I am not that old. Am I?

Okay people I am only 28.5 years old, but last night at Young Womens I felt SOOOOO old. I had the beehives in my car and we were driving to our activity for the night. My radio is set to RadioDisney, and it rarely changes (I confess I like it as much as my kids do). The new song by Paula Abdul came on and the girls asked who was singing it. I replied (surprised that I actually knew the answer) "Paula Abdul" one of the girls was totally flabbergasted (i love that word) and said she didn't know that Paula Abdul was even a singer. um!!!!!Hello!!!! she was my 5th grade rock star. She had never heard of "Opposites Attract" or "Cold Hearted Snake" I knew every word and every dance step. She was my first album I ever owned (actually I think I had a tape of "TIFFANY" when I was 6). So to all of you who don't know that Paula is a singer and not just an American Idol host here is my favorite song (I can still sing it word for word)
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Our First House

A fellow blogger did a post of their first apartment she and her husband lived in when they were first married. I thought this would be fun, but then I got looking through my pictures and I don't have any pictures of our first apt. or even our second apt. They were both basement apartments and they were our little heaven on earth. Things seemed so simple, even though they really weren't at the time. Both of us were working and going to school. And at the time I thought it was really cool that I made more money than my husband! I was working at Primary Children's Hospital and Cache was working at Finova. Our first Elder's quorum president told us we were "living large", we laughed at that remark and wondered what he was talking about. As I look back, I now understand.

So since I don't have any of our first apartment pictures I will post our first house pictures. It was downtown SLC, right across the street from Cache's parents home. It was a dump when we bought it, in fact it was condemned and the city wouldn't let us live in it until we fixed it up. Someone went in before us and tried to remodel it, but only made it worse. He cut through the heat ducts to the upstairs to put in a pass through window from the kitchen to the dining room. I guess he didn't care if it was warm upstairs. He wired all the electrical cables on the outside of the walls and stapled them down. This was only a few things that made our home a wreck when we moved in. Take a look: (you can click on the pictures to enlarge)

It was a HUGE project and wouldn't have gotten done without the help we received from family and friends. I spent hours and hours painting the ceilings, plus other stuff, but this is what I remember most. Cache got a hernia, we had to hire someone to do the front porch area, but the rest was pretty much done with our own labor.

Have you ever........

tried Geocaching? It is so fun! If you have a hand held GPS device, you can do it. If you don't have one, you can come with us. Here is how it works; There are little treasure boxes hidden all over the world that contain little gizmos that you can trade. You would be surprised that you have probablly been walking past one of these on your daily jogs through the park. First, you have to log into the Geocaching website then enter your address or zipcode and select how many miles you are willing to travel. Second, find a "cache" that you are interested in and enter the coordinates into your GPS. Third, go find it by following the directions on your device. Don't forget to take little treasures to leave in the container and don't forget to sign the log inside too. Usually the treasures aren't that neat, but the kids like to choose something to keep. sometimes there is money, sometimes there are toys, pins, jewelry. It is a good way to get out and explore the valley. We have found a few parks and hiking trails that we wouldn't have found if we weren't looking for treasure. For the intense "geocacher" there are travelling "bugs" (that's what they call them, but they aren't real bugs) that you can find sometimes in the container, If you find it.....sign it out and put it into another "cache" and log it on the website. These bugs travel all over the world. Anyway warm weather is almost here, so I thought I would share one of our hobbies so you can can enjoy it too.

Happiness at our house!

Zinch was featured on the Today Show on Monday. As you can imagine it has our household clapping our hands. Sorry guys for the brag moment, but I have to rejoice in the good news, it's what keeps us going when the times are hard.

Cache is the "computer guy" for Zinch (for those who didn't know)

What a boy needs......

a toy truck and a dog. This is my mom's neighbor's dog. One of these days I might kidnap him and take him home. He is so cute.

My Cute Niece

I took some pictures of my niece today, I was getting a little bored of the same subjects to practice on. What do you think? I still need a lot of practice, especially with my composition and focus. I know there are some experienced photographers that read my blog every now and then, if you see these can you give me some feedback? Or anyone that wants to give feedback , good or bad- is welcome.

This is DANG Cute!

Two more pics.

These pictures are for my memory sake. I love them and they make me giggle. They really show Finley's moxy attitude. He was upset because as he was riding on a little horizontal slope his biked tipped over and he got left behind as he tried to climb back on. "Mommy dey not waiting for me!" I had all sorts of sympathy as I kept the camera to my face and kept clicking the button.

potty training, Annie, and a bike.

These are things I have been wanting to post about for awhile. My mom told me that the two hardest things she had to teach her kids were potty training and riding a two wheel bike, I rolled my eyes and thought yeah, we are doing both of those right now. Fin hated sitting on the toilet until I found a potty seat on clearance at TJMAXX for 10 bucks and it came with a stool and reward tattoos (referred to as "Stickers" in our house). He loves it, because it fits on the "big toilet", and the back has a head of a frog as a backrest and Fin thinks that the frog catches his (ahem) pee and poop. It's great, I tell him the frog is hungry and he should go feed him (disgusting I know, but I do what I have to do). Yesterday, he used the toilet 3 times and we weren't even at our own house, "hippee-ray" (fins version of hip hip hooray).

The two wheeler isn't going as smooth. We live on a hill so we have to take peanut to a nearby trail to get her to practice. She is pretty nervous, but getting better, she still hasn't mastered the balance. Does anyone have any good ideas on teaching bike riding, we could use any advice right now. My friend told me to put her on a grassy hill and let her go down. We might try this. One of the highlights of taking Peanut to the trail is that we pass a lot of horses and we always stop to pet them. This last time we stopped the owners were out and asked if we would like to see their other animals, the kids got really excited and ran to their house. I think we walked into a petting zoo. They had goats, chickens, peacocks, a huge "beethoven" dog, a small "taco bell" dog, about 10 scotty dogs, baby ducks, a parrot, and turtles. I am sure I am forgetting an animal or two that they had. These people were so nice and told us to stop by anytime.Now, on to my favorite event of the weekend. The Annie production came to Kingsbury Hall this week and since Peanut sang "It's a hard knock Life" in our stakes Broadway production, I thought it would be fun to take her to see the real thing. It was wonderful! We both loved it. The only bad thing was that it started at 8:00 at night and didn't end until 10:30, near the end Peanut got very tired. I am not sure how much she understood because she was trying so hard to keep her eyes open. It was fun though and I always treasure our mommy and daughter dates.our friends came with us too, Thanks guys!
Pictures from my cell phone

My Little Peanut

I am having a sappy mom moment, I am feeling how much I love this little girl. She is such a sweet heart. She is so obedient and thoughtful and kind. I want to be just like her. Today she picked up the dishes after lunch and stacked them in the dishwasher, when I told her how grateful I was that she would do that without being asked, she responded by saying "I listened to the talk in conference" (meaning Elder Ballard's talk). It made me beam with Joy. She does have her moments though, if she goes too long without a snack she is surrounded by a puddle of tears, and sometimes she loves to try make her brother jealous or angry, isn't that how all kids are though? She was a hard baby too, I remember thinking if the Lord sends me another like this I won't have any more. Luckily my second was a perfect little baby, but he is a terror of a toddler.
I have had some ask why we call her Peanut. It is because she was born 3 weeks early and weighed only 5#9oz. She was tiny just like a little peanut.

Sorry about the sappy cheesy post, but I just had to do it. Sarah, I stole the pose in the picture above from one of Madison's pictures-Sorry.