While Jade's at school

Ivy is really getting used to having a few hours to herself everyday. She gets to play with what she wants. She gets to watch what she wants. She gets to do pretty much whatever she wants without a big sister telling her otherwise. Here's a little sampling of the things she does while Jade is at school.


She gets to play in the rain with bare feet- with her choice of umbrellas.

She gets to blow bubbles, without someone else popping them.

Best of all, we get that great big smile!

The difference two years makes...

I hope that all of you know how proud i am of our JadyBug. She is smart, sweet, a great big sister, strong, athletic, graceful, funny, loving and a blast to be around. But, she isn't always as great as that sentence may lead you to believe. Two years ago tonight was one of those times...

It was my quarter end and it had been a semi-stressful day. We weren't to the point that we were doing a lot of business yet, so I was able to go home at a decent hour. I got home and Jade didn't want to go to bed. She wanted to watch "Herbie Fully Loaded" and we didn't. So we let her curl up in our bed and watch it. She had been coming to check in with us every so often. We noticed that it had been a little while since we had heard from her. We thought that she must have gone to sleep. We didn't go check on her.

Several minutes went by and we still didn't check on her. Certain she must be asleep.

Soon, she comes bouncing out of our room. "Look, Mommy, look what I did to my hair!" In the night light silhouetted, I thought, "What on earth did you put in your hair that got it so slicked back?" I reach out to touch it, expecting wet and gooey. Instead, I feel a buzz cut! I scream, I start to cry, I send her over to the couch where Scott is sitting.

While I go and look in the bathroom, Scott calls my parents to come over and be a voice of reason. In the bathroom, I find the scissors put away and the hair, little 1 inch long strands, gathered up and put in the trash. At least she tidied up after herself!

My parents got there just as we were about to shave her head. My mom said that we just couldn't do that to her. It would be too traumatic. So, we cleaned up the edges and got rid of a few longer chunks on the top.

Here is how our little blond beauty looked, two years ago today.

And how she looked two years ago, tonight...

Yes, she cut all the way back and all the way down each side. Every family has at least one child that cuts their hair. Never have I known one to cut her own hair to such a length. I told her when she did it that she would be in kindergarten before we were able to cut it up to a bob. Guess what? She's in kindergarten and it is just barely long enough to do a little bob. She doesn't want one, so we just tapered it and tried to blend it a little, while keeping her length.

The saddest part of the story was the next morning. Jade came running into our room and said, crying, "Mommy, my hair! It didn't grow back!"

That winter she wore a lot of really cute skull caps. She still got to look like an adorable little blond girl with her long hair hanging out the back. But, boy am I glad it's long enough now we can pull it back any way we want and the front doesn't require a handful of bobby pins.

Here are the emails that I sent out, with pictures to let our family members know what had happened at our home that night...

First email was titled "6 Things we take for granted-"

6. seedless watermelon

5. Costco

4. running water

3. debit cards

2. DVR/ TIVO

and finally...

1. Hair on the top of your three year old daughter's head.

The follow up email the next morning was titled, "Now for the explanation... "

Important lessons that mom and dad learned last night.

1. When you send a 3 year old into your bedroom to watch Herbie and she quits coming out wanting juice, chocolate milk cuddles or just to say hi, DO NOT assume she is just liking the movie or asleep.

2. When she tells you her hair is in her face and its bugging her, HIDE THE SCISSORS

3. Anytime a 3 year old is quiet assume the worst

4. When your 3 year old comes out with presumably slicked back hair, be very wary of what she's really been doing.

5. 3 year old do not understand the ramifications of cutting their hair to the scalp. It won't grow back in a day.

6. Little girls don't want to look like their dads but do want to look like their baby sister.

Now that we have moved past this experience, I can honestly laugh about it. And can say, Jade did not learn her lesson after that haircut. About a year later (August 2007) , she cut Ivy's hair.

She's learned her lesson.

How do you do the canyon?

I often put up posts that talk about how different my two girls are. Even the way they enjoy the canyon is different.

Jade likes to explore and make friends. The last time we went up to Tibble Fork, the friend Jade made was a long skinny snake. She would have brought it home if we would have let her.

Ivy will explore for a bit, off and on, but she mostly likes to sit next to me on the blanket.

I'd love to hear about how you do the canyon with your family. Where do you go? What do you do? Do you take food? What kind of food do you take? Leave me a comment and let me know.

Six Month Check-up and First time to the Dentist

Jade has always loved going to the dentist. When she was one she fell in the bathtub and hit her mouth. She broke her front tooth. We had a dentist in our ward that looked at her and tooth and said she was okay. Then when we were in Michigan, she again fell- in the bath. Maybe she needs to be a little more careful in the tub. This time we took her to an emergency dentist. She loved sitting in the chair. She was happy and willing to do everything the dentist asked of her.

Every 6 months we go through the routine. Jade does great every single time.

This time was Ivy's very first time going to the dentist. I was a little concerned that she would be a little freaked out. I had hoped they would they would wait for me to get there to start. But they started without me and she was great through the x-rays, the cleaning and the fluoride.

