Lillie's trip to the Fair

Oh the Fair. I really don't enjoy the fair. It's stinky and dirty and you always come home feeling gross from all that greasy, but extremely tasty, food you inhaled. This year add being 14 weeks pregnant and sick and a really rainy day and you have a really bad combination.

However, I love my Lillie and her class was going on a field trip to the fair so of course I sucked it up and went and of course it was so much fun. We opted not to take the rest of the family this year because we had such a fun fair experience this summer at the Celebration with our cousins in Colorado. So that made this even more of a special treat for Lillie. It was fun to spoil her in grand fair fashion.

Addie turns 5

Addie turned 5 on the 15th of October. Unfortunately for Whit and I, we were out of town. Fortunately for Addie, she was in very good hands and was spoiled rotten while we were gone. She definitely had a more fun day than she would have had with me here. She had a special lunch with her best friend Ellie Kate and then they went to Build a Bear and she came home with not one but two bears. Ellie already has three so she wanted Addie to have two. Such a sweet friend.

On Friday the 19th we were able to have a super fun Halloween Boo-day party for Addie. She invited all her school friends and some church friends. We had a great time.

I think Addie had such a fun birthday week that she will tell me to go out of town again next year.

Muffins for Mittens

Addie quote of the day: Mom, look at my muffins!!

Treck On 2012

There is so much to write about our Treck with the youth and when I get the pictures off of my camera I will write the whole experience.

Treck was amazing. I learned two great lessons from the experience. First, it renewed my faith in the world. My kids are going to be ok. They really can grow up in this crazy world and still be great kids. Second, it strengthened my testimony that the faith of people can bring forth miracles great or small.

4th of July

This year I was in charge of our neighborhood 4th of July party. We had it on the night of the 3rd. I think it went really well, but of course I didn't really get to enjoy it because I was running around making sure everyone else was having a good time. This year the girls decorated their bikes for the bike parade at home so they really got into it. Everyone but Eliza went with an animal theme. Addie was a monkey, Lillie was an alligator, Jaynie was a zebra, and Eliza just wanted to be patriotic. I think she was nervous about doing it different than she has done in the past, like maybe she was breaking a rule or something. I tried to tell her that I made the rules but she didn't care. The best part of the whole night was the fireworks. Whit went to South Carolina to get them and it was like watching a real show but super close up. Penny, however, did not appreciate how close we were, she did not enjoy the show.

On the fourth we just kind of had a lazy day. We went to the gym and then spent the rest of the day at the pool with the Browns. We finished off the evening watching the Lewisville fireworks from our neighborhood.

The Dash

Whit scored four tickets to our local minor league baseball team- The Dash. The tickets included an all you can eat buffet complete with all you can eat Krispy Kreme doughnuts and a purple chocolate fountain. We took the oldest two girls and despite the 99 degree weather, we had a blast.

Mustache Anyone??

Summer Field Trip #2-Hanging Rock

The girls and I had a perfect day today. We packed a lunch and headed up to Hanging Rock State Park. We picnicked and then hiked to a waterfall where there is a pool of water to swim in. The weather was perfect, all the kids were well behaved and happy and we just simply had the best day ever, according to Lillie.

On the way home we passed by the Dairi-O so of course we had to stop and get a little treat.

They were supposed to water the flowers...

Father's Day

Whit is one lucky guy. He will always be surrounded by beautiful women who adore him. Us girls are really the lucky ones. Whit is the perfect dad for all these girls. They definitely came to the right family.

I am so blessed to have Whitney by my side raising all these wonderful girls.

To show our dad how much we love him we combined two of his favorite things, Oreos and popcorn. Followed by his favorite soda, Virgil's Rootbeer.

Summer Field Trip #1-Sci Works

My plan is to take the kids on a field trip once a week this summer. Friday we were able to go on our first one to our local Science center called Sci Works. We haven't been there in a long time and they have a few new additions that I was pleasantly surprised with. The girls had a great time and I was able to spend some real quality time with them. The best part was a room full of these cool flat blocks that you could build with. I am pretty sure Lillie could have spent an entire day in there and never been bored (I think I know what she is getting for her birthday.)

