Slow down a little girlie

New update on our family blog. 11/30 click here

Update, Update, Read all about it...

The long wait is over. I have finally given my poor blog some attention. It only took all day and I'll still a week behind.

Check it out here...

Say What???

New update on our family blog 9/28

Family Blog updates...

One of the most annoying things about having a private blog is that no one knows when you've done a new post. So after stealing this idea from someone else I'm going to use this blog to let all my friends and family know when we've updated our family blog. So if you're interesting in our family updates then use this blog link (www.mynerflife.blogspot.com) on your page (or google reader) so you can see when I've added a new post.

Simply click on the line below and it will take you to our most recent post. Enjoy!

New post 8/25 This little piggie went to the market... this little piggie stayed home

"Oh ye of little faith"

So in my previous post I mentioned how on the Monday before school things seemed perfect. I felt as if it were Heavenly Fathers way of telling me that this was all meant to be and we were meant to move here. Then Tuesday my world was torn apart. Or at least in the moment that's how it felt. Well first off I knew that this was where we were meant to be long before the Monday before school. I knew we were suppose to move when we posted it and we got our perfect renter (let's just hope they are when we go into the house after the lease is up). Then we went through some miracles when we found the house we are living in now. Then there was my calling and of course the great people that we have met and have already touched our lives. So for me to think that having the perfect teacher and a primary girl in Shay's class was the clincher on whether we had made the right choice only showed my lack of faith. Especially when it all went down the tube. Okay so it didn't actually cause me to question our move, but it made me question if I made the right choice for Shay and going only half day. So since then I have to say that I am 100% happy with my decision. I thought before that life was perfect when Shay had the best teacher and friend in her class, but I've since realized that everything has just recently become "perfect" as we've met with her new teacher and learned what her day will be like in her new class. First, I'll be blunt and say that I got a better first impression with her original teacher, but all in all everything sounds much better with her new one. So here's what made it perfect in my eyes.....

- First (I know there are alot of firsts in this post) , she ONLY has 13 kids in her class! How likely is that in a public school to only have 13 children in a class room. Obviously as kids move into the school boundaries they'll be assigned to her class, but still 13!!!! I'm sooo excited for Shaylee. She will get more hands on and more attention. The teacher will be able to help the students individually and know what areas they need to be more challenged in.
-Her teacher in the past taught 1st grade- I love this because she knows exactly what they need to know next year. After teaching Sunbeams I had a better understanding of what I need to do to prepare my own children for primary/sunbeams.
- Being that the class is so small she will be able to cover the material in less time so Shay will get to do some of those activities that she would have been left out on in her original class. Like....
-art
-library time
-music time
-computer lab
-I also feel that this will help her get closer to her classmates being that there's 13 (or 12 not counting her) rather than 30.
- All her classmates will go home at the same time rather than half her friends leaving to lunch while she's leaving to go home
- and most of all she gets to come home at 11:30
Seriously I feel like I got the best of both worlds. No she doesn't get as much time as the other kids do with the extra curricular activities, but she still gets to do them and again I GET TO HAVE HER HOME!!!!!
- oh yeah................and it's FREE!!!!

So I thought I better write a post about this since I gave you my whole sob fest. Things are good. Life is good and I seriously couldn't be happier with all of this. So I will not doubt my faith again...... okay I'm gonna try really hard not to, but I AM human.

Mixed Feelings

Monday 2:30pm

Life is good. We just found out that Shaylee got the "best" kindergarten teacher and that her new bff from primary is also in her class. We get her a new school shirt for spirit day on Fridays, get her lunch card all set up, and say a quick hello to her new teacher. Kinder Orientation is tomorrow so once we get done what we need to we are off to enjoy the rest of our day. Again, life is good.... things have worked out perfectly and it just puts the icing on the cake for our whole move up North. At this point it's just obvious to me how this was all meant to be.

