Jaguars, Art, and Missionaries, Oh my!

I realized tonight that I
have been recently
learning much more
about Jaguars, Rinos,
Tigers..., then I ever
thought I'd be
interested in knowing.
It's all to fuel the curious
mind of my little three
year old. I only expect
my knowledge of wild
animals to grow in leaps
and bounds over the
next so many years
because of these three
boys that live in my
house. Josh is mainly
interested in what every
animal eats, he is
obsessed with it. I was
reading a book to him
tonight about animals
and all their facts and I
just don't know if it's
right to teach this little
boy how, "Vampire Bats
eat the blood of cows,
pigs and horses." And
how after, "...Dingos kill
a large animal, like a
Grey Kangaroo, they
back away so they wont
get kicked, receive a
fatal injury and die." I'm
all about telling the truth
to my little boy, but he is
soooo little. THREE. Do we
have to talk about all this
killing and eating of the
killings. One of our family
activities lately is visiting
the, Bean Wildlife Museum,
at BYU. Josh loves it, so
does Dave. I did the first two times, but don't know how many more visits I can take.

On Saturday night we were down in Provo wanting to visit the Bean Museum, but it was closed.

I thought it would be great to see the Fine Art Museum for a change, but before we got the chance we saw the back of the MTC and we decided it would be really fun to go there.
I use to volunteer there every week when I was pregnant with Josh, but haven't been back since. The MTC always needs volunteers to sit and listen to the missionaires in training practice, and its fun to see them practice. They really try so hard, and it is so nerve wracking for them. A whole floor of one of their buildings is set up with twenty-odd rooms that are decorated like a living room. I bell rings and all the missionaries knock on the doors and you open your door and let them in. They teach you something (while they are being video-recorded) and then a bell rings and they leave and go watch the video of them teaching to see how they can improve, etc. It was fun to get to go with our boys so they can see what a missionary actually is, and what they do. We will have to incorporate this into our family activities especially as they get older. So if you are looking for some fun family service to do, especially with boys, this is a great opportunity. (click here for volunteer info) We just dropped in, stayed for as long as we could (about an hour) and they were so nice to us. We'll have to do it again.

V-Day

I feel like I'm always saying to myself, "what a nice idea for a holiday", whenever a holiday comes around. I too am a Valentines Day fan. I think its fun to think about all the couples everywhere doing nice things for each other and remembering how much they love each other. Usually Dave and I enjoy a fun night at home, but this year Dave's brother asked us if he could watch our kids for us on Valentines Day. !?! Dave's brother goes to BYU and likes to babysit our kids as a date. It's funny because his idea of a good date is to watch two wild little boys, and our idea of a good date is to run away from two wild little boys (cute, but wild). We had a great date, went to Magleby's for dinner (mine wasn't that great), shopped the cute Riverbottom shops, browsed the bookstore for a bit, and watched "Jumper". At the bookstore we got stopped by some creative daters doing a Valentines survey. The questions were:

1.Who is St. Valentines? (i thought that he chased rats out of a city so everyone loves him..., surprisingly I was wrong. I looked up the answer in the bookstore, ya I was really wrong. Dave got mad at me for giving such a bad answer.)

2.Not knowing who St. Valentines is, would you rather vote for him or Hillary in a Presidential Election? (Sorry Hill.)

3.Will you complete the poem, "Roses are red, violets are blue..."? Dave quickly said, "I am in this bookstore being interviewed by you. So romantic Dave, but much better then anything I could have come up with.

It was fun just being together and not having to chase little ones. Speaking of the little ones the babysitters had a great time too. What a great night.

Here are a few pics. Josh and I decorated on Valentines's Day and when I started hanging up the streamers he said, "Oh, good! It's going to be like Hawaii!!" (? I just laugh)

I was actually hoping for tulips this year. Dave was so cute and bought these flowers in the morning before work and left them in the car all day. They didn't make it into water for a long time and therefore were a little droopy. They did perk up after a few days just in time to die.

I was going to make Valentines with Josh for his preschool-mates (only 9) but he wasn't interested and my two little nieces were. They turned out kind of big so I just ended up putting them on the kitchen walls for decorations. Designs by Alisha.

If only someone gave me this 4 years ago...

