The past month

I have so much to post about, I feel so behind. There is a very good reason why I am behind. I have learned that a 17 month old can reset a laptop to factory settings, while the computer is turned off! It seems it would be impossible, but Toshiba has made it all to easy for a big accident like that to happen! I called and asked how a little one would do something like this and I am disappointed in how easy their reset process is. I have been scared to even get back on the computer, but now things are running almost normal. We have have quite the eventful month and I haven't been too fond of some of the circumstances. However, we have also had a lot of good going on. This has got to be my longest post ever!

Just last night the boys enjoyed sleeping out in the great outdoors. This time we didn't travel far before we found a spot.

Kyrie was upset that she didn't get to go night-night in the tent with the boys.

But she was SO happy to find that the jeep still really does work. We have tried it out several times with no luck, we thought somehow the hail seized the motor or something. But here we are a month later and she can now take her brothers for a ride.

We have put Chris's father's day gift to good use. Lots of yummy hotdogs and smores!

What is that? A strawberry marshmallow?

Hum!

Ew!

You take it! She has no idea what she is missing, Kyrie has yet to taste a roasted marshmallow.

This picture makes me want to run and find the little miss. It makes me want to give her squeezes and eskimo kisses.

We have had the experience in guessing how many cars can fit in this tub. Believe it or not, there are 165 cars in here. I won the guessing game after about a dozen guesses.

And this is my prize. Dusty went right to work making me some scrapbooking page layouts. All I have to do is stick on the picture. WoW, thanks Dusty!

Last week Chris and I also celebrated our 10th year wedding anniversary! Actually the two of us have yet to celebrate. He spent the day in Arkansas.

I had joked about us going to McDonalds for our anniversary, but that is exactly what we ended up doing, well me and the kids anyway.

Poor kids look like it was pure torture!

At least Ronald was excited about the big day.

Chris did send me flowers and a balloon, which was so sweet it made me cry for just a little minute. He then called and asked me to find a babysitter because he had changed his flight plans and would be home that night instead of the next day. It sounded too good to be true, of course his flight then had to be delayed. At least he made it home, just really, really late! So then we hoped to go out over the weekend, but to my surprise, my heart couldn't handle the excitement and tried to jump out of my chest. So hopefully this next weekend, or even the weekend after we are going to get out without the interuptions of 3 little ones, AND I CANNOT WAIT!





June 23, 2000 I married my best friend of 5 years! It's hard to believe that 10 more years have flown by. We have had our good times, and our bad times but are currently enjoying our best times! We have made so many fond memories with lots more to come that we can enjoy for eternity. Thanks for our 10 years of marriage babe, I love being married to you!

Kyrie just turned 18 months old, who knew it would bring such big changes? She can be so ornery, she wants what she wants and NOW! But she still keeps us all smiling and laughing and we wouldn't trade her for anything. She is such a girly-girl, and she is my kind of girl. Her newest favorites are lotion and chapstick, we should get along just great! She will walk up to the counter where the lotion is, hold out her hand and say, "On". You have about 4 seconds to get some lotion on her hand before the tamtrum starts. She does the same thing with chapstick, who knew these addictions could start so young. She is also good at giving herself some time-out. If something happens that she doesn't like she runs and stands in front of the wall or fridge or into the closet while she sulks for a minute. It is so funny!

What's Up?

We have also had the pleasure of having some more visitors. Chris's mom and step-dad came for a quick little visit over Father's Day weekend. We took advantage of the little time we had and ended up nearly killing them with exhaustion. We went to the zoo, to the 16th street mall, the Cheesecake Factory and to the school playground. I think we all had a blast!

Kyrie absolutely loved the fish at the zoo. One of the tanks of fish especially grabbed her attention and she did not want to leave. She kept on turning back and would run right for it. Even when we got to the other end of the building, she was determined to go back to that fish tank.

We even got to try out Chris's Father's Day gift while they were here. It seems almost impossible to enjoy the mountains out here, believe me, we drove around for about 4 hours the other day trying to find a spot to get out and explore. We found it impossible! 4 hours and there was nothing but houses and private property! So, our backyard is about all we get for the great outdoors. Sometimes there is nothing like hotdogs over a fire and gooey smores - even if it is in your backyard! Hayden had so much fun he kept on cooking more marshmallows than he could ever eat. He'd say, "I'm going to eat all of these after we go in the house, so that means I need to hurry and cook two more". I hope Chris liked the fire-pit, because the rest of us love it! I hope all of the fathers had a great father's day!