Tuesday 2:00pm

Life has taken a turn...... it's not soooo pretty anymore. I had previously been looking online to find out when the half day kindergarten ends and had no luck. Everything I read said that ALL elementary kids are in school from 8:00-2:30. I started to have a little hope that this was just more icing on the cake and that maybe soooo many parents paid for all day kinder that they just made is all day kinder, but I apparently had my head too far in the clouds because just as I thought things were getting even better we were informed that they just got approval for a new teacher and that the few kids that were doing half day would be moved into the new class. My excitement of having the best teacher for my child and her having a friend in the class was short lived. Not only that,but the teacher then went on to explain that the half day kids will also be left out of the art, p.e., music, library, and computer time. That part I was some what prepared for. I knew that they couldn't teach the full day kids more than the half day so me paying would mean that we would be missing out on the extracurricular activities. It's just that much sadder sitting in the classroom hearing about all the excitement and knowing my child wont be participating in it. In that way I'm glad that all the half day kids will be in the same class so Shay doesn't have to stare at all the other kids artwork on the walls that she wasn't there for. I guess I just looked at paying for full day kinder the same as paying for daycare and I don't need that or want that. Now I guess I'm just afraid that Shaylee's gonna be really sad that she's missing out on all the fun stuff. Not only that, but I thought that she'd have lunch at school before going home and we were informed that the half day kids leave while the other kids are going to lunch so that lunch card I got is gonna come in REAL handy. Overall, yesterday turned out to be a bad day. You're probably wondering why I'm making such a big deal about this..... after all she's only in kindergarten, but I guess finding all this out made me really question if I made the right decision. Will Shay go through this year sad that she's missing out on all this extra fun stuff?

Wednesday 8pm

We wake up excited for the first day of school. I'm making breakfast as Shay comes in with some classic first day drama (more to come with this story on our family blog), but we make it to school on time and we're feeling a little better. By we I mean me. I've excepted that this is just the way it's gonna be unless I want to fork out some serious cash last minute (if that's even an option). Who knows maybe this new teacher will be even better (fingers crossed) and at the end of the day what is important is how Shaylee's doing with all this. As of now she's okay with going to a new class. She said she's sad that she wont get to do all those extra activities, but who knows maybe she'll enjoy coming home early even more. So we'll have to wait and see how her first day went and if she's happy being able to come earlier. As far as the teacher goes.... we haven't even met her yet so we'll give her a chance. As far as feeling that maybe I made the wrong choice. Well, it is what it is. The decisions was made months ago and..................

it's only kindergarten right???

Okay, so maybe I'm still trying to convince myself, but I know in the end it'll all work out and I'll wonder why I stressed so much over it.

Coming in the near future (hopefully today or tomorrow).....

Check out our family blog for details on Shay's first day

1 down 19 to go.....

Okay so as I was going to post this I realized I put this on the wrong blog so if anyone knows how or if it's possible to copy and post to another blog please let me know...

Well life has been anything but boring around here.......

Just yesterday Shaylee was telling me that everyone in her Sunday school class except her had already lost a tooth.

I could tell she was feeling a little down about it.

After all losing a tooth is exciting stuff.

Who doesn't want a grill with a couple missing teeth in the front??

I told her that people lose teeth at different times and it was nothing to be concerned about.

It'll happen when it's suppose to.

Then later that day she bit down on something and started crying.....

I came to find out that she had a loose tooth.

The poor girl was soo scared so I comforted her best I could and helped her to see how exciting this really was.... After playing with it all night and most of this morning it finally came out.

She hasn't decided if she wants to keep it or give it to the tooth fairy, but let's just say this girl can be easily bribed with money. So I have a good idea what she'll choose at the end of the day.
...and now she has a new smile to start off kindergarten with.

Along with that Chad and I are very excited.....
we finally broke down and got new phones.
I know you thought it'd be more exciting than that, but really... my phone has been broke for a little while and it was getting a bit ridiculous.
It's no iphone, but it's nice to be able to read my texts again.

I've also been holding down the fort in RS.
In our new ward everyone seems to disappear June and July and it turned out that a week ago Sunday I had the RS president, 1st counselor, secretary, chorister, and teacher all on vacation. It was very lonely sitting by myself in front of the room.
I'm just grateful that it was an uneventful week and I didn't have to deal with to much excitement on my own.

We've also had the opportunity to meet alot of new friends in the ward.
Don't worry they'll never replace my friends from Campbell Ward.
We've had plenty of invites to dinner, games, playdates and more.
It's times like these that make me sooo thankful to be members of the church.
I couldn't imagine moving somewhere and not knowing anyone and not having many opportunities to get to know people.

I asked Shay a couple weeks ago what things she wanted to do before school started again and she wanted to go to the zoo.
So we invited some of our new friends and had a hot, but great day at the zoo....
I will have you know that we are generally too lazy to make it to the zoo in time for the giraffe feeding, but we finally made it there and we weren't going to miss out.
Even though I'm not a big fan of touching animals like this. I just feel dirty and like I need to wash my hands right away.
I guess it's a good thing I don't live on a farm.

...oh, and Cache wouldn't go near them.

The kids had a blast playing in the water area...

My friend has a daughter Shaylee's same age (same month even) that is also starting Kindergarten at the same school.

