Spying on Georgia

So, this is what Georgia does when I'm not looking....

She sneaks into my closet
and tries on my swim suits!

She dances to my blog music while watching pictures of herself on the computer screen saver. There is definately a difference between boys and girls!

Happy 11 Year Anniversary!

I can't believe it, I've been married for 11 wonderful years! I am so lucky to have the best husband in the world. Want to know why I love him so much? Here are 11 reasons why...

1. James has a great sense of humor!
2. He is the peacemaker in his family and ours.
3. He is stunningly handsome.
4. He can bench 275 lbs!!
5. He spoils me to death.
6. He is patient with stubborn me.
7. He is the greatest Dad to Conner, Dallin and Georgia. They all just love him so much.
8. He would do anything for me.
9. He makes me laugh.
10. He makes me feel like everything will be alright.
11. And he is good...I'll let you guess this last one!

The other day I was cutting stawberries for Georgia. I cut into this strawberry and the heart in the middle reminded me of you James. I know that is cheesy but I love you so much. I am so glad to be married to you! Happy Anniversary Sweetie!

Four-Wheeling Fun

On Saturday we went four wheeling with Gabe and Brandi and the kids. They just bought 3 four wheelers and we have ours. So we left little Georgia and Marren with babysitters and headed out for the trails. We rode behind their house going south. I couldn't believe how far it kept going. It was beautiful and hot. We rode for about 2 hours, picked up the babies, then bar-b-qued. It was a long hot day but lots of fun.

Dallin, Tavener, and Conner all suited up and ready to go.

Here is the group, we had 6 quads and 8 people. Kieffer rode with Brandi, and Mallory rode with me. We will have to do this again!

Why these songs?

What a weird collection of songs! But I love them all. Here's why:

"Killer Queen" and "Take Me Out" remind me of Conner and Dallin playing Guitar Hero.

"Killing In The Name Of" reminds me of my college days, I would work out to this song.

"Surfing USA" reminds me of my sweet Dad taking us to the beach every week growing up.

"The Lovecats" reminds me of clogging. Corene, Darci, Toni and I did our clogging recital to this song.

"The Killing Jar" reminds me of Corene she liked this kind of music growing up.

"A Little Respect" reminds me of my step Dad taking me and friends snow skiing. We would listen to the same Erasure song the whole way there and back.

"Somebody" reminds me of Darci. We would sing this whole song as we walked to our lockers before school started, after seminary. Then we wrote the words in our yearbooks.

"Popular" because I am going to see Wicked in April!

"Golden Touch" and "One Love" because they are just happy songs.

"9 to 5" reminds me of my Mom because she introduced me to Dolly Parton when I was about 9 years old and I have loved her ever since.

Daddy's Little Iraqi Princess!

Dada got this dress for me in Iraq, aren't I a little princess?

6 Boys and 1 Girl

This is a picture of what our day was like yesterday. 6 boys and 1 girl. We had Colton, Braxton, TJ and Landon over so Megan could get some rest, she hasn't been feeling well. It was tons of fun. We had a great lunch, played in the sprinklers, made shaved ice, played video games and just hung out. Everyone got along really well and it was easier than I thought it would be. Having friends over is the best!

James and Mariah Dancing

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How many of me?

This is kind of cool, I got it off my cousin Becky's blog, try it out!

HowManyOfMe.com

There are 14 people with my name in the U.S.A. How many have your name?

Kids say the darndest things!

Me: Conner, did you finish your chores?
Conner: Why do we always have to do chores, Mom?
Me: Well if you don't who will?
Conner: My wife will when I'm married, she will do everything I tell her to do.
Me: Oh no she won't!
Conner: She will because I'll reward her!
Me: How will you reward her?
Conner: I'll give her a big smooch on the lips!

Conner and I once had a discussion about how often we would talk on the phone once he moved out to go to college. He said he would call me everyday. I can tell when he is mad at me though because he tells me he will only call me three times a week instead of everyday!

Forever Friends

This is my childhood friend Marci. She was in town for the weekend doing a photo shoot. She emailed me and we arranged to have lunch together in Salt Lake. We haven't seen each other for about 13 years. She and her family live in LV now, but when we were younger we would both go to our Dads' houses on the weekends. She would always come play at our house after church and we had tons of fun together. We would do crazy things together, sometimes get in trouble or hang out across the street at the Francis'. My dad and her dad bought a boat together so we would go boating a lot. We would take her camping, to the beach or just about anywhere else we went.
We always send Christmas cards and exchange an occasional email but it was so good to actually see her after all these years. I am the kind of person that doesn't need a huge group of friends, just a few really good friends. Marci is a really good friend and I am so glad we have kept in touch all these years!

Georgia can crawl!

Yea! Little Georgia finally took her first crawl yesterday, July 18th! Here is a video to prove it.

Dresses are now a pain! They sure are cute on but get in the way of crawling, what to do!

Conner's Brown Belt

I am such a proud mother. Conner has been attending Karate Kamp all week. This week they focused on sparring. He is very good at sparring and won a trophy for it at his last tournament. So at the end of the week (Friday) he promoted to a brown belt. I can't believe my baby boy has a brown belt in karate. That's pretty impressive!

All the kids that attened the Sparring - Karate Kamp
Conner is on the second row on the right.

So out of all the kids that were there this week they handed out five medals to five kids. Conner got most improved. He was so proud to be picked out of all the kids, and to get a medal. He had a hard time at the beginning of the week because he wanted to do the camp at our school but since our school is pretty new there were only five kids signed up. So they joined with the American Fork school and having that many kids made him a little nervous. His karate instructor, JD, was so awesome and made Conner feel more comfortable and got Conner to work hard!

