Random Summertime Memories

I simply cannot believe this summer is almost over!  We had great plans for awesome vacations this summer, but between work and general "busy-ness" we didn't do anything too awesome.  We had fun, though. Here's a quick rundown of some of the things we did this summer:

 Caleigh at her last day of school pool party

 Caleigh with one of her friends from school.

 I built the girls a playhouse (with lots of help from my Dad!)

 Caleigh painting the playhouse.

 My hard worker :)

 Grandpa Bryant visited and brought the girls some pretty princess dresses!

 They were soooo excited!

 Caitlyn in her pretty dress

 Caleigh in her pretty dress

 Caleigh with her tiara

 The girls and Nanny :)

 The whole crew at the boys' baptism

 Our familia at the baptism

 My grannies at the baptism

 Collin and Nanny

 Caleigh at the Arizona Science Center.  The company John and I work for sponsored the museum for July, so we were able to take ourselves and up to 6 guests each to the museum.    

 Caitlyn at the museum.

 Cam cracked me up in this picture :)  This science center has SOOOO many exhibits!  We will definitely need more time to explore when we go next summer!!!

 This was an exhibit that represented a heart.  There are red balls to represent oxygenated blood, and blue to represent deoxygenated blood.  Caleigh just stood there.  There were some wild boys in the deoxygenated area who overwhelmed her a bit.

 We stopped by the Mesa temple and walked the grounds after leaving the science center.  

Let's Play Ketchup!

Here they are on their baptism day. All three of my boys. All dressed in white. Awesome!

Here they are again :) This is more like it! hehehe!

Here's the whole familia! Meanwhile, I went to the temple for the first time and took out my endowment. It was an awesome experience. We've set a goal to attend the temple weekly. My brother took out his endowment later the same day. We have some pictures of us in front of the temple, but they're on a different camera, so they will have to wait. But just imagine them here :)

 The day after the boys were baptized, we were able to go to the temple and be sealed as a couple, and as a family. It was awesome! It was just us, the temple workers, John's sister and aunt, my dad, and one of our home teachers in the sealing room. The kids looked absolutely beautiful. It was a perfect day. We have pictures of our sealing day, too, but they are also on the other camera, so they too will have to wait :)

Caleigh's Birthday

Our sweet little Caleigh turned 4 yesterday. She is such a sweet heart! We celebrated by having family over for hot dogs, cake and ice cream. We were lucky enough to have Aunt Erin and Grandpa Bryant visiting from Texas, so they were able to celebrate with us, too. Our guests for Caleigh's party were Nanny, Grandpa Bryant, Grandpa Rhodes, Grandma Rhodes, Aunt Erin, Auntie Erin and Uncle Josh, Aunt Shanda and Kayson, Uncle Layton, and Unky Sussin. Collin, Cameron, and Layton were helping me serve cake and ice cream. As they served, I had them take plates to various guests of honor. "This one is for Caleigh!" "These ones are for grandparents!" etc... When we got to Uncles, Layton took his plate and said, "Ok, this one's for me! I'm an uncle!" It cracked me up :) I always forget he's an uncle, even though he's been one since he was 14 months old. Caleigh was a great little hostess. After opening each gift, she found the person who gave it to her and gave them a hug and said "Thank you!" The pictures from her party are on my phone, but here is a picture of her in her princess dress and that Grandpa Bryant got for her.

Caleigh Bug

I'm so proud of my little Caleigh bug. She recently finished her first year of pre-school, and she's made so many improvements. A little over a year ago, we started her in early intervention in Texas for her speech issues. She couldn't/wouldn't talk. I taught her how to sign "more" and she could say "no", but that was it. In the few visits she had, we saw a little improvement, but she wasn't in the program long enough to really see much progress. After we moved here, I enrolled her in the special needs preschool program. She has absolutely blossomed in the program. She is learning so much and is communicating so much better than before. For the last day of school, her teachers sent home a slide show of all the activities and field trips her class did together. It was adorable! I am going to try to upload it on here, but I'm pretty illiterate, so who knows if it will work...stay tuned! I'm so proud of Caleigh.

Mothers Day

Mothers Day was really fun this year. I was in the middle of a night rotation at work, so we were able to spend most of the day together. I slept while John took the kids to church, then we had my brother and sister/ brother-in-law, mom and Grandmother over for a steak dinner. John was the grillmaster, and everything was wonderful! He made beans and mexican rice. My mom made salsa, and my sister made pudding pie. It was absolutely perfect. The kids gave me a pile of sweet cards, flowers, and some beautiful plants...now just to keep them alive!! Yikes!! I got a small quarterly bonus at work this week, so I used it to buy myself a new iPod. I can't wait for it to get here!!! I hope all you mamas had a great day :)

Another month....

It's been another month since I last wrote on this thing.  Let's see what's going on...  hmmm....  My days and weeks totally run together.  I guess rotating shift work will do that to a person.

We took the children to the Mesa, AZ temple Easter pageant.  It was awesome!  I came off nights the morning of Good Friday, the kids were off from school, and John gets all holidays off (lucky guy!), so I slept until noon and away we went.  I LOVE the Mesa pageant.  At the end of the pageant, we waited for people to clear out a bit, then John went to get the car to pick us up.  While we were waiting, Cam told me he wanted to walk the grounds, so we walked around together.  I had him, Caitlyn and Caleigh.  The girls mostly like the flowers, and Cam just likes to wander around and look at the building and water features.  It's so peaceful.

The kids are still doing pretty well in school.  Honestly, the boys are bored and their grades and the notes sent home from their teachers reflect that fact.  It's the last month of school, and they still haven't brought home anything they didn't already learn in TX.  Gotta love Thatcher schools!  Caitlyn is a little social butterfly.  She has her little group of friends, and they play and talk about horses all day.  She and Caleigh are absolutely obsessed with horses and My Little Pony.  Caleigh is learning to use the potty!  She made poops on the potty even!!  I took her to the store and bought her a new pony for going poops.  She saw this really pretty barbie while we were there, and she really wants it.  I told her that if she starts wearing big girl panties, we'll go back and buy that barbie.  She is sooo excited :)

John and I joined the local gym.  I'm going for the first time today.  This shift work and eating all the wrong foods is making me gain weight again.  I've gained back about 25 pounds since we moved back to AZ.  I want to get it back off!!  Yuck!!!

I applied for a promotion at work.  I'm really hoping it goes through.  I'm hearing some really positive feedback, but won't know for another month or two whether I get it.  I hope, I hope, I hope!  I am so glad I took the time to get my education while the kids were young.  I can't imagine trying to go back to school right now.  You think you're busy when your kids are little, but as you add more children to the family, and they become involved in different activities, life gets CRAZY.  Honestly, there were times that I felt like giving up, but didn't, and I feel like the lord is blessing me at this point in my life for that perseverance.

I'll try to find some pictures, but right now, the camera is in the car and I'm too lazy to get up and go get it.

Until next month.....