Week in Review 8/5/10

Getting behind again??? I swear I don't know where the time goes. Here's our first week of August though - finally.OY! Another busy week ... but soooo much fun! We celebrated #2's birthday, for starters. He's 15 now - crazy. We started off the day with Monkey Bread, as per his request, and had a super mellow day. I felt horrible, because we didn't have everyone here. This means no presents. :( Lucky for him though, hubby and I were crazy ready to go actually find a little brother puppy for Izzy. We've been searching the ads for the last couple of months and couldn't wait any more. So Murphy was adopted and brought home on his birthday. This, of course, means that we had to send oodles of pix to the other chitlins in Colorado so they didn't feel left out. Murphy is the sweetest little puppy and has a great personality too.

Monday the rest of the fam showed up to spread birthday cheer and give loves to the new puppy. That night the girls and I drove down to Provo for Mindy Gledhill's CD release party ... followed by a quick stop at BYU to see #1's new beau and have a double scoop at the BYU Creamery. Yum. We finally celebrated the birthday in full on Thursday, complete with birthday dinner ... pancakes and sausages, strangely enough. The presents this year were kind of funny too since all he had requested was cash. Oh well. He finally got to celebrate and that made us both happy. :)

Blast from the Past

Well, isn't this just too funny? I took a few minutes to answer some questions about my first year of college at BYU in 1990 ... and they quoted me in the Summer 2010 issue of the BYU Magazine. The article is titled "The First Year - Four Generations" It's an interesting feature about how much things have changed (or stayed the same) for incoming freshman between 1950 and 2010. My lovely little nugget of insight is under the heading "Lost in the Crowd". I know. I'm such a nerd.

Meet Murphy

I couldn't wait to show you all the latest addition to our not-so-little family. This is Murphy. So cute. Yes. Enjoy!

Week in Review 7/29/10

Hmm, this week had a rough start with #1 in hot water for ... not knowing how to be 16 yet. She lost her phone and driving privileges and was pretty much under lock-down except for work hours - needless to say, she pulled a double shift on Saturday to stay off my radar. ;) Sunday was the youth sacrament meeting and we got to listen to the youth tell us all about the different summer camps and youth conference. We also found out Sunday night that there was no way on Earth that #2 and Chandler were going to make it back from California anytime soon traveling standby into Salt Lake, so we had to adjust our plans.

Turns out the best fix was for #1 and I to roadtrip down to Vegas and pick the boys up from a flight there. Six hours in the car with my own daughter when we're barely speaking to each other ... let's just say neither of us were sure how we felt about it. I finished up my jetBlue shift, we each packed a bag, gave Izzy a quick bath and finished up the laundry and dishes and we were off. We topped off the tank and zipped through a carwash, grabbed some gross fast food and spent the next 40 minutes or so in awkward silence. Somehow ... thanks to my prodding, we were able to have cleared up most things between us by the time we pulled up to the Red Barn in Santaquin. We peeked around the shop and decided there wasn't anything we wanted so jumped back on the freeway. I have to say that being trapped in a car together without any other distractions and plenty of snack food isn't a bad way to work through some of these things and have a productive conversation with a teenager. (I'll have to remember that for future issues)

Anywho! We pulled into Vegas, checked into the hotel, grabbed dinner at Chili's and very quietly made fun of the couple who were sitting on the same side of their table. Next came the tricky airport business, luckily the boys were able to find us without a hitch. Back to the hotel ... kids texting and on iPods until who knows how late while I passed out. The next morning brought breakfast and the lovely drive home. Oy! Exhausting.

And believe it or not ... Wednesday was even more tiresome! I took the 3 bigs to a "Discover Scuba" class at Dive Utah and redeemed the groupons I'd purchased in June. It was a riot! The kids had a blast, but we were pretty worn out by the time we had to lug our gear back to the storage room. That night we had plans to go boating too. Scuba and boating all in the same day? Yup. Can I tell you I slept like the dead that night? Thursday we tried to keep the schedule more mellow .... it was dreamy.