This is Dallas (the owner), Conner, and JD (Conner's instructor).

And here is my Conner with his new brown belt!

dumpr.net

My friend Becky had this on her blog and I thought it was so neat. So, I uploaded this picture to this Dumpr website and look what it did! Very Cool! I printed a few pictures out for the boys to color during church. We will see tomorrow if it keeps them interested.

Sketch your photos at dumpr.net
Isn't this cool?
Click here to do this yourself.

Boating

We finally got to take the boat out. We took the Cherrington's with us and had tons of fun! I left Georgia with my friend Linda, I owe her big time! All the kids went tubing. Adam, Janet and Dallin went on the knee board. Here are some pictures and video's of our adventure. Turn your volume off when watching the video's so you don't have to hear my high pitched voice getting excited for Dallin!

Dallin's first try on the knee board ever!


Dallin's second try on the knee board, he did it!

Here is Hannah, happy as can be, she just got off the tube. Her second run on the tube wasn't as fun though. She got flipped off and stuck under the tube. It was pretty scary.

Janet was sporting the cutest glasses. She did awesome driving the boat, better than I did! We are gearing ourselves up to take the boat out with the kids and no husbands!
Here is cute little Aubrey, she had tons of fun on the tube as well.
This is Adam and Aubrey coming in off the tube. The tube can sit three people and it stays right behind the boat. It was hard to get it to go over the wake. It is a pretty big tube.
Dallin, Parker, and Conner. Parker and Conner kept doing thumbs down, wanting to go slower. Dallin kept giving us thumbs up to go faster. He is a little dare devil!

Dallin and Conner enjoying the ride!
Me driving, watch out!

Crumb Snatcher's Army Crawl!

Georgia will be 10 months old tomorrow. Here she is trying her best to crawl. I try to keep the "Baby Legs" on her so the carpet doesn't bother her knees. Or I will lay out her favorite soft blankie so she doesn't have to crawl on the scratchy carpet.

She was after her pink monkey. Dallin won it at Lagoon and Georgia likes to laugh at it and snuggle it. She does this also with her Panda and her Lion. It is so sweet to watch.

The boys are learning quickly that they have to keep video games and lego's picked up or else they either disappear or get ruined by the little "Crumb Snatcher" as we like to call her.

Family Photos

Here are a few more of our family photos taken by Dan and Katie Moss of Peek A Boo Photos. They turned out sooooo cute, don't you think!

A lesson to learn...

James assigned the boys the chore of doing dishes. When he tells them to do something they have a better chance of doing it than if I tell them to do it. For some reason the dishes were not coming out of the dish washer very clean. I noticed the boys put a bowl of macaroni and cheese into the dishwasher. They must have thought that the dishes didn't need to be rinsed, they would magically be washed in the dishwasher. James said I need to make doing chores fun for the boys so I decided that they needed to be taught how to do the dishes, so I taught them and we had tons of fun and filled up the dishwasher. Low and behold there were still more dishes so we did them by hand. The boys had so much fun doing the dishes by hand, they preferred to do them by hand. Anyway, they now know how to load the dishwasher and wash dishes by hand. And they do a pretty good job at it. What is it with boys and walking around the house in their underwear? Here they are doing the dishes in their underwear!

Georgia playing around

Poor little Georgia is just so sweet playing around, showing off her moves, and she takes a spill in the end. She bonked her head and the video quickly ended. She cried for 10 seconds though and was fine.

Another fun week.

We had another fun week, kind of doing the same things we already did. Because we bought the season pass to the Children's Gateway Discovery Museum we decided to take some friends with us this time. This is Caleb, Kylie, Conner, Dallin, and Matthew. Dallin and Matthew were in kindergarten together and they now do karate together. Kylie and Caleb are Matthew's siblings. They all get along really well and we had tons of fun at the museum.

Doesn't Georgia look so big in this car? Time flies!

Georgia loved playing with the balls. She loves collections of things. If I give her a pile of popsicle sticks, beans, spools of ribbon, "suckies", balls, anything she gets so excited.


On the Fourth of July we decided to just relax. So we went over to the Army pool and swam for a couple of hours. Here is the only picture I got. I didn't realize I had my camera until we were getting ready to leave. Georgia loved the water and kicking her legs. We sang "I'm a little fishy, under the sea, I'm a little fishy, 1-2-3" and dunked her under the water. She wasn't sure what to think. The first time she was a little surprised but didn't cry. The second time she fussed a little but was fine.

Finally, we took the boat out of the garage. Next step is getting it to the lake! I am a little nervous taking it out because I don't know exactly what I am doing yet. Here are the kids relaxing on the tube. I wanted to make sure it would still hold air because over the winter we had a stray cat that kept sneaking into the garage and sleeping in the boat. I don't know if it punctured any of the tubes. Better check before I get them out on the lake.

Pictures from Mexico

Finally, here are some pictures from our trip to California and Mexico. This is Georgia on the ferris wheel at the Pike in San Diego.

This is James on the taxi in Puerto Vallarta. He bought this cool hat from some Mexican guy that hand made it. We almost weren't allowed to take it off the ship because of Custom's, but you know James he can talk anyone into anything.

This is my hot husband with my adorable kids, Dallin and Conner and my cute brother Jesse (18 years old) in the waves in Cabo San Lucas.

Here is James, Conner, Dallin and Georgia swimming at the hotel pool.

Conner loved the waves, we couldn't get him out of them. He is such a good swimmer too.

Here is Conner boogie boarding, Uncle Rick showed him how and he and Dallin picked it up quickly.