movie quote...ye-ah!

"Pray that your years come swiftly, pray your beauty fades, so that you may better serve God."

it's seven o'clock on the dot, we in our drop top

ok, no drop top, but a "new" ride none the less. We finally decided what we wanted to buy and just watched the listings for the best deal. We thought we found it yesterday and went to this little dealer in Provo, but we drove it and it just wasn't what we were looking for for the price and all that. So we came home and they updated their Web site that night with one we thought was IT! So we went to the shop and the one I went to see was really nice. Then Jenny came and we were talking about whether it was the best choice to make (a little different than what we were looking for) and we were tired of holding the boys, so we opened this car next to us and sat in it to talk and the guy came up and said, "Oh, you found the other one we got in last night." It was perfect for what we wanted. It didn't take much deciding (except for the fact that the fancy one kept calling to me and had an internal battle about whether to be practical or not--it was a lame battle-- it had more miles, not as clean, more expensive...but I really liked the bumper--I thought it looked cool). So, a decision that came a year quicker than we were hoping, but now we have it and life moves on :).

yoked, yo!

We couldn't let John and Emma get all beefed up on their BOWFLEX without providing some competition...so in light of this new focus on fitness (because of the upcoming 1/2), we got a little workout set at SPORTS AUTHORITY's big weight sale. This is what I decided to spend the money I saved for the camera. Now I have to start saving again--but this was a better purchase because I was actually under budget for the money saved instead of way over. I thought it was super simple--until I put it together with my next door neighboor Will. It took us forever. But now it is up and running and Jenny and I put her to the test tonight for the first time. I LOVE it! I am glad we got it. We had something similar in Hawaii in our garage and we always used it, so I hope we keep it up. Jackson AND Christian both like to watch and pretend they are lifting weights. We'll have to get a picture next time they do it :)

Garden of Eden

Well, the garden begins to blossom. All of the fruits are really starting to come alive. I didn't take any pictures of all the overgrowth and weeds that have taken over also. The soil in our backyard is really rich I think. So it makes for GREAT fruit, but it also makes for weeds galore and lawnmower-smashed fruit since it there is more fruit than we can pick.

The pride and joy if the garden. The delicious black (but not blackberry) berries are coming. They are so good!!

What! What!

Grapes of wrath. They are still too bitter. But I love backyard grapes. They have such a unique taste.

Apples up, applesauce beneath.

Apricots.

Last year our apricot tree gave us about five apricots. This year, we had five too many. There were so many on the tree that two of the big branches snapped right off. I spent the whole morning cutting them all up and cleaning up the mess. We are glad we have a lot this year, though. (Last year we just ate the ones off the trees at Rock Canyon Park--those require no cutting, sawing, and ripping apart branches).

sick.
more sick.

Build me a fork

I loved building forts growing up. Me and my brothers and sisters used to make the best forts in the world up in our playroom or down in the den. Silky was the best blanket to make a fort with because it was so big. (What ever happened to silky? It was this big brown hideous blanket, but it was huge and...well, silky. Everyone always raced to get it if we ever watched a movie or whatever--a family favorite--) Not too long ago I decided to introduce the joys of fort building to the boys. They both LOVE it. I think they are so fun in it. We use that one seashell chair we have and Jenny's blue tapestry she bought. I knew there would be a purpose to both of those treasures one day.

Summer and Mike

We spent a night with Summer and Mike over at Jessie and Aaron's house. They were some of our good friends in Hawaii. They still are our good friends, but we just haven't seen them since we left about 3 years ago. Yikes! Can you belieive that? Summer is supposed to have their second baby here any day (although I think it has probably come already). Summer and Mike are totally awesome. We loved hanging out with them that night. We went to IKEA and made some microwave cake (I'll explain another day). They are both really down to earth and just real. That might sound like a strange compliment, but it is a good one. They are real fun to hang out with. They have moved to Logan, so hopefully we will be able to see them more often than once every three years.

Out of town...and then what

Ok, so I am surprised nobody put me on probation. I guess you can't really put the sherrif in jail right? As ya'll know, I went out of town for our high adventure, and it just messed up my rythym in life, so I need to do a catchup BLOG so I have all of these events covered. I think I'll do them seperate. It's easier to load pictures that way. But, so that this one has some value... and official welcome to the blogging world to:

The Williams

and Jessie and Aaron Kerr

We're happy they have blogs. We would also be very happy if a certain Minnesota family got a blog. But that's just me ranting.

