Faith and the Brother of Jared

On Sunday morning Amber bolted the bedroom door so that she could work on her lesson before church. I was with the kids and was feeling a bit guilty for spending so much time over the past couple of weeks on school work. So we got together and made this corny little video.

For slower connections it may take a little while to load, but wait for it, it will be worth it! Also, enjoy the credits at the end of the film.

Waiting on a Story

I hear Dad has a story to tell. I am pretty excited to hear about it. Looks like someone got a photo of the event, anyway!

False Start

Well that little stinker has done it to us. Alayna has refused to use the toilet this week. Every time I tried to put her on the throne she gets her body all rigid like a board, and will not sit on the toilet. I guess we have a false start. And I do not know why each one of our children insist upon teasing us so, by first getting excited about using the bathroom, and then refusing to do so for a while. So it could be a few weeks, or a few months he for we are free of the diapers.

Disclaimer

Amber made me post this. She claims that my last few blog posts were a little error prone - laiden with confusing words that didn't quite fit. Lest anyone feel that I am losing my mental capacities, or fear that I had a pint too many while Amber was at her church meeting last night, I confess that I was too busy to type the blogs so I used some Speech Recognition Software that converts speech to text. I am not very good at it, and it is not perfect - hence I had quite a few words that were typed that were not really what I meant to say, it is just how the software translated my speech. I have to admit, it did pretty good, though.

I did happen to also use it on some of my homework last night, too...I hope I don't get penalized too badly for the errors the software made!

Disclaimer #2...This message was typed manually, thus any mistakes, unintelligible phrases, etc are the sole responsibility of the author and not that of any speech recognition software.

Potty Warrior

On Monday morning when we woke up to start our journey home to Provo, Amber discovered that Alayna had a dry diaper that morning. Amber was quick enough to ask Alayna is she would like to go and use the bathroom. Alayna agreed. I took Alayna into the bathroom and sure enough she went to the bathroom.

Alayna managed to to get through the whole trip keeping her diaper mostly dry. Every stop that we made, Amber would take Alayna into the bathroom and she would use the bathroom.

Today all of the kids have been in a bad mood. I think it is because of lack of sleep. Alayna is of no exception. In her bad mood today, she has refused to go to the bathroom, or rather has been unable to. Thus it remains to be seen, if yesterday's potty adventures will continue on into a habit of a regular potty program.

Fall fun in Spokane

Last Wednesday, we took the kids out of school early and headed off for Spokane. We arrived in Spokane at about midnight. I was very worried about how well Evee would handle the long trip. I have even searched high and low in our house for some ear plugs. I was afraid that that healthy long the little girl would have a lot to complain about during the 11 hour journey.

Evee and the rest of the children did awesome. We hardly heard a cry or complaints the whole trip. We also made a record of two stops along our way. One stop was that Dell MT. Ann and Verne had suggested a small cafe that serve the large portions of the very yummy food. We found ourselves at the small cafe that was once an old wooden schoolhouse. It was nostalgic and the food was terrific. There was no way we would have been able to eat all the food that was given to us. After our brief stop there, we continued on our way to Liberty Lake.

Ann and Verne both had commitments on Thursday. After getting rested up, amber and I dressed the kids up and got them days, and spent a couple of hours taking photos of them for some portraits that will go in our house. The pictures turned out well and we hope to have them hung here soon. (The pictures not the children).

On Friday, the kids road bikes and played while Ann and Amber did some shopping. That night, Verne and Ann had a dinner appointment with the stake president. Amber and I hooked up the karaoke microphone and had a jamming evening with the children.


Saturday was a beautiful day. We did a little Geo caching. We also spend some time up at Green Bluff at the Apple Festival. I believe that everyone else in the valley have the same idea as we did. For there were many people kicking up dust and waiting in lines. It was so bad, that we were stopped in long lines of traffic, just to get out of there when we were done. I was glad that I had asked amber to drive, as I fell right to sleep and didn't notice the traffic hassles on our return trip.

