Friday, May 29, 2009

We love 3 day weekends...

...and we get them all summer long! Andy started his internship this week and we're excited that he only works 4 days a week through the Summer!
So we decided to celebrate his first Friday off by going to the Children's Museum in SLC.

We bought a 6 month family pass, so we plan on going several times this year. The boys both loved it! And we didn't even do everything there. I'm already excited to take them back.

Here are a few pictures of the fun we had.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Noooo!!

Jack can climb the stairs.

There are a few reasons I do not like this.

1. Our stairs are wood, so if he fell even a little it would hurt him. Or kill him, how sad would that be?! (that may be a bit of an exaggeration...)
2. This means we have to have the baby gate at the bottom of the stairs. I hate baby gates.
3. It means he's growing up. And I don't like that, can't he just stay a little baby?!

He sure is proud of himself though!


Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Family Pictures

A few months ago I won a blog giveaway for a free Photo Shoot, and a couple weeks ago we went and got our pictures taken. They turned out really good, here are a couple from the sneak peek we got this morning, I can't wait to get the rest and get some printed!!

Jack was a little punky, he was not interested or willing to smile at the photographer, so he looks kind of mad in some of the pictures! Oh well, we still love him and think he's adorable!

Thank you Emilie for taking such great pictures for us!!
(you can see a couple more here)

Our Modest Beginnings (Part 7)

To read more our beginnings go here
Jobs:

As would be expected for young kids with little education or experience doing much of anything, we started out with some less than desirable jobs. I tried to get Kizzie to come up with some funny stories from her first job, but she was unable to do so (perhaps her post-traumatic stress is so great that she is just blocking all of those memories out).

Anyway, here we go.

Kizzie: Quickdown.com

Never heard of it? Neither has anyone else. Quickdown is a down-payment assistance provider. (I think they essentially do something to roll the down-payment into the final purchase price, or something like that) Kizzie worked there for about a year and a half (joyfully quitting the month before Avery was born) and had a couple different roles here. For the first while, her main task was to get registrations. For this she had to call up loan officers and try to convince them to sign up for their program (for free). Later on, she would just call those who had already signed up and get them to do something (I don't know... and frankly I'm tired of writing about Quickdown... BORING!).

-Kizzie Here, I took over to write my funny stories....or whatever-

From the begining my experience with Quickdown was crazy. I never had an interview, some guy names Mark just called me and said I was hired. (I applied for the job before I moved to Utah)

When I got there my training was crazy too, I can't remember specifics, but some really weird and off the wall questions were asked that had nothing to do with the job. Mark was crazy (can I get an Amen? Cari-Ann, Lindy, Jess??) It was all very wierd. And boring.

So mostly at first I was a good little worker, making my calls trying to stay focused. But I sat next to Lindy, so we talked a lot. And I think I braided her hair a few times too.

When I got comfortable with my job and the people I worked with I started doing cross word puzzles and word searches. I think I finished 2 whole books of those babies in a year.
I also took the Ikea catalogue with me when I got it in the mail and would pretty much spend the majority of my shift dog earing and underlining things I thought I had to have.

We made a lot of trips to Will's Pit Stop on breaks, but I think we got in trouble for that once, so we had to stop.

There was also a Secret Book that floated around. People wrote secrets in it and tried to disguise their handwriting. But if you read something in it you had to write something. I read it a lot, but I don't think I ever wrote anything. There were some messed up people that worked there!!

Towards the end I was a "supervisor" or some word like that, they were trying to fancy it up to make us feel important and special. But it basically meant I didn't have to do anything. I got to observe people making calls. So I did some crafts and read and during breaks I would make everyone have word search races. It was exciting.

After Avery was born we went back to show him off, and I got a little bit of anxiety as we drove the ever familiar route to QD. I was afraid they were going to try and make me stay!!

I did meet some really good friends there, so at least I got something good out of that job. And a few free dinners and movies. Those were good too.

back to Andy

This may make Kizzie look like a bad employee... but she was actually really good at that job (though I'm not sure what that says about her). She was always one of the top (if not the top) employee at getting people to sign up, which meant lots of bonuses and even some prizes for us. Her starting pay at this job was $8, and she was making $8.75 by the time she quit. However, with her bonuses, she probably made at least $10-10.50 per hour... which isn't bad for around here I think. It did, however, build in her a hatred for the phone. She cringes everytime I ask her to make some phone calls. Anyway... we'll talk about my jobs later this week.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Mommy and Avery's day out

Yesterday Avery and I met up with Amelia and her boys at the library for a Children's Book Festival. It was fun after we made it through the speaker. Who's idea was it to have a speaker at a thing for kids? sheesh.

Anyway, we left Jack at home with a sick Dad (Andy's better now thankfully!) and had a little fun of our own.Avery got his face painted, he got to pick a free book(Just me and my Mom by mercer mayer. Quite appropriate for our day I thought), made a bookmark and a pin. He had a lot of fun, then we went out to lunch.
He got a happy meal which I was quite disappointed with, McDonalds doesn't have toys right now in their happy meals? What the...?! He got a lame CD he'll never listen to. But he was excited anyway.It was fun doing something with just Avery, I don't get to do that very often, he's so much fun. It reminded me of before Jack was born and it was just Avery and me, we were buddies and did everything together(obviously). We sure do love Jack though, but one at a time sure is easy!

