A slice of our life

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Here is Cady doing almost what she does best. Normally she is sitting up reading to herself while creating chaos with our bookshelf. She loves books and reads them whenever she has the opportunity to do so. :) Don't know where she gets that from.


Claire's big kick now is building farms out of blocks and then arranging all of our counting animals in it. This has been a multiple-time-a day activity for us lately. Good thing I enjoy it too.



Sunday sing-a-longs. We've started inviting friends over to our house just about every Sunday to sing songs while Bryce plays. We recently bought the complete Disney Songbook, which has proved to be a great investment! Now no one can claim they don't know the song in order to escape singing. :)

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This is my masterful creation that I took to Enrichment. If you are thinking that you'd be embarrassed to bring this out in public, you are absolutely right!!! Lets just say that I improvised and made a 2 layer 8 inch round cake into a 4 layer stacked cake, which happened to be assembled lopsided, and then had glumpy thick whipped cream frosting so you couldn't even tell it was cute different sized layers, and to top the whole disaster off, I didn't even get the cherries on top centered correctly!! :D Yes, it was an embarrassing entrance that I made with my cake in front of our wards entire Relief Society. Jean the amazing cook strikes again!


Me and my Beehives group. These girls are adorable! I'm so impressed with them, they are a joy to work with.


This is a new picture that I've added to our home. I love it! I get a little thrill every time I see it, probably because I bought it half off at a thrift store. It's an original oil painting and it reminds me of beautiful North Carolina. I put it in my bathroom over the toilet. Unfortunate place to put such a pretty piece, but it fit perfectly there and it makes me smile every time I go in there now. What a bargain!

We're alive!!!

Okay, once again, sorry about the delay in postings. Brace yourself for a whole bunch of random pictures, I'll try to do better at regularly updating from now on. :)

Our wonderful spontaneous vacation!

We went on our first real spontaneous family vacation this past weekend. Bryce didn't have class thursday afternoon or Friday, so we were looking for something to do during that time. Bryce's co-resident Tyson told him that his family was going down to Nauvoo at that time, and Bryce informed him that we were coming along too. :D I hate to crash a family vacation like that, but I'm so glad we did! Hopefully the Teeples didn't mind too much, we sure are grateful for their willingness to have us along.

So, we drove up on Thursday afternoon and arrived in Nauvoo IL that evening just in time for the Nauvoo pagent. After the pagent, we went to a campground and set up our tent in the dark with the light of our car headlights. We awoke the next day and spend the day walking around Nauvoo visiting the different historical sights, seeing a children's play "Anna Amanda" (really cute and well done), and then did the Nauvoo pagent pre-show activities. We then went back to our campsite and made smores and sang songs. Saturday morning we packed up our campsite and took turns with the Teeples in going to the temple. Wow, I have never been in such a beautiful place before. This was definitely my most favorite part of the trip.

This was our second camping trip as a family, and it went a thousand times better than our first time. The girls both loved camping. In fact, Claire spent the whole time we were exploring Nauvoo asking me if we could go back to our tent. :) Funny girl. We had air matresses and so I had no complaints with camping either. The only down side was the 7 ticks we found during our stay, one of which had bitten Cady and had to be pulled out with tweezers. Yuck.

I only wish we had a camera during this trip. We are definitely going to be visiting Nauvoo again during the next 5 years. If anyone is planning on going, let me know and we'll drive up again too. :) I just loved that place, it was so beautiful, full of history, and such an example of the faith and testimony of the early members of our church. I loved this vacation. What a wonderful note to end our summer break with.

Yes, sadly, break is over. Bryce is going to school full time now, but I'll take it anyday over his residency last year. If anyone is confused, Bryce is still an OMS resident, but he'll be in med school the next 3 years getting his MD as well. Supposedly, the first and fifth years are the hardest in his 6 year program. I'm happy to be at the point that we are at now.

Random musings

Well, don't expect anything deep here, it's just been a while since I've posted and I wanted to update you.

Our memory card has been mailed in, so hopefully we'll have a new one and be able to take pictures again in about a month. Sigh. I think we're not going to buy memory cards off the Internet anymore---it takes too long to exchange them! I'll try to do occasional posts in the meantime, but for some reason I feel like I have to have pictures in order to make it a real post. :) I'll do my best to get over that mentality.

Bryce and I went to the St Paul temple today for the first time. We weren't sure how to manage this before because it is about a 6-7 hour trip away from our home when all is said and done. We've been living here over a year now, and we finally came upon a plan that works, a kid exchange! We left our kids with a family up here that we are good friends with, and then next month they will drop of their kids with us to go. So simple, and yet so perfect. :) I can't remember who came up with this idea, but I know it wasn't me. It feels really good to go to the temple again, I'm excited to be back on track with this!

I have a new calling as the 2nd counselor in Young Womens. I'm so excited about this!!! I have wanted to be involved with the YW program ever since I left it as a Laurel. It's so fun getting to work with the Beehives. I'm in charge of the weekly activities. I want to know if anyone has some fun ideas for activities that they have done? Any traditions? I remember doing a friendship basket on Sundays, and an all-nighter, anyone other ideas?

Claire has a new pet lizard that she got from a birthday party. It is a blue rubber thing and Claire has named it, "Lizzy." She carries it around in a little jewelry box and has slept with it for two nights now. This is definitely a big change from the usual horde of baby dolls that she keeps in her bed.

Cady has discovered the naughty thrill that kids get from saying the words, "poop" and "pee." She inserts those two words at random in her sentences, the songs she sings, and when she plays with her toys. While at our friend's house today, she told them she was making a recipe that consisted of "popcorn and pee." I keep reminding her that "Those are yucky words, Princesses never say yucky words, we only say those words when we are in the bathroom." For some reason, what I'm telling her is just not sinking in. I'm trying not to make a huge deal about it, and I'm sure this is just a stage and will pass. (I'm hoping at least!)