Eden's first day of 7th grade!

Asher's first day of school

This boy has had such a great summer, but unfortunately it has to end.  

First day of 3rd grade.  Mrs. Sherman/Ren Chinese immersion

Journals

I have spent the last month or so typing up some of my Grandmother's journals.  I have loved living her life with her through her words.  I just finished a journal that she kept while traveling all over Europe: Greece, Italy, Pompeii (wherever Pompeii is), Germany, Scotland, England, France.  They spent about 30 days on this tour..WOW!! During the hours and hours of typing I have been overwhelmed with the thoughts that I need to be better at record keeping and journaling.  Someday I may have a grand-daughter reading through my words and hopefully they will be words of encouragement and inspiration that my Grandma Lucille's words have been for me.  I have to remind myself that every entry does not need to be elaborate and full of detail.  One entry of my grandmother's was :

"I went shopping & bought me a new dress at Ross's.  Also hose & groceries" - Wednesday May 13, 1987

hahaha, I love it!  So I am off today to buy a small pocket calendar so I can start my journaling (which is what my Grandma used), and I truly want to record my journal entries each week here on my blog, because every time I open up my blog my heart swells with love and pride.  I love seeing everything in the past that has happened to my family :)

Eden is 12

Easiest Birthday party ever!!

 Trip to the Pie Pizzeria. Write on the walls (it's tradition). Be silly (of course, they are 12)

 Mall Scavenger hunt.  Be silly again.  Eat cake and open presents in the food court.  Done. 

So Easy!!

Presents for Eden: Her party :) and clothes, make-up, shoes, and decorated her room.

School's Out Scream and Shout

It has already started. This morning the smell of sunscreen was in the air and the endless chatter of Disney channel shows echoed through the house. Bikes were being washed, tires were being inflated, and the day was being planned.  All of this was done by 8:20 and they still had 4 more hours of school to attend before calling it quits for 2 months.  It's a bitter sweet day for me.  No more sack lunches to prepare, no more planners to sign, class websites can be un-bookmarked off of our computer, no more alarm clocks, no more book reports or Chinese flashcards and no more harassing about daily homework.  At the end of all that comes questioning that chores are done, endless bickering, constant messes, constant choas, incessant pleas to go to the pool, "I'm hungry", "none of my friends are home" and let's not forget those dreaded words "I'm bored" (like nails on a chalk board I tell ya).  But despite all this, my goal is to enjoy it.  I watched several kids from our neighborhood graduate this week. These are kids that when we moved into this neighborhood were the same age as my Asher right now. Now they are graduating and preparing to leave home for college and missions.  That time went so fast, and my kids will grow and be leaving just as fast.  So this summer I want to hug them a little tighter and enjoy their noise a little more because it will all end a little (a lot) too soon. And this post is for me to read when the days are a little too long and little too tiring. I love my kids!!

buy me some peanuts and cracker jacks.

Asher had his first season of baseball and absolutely loved it.  He rocked it too.  The first half of the season was machine pitch and he had several double hitters and of course became the rockstar of his team. second half of the season was kid pitch and that became a little more difficult, but he didn't give up even though he didn't hit one ball :( It is so hard to know if the ball is in the strike zone or not! But because it's kid pitch he was able to make it to base many times he just had to suffer being hit with the ball.  His team, the Giants, were 3rd in their league and will get a trophy so Asher is all smiles about that. Who doesn't want a trophy?

(2nd base)

But something other than the trophy gave him an even bigger smile......His coach asked him if he could put his name in to play on the AllStars team!! We aren't sure what that means or entails, but Asher thinks that it's pretty exciting.

(coach asking him to play allstars)

The coach told us that Asher was his favorite player on the team "the kid has heart".  ahhh just what a mom wants to hear.  We love our boy.

You see that he is number 1?? it's not because he was the best player, it's because he was the absolute smallest on the team :) the smallest jersey is number 1, he was also the youngest. Go ASHER!

Someone had a birthday........

.....Shout Hooray!  Little Miss Ainsley turned 4 on Sunday.  Can I just say that I love that this little girl came to our family.  She is so full of energy, which on somedays is a little exhausting and frustrating, but I wouldn't want her any other way. She is so kind to everyone and loves to do nice things for people, she says she "loves to make people's hearts feel happy".