Jackpot!

It has been a year since we've moved into Grandpa's house, and we thought we'd share a few new found treasures with you.


Check out the date on this army ration!!! That was during World War II. Unopened--cool, huh?

I wonder why they stopped making Jello like this...check out the flavor on this baby. If your mouth isn't watering yet, check out the suggestions for cooking on the package:

Jenny's dad, mom and uncle have been here working hard cleaning out the infamous food storage room. That room is not only full of decomposing paper towels and fruit bottled in the 60s, but it is full of obedience. Jenny and I have only recently started our own food storage because of great examples like Grandpa and Grandma Sorensen who heeded the continued call of a prophet for decades. It is gross--but it is inspiring!

What I think is one of the greatest finds yet...

I went into the garage to find something and saw what I thought was a big dusty trunk, then I wiped it off a bit and found this...(turn off the music on my blog, because the music in this clip is original!)

No more sweaty head

As much as we loved Christian's hair, he woke up one too many times with a sweaty head. We felt bad, so we decided to take the Jackson approach and buzz his head too. I missed his long hair right when we did it, but it still looks cute. I am happy for him since he will not be so hot anymore. He is starting to walk a lot more and it is cute. He may almost be to 50/50 walking and crawling. Maybe more 60/40. Depends on the day.

Sometimes I log on our blog from work just to see the boys...I love them!

spoiled!

We are glad the Bunkers are back from their trip...but we are spoiled now. As everyone knows, they kindly let us borrow their car while they were gone. We LOVED it! It is a really fun car to drive and it was beautiful to have all that space. Jackson and Christian both loved watching DVDs when we went different places. Fancy and Fun! We are so happy to be driving "Lindsey's Jeep" (as Jackson calls it). It is nice to have a little more room. Now comes the challenge to get a new guy. Right now we are kind of choosing between two cars we like:

The Pilot or the Odyssey. Both have their advantages and disadvantages and we just need to go test drive them. In the process, other cars might jump into the mix. We shall see. The only problem is any car we drive will not be the Armada, and I hope we can "settle" after having been spoiled :)

We turned Chunky around while driving the Armada because we had Adam's seat and he really like watching the DVD. He had fun.

Jack LOVED it too. Here he is playing with Mom's IPod. Now every time we see an Armada he yells, There is Suz's Jeep!! He actually had withdrawals from the Jeep though. Every time we saw Mom and Dad with it, he would want to ride in Lindsey's Jeep. Fun times!

Post for Jacquelyn and Josh

Hi, I am taking the initiative to post for Jacquelyn and Josh in case any of you feel like they are still on their trip to Texas:

Hi guys! It's the Cheat and Josh! We are so sorry we haven't been blogging! Well, our trip to Idaho was fun and our apartment looks great. Thanks for all the help in moving even though I hate David and never call him to help us. Good thing he came to help paint and spilled the paint on the floor. Maybe that's why I don't call him. Well, got to go. Come visit us at our new pad!

I Think Franklin ate John and Emma's Computer...

The Fourth and Fifth and I think Third of July!

These first few are a bit random because they have nothing to do with the 4th of July, but we thought they were cute.

Jenny ordered these books that come in the mail and the Three Little Pigs came this month. It came with some masks that you could wear to act out the story while you read. Jack wanted to act it out with NaNa--

On the 3rd we went and hung with the carnies at the Freedom Days Festival in downtown Provo. Seriously I need to know where these people live every other day of the year. Jack drove the race car simulator and Mom got him some tickets to ride the ghetto boat ride that I thought would fall apart any second. We had to convince him not to ride the planes because I was confident he would have fallen out of them. He loved it!

After the carnival we went to the Orem Institute for a Freedom Concert. It was nice. My buddy I work with directs the choir at the Institute, so it was his show. But then...the cherry on top for the night--SmartCookie! We met John and Emma there for a delicious treat.

Chunk was crawling around--Emma had it perfect when she said he looked like a chimney sweep. The cookies are good, but the ground is nasty. Watch out.

