Hello, World! I'm Baaaaaack!

It has been almost 2 years since my last blog post.  I kind of got bored with my blog for a while there.  I keep thinking, "Oh, this would make a great blog post."  But then I never write about it... So, I am going to write about what is going on in my life right now.  You're welcome. :)

The boys left less than a week ago to go visit their mom for the summer.  I miss them already.  Yes, I miss those two stinky teenage boys.  They make me laugh and see things in ways I never would normally see things.

While I was in SLC to take them to the airport, the day before their departure, I was able to visit with some extended family I don't get to see that often.  It was an absolutely awesome evening.  I wish we all lived closer but thus is life.  I took some fun photos of the get together but I haven't gone through them yet.  But all should beware... I am sure I got some awesome not-so-flattering photos of people eating!  You will have to check those out on Facebook.

Today is the last day of this round of FGI8.  FGI8 stands for Feel Great In 8.  It is an 8 week program where you eat healthy foods, do acts of kindness, and lots of self improving.  This was my 4th round (I believe) and even though I have not lost as much weight as I would like, I am still on the better side of the scale than I was a year ago.  At my largest, I weighed 183 pounds.  That may not sound like a lot to some, but to my small 5'3" frame, it is!  Currently, I weigh 167 pounds.  I am trying so hard to get to that 163 mark, just to have lost 20 pounds total.  I am a work in progress, so it is ok. :)  My husband has been doing fabulously though.  Why is it that men lose weight faster than women? It just isn't fair! I blame Eve. Ok, so it isn't Eve's fault, but it just isn't right that men lose weight quicker.  Although I am green with envy, I am proud of my awesome husband's weight loss journey.  He started one round after I started.  All in all, in one year, he has lost 51 pounds!!!! That is a small child!  That is a sack of flour from Costco!  (Yes, I use Costco items as gauges of measurements.)  I am so happy that he is eating healthier and been able to get off of insulin! That is a HUGE bonus!!!  No insulin means his body is healing itself!  (Look away..... *awkward happy dancing*)

Another thing going on right now that makes me happy are my two girls.  They have been doing great this summer with not uttering the words that every mother dreads hearing 15 minutes after school gets out, "I'm bored!!"  They have been OUTSIDE and UNPLUGGED most days!!  I love that more than they probably love hanging out with their friends and such.  Oh, and another HUGE thing that happened this summer, Rebekah FINALLY learned how to ride a bike!!!  Yes, she is 14 years old. Yes, she just learned how to ride a bike.  And yes, I couldn't be prouder.  I wish I could take the credit for nagging nudging her in the right direction to learn, but it was her friends.  Thank heavens for great friends!!!

Tomorrow I get my permanent filling for the redoing of the root canal gone wrong, taking a left turn at hell and staying there to vacation for a month.  I will have to blog about that another time.  I am just hoping all goes well.

Rebekah leaves for the Trek on Wednesday.  I am slightly worried that she will have a difficult time, but part of me hopes she has a slightly difficult time.  Now before you think I am a nut job (which is also possible), I just want her to experience the joys/pains of the trek.  I sewed her an awesome pioneer apron without a pattern.  That's right, I rock! :)

Right now, Bill is making me breakfast and I am so excited to see what he creates!  Then it is off to church to be spiritually fed.  I love going to church.  I look forward every week to getting away from the regular hubbub of daily life and feast on spiritual things.  Sure, I need to feast every day, but let's face it, I am not there yet.  I will be, one day.  I am just happy when I read my scriptures every night for a few minutes.  Which is leaps and bounds better than I was doing a year ago, where I would read maybe once a month.  It is all in the baby steps. Next baby step: toilet training! Wait, that isn't right...

Have a happy Sabbath day!

Family Star of the Day!!

This morning, I awoke to the alarm, turned it off and promptly fell back asleep.  Every Sunday, I am the first person up, I get the rest of the family up and we all get ready for church.  Well, we have the 9 AM slot this year and since I tend to stay up late on Saturdays, I have a hard time getting up Sunday mornings - which explains why I didn't stay awake after my alarm went off.

That brings me to 9:30.... I get a knock on my bedroom door.  I can always tell which kid it is by their knock.  It was family star of the day!!

Which was.............Lily.  She asked me why we weren't going to church.... and she was already all dressed and had been waiting on the couch since 8:40.  She must have been watching TV and got distracted (she is *my* daughter, after all) before she realized I wasn't up.

The cute little thing was sad we were going to miss church because it was Fast Sunday and she was looking forward to bearing her testimony (she is our only kid who LOVES to bear her testimony).  I told her that I was going to also and now we wouldn't get that chance.  So I had her climb into bed with Bill and I while I decided to snuggle her and I bore her my testimony.

So even though we missed church today, it ended up being a great day.  Yes, it was fast Sunday, but I made the family a huge breakfast.  We all sat around the TV, ate breakfast, and watched the TV show "Bones."  We never let the kids play video games on Sundays but we decided to forgo that rule just for today but on one condition: they had to play a game together.  They had a lot of fun.