Once they were done and nearly cavity free, they had their pictures taken with the dental hygienists. Happy and ready to go again in 6 more months.

Hogle Zoo!

This weekend, we were invited to go to the zoo with some close friends of ours. They have an adorable son, that both girls adore. Ivy adores him, cause she can call him a friend. Jade adores him because she can push him in his stroller and make him giggle.


I had hoped to get an awesome picture of the whole group by the Hogle Zoo sign, but apparently it is a great place to camp out, wait for friends, eat lunch, or whatever else they can do. So, I didn't want to "wheel" over to them all and ask them to move so we could take a group picture. I'm not assertive enough, I guess. So, I got this one and some other adorable ones with the three kids.

Jade is a very reflective child. I find that once she starts really thinking about something, she doesn't hear anything else around her. I keep reminding myself that that is really an awesome quality called focus. She's not being rude nor ignoring us, she's just focused.

I know I promised no more collages, but I didn't do this one in Picasa and I thought the white in between pictures made it a little easier to see. I have always loved taking pictures of giraffes at the zoo. I am not sure why. Maybe it is because they get up close and personal pretty easily. The top right one is the baby. I also like the zebras. Maybe it is their print that I'm so drawn to.

This is a face we get a lot with Jade. "Just one more, pleeeeeeze"

PS- Saturday at the zoo is a ZOO. There was a line to get tickets, a line to get in, a line to see the monkeys, sold out bird show and a lot of strollers. I always enjoy watching the kids enjoy the zoo. When it's so crowded, you forget about the fun of watching the kids, because you are focused on not losing them.

Quick photo shoot before church...

On Sunday, Scott was headed up to see his dad at the hospital. He's been there now for a week and a half and we are very grateful that he is doing better. It's been a tough week and a half for Grandpa Bob and Grandma Janet. So, we wanted to send up a little present for Grandpa Bob. Before we headed to church, we snapped a few adorable pictures of the girls and headed to church. I was glad, when we got home and I uploaded them, that there we some good ones. Here are a few of my favorites...

Time for Karate

Well, we just signed up for another year of karate. Jade absolutely loves it and she's so glad she gets to see her cousin, Luke, every week for class.

The pictures aren't great, but since I'm kind of grounded due to crutches, I did what I could.

China, Olympics and Lenovo

A friend of mine, from work, went to the Olympics and got to be a torchbearer. He put together a really cool blog of pictures that he took while touring through China. Thought I'd share it with you...

Photo Blog: Olympic Torchbearer, Summer 2008

Talk about a pretty foot...

Since I haven't put an update out there for a while. Here it is. Love the scar with the holes from the stitches. Love the two little scars that look like the top of a draw string sac. Love the purple color it turns if I keep it down for any period of time. Love the great big boot that insurance didn't cover, so it cost us $130. Love the sausage toes I have every night when I go to bed and should be icing it. Love being asked by strangers what happened. Love riding in the super slow cart at Walmart/Costco/Target/Albertsons- that is when they have them available. Love the millions of snags on my sheets from the Velcro on my boot. Love wrapping my boot in an ace bandage so that I don't add to the millions of snags on my sheets. Love the challenge of cooking while balancing crutches, pans, food etc and hopping on one foot. Love the support my family has given me and the patience they have for the past 10 weeks and the patience they will have for the next 7 weeks. Love holding my girls on my lap while I am pushed around in a wheelchair. Over all, there are many true loves and many sarcastic loves. But, all in all, I am improving and hanging in there. Thank you for every one's support and prayers for our family.

School Picture Day...

Today was school picture day at Jade's school. They allow you to bring family members, that are not students. So I decided to take Ivy in as well. Now you and I know my girls are well documented with photos, but hey now we have some with identical backgrounds, lots of copies and hopefully beautiful smiles.

Before I sent them off to school (and headed up to a meeting), I took some of my own pictures. Here are a few of my favorites...

No Bake Chocolate Cookies

Click here for the recipe

Gardner in Training

Last night Jade just started weeding. She'd ask me if something was a weed or a flower and yank it out. Granted, she didn't always get the root system, but hey, it looks better than it did before.

Here is her impressive pile of weeds. She actually asked me to take a picture of it. Too cute for words.

Who needs a dollhouse?

For Christmas, Santa gave the girls an amazing dollhouse (Costco rocks). But, my girls don't play with the dollhouse nearly as often as they carry the furniture around the house. Most days some of it ends up on the porch (or front patio if you are my brother-in-law ;) ). The girls will play out on the porch all evening if we let them. It's pretty darn cute, so I, of course, had to take lots of pictures.

Daniel's Summit Ride- July 26th

I realized I forgot to post these great pictures from the big Daniel's Summit Ride back in July. Sorry.

My cousin Pete.

The whole group.

Coming up the trail

Kickin' it :)

When you are on the top of the world, you don't get reception very often. It's worth a call to brag about where you are and how beautiful it is.
See- BEAUTIFUL!