Clean up Clean up....

This is our playroom. This is actually looking pretty good compared to some days. Every week the kids are supposed to clean it. They do. It always looks cleaned up... until I go look in the bins where I find food, cups, garbage, and broken toys. Nice.So I decided that it was time to fix my problem. I wanted to get things in order. I always procrastinate cleaning the playroom because it's quite a feat to go thru everything. By the end I'm always grumpy and mad.

Not this time. Noah actually helped me for a little while. I went thru things and tossed things out. Abby was so upset that we had to go put her to bed. No matter what it was she wanted to keep that toy, even if it was broken.

These are some of the bags that got thrown away. There were more. Scary I know. I should have carefully gone thru the toys and donated some, but I felt since I paid for a lot of them it was my money that I was tossing in the garbage. Everything else was broken so I didn't feel bad.
Drum Roll Please!!!!........

TA DA!!!!

Isn't it beautiful? You know it is.

It is heavenly now. I can't believe how much better I feel knowing that all that clutter is gone. There is still lots of toys but now everything is labeled and most of my kids can read. That is Sydney sitting in one of the chairs. I'm not sure if she knows what to do. Oh well she'll figure it out. At least now she can find what she is looking for.

Mother's Day!

Now that it is almost Father's Day, I'll talk a little about Mother's Day. Nothing like trying to get caught up...right?

So this year for Mom's day my wonderful family let me sleep in, made me breakfast in bed, let me have a nice long soak in the tub, sung to me at church (of course with all the other kids), told me I could take a nap while they fixed dinner, and told me not to worry about the dishes. That totally rocks!

I got some beautiful cards made by my beautiful children!

Oh yeah and this......

See how it fits perfectly between my bedroom windows. See also how nice and close it is to my bedroom door. AWESOME!!!!

I'm not the only one who thinks so either....

Thanks to my wonderful family for such a wonderful day....And thanks to my awesome husband who always goes above and beyond for me. I love you honey. I love my kiddos too.

We are REDNECKS!!

The boys have been letting their hair grow out for quite awhile. Grandma and Grandpa have been threatening to get it cut, but we have just been waiting for the right time.

The right time? The last week of school. We promised the boys they could cut their hair anyway they wanted for the last week of school...

and here they are...

Does it get any more redneck than this? I suppose if we had added a rat tail and a wife beater tank we would totally be rocking the look.

I still think they are pretty cute, they were also forced to shave off the mohawks before church. They still had a lot of fun.

A trip back to April! Happy Birthday

April 30th 2008. What a great and wonderful day.

What happened that day?

Abigail Laurel Hannant was born!

What a little doll she was. She was beautiful and alert, and we had no idea what we were going to name her. I spent the whole first night snuggling her and talking to her to see if she would tell me who she was.... The names we liked were Abigail and Laurel. We just weren't sure which way they should go. So after the long night she told me her name. And it rings true today that she is definitely an Abby, Aba, Abigail.

I am just now getting to posting about her big 3 year old birthday. I finally found the cord to the camera! Yay me.

Abby shares this special day with her Aunt Jenny. Thanks Jenny for sharing your birthday. Of course now she always has somewhere to go for cake!!

This year Abby wanted a kitchen and a Dora cake.... Guess what she got?Here she is just about to blow out those big candles. And below it's time to start opening presents. Everyone was excited about that.


Noah decided to give Abby one of his favorite stuffed animals. Honey Bear. As you can tell Abby loves her. Abby also got many things to put in her kitchen. She was excited.


We had cousins come over to celebrate and play dress up and have cake. It was lots of fun. I wish I had a picture of Abby and her Aunt Jenny but sadly I don't. I do have a picture of Addie and she is part Jenny so that will have to do.

I'm not sure when she became such a big girl and our fashionista, but our lives wouldn't be complete with out her. She may be little, but she is very big on personality and love.

June? What happened to May?

Ok I have been really behind. I still haven't posted about things that happened in April. Ok the last day of April but still....

I am having computer issues again. My wonderful pink laptop, came back to life briefly and then decided to die again. It wouldn't be so bad except I have pictures on there I want to use. Also my computer has a card reader. This one does not. I can't find my external card reader so it is making it very difficult to get the pictures off the camera.

