Asher's 5th birthday party

Today was Asher's birthday party. Poor guy had to wait almost a whole week after his actual birthday to have his party since we were out of town. But he was a trooper and was so patient. He told me he wanted a Spiderman party, but I talked him out of that since that's what we did last year. We were able to compromise on Batman instead. ;-)

His cake did NOT turn out the way I wanted. At all. The fondant gave me serious grief, and I ended up tossing the whole cake into the garbage out of frustration. Thank goodness Derk came to the rescue and whisked the kids off to Walmart to buy a cake while I finished the party prep. I salvaged a bit of fondant and made a Batman symbol to put on the store-bought cake. It wasn't even close to what I wanted, but the kids all commented on how COOL it was. That made me realize that I'm too much of a perfectionist and need to relax. Any tips on accomplishing that?! ;-)

It was a busy few hours, but he had such a fun time. We had 11 kids here (including mine). The kids all played while we waited until everyone showed up, then they watched a bit of a Superhero movie. After that, we did a Batman symbol hunt out in the backyard. Derk and I hid a bunch of bats around the yard for the kids to find. I just blew up a Batman symbol I'd found online, traced it onto black construction paper and cut them out. Super easy game, and the kids all had a blast. I had a couple other games planned, but the boys were having such a fun time just jumping on the trampoline and playing that they actually told me they didn't want to play any more games!

Then it was time for cake and ice cream. Everyone said the cake was SO good, so I guess there's no reason for me to bother making a homemade cake in the future. ;-) After that, it was time for presents! All the kids were so super excited for Asher to open their gifts, and I barely got them to move out of the way long enough to snap a few pictures. :-)

Enough rambling. Here's the video and pictures!

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A package from Nana

My mom's birthday package for Asher arrived today. I tried to convince him to wait to open the gifts until his party tomorrow, but he was WAY too excited. :) I got it all on video for you, Mom. Enjoy!! :)

For some reason, it won't upload the whole video. I guess it's too long or something. But you get the idea. :)

**FYI-- It sounds like Asher says a bad word in the video, which is why I kinda yell at him. But he didn't say what I thought he said. He just had his mouth full of gum, so it sounded like something different. Whew. :)

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Asher's 5th birthday

Unfortunately, we spent Asher's whole birthday traveling back from St. George. But Derk and I had a little surprise up our sleeves for Asher when we got home. :)

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A week full of family!

Jessica (Derk's sister) and her fiance, Mike, came for a visit last weekend. He's moving up to Coeur d'Alene, so she flew down to get him, and then they made the long drive back up to Idaho. We're so glad they stopped to see us on their way! It is a huge understatement when I say my kids LOVE Mike. :) We watched some movies, played Risk, Jessica painted the girls' nails, we did some hiking, Mike tortured Kyrie with riddles and amazed the kids with magic tricks (he can take out his eyeball AND remove his thumb!) ;-) , and we had fun just hanging out together. I only got one picture while they were here. We stopped at the top of our hike to check out the view, and I snapped a quick picture of everyone.

They left our house late Sunday night. Derk's cousin, Grant, was getting married and sent us an invitation. When we found out Jessica and Mike were going over for the wedding, we decided it would be a fun excuse for a weekend getaway since we'd get to spend more time with them at the same time. We packed the kids up and left for St. George on Friday afternoon. It's about 7 hours away. The kids were SO awesome in the car! We were extremely impressed and told them over and over how proud we were of them.

We got to St. George around 8pm on Friday night. Derk's grandma really wanted us to stay with her, so we decided we'd do that for 2 nights and then spend the 3rd night at a hotel so the kids could swim. I'm so glad we chose to stay with Grandma those nights. She really loved the company, and it saved us a good amount of money, too. Jessica and Mike stayed there also, so that made it extra fun. The sealing was first thing on Saturday morning, so we woke up, got ready and headed to the temple. We didn't go to the actual sealing, but we had a great time on the temple grounds as we waited for everyone.

Asher wanted a turn with the camera, so we let him snap a few. The photographer at the wedding thought he was the cutest thing ever and got pictures of him taking pictures of her. :) Here are some of the pictures he took. He did a pretty great job!

After the sealing, we went to the cemetery where Grandpa Dean is buried. This was per Cambria's request. She still talks about Grandpa Dean daily and asked if we could go visit him. I love how close to Heavenly Father children are. We had a really nice talk about how he's in Heaven and how we'll see him again someday. Right by the cemetery there was a wildlife refuge type of place with a pond and ducks. And then right near that was a farm with a lot of horses. So we took a little walk after visiting the grave site.

This next picture is hilarious. As the kids were checking out the horses, Kyrie made an observation that one of the horses was most definitely a boy horse. You can see by Bri's face that she thought it was gross, but what you can't see is that Asher is laughing his head off. It was really funny!

