Turkey Trip

I'm about two weeks late on this post, but as most people say, better late than never. We had a fabulous trip to Utah for Thanksgiving. We had a great flight with no holiday hassle traveling, no horror stories to speak of. Our friends the Eckersley's made up for our lack of horror stories in their trip to Utah, but those stories are for them to tell! The kids were great on the plane, we each took one, and played with our iPods, colored, and played Bakugans.

We were only in Utah for 4 whole days, 2 travel days, so it was a short trip. We managed to see all of our family and a few friends, some of which we hadn't seen in years! We had Thanksgiving dinner with Chris's mom and uncle's family. It was a delicious meal and great conversation. There were too many highlights to write down, but hopefully pictures will capture some of them.

The day before we left Maci had her 1st grade music recital at the school. She even had a speaking part, her recipe for Mashed Potatoes at a Thanksgiving Feast. She did a great job. We have bits on tape, if I ever figure out how to upload video, maybe I'll do that!!

The Highlight of the travelling part of our trip, the Captain on one of the legs of our journey let the kids sit in his chair, and even pull things and push buttons, set off alarms, all while the plain was off of course :-D But the kids thought it was very cool, especially Gavin! He was in there probably 5 minutes? the Captain was really great about it, the stewardess said he's just a big kid.

I should have taken more pictures! We had plenty of Grandma and Grandpa time on both sides, cousin time, sister time for me, candy making time, and wrestling with Uncle Todd until he's ready to scream time! Although it's never enough time (especially when we miss you all so much), we really enjoyed our trip.

This week we've been busy getting ready for the holiday. I saw a kit to make rice crispie houses instead of gingerbread houses and thought that looked fun and different, so the kids and I gave it a whirl one night while Chris was at school. They loved it. I thought this might be more edible, but after sitting out for a couple days, I'm pretty sure it would break a tooth, and Uncle Don would be very upset at us! Still, the pieces were a little easier to attach on a flat surface instead of a vertical house. I saved the mold so we can make them again!

Chris has finals next week, so he's been studying like crazy and getting projects and papers done. He's looking forward to his month off of school, even though he's planning on working on his thesis a lot during that time. We finalized most of our Christmas shopping tonight, thank goodness, we're not usually this behind! Now to wrap it all and get ready for the big day. We're planning on going to Silver Dollar City tomorrow, they're supposed to have fantastic Christmas shows and lights this time of year. We're going to brave the 30 degree weather (feels like 20, or so the weather man tells me) and keep warm for at least a couple hours while we have some fun!

We found some time to squeeze in some family pics with Joel Jenkins. Thank you for squeezing us in Joel on such short notice!! They turned out so great, I LOVE them!!

All the Trimmin's

We were a little pre-emptive this year and put our tree up tonight! Since we're leaving on Wed. for UT we thought we'd get it done before we left so it would be looking great when we got home. We did the lights on the house yesterday and all the little shelf stuff, and saved the tree for tonight. The kids were excited about it all day, and it was a relatively low stress, low anxiety event for all! which sometimes doesn't happen even though we always want it to. The tree looks great, but going through all our Christmas boxes I've realized I have a lot of stuff I don't use anymore, time to streamline and dejunk!

So we're off for Turkey Day and very excited to see friends and family. Hope all your Thanksgivings are full of friends and family and lots of yummy food!

Nuttin Honey

Soooooooo, haven't posted for a couple weeks. Maci is reading Junie B. Jones Books, Gavin is playing with Bakugans and is obsessed with watching YouTube videos of people putting their Maxus Dragonoids together, Chris is gone 4 days/nights a week at school, I'm up to my neck in craft orders. That sums up our last couple of weeks!

Maybe if I look at what pictures I've taken it'll jog my memory as to what we've been doing. Here's what I've got.

Yup, this one is old news from while my mom was here helping me recover. We've taken no pics the last two weeks! besides of craft projects. Pitiful.

I had a checkup today, all is good. I get to actually start taking Clomid tomorrow! Yipee that we've finally arrived to this point. Our trip to Utah next week makes it a little more difficult to track my progress, but we'll just kind of leave it up to chance this first month I guess, we don't have much other choice at this point. I'm fine with that. They have you doing like 3 ultrasounds a cycle, plotting this, timing that, take a shot for this, check your follicles on this date, it's too many complicated timings! So, for now we'll just see what happens.