We've had lots of sun, lots of water, lots of sand and lots of popsicles this summer. Hayden usually starts asking for the popsicles and about 8 am. Why not?

We are loving this summer! It's hard to believe that our break is half-way over. So much more playing we want to do!

Soccer

Wahoo! It is over! What a long soccer season, I love watching my kids play, but this year seemed LONG! I was officially a soccer mom, soccer 3 nights a week! Although it really wasn't that much because so much of it got cancelled, thanks to mother nature. Really it seemed to be a beautiful day and then 10-30 minutes before soccer was to start the weather changed, and it seemed to do that just about everyday they were to play. Or sometimes we would get to the field and the kids would start to play and then out of nowhere a storm appeared. CRAZY CRAZY weather seems to be the normal this year - everywhere!

The boys did awesome, ran hard and had a lot of fun.

More pictures

I have had a request to post more pictures from the big hail storm. It was pretty amazing!
This is what the driveway looked like, the black speckles are granules from the shingles.

And here is a picture of our roof, with lots of shingle granules in the rain gutters, we also had piles underneath the downspouts.

The next few pictures are some shots of what our neighborhood looks like. We asked for a sign to put in our yard from the company we are going through for repairs. We hoped it would help the traffic to our front door. It hasn't seemed to help much though, we still get salesmen and fliers everyday from businesses that want clients. We also get several letters/postcards and phone calls, and even a few e-mails! I wonder how in the heck did they get my e-mail address?

There are houses with damage like this one all throughout the subdivision. Houses with vinyl siding will now get a new north side!

This is also a common sight.

And now this, several houses have already been repaired. Ours is getting close.

I stole these last two pictures from a girl in the ward, I hope that is okay! Here is just another example of how big the hail was, and again this is after some melting.

Crazy weather! We had another tornado warning today, but the kids and I were at a movie, so we missed out on taking cover in the basement. Chris is out of state, hoping to get home tonight but his airplane has been grounded for several hours because of the warnings. Oh well, it keeps life interesting!

Fun at Elitches

I can see our family spending lots of time at Elitches. We went a couple of days ago and had a blast.

As soon as we walked into the park, the kids wanted to get on the great big ferris wheel. It took Hayden just about 1 minute to decide he did not like it. He held on with both hands as tight as he could for the entire ride.

It was really quite nice that Chris decided to go bald. It was so much easier to spot him out, especially at the water park. His baldness is a result from a moment of shock the day earlier. He was getting ready for church and used a mirror to see the back of his head and saw how thin his hair was on top. He said, "I can't go to church like this, why didn't you tell me my hair is falling out?". So I guess he decided to hide his thinning hair and got rid of all of it.


We had a great time especially at the play area and the water park, we can't wait to go back!


After we got home I was putting Kyrie to bed and told the boys to get in the tub. Hayden came to me complaining that there was not enough water in the tub to wash his hair, and he was not going to use a cup to dump the water on his head like Dusty. Then we hear Dusty trying to explain. They watched a performance of Bob The Builder at Elitches and they taught us about recycling and saving the planet. Dusty was saying, "Don't you remember the show, we are wasting the planet, we have wasted about 5 gallons of water already!" Chris and I went into the bathroom to try to help the situation so that Hayden could wash his hair and we found that there was only about 1/2 inch of water in the tub! Way to go Dusty for trying to save the planet!

Kyrie!

Kyrie has always loved to stick her hand down my shirt. If she is tired or needs comfort, that is what she always turns to. The more tired she is, the further it goes, she will shove her whole arm down there! Sometimes she twists her hand so that it is completely wrapped up in my clothing. She loves to stick her hands up my sleeves as well, long sleeves make it kinda difficult for her. She usually does this to me, but if she is near her dad or brothers she will also shove her hands into their shirts.. One day we were at preschool with Hayden during her nap time, I was busy with some of the kids so she walked up to Hayden, shoved her arm down his shirt and laid her head on his shoulder. It took me awhile to get used to being in public with her hands down my clothing, but now it doesn't bother me at all. It makes me laugh! Some nights I rock her to sleep, with her hands in my shirt. Other nights I lay her down and let her fall asleep on her own, now with her hand in her own shirt! LOVE HER!

