Our Vacation 2011

We had a really great trip out to Utah this summer! It was A LOT of driving, but so worth it. The weather was so nice and it was so great to get to spend time with family at the Egnew reunion! And then to spend time in B town with my fam! One of the high lights for me was getting to go to the temple and have Nichole and Sergio be there!!!!
The kids had a blast with all of their cousins and really did not want to come home. I wish I was better about having a camera near by....there are so many things I didn't get pics of that I wish I had. I was just enjoying myself to much, no time for a camera.
We went to a dinosaur park in Ogden that was so fun for the kids. They enjoyed panning for gold and digging for "pretty rocks". We had a really fun country store at the reunion. I purchased some fun items like night gowns for the girls and home made suckers and knitted hot pads and jewelry, baby doll with crochet ward robe, and lots of other little things. We were treated to an amazing fire work display in Logan and were lucky enough to get to see Black Hawk perform. Cali was afraid of the "boom boom's" and kept her head covered with her blanket pretty much the whole time. The other two kids fell asleep during the grand finale.
We had a blast at a little water park in northern Utah. My kids could live in a pool, so that was perfect for them.
We were able to visit family we haven't seen in quite a while, but unfortunatly were not able to make it to see all of our friends we would have liked. Maybe next time.
We were so happy to welcome the newest Tingey into the family. We are happy for Chris and Becca and Will that there sweet little girl made it into the world safe and sound.
We visited my grandfather and were glad to see him recovering from a broken rib. He always treats us to pizza or something. It was fun to hear stories from the past I had never heard before.
We went to B town and just took it easy. I was grateful to finally get to go pay my respects to my dear Uncle Kent who passed away the begining of the year. It was so strangenot to see him, for him not to pop in at Gran's and Grampa's to visit and tell a funny story. He will continue to be greatly missed!!!
I loved seeing most all of my sisters. I met my newest nephew and got to hold and cuddle with him. He is a sweet boy. I pray for his mama and him that they will be happy.
My sweet Auntie Jenny took family pics for us and I am really excited to see how they all turned out!
My goodness there is so much and I know I am forgetting things so I will have to come back and add to this eventually.
Mostly I am so happy we were able to see our family, even though it was for a short time. I will let the pictures do the rest of the talking......

We were Cassie's first clients in the new salon!!!

Pictures below are from the divisional swim meet. It was soooo HOT that day! We are so proud of Wes! He placed first in back stroke in the 6 and under age group and qualified for All Stars, which, sadly, we were unable to attend. He improved his time in all of his events! We are so happy for him and are excited for next year!!!

So, I am trying to be more consistent in my parenting. I need to me more consistent in many areas of teaching and discipline, but more urgently at this moment is consistency in potty training Cali. I think I have found something that is working......as long as I let her wear her swim suit all day, she uses the potty! I told her if she wets or poops in the swim suit, she looses it for the day! This girl LOVES TO SWIM and loves her swimming suits. So, thus far, we have only had one day last week that she lost the privilege of wearing her suit all day. Pretty good, eh? Now, lets just cross fingers and maybe by the end of summer, it will be a good habit she will have developed!!

Time Out For Women

I was able to get together with some wonderful ladies from church this past weekend and take a little road trip to San Antonio for Time Out For Women. It was a much needed weekend and I am so grateful I was able to go.

I had never been to San Antonio and let me just say, I am itching to go back! I kept thinking how fun it would be to go take my kids. There is so much to see and it is really beautiful!

We stayed on the River Walk at the Marriott, which was wonderful to be so close to the conference center! We were able to park in the parking garage at the Marriott and then just walk everywhere we needed to go.

It goes with out saying, but I will say it anyway, THE CONFERENCE WAS WONDERFUL!! The speakers made us laugh and made us cry. The music was fun and uplifting. I felt inspired as a woman and encouraged in my current stage of life. And at times was taken back and felt like a high school girl again, young and carefree and fun:-) Honestly, by the time I got home, I felt like I had been on a wonderful roller coaster ride of emotions! For the sake of time that I do not have at the moment, I just want to share a few things that sum up what I got out of the conference. I could delve in and write forever on all of my thoughts and feelings. And would if time allowed for it.