She is already Shaylee's new best friend.

I'm sooo amazed at how fast Shaylee makes friends.

If it were only that easy at my age.

our excitement didn't stop at hanging out with new friends though....

We had this friendly guy camping out in our garage for a couple days.

He was the ....

biggest

ugliest

cockroach looking thing I've ever seen....

Chad and I both avoided the garage for a couple of days until I talked Chad into killing it.

So gross!

So I already shared Shaylee's exciting news with her loosing her first tooth,

but here's a few other things Shay's been up to....

About a week ago we took Shay to the dermatologist to have a couple bumps above her lip froze off.

We saw this doctor a month ago about this problem and he prescribed some medicine, but the medicine just pealed off layers of skin and didn't do a thing to the bumps.

So we decided that we'd try freezing them even though that is the painful route.

Well I have to tell you that Shay was a champ.

She didn't even tear up.

I've had that stuff before and I know it hurts so I just couldn't believe how brave she was.

What a tough chick she is.

We also signed shay up for dance class again.

Since we only have Shay going to half day kinder we decided we better have some extra curricular activity she can do during the week.
So Friday is her first class and she can't be more excited.

This is just a random pic of Shay.

I don't know why, but I love pics of my kids sleeping.

I love that Shaylee's favorite dolls these days is a red head.

and the last of shay's exciting news is that we gave her her own room...

...i know it looks quite boring.

I haven't even had time to go out and look for idea's on how to decorate it, but I'm pretty sure that Shay will choose some time up rockstar theme.
We figured that with her having to wake up so early for school that she should finally get her own room so she's not waking up her brother.

I thought she'd have a hard time the first night.

Maybe be a little lonely... but no.

I think she's enjoying her space.

Shaylee and Cache can be the best of friends at times.

It's times like this when my house feels soooo peaceful...

Cache

is all smiles as usual....

he thought he was sooo funny for wearing his dad's shoes.

Nothing too exciting has been going on with this kid.

He stays busy playing with his cars, dinosaurs, riding his bike, and scooter, these days.

Recently he hasn't been taking a nap.

I'm not sure I'm ready for that to be gone, but he does great staying in his bed and having a little quite time.

We are signing him up for a sports class where he'll play football, soccer, and teeball.

I'm excited for him to try this.

I think he's gonna love it.

Although I'm still counting on him being my basketball player.

I'm just giving him a chance to get these sports out of his system so he can focus on his basketball career when the time comes. =)

Cache is still my silly boy.

However, he's surprised me with how quiet he is around other people.

Maybe he won't be the class clown, but at home he keeps us laughing.

The other night he came in with his pants pulled up as high as he could get them....

of course once Shay saw Cache getting attention she had to join in the fun....

...and now for our sweet

Kaelyn

Kaelyn has been up to a lot these last few weeks.

She's busy busy busy.......
She has finally decided to start walking.....

... and not just with her grocery cart around the house.

I seriously love her cheeser.....

she has become a very messy eater.

I usually have to prepare to give her a bath after most meals.

She LOVES her fruit and loves to style her strawberry blonde locks with the juice from her fruit.

Somedays the result of this is a quick bath in the sink...

Like I mentioned in my last post... this girl is a climber.

The other day I was fixing dinner and when I turned around to find Kaelyn in her high chair.

I didn't put her there so I asked Shaylee how Kaelyn got in her high chair.

Shaylee didn't do it.... so Kaelyn must have climbed up herself and sat in her chair.

A little scary, but now I know when she's hungry.

I didn't even have to teach her sign language.

She just walks over to her chair and starts climbing up....

hmmm.... maybe sign language would have been safer.

another cheeser....

and Cache's and Kaelyn's new room.....

I was a little nervous to how this would work out, but so far it has been great.

I think Cache is liking being the BIG brother in the room.

As for Kaelyn's other happenings.....

She loves to point at all the pictures in the house and say something to the effect...

"look at that"

I start a mommy and me class with her in about a week

She loves to give kisses

At night time when we tell her goodnight she gives us lots of slobbery kisses

She's also good at blowing kisses

She has climbed out of her crib once... however, I'm assuming once she got over she fell because I haven't noticed her do it again... oh, and she was screaming when I found her.

She likes to shut the doors

In the mornings if she wakes up before the other two I have to keep my eye on her or I'll find her in their room on their beds waking them up

and last today I came in to get her from her nap and found her diaper off and "stinkies" all over her crib.

Luckily, I found no evidence of any in her mouth.

So I guess that's our update for now.

Alittle all over the place, but that's about all I can do with the craziness three kids bring.