Nevermind!

We really don't have minor damages at our house from the hailstorm. And now the strawberries look even worse to top it off ! We have 2 window screens that need to be replaced as well as the rain gutters, water spouts, the chimney cover, the vents on top of the house and the shingles. We have had lots of guys come over trying to get our business and one of them inspected our roof and showed me the pictures he took. Our roof is hammered! So I guess we get a new one! We will get a new door, new lawn chairs, new sand toys, some new sand, new solar lights, new flower pots, and flowers, maybe a new tree, and money to replace the trampoline spring cover thing and money to replace the boys jeep! We have thousands of dollars of damage! I'm sure our friends at Farmers Insurance are going to love us! We have damage to our fence too! But really it's our neighbor's fence but the damage is on our side. What else are we going to find? We keep finding more and more!

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs

Cloudy with a chance of meatballs might have been better than meatball sized hail! Meatballs would've been softer than these ice-packed balls.

These first few pictures are from the beginning of a 30 minute hail storm, before the community alarms went off telling us to take cover for tornado warnings. The hail started out about marble sized, but in the end they were golf ball sized. A friend said she had egg size hail at her house and the news reported of some tennis ball sized hail!
Here is one of them after it had melted some, it was 67 degrees outside! We took cover in the basement for awhile until the alarms said it was safe to come back up. I headed right outside to take pictures.
Chris came home from work and we had some friends houses to check on with them being out of town. So we decided to drive around the neighborhood a little bit to see the damage.

This car was pulled over, we saw one that had the windshield and the back window blasted out. I can't imagine how terrifying that would be especially with little kids in the car. We saw lots of cars with busted windows, and dents all over. Mailboxes were smashed in, broken garage doors, tons of houses with shattered windows, trees all torn up, snow plows, news crews, and insurance adjusters were already at work. Helicopters were circling the sky, cops were driving all over and I saw quite a few church vans driving around as well. We could hear sirens all over, I guess some people weren't so lucky. A friend of mine was stuck at an intersection behind 2 semis and sat in the truck with her two kids while her truck was being totalled. When she finally got to leave, she said she almost stopped at my house because she saw a huge funnel cloud above our homes and she didn't know if she would make it to her house or not. Thankfully they are fine! Lots of people have totalled vehicles, roofs, shutters, there was a lot of damage, luckily ours is minor, we have more than I initailly thought though.

Our door is swelled from the pressure of the storm

Broken flower pots and demolished flowers

About half of the sand toys were busted

There are holes like this around the whole trampoline mat

The boys jeep has a few holes blasted through it

The solar lights got holes

and so did the lawn chairs

Our strawberries were trampeled, and this is what Chris is the most upset about. They were doing so good, the plants were very tall and we had dozens and dozens of blossoms and a few berries, now gone! All the blossoms were torn from the blueberries as well. None of my flower plants in the flower garden have flowers anymore, and the new growth and the leaves were ripped from the trees. I have no idea what to think about the vegetable garden, I will probably be re-planting this week. Our lawn now looks like it has been airated. I heard that hundreds of homes will now need new roofs and I'm hoping ours won't be one of them. At first I thought it was fine, but then we noticed piles of granules from the shingles below all of the water spouts, so we will be getting our shingles inspected. So we have a few hundred dollars worth of damage, and possibly more! But I am glad it is minor and I'm glad all of my friends out there are okay. I'm greatful that the funnel cloud above us didn't touch down and that my kids are out of school and were home with me!

I think our tomatoes look pretty good though! I was excited about that. Later last night we had another storm, not quite the intensity of the first though. It brought more rain, wind and marble sized ice - I wouldn't even call it hail, it was solid ice! What excitement and now I have some clean-up to do as well as more planting. The boys are now playing cars that are in a tornado/hail storm, they keep telling the cars to take cover now! Then I hear, "It's all clear, the emergengy is now over".