it back where it was and the mom should come back. We had a bucket from easter and put the nest and the baby birds in it and hung it from the drain pipe. Within a few seconds the mom came back and feed her babies. It was so awesome. Max loves checking on the baby birds now. We can see them from our front window. Last night in his prayers (he says them by himself now) he blessed the mama bird and the baby birds. It was really cute.

On Thursday we went to the zoo. Max really liked seeing all the animals. His favorite animal were the zebras. When we left he said he didn't want to go and I said that we couldn't sleep there and we needed to go home and he said he would sleep with the zebras. Isaac just looked around and didn't really react to anything, but he didn't cry, so that was something. When we went to see the giraffes Max said, "Oh, Grammy's favorite." My mom had told him that they were her favorite and he remembered. His favorite was the park. We made sure we did that at the end because he wouldn't have cared about any of the animals, he just loves playing at the park.

Friday we went to the Clearfield Aquatics Center. Max still loves swimming. They even have a really big water slide and Max wasn't scared to go down that. He is just a little fish. They have a shallow end that is only a foot deep and we had Isaac in a little tub chair. In the shallow end he could stand up. He was having so much fun jumping in the water. He is such a jumper. He bounces in his high chair, in your arms, in his walker. He loves to bounce. We are thinking about getting a pass since the boys loved it so much.

Well, Max is getting smarter every day. He can spell Isaac and Oli now. He has been writing his name with chalk everywhere, on my door, on the deck, on the sidewalk. He picks up everything we say. When I ask him if he wants lunch he usually says, "mmm, let's wait." because he is playing with something. It's fun because I can carry on a conversation with him.

Isaac is getting really close to crawling. He is starting to get fun and not so whiny, although he is whinning right now. Max is a good brother and plays with him. He still loves Max. His favorite new toys are cars. He sits and drives them around. It's really cute. He had his first two teeth come through last week too. He loves putting his tounge on his teeth so most the time he is sticking out his tounge.

Ben is still waiting to hear from jobs in California. I start summer tutoring next week. I am excited because I am already full for the summer. I am not sure if I want to open more times up yet or not. I'm already working 6 hours a week. I never guessed that tutoring would have been such a blessing to us. I am so glad that I can work, but be at my house and be home with my boys. I wouldn't want to miss out on everything they are doing. I am so glad that I have a husband who wants me to stay home and raise our children. I guess I am just feeling very grateful for all the blessing that I have in my life. Heavenly Father is sure looking out for us!

Catching Up

We have had a lot of trips and things to catch up on. The beginning of May we went to San Francisco. Our friend gave us some buddy passes so we got to fly there. We got to the airport in time for our flight, but it was delayed by two hours so we decided to walk around and have some lunch. When we got back to our terminal the flight was moved up an hour and it had left without us. So we had to wait for the next flight. After six hours at the airport we finally got on the plane. Max was exhasted by now and while the plane was backing up he fell asleep and slept pretty much the entire flight. Isaac did pretty well too. We got to San Francisco and had to find our luggage because it was on the flight that we missed. Then we got on the BART and went into the city. By the time we got to our hotel it was 9:30. We left our house that morning at 8:30. It made for a very long day.

The next day we rented a car and drove around. Ben has applied for a lot of jobs in the Bay Area so we went to check out the areas that we want to move to. The city that we really liked was called Discovery Bay. It is a small town, population about 9,000. It was really cool. It has a river in the city and the houses are built right on the river so they all have docks in their back yards. We saw the schools and parks. There were tons of parks. We stopped and let Max get out and play for a while since it was a long drive. It is about 1 hour and 15 mins outside of San Francisco. We are now really excited to move there, now Ben just needs a job.
The next day we went back to San Francisco. Max played at the beach. He loved throwing the sand into the ocean until a big wave hit him and he fell in. Nothing like a wet, cold, sandy two year old. After we got him changed we walked the wharf and had to get Gharradelli sundaes. We are now addicted. I have learned to make their fudge sauce and make it about once a week because we have hot fudge sundaes every night.

Our flight left at 7:45 in the morning so we got up early and went to the airport. The shuttle from our hotel was late and we kept getting in the wrong lines. When we finally got in the right line there was no way we were going to make our flight, so yes we missed another flight. So seven hours later we got on another flight home.

As soon as we got home we missed it. We just wanted to go back. Hopefully Ben will get a job soon. A lot of the companies are highering from the inside, but they have to post the position for so many days and interview so many people. The good thing is if he does get an interview and he as to fly out there it is a pretty good chance that he is getting the job.

Last week was our anniversary. Five years goes by quick! We went up to Park City for two days. It was really fun to get away. Max went swimming for his first time. We went a few times last summer, but he didn't like it much. He had a life jacket on and at first he was really scared to let go of us, then he started to get a little more daring. By the end of the day he was jumping into the pool all by himself and swimming all by himself. He loved it. We were swimming for 6 hours. Now that is all he wants to do.

Max is getting so big. He knows how to spell Mom, Dad, Max, fox and in. He started to write his name today. He loves typing things on the computer. His new thing is he will only do things you tell him not to. So we say, "Don't pick up your toys, Don't get in the car, etc." He thinks it's so funny and really it is just annoying.

Isaac wants to crawl so bad. He can get around on his bum a little, but he just wants to do everything Max does. He is getting better with the crying as long as I am around. He doesn't like it when I leave him with Ben. I can't wait until he out grows that.

Tricia and I are starting a new business together. It is called Simple Things. She is doing a photography business and I will be doing my cards. I am working on the website right now, but I want to do a lot of things differently so I have been reading a lot of computer programming books. Let me tell you how interesting those are. I have to read them during the day or I fall asleep.