May Seventh

One week and one day ago, Jared and I celebrated our 12 year wedding anniversary that began in the San Diego Temple. Wow...twelve years. That just sounds like a lot.

Who are those crazy kids??


This date holds even more meaning for me personally. It dawned on me last week that it was TEN YEARS AGO, May 7th, that I graduated from Weber State University with a degree in elementary education. It's hard to believe it's been a DECADE since then. Ironically, it was also that very graduation morning that I found out we were expecting Jacob in December. Talk about some major excitement. Never mind the fact that Jared drove 19 hours straight through the night from IL to UT to be with me at graduation by 8am in the morning. He had finals he was taking the day before so we "agreed" he would stay and take them. He showed up at my aunt's house about 5 minutes after I took the pregnancy test that indicated "positive." I was actually VERY relieved he had shown up. I didn't know how I was going to keep that a secret over the next 3 days traveling back to IL with my parents. I took him downstairs to give him his anniversary gift--the positive pee stick. To which he replied, "What's that?" After I explained to him what the stick meant, we went back upstairs. I slid the pee stick across the table (sanitary? maybe not) to my parents. It had no sooner stopped sliding when my mom was jumping up and down, giddy like a school girl, doing cartwheels while my dad sat there scratching his head saying, "What's that?" (To this day, my mom collects the pee sticks that represent each of her grandchildren :)

So yeah...May 7, 1999 was a BIG day for me and Jared.

Here we are after the ceremony with my girlfriend Sarah and her then fiance Justin. They were married a couple months later. Hopefully she won't mind me posting this picture from the past :)

Birthday Blues

Jared's brother, Kevin, was coming to give a medical lecture in downtown Portland at Jake's. He hasn't been doing lectures for very long and has NEVER come to Oregon, let alone, Portland. And this trip it was on my birthday. April 29th. Which meant we'd have to celebrate it a little early. I was actually just fine with this. On Sat. 25th, my parents took us out to eat at the Old Spaghetti Factory. Good food, fun company and great times! Yum. I also got a sweater from my parents and from Jared I got 3 Nike running shirts (2 short-sleeved and 1 long-sleeved) and NINE pairs of foot specific (L/R) running socks. Niiice.

On Tuesday, April 28th, we had our FAMILY party planned for after dinner.

Earlier that afternoon, I was doing laundry. I'm not sure where my mom was...out running errands I think, but I came out of my room and as I walked past the boys room, I found their faces crumpled in TEARS! They were so upset.




When they told me why they were upset, I couldn't help walking out of the room without a word and retrieving the camera to document the trauma.

It went like this...
*Cooper and Grandma secretly made me a birthday cake.
*They stashed the cake in the boys' room to cool, with the frosting fixings to decorate with later, hoping kitty Madras wouldn't get to it.
*Apparently they forgot about sissy Karcyn.
*The door got left open and this is what they found....



I assured the boys that the cake would STILL taste wonderful and though it wasn't a surprise when they were hoping it would be, it was still a surprise for me!

Karcyn was put in time out (she looks REAL sorry doesn't she?)

The boys delivered the sad news to Grandma when she returned.

And this was what I got....a "pistachio" frosted, Karcyn-munched birthday cake. And it didn't last long!




I was showered upon with more gifts...our first BluRay disc to go with our NEW BluRay player...from my kids...TWILIGHT. According to Jared, the boys wanted to get me "Snowbuddies" and "Alvin and the Chipmunks." I'm very grateful he steered them in the right direction. I also got LOTS of yummy movie treats to go with it.

Another gift from my parents was a super cool croquet set. We are finally at a point where croquet would be somewhat successful in our backyard. I have fond memories of the game growing up and my parents have helped expose the boys to it as well.

And the last gift from Jared...was BLUE. A Nike running jacket for me to wear when I run in the rain! I was so excited! I actually wanted to sleep in it. It was the perfect size and I love the color.



I had a wonderful REAL birthday too--with all the visits and gifts and phone calls from family and oh-so-thoughtful friends. Even the Beehives came to clean my house! That was just lucky, but I'll take it!

Oh and I have to add that this birthday is when I'm exactly HALF my mom's age. So we got a picture to document it. We almost forgot. They had gone to bed in the camper outside in front of our house. I was in my PJs and getting ready for bed when I remembered! So I grabbed my camera and paid them a little unexpected visit. Fortunately it wasn't too far to go :)

American Idol...watch out!

Cooper has fallen in love with the song "At the Beginning" sung by Richard Marx and some other chick. It's on the "Anastasia" soundtrack. We listen to it occasionally in our van and we all like to sing along. Cooper's actually gotten pretty good at singing it and getting into it. When he heard about his classroom's "Show and Share" program that started up a couple months ago, he knew JUST what we was going to share....singing along with the CD.

Cooper's kindergarten teacher is so great. I emailed her to see if it was first okay to have him sing a song in class. And if it was, could she let me know when he would do it so I could come video tape it. (We just got a rockin' new video camera too...let's just say that the NEW camera is the size of the battery on the OLD video camera. Blows my mind!!) This is how awesome his teacher is...she called ME to find out when I would like to come and see Cooper sing. She knew I'd have little kids to contend with and to find someone to watch them and I just thought that was so cool! Fortunately, my parents had arrived a few days earlier and would be here to watch Karcyn and Calvin for me.

I have GOT to figure out how to upload video snippets to the blog because this one is definitely worthy of it. Actually, he was sitting when he sang and he's much more, MUCH MORE animated and performance driven when he's on his feet. So maybe I'll re-record it with him keeping the beat, etc. here at home. Either way...it's pretty funny. I LOVE that my laughing (because it's so cute and admirable) doesn't deter him. What confidence!! I would NEVER have done that at his age (or THIS age). Kudos to him!! I hope he never loses that love of performing.

My BIG...

Helper....




and CLIMBER...

I LOVE SPRING!

Spring is definitely my favorite season. I like fall too, but between the two transitional seasons, spring wins in my book. I hate the iffy weather, but I love that it is getting WARMER not colder. Usually. Spring this year has been very wet and cold. However...I love the new life that's bursting forth in flowers and animals. And I'm sure that my birthday in the spring has nothing to do with it!

I don't think I've met a flower I didn't like. I love them, especially the kind that smell great and the kind that people give to me for whatever reason. But I have a special place in my heart for tulips. We, I mean Jared, planted LOTS in the front patch of our yard by our garage and by our front porch this past fall. It was so exciting to watch them finally come up. We were curious too to see if we had any flower fatalities via death by squirrel because the darned vermin wouldn't stay out of our bulbs!

Recently, we got a rockin' new digital camera with some of our tax refund. It's an Olympus TOUGH. It's water-proof to 33 feet, crush-proof up to 220 lbs, drop-proof from up to 6.6 feet, and freeze-proof to 14 degrees. I was having fun with it as I took these pictures that just make me happy. Kind of like..."Sun-shine...on my shoul-ders...makes me hap-py." :)

Made for her...

My mom found this shirt at Target and thought it screamed "KARCYN!" when she saw it. Yeah that pretty much sums it up for her. Especially numbers 1, 2 and 4. Does anyone else out there think that age 3 is the new 2??