Ainsley loves her friends!  She asks everyday to have a friend over.  Some of her friends right now are Sicily, Kai, Isabella, Rachel, Annie, Kika, and Aubrey. Her friends also include some of my friends and their teenage daughters.  She adores Miss Barbie and Miss Alyson and it is common to find her giving them hugs and asking if she can come play at their house.  Miss Barbie's daughter Elsa is also one of Ainsley's favorite buddies.  

  I love her smile and she is generous in sharing it.  She is so sweet to her Brother and Sister, just yesterday at Asher's baseball she yelled out to 2nd base from the bleachers and said "just do your best Asher".  It was so cute to hear her little voice call out and for him to glance over at her and give her a tender smile.  Eden and Ainsley are perfect sister together, they do nails and play, Ainsley is always telling Eden she is pretty and Eden is always asking for hugs and kisses.  

When we asked Ainsley what she wanted for her birthday she would always respond "everything! everything that's good and girlie". I loved it! And little Ainsley, WE LOVE YOU! Happy Birthday!!

Easter 2013

I am so glad that the weather decided to warm up a little for Easter.  It made the celebration so much more enjoyable.  Our holiday turned out to be a great day  weekend.  It all began on Saturday with a birthday party for my sweet mom and an Easter egg hunt for the kids.  We had a brunch of french toast with fruit and hot chocolate (mom's request).  Unfortunately, the exterior of our house was under construction which made the egg hunt a little messy, but the scaffolding made for some great hiding spots.  My mom did something different and there was an egg with a number inside of it and a sticker on the outside letting the kids know that if they already had an egg with the sticker they couldn't have another.  When they opened the egg the kids discovered which place in line would be theirs.  After all the eggs were found the kids lined up accordingly and were able to choose a prize from my mom's treasure stash.  Eden chose a magnet wand that extends so she can get the screws that fall behind the dryer-random.  Ainsley chose a littlest pet shop toy and Asher chose a softball.  Oh!! Ainsley found the golden egg (with a little help from my sister) which contained 5$.  She was a little confused why there wasn't candy in the egg, she probably would have preferred the chocolate.

(The tongue comes out whenever she gets nervous, I guess all the kids cheering for her freaked her out a little)

Easter morning was great the kids found their basket and searched for candy hidden around the house.  The Easter bunny had way more hiding places in this house than he did in our old house, which made for candy being found days later, in fact Ainsley just found some m&m's yesterday, 2 weeks after Easter!  I loved when I found the candy.

 (Easter outfits)

Bunny mouths

After church we headed to Cache's parents for a Easter dinner and another egg hunt.  Dinner was delicious! Ham, Au Gratin potatoes (has anyone had the Reser Au Gratin's from Costco-oh my delicious! and all you have to do is heat them), homemade rolls, Miriam's delicious cucumber and tomato creamy vinegar bowl.  It was all so good. The Merrill's egg tradition is each grandkid has a special egg color and they can only hunt for their special eggs.  They have three properties in a row, so it makes for a large territory to find your eggs.  I remember one year my nephew Perrin found an egg from the previous Easter, hahah and he was lucky because it had quarters in it.  Cute Grandma and Grandpa also changed up the egg hunt and put questions about the saviors crucifixion in random eggs and the kids would have to take the questions to grandpa and give a correct answer to the question and they would receive money for answering correctly.  The kids liked it.  

I am grateful for the Easter season and the time it gives me to stop and think about the special gift that was given to me. I am very grateful for the Savior and His atonement and I know my understanding isn't fully what it could be, but I know that everyday I am able to use it and with time my understanding will grow and develop. 

Mission pics

I love when I have a chance to practice my photography.  It isn't something that I feel I can do full time, or even part time, right now, but I love that I get asked every now and then to do a shoot.

Here are a few snapshots of one of my dear friend's son who is preparing to leave for Argentina soon.

Eden's 11th

I can't let February pass me by without blogging about Eden's birthday. I can't believe she is 11!  She has gone from this.....

To this.....

She is kind, beautiful, friendly, spiritual, helpful, thoughtful, sweet, sensitive, and sometimes a little moody.  We are so glad she is in our family.  

For her birthday she really wanted a shellac light and some Sorel boots.  Lucky for her she got both! and a few other small items. 

We told her that because the items were a little more money than what we usually spend on birthdays she would not be able to have a birthday party with her friends this year. 

But...............We felt bad and arranged to have some friends over a few days later for a SIMPLE surprise get together.  

(I just went to find the pictures I took of the party, and can you believe I didn't take one Picture??)

