there is something magical about having fresh flowers delivered to your door in the middle of a snow storm....

thanks mom and dad butler

please refer to my previous post for my feelings on this picture...

today it was 80 degrees in sugar land.

monday we will be there.

:)

the baby clepto

jenny took all the kids somewhere the other day.  jane came back with this under her blanket...hidden in her carrier (no, not the rattle thing).  i am not sure whether to be impressed or concerned,  because as of now i am very impressed at her skills.  she will be doing high end art theft in no time...

dirty thirty

check out these cakes john and emma made in your honor...boo ya!

Happy Birthday Baby!

Should we list 30 things we love about you?

ok.

1. You are cute.

2. You have beautiful hair.

3. You have fun ideas.

4. You are a fabulous mom.

5. You are an amazing wife.

6. You make the best desserts.

7. You are adventurous.

8. We love your laugh.

9. We love your smile.

10. We love when you chicken people.

11. You have great legs.

12. You get a fabulous tan in the summer.

13. You are very thoughtful of others.

14. We love your health craze.

15. We love how you love life to be simple.

16. We love your buttons.

17. We love your advent chart in the making.

18. We love how much you pamper Jane.

19. We love how you love Jack.

20. We love how you love Christian.

21. We love that you are a hard worker.

22. We love your love of God.

23. We love your love of family.

24. We love that you love people.

25. We love that you love experiences.

26. We love how you cherish memories.

27. We love your passion.

28. We love your empathy.

29. We love your quirkiness.

30. We love that you are 30...and we are not.

i h*** snow

no, that didn't say h***, that says h***. Besides the fact that h*** wouldn't make sense gramatically in the sentence, I just felt like h*** was too strong of a word. Especially for a title. And especially for this time of year (don't you h*** that phrase? I do, because if it is no good this time of year, it should not be good any time of year. It is the cousin of the other phrase I h***, which is, "You can't say that, you are in a church!" If you can't say it, watch it, or think it at church, perhaps you shouldn't say it, watch it, or think it anywhere...there is room for context based arguments here, but I digress). Where was I? Oh yeah, h***.

The only thing I can think of about snow that I like is the scripture from Isaiah:

"Though your sins be a scarlet, they shall be as white as snow."

How can I have distaste (thats better) for something that is symbolic of forgiveness of sin? I don't know. But I do, and right now I am not into it...I am having second thoughts...nope. They didn't last very long.

See ya.

he sees me when I'm sleeping?

ward party tonight. the boys were actually excited to see santa, and they both told him what they wanted. jackson told me in the car he forgot something, so we have to write him another letter to tell him. does he do email? or texts? he should do texts.

jackson and prize. we have this brilliant author in our ward who told me he once wrote an article on the 'desensitation of santa claus.' i wanna read it. he explained to me the best way to help your kids get over santa and for it not to be a traumatic experience. i'll tell you for 5 bucks.

this is christian, giddy as can be to see santa. i mean, giddy. eventually he butted in line to the front. he saw an opening and seized the day. he couldn't wait!! (me neither, so good thing)

this is the program. it took jack a while to get his feet wet.this was christian during the program. he found a seeing eye dog.

oh no...

random post.

Jenny is afraid of the rides at DisneyLand. Her reason, as posted in this post, namely: America is getting too large for all of the rides.

I thought she was ridiculous.

I read Holly's blog where she explained my new find.

I researched.

I found this.

Last year, they overhauled, 'It's a Small World' because of the obesity problem in America. It was causing the boats to bottom out.

Jenny is right.

Jenny is still afraid.

Jenny only trusts one ride now.

That is lame because that one ride creeps me out a little.

I think it is ironic that they overhauled 'It's a Small World' because of largeness.

another reason we appreciate our water-proof camera

halloween...a bit late. and we didn't take any good pictures. here are a few of the ones we did take.

at the ward trunk-or-treat.

the boys trick or treating...

the ghost and forrest gump (and eden - the cute lady bug)
the cousins.justin's birthday and mission call - macon, macon, bbbbbbbbacon, georgia!!!

and we have unofficially (or inconsistently or begrudgingly) started jane on baby food.

(just realized i never posted this - from like a month ago.)

the pumpkin patch and our quest to find the perfect pumpkins...christian found his - the smallest pumpkin with a big chunk missing from the side. jack and his perfect pumpkin..

jane's perfect pumpkin...
check out this series of pictures - so funny. watch christian attack jane with the hay...

jenny is not posting...

