Favorite Pastime

If you come to our house you might find at least one of The Hoard coloring. They have all decided that it is their favorite thing to do. More often than not our counter looks like this.

And our table looks like this.

And the girls love to tape up all their pictures in their rooms.

Brooke said their rooms look like The Friends episode when Monica tried to find out what the switch turned on and off and covered all the holes with drawings.

And they love to color pictures just for us. We usually have a few pictures placed on our nightstand every day.

Who knows, maybe we have a few artists in the making.

Thorup Reunion

We had a reunion on Saturday for Trent's Grandma's family. It was a good time. My kids absolutely love Dodee and Papa and were pretty excited when we told them we were going to see them.

I don't know if we have ever had all of us in one pic before. Once again, it is very difficult to get my kids to look and smile at the camera at the same time.

We played a game that resulted in a lot of unused yarn. The kids loved the aftermath.

Thanks Dodee and Papa (and everyone else that helped) it was a fun night!

The Only Child

I only had one child today for 2 hours and 15 minutes. It was magical. Really. After we dropped the girls off at preschool, we went on a short, but steep walk per Oakley's request. After we sweat it out for a minute Oakley did this:

So I couldeat breakfast in peace and watch a few minutes of The Today Show. And I promise I didn't pose my breakfast and condiments, I just don't put anything away until I am done eating. You never know if you'll need a little more splenda to make Cream of Wheat edible.

And while I was trying to eat a semi healthy breakfast Oakley snuck in from playing and consumed some treats from Oliver's BDay party.

I also got to do paperwork and a telephone interview without being interrupted. So, so nice only being in charge of one child and when that child is easy Oakley it is even that much nicer.
***

I went to get my photos from my quiet morning and it appeared that Paige and Morgan had a little fun with my camera during their alone time with Mom.

Morgan's eyes look kinda creepy.

Kind of a little Brad Pitty from 12 Monkeys.

I have a feeling I am going to love Fridays.

Addendum

I got some pics from Jamie from our girls trip. And since they were some of the highlights of my trip I thought I would add them in.

First, my photogenic classes. As you can see I couldn't quite get it.

Next, our dinner at Chilis, where I tried to eat healthy. I did steal a few of Candice's fries and had some chips and salsa. But compared to what I used to eat, that was pretty dang good.

And last, but not least, meeting cute little Miles. We even flashed some gang signs back and forth.

Sorry about the repeat post, but I wanted these in my blog book of life. Maybe tomoroow I will have some new material.

Lazy in St. Geezy

I just got back from a very extended weekend in St. George with just (some of) the Jensen girls (plus the cutest little Miles). We went down Wednesday afternoon and had a wonderful, relaxing, lazy, good time.

We had a million and one magazines to go through in 5 days.

We spent a little bit of time soaking up the sun AND shade by the pool.

We went to a very little market at Tuachan, where I was able to restock my Scentsy stash.


We ate a lot of delicious food. In one night we visited Cafe Rio.

Jimmy John's

In & Out

And Twenty Five Main

Lets just say we tried to please everyone and I think we succeeded.

Other highlights of the trip

*Trying to stay on my new diet while vacationing. I must admit I did pretty dang good. In fact I got broccoli instead of fries at Chilis and DID NOT eat some of Jenny's molten lava cake.

* Some pretty fierce games of Words With Friends where I had my highest word of 99 points. And I got Jill hooked which made it that much for fun sitting right next to her and playing.

*Getting to see baby Miles for the first time. He is so little and so perfect.

*Shopping, shopping, and more shopping. I had the best of luck with every store. Which isn't the best of luck for my savings....my tummy tuck is now further down the road.

*Photogenic classes. I had no idea how much went into being photogenic. I fear I am a lost cause though. I wasn't able to make my collar bone stick out, suck my neck in, look down, smile, and still look normal. Let's just say my sister-in-laws have skills. And wouldn't you agree they are all very photogenic?

*Getting to enjoy my Kozy Shack Tapioca, because I was on vacation. And being made fun of for having that as my treat.

*Watching the Utah game knowing Trent was loving every minute of it back home.

*Lots of pregnancy/fertility/adoption discussions. It took me back to my infertile psychotic days.

*Candice giving every one a wax (just eyebrows and staches) and me buying all the stuff so I can do it at home. We will actually see if I can do that to myself.

*Cuddling with Jill at night. Not really, but we did share a bed and had a great late night conversation and multiple games of Words.