(click to enlarge)

two sickies

It's official. Josh's congestion has turned into a nasty ear infection. Now there are two of us on antibiotics in the house. Ammon has been so congested too but I don't think he is infected yet, and I'm hoping we won't be running to the doctor's tomorrow for another prescription. I'm almost finished with my antibiotics. I got a killer kidney infection last monday night. I thought I was going to..., no I wanted to die. I haven't been in that much pain since labor. I'm so thankful for all these great doctors close by who know just what to do. After taking some medicine I was feeling pretty great in less then 24 hours. I realized I forgot how terrible pain is until you are actually in it. When ever I'm in that much pain I can't stop thinking about what people did hundreds of years ago when there weren't many medicines and doctors. I feel so bad for them and there pain and they aren't even alive any more. I guess I'm just really grateful to live in this time period. It's funny because I kind of like natural remedies and just trying to eat the right things to help you feel better but when my kidney was under attack I just wanted what ever would make it go away the fastest, forget the health stuff.

While I was recovering, I watched a BYU devotional given by Elder Hafen. He spoke about a conversation he had with Elder Maxwell who had just been diagnosed with Leukemia. When Elder Maxwell found out about his Leukemia he realized that he should have seen it coming. He had been praying recently to filled even more with the charity, or real love that the Savior has for each of us. Elder Maxwell realized that he had asked for the Leukemia and it was an answer to his own prayer. It would help him have more compassion for so many more people who were going through the pains of cancer and other diseases. What an unbelievable man. They inspire me so much to be better.

expensive

I was wondering why my food budget went up so much this month, and why all our safari animals were looking a little plump.

Blue's Clues

Did you know that Blue's Clues lives at our house? And he likes bagels? I love it when Blue is running around our house, he is such a cute puppy.

surprised/not surprised

I'm not surprised at all that Emily found a quiz like this, but am surprised that Elizabeth Bennet was my mach. You've got to love Elizabeth, I just think she is way cooler then I am. It was a harder quiz then normal and often non of the multiple choice answers matched me, but oh well, at least I didn't come up with a worse match. See who you are.

Take the Quiz here!

Tales of a Slacking Blogger

I feel like I haven't been blogging much or even leaving comments on all the blogs I love to read(love my google reader). So it's time to shape up and I'll start by recapping the weekend.

I realized haft way through Friday morning that I was having the perfect day. (I'm sure I've had lots of them and have just not acknowledged them.) We finally got a chance to try out Kangaroo Zoo on friday. It's a huge room filled with all kinds of bouncy obstacle courses, slides, etc. Of course, the kids loved it, but I was so surprised how much fun Ammon was having. He is normaly a happy boy but I don't think I've ever seen him sooooo happy. He just kept throwing himself all over the bouncy toys and running around so hyper. He kept looking and me with this massive smile on his face. That's when it hit me that I was having a perfect day. There is nothing that makes you happier then to see your kids happy. We came home and the kids took great naps, and instead of doing all my housecleaning work I had planned to do I worked on my home movie organizing project. I'm trying to label and archive all our home movies. I happened to watch the movie of when Ammon was born. I don't think I've see that movie since after we took it a year and half ago. Josh was two and at such a cute age and to remember such a happy time in our lives was fun. I straightened the house a little and then went over to Josh's cousins house who were having a pizza/ice cream party. My parents had been watching my sister's kids while they were on vacation and it was there last night there so we celebrated with a fun dinner. I can't remember the last time I had a pizza/ice cream party, it reminds of elementary school. Need to have more of those. We played a little Dance, Dance, Revolution and watched a movie. We did miss going to play games with some good friends, but that was the end to my perfect Friday.

Saturday was a good day too. The main event on Friday was
'Rocket Launching'. Dave has been building rockets with Josh for the last couple Saturdays and yesterday was the day to release them. I have to admit I wasn't as excited as my boys were about going out in the cold but I would pretty much be the meanest mom/wife if I didn't go. We went out to the field next to Lone Peak High School. It was fund to do a little four wheeling and drive out in the middle of all the snow. Ooooh, it was way too cold out there. My sister Diana ,and her husband Ryan, came out to view the show. After we got there it took us all a minute to realize that Ryan was dressed up like a hick. He had decided that morning that he was going to start dressing like a hick every saturday. You should know that he usually dresses like a college student/snowboarder, and it was impressive to see how many hick like clothing items he owned. Outfit included Rustler jeans (Wrangler wanna be's),flannel shirt,and worn out John Deer hat. He had tried to put everything he could on his belt; a knife,a leatherman (we actually needed that out there) and Diana had talked out of wearing his flashlight. Pretty convincing. I was thinking about how funny he was and then I remembered that on Sunday's he tries to dress like my Dad, that get-up usually consists of New Balance tennis shoes, casual office like pants, and maybe a sweatshirt or a button up shirt. I can't wait to see what he starts wearing every Monday, or Friday. I guess it makes dressing easier. Anyway, here is a little video clip of the big event, I wish it was better but our battery kept dying.