Your Turn

Okay, I shared a good idea with you last week. Now it's your turn.



Ned is going to be baptized on May 9th (can he really be turning 8 already?) and I have been trying to think of things that will make this day special. So, I am turning to those of you that have had children baptized (or have been baptized yourself) and have great ideas.

What has worked for you? What hasn't worked for you?
What are your thoughts on giving an 8 year old their own set of nice scriptures? Have you done that and then decided they were too young to take good care of them?
Really, any advice would be appreciated. I just want him to enjoy it and I want him to have some great memories.

The only idea I have so far is that I was thinking of doing a photo montage to play while we eat cake (obviously it will be my Raspberry Cake, pictured at the end of this post ,YUM! What kind of family event would if be if I didn't make that?)

Good Idea

About a year ago my sister was reading to me from a notebook she had from when we were kids. My mom and my sister would take turns asking one another questions. I think she was about 10 years old when they did it. It was so sweet to hear the questions my sister asked my mom and the loving way my mom answered those questions. When I see a great a great idea I like to copy it (see #23) so I bought two composition books and started this with Ned and Dusty.

Ned usually asks how our day was


and sometimes he draws us pictures


Dusty draws pictures also


sometimes he has us write the questions for him


I think it will be so fun to read these in 20 years or so. Plus, my hope is that this will be a way that my boys can communicate things with us that might be hard for them to say to us face to face. So far it has been really fun and I am glad that I started it. Thanks for the great idea, Mom!

31st Date Videos

Thanks to all of you that took the time to vote for Evan. I just wanted to share the video from the show. There is another video that has more from the date.

He WON!!!

Check it out here and the GMA Weekend video here.

Vote Before Midnight

My brother in law was date number six over at 31 dates in 31 days. He could be selected to be date #31 if we all go and VOTE for him. Watch ABC's Good Morning America Weekend tomorrow to see if he is the ONE (or thirty-ONE, whichever) that Tamara picks.
Michal explains this all (and has done a pretty darn good job campaigning for Evan) here.

Live from the shower, Dusty and Lucky

There are a few times that they sing it correctly, but in case you missed it...

Dusty sings it like this once: Take my hand and we'll make it on a prayer. Oh, oh. Livin' on a dare!

25 Random Things

I was tagged to do this on facebook and figure that I have been tagged enough to do this sort of thing on blogs that I might as well post it here too.


1. When Ned was a baby we lived in 5 places in one year.

2. I never finished college and while I would love to finish one day I will never regret the things that got in the way.

3. My blog is almost always positive and even if people think I am painting a pretty picture of my life I don't care because I just want to be able to look back at the good times I had with my kids.

4. When I announce that I am pregnant it will not be by posting a picture of my pregnancy test and will not put a floating baby on my side bar. Those pictures are gross and the floating babies are creepy. I am obviously the minority on this.

5. I am not pregnant and I am not trying but I will have at least one more baby, hopefully sometime in 2010.

6. Lately I have had a hard time hearing about other mothers’ relationships with their new (and older) daughters. I also can’t look at really cute girl clothes without getting a little bit sad. If you say that there are a lot of cute boy clothes out there too… well, they just don’t even come close, do they?

9. I will not lie, I want a girl next.

8. My husbands big Christmas present to me was to get my porcelain veneers redone on my teeth. I am in the process and they will be finished in April. Hooray!

9. I really should turn off cable to save money but I don’t know what I would do without a DVR.

10. I analyze every conversation I have with people. I never want to hurt someone’s feelings but always worry that I have unintentionally.

11. I am terrible with punctuation, especially commas. Did I even use that one right?

12. I do not like tomatoes but I wish I did. They look so yummy!

13. I try not to buy cookies and treats. If I have to actually make them to eat them I have them less often.

14. I have never been much of a reader but I read the Twilight series and enjoyed it. I would love to read more.

15. I really love living in Oklahoma and wish that people would not make fun. Don’t knock it ‘til you try it!

16. I love to talk on the phone. You already knew that? Oh, sorry… Call me!

17. I was invited to, but missed the birth of my nephew. I hope that someday I can experience that.

18. I don’t even want to think about how much money I have spent on scrapbooking products.

19. I think I have a bad gallbladder (I feel pain daily) but the tests came back normal. I wish I could get it out anyway so that I could have a better (less sick) pregnancy next time – apparently that seems to help some people.

20. I have never met my husband’s mother, brother and sister. When I talk about my in-laws it is the Johnson family that I am referring to. They are not related to my husband by blood but they are my family and I love them.

21. I have had a sewing machine for 7 years and sewed with it twice before it stopped working. I only want to get it fixed so that I can sew onto my scrapbook pages.

22. I would love to be good enough at something (singing, dancing, scrapbooking) that people would pay to see my work.

23. I am really great at copying other people’s good ideas. I don’t usually come up with any good ideas on my own. Everything seems to work out better in my head, though. Especially things I say. (I stole this one from my sister’ s list)

24. I am not good at putting on eye shadow. I love it but I just never know what to buy and how to apply it well.

25. I try to be a good friend. I hope I really am.

My Excuse

I really planned on blogging every day last week. I even had a Saturday post I was planning. Can you imagine me blogging for 7 days in a row? Nope. Not me. My excuse is that I am moving the boys to the computer/scrap room and visa verse. I have been painting both rooms and the hallway. We wanted to move the boys into the other room that is a little bigger because they are all getting bigger and we just bought them a new bed.

