Sunday, August 10, 2008

The 4th of July!

Alright! We're finally back to updating our family history. While we were in Albuquerque, Grandma, Grandpa, Nathan, and Lisa came to visit us. Of course, they first thing they did when they got there was fight for who got the best seat on the couch...
But then we started to play dollys and Wii. Finally, Katie got us out the door to the waterpark. Now it is actually not any hotter in Albuquerque than it gets here, but there are water parks EVERYWHERE. Aside from frequenting the one two blocks from our house it seems we went to try a different one every other week. This one happens to be in an area known as Coors, and it was pretty nice. It had full sized water slides and indoor and out door areas. Same price as Heritage Park here in Provo, but about 3 times as big.
One of the teenage female lifeguards caught a little glimpse of Nathan here lounging by the pool and decided she better jump him before any other girls did. She blew her whistle at him and told him he was in trouble. He asked, "What did I do?". "Nothing," she replied, "but do you want to do something tonight?" She pulled him aside again as we were leaving to give him her phone number. While the pierced navel was definitely on Nathan's list of what to look for in a girl, she just wasn't cute enough to get a call back in the end. On another note, Grandma managed to walk through the mens dressing room 3 times while attempting to leave the facility. Despite the effort she didn't get one phone number!
Back at the house the kids practiced their aim while waiting for it to get dark enough for fireworks.Despite original plans to go get shoved around a huge crowd at the Balloon Grounds to watch fireworks, we decided to obtain our own stock and set the off at the park by our house. All in all, we had a great 4th of July.


Friday, August 1, 2008

Ok, one quick story!

Yesterday (or maybe it was the day before that) I was playing spider on the computer, holding Andrew, talking on the phone, and having Kallie make me into a princess by doing my hair. I admit I was a bit distracted when Kallie told me she would be right back. I swear I didn't even hear her come back into the room...I just heard the sound of scissors cutting.....MY HAIR! Yep, she did it.....AGAIN! A month or so ago so gave herself and amazing princess hair cut by cutting her hair into adorable layers (you know the kind that are about a INCH long here and there...it is all the rage these days). Well now I am blessed to have a princess hair cut of my very own. Aren't I a lucky mommy?!?!

My question is how in the world did she find the scissors again? I haven't even been able to find them since we got back from New Mexico!

We're still kickin'!


I know it has been a long time since we have posted anything, but I wanted you to know we are still alive and kickin over here! It has been such a crazy summer with moving to New Mexico, interships, moving back to Utah, losing Dandy, family reunions, trip to Yellowstone, BBQs, cousins playing, grandparents to visit, waterparks to attend, and top it all off with 3 sick kids (just got back from Urgent Care with Ben and his lovely ear infection) and 2 sick parents! We have a ton of things to write about, but until we get back up to speed here are some cute pictures to tie you over till then!






Friday, July 11, 2008

She's HOME!!!!

I am so happy!

I am ecstatic!

I am just jumping out of my skin excited!

DANDY IS HOME!!!

Yes!!

So here is the story.

July 4th Dandy gets spooked by the fireworks and digs out of our yard. Kimberly (the gal who is staying at the house and watching the dogs) comes home around 10-11pm and sees Apollo in the front yard, but no Dandy. We get the call Saturday that she was missing. I misunderstood when Chris told me she was missing and thought she had just been gone for the day (Saturday) so I wasn't too worried thinking she would come back or one of our wonderful neighbors or friends would recognize her and just put her in the yard for us. Anyways - it turns out a guy found her about 10 blocks from our house and thought it would be fun to take her for a ride...so he took her for a ride up to his mom's house in Lindon. She was out of town so he just left Dandy in the yard (front or back I'm not sure). When his mom came home she had no idea who this dog was. Dandy would not leave her yard so she started to ask around. One of her neighbors told her she thought her son had brought the dog and left it. After a confirming phone call the lady set out to find the real owners. She called the animal shelter in Spanish Fork and I had left tons of messages so the shelter called me and told me to give this lady a call. Well I was just a basket case so I called Chris at work and asked him to call her. He called me back and told me it was a good chance it was Dandy. She said the lady described the dog as all black, white on the chest, blue slip collar, scratches all the time, and barks if you leave her outside too long. I knew it was her! That was Dandy to a T! I was so excited! Now we just needed to get someone over there to make sure it was her. My amazing mother-in-law and sister-in-law Megan went over there for us and said they knew it was her as soon as they saw her. Dandy came bounding out and just pretty much attacked them with love.

So now I can't wait to get home and open my front door and have my girl Dandy run out and go crazy with excitement because we are home! I never want to do this again....losing a dog is awful!!!

A few tips:
1. PUT YOUR DOG INSIDE ON THE 4TH OF JULY!!!! FIREWORKS MAKE THEM GO CRAZY!!!
2. Make sure you have up to date tags, and that they are on the collar, with a good phone number
3. Take a good picture of your dog and just keep it on hand


So thank you for everyone who kept looking for Dandy and kept us in your prayers and thoughts! We know that is what helped to bring our Dandy home!

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

I'm going crazy!