Why this is such a challenge for me I don't know, but I guess there are worse things. I just wanted you to know why my blog is void of pictures. Soon I will figure it all out or else go to the store and buy another card reader. I mean really.....So that is why April and some of May posts are missing....and when did it become June? Am I really that far behind? Guess I've been a little distracted...

No Pictures?

Dave and I just got back from a trip to Florida! It was such a short trip. I wish it had been longer.

Have you ever heard of Destin Florida? I hadn't. Not until we were told that is where Dave's meeting was going to be. Then we got our flight itinerary. Now I know why I haven't heard of it. It's not easy to get there.

We had to leave Boise on a 6:25 am flight. Not too bad right? Right - if we were going in the right direction. We flew to Oregon. Which would have been great if the Oregon coast were our destination. So we went a negative 1/8 in direction. That's according to the Jody law of travel. ( for those of you who don't know me well, I'm not a good flyer. I have anxiety, not as bad as boats but it's still there.)

After we arrived in my hometown of Portland and deja vued our way thru the airport, we caught our flight to Dallas. Well that was good, and at least in the right direction. Guess where we flew? Yep right back over Boise. Makes sense. But at least we were 3/4 of the way there now.

So after eating some delicious Southern Green beans at a BBQ place in the airport, we caught our flight to Elign airforce base/fort Walton. That was the longest taxi on a runway I have ever been on. It took about a half hour. But it was cool to see all the fighter jets and everything.

We got our little gutless wonder of a rental car and headed toward Destin. The hotel was nice and we looked out at the beautiful water and beaches. I ordered room service and finally ate my dinner about 10:00 pm. Long day for a wary traveler like me. I slept like a rock. I'm sure the 3 dramamine's I took helped.

So the first day Dave had his 4 hours meeting and I slept in, did some yoga, took a nice leisurely bath. Then we put our swim suits on and headed for the beach. Can I say AMAZING! I have never felt sand like that in my life. It was seriously like powdered sugar. It was great. I kept digging my toes in the sand, so soft. Anyway we played in the water, laid under an umbrella and had an ice cream. Then headed up to get ready to go to dinner.

We had some delicious food at a place called Bud and Ally's. Turns out Bud is a cat. Good to know. Still didn't get us seated any faster. But the food was tasty and company was great.

Then we went back and watched a movie and crashed again.

Next morning (Saturday) we went golfing. It was fun, but I was already sweating before I reached the course. I forgot about the humidity down south. Good thing I hadn't showered yet. EWWWW! I know. So we had a lovely round of 18. The course was beautiful. Then lunch and back to the beach. The waves were pretty big so Dave went boogie boarding and body surfing while I hung with the other ladies. We did get approached by some college guys to see if we wanted some Kahluah. I don't know how to spell it. We all happened to be LDS so we turned him down. He seemed a little shocked. But it was a little flattering anyway.

Back to the room for a nap and got cleaned up and then went to a steak and lobster dinner. It was yummy. I so overate the whole time I was there. Means it was a good trip.

We got up the next day, did a work out, packed, got breakfast and headed out the door. We went to the biggest factory outlet mall in the US. It was giant. Any store and every store was there I think. I got some T shirts and we headed out to the little AFB/Airport. About 15 minutes away we realized we weren't seeing any gas stations and had to fill up the car to return it so we turned around and headed back the other direction.

We fill up at this little station and while there find out that you can't buy beer until 1:00 pm but the next town you could buy it anytime. So some guy was having to wait 10 minutes for his beer. We also saw they had adult films for sale at the gas station. There were also bongs for sale too. We were told the films and such were educational. Interesting and good to know. :)

So we made it to the airport and got all checked in. I should have known the travel was going to be iffy, because our first flight was 7 minutes late leaving. Yep 7 minutes. Isn't that just a random amount of time? Taking off and flying above the coast line was awesome. The water was so blue and the sand white. It was pretty spectacular. That flight was ok. A few bumps but it was a short 43 minutes. So we were good.