Shortly after our visit to the Apple Festival, we went to the nearby Liberty Lake County Park and set things up in for a barbecue picnic. While the adults worked on getting the food cooked, I played with the kids at the playground. Johnathan and Aylee had contests to see who could cross the monkey bars the fastest. Johnathan was very fast. He beat Aylee several times. However Aylee had more stamina. As they raised over and over again, Aylee started to be Johnathan more and more often. They wanted to continue the races, but I in my great wisdom told them they had better stop. I was a bit too late, however, for Aylee discovered she had popped in a blister that had formed while they were competing at the monkey bars. Aylee had never experienced a blister or a popped blister. This was a very big deal to her, and we heard her complaints for quite some time thereafter.

The night started to get cold, so we can grab the food from the picnic and ran home to have dinner at the house. Ann had cooked some delicious steaks and we enjoyed the need to and the barbecue vegetables in the warm house.

Just a Saturday had been a beautiful day, Sunday was the stormy day of the week. We woke up to rain and enjoyed that the rain for the rest of the day. Aliece and Alayna were both sick through the night. I was selected to remain home with the two girls plus Evee while everyone else went to church. Ashlee and Brett and Michelle arrived to Spokane during church. I took the three girls to the airport to pick up the new arrivals. Michelle's brother had already come to pick her up, so I grabbed Brett and Ashlee and took them to their home.

Brett and Ashlee's new home is awesome. It has a lot of potential for some fun winter projects this year. Their yard is huge and it opens up into a Park with a cool little playground. Aliece asked over and over again if she could go and play at the Park, however she did not realize it was a Park she thought it was their playground.

After church we all got together for a delicious dinner of ham and potatoes. We had an enjoyable time visiting together and saying our good byes. On Monday morning we headed back to Provo.

A few days with Elyvia

Last week we had the great opportunity to have Elyvia stay at our house with us while Ashlee and Brett went to Chicago to visit to Reed and Michelle. As luck would have it, we had sick kids the very first day of Elyvia came to visit. Despite the illnesses that ran rampant in our home during her stay, we all were very excited to have Evee with us.

As you can see from this picture our children were very best friends with Evee while she was here with us. The first few days she was here, Aylee was the only person to home Evee would play with. If Aylee was not close by Evee would be very unhappy. Amber was considering keeping Aylee from school, so that she could be at home with Evee. However, once school started, Evee warmed up to amber quite quickly.

For the week that she was here, Evee was one of the kids. She had a great time playing with toys and dressing up with the rest of our crazy lot.

We are very grateful that we were able to have the Evee in our home.

Addresses

Hello Everyone!

As you all know, Adee is getting married the middle of November. She wants to send invitations to you all, but needs your addresses. If Jen & Dave, Jake & Shan, Joe, and Nae will send me their current addresses, I'll get them to her. Thanks everyone!

WishTips.com

Hey everyone, you may notice that I sent an invitation to you earlier today to view my WishList at www.WishTips.com. No, it is not because my birthday is coming up, though, hey that is a good idea! But, actually, this is a website I have been working on for the past five weeks.

It all came about from Amber who requested the service. It should be a great way for us all to see what each other wants and then claim items so that other people don't give the same gifts that you do. By the way, the person will not be able to see who has claimed or purchased items on the list, so they still won't know what their getting and they can enjoy a surprise or two :-).

You will be able to create your own lists also and share them with whomever you want.

Anyway, try it out and let me know what is confusing and what doesn't work. REMEMBER, this website is not done. I have just completed the bare minimums to get it functional right now. But if it doesn't work, let me know and I'll get it fixed.

Enjoy, and happy gifting (by the way, don't forget my birthday is coming up)! ;-)

Last Day: Wisconsin

On the last day of our trip with Reed and Michelle, we spent the day traveling. We started off by heading up into Wisconsin to say that we had been there. Our first stop was the Kohler Kitchen and Bath Design Center, just north of Milwaukee. It was a multi-level center that had all sorts of bathtubs, showers, sinks, kitchens, bathrooms, etc. It was dang fun to walk around and see the imagination and creativity. Some of their bathrooms were as large as our first apartment!