Later we played "Don't Eat Pete" and then watched some more TV.  It was a very lazy day but very needed.  And before bedtime, we sat the kids down and had a great discussion about how we can be a stronger family.  I told the kids that Lily was the family star of the day.  She smiled.  She has been going through so much stuff lately and needed that recognition. :)

My 33rd Birthday

Last Friday I turned 33.  I am older than the age I still picture my Aunt Marianne being from when I was a child.  Why is it that when you get older, people you know that you don't see day-to-day stay the same age?  Aunt Marianne is now in her 50's but she will always be in her 30's to me. :)

Aunt Marianne's daughter, Sarah, one of my most favorite people on the planet, brought her family down here to Cedar to spend time with my family.  She made me this adorable cake:

Why yes, it is on Tupperware.  :)  I love me some Tupperware.  This is actually a relatively small cake.  Except the height.  It was 3 layers!  Last month when I was visiting family in SLC, Sarah and I talked about possibly making a smaller cake for me to eat like I was turning one but I couldn't use my hands to eat it.  Thus, the cake you see here.

She is finding enough spots for 33 candles.  Yup, she is awesome.

Flaming birthday cake!  Seriously, this thing was HOT!  Just check out my face in the next picture!!

I really should have put my hair back before this point, but luckily, no hairs were harmed in the extinguishing of this cake.

 That flame ball cake was so warm that it started to melt the frosting.  I am just testing it out first; no use in burning my taste buds!

 After my tongue gave me the all clear, I tackled that cake!

 Mmmmm, yummy carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and what appears to look like a snotsicle.  Rest assured, it is only frosting!

 I am having a hard time eating that cake.... I think I bit of more than I can chew! (pun intended!)

Working on the side.... I LOVE cream cheese frosting!!

 I wish I would have had a picture of the moment my head was SHOVED into the cake by Gabe and Nate, but Gabe was the photographer as well, and he knows how my camera is like my 5th child, so he opted to just shove my head and forgo the picture.  But who cares? Check out my face! AH!  If you really want to see the video of my head getting shoved:

 I could seriously not breath!  After all was said and done, I was cleaning out my EYES as well!!  Bet you didn't know that eyes can eat cake, too!

This is my only revenge: SEE FOOD!!

 

 This is the cake for everyone else.  Sarah did a GREAT job getting all those sprinkles on only the sides of the cake.  It was DELISH!  (so was my cake, considering my nose and eyes were eating it, too.)

We spent Saturday watching General Conference together. We had a huge breakfast of french toast (two different kinds, cuz I am awesome that way), chocolate chip pancakes, sausage, homemade hashbrowns, scrambled eggs, and orange juice.

 

During conference, we played conference bingo, doodled, ate, and pretty much had a blast.  Can I just say how much I LOVE having an HDTV??  It was like the Prophet and General Authorities were IN my house talking just to our family!!

While the boys men went to the Priesthood session, Sarah and I played the Wii together.  After every Priesthood session, the guys go out for ice cream after. Every family must have the same ritual because Bill says that all the ice cream joints in town are packed like a fat kid in a pair of stretchy pants three sizes too small.  Ok, Bill never described it that way, but that is how I imagine it.  So they went Cedar Nut and Candy because they have milkshakes there as well.  They also sell Anderson Dairy ice cream by the half-gallon.  It only cost $3.50 a half gallon!  They brought us some so us ladies (and little Christian) didn't feel left out.  They got us two kinds:  Pistachio Almond and Cookies & Cream.  Ohhhhh, it is sooooo creamy.  So creamy and tasty that right now as I type, I started to salivate.  Makailah (who is 5) wanted some green ice cream (the Pistachio kind) and so we gave her some.  A few moments after tasting it, she tells her mom, "I don't like this ice cream.  It tastes like, um..... butt."  It is a good thing I used the bathroom earlier or I surely would have had an accident!

That night, before we ate the ice cream, Gabe, with the help of Nate and Justin, made some hot wings! They were killer!  I don't have any pictures of it because no one wants to see ANY of us chowing down on chicken wings.  You may think you do, but trust me, you don't.  It was like a murder scene with a side of bleu cheese.

 

We watched X-Files whilst licking our Frank Red's Hot fingers.  Then us adults busted out our awesome Wii Bowling moves.  I am proud to say that I dominated and annihilated the whole bunch.  I feel it is God's way of making me feel better about the fact that it is always the opposite when we bowl at the bowling alley; it is a good day when I bowl in real life anything over 99 - even with bumpers!

Sunday morning, I made Cream of Wheat and banana muffins.  Conference was extremely good.  Both sessions were very filling to my soul.  Between the sessions, we played "Don't Eat Pete!" that Bill's mom made for Nate when he was a little boy.  

 

 "Hmmmm, which one should I choose?"