Friday, May 15, 2009

Painting the sidewalk

...with water.

I saw this on another blog. I don't remember who's it was, but I thought it was a great idea. And totally my kind of kid activity. Not too messy, not too much prep. Perfect for the lazy mom in me. :)Avery had a blast, I handed him a paint sponge and a glass of water and he drew on the sidewalk for at least 30 minutes. And that's an eternity to a 2 year old!

Jack just sat and watched. I didn't want him to get all scraped up crawling on the sidewalk.

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Animals two days in a row!

Monday we went to the zoo, we were worried Avery would react like he did last year, but he did great! He was little nervous at first, but as soon as we explained that all the animals were behind fences and couldn't get him (or his hat! he was concerned about that!) he was fine. He loved running around seeing all the different animals.

And when we got there I realized I left the memory card for our camera at home, so we could only take about 15 pictures. Which turned out to be a good thing. It was nice to not feel like I needed to take pictures of everything, and the ones we got are cute. So maybe I'll leave the card home on purpose next time...!After the zoo we stopped by our Uncle Jack's house to visit for a bit. It was crazy. 5 boys in his little house. We didn't stay long! But it was good to see him again.

Then yesterday Robyn and I went with the 4 littlest boys to Farm Country at Thanksgiving Point while Silas and Cleod went to the Dinosaur Museum. Again, Avery did WAY better than last year. I'm so glad! Maybe he's finally coming out of the "I'm afraid of EVERYTHING" phase...!
There were a bunch of school kids there, but it was still fun. Avery and Ryan loved running free sort of looking at animals. Grant and Jack just chilled in the stroller(s).

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Trip to the Aquarium

My brother and his family are in town for a little vacation for a few days this week

Yesterday we went to the Living Planet Aquarium in Sandy. Avery loved it, he loved all the fish and pretending to drive a boat. He got so excited to see Nemo fish! Andy touched a sting ray while I watched. It was fun, and just the right size for little kids.
Avery is having so much fun playing with his cousins, even if it does get a little crazy here with 5 boys ranging from 6 months to 4 years!Next we're going to the Zoo.... and some other places!

Happy Mother's Day

Andy gave me my Mother's Day present on Friday. We're impatient people around here.

He got me the willow tree figure of a mom holding a baby boy on her lap and her other arm around a toddler boy standing next to them. I love it. It's perfect for me right now (obviously). And Avery drew me a picture of our stick figure family, it was from Jack too...even though he slept while Avery drew! Andy got a nice frame to put the picture it, so it is now proudly displayed in the living room.
The other day I told Andy if I didn't have to change diapers, make food or do dishes today I would be a happy woman. He gladly gifted me with that.

I'm so grateful to have such a loving and doting husband and two little boys who think I am just the greatest person alive. They all make me so happy every day!

Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Pompeter aka Computer

Avery likes to pretend that books and boxes are his own computer, he often builds something he says is a computer in the laundry room and says he's "going to work".

He talks about checking his email and blogging. Can you tell what I do in my veg time?

Yesterday I was clearing out some more junk and found a broken portable DVD player in a box. Why have we kept it, broken, for 2 years you ask? Who knows. But it paid off!

Avery claimed it as his "pompeter" and carries it around checking his email and writing on his blog whenever he feels like it.I sure am glad he has such a great imagination! I love this kid!

We also went on a nice walk yesterday along the Provo River Trail, the weather was so nice and there are parks along the way to play at. It was so nice, and we totally plan on doing it again.

Sunday, May 03, 2009

Our Modest Beginnings... (part 6)

To read more of our beginnings go here

Our TV:

This may not exactly fit with the other topics I've discussed so far, but our first TV (and especially our remote) was just plain awesome. This was one thing I bought right after my pre-marriage poverty (see 2nd post) from some young BYU couple who was moving. I also got our super swank microwave, which was probably about as big a lot of mini-fridges. Anyway... without further ado, behold the digital command center!


This thing was the state of the art when it came out in 1983, and was still pretty darn cool when I bought it in 2004. It required 4 AA batteries and really was as big as the picture makes it appear. The TV itself was built to interface with a number of peripherals, so had way more input/output slots than anything else I've seen that old. The first time we used it, this remote even worked for our VCR, without any programing. Good times. Probably no one else thinks this TV/Remote was as cool as I do.

Saturday, May 02, 2009

Avery regulating...

So, I was put in my place a couple times by Avery today, so I thought I would share.

First, Kizzie had a major hankering for some cheetos, and I was slow to volunteer to go to the store to get them. Kiz decided to go out and get some, and said (jokingly) that I was in time-out as she was walking out the door. Avery took this very seriously and walked over to me and told me that I made a bad choice and that I was in timeout. I said "ok" to this, and continued what I was doing. A few seconds later, he reminded me that I needed to fold my arms (that is what he is supposed to do when he is in time out). I was not quick to follow directions, but he was quick to remind me several times to fold my arms.

Later, right before bedtime, I grabbed a couple diapers and threw them on the ground before grabbing the wipes. Avery, again, was very quick to reprimand me by saying "No throwing Dad." I told him I was sorry for making a bad choice and gave him a hug. He responded, "It's ok Dad, just don't do it again."

If only he would monitor himself as well as he monitors me!