I have retired from posting, and jenny has not posted for a while, so i decided to come out of retirement just for a day--





I had to put on this picture:

I was at Toys R Us getting Jackson a birthday pirate ship and ran into this little scene. This chubby older brother was on one of those new TV activities that is supposed to promoste exercise. But he was forcing his younger brother to pedal the bike for him while he played the game. The poor little kid was down on the dirty ground swinging the pedals around as fast as he could while the slave driver played his exercise game. All I could hear from around the corner was, "Faster! Faster!" So I take a peek and laughed out loud (After going back around the corner of course).

I thought it was classic. Maybe even more classic is me looking around for their mom so I could quickly snap this picture.

the witches...

my sisters and mom having been going to Gardner village to see the witches for years and this year we finally made it. so fun and so worth the trip. the boys weren't really into the witches - i think the witches made them a little bit nervous, but they were in heaven surrounded by all of the pumpkins.
this was as close as they would get... :) i let them choose a treat in the candy shoppe - my favorite! and christian would not let his sour apple heads out of his hands or sight the whole time - we're talking like 2 or 3 hours - it was hard to get him to even look at anything else. so funny!

fall fun!!!

fall is soooo fun. we love it. we had a little family night up in the canyon, but unfortunatly we didn't get any good shots of the leaves, but we did get the kiddos jumping around and having fun just being in the mountains. painting! we're finally done! how come nobody warned us how long it would take!?!
these boys love donuts - any kind - as long as it's round with a hole in the center, they are in heaven.
during the priesthood session of conference, all of us girls get together with the kiddos. this year we went to jenn's house and decorated sugar cookies. i love it - lots of kids and lots of sugar, by the end of the night they were literally hanging from the chandelier

thanksgiving point

we met up with julie, jenn, my mom and all the younger cousins at the thanksgiving point farm or whatever. i was so impressed that jack and christian had no problems and were actually excited to ride on the ponies all by themselves - yeah!!!

i LOVE this picture of my mom and maren and jane. she is such an amazing mom and grandma! everyone adores her.

footbaaaalllllll!!!!!

byu football....can we ever get enough!?! we have had so much fun watching and going to games this year. we've only taken the boys to one game and by the end of the first half we were sure it was one game too many, but they got into it the second half and actually had fun. they're pretty good at the byu fight song - just the rah, rah, rah rah rah goooooooo cougars part.these are our awesome seats!!! my family has had these same tickets for YEARS and we LOVE them. nobody to crawl over, no awkward sitting/standing problems, a view of the whole field (plus utah lake, the mountains, costco...) portal XX section 146 row 33 seat 30. awesome.

jane has been my little buddy for all of the games - hot or cold, rain or shine - she has been such a trooper - i'm sure she already bleeds blue like her momma. ok - so we're usually the last to leave the stadium, partly because it takes so long to walk all the way down from the top and also because we like to wait for justin. so the boys were having fun running up and down the empty rows and jumping on the benches so i tried to catch a picture of jack mid jump. well, turns out i also caught christian mid sip - i wonder how many sips he had from left over drinks!!! gross.

my little jane was so cute at jake and lindsey's wedding and i didn't get a single picture... but emma did...

thanks!!!

I am a Ute.

Ok, so I officially started school 2 weeks ago, or something like that and now that I cannot refund my tuition, I think that makes it official. By the way, dropping 1,600 scrillas on tuition is not the funnest end-of-summer activity. I can think of at least five cool things I could have done with that money, including a cruise or a trip to some cool place I have never been. I could've bought an IPhone, which I don't need, but I am way trendy so want it. Um...ok, so maybe only two things, but still. School is ok. I miss seeing my boys on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I feel bad Jenny has to put them to bed which for the most part is labeled the worst part of parenting in my book so far. (I really do feel bad...most nights). AND I feel guilty right now because I should be reading a boring book, or writing an essay or something instead of writing this sentence.
Ok. Guilt is working. Actually, it is not guilt at all. I don't want to be up forever.
peace.
go cougs.

i love people who make rules like this:

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=4243019

since I am the biggest BYU football fan...
I want to win Frockly's t-shirt giveaway

st. george

a big huge thank you to the whalens for letting us stay in their beautiful home in st. george... while we were there, mom and dad brought us our scuba gear, and the boys insisted and begged and asked a million times for me to put the wetsuits on them, and of course once they were on, this...

jack loving every second by the pool...

so cute, he kept saying he was "surfboarding"

and he had to make sure we had a picture with the palm trees in it...(that's my boy fo sho')