We followed up the trip with chocolate dipped ice cream cones from McDonald's. These brought back some great memories. I remember getting them when I was young. We got ours from Dairy Queen and not to call my Dad (the stake president) out or anything but I am pretty sure we would get them on Sundays on our way to Grandma and Grandpa's house. Wherever and whenever the yumminess I remember is still the same.

Our First Swim Meet

I am not sure I can adequately describe a swim meet here on the blog. All I can say is Holy Cow!! Our first swim meet was probably one of the most stressful things I have been through in a really long time.

The prep work was insane because I had to go to the pool prepared to feed and entertain my entire family for four+ hours. I wish I would have taken a picture of the house when we left. There was flour all over the floor from Jaynie using the flour conatiner as a stool and having the lid collapse on her, there was sugar all over the floor from Penny getting into the sugar container that was left open by Jaynie when making cookies, and there was salsa all over my rug from Addie trying to help clear the dirty dishes and not quite getting the bowl in the sink. All of this happened 15 minutes before we left the house so needless to say we left a mess.

Once we arrived at the pool I was frantically trying to read this insane heat sheet and write all the girls races on their arms with permanent marker (yes I said permanent). All the while trying to explain to the youngest two why we were at the pool but not swimming. Just try to imagine me trying to keep a toddler away from the pool when her older sisters are swimming in a race. Then to top it all off about an hour into the meet it started to thunder. We waited at the pool for over an hour until they decided to reschedule it for the next night.

Lets just say I left the pool feeling pretty defeated and terrified that I had to do it all again tomorrow.

But, despite all the craziness the next night went much more smoothly (I learned a few things from the night before) and it was pretty awesome watching the girls swim their races. They all did so great. I was so proud of each one of them and I can't wait to see how their times improve as the season goes on. I like swimming because although they are part of a team they are really only racing against the clock and as long as they can improve their individual time then they are winning.

A Visit from the Ruberts

We we're lucky enough to have the Ruberts come and visit. Shaunna, Russ, Lindzy, and Kaden drove out the second week of June.

Here is a quick recap of their trip as told by Whitney.

They got here on tuesday night and we had a good dinner and some good chat. We then watched mr. South Fremont and saw kaden in all his glory. That was pretty darn funny. Then next morning we had some breakfast and the ruberts headed to charleston south Carolina and spent wednesday and most of thursday looking at civil war and other early American history stuff. We made sure they left most of their luggage so they'd have I come back. The ruberts had a great time in charleston and got back late. Friday I went to work while everyone got ready then we went and had some bar b que for lunch. Then we went and toured old Salem. Uncle Russ bought the girls ice cream. My girls think Russ is about the coolest uncle ever. The ruberts had just come from Nauvoo and we decided that old Salem was the nauvoo for the Moravians. On the way home we stopped by the Krispy kreme that is near the Krispy Kreme headquarters. Then we headed to the pool for a bit. We finished the night cooking out and having a firework show thanks to Kaden and a stop at the worlds largest fireworks warehouse somewhere on their cross country journey. Saturday we had some swim practice, then headed to the mountains, we went to the old mast general store in Valle Cruisis and had lunch at a nice little park. Russ and I found some great pickled okra which we were pretty fond of. Then we went for a hike off of the blue ridge parkway. We headed home just in time to leave the younger 3 girls with a sitter while the rest of us went and got some pizza from mellow mushroom en route to bowman grey stadium to watch some minor league NASCAR. It was amazing. So hard to describe... The people the tobacco the noise the whole thing was a lot of fun. They had several different classifications of racing, but for the most part is was like a controlled demolition derby with really fast cars. My favorite moment of the night was when the guy behind us yelled 'rubb'n is race'n' as the second place guy nosed the first place guy out of control and into the infield. Well actually my favorite moment was the last race which was a chain race. They had 7 or 8 teams with 2 cars chained together. The front car had an engine but no brakes and the back car had... You guessed it, brakes and no engine. It was pretty much the coolest thing we'd ever seen. Then we went home and woke up and as quick as they came The Ruberts were gone.

I always get pretty homesick when people leave us but I wouldn't trade their visits for anything. Thanks so much Ruberts for making the trip. We love you and miss you already.