The next stop on our trip was the Jelly Belly Factory. We got there just before closing, so we didn't get into a tour at all, but we were able to sample many of their jelly belly flavors, including their new Harry Potter line that includes, Boogers, Earwax, etc. I enjoyed the Earwax flavor, personally. To testify that we were there, we each bought a large bag of "Belly Flops" - the Jelly Bellies, that just didn't make it.

While we were in the area we grabbed our first and only geocache from Wisconsin - it was a mile long hike overall on a wet trail that helped us burn the jelly belly calories.


On our way back to Chicago, we stopped at the Naval Base where Reed works and saw the different buildings, and watched all the Navy personel salute "Lt. Dr. Verne Reed II". The Navy base has its own beach, so we stopped there and took this handsome picture of Amber and I on the shores of Lake Michigan.

Reed and Michelle were awesome hosts. We enjoyed every minute of our trip with them. Each day included selfless giving of their time and touring expertise. Top that off with some gourmet meals and it made a very memorable experience.

Heck, since we had to share our wedding night with Reed nine years ago, I thought it was fitting that we made this trip our nine-year anniversary outing so that we could share it with Reed once again!

Day 5 - Another Fun Filled Day in Chicago

Last Saturday on our Chicago trip, Reed had the full day with us along with Michelle. We started off the day by first sleeping in a bit. After we got the zzz's out of our system we loaded up and headed back into Chicago. Our first stop this time was Millenium Park where we did a geocache that led us to this incredible mirrored structure. We had a lot of fun snapping cool photos in the reflective spherical attraction.

Following the park we hit another geocache in the city center. It was of a building that had parts of other buildings embedded in the building. It was cool. We each snapped a picture of ourselves by different buildings that we enjoyed. This picture was of Michelle by a piece of the Salt Lake Temple.

Our final In-Town Chicago stop was Chinatown where we snapped some pictures and hunted for gifts for the kids and some art for Reed and Michelle.

We topped off the evening with some fun Karaoke where we all got involved and crazy :-).

What's Different About Me?

In this rymm, see what you can find.
123 clus I'll give.
Figyor it out in a snap.
See what you can find, behined.

1.ihrautc
2.by mom
3.behind what you see

My Kids Browser is in the Marketplace!

Many of your have already heard about this since it happened early last week, but I thought that I would blog this. Granite Distribution, the company that sells My Kids Browser to store owners notified me that they have sold 135 browsers and that need me to bring them some more! They were sold to several Ma & Pop stores. Deseret Book and Seagull Book have still not taken it. That will be my next goal :).

My hope is that the small book stores will be able to sell the My Kids Browser quickly so that they reorder. This 135 could be the only big sell that I get.... It hopefully, however, is just the first of many orders.

Anyway, I thought I would give you all the update!

Labor Day . . for sure!

Well, Mom and I decided to brave the domestic world and do some canning this past weekend. It was a perfect weekend with an extra day off and then I also took Tuesday off to finish up our work and spend a little more time with mom. Since I had never actually done a lot with Pressure Cooking, I thought it would be much easier than it was. I was quite optomistic and thought the process would go much faster and also give us some lax time. . . mom on the other hand was more realistic.

We canned the beef first and was able to also use Julie's stove down stairs so we could have 2 pressure cookers going at once. The pressure cookers usually take some watching over, however, we had some problems and ended up needing to watch them constantly. So we finally set up our stations and got some reading material and waited for the 2 hour process to complete. We got started Saturday afternoon and continued on through Monday. Then on Tuesday we did a bushel of peaches. It was a lot of fun and also a lot of work. It was fun to spend some time with mom and to learn the skill of canning.

We did take some time to watch a couple movies and do a little shopping. We also went up to Jake and Shan's on Friday and had dinner and visited. It was fun to have mom here and didn't want to let her go home, but I think she was ready to see Dad again.