One more week til school starts.

I'll be sure to post all the excitment!

Blog update

I updated my family blog.

You can click here

To be SELFISH or SELFLESS

I've had to make a tough choice lately. No it's nothing eternal, but it's something that's important to ME. It's my hair...... yes ladies (and gents if there's any out there reading this) my hair is very important to me. I enjoy getting it done every three months if my pocket book allows. It's one of those things that when it's done it makes you feel like a million bucks. Unfortunately, lately it's seemed like I "need" everything. A couple examples..... I need some new workout clothes, I need a swimsuit to swim laps in, I need goggles, I need some new clothes, I need a new car, I need to decorate the new house a bit, I need chick-fil-a once a week, and the list goes on and on. Most importantly, I need to get my hair did. Seriously it looks awful. Well..... since I'm not rich and can't call and make a hair appointment whenever I feel like it I've been saving my money...... and guess what I have it. Enough money to do whatever I want to my hair, but there's one small problem...... the kids need swimming lessons. Okay they don't' "need" them, but some might argue I don't "need" my hair done. So do I do the selfish thing and get my hair done? After all I've been saving my very own money for it. Or do I do the selfless thing and use my hard earned money to pay for my kids swimming lessons?

Well I'll let you know I have already made my decision, but I'd still like to hear what you think. If your roots were grown out about 3 inches and it looked like you stopped taking care of yourself would you do the selfish or selfless thing?

Why and who decided this?

*** WARNING ***

***There may be..... okay there IS some inappropriate language below***

Soooooo last night I was rudely awakened by a barking dog. To my disappointment that barking dog was mine and he had jumped over into the neighbors yard and couldn't get back (different story). As I laid in my bed trying to go back to sleep (after fixing the situation of course) I got to thinking about WHY some words are bad or inappropriate. For example the work "hell" or "damn". Growing up we were definitely not allowed to say these words, but we weren't allowed to say stupid or shut-up either. As a matter of fact I don't let my kids say shut-up or stupid, but I feel it's for a good reason. They just are not nice words. They are words that you'd use to put someone down and I personally would rather teach my kids to use words that would raise one's spirits=). However, as I thought about these two words I couldn't understand why they'd be "bad". What is different about saying "what on earth is going on" verses "what in the hell is going on". They mean the same thing. Why is earth socially okay, but not hell.

*BTW- I understand that some people don't believe it is a "bad" word, but like the word "damn" you probably would go using it while you were giving a talk in church. (unless used in the right context)

So then I got to thinking about the other curse words. Who decided that these words are bad. For example what's the difference between "please get your a** off my table" and "please get you're butt of my table". Who decided these words were inappropriate and WHY? Obviously, saying "get your a** off my table" sounds worse, but isn't that just because society views them as bad words?

I want to know you're opinion on this. Although I may not totally agree or understand why these words are "bad" I will refrain from using them around my children and in public (and most likely some words all together) because society views them as inappropriate and I don't care to have my kid dropping the f-bomb in the middle of primary.

I went post CrAzY!!!!!

Yup!

I couldn't control myself and went a little crazy with the posts on my family blog.

Chem em' out here if you want...

grrrrrrrr....

Many of you know this already, but we are a bit crammed for space.

We have 5 people living in a 2 bedroom house.

When we bought our house we only had Shaylee and planned to live in our home for 2 maybe 3 years and then move.

We bought in the first phase so we felt pretty good that we'd make some money off of it.

4 years later the market is terrible and we owe a lot more than our house is worth.

Apparently there is a lesson we need to learn and it's been a tough one.

However, we've come to realize and except (as much as one could in this position) that we will not be selling our house anytime soon.

We were at least hoping to refinance to decrease our bill a little.

Unfortunately no one is willing to help the honest people in this rough economy.

You have to either have bad credit or foreclose on your house to get help.

It's been VERY frustrating as Chad and I have called bank after bank trying to work something out only to find out that no one will help us out.

It's no wonder so many people are walking away from their home these days.

They're more likely to get help once they do.

I'm convinced that doing the right thing is going to pay off, but really sooner rather than later would be great.

grrrrrrrr!

Brilliant I tell ya!

I have a friend who I believe is

BRILLIANT.

You know she's one of those girls that likes learning and reads alot.

I'd like to introduce you to her. Her name is Bridget.

She's so brilliant in fact that a magazine wanted to interview her.

I heard about this one day and didn't think much about it. To be honest I wasn't surprised. After all she is a smarty pants so why wouldn't they.

Well it just so happens that one day as I was in a store looking at the magazine section I couldn't help but notice a familiar face looking at me from the REAL SIMPLE magazine.

