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. . .