Eden had been out with her grandma shopping for a present and when she came home, thinking that she had to babysit, her friends were waiting to surprise her.  Although, she didn't act as surprised as I thought she would. I expected screaming and yelling from excitement and all we got were a few smiles and a look of confusion. "so what? I don't have to babysit?" was all said.

They had pizza and cake and played a few rounds of bingo with some super lame prizes, but they loved it.  After the raging bingo game they watched Nacho Libre.  In the end I think it turned out to be a great birthday for my sweet Neenie!

Birthday festivities:

Breakfast: crepes

Lunch: Kneaders with Mom, Dad and Ainsley

after school she rushed off to gymnastics stayed there for 2 hours instead of 3. 

came home to her dinner of choice: Chicken Alfredo (which was cold because we had to eat before she got home from gymnastics because Cache had YM and Asher also had gymnastics)

dessert: cupcakes and a birthday song sung to her by me and Ainsley since we were the only ones home. (good thing we had that party because her birthday evening was a little sad)

helper

I miss my blog.  I really do. It is such a great way to document our family.  I refer back to it so often.  I hate making goals, I fail way too often.  But I want to do better. Do I dare make a goal to do better on my blog? My stomach twirls just thinking of saying it out loud (or publicly documenting it). But here goes nothing......my goal is to blog more than I did last year. oh wait......I only blogged 8 posts last year? Well this goal shouldn't be too hard then :)

I had to make cookies for our Great To Be Eight program in primary tomorrow and Ainsley wanted so desperately to help.  I am horrible and I cringe a little when my kids want to help in the kitchen (or in the laundry room, or with crafting, or with washing the car) I wish with my whole heart that I savored those moments with my kids to teach them these necessary skills, but it just takes sooo much longer and creates such a huge mess. I was ready to tell her to go watch a show when I realized how much TV (is it considered TV if it's on the iPad?) Ainsley had been consuming this last week (massive amounts) I relented and accepted her help.  It went okay, it was a mess and it took so much longer than it should have, but now, at 11:00 at night, and looking back at the experience, it was fun!  She rolled the dough in the powder sugar for me (we made these delicious and easy cookies) and even though she was doing less rolling and more squishing I pushed aside my annoyance and let her go at it.  She did about 6 cookies and then was distracted by the batter bowl.  I let eat to her eat up while I quickly finished the rest of the cookies.  

"no more pictures, until I put more lipstick on"

note to self: Make a goal of letting your kids help in the kitchen more.Time flies way to fast and I will miss it someday, I know I will!

Sunday pic

It's been awhile since I have added a Sunday Pic,  they are growing to fast.  It makes me a little sad. I know they are still little, but I felt like they were babies yesterday and I blinked and they aren't babies anymore.  I think I will blink again and they will be off to college, missions, and getting married.  I wish they would just stop.

Some things we have been up to (caution: may be boring to some, but I feel I need to write things down so I can remember this time in our life):

*Eden is enjoying school, and just participated in Jr. Achievement Biz town.  It was a real working little city located on the top floor of Discovery gateway museum.  She was a United Way volunteer coordinator, not the job she applied for, but had fun anyway.  I was able to go and I was placed in the First Security Bank.  I was able to see Eden when she came to cash her paycheck, she earned a whopping 14.00 for the entire day, all to be spent buying food from the restaurant and dinky little toys donated by various businesses around the valley. At the end of it all Eden still had 13.00 left :)  she wished it was real money.

*Asher is enjoying Chinese Immersion and is picking up on the language very easily.  Cache and I are always surprised when he comes home speaking phrases and singing songs in Chinese. We also found out this month that Asher has a condition called Uveitis.  It is when the insides of the eyes are inflamed.  The Dr. isn't sure what is causing the inflammation, but we have been sent to a specialist at Moran eye center that will be able to find the root problem and hopefully be able to treat it.  Right now we apply steroid drops 3 times a day, hoping they will bring down the inflammation so it won't cause cataracts, glaucoma, or blindness.  He is a trooper though and doesn't mind the drops anymore and didn't even cry or wiggle when he had to get a ton of blood work done.

*Ainsley is our social butterfly right now.  She asks to play with someone everyday and throws a fit if she is unable to.  She even asks to play with our sweet 20 year old neighbor, Elsa and calls her her "best friend". She eats way too much candy and loves "brown" soda, so much different that our health conscious Eden.