We had a funny interesting thing happen, I don't want to read too much into this, but I want to write it down for future reference? I was thinking of baby names the other day, as babies have been on my mind?! and I really like the name Ellie, but want to name her (if it turns out we have a her) something longer so her nickname would be Ellie. I thought Elaine, since that is a family name, which I like but I'm not in love with. . . Eleanor, which is cute too, but again, not in love with it, then thought Elizabeth. My sister Anne's first name is Elizabeth, it's a "family" name, yes, I like Elizabeth and call her Ellie. I didn't talk to anyone about this on that day. I came home, was making the kids dinner. They got talking about little brothers and sisters, mostly because all their friends have baby brothers or sisters right now. Of course Maci wants a girl, Gav wants a brother. So Maci, out of the clear blue, says "I think we should name our baby sister Elizabeth". I have never ONCE talked to her about the name Elizabeth, she doesn't have a friend named that, I don't know that anyone in her class is named that, it was just completely out of the blue! on the same day I had an incling that I liked that name as well. Anyway, maybe there's a little Elizabeth up in heaven waiting for my follicles to get in line!

I've also had a couple twinges that we might have multiples. Of course your risk is upped with Clomid, but not that significantly, I think it's like 5%. So maybe it's just in my head that we might and that's why I've been thinking about it. But I think I'd really be ok with it at this point! We've always said we'd try for 4, and maybe this is my way of getting it easily without going through all this again. Anyway, who knows what will happen, but if we do end up having twins, or heaven knows, triplets?! I think I'm prepared for that possibility and would be grateful for it.

Well, again I know this is all "personal" stuff, but I WANT to remember all this, so I can look back when we have a beautiful baby and say, see, all that was worth it!!


OK, back to what the kiddies are up to. Maci is an artist. She loves to draw. I showed her how to draw something or write something, and then go around and around it in different colors, radiating out. We used to do that when we were kids, with our names, etc. She loves this "technique" and has started doing it on all her pieces. She loves to draw girls with pig tails. She's moved on from the rainbows, those were so last year ;-D She can write in full sentences, she's flying through school and loves every minute of it, although when I picked her up today she was in tears. She said a boy kept putting his hand in front of her face. She asked him to stop, and he just kept on doing it. I'm not sure why this upset her so much, I guess just the fact that she asked him to knock it off and he wouldn't?! Chris told her that sometimes boys do that when they like you, and she said in disgust "He does NOT like me!" like how icky could you get dad, I'm glad she still has that reaction!

Gavin Gavin Gavin. He is my little buddy. He's such a good sport, patient with me and my crazy wood crap I have to do during the day sometimes. He plays the Wii, plays Bakugans by himself, plays cars on the kitchen floor by me, he's just a good sport about it most of the time. When we have to run errands, he has to know each and every store we're going to before we get in the car. He usually chooses to wine about one of the stores, but now that I have my trusty iPod Touch, with lots of fun games on it, the complaining has been less :-D Gavin needs a haircut desperately, before we leave for UT for Turkey Day for sure! His faux hawk is like no other. Gavin is learning a lot, and mostly on his own because heaven knows I have not been doing my motherly job by printing off worksheets and flash cards for him to study and go through. He is a puzzle genius. He's very good with spacial relations. We also won a game basket at the Fall Festival at school last week. It had a lot of great games in them, but our 2 new favorites are Marbles!! and Toss Up. The kids love trying to hit the Marbles, I never would have thought that such a cheap game could entertain them so much, and Toss Up is a blast for the whole family. It's a dice game that is easy enough for Gavin, but entertaining enough for the rest of us. I creamed everybody last time we played :-D but I think Chris let me win. Gavin is my best bud, and I'm trying to soak up this time I have with him before he starts school and before we add another bundle to the mess. His laugh is infectious and his mischevous smile brightens up my day.

We said goodbye to our good friends the Dunakey's last week. They have been SO WONDERFUL to us since the first week we moved here. Tom literally moved our whole house from our truck into the house, by himself, and Chris, and he didn't even know us?! Their girls have been such good friends to our kids, their oldest McKenna, who is 11, would come and watch the kids while I did woodwork in the afternoons, they're just great kids and we're going to miss them so much! They moved to Omaha for a new job :-( Angelita has been one of my closest friends here and it really hurt to let her go! But we hope to keep in touch and will be bunking in their fabulous new house on our way to UT when we go, or maybe just to party for a couple days!

I did not intend for this to be such a long "journal" type entry, but that's what blogs are sometimes! I promise the next one will be filled with snowfall pics from Utah with friends and family for Thanksgiving. We can't wait to get there and soak up the love of Home for a couple days. Until then. . .