Day 4 - Downtown Chicago

Reed had to work our first real day there at Chicago. Michelle was gracious enough to show us our first glimpse of the Windy City (wherein Michelle explained why it was really called the windy city - I never knew!)

We traveled on the L-train throughout the city and hit several downtown sites. She snapped our picture for us out on the Navy Pier - a tourist attraction that was built up for the world's fair.

We took a tour of the Franklin Lloyd Wright house which espoused some incredible architecture. It was a cool tour - one that Amber had been wanting to see.

After the tour, we met up with Reed in the city and had some pizza. Then we caught a show called the "Blue Man Group". See some trailers at this link. At the beginning of the show a girl came up to me and asked me if I would participate with them in one of the acts. I told them I would. They gave me some black shoes to wear and told me that near the end of the show they would come and get me.

Just as the show was beginning, they had Reed stand up in the audience and they announced that he had just mapped out the human genome. They asked everyone to applaud him. That was pretty funny - and the evening continued on just a funny. It was a pretty entertaining event. Near the end of the show, as promised, I was "selected" by one of the blue men where they put me in a jumpsuit and whisked me off stage. Once we were off stage, they showed a film of me getting my feet tied up and being hoisted up off the ground, painted blue, and slapped against a huge white canvas to create "art". Meanwhile, in the backstage they were changing my jumpsuit to be one that was already painted blue. They showed me a short clip of what the audience was seeing and then stuffed me in a small metal box that was rolled out onto the stage. On the cart was a large thing of jello. They told me that once the blue men started to shake the jello, I was supposed to poke my head out into the Jello through the hole in the cart. I did so, and once my head was in there, they ripped up the jello and there was my head. It was pretty dang fun.

Day 3 - Nauvoo, Carthage, Iowa, and Travel

On the third day of our trip, Amber and I did a lot of driving. Before we left Nauvoo, we ran over to the "Trail of Tears/Trail of Hope" road and read all of the quotes along the trail. This street is where the Saints lined up their wagons to cross the Mississippi river in compliance with the mobs that were driving them out of Nauvoo. It was a nice walk for us.


As we bid farewell to Nauvoo, we crossed the Mississippi ourselves to grab a geocache in Iowa. This one was located in a cemetery in Keokuk, Iowa. While we were driving back from the cache, we called Jen to get the information on her ultrasound - it was then that we first heard that she is expecting a girl. We were pretty excited.

Our next stop was Carthage. We stopped there and had the tour given to us. It is always a neat experience to go to Carthage where Joseph & Hyrum were martyred. This was my second time and Amber's first.

We spent the rest of the evening traveling the five or six hours to Chicago from Carthage. It was a beautiful drive. Chicago traffic is terrible and we were stuck in traffic quite a bit. We arrived about an hour early, but because of the traffic we needed that hour. The funny coincidence is once we called Reed to tell him we were near the airport (he was driving to pick us up) we all ended up on the jammed freeway within a few hundred feet of each other. We couldn't have timed it better.

Reed took us to his house at: N 41.98769 W 87.66344 (See it on Google Maps)

They live in a cool town house apartment and their decor is awesome. We enjoyed a several course meal and were treated like royalty!

Nauvoo, The Beautiful

On day 2 of our trip, Amber and I got up and readied ourselves for a full day of touring Historic Nauvoo. While Amber was dolling herself up, I ran to the only grocery store in the town and rummaged through it's five aisles to find some breakfast food suitable to our small hotel room.

When I returned, we sat on the bed and had some microwavable egg/sausage muffins and then headed out to do a session at the Nauvoo Temple. It was a beautiful edifice. I had visited Nauvoo with Jen just days before my first date with Amber nine years ago. When we had visited, the temple site was only an empty indentation in the ground with some historical markers in place. It was moving to be standing on that same spot and know that I was attending a temple session in the newly rebuilt structure. I had goosebumps the entire time!

After our temple session, we went to a newly opened mexican restaurant and ordered a taco salad. We were the first customers of the day and no one else was in the restaurant. As we visited with the only on-duty employee we discovered that she had lived in Kalispel, MT. Upon further discussion, we discovered that it was Sister Zeigler from Ann and Verne's Kalispel ward years back.

