St. George Weekend

Katelyn graduated from Dixie this last weekend, so Monica and I drove down to see her, and go to Graduation. We had 2 graduations. One was a pinning ceremony just for the nursing students, and one was for Dixie. We left on Thursday morning so we could make it there for her first one that night. We drove with Katelyn and her room mate Leigh. It was at Zion's National Park. It was beautiful, I want to go on a family trip down there soon.

Monica and Leigh excited to be going to the Pinning Ceremony

And Me and Katelyn
Beautiful Scenery. It was kind of weird to see blue skies all day long, after it being overcast pretty much everyday up here.

This was the site from the amphitheater where Katelyn got her pin.

Here is one of the Nursing teachers. She was a Doctor and I don't think I'd ever let her touch me, considering when she welcomed everyone she said it was 2002. I said I knew it was a long drive, but it must have been longer than we thought because it took us 8 years backwards.

Here's Katelyn's Pizza Factory Supporters

Chelsea, Nick, Katelyn, and Chris

After Graduation we went to dinner at Texas Roadhouse and then to the mid-night showing of Iron Man 2. It was pretty good. It was fun to be with Katelyn and her friends.

Friday was Dixie's graduation. Here's the Graduate!

Here's the Three Amigos, or Charlies Angels as we are sometimes called.

When the 3 of us get together, you never know what's going to happen.

Katelyn and her family

Then we went to the Olive Garden for dinner. Yum!

Katelyn's Dad took this picture. Me and Monica are in deep conversation, and Katelyn is just excited about graduating I guess. When we saw this picture, we couldn't stop laughing.

The whole group.

After dinner we went Mini golfing with Katelyn's friend Chris, and her soon to be boyfriend, Nick. We had so much fun. If you saw us you would have never guessed I was married with 3 kids, or that we had two college grads in our group. It was like we were all back in High School. It was so much fun.

Nick and Chris. Chris was in charge of keeping score, he won so we were all concerned for his math skills.

Monica shooting some pool. We didn't have the heart to tell her she was playing the wrong sport.

Cute Katelyn

While we were golfing, little baby cockroaches kept crawling out of the holes and running across the greens. Nick kept doing his cockroach impression.

It scared me and Monica

Attack of the killer golf clubs

Oops Travis don't look! At least it's not the other way around :)

Monica got a hole in one, because she screamed and chased her ball in.

Yay!

I lost something fierce. It made me sad.We told Nick if Katelyn made a hole in one on the last hole, he had to do a dance and buy us ice cream. Well here we are at Wal-Mart. Yay Katelyn!!

My flip flops gave me blisters so I took them off. Nick was such a gentleman, that he took his shoes off right away and gave them to me. They were a tad too big, considering they were a size 13.

But so it would be an even trade I let him wear my flip flops.

After we got our ice cream we went back to Katelyn's. And ended up staying up all night playing games and talking. Chris and Monica didn't make it and fell asleep, but rest of us held strong. We had a great time. Thanks Leigh and Chad for letting us stay at your house. And Congrats Katelyn!!

Potty Training Update

Joye has been wearing her Elmo unders for 2 days without a #1 accident! And has only had one #2 accident! The last 2 days I have just been asking her every few hours if she needs to go potty, she'll tell me yes or no. But this morning, I was a little more tired, and didn't take her right to the bathroom when she woke up. We put diapers on her at night just in case, she usually wakes up dry, so I wasn't worried about clean up. An hour passed and I decided to get everyone dressed for the day after they had breakfast. I told the boys to start getting dressed while I got dressed, Jaxon yells at me from his room that Joye needs to go potty. Then Joye comes in and keeps telling me potty. So we run into the bathroom and I unzip her jammies, and low and behold, she is standing there in a dry diaper!! All night and an hour after she woke up, and she came to tell me she needed to go potty! I don't want to jinx it, but I think we're pretty close to NO MORE DIAPERS!