That Bewitching NIght

We had a fantastic Halloween Week. We started off with Carving Pumpkins on Thursday night, had Maci's classroom parties on Friday night, then Trick-or-Treating on Sat. We also picked our pumpkins out at the patch at Rutledge Wilson farm, which was really fun as well. Here's the pics, they don't need much explanation! Hope your haunting night was as fun as ours.

Surgery Schmergery

I know I'm behind on Halloween stuff, I'll get that posted today as well. Just thought I'd jot a little line about the cyst situation. My surgery was scheduled for yesterday, and went pretty well. I went in at 7am, they said the Dr. was ahead of schedule and they got me ready pretty quickly. Then I sat on a gurney for about an hour, guess his "ahead of schedule" turned the other direction. Then they gave me my happy juice and the rest is a blur, until waking up in another room feeling totally crappy! I had a slight cough going into this, and they wanted me to cough to get my oxygen levels up, You want me to WHAT?! youch, that really hurt. They wheeled me back in with Chris to wake up the rest of the way. I gotta say, I'm a lot more sore than I thought I would be, they made 3 incisions, all pretty small, but my stomach is feeling the pain. I went home about 7 hrs. after I arrived, drugged up nicely and ready for bed. I pretty much slept the rest of the day/night. This morning I'm feeling pretty good, still not moving too much, and my back hurts from being in one position too much. Thank goodness for my wonderful mom who flew out to help with the kids. She's totally babying me and it's delightful. The kids are having a ball with her, making cinnamon rolls this morning. Thanks mom!!

So the prognosis. When I went in for my pre-op a couple days ago, the Dr. assured me that they would try and save the ovary the cyst was attached to. He said generally this isn't a problem and it should be doable. Well, when he came in to speak with me right before the surgery, he said he'd been thinking about my case all weekend. He said because the cyst had grown so fast, egg sized in about 2 months or so, that he was slightly concerned that it was cancerous. He said if he got in there and the tumor was a solid mass, he'd have to cut it up in little pieces to get it out and get it off the ovary. Then if it was cancer, it would spread and I'd have to have chemo to make sure we got all the pieces. SO, he thought it was in my best interest to just have the whole thing removed. Cancer vs one less ovary. . . . seems like an easy choice, even though it was not what I was expecting or hoping. So they took the ovary. He said my left one would compensate and start ovulating every month, which is good, I didn't know it did that?! He checked out lefty and got it working as well as it can, so in a couple weeks we'll start the Clomid treatments and go from there.

Taking the ovary was my greatest fear going into this. Now that it's happened, I just feel that it's all going to work out ok. Chris gave me several priesthood blessings of health and comfort, and I truly do feel comforted by my Heavenly Father that everything will be ok. He knows our righteous desires to have another baby, and when the time is right, even if it's through adoption, I know that it will happen. It may take a while, years even, but I know that it will happen.

Thanks for all your prayers and thoughts, I have the best friends and family around. We'll keep ya posted! and I promise to get the Halloween pics up :-D

Haunted House

Here's some pics of our Haunted House of the gingerbread variety. We had fun slurping on the frosting and adding the finishing touches. Maci and Gav love every minute of meticulously putting on the candy and adding the windows, door, etc. Turned out pretty cute if I do say so myself!

The last pic is of the kids dressed up for our Trunk or Treat we had tonight at church. We had a great time.





There's a recurring theme here . . . Maci's cheeseball grin!! Still a cute one though :-D


One more, the kids have a thing about climbing on us when we're sitting down, maybe it gets our attention and makes us not ignore what they're saying?!? Anyway, this was the end result on one such occasion.

Gavin turns 4, take 2

So I'm MONTHS behind, but thought I'd jot down what we've been up to the last little while. Gavy's actual birthday on August 30th was great, we opened family presents and had his favorite dinner which I think was meatballs. Thanks to all the grandparents for the great presents. You've all hopefully heard this Thank You in person by now ;-D

I wanted to write down a few of my favorite things about Gavin.
Gavin is such a happy little boy, except in the morning. He needs at least half an hour to get into his groove, but after that, he's usually all smiles and loves to play and help.
He's very into Power Rangers and Bakugan right now.
Even though he's all boy, he still loves to play dress up and My Little Pony with the girls. He also HAS to paint his fingernails while Maci and I are painting ours, he has to be part of the fun. We usually paint them black to make up for painting them at all :-D
Gavin loves playing with his sister. They usually play really well together. They still sleep in the same room together, and I'm anxious to see how they do if/when we separate them any time soon.
Gav has a few fun words that he says that we get a kick out of.
Breakdast
Calapitter
Meed (Need)


I know there's way more of those, I just am having a brain freeze tonight. I'll have to come back and fill them in.
Gavin gives the best, tightest hugs ever. He'll come up and squeeze your guts out and say "I just love you so much" Melts your heart. He loves helping me run errands during the day and is my little helper. He's happy to do this, as long as we can cruise the toy aisle "just to look" while we're out. I love this little guy, and can't believe he's 4!!
Love you Gav!

