Message from the Principal

Friday morning I was out running errands and when I got home I saw the school had called. Uh oh it always scares me for a second. I then listened to the message and couldn't stop laughing. I wanted to record it here so I will not ever forget it.

The message goes like this:
Principal: Hi this is a good news message from Valley View Elementary. Jacob has received the principal award for the week. Jacob is an excellent reader and boy what a math wiz. His teacher says he is a fun student and everyone likes him and wants to be near him. Thanks for sending us such a great student. I will now put Jacob on the phone.

Jacob: Hi, this is Jacob and I won the principal award.
(pause)
I love you
(pause)
And I am proud of myself
(pause)
And I'll see you at home
(pause)
Bu Bye

I laughed so hard becuase I knew the principal was telling him what to say. When he got home I congratulated him and asked if she told him what to say. He said, "Ya".

I saved the message and as I was replaying it for Brandon I heard the other two saved messages I have on our voice mail. They are both from Jacob and they crack me up everytime I hear them. The first was him calling me on my cell phone:

Jacob: Um hi, do you know where the little DVD player is? Call me back and if you know where it is then tell me and if you don't know then I will keep looking.

The second message is my favorite, he left it while we were at one of Brandons basketball games and he was playing with my phone:

Jacob: Thanks for bringing a wonderful treat to all of the teachers. And could you meet at the church at 2:00 in the afternoon tomorrow because we have a special game and the whole church is going to play it. Everyone together. Thanks bye.

Jacob is my joy because he is so much fun. He will dance around the kitchen with me while Brandon looks on, kind of embarrased. He asks me to sing at the top of my lungs. He gets excited about almost anything. He still likes to kiss me and hug me very tight. He was such a challenging infant, toddler, whatever comes next and now he is a fun and energetic 6 1/2 year old!

Life is Too Short

I got this flyer in the mail the other day. I laughed and threw it away. All weekend I kept thinking about it and about what other things in life are too short to do. I agree that life is too short to clean the house, but really it has to be done.

I have experienced several events in my life that have made me realize that life is short and to enjoy it while we have it. I am trying to be better about making each moment last and not putting off things for later.

Life is Too Short:
to not go to a movie during the day and eat a bucket of popcorn
to not go on vacation everytime the opportunity arises
to not play a game with Jacob when he asks
to not go on long walks
to not eat a piece of delicious chocolate cake a friend brings over
to not read a good book in the afternoon (preferrably in my hammock)
to not stay after a Jazz game with Brandon to get player autographs
to not eat good food (hmmmmmm food keeps coming up)
to not read Jonah as many books as he wants
to not have a long conversation with a friend
to not be there when someone needs me
to not rub Bryan's shoulders when he asks
to not sing along whenever a song is playing
to worry about what might happen

The list could go on and on. Today I am going to take advantage of every opportunity that arises. O.K. maybe I am dreaming, but I will at least try to enjoy the journey!

Island Park

We went on my favorite trip last weekend, well actually my second favorite trip. This is the third time we have gone to Island Park with friends on a snowmobiling trip. It is so much fun! I don't even mind the long drive, well I kind of don't mind it, because we are with friends. We left the boys home with my Dad and Judi and they had a great time without us. It was the first time we have left Jonah and I don't think he (or me) was affected by it.

There were 9 couples all together on this trip. We didn't get to stay as long as we have in the past, but we made the most of the short time we were there. The first night we stayed up until 1:00 a.m. (so not me) playing games and talking. It was -18 degrees outside when we moved cabins, we had two cabins with couples in each of them. I didn't mind the cold because we were having so much fun!

Day two was spent eating a yummy breakfast and watching a movie at 9:00 a.m.!!!! When would I ever do that? For lunch we ate at the diner we eat at every time we go. We always make the waitress crazy because we are such a big group. Most of us behaved ourselves and were nice, most of us meaning not Bob Farley! I snowmobiled back to the cabins and loved every second of it. I love to snowmobile. There is something about being out in the beautiful scenery with a very fast machine at my fingertips!



We spent the evening eating and talking and eating and playing games and eating and playing more games. A very intense game of mafia ended the whole group night at midnight. That didn't end those of us in our cabin we stayed up until 2:00 a.m. (again so not me, especially 2 nights in a row!) talking and laughing and ending when I had expressed my opinions a little too much!

Day 3 started with me feeling extremely tired! We had another yummy meal and packed and cleaned up. I hated to see it end, but real life was calling!

While on this mini vaca I was preparing my young women's lesson about "Finding Joy NOW". I kept thinking about how this was so perfect, I was having more joy than I normally do. I had to define the words; fun, satisfaction, happiness and joy for my lesson. I experienced all of those words over and over. All of those words describe my expectations of each day and it was nice to have a good reason to experience them!

We arrived home in the evening of Valentine's day and I thought, who cares about valentines day? I just had the best gift I could have asked for. At 8:56 p.m. I turned off my light by my bed and was the last in the house to go to sleep!