Learning Experience

The other night we sat down to read scriptures. The boys are usually always good, Joye is another story. But this night Joye was pretty good. We were reading about the Tree of Life and the Iron Rod. Since the kids were being so good, we decided to turn nightly scripture reading into a little family home evening. Braden went out into the garage and got one of his long ropes, and tied it through the kitchen and down the stairs. Then we shut all the lights off, made the kids close their eyes and carried them down stairs. Once we got down we told them they had to keep their eyes shut and hold onto the "Iron Rod". The boys did really good going up the stairs, but the rope was tied to the doorknob at the top and they couldn't find the other part of the rope to keep going. We reminded them that, Lehi asked Heavenly Father for help when he couldn't find his way. So Jaxon said, "Hey I'll ask Heavenly Father to help!" So he bowed his little head and said a prayer asking Heavenly Father to help him find the other part of the rope. After he was done, Braden helped him grab the other part of the rope. Then it was Alek's turn. When he couldn't find the other part of the rope, he got scared. So Braden turned into the little devil on his shoulder and I turned into the little angel. Braden kept telling him just to let go and come to him, I kept telling him to keep holding on so he could get to the Tree of Life, and eat the yummy fruit. After he wasn't going to let go, we tried to get him to pray for help. He said he was too scared. I knew that he was getting close to crying, so instead of ruining this neat experience Braden got down next to him to help him pray. He asked Heavenly Father to help him not be scared, and to help him find the rope so he could get to the "tree". During this time I am of course crying. Braden helped Alek find the other part of the rope and keep going. Our Tree of Life was our refrigerator. Once the boys got to the end of the Rod, we opened the freezer to show the boys the brightness, and our fruit was inside. We all got ice cream for holding onto the rod, and making it to the end. While we were eating our ice cream we talked to the boys about prayer, and that they can always ask for help, where ever they are.
I am so thankful for my little family, and all that we get to do together. I'm also thankful that the boys love when we read scriptures. They always ask me if we get to read scriptures when dad gets home from work. It makes it easy to have scripture study when there isn't a fight. I'm grateful for scriptures and prayer, and that we get the chance to teach our children about them, and how important they are. I think I cry every time that Joye folds her arms and prays. 1. because she is learning how to pray and she loves it and 2. because she is too big, she shouldn't be big enough to pray. The boys know how important it is to pray for safety. Every prayer they say they ask for Dad to drive safe when he's going to and coming home from work. They also pray for Uncle Jairon (if this doesn't get done, who ever said the prayer gets a talking to after, from the boys) They usually say, "Thank you for Uncle Jairon on his mission, bless him to be safe." I'm sure Uncle Jairon is very appreciative of their sweet prayers. They think we are teaching them about prayer and scriptures, but really I think Braden and I learn more from them, than they will ever know.

Easter Weekend 2010

Our Easter Weekend was full of fun! We had Fessler Friday, Anderson Saturday, and Smith Sunday. Busy Busy. Since we were so busy we colored eggs at Braden's parents.

Jaxon happy as can be. Look at Braden in the background sporting his new glasses. Handsome!
Alek hard at work

Joye had to be Miss Independent. Not much help at her station.

Cheese

Here are Miss Independent's eggs after she was done with them. Not many survived.

Joye didn't want to leave her carton out, she put stickers on that too.

Alek finished with his eggs

And Jaxon

Saturday was the Anderson's. Since the weather wasn't good, we had an indoor Easter Egg Hunt. The Kids each had 10 eggs hidden around the house. Then Grandma had a silver egg and a golden egg with big money inside of it.

Here's Taylor taking a break from hunting eggs, to find a different kind of golden egg ☺

Jaxon found the Golden Egg!! He was so excited.

Here are all the babies, well youngest anyway. Below is the picture from last year about this same time.

What a big change!

Easter Sunday!

The kids walking into the Living Room to see what the Easter Bunny had brought

Alek was our champion egg finder. He found all of his and then had to help Jaxon and Joye find theirs. The Easter Bunny had forgotten where he had hid one egg (which happens every year by the way) and we all looked for about 3 or 4 minutes, until Alek started helping, it only took him a second to find it.

Jaxon on an egg hunt

Joye found one under the piano. So cute with her bum up in the air.

Playing with Alek's game from the Easter Bunny.After 1st session of Conference we headed down to Ricky's for dinner. We couldn't get the grills to work so we were waiting around. I got bored and made a cup tower!

Here's Jaxon, Renee, Alek, and Grandpa waiting for dinner. I didn't even have to force Renee to smile in this one.

We had such a fun and busy Easter. It was good to get together with all of our families and celebrate.

Fun At The Jazz Game

The Studio I work/dance at got to perform at a Jazz Game as a pre-show. Ricky wasn't able to go down so Braden and I got to go down and use his and Ryten's tickets. It was so much fun. The guy that was in charge of the show, told us that he does these shows every game all season, and that our girls were very well behaved, and one of the best groups he has seen!! Way to go girls!!!

Here's Raimee with 2 friends from dance

Raimee dancing.
In the middle of her backhand spring

Stupid camera man. Right in the way of Raimee's awesome Scorpion

All the teams with 2 of the Jazz Dancers

We had nose bleed seats, but we had so much fun. I noticed some people clear across the court and we were more intrigued by them instead of the game.

Here they are. Right in the middle of the picture there is a man in a yellow shirt, next to him is a white haired lady wearing purple and a man in brown, then another man in a dark blue shirt.

The white haired lady and the man in the brown are innocent bystanders. Every time the Jazz would do something good the man in yellow and man in blue would stand up and high-five over top of them.

Here they are high-fiving, the guy wearing purple in front of them felt left out so they did a three way high five. Look at the poor lady in purple, she is covering her ear. So funny!

Me and Brade at the Jazz game

Renee, Raimee and Mi-A. Haha Renee got one of you smiling.

While we were walking out we found Lil Bear. I told Raimee to go get a picture with him. Guess what I wasn't afraid of this mascot.