We got up early on the 3rd to see the balloons from our back porch. By the time we were up, they were on their way down, and thought we would wake up the boys on the 4th to see them, but you couldn't see them as well again, so we decided to wait until next year to drive the boys over to see them up close. I was helping one of the youth in the ward with his Eagle project (which was security for the parade) so I got to see the whole parade without dealing with getting there early or sleeping overnight or standing behind the throngs of people. It was actually a really nice way to see the parade. When I got there, they put me in charge of staging all the floats. This meant I had to line them all up so they would be in the right order in the parade. I had a fancy shirt and one of the walkie talkies. It was cool. Once they were all getting into the parade I just walked the route a couple of times as security. I saw some of my students and got hit by a million of those popper things. It was fun!
In the afternoon we went up to the canyon to hang out with my brothers and sisters [except one who is in Texas :( ] and my parents who were in town and my brother-in-law's family at Vivian Park up Provo Canyon. Brian's (my brother-in-law) Dad had some rafts we could float down the river with. Me and my Dad and Mark and April and Kale all went down the river together. My Dad almost fell in, which was pretty funny. The water was FREEZING! Brian got in and swam in it which is nuts! It was fun. I had never floated on the Provo River before but hear people talking about it all the time.

We went and spent some time with Jenny's best friends from college. One of them (Megan) lives in California and the other (Maya) in Arizona now so we don't get to see them very often any more. It is fun because they are all in the same stage of life and was fun to catch up for just a bit before everyone had to fly home. We miss seeing them. One of her friends Julia, who we haven't seen since I was still at BYU was supposed to come, but her kids got sick and couldn't make it. Glad we got a minute with the other two and of course it is always good to see Erin and Spencer!

And the grande finale...We need to prune our apple trees a little for next year's firework show. This year was awesome, but there were a couple of branches in the way of the little ones that shoot up right at the top of the stadium. We got to hear the concerts from our backyard which was fun. and the plane flyovers are always cool I think. They shook our house when they came. Remember last year when Jackson hit the deck when they flew over? Just one burnt little finger and a lot of fun! (Jackson learned that the sparklers are hot--sometimes I forget that obvious things are not obvious to a two year old until you teach them)

One final shoutout--are you tired of this blog yet?? No picture, but we ran down the canyon (on the actual race course) with Mom on Saturday. I hadn't run in a while, so it jump started me back into gear! Hoody hoo! 4-5 more weeks.

Campin'

We went and now our job is to convince everyone in the famiy to go with us next time! Our friends Jeff and Julie called us last minute to see if we wanted to go, so I took the day off work and away we went. Jeff's parents own some land in Fairview Canyon, so we drove down their to their private land up on this cool little plateau overlooking a lake and some beautiful forrest.

The boys both had a great time! They were a handful...Chunky loves to eat all the dirt and rocks and was reaching for the fire the whole time and Jack would just get one of his friends (NaNa or Stitchy) and just wander off, so we had to be watching both every second! But they loved it!

Jeff and I went on a little hike after the kids had gone to bed. He works for the Utah County PD so I was kind of glad when we went hiking with his gun strapped to his belt. This is all Emma's fault, but all I could think about was getting attacked by a bear. Seriously we were up and away from everyone in the mountains, and then on our little hike Jeff told me there was a bear living somewhere on their property. Are you kiddin me! In the night Jeff was snoring (I think), but I dead serious thought it was a bear growling by the tent. I am still not 100 percent convinced that it wasn't. In the morning, Jenny told me she was scared in the night because she thought the same thing!! Yikes! Then we found this...

and this...

The only downfall to the trip--when we were packing up we got attacked by a swarm of flies. Seriously there were like 10 flies on each of us...and they didn't fly away when you shooed them. One of them I reached down and pinched off my arm. It was pretty nasty.

We really had a fun time and want to go camping some more! If you are in, let us know!!

Happy Birthday Jared!!!

Today is my big brother Jared's Birthday. Growing up he was always the peacemaker of the family and the one we all called "the favorite". He is super smart (valedictorian in High School and at BYU) athletic (ran a marathon in just over 3 hours!) A wonderful father to 3 cute kids - including a set of twins. He has an equally amazing and talented wife. He is very self-disiplined and dedicated to whatever he's doing. I always remember the stories my mom would tell about Jared spending hours practicing his racquetball serve - he later went on to win a National championship title while at BYU. I loved the semester we spent together in Jerusalem where I learned what a powerful testimony he has. He has always been the perfect big brother and always willing to go out of his way to help and to make you feel included. He is always happy, fun to be around, extremely funny and super witty. I have always been so proud to be Jared Sorensen's little sister.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JARED!
Can't wait to see y'all next week.