1. I learned from Sister Sherri Dew that life is never ideal for anybody, but SO WHAT!!!! Get over it and GO FORWARD keeping your eye on your eternal goals!! Don't allow yourself to be distracted. Look up and move forward and be aware of what and who you are being influenced by and how and who you are influencing others.

2. I learned from Amanda Dickson that as women our friends make us good lookin'! That it is part of keeping myself healthy and happy to reach out and have friends, be a friend. And also that I need to be a friend to myself!

3. I learned from Emily Watts the importance of traditions and the importance of catching people doing good (especially my children). I learned that it is important to develop "thick skin" and work not to be offended.

4. I learned from John Hilton, once again, the importance of looking up, looking forward to our Heavenly Father.

5. I learned from Matt Baldwin that I can pray to know what I am capable of becoming. For some reason I had never thought to pray about that before. I was reminded of the importance of trying to see all perspectives. I learned about conforming and that there are really only two basic things I need to conform to; True principles and my behaviors to my belief's. I also learned I need to get a grip on my expectations of myself.

6. From Kristine Belcher, It was confirmed to me something I have always thought; It is not that the Lord only gives us trials we can bare and he won't give us any more than that. He lets life happen and WE MUST LEARN TO DRAW STRENGTH FROM JESUS CHRIST to make it through. Sometimes, life gets very hard and we feel like we just can not do it. And it is true! We alone can not do it. But if we choose the help that is there from a loving Savior, we can.

7. Music is awesome and I enjoyed Jericho Road and Dallyn Vail Bayles immensely!!

Like I said before, there is so much more I could say about this conference. The challenge was to think about who we want to become and to choose one thing we can work on becoming. At this point, I keep feeling like my one thing to become, is FREE. That probably makes no sense to anybody but me. But, it is what it is. :-)

And now, off to the laundry! :0) And happy to do so!!!

HAPPY EASTER!!

We had a fun Easter weekend. The weather was nice and it was fun to spend time as a family and with friends.

Easter Sunday, the kids wake up to Easter eggs hidden all over the house. It is fun for them and I enjoy seeing their smiles. This year I took a picture of Christ coming out out the tomb and cut it into puzzle pieces and put it in an egg. Cali found it. After the kids found all the eggs, we took that picture and glued the pieces down to a separate piece of paper and talked about that Easter Sunday so long ago when Christ was resurrected. I had this thought come to me Saturday night, that for next year, I am going to come up with a little letter or poem from the Easter Bunny to put in the kids baskets. I love the tradition of the Easter bunny; but I don't love how he has taken the spot light on that special day. So, if I can come up with a letter to the kids from the bunny, talking about how sweet it is to celebrate the life of our Saviour, maybe it would leave an impression on them??? Maybe not. I am thinking something along the lines of the bunny leaving sweets to help remind us of the sweetness of the resurrection? I am not sure yet how to put it together....but I have a year to figure it out.:-)

My beautiful family:-)

Our garden is coming along...basil doing awesome! Cherry tomatoes doing very well. Not so sure how everything else is going to turn out.

We made dutch oven potatoes and roasted hot dogs with the kids Saturday night. Soooo yummy:-)

We had a really fun neighborhood easter egg hunt with pancake breakfast.

Cali drinking her daily smoothie. Aubrey didn't want hers, so Cali snatched it.

Wesley roasting hot dogs. He is so silly!!

The Easter Bunny came to the neighborhood hunt, and I had to bribe Aubrey to sit on his lap for a picture. Cali would have none of it.

And a little random pic...

Lots of good weather means lots of fun bike rides! Cali loves it. Aubrey is learning to ride a bike with out training wheels . She is pretty determined. If Cali were taller, she would probably be riding as well. She wants to do everything the big kids do.

Cali is 2!!!