P.S. I didn't get very good pictures, my camera sat on a table and I kept thinking I should take more pictures, but I didn't.

Computer hijack

I haven't been able to blog as much as I would like lately. The reason being Jonah baby has decided that the computer is his. He used to love to sit in the computer chair and watch the pictures on the slide show. He now insists on having control of the keyboard and mouse. Last week he emailed 3 people and opened 70 windows of the internet. Needless to say that I am having a hard time getting "my" time with the computer.

I have tried to not let him bully me out of the computer, he stands at my feet and screams his head off until I either give in or take him somewhere else. He isn't used to not getting his way. We try not to give him everything he wants, but really who can refuse this child? He gets his way at church, his "friends" have learned that he will let them hold him if they take him outside. He gets his way at home, one of his brothers will hold him or give him what he wants. He pretty much has us all wrapped around his little finger. Well I am trying to take a stand with the computer and will try to get my blogging done while he is asleep so that my 2 readers of this blog will not go without!

Mini Vacations

I love going on vacation. I need one at least once every few months to keep me going. Last week Bryan was so bothered by the cold weather (I haven't noticed it too much this year)that he needed to go somewhere warm right now! His first choice was to go to Phoenix to visit his family, but just thinking about an 11 hour drive changed our mind quickly. I looked into condos that we get very cheap through my Dad and found one in Las Vegas. So off to Vegas we went! Before I booked the condo I checked the weather to make sure it was going to be warm, yep 70 degrees.

Now this really is a two part blog. First about vacations and second about how much I strongly dislike driving for long distances.

So off we go driving to Las Vegas. I was a wreck the whole drive. It scares me, I get soooooo bored, I eat and eat and eat just for something to do. Bryan isn't the most talkative person so conversations don't last very long. I can't fall asleep becuase I am too worried that the person driving might fall asleep. I kept telling Bryan if he didn't drive carefully I would never drive on a trip again! He isn't a bad driver, my reflexes are just about 2 seconds faster than his. So anyways it was a long 6 hour drive.


We spent 3 days in Vegas and the weather wasn't as warm as I had hoped for. It was 68 the first day, 63 the next, and 55 and raining the third day. The boys still swam in the very cold pool, I ventured in it with them for about 5 minutes. We spent a lot of time in the hot tub. We went to an aquarium at a casino that was really neat, Brandon and Jacob especially liked the huge sting rays. We also went to M&M world, wow 4 floors of M&M stuff!

From the second we walked into the condo Jonah said "out", he then proceeded to say "out" every few minutes for the whole trip. We all took turns taking him "out" for a walk, if someone said "out" accidently, out they went with him. We decided it is lucky we don't live in an apartment, he might go crazy!

Besides the weather not being fabulous we had fun, except for the part where the boys woke up very early and I was tired the whole time. We decided not to travel west of Utah, becuase of the time zone change. My boys wake up at 7:30 a.m. no matter what time they go to sleep, so this translated into 6:30 a.m. Vegas time.

The drive home was pretty much the same, me worried and eating up a storm. Jonah cried for about an hour of the drive, Brandon and Jacob were content watching movies. By the time we go on another driving vacation I will probably forget how much I don't like it!

Jazz Fever

We love the Jazz at our house. We don't have cable and so we only get to watch the games which are on KJAZZ, only about twice a month. We get pretty excited when we see that a game is on TV that we can actually watch. Brandon is always trying to get me to take him to a game, we tried over christmas break and couldn't get tickets. On Friday he came home from school and said, "please will you get tickets for the Jazz game tonight"? It wasn't hard to convince me. The only problem was that I am pretty cheap and was not about to pay a $15 processing charge on $5 tickets. If I am going to pay more than $5 then I better have decent seats. Well after I told him we couldn't go he asked me to check one more website. Sure enough we found $5 tickets with only a $1 processing fee.

We didn't care that they were playing an easy and not popular team, the Oklahoma City something or others. Our seats were up in the rafters, but we didn't care. We moved down closer and used our binoculars. At half time we tried to move down on the 7th row, but someone beat us to those empty seats. As we were walking back to our original seats we passed where Thurl Bailey does his halftime show. We were able to go up to him and get pictures. That was exciting, he was very nice.


Our neighbors have told us about how they wait for the players to drive out of the parking lot and where to wait. Well that is right up my alley so off we went to wait for the players. It was freezing outside, but we stood there waiting. About 15other fans were also waiting. Some of the players are very nice and stop and sign autographs and some just drive on by not even looking in the direction of the fans that keep them employed. The first player to stop was Brevan Knight, he was cute and nice. Then Ronnie Brewer and C.J. Miles stopped. Brandon kept saying, "we can't leave until Korver comes out". Oh don't worry I was not going anywhere until he came out. Well he finally came and he was so nice and soooo cute and it was just fun, fun, fun.



We got back in the car after 45 minutes of standing in the 30 degrees weather. We were freezing, but it was so worth it. These are the kinds of memories that I love having with my kids. Jacob insists that we take him next time so he can also meet Kyle Korver!