Here's where the drama begins. After we got some food and sat down at the gate, they had the weather playing on the TV. There were severe storms from Texas to Minnesota, or Minnesota to Texas however you want to look at it. This is bad news for nervous fliers like me. Of course I start freaking out. Silently of course. I was the picture of calm on the outside. Good for me.

We got on the plane and then it happened. That's right. The delay. The continuous delay for about an hour and a half. They even started the inflight movie. Well we only had an hour layover in Salt Lake so we were starting to get a little stressed.

The reason for the delay? They kept changing our route due to the storms. So while we waited we thought about our options. If we missed our connection the next flight to boise was the next night. Or at least that's what the web site was telling us. Then we realized we had to be home. Paul and Jenny were watching our kids, and Paul had a busy day just like Dave and the kids had school. So Dave started looking up rental cars. Really not looking forward to a 5 hour drive.

Finally they got us underway on the original route and we got in the air. Not the best flight but definitely not as bad as I was expecting. The first hour and a half the flight attendants didn't even get up, we ended up having to go a little bit thru one of the storms, but still not too bad. They played another movie since we watched the one on the ground. Kept us occupied.

Dave went and talked to the flight attendants about our predicament and when we were close to Salt Lake they found someone to switch seats with us. We were near the back of the plane and the really nice people who gave up their seats were next to the door. So as we hit another storm in Salt Lake and tried to navigate up the aisle with our bags, I have a really deep admiration for flight attendants and their sense of balance. Anyway we landed and got to the gate at 9:30. our flight was supposed to leave at 9:35.

I have never run so fast in flip flops. I will tell you luck was on our side because our other plane was at the gate next door. So we ran from the one and on to the other as they shut the doors a couple of minutes behind us. Turns out they were a little late getting in too. Yay!! Never thought I'd be happy about a plane taking off late.

We made it home. Paul and Jenny got to go to their home. I slept in my own bed and didn't have to drive 5 hours. My sweet kids were sleeping sound. I kissed them all. I really appreciate the help and kindness the flight attendants gave us.

When we got home, I realized we took 2 camera's and didn't take one single picture. WHAT THE???

Oh well at least I can picture it all in my head! It's too bad you can't see it too.

A little bit of random

Ok this post contains pictures that should have been in other posts but I am too lazy to go back thru and find where they belong. Of course the first ones I don't think have a post yet so.....
This is Easter morning. The Easter Bunny had such great plans for Easter all of which didn't happen so the night before the Bunny was hopping. The Bunny still did a great job and all the kids ended up with some Marshmellow candies and a big chocolate bunny. Yummmmm! The rest of the goods were things to play with. Dolls and books and the boys got model airplanes to build. Jump ropes to work off the chocolate and candy filled eggs from the egg hunt. All in all it was a good Easter in the material holiday. Next year the Easter Bunny is going to bake some very cool cookies that tell the story of Christ's resurrection and the true reason for Easter.

This is from our spring break trip to Oregon. The kids went jumping at Sky High! They all had a great time. I thought they were awesome and would have loved it if the place had circulation of air going because to be honest it smelled like sweaty socks.

Little Abby trying out the trampolines. You can see Sydney just jumping off the picture.

Our nephew Tate. He was awesome. This is an action shot just in case you think it's shotty camera work. See the air under his feet. Again I say Awesome!!

Here is Sydney again bouncing off to somewhere. She had a really great time and then after we left was sick for days. It was sad but she was a trooper.

Even baby Avery was able to have some fun. She is messing with Uncle Dave and laughing.

I have decided to try my hand at sewing. Not anything big just some baby blankets. Don't think I'm too great. The fabric was already picked out and put together so I didn't have to match anything. I did pick the backing and cut and sew it all together. Not too bad for not knowing what I'm doing.

I took this photo of a storm heading our way. I thought the contrast of the sky against the white of the trees was cool. It looks cold too. I just liked it.

My princess. Are girls born knowing how to pose like this? I think we are in for some trouble.

I posted about kids playing with toys that aren't toys but are more fun sometimes. This is the cup castle Noah built. I think it's pretty good.

So this is my catch up post. I still need to get the pics of Abby's birthday downloaded and then I might actually be caught up. Oh I lied there is still Mother's day, and our trip to Florida. That one hasn't happened yet, but will have by the time I post again.