Wow! Our "baby" is TWO!!! I can't even believe it! Amazing how quickly the time goes. Especially with such a sweet, yet spunky, cutie like Cali around. We love her so much and are so happy she is a part of our family.


For her birthday, the kids and I spent the day together. We all agreed it would be fun to go to the nursery and pick out a couple of flowers to plant in honor of Cali and her birthday. So, Wesley picked out an orange Gerber daisy, Aubrey picked out a pink geranium, and Cali picked out some cute little White ground flowers (forgot what they are called...maybe snow flowers or something????). Anyway, we came home and planted them together in a pot and they are now sitting beautifully on the front porch for all to enjoy:-) After that, we went to a place called Bouncin' Bears. The kids had a blast playing on all of the inflatable jungle gyms. And then we went to Chili's and the kids had corn dogs and chips and salsa. We didn't make a cake. We got Cali her favorite thing....donut holes! So, for desert we went home to enjoy her special birthday treat of donuts and donut holes.

Wesley wrapped up several of Cali's old toys in blankets and made her a card. It was so thoughtful and sweet. The kids have so many toys, that I counted our fun day as her gift from us. Daddy brought her home a big Butterfly mylar balloon, and had Aubrey and Wesley give her this wooden pizza set to add to the play food collection.

Cali and her donuts. We had a practice run at blowing out the candles at breakfast. We put candles in her blueberry pancakes and had her blow them out, so come donut time, she was ready!!

Aubrey and her friend posing with the birthday girl:-)

This was not on Cali's birthday, but it made me smile. One day Aubrey asked if she could have a picnic out side with Cali. I said sure, and assumed I would go out to find them on a blanket under the trampoline, where they usually go for picnics. But this day, I found them in "the turtle" on top of the trampoline, enjoying their snacks and having a great time! It had to have been put there the night before by Wesley and the neighbor boys. So, the girls took advantage of it and pretended they were in a boat. So fun.

Family Is Everything

My heart is full and I am feeling very humbled and grateful for Eternal Families. I want to be pure and worthy of this blessing. I am grateful for the atonement of Jesus Christ, for His forgiveness, His love and mercy, that make it possible for me to be worthy to return to Him and to be with my family FOR ALL ETERNITY!!!

St. George, Garden, and Soccer

I was fortunate enough to be able to be in St. George over the weekend to be with my sister and her family as they went to the temple to be sealed as an Eternal Family. I was so grateful I was able to be with them. It was a very special experience. The peace of the spirit was very strong in the sealing room. My heart is so full of joy for my sister and the choices she and her husband and kids are making to follow Jesus Christ.
Brady kept the two oldest kids home and I took Cali with me. We had a nice trip and got to see a lot of our family.

Azelin looked beautiful in her white dress. And Ethan was very handsome. But he didn't hold still long enough for me to get a pic of him:-)


Here is Cass with Grampa. He was able to perform the sealing for them. That is always special. I didn't get a pic of all of them together, but I am sure Cass did.

All the girls. We all got to go out for a fun dinner for Granny Ann's birthday. It was fun.

We are attempting a garden this year and I am praying all of our hard work will pay off. I dug out all of the grass in this section and then Brady helped me till it up and work in the new soil. We added about 760 lbs of new soil!!! So, I am hoping the soil is a good mix now. I bought an organic fertilizer and am I am going to try to do a garden here in Houston with no pesticides. I figure we have a bonus because we have no trees or shrubs in the back yard to attract little pests. Also, our neighborhood is new. So, I read on line that there are certain types of flowers and herbs you can plant with your veggies that will attract the good bugs and detract the bad ones from eating your veggies. So, I am going to give that a try and have Marigolds, Cosmos, Nasturtium, and Borage to plant in my vegetable garden.

My dad pointed out to me that our garden is shaped like Utah. LOL Did not do that on purpose. Maybe it will bring us luck somehow????

Wesley is really enjoying soccer. He has fun, and that is what matters. It has been fun to support him in this and watch him learn to play.

He is happy as long as his team is winning. At this point, it doesn't matter to him if he scores or not, so long as "The Destroyers" win