First of all I will give you a before picture. (I did not take this picture with the intention to post it so I did not clean up one little bit, sorry.)

This is what it looked like right after it was painted. I sure wish it looked this good now.


But, no. This is what it looks like now.


It is such a mess and I have not decided where to put up my shelves from the other room so some of them are still up in the boys' new room (obviously that still is not painted. I will get to that in the next few days.)
Lucky likes his bed so much that he didn't even notice that I came in to take this picture at naptime. I was really afraid that naptime would be over when he was out of his crib but he loves it.

Ugh! Still so much to do. Hopefully I will have it done soon.

Way Back Wednesday - Christmas Morning

*boring post alert*
It is 11:30 pm and I am exhausted. I really should not have promised I would post every day on a week that I knew I would be painting 2 rooms and a hallway and switching rooms around in my house (we are getting a new bed for the boys now that Lucky is finally leaving the crib :-( and it does not fit well in the room they are in now). I am exhausted. Wait I already said that. Anyway, better late than never, right...?

We had a nice, relaxing Christmas.

Lucky loved the candy,


but his favorite part was the oranges.


Ned got a few really fun books and ended up reading aobut twice the amount of minutes required for the month of December in school just over Christmas break.


Dusty's favorite was the Hot Wheel track. You can't go wrong with Hot Wheels with this boy.


Ned and Dusty loved the chocolate milk mixer that Santa brought.


Lucky just loved those oranges. He did not want anything to do with the gifts.


Dusty couldn't handle all of the excitement (or the early wake up call from his big brother.) Nice chocolate on his face, huh?


Everyones favorite gift was Guitar Hero World Tour.







Whew! Another day is done. Good night!

Time Machine Tuesday - It's all fun and games, until...

On January 8th El Guapo finally gave into our children's constant begging to jump with them on the trampoline. He is much, much nicer than I am when it comes to that sort of thing. A little while after they had gone outside I could hear El Guapo laughing. It wasn't the laugh you usually hear from parents (me) when playing with their kids, he was really laughing, really having a lot of fun with his kids. I love that sound, almost as much as I love to hear my little boys laugh.

Well, a few minutes later I heard crying. Ned was curled up on the trampoline holding his face. This would normally make me a little worried but lately this is the norm (the story 'The Boy Who Called Wolf' comes to mind) and I figured Daddy could handle it. Then El Guapo called into the house, "Mommy, we need a rag." Then I was a little worried.

I took the rag out to them and El Guapo told me Ned hit his face on the trampoline and under his eye was a little red and he figured he had burned it a little on the trampoline and a wet rag would soothe him. I was relieved that he had not broken open any skin but when Ned took his face out of his hands I could see a HUGE goose egg under his eye, this was no trampoline burn.

I took Ned inside and he calmed down enough to tell me that he had kneed himself in the eye while trying to do a flip (he has flipped successfully many times).

This was the progression of the injury.

Jan. 8th:



We won't talk about that game. We tried to convince Ned to tell the other kids at school that he had a run in with a Gator fan and to say, "You should see the other guy!" He wasn't going for it. Bummer.
Jan. 9th:



He was a little nervous to go to school. He said, "Sometimes people get teased when they have different things like this."

I was a nervous to see what was said to him throughout the day at school but when he happily got in the car he rolled his eyes and said, "Everyone kept asking about my eye. Like only two people in my class didn't ask me!"

In the beginning the worst part was how swollen it was.


It got worse each day for a few days before the swelling got better on Sunday, but then the bruising started to get worse.

Jan. 10th-11th:






Jan. 12th:
This is probably the worst it looked. Everyone loved it, even the ladies that helped him into the car at school said something about it every day. It took me a few days to get used to looking at this face.


Jan. 15th:
He was still pretty bruised but it started to yellow a lot.


It actually went away pretty fast now that I think about it because you couldn't even tell in the zoo pictures that were taken just four days after this last picture. Hm, not bad.

Flashback Monday - Zoo, January 19th

That does not have quite the same ring to it as Flashback Friday does. How about Memory Monday? If I am going to do that then I don't know what to call the rest of the days. I will have to work on that.

Most of the posts this week will have a lot of pictures and because of this I will not be editing them quite as much as I usually do. So, all of you great photographers out there will just have to forgive me.



We went to the zoo on the 19th, MLK Day. The boys had the day off and the zoo has free Mondays in January and February. It was a little bit cold but the boys did not mind a bit and the animals were all out and happy with the weather.

Our first stop was in the aviary where I got my favorite picture of the day.


The first hour was fun for everyone but then Lucky decided he would rather do this


than ride in the stroller. Since I would not let him do that he spent the second hour doing this



He did get out to look at some of the exhibits. A favorite for everyone was the huge snake. I love the look on all of their faces in this picture.


I just had to get a shot of Lucky using his very unstable snack tray to get a better look at the Rhinos. Scary.


For the third (and last, whew!) hour we were there we went to the playground. I think the boys would have been happy to have just played there for the entire three hours.

They loved the slide and found lots of fun ways to go down it.










Ned was a very nice big brother and pushed Lucky on the swings for a while.


Dusty joined in


and Lucky loved it.


Lucky tried to return the favor.


He did the best he could.


It was a good day. Here are some other fun pictures from the day.

Here is the plan...

I have not blogged in a while because I have felt like I have missed a lot and did not want to move on to talk about new things until the old things have been posted but have been so busy actually doing all of these things that I have not caught up.
So, I am devoting this week to catching up. I plan to blog Mon.-Fri. We will see how it goes!