SO, what else have we been up to? School started at the end of August. Maci has Mrs. Struckhoff and is really liking her and 1st grade so far. She's doing really well in school and is ready way above her 1st grade level. She loves doing her homework each weekend and just loves school in general!
Chris is still loving school and is very busy this fall. He's observing other students doing therapy at the school clinic, The Murney Clinic, one night a week, and has class 2 other nights a week, so 3 days a week he's gone from around 8 till around 9pm. Long days for him!! In January he gets to start seeing clients at the clinic, and he's very excited about that. He's loving school and has enjoyed giving practice IQ and First Interviews this semester for a few of his classes. He's still working part time and teaching the Deacons at church. Busy guy! but loving it all.

I've been busy busy with Super Saturdays this fall. I've done 6 in total I think? A couple in OR, UT, ID, and AZ. It has been a great blessing, but I think I've decided I'm a much better creator than producer, I enjoy the creative process much more than pumping out 60 sets of Spooky letters. But I guess it all comes with having a business. You do whatcha gotta do.

PTA has been very busy, and enjoyable for the most part. We had a successful Open House and had a good turn out, everything went pretty smoothly. Because of some of my health stuff going on I decided I just couldn't keep all my pans on the fire so to speak, so after much thought, I decided I needed to step down from PTA. I let everyone know last week, and they've already had 2 people step up and say they'd fill the position, which is a great relief to me!! So I will help from the sidelines from now on, but am happy to let someone else fill the "president" shoes and take charge. It's been a great learning experience though and if things settle down for me personally in the future I wouldn't be opposed to being on the board again. We'll see ;-D

On the baby front, we were planning on starting the Clomid routine, when they found a large cyst, about the size of an egg, on my right ovary. We waited a month to see if it would shrink, but there was no change. So we found out this week that I'll need to have surgery on it, probably around the 1st of Nov. I can't start any fertility treatments until this is taken care of, so it's kind of a must to get rid of it. It's a same day surgery, so shouldn't be too big a deal, recovery should be a couple days. We're hoping that after this we can really get going on the Clomid and hopefully see some "results" soon. Sorry if this is all too personal for a "blog" but I see this as my little journal, so I wanted to jot down my thoughts and remembrances about all this. I know hopefully when we get a baby here that this will all "seem but a small moment", and we're trying to keep positive about the whole situation. I am so grateful for the 2 beautiful kids that we have and for the most amazing husband that I am blessed with. But we still hope to expand our little family to a little bit larger ;-D

We've been so busy we haven't done too many "fall" things yet, but the weather has definitely cooled down. We hope to drive down to Arkansas sometime in the next couple weeks, we hear the foliage down there is a little more colorful than here. Hopefully we'll still get to enjoy a little bit of our favorite time of year.

I need to take more pictures! Next time. . .

Go Go Power Rangers

I can't believe my baby is 4 years old! Well, tomorrow he will be 4. He's such a little man, adorable and happy most of the time. He's growing up fast and loving every new adventure he gets his hands on! We decided to have a friend party this year, since last year we knew no one and didn't do a big shindig. Gavin invited 4 of his closest friends, 3 of which are girls ;-D His best little friend Emma couldn't make it, but the other 3 did, and with my two that made a party of 5, perfect size. It wasn't too crazy and I think the kids had a fun time. We did a Power Ranger party, Gavin wanted a Bakugan party at the last minute but I didn't know enough about those things to pull it off, so we kept it Power Rangers. I made it pretty easy this year, bought the invitations instead of trying to make adorable handmade ones, bought the cake instead of making it, I just wanted it to be relatively stress free, I have enough stress right now! and I knew Gavin probably didn't care either way.