*Cache is living his dream, by starting his own business.  He has signed several clients and works hard with his employees in India.  He just returned from a trip to India where he was able to meet some of his employees face to face for the first time.  With him gone I realized how much I depend on him at home to help keep the house clean and to watch kids while I run various errands and volunteer at the school (It was a crazy 2 weeks with him gone).

*I am just being a mom, which I love.  I was able to be in charge of the primary program this year for the first time in all my years in primary.  It is a much crazier job than I expected, but very rewarding.  I was so amazed at what a great job all the kids did.  I have to admit I was so nervous after our practice two day before the actual program.  The kids were crazy, the seating chart wasn't right, and I didn't think the kids knew the songs very well, but everything went perfectly and without any errors (that I can remember).

That is our life right now.  Maybe I will post again in a few more months.

One of my favorite picture from today.......

SundayPic

2012 Primary Program

Asher was Narrator and spoke as a young boy who couldn't wait to serve a mission (the reason for the missionary tag)

Eden's part:  I need to be kind to everyone because Jesus was kind to even the lowliest person and I want to follow his example.

Ainsley's part: Sang "Wise Man and the Foolish Man" with the nursery choir.

Halloween 2012

 Asher-Karate Master

 Eden-Katniss Everdean

Ainsley-Hootie the Owl

The year Halloween was amazing.  The weather couldn't have been more perfect.  The kids came home with pillowcases full of candy.  Eden went out with her friends.  Barb and I took the boys and Ainsley.  After about an hour and 30 or 40 houses I had Cache come and get Ainsley and the we continued on with the boys for several more hours.  Ainsley had more fun at home passing out candy than she did trying to keep up with the speedy boys.  I wish every Halloween could be as great as this years. 

 School Parade

 2012 Halloween

"trick or treat!"

Camping in the Uintah's

We have become the little adventurers in the past couple of weeks.  It may not seem adventurous to some, but for us, a family with three young kids, this is crazy.  I have sworn off camping because I hate getting up in the middle of the night to stagger to the outhouse while searching for wild animals with my flash light.  I also hate lying awake for hours listening to cache snore and dealing with children that talk in their sleep and have go to the bathroom (again staggering to the outhouse, but this time with a child in tow).  But because of my husband's and children's plea's for a camping trip I caved and agreed to drive to the Uinta's for ONE night in the great outdoors.  It was much more fun than I thought.  We cooked hot dogs wrapped in rhodes roll dough (delicious), roasted marshmallows with Rolo's in the middle, and made smores with Nutella.   We also hiked (walked) around Butterfly lake, pitched a tent, explored a few meadows, and caught a fish.  Okay, I exaggerate a little on catching a fish.  I speared out of the lake a freshly dead trout.  I saw it floating and it didn't have gross flies flying around it and looked actually really good.  I suck stick in its mouth and pulled it out.  The kids had fun looking at it and then we gave it to some fisherman.  They actually decided to keep it-bleh.  The Uintah's are so beautiful and we had some good ole family bonding time.  I will say though, I didn't sleep AT ALL, and I did stagger to the bathroom, and eventually crying at 6:00 am because I was so tired.  All is good though, and I would possibly do it again, I just wish I was a heavier sleeper.
(please forgive these phone pictures. forgot the camera)

 Butterfly Lake

 Pigs in a blanket-campfire style

 itchy eyes+soot on hands=racoon eyes

 Provo falls

OH! I almost forgot to write about the faith promoting experience we had.  When we arrived in the uintah's we were looking for Trial or Washington lakes.  We ended up driving past the turn off to those two lakes and spent an hour trying to find them.  Once we turned around a found them we searched out a camp host who told us all the camp spots were occupied. bummer.  We drove to the next lake and heard the same news.  We drove to 2 or 3 more and again they were all full.  We decided we would try one more and if it was full we would go home and try another weekend.  By this time it was 5pm, the kids were getting hungry and we had been driving around for about 2 hours.  We drove into butterfly lake and Asher and Eden said they were going to say a prayer.  After about 2 minutes a man waved us down and asked if we wanted his camp spot because he had been up into yellowstone for the past week and was heading back home to SLC. He explained how his original plan was  to stay one night and drive home in the morning, but he was so close and missed his dogs and wife that he made a last minute decision to drive straight to SLC without stopping.  Lucky for us we took his camp spot , which was great because the rest of the campground was full.  My kids were so excited that their prayers were answered and their Heavenly Father listened to them even for something so small.