While there, we also took the opportunity to go on some hikes at Snow Canyon. We took lots of pictures there!


On the way back to Yuma, we decided to stop at Hoover Dam and check that out. It was pretty amazing. We really wanted to take a tour, but they were between $11 and $30 per person.

And I got some cute ones of Jess and Mike throughout the weekend. Here are my favorites.

Living so far from family sure makes you appreciate them that much more when you do get to see them. It was a really fun week! Thanks for all the fun, Jess and Mike! Can't wait to see you guys again soon! :)

Leftovers

This isn't a typical post. This is a realization I had a few days ago. I recently stumbled across a blog that I haven't been able to get out of my head since. Some of you may have heard about this family on the news. They live in Utah. The mother put her 2 young boys in the tub in her bathroom. I don't know exactly how old the boys are, but I know the older boy is around 3 and the younger boy is around 1.5. She turned off the water and then went to get clothes for them (or something) in their bedroom. By the time she came back, the youngest had drowned. Miraculously, they revived him, and he defied the odds and is now perfectly fine and at home. Ever since I read that initial story, I have frequently blog stalked this family because I can't stop thinking about them.

One of her recent posts was very profound. She talked about how she went into her kitchen to get some food, opened the fridge and realized she really hated leftovers and didn't want to eat them. Then her thought process changed. She thought about that and realized that all she gives her family are leftovers. And not in just the traditional sense of the word, either. She gave examples about how she's exhausted and running on fumes and will give her son a quick back rub at bedtime and get out of there as fast as she can to attend to "more important" matters. Or how she's "too busy" doing something and can't pause to give her son her full attention while he tells her about the goal he scored at soccer practice, just giving him an "mhmm" at the appropriate times without really hearing him. Things like that. She said her family, the most important people in this world to her, deserve better than just her leftovers.

I could have written that post. I do that all the time. I am the queen of multi-tasking and do it often. I've got 3 kids, I homeschool, I've got a house to run, and I recently went back to school myself. I'm busy. I don't have time to "waste." That's how I found myself feeling, at least. I just didn't realize I felt that way and that I was treating my family that way. But now I realize it.

Thank goodness for that blog and for that post in particular. Time spent with my family, really spent with them and not half-spent while I'm doing something else at the same time, will always be the most important thing. It will never be a waste of time. I will never look back on those moments and wish I'd done something else instead. I will, however, look back on those moments where I wasn't giving my loved one(s) my full attention and wish I'd done something else instead. I'll look back on those moments and wish I'd just stopped what I was doing, just for a minute, because whatever I was doing isn't nearly as important as my family. Whatever I was doing will still be there when I'm done doing what really matters.

Spikey hair

Asher just loves being like his daddy. Whenever Derk puts his styling paste stuff in his hair as he's getting ready for work, Asher will ask to have some, too. I was at the beauty supply store the other day and saw a huge tub of gel on sale, so I decided to get some for Asher. He was so excited to have his hair spikey. I sure think he looks cute!!

The most random, ridiculous accident ever!!

DISCLAIMER: There will be icky pictures, so don't read this post if you're squeamish!!


I still can't believe this happened. It's just beyond random and is just, well, stupid!

Last night, I was cooking dinner and went into the pantry to grab a can of black beans. I was walking out of the pantry and shut off the light. Well, as my hand was going down, my ring somehow caught on the strike plate on the door jamb.

I have NO idea why there are those yellow strips on either side of the picture. Strange. But anyway, you can see the lip of the strike plate that sticks out on the left side. That's where my ring caught.

I didn't realize I'd caught on anything, so I kept walking. There was such force that my finger ripped that strike plate completely off the door jamb! It flew across the room. I remember hearing a clinking sound and turning to figure out what had fallen, then the pain set in. I looked down at my finger, and my ring had sliced into my finger when it caught on that stupid thing. Oh, man, I haven't felt pain like that in a long time! Thanks to my medication, it bled a bit more than it probably would have otherwise, but it was controlled easily enough. Also, because of the force, my ring was yanked hard into my knuckle, so now my knuckle is super swollen. It was probably 2.5 times its normal size last night, but it's gone down some this morning.

Okay, here come the icky pictures!

You can sorta see how swollen my knuckle is in this picture...

And here's another one to show that the gash goes all the way across my finger.

It's A LOT more bruised than it looks in the picture. I took the picture right under the chandelier in the dining room to get good light, so it kind of drowns the nastiness of the bruising. There is a blessing in all of this, though! At least it was my left hand and not my right! It's hard not being able to use my left hand, but I can't imagine trying to function without my dominant hand.

So anyway, how's that for a freak, random accident?!?! Ridiculous!!