We decided to do a Power Ranger training session, an idea I found online. We did 5 events, Bad Guy Bowling, Water Balloon Target Practice, Re-Building a City, Kung Fu Practice on the tramp, and then an obstacle course to finish it off. It was really fun and I think the kids enjoyed it. They got a little prize after they finished each one. I made some cool noodle swords for each of them to take home, that we used in some of the events. Then we had cake and opened presents. We decided to give Gav his present from us today, we got him a big boy Spiderman bike. We're going to let him open all the grandparent's presents tomorrow so he'll still have something to open on his bday. He loved his bike and we went to the park tonight and he rode it around quite a bit. He can go much faster than on his big wheel and can keep up with Maci better. Unfortunately for Maci, she left her bike too close to the driveway the other day and I ran over it and broke it. She needs a bigger one anyway, but now she's stuck riding her scooter until we get her a new one. I'm hoping to find a good one at a garage sale or something.

Enjoy the collage, I'm sure there'll be another post tomorrow!

1st Day of 1st Grade

How do I have a 1st grader? Where does the time go?!?! Maci needed no coaxing or bribing to have a bright and shining face for the 1st day of school. She was so excited and counting down the days. She started on the 19th. Her teacher is fabulous and Maci knows a couple of the girls in her class that were in her kindergarten class. She is excited that she gets to play on the "big kid" playground this year, and even has TESTS!

"So what has been your favorite part of school so far"-Mom

"Every Part! I love school" - Maci

There you have it, that's my Maci for ya! Her favorite subject is Art, I have no idea where she gets that from ;-D but she enjoys it all. She is also wanting to eat school lunch a couple times a week. As long as she'll actually eat the food, I'm ok with that. We'll see how that goes. I'm sure she's going to have a terrific year!




We have attempted to get Gavin signed up for Head Start preschool, which would be every day from about 8:30-12:30. It's kind of a need based program, and unfortunately I'm not sure we're needy enough! We are in the $ department, seeing as they don't even count our student loan money as income, but they also go by if you're a single parent, if Gavin has disabilities, which he doesn't, if there's been trouble at home, the list goes on. And we don't have any of those other things (which is a blessing, I know)! So we'll see if some people in front of us on the wait list drop out, but I'm betting that we won't get in this year. Next year he might have a shot, they also go on age and since he's not officially 4 till the 30th, on their charts he's a 3 year old. Another strike against us! Oh well, I'll enjoy my little Gavy sidekick for another year. Even part day preschool here is 100-200$ a month. Crazy!!

I'm also struggling with balancing PTA stuff already. Our President is moving to Houston and 2 of the VPs have balled out already, so I'm next in line for Pres. This would be fine if I had any idea how to be a PTA president. I DON'T!! But it looks like I'll be filling in for now. The principal is super sweet and has done her best to help me get my bearings, but I'm very nervous about how much time it's going to take and having angry parents because I'm not doing something right. I have 3 other great ladies helping me out, but none of us have ever done PTA before. SCARY!! I'm really liking the work we've done so far, I'm just swamped as it is. So it's going to be a very busy year. We may have to scrap some of the small stuff and just try and focus on survival and a couple fund raisers. I'm sure I'll be complaining, I mean journaling, about all my PTA experiences this year ;-D

Hope your first week of school was as eventful as ours was!

8 Years and Counting

Yesterday was our 8th Anniversary! I generally don't get too sappy on the blog, but it IS our anniversary after all. So I'm going to jog down memory lane a bit, more just to have it on record somewhere than for the benefit of those of you who may read this blog.

It's fun to get married in the summer, but we've found that the middle of August is generally a pretty hectic time! The past 8 August 15ths have included such things as 2 Boren Family camping trips, 1 Trip to St. George, 1 trip to Cedar City, and last years most exciting anniversary ever, moving to Springfield MO! Even though it's a busy time of year, I love having one day a year that we can focus on all the happy memories that we've shared together, and the wonderful life we've built for ourselves and our kids.

I've known Chris for almost 13 years now. He has always been the person that could cheer me up when I'm down, be my wall when I'm crumbling, give me a break when I need it, make me laugh more than anyone I know, be the BEST dad to my kids, be a wonderful provider even when he didn't like what he was doing, shows our kids that education is important and sticking in there till the end, be a worthy priesthood holder in our home, and all that other mushy stuff that wives love to say about their husbands. He is my best friend and I can completely be my true self whenever he is around.

Thank you Babe, for always being there for me and for being a TERRIFIC husband! I love you, and hope we have 68 more wonderful August 15ths to celebrate.

(yes I know I'm a day late in posting this ;-D )

Oh What do you do in the Summer TIme?

I've been a horrible blogger this summer. I blame some of it on the fact that I spilled O.J. on our nice camera and had to say goodbye to it, and we haven't had the cash to purchase a new one. Luckily we still had our older, but much larger, camera that works fine. It's just much bigger and not easily put into a purse or pocket to take cute pics everywhere we go. Excuse #2 is that we've been really busy!! With what, I cannot pinpoint, but this summer has just flown by. So here's a miniature version of our last 2 months.