*And getting to see my Grandma. She is awesome.It was a great weekend.

Potty Training???

I know, I said I was done with all this mumbo jumbo, but it appears Oliver may be on the verge of going potty in the potty.

He has gone in the potty twice for me, but he also peed his pants once. And once was all it took to be back in a diaper. See what I mean about me having no patience what so ever?
When he does stay dry and go potty he gets M & M's and 3 Hip Hip Hoorays from his cheerleaders .

First Day of Preschool

My girls finally started Preschool. I had to work on their actual first day, so we did all their first day stuff today.

Paige
Morgan

They were so excited for preschool that they tried leaving 1/2 hour early, but luckily I caught them. Remember when my boys went to preschool early and I didn't know they were gone for a half hour? If you don't you can read about it here.

So now I only have 2 kids (we have Oliver a few times a week) at home in the morning and it is so nice.

Good Mom Moment

I finally had one, a good Mom moment. Yesterday morning I was making a list in my head all the things that I had to get gone, and it was a long list. In fact I still haven't completed the list. As the list was growing in my head Oakley came up to me and asked if I would play cards with her. My first thought-no, I have too much to do. But I actually put aside my usual selfish feelings and sat down and we played a killer game of War and Oakley loved it. And just so you know, this good mom moment followed a lot of bad mom moments, like me getting so frustrated with Oakley as I tried to help her read, I really have no patience.

Its a shame really, my kids deserve more of these moments...but I am working on it.

Garage Project

Well, like I said earlier we have had 2 projects in the works for a while now (one of them 2 1/2 years actually and that is not the one that is done). We, I mean Trent finally got one of them completed-the garage. We redid the garage so we could fit everything from our shed into it. You see, I want a fire pit area in the back yard, but the shed was in the way, so Trent went to work on solving that problem for me.

We don't have a before picture of our garage except this. You can at least see the color, but you can't see the old cupboards that were falling of the walls...
This is what I call the fun side of the garage. All our outdoor equipment for any season is on this wall. Oh and Trent has bought more of the green totes so he can switch the old ones and have them all matching. ;)

We even got new doors, which are so much nicer than our old ones. And behind the wood door is project number 2, which I am hoping will be done by Christmas, give or take a year. ;)

And this is the work side. Don't you love how organized and straight everything is? Well, that's Trent for you. It was fun to watch him figure out where he wanted everything.

And there you have it. Hopefully next Summer we will be roasting marshmallows in our backyard.

Who Says Summer's Over?

Not us.

Oaks in Soccer

The boys and Oakley all started soccer last week, the problem is their games are on the exact same days and exactly the same times and in different cities. So, Trent and I have to divide and conquer.

I was assigned Oakley last week and it was the cutest thing I have ever seen. Oakley is a midget and to see her cruising around the field, kicking the ball, and heading into the "mosh pit" was awesome.

She gave it all she had and was always bright red when she came off the field. And her little determined face was the best part. She really wanted to do well.
I think I need to video a game so you can see how cute she is. Or you can always come to a game in person.

(I get the boys this week, so I will do a post on them after I get some pics.)

The Ward Campout

We had our Ward Campout this weekend. And Trent, being the good dad that he is, took all the kids by himself. You see, I was supposed to be running this race, but with my current foot problem I had to drop out. But since I was planning on running I didn't take the weekend off work, so after all was said and done I had to stay in town and be on call. Bummer.

Trent and the kids went up to Heber Valley, which in my book isn't real camping, but it works. the kids had fun around the camp fire roasting hot dogs and marshmallows.

They also got to go to Legacy Lake to canoe and play in the sand.

And they got to sit and listen to something. Not sure what it is but I liked them all lined up. And of course Oakley was sitting with our neighbor girls.

I think the kids had a fun time running around, getting dirty, and playing with their friends. Naturally, Aiden was the only one that did the obstacle course. He loved it.

And since I had alone time with NO responsibilities, Brooke and I hit up the new shopping that is happening in Farmington now. Can you believe that these 3 stores are all right next to each other? (if you can't tell from the pic the 3 stores are Marshalls, Home Goods, and Ross!!)

The rest of my weekend also included a dinner at Pei Wei, which was horrible. It took me 30 to get my food and then they didn't bring Brooke's food for another 20 minutes. Seriously it was pretty bad. On Saturday I slept in, did a visit for work, had a visit with Maga, went to lunch with Brooke, Heidi, and Teri, did some more shopping and finally came home to be reunited with The Hoard.

It was a great weekend.