Our dog Dandy has now been gone for 6 days and I feel like we aren't going to get her back. Every morning and every afternoon I call the two animal shelters that she could be taken to and nothing. I've called the police, posted her on 7 sites and nothing. I had hope that she would be found since she had her collar with her tags on, but last night as I was trying to fall asleep I realized that was not the case. Just before we left for New Mexico we lost her collar so Chris and the kids went and picked out a new one for her. I didn't think to make sure I got her a new name tag since i was sure the old one was just hiding from us and we would find it when we got home and just transfer the tags. I did have her new animal license, but instead of putting it on her new collar I just filed it. Why didn't I put it on her collar! If I had done that who ever found her would know she had a family and was cared about and would know to call us! But now the only way she will be found is it someone takes her to a shelter (which is unlikely if they are an animal lover since the shelter will put the dog down after 4 days or so) or if they look for her family and go to the same sites I have posted her on. This is getting hopeless. I'm in New Mexico and can't get home till Saturday at the earliest (if the kids can do the drive straight). I will post up signs and knock on doors, but I honestly think some kid has found her and the parents let him/her keep Dandy. Dandy is such a great dog who wouldn't want to keep her! She is fun, loving, house trained, lease trained, loves kids, playing ball and is just the perfect dog. I am just kicking myself for not bringing her with us, although I know it really wasn't possible. I am just hoping someone will take her to a shelter or try and find us, but with all the websites out there who knows if we will post/look at the same sights. We just need Dandy back. I honestly don't want to go home, open my door and not have Dandy dash outside running like a crazy dog because she is so excited to see us. That is what I was looking forward to the most is seeing my dog again. We have Apollo and we love him, but Dandy was my girl. All during Andrew's pregnancy she would lay by me and stayed with me as if she could help me. She would spend her days following me around and hanging out with me. She is a true friend and I can't imagine going home and seeing her bed, leash, bowl, and not her. Sorry about the sad post, but that's just what we are right now.

Sunday, July 6, 2008

The Roaches, Superman, and the Target Nazis

So according to a comment on our zoo post, it is not acceptible for grown men to wear the superman logo (unless you happen to be superman presumably). It so happens that when the kids were playing on the jungle gym at the zoo a little girl ran by and very excitedly said, "Daddy! Look! It's SUPERMAN!" Oh yeah, that's me baby.

I admit the shirt was not a Father's Day gift. I did not, however, buy it for myself either. This is the story of the roaches, and how, for a day, Daddy was really the hero.

So the first week we were here, every morning would reveal a cockroach or two already dead or in its death throws. No big deal. I would take care of them before anybody else was up and there was no problem. Well, apparently I either forgot to do that one morning or it just happened to be the day of the roaches, but when Katie and the kids woke up they were barricaded in their rooms, trapped by nearly dead exoskeletal intruders. Finally, Katie decided that she would pay the price of freedom. Charging from her room she lept over entire patches of one or two roaches in a single bound to race to the vacuum and vanquish the captors. Laughing maniacally, she sucked the suckers up while Ben practiced his counting skills to keep track of the ones she had got. (The vacuum has a removable clear chamber instead of a bag). The roaches had planned a clever counter attack however.

With Andrew sleeping up stairs, a roach had strategically died in such a way that Katie had set the vacuum on one of the stairs while standing below in the part of executioner. As she let fly the fatal blow with the able blade of her vacuum a combination of gravity, balance, and roach appeal came together in such a way as to knock over the vacuum. The clear plastic prison broke free from the main body of her Excalibur freeing it's renegade occupants, whose dead bodies immediatley setup a barricade to hold hostage her precious sleeping babe.

I received a very frantic, nay, a series of very frantic voice mails and text messages at work the next day. I very nearly didn't receive them as I had forgotten to charge my phone the night before. It was clear that life as we know it would end if I did not act. So jumping into my phone booth I realized that I was fresh out of superman outfits to wear as underwear and I was forced to return home and save the day in my work clothes.

When I returned home that night I received a great thank you package which included dark chocolate and a new superman t-shirt. The kids, though grateful, immediatley tried to scam me out of the chocolate but they let me keep the shirt.

Now for the Target Nazi's. If you already guessed that my shirt was bought at Target, and you know Katie, you can probably guess the end of the story. Along with my shirt, they had purchased that day the hats that you see everyone wearing in the zoo pictures. The next time that Katie went to Target she noticed that the hats she had just bought were now on sale a mere couple days after the initial purchase. So like clock work Katie whipped out her reciept, went to customer service, and expected to be refunded the difference. Only they weren't going to refund her the difference. They wanted her to fully return the items and then rebuy them with three kids hanging off of her and the items at home. That got her steamed enough, but what really broke the dam was when she went to buy other items that day that were on sale she was informed that the sale had actually already ended and they just hadn't bothered to change any of the signs. By the time she got home she was almost as mad as the Petrified Forrest incident. SO, back I went that night to return everything she had just bought there including my superman shirt. The kicker is that Ben's hat was actually more than the other hats they had bought, unbeknownst to me. When I got back that night and Katie saw that they had returned it for the same amount as the other hats it was too much. She didn't sleep all night...

Please keep a look out for our little doggy while keeping up with our posts (see below).