I couldn't believe it. After all REAL SIMPLE is a magazine I like. I expected her to have an article in Newsweek or something (which she may have preferred), but to my surprise and liking she was right there on the cover of REAL SIMPLE magazine. Not only was she interviewed, but she got front cover. WOW I was impresses.

Well the story gets better because as I read her interview I found that she was being interviewed about motherhood and right there in the middle of the article was a HUGE shout out to me!!!

Now I've always felt like Bridget thought I was a good mom, but I was on cloud nine reading about how she felt I was an example of a good mom.

Unfortunately, I was reading this interview around 3:00pm last night and was rudely awakened at the best part by my sweet little boy who had had an accident in his bed.

So yes, this was a dream. That is most likely why this doesn't sound at all familiar to you Bridget.

I thought of casually mentioning I had a dream about you =), but I thought this would be so much more exciting.

However the truth is....

-Bridget is brilliant

-I apparently took the compliments from Bridget about my parenting to my head

-and, for real, one day I was walking in a bookstores coffee shop and as I was walking through the magazine section something caught my eye. I turned back to see what it was and it was my cousins face on the cover of a magazine (Steph that's a shout out to your bro!). I was very impressed to say the least!

*Bridget- I hope you dont mind that I wrote a blog post about you. We're even =)

Have you tried this?

because you need to on some chicken tenders!

As Requested...

I'm posting my story about Cache's name on my open blog (minus his pics).

Cache- the boy with many names
So many of you are wondering who this Cache fellow is that I keep referring to. He sure looks alot like our son Aeden. Well that's because he IS Aeden. In late MAY of 2007, May 25th to be exact, we welcomed a handsome little boy into the world and our family. Chad and I both agreed on the name Aeden and were very happy with it. In fact we still are. I love the name Aeden. We knew that it was a fairly popular name, but that didn't bother us. Plus we were spelling it differently than most Aeden's we had heard of anyway. So from that day forward this new little baby boy was known as Aeden among all that knew him.... ..... well until lately. I would take him to the park to find numerous Aeden/Aiden/Aden's running around. I would take him to the mall play area and find that there were numerous Aeden/Aiden/Aden's running around there too. It seemed that anywhere we went other Aeden's were sure to be around. Which isn't/wasn't a problem until all the other moms are calling their Aeden/Aiden/Aden. It can get a little confusing and to be honest a little annoying. So to lessen the confusion for my own Aeden I decided to call him by his middle name, Cache, when we went to play area's. Then I started thinking that maybe we should just start calling him by his middle name all the time. It would be alot easier once he goes to school and is in a classroom where most likely half the boys in his class are named Aeden/ Aid.... (you get the point with all the other spellings). So we figured we'd change it now while he was younger and if he wants to go by Aeden when he's older than he can. So it began....... we started calling him Cache, as weird as it was and I even found it to be a bit sad. However, he's still my little Aeden and still gets called that quite a bit, but if you ask him his name he'll most likely tell you that it is Cache. As a matter of fact that is how we introduced him in our new ward. Which I'm happy about because it seems like there are sooo many Aeden, Kaden, Braden, Jaden's...... in this new ward. So now weeks later I've come to really like the name Cache. I think the name Cache is pretty GoRiLLa! So there you have it. That is why we changed his name. That's our story and I'm stickin' to it.

New Year's Resolutions

Soooo I should REALLY be in bed because tomorrow morning is going to come way too soon, but I'll end up laying there for atleast an hour before I finally fall asleep. So instead I'll blog about New Years Resolutions......

How many of you make New Years Resolutions? Are you good at keeping them? I've personally never been a big believer in them. Don't get me wrong I think that they could and in some cases are a good thing, but I think far too often people make unrealistic goals and too many of them. They think that starting January 1st they are gonna change EVERYTHING they don't like about themselves which is....... "unrealistic". Maybe it's because I'm someone that has to take small steps. I can't change everything I don't like about my self in a day. Instead I choose to make goals throughout the year on my own time and I try not make make goals that I know I'm gonna fail at. For example I don't make the goal that I will workout EVERYDAY for the next year when I HATE working out. Or I'll give up Chocolate when I'm a chocoholic. Instead I might decide one day that I'm going to try and eat better and I allow myself room to enjoy life without throwing all the fast food out the door.
So there you are I'm an unbeliever. So convince me those of you that live your lives by your New Years Resolutions. Are you really successfull? Or at the end of the year are you left feeling a little down of yourself because you didn't become everything you wanted to be by Decemeber 31st?