We took our food to "the Nauvoo Grove" area and sat on a bench amid the trees and crickets and consumed the large serving. We were lucky we shared the portion because we were both filled and had to throw the rest of it away.

We spent the rest of the day touring the visitors centers, buildings, and other sites. On one of our tours, we met up with a family from texas who were with more family from Australia. The Husband was the only one from the states as he married an Aussie from his mission many years ago. They were a very funny bunch and we hit it off with our Aussie friends.

We attended the "Rendevous in Old Nauvoo" production and enjoyed it. While we were waiting for it to begin, one of the missionaries came up to us to shake our hand. I told him that he looked familiar and asked him where he was from. He said that he was from the bustling metropolis of Malad, ID. Well, of course, I knew him right away. He was Elder Ward (I think his first name is something like Eldon or Elton or Weldon -- can't remember that far back). Anyway, he had some kids at Malad High with Jen and I. I even think Jen went out on a date with one of his sons. Anyway, he told me he enjoyed his association with my Dad during their Farm Bureau days and all that. It was fun to see a familiar face there.

After the musical production, Amber and I searched for some places that breached the 9PM barrier and remained open. After a few failed attempts, we were directed to "Dottie's Diner". We ordered our meal. Shortly thereafter the Aussie family. They sat by us and we had a great time visiting with them. They were here because their nephew from Australia met up with a girl from Kirtland, Ohio. Her family was a staunch anti-mormon family, but they hooked up anyway. The family flew up from Australia for the Kirtland wedding. We thought it would be funny if they asked the RLDS church if they could perform the wedding in the Kirtland temple, then when people asked, they could say they were married in the Kirtland Temple. Near the end of the evening we all said our goodbyes, only to find out that we were all lodging in the same hotel!

It was a fun and enjoyable day, to say the least. I sure love Nauvoo.

Meet me in St. Louis

As most of you know, Amber and I went out on a week long trip to Illinois last week. This is one part in a series of logs that I will log over the next few days of our great trip.

The purpose of our trip was to visit Reed and Michelle in their new resident city of Chicago. However, Amber had the awesome idea of us going a little early and flying into St. Louis and renting a car to go and visit Nauvoo for a few days. Amber has never been to Nauvoo and it sounded like a great idea.

We flew into St. Louis in the morning and tried to find a place to store our luggage so that we could tour the city before picking up our rental car that was reserved for later that afternoon. To our dismay, no place in the airport would store luggage due to 9/11 security risks. So, Amber and I toted our luggage around the city as we tried to get in a site or two.

Our first stop was at the St. Louis arch. It was pretty cool. You can ride up there for a fee, but with our time restraints and luggage, that was pretty much a non-option. We got a couple of shots of the arch under the overcast sky.

After visiting the arch, we found an outdoor restraunt and shared a lunch together and enjoyed the scenery. We then headed back on the Metro (the light rail system) to the airport where we picked up our car and headed off for Nauvoo.

On our way to Nauvoo we stopped in Missouri at a small town to catch the Mine Car geocache to say that we got one in Missouri.
We arrived in the sleepy town of Nauvoo around 10:30 PM.

It's a baby!

Well family. . . . Dave and I were able to go and get the ultrasound done on our baby yesterday. It was so amazing! There really is a baby in there! Sometimes it's hard for me to believe it even though I can feel it and have heard the heart beat (and of course I'm growing :). He said everything is looking good and the baby is measuring right on the due date of January 16th! Here are a couple pics that I thought were so cute!

If you haven't heard and can't tell by the pictures. . . .it's a girl! She was pretty active and not shy at all! We can already tell she's got a bit of Andersen in her with these great poses. It was fun to see her moving and sucking. We've already become proud parents and sharing our fun pics!

Anatomically Correct

Aliece drew this picture yesterday of a Mommy. As you can probably see, she was fairly anatomically detailed in her depiction - as she puts it, she even included the parts of the body that make the baby grow big.