Thanksgiving in California!

I decided I better post my few pictures of Thanksgiving before Christmas gets her.
This year for Thanksgiving we went to California to spend it with the Foxcroft Family. I have been in the family for a long time, but this was the first time we have ever gone to California for Thanksgiving! Berta had it at her home with her girls minus Rebecca. We had a great time! We ate lots of good food and enjoyed family time. I am glad we were able to spend it with them!

While we were in California, we did everything from eating on the pier to spending a day in Long beach at the Aquarium and just relaxing on the grass. Rob and I enjoyed time with just the little kids. Kyle and Kailey stayed with rachelle. Kyle had to fly home early and kailey stayed glued to rachelle most of the time. I am happy they are so close!

Kade made this cool indian vest and feather hat at school so I thought I would put them in since he looks so cute. I can remember taking these same pictures of Kyle and Kailey when were his age.





My sister in law Bertas home is beautiful and she and her girls decorated the table beautifully! I didn't take any pictures other than these few of the actual feast. Erica was kind and stood on a chair and took them for us, so he isn't in the pictures. We had a great meal and a great time with each other!

Going Home for October Break!

There is just something about going home to me. We ended up leaving later tuesday evening to come home, so it was dark by the time we started up the mountain. I got pulled over right before Heber and the nice cop gave me a warning. I was so happy that it started me thinking about all the things that I love about going home. The kids were asleep in the back and so my thoughts were many and uninterrupted which I always love. By the time I got to Snowflake and saw the temple lit up on the mountain it made me even more happy.
To me there is nothing better than going home. I love to be able to spend time with my family that I don't get to see that often. I love the quietness of the town. I love that i can take my kids to the movies for $4.00. I also love that I can leave my kids alone at the movies and they are perfectly fine! I love that I can cruise and get a coke with crushed ice from the station any time I want. I love that I drive 35 and feel like it is going fast. I love that I run in to old friends from school. I love arriving at my parents house and the excitement I feel to see them for the first time. I love sleeping at their house, which used to be my grandmas. I still sleep in the same room that I used to sleep in so many years ago. I love that there are lots of pictures of my grandma above the bed and I can sit and look at her and remember all the many things we did together. I miss her so much! I love when I go home that my stresses are minimized and I don't think of anything but love and fun with family. I love to drive by the house we bought there and dream of someday it being finished and me being able to stay summers there! I love to see my kids happy playing with cousins! I know that people think this town is a small rinky town with nothing to offer, but to me it is everything. All my memories are from there. I love that Santa used to fly in to town and then drive down main to give us candy. I love that they used to shut down main street at Halloween time for all the kids to walk down main in their costumes and win prizes for them. I love that they town supports sports and are such fabulous fans. I love that my family hasn't left and I can still go home. I love the blue blue skies and the puffy clouds. I used to spend lots of time at the park when I was younger and lay in the grass and just stare at the clouds. Something my grandma cowley used to spend time doing with me. I could go on and on with my feelings. It really is almost euphoric to me driving over grovers hill! I had a fabulous time the few days that I was there! Another great memory!



The first day of our trip I asked the kids what they wanted to do and they both wanted to go to the skate park. There is a new skate park in town. They especially loved it because everyone else in town was in school and they had it all to themselves! I love that they get to see things they would not normally see in the city like these giant grasshoppers! Kade was fascinated by them. He had never seen such a site. I chuckled that they were both a little afraid of them!
I remember saying to them "Shhh, listen what do you hear?" They said nothing.....I said exactly! I love the quietness of SJ. I miss it! I love when I have time to bring my kids home and show them what small town life is like. Sometimes I think that I am a better mom when I am home, mostly because I can take them and show them things I did as a kid that was fun. I have a hard time in the city since I didn't grow up here I feel like you have to have money to do fun things or if you do things that aren't costly, there are hoards of people there.
Another fun thing I taught my kids on this trip was how to play marbles. I remember playing marbles as a kid at school at the old Coronado building that is no longer there. I would love to watch others play and always wanted to win cool looking marbles. So I bought a few bags and taught them. They loved it! I even convinced them if they did helpful things I would take them and buy them more. Kaden went to work and spent one morning helping my mom transplant plants. He had a good time helping her but reminded me he earned more marbles. We stopped in RV at western drug and lucky me....they had a whole wall full of different colored marbles. JACK POT! So I bought quite a few bags to have them earn at a later time!