We've been swimming, A LOT! We got a 3 month pass to our local community center that has an indoor pool, the local outdoor one is usually very crowded and has lots of unruly teenagers at it wearing skimpy clothing. So we opted for the much less crowded indoor variety. We've been there LOTS and have definitely gotten our money's worth out of it. The kids also took swimming lessons, which they really enjoyed. They both learned a lot, including jumping off the diving board and swimming to the ladder, even Gavin can do this now without floaties or help! Maci is working on her strokes and is becoming a very good little swimmer.


We had a great 4th of July with some friends, the Eckersley's. Their parents own a cabin down on Table Rock Lake, they were at the time on a mission but are now home. They were gracious enough to let us crash at their pad for a couple days, swimming in the lake, watching movies, and generally bumming around for the 4th. We did some fireworks down on the lake, they have cool ones here that shoot up in the air, the kids really enjoyed that. It was a really fun weekend.


Chris still had a full load at school, and worked 24 hrs. a week. He just finished finals this week and has a couple weeks off before school starts up again. He's doing terrific, and so far has 2 A's, one class he still doesn't have the verdict yet. I'm so proud of how hard he's working, while still holding down a part time job. He's really enjoying school for the most part, and is excited to start practicum this next year and get to observe and speak with clients at the school's clinic they have in Springfield. Keep up the great work babe!

We've been to Silver Dollar City several times this summer. We bought a season pass at the beginning of the year, and have put it to good use. It's nice that every time we go, we know we don't have to do EVERYTHING because we can always come again. I think we'll go quite a bit in the fall when it cools down and gets less crowded. It's open till Jan 1st, so we still have plenty of time to use it. Maci's favorite ride is Thunderation, which is a pretty good knock off of Thunder Mountain at Disney Land. Gavin's favorite is the carnival swings that go up off the ground and then around and around. I personally LOVE that one, (barf) It's a fun little park. Chris and I haven't ventured on any of the big roller coasters yet, I'm not a huge fan of those anyway.


Chris had his 30th Birthday!! We celebrated with dinner and a movie I believe. His birthday was on a Sunday, so we went out on Saturday. We made his favorite dinner on Sunday, Swiss Steak I think? and Peach Cobbler for dessert. He got a new pair of Arnett Sunglasses for Father's Day that kind of counted for birthday too, and a few new t-shirts. He bought a new motorcycle jacket ( a winter jacket I'm told) with money from his mom and my parents. His dad got him a set of videos that he loves about a motorcycle documentary type thing. I know it sounds boring but it's really good actually. It's called the Long Way Down and Long Way Round series, if you like motorcycle trips (and Ewan McGreggor) you'd like these.

The last couple weeks here we've just been squeezing in lots of playing with friends, swimming some more, and getting ready for school to start. Maci starts on the 19th. I'm working on getting Gavin into Head Start here, it would be 5 days a week for 4 hrs. or so. He really misses Maci during the day and I think it'd be good for him. If we qualify (if we're poor enough ;-) I think we'll do it. He's excited about the prospect of getting to go to school too.

On a more personal note, we've also been working on some fertility issues. We've been trying for a while now and with no luck, which wasn't really a suprise if you know my past history, but I was just hoping that I'd get pregnant easily like I had luckily with my other two. Well, no such luck. I've been diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome and will probably need to go on Chlomid. I've decided to wait one more month before we go ahead with the pills, hopefully once we do it won't take too long before we're expecting baby #3. It's been a kind of rough process, it's just no fun to try and find out what's wrong with you, and then even once you know, to process it all and decide what to do from there. Anyway, we feel good about where we're headed and hope it won't take too long.

We're looking forward to a night out for our 8th anniversary on the 15th. I did get a new calling, 2nd Counselor in the Primary. I'm excited for a change and looking forward to working with the other ladies in the Presidency. That's a wrap! of Summer 09.

Posting

I haven't posted for a while, not much going on! We've been doing a lot of swimming, running in the sprinklers, staying in the AC inside, and generally bumming away the summer!! It's HOT here, 105+ with the humidity, and we've been trying to keep cool and keep busy. Pictures will follow in the coming days, hopefully :)
Off to soak in a cold tub. . .

I'm ON Vacation!

So we've been MIA for 3 weeks now, and MAN have we had a ball here in Utah. We've done so many things and seen so many people, we've found that when you don't have a major holiday in the works, i.e. Christmas, you have a lot more "free" time to do fun things! So here's a sampling of what we've done on our vacation to the Beehive State. (This is more for my benefit in the future than for all of you, so if you just look at the pictures, I won't be offended!)