 The look on Makailah's face makes me giggle.  She just picked up Pete and we all loudly whispered (didn't want to make her cry by the yelling), "Don't eat Pete!!"  And she wasn't sure what to do, so in a panic, she ate Pete!!  Our hearts go out the the surviving members of Pete's family.

 Gabe deciding which one to eat, hoping it isn't Pete.

 After a few choices, he just picked up the whole sheet and dumped them in to his mouth.

 However, the Pete in this game was not going to give up, so it stuck behind.  (Look close at the pumpkin face - click on picture if you need to - you will see a yellow Pete.)

 While I was waiting in the other room for them to reset the board and choose a new Pete, I decided to go all out.  I am one sexy mama!

 Before I decided to take on the game, I thought Justin was just looking like he really needed a kiss from my REALLY DARK lipstick.  His eyes said yes, but his arms said no.

 

 I got his forehead, after much wrestling, then went in for the kill: his stomach!

 He wiped most of the kiss left over his right eyebrow, but this time, his eyes are not saying anything nice at all!!  Also, I would just like to apologize to all you who are checking out my messy house.  What do you expect when you have one room emptied into other rooms in the house (I am painting a room) and then you add two younger kids into the mix??  Not to mention the older kids that I truly think were messier than normal because they were hoping I wouldn't notice and blame it on the younger ones..... who knows. But, like I mentioned earlier, I love Tupperware, thus the cool Thatsa Bowl!!  Then you have a smattering of papers, a cup, a box to mail my cousin Summer a care package, play dishes, white board markers, and many other fun items.... I know, you are totally jealous, you wish your house was this messy right now.

 I am not sure if this is Pete or one of his many loved ones.  But it sure was tasty!!

 Christian wanted a turn.

 I think his face says it all.

 

 

 

Now time for some male bonding.....

 

 Dontcha just feel the love between Gabe and Justin??

 What do you get when you mix two supposedly grown up men and a fifteen year old pubescent boy??  An atomic wedgie!!!

 They really went in for the kill!!

You know the phrase, "there are no words"?  Well, that doesn't apply here, I get, "there are SO many words."  The first word that comes to mind is effeminate.  Not only does it look like Gabe is whispering sweet nothings into Bill's ear, Bill is wearing his oh-so-"manly" Strawberry Shortcake band-aid.  All the while, you can see poor Nate writhing in the background from that fallout after that atomic wedgie.

 

During this wartime of atomic wedgies and gender confusion, Makailah and Lily played dress up.  (I am so glad Gabe and Bill did not play dress up.)

 She wanted to wear the same thing I was earlier.  I think she looks a million times better than me.

 Here we have Lily in a costume from 2 or 3 Halloweens ago!  And we explained that just because she can still fit it, it doesn't mean she should wear it.  Now if only some people out there in the world would just learn that lesson, all of our eyes could be spared... but then again, there wouldn't be much on that website: People of Walmart. 

 There we go, this is what it is supposed to look like on a little girl.  Plus Makailah had to add the pom poms.  No matter how some people like it or not, some little girls are just going to be extra girly.

 And I shall call her, "Lilliana Jones!"

Lily wanted to show off her weird feet!

Aw, for cute!  Christian really likes Bill.

After we put the kids to bed on Sunday night, we did something that the kids would freak out if they knew what we did..... we played the Wii on Sunday!! We NEVER play video games on Sunday, but we did anyway.  We played Raving Rabbids TV Party.  I LOVE any Raving Rabbid's game and I was laughing so hard that I started coughing.  And as I mentioned before in this entry (and here) I have a problem when it comes to the dangerous mixture of laughing and bladder control.  When you throw coughing (or throwing up or sneezing) into the mix, you better run for cover or at least for some galoshes.  Thankfully, disaster was averted since I run fast.

The next day, we all went out to eat while the kids were in school.  Being an adult has many drawbacks, but there are some fun perks!

I had a fantastic birthday weekend.  Thank you Sarah and Gabe for coming to visit!!

Lily's Baptism

I am overdue on posting pictures about Lily's baptism from over a month ago....


Lily in her baptism dress

Silly Lily

She is wearing a baptism dress that Grandma Pearcy got her. :-)

Bill and Lily

Bill, Lily and me

Aunt Holly, Grandpa Pearcy, Lily, and Bill

Grandpa and Grandma Shatzer and Lily

Justin, Grandpa and Grandma Shatzer, Lily, Rebekah, and Nate

Grandpa and Grandma Shatzer with all their grandkids. Justin, Liam, Lily, Evan, Rebekah, and Nate

Aunt Holly with Lily and Rebekah

Our family :-)

Billy and Lily

Sillies

Grandpa and Grandma Pearcy giving Lily white roses from Adam.

Lily and her new scriptures

Lily's baptism was a wonderful day. We all felt the spirit very strongly and know that Adam was there in spirit with us to celebrate Lily's decision to become a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.