On Thursday Julie and I packed up the car and drove to the mountains to find fall leaves. Kaden had an assignment in school that if we went anywhere for fall break that had colorful leaves to bring some back. I thought it would be fun to take a picnic and go make some memories like I had growing up. It was a little early for the color change and so we weren't sure if we should drive to greer or nutrioso. We ended up driving to Nutrioso since my grandma was from there I figured I could teach my kids a little about the area. It was so much fun visiting with julie. I had a blast just spending time with her! We stopped off at some lake that now slips my mind the name of it. But we parked and both had babies in our arms and lunch and headed down to the lake. We saw fish actually jumping out of the lake and thought we were crazy at first. The kids had fun exploring and these are a few pictures of the day.










We took the little kids to Nannie Mcphee 2 at the theater and Julie and I ran over just in time to catch Senior night for jenna. It was a Soccer game I believe between SJ and RV and of course they whopped them. I am amazed that 2 days later we would find out about Spences condition....he looked so great that night!




I couldn't get over how big the twins are now! Last time I saw them they were so little. They are beautiful and such happy little girls! I am proud to say that the few days I was home I can successfully tell them apart! However I think it will take a few more times of spending more time....because now I look at the pictures and wonder! Julie and butch are really lucky what great babies they are!

Lost turtle please help!

Makenna got her turtle Myrtle for her birthday. She loves this turtle. Me being a lover of turtles myself think it is quite the turtle. It is friendly as any turtle I have ever had which is many!, so I have LOVED this turtle as much as she does!

On occasion we take myrtle out in the back yard and let it roam. Well I guess Makenna did this yesterday and then forgot to check on it. It has made a few burrows in our yard, but nothing too deep that we can't see it. Well I got a text yesterday while I was at work informing me they lost the turtle and had been searching all day long and can't find it. I was just sick. I even left work an hour early because I wanted to help before it got too dark. Well we searched and searched and couldn't find myrtle. For some reason she likes the pool area. She will literally pace back and forth along the fence line until she finds a spot where she can slip through. This is the last place that makenna saw it.

So after many prayers and sleeping on it, we all once again started our search. Still no myrtle to be found. My prayer actually was that it wouldn't somehow fall in to the pool and drown. She can float, but I don't think that it could keep its head up all night. So I was thankful I didn't find it in the pool. You can see by the pictures that it is really good at hiding and so I keep hoping it will show up. I feel sick about it and now makenna isn't wanting to leave town until it is found. So for now I am hoping and praying myrtle shows up so we can feel happy and complete over our vacation!

Trying to catch up

I am really behind as usual on my blogging. So here are a few things that we have been up to lately. This is only a few. I hate feeling behind. I really need to set aside some time once a week and make myself blog!

Kaden turned 6! Really where has the time gone. To me he is still my little baby. Wonder if I will ever stop thinking that? We took the carpool gang to bahama bucks and had a cool refreshing treat. Then kailey brought home tons of snowballs and we had a snowball fight. That was a lot of fun for the kids. I think he had a special day. I love him so much!











We have been working on Makenna's new room for quite some time. Kyle moved out and so she got his room. Rob in all his wisdom decided to retexture the walls and put a smooth texture on them. It looks really good but I have had a layer of dust all over my house. What a mess. Rob eventually wants to do the whole house that way. Oh joy! So we have had fun going to goodwill and finding the bed. We repainted it. Picking our her bed spread. I will post more picture of everything we did. But for now here is a picture of her relaxing on her new bed. She loves having her own room. Kade has done quite well being on his own too. I worried at first because he thought he might be scared but nope....sleeps like a baby.


I was happy I was off of school and got to go watch Makenna. The whole 5th grade did this little thing on explorers. They researched the person they were assigned and wrote a paper and memorized it. Then they dressed up and were "statues" that would come alive if you pushed a black button on their desk. Once they were finished they would freeze again. It was really cute. Her explorer was Vicente Pinzon. She looked pretty close to her guy except for I made the black hat a little too tall and it looked like the popes hat. She did awesome! Interesting hearing about so many different explorers. All the kids looked great and did a fabulous job!




Our Saturdays have been consumed with Kaden and his flag football team the Tarantulas. They are undefeated so far so that is awesome. I enjoy watching him trying to figure out what to do. He really wants to tackle and has a hard time not doing that. He likes the contact. He is a good little blocker and I crack up watching him. I think we have 8 more weeks left. I just hope that the weather starts cooling off. It is so hot even so early in the morning. We are all sweaty messes by the time we get home.