2 Movies-Up and Night at the Museum
Hogle Zoo
Dinosaur Museum
Miniature Golfing
Boondocks
Chuck E Cheese
Going up AF canyon for a cook-out
Oquirrh Mtn. Temple Open House
Went to the Church Office Building and saw Mom and Dad's Office and Temple Square
Had several BBQ's with different groups of friends
Went swimming twice
Thanksgiving Pt. Animal Farm
Went shopping to ALL my favorite stores, I don't think I missed ONE that I had my mind on going to
Ate WAY too much good food
Did not clean, cook, or do much laundry for 3 weeks, Ahhhhhhh
Had a Boren Family Carnival
Got Gavin's hair buzzed by Grandpa
Read books and snuggled
Had lots of fun jumping on the tramp with the sprinklers and sliding on the slip and slide
Spent plenty of quality time with all the cousins
Kids had 3 sleepovers! which meant 3 nights to myself :)
Missed Daddy lots while he was back in MO
Went to the "Wood Park"
Learned how to sew a bag
Bought food storage that you just can't find easily in MO
Watched the rain and thunderstorms for a week straight?! I came here for dry HEAT, not rain?!

Had an overall fabulous time with friends and family, and can't wait to do it all again next summer!!

Thanks to all those who we had a chance to catch up with, we had a GREAT time!!

And we're looking forward to being back in MO with all our friends out there, and getting back to a regular schedule and being productive members of society! :)


Busy Bees

Time flies when you're having fun, or over extended beyond imagine! We've had a little bit of both the last couple weeks. Here's a rundown of the highlights:

• went to a Kindergarten "Celebration" not Graduation! ('It's a ceremony' - 'It's psychotic!')
• went to a PTA meeting with the principal
• watched Maci play in her last soccer game of the season
• babysat several different families of kids several different times
• survived finals week part 2, Chris finished everything with flying colors
• Spent 4 hours at the Dr.'s office trying to get Gavin to poop, 3 enema's, 2 suppositories, lots of patience, and 12 hrs. later at home, POOP!
• Spent another 2 hrs. in the ER last night with Gavin because of breathing problems, croup. He got 2 steroid shots and a breathing treatment, but is doing fine now. He's on prednizone for 5 more days. He gets croup often when he gets a cold, it was just really bad this time!
• Sent out about 15 orders, business picked back up!
• Did a craft night for my ward, 25 ladies participated, it was a success
• Watched a tooth go from loose to dangling in a matter of days, to OUT tonight!
• Did 20 loads of laundry and countless number of dishes
• Did some work for my other "side" job for Chris's boss, data entry stuff at home
• Tried to get the house somewhat scoured before we leave on Thursday for UT! I hate coming home to a dirty house
• Made it through 2 tornado days, none touched down REALLY close to us, but close enough?! and crazy thunder and lightning, sheets of rain.
• Made it through the first real heat of the summer, I think we're in for a rude awakening! Give me some dry heat PLEASE!
• Had a lovely Mother's Day where I got to do whatever I wanted, which was go for a beautiful country drive with my family, and didn't have to teach primary :)

So that's been our last 2 weeks in a nut shell. We're anxiously baby stepping to Thursday when Maci gets out of school and we'll head that day to UT. We'll probably arrive on Friday late, that's the plan. We're excited to see those of you in UT and will miss those of you here in MO!

They got these bears and autographed each others' bears.

PTA Conference

I was asked to be on the PTA committee, more out of no one else signing up than anything else I'm pretty sure, but I said yes (I have a hard time saying no to things, I need Chris to help me work through my issues.) So I'm the VP over Fundraising and Reflections. I have no idea what I'm doing, and no one else on our board has ever done PTA before either, so it should be a fun learning experience for all of us! We went to a conference in Independence this weekend. 3 of them drove up together, but I was scared to go with 3 people I didn't know, so I roped Chris and the kids in to going with me. We left yesterday afternoon, arrived just in time for the kids to go swimming and for me to go to a "rally" where we chanted PTA over and over for 2 hours. Well, not quite, but something like that. I did win a t-shirt in a raffle :)
I went to workshops this morning for about 5 hours, and tried to soak in as much as we could. Chris and the kids went to a great park our friends told us about. They got to ride horses, feed baby goats, and trapse around the park having a great time. I wish I could have joined them, or at least snatched a picture but we forgot the camera on this trip.
They picked me up this afternoon and headed for the Independence Visitor's Center. We hadn't been since Heritage Tours after our Senior Year in HS, and it's been remodeled recently. It was a fun visit and we all learned a little more about the period of time the saints spent in MO. I love the spirit you can feel in all the LDS visitor's centers. There's nothing else like it! We had to get some KC BBQ while we were there, so we went to Arthur Bryan's, one of the best BBQ places around. It was really good, but I kind of felt like I was at Cafe Rio and not knowing the lingo and how to order stuff. Then we headed home.
It was a fun little trip. I was amazed at how many volunteers on the state level there are in PTA. These ladies spend countless hours, probably close to a full time job, helping in every aspect of the PTA for no pay. They simply want to make a difference in MO kids' lives. It was pretty inspiring actually. I really hope to get a Reflections program going in our school, they didn't do it this year and I'm not sure if they've ever done it. We don't have a strong PTA right now at all, so we're hoping to get it going this year and make it fun for all involved. So if you're not a member of your school's PTA, JOIN!! there's people behind the scenes working hard for your kids. (stepped off soapbox now)

3 weeks and counting till we convoy out to UT!!!!

Good books to read as a family

So Maci's getting to the age where I think she'd enjoy reading a book as a family, me reading it aloud to everyone. I've thought about Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, Harry Potter is a little old I think. . . but wanted to know what all you read to your kids? I want short chapters, good story line, easy to understand for a 6 year old. . . you guys got anything in mind?? Comment away!

Lions, Tigers, and Chicks oh my

It's been a busy, fun week. First off was Maci's first Kindergarten Music Performance/Play. It was so cute. All the kindergarten classes sang a couple cute songs, and then did a little play of the Little Red Hen. Maci was one of the baby chicks, she had a couple little singing parts with the other chicks. It was so fun to see her up there singing her heart out. The pics didn't turn out too well, we were too far back. We were about 10 minutes early and ALL the seats were taken already, we ended up standing in the back. She did a fabulous job, as did all her little classmates.




This weekend we relaxed and got some stuff done. Maci had a soccer game, they won again and are undefeated! Then we got some yard work done and got some composte to put in the flower beds. It's free here! We got a lot done and it was a great Saturday.

This week has been busy, and it's started to get hot! It was about 85 today, and it felt it. I think we're in big trouble when it reaches 90-95 with the humidity. It hasn't been too humid yet, but I'm sure it's coming. Maci's school went to the zoo on Wednesday and Gavin and I tagged along. It was really fun. Gavin and I have been to the zoo, but it was Maci's first time. We enjoyed seeing all the animals, there was one giraffe in particular that was a little agressive and out of control! She had a great time with her friends and teacher, and we had fun seeing it with her. Gavin loves to be in the big kid mix, and Maci was really good about including him. Today i did library time at the school, and tomorrow I'm helping at a PTA dance in the evening, I'm feeling very involved in the school this week! Gearing me up for PTA next year.






Yesterday a friend also helped me make some freezer strawberry jam. It turned out really good! It was fun to feel a little domestic, something I'm trying to do more of. Thanks Maria for letting me mess up your kitchen! The kids had a ball and the product was fabulous.

I've done some orders this week too, I've been trying to balance crafts with every day life here for a while since I've gotten busier. I decided to only make and finish orders on Mondays and Tuesdays, and ship out Wednesdays. So any orders I get during the week, I wait till Monday to start in on them. It's been really good, and helped me balance work and life. Then I can put away my craft stuff during the rest of the week so it's not out all the time. I've also had a few 9 year old girls from the ward come over on Monday afternoons to play with the kids while I cut stuff out. That's been a great help too. I think I'm finally getting a schedule down that's working for all of us!

Chris is winding up his 2nd semester, and doing really great. He had a big presentation this week that went really well, and finals are coming up in a couple weeks. I'm so proud of how dedicated he's been to his school work and not procrastinating anything. He's totally on top of it all and really enjoying every moment of it. Work's going well for him too, we're really lucky to have this job that's so flexible and that he enjoys relatively well. We're so happy to be where we are and are so blessed in every part of our lives.

We're excited to be coming to UT around the 22nd of May. Hopefully we'll get to see lots of friends and family while we're there! Sorry this was such a long post, it was more for me than for all of you!

Oh last thing, YES we did get Gavin to cut his hair!! He just said one night, after the 100th time we asked him if it was ok, that sure, if he could watch whatever show he wanted to, we could cut his hair. So the next morning, we did it, and he was fine. Yeah!! It looks really cute. I love to rub his little head.