embarassing photos

so ya know when someone (er-your cute sister) does a really nice post on her blog to say happy birthday, and the intent was so sweet, and thoughtful, but she posted a picture of you and her with your mom and other sister trying to be nice and cute, but you look HIDEOUS and FAT in that picture. Yeah-that just happened to me. So in defence of bad angles in a picture I decided to post a more flattering picture of myself in the hopes that a few people that read her blog actually will read mine too and be like "Oh-Rochie's not as fat as that other picture made her look". Ok, I feel better now.


(this is Shaner and I at the Richard Marx concert, and it rocked!!! We had a blast!)

In other news here are some things I am loving and not loving so much

Loving:

1-Mama Mia soundtrack-love it!!! Shane is diggin' it too.
2-my new calling in Primary. Surprisingly- I love it!!!
3-The Pioneer Woman-blog, love the story "From Black Heels to Tractor Wheels" a fun read!
4-Facebook-ok seriously this is fun and addicting!
5-Jason Mraz-Loving with Colby Calliat (see new additions to my play list below)

Not Loving:

1-Summer heat-alright, already, can we be back into the 80's please?
2-Watering flowers-it is the end of the summer and I have had it with watering flower pots. Whose bright idea was it to plant 16 flower pots this year?
3-Migraines-I got one yesterday and had to leave church right after the sacrament (not the meeting, but the actual sacrament) the whole flashing lights, followed by a pounding headache. It's been about 6 months since my last one and honestly I could wait at least that long again before my body decides to pull that again. Ouch.
4-changing clothes-Connor feels it is his duty to test my patience by putting on long pants and long sleeves when it's 100 degrees and then he proceeds to change about 3-4 times throughout the day. Stop changing clothes and will you please wear shorts and a t-shirt?

Happy 7th Peyton

Peyton turned 7 on Aug. 9th. We had a great time this year for his birthday. The night before his b-day was Friday and he had some friends over for a "late-night" party. They watched a movie in our backyard (Ben10: Race Against Time). We borrowed our neighbor's popcorn cart and had popcorn, movie candy and snowcones for the kids. You would have thought they were in heaven!!! For a small thank-you I got the boys Spiderman watches at the dollar store and they were a huge hit! This is probably the most low-key party we have ever done with the best results! We heard from a few parents that their boys came home saying "that party was awesome!". Score one for Mom!

This is the boys at the party....

I wanted to share 7 things about Peyton:

1-He is very sweet and caring. He still will give us the biggest and best hugs and isn't afraid to kiss us on the lips. He and I "touch noses" each night before bed. It's something that started when he was just little and he still loves it!

2-He is a rough and tumble boy. He loves to wrestle and fight. He loves to play with light sabers, guns, and swords.

3-He is a great reader! Honestly he really had no problems learning to read. It came very naturally to him and he is just really good at it.

4-He is a great artist! Peyton loves to draw on clean, white, never-been-written-on paper. He draws very intricately and is quite a perfectionist when it comes to art work.

5-He is developing a testimony of Jesus Christ. He is really understanding what is going on at church and knows right from wrong. He is a great friend and doesn't want to hurt others' feelings.

6-He loves Connor! Peyton is a great big brother and would probably rather play with Connor than anyone else. He is quick to include Connor in anything that we have going on, and is very sensitive towards his "big brother" role.

7-He is our Peytino, the great bambino, the monsterino, the one that we know, the cappachino and all those thingo's. We love him so much!!!

Happy Birthday Peyton!!!

tagged

My sister Jenni tagged me...

Ten years ago....
1. Living in West Des Moines, IA. working for Principal Financial Group
2. Trying to get pregnant!!!!
3. Missing my family and being very lonely
4. Driving the missionaries to Winterset, IA so they could save gas money
5. ending a hot, humid summer in Des Moines.


Tomorrow's to do list...
1. Finish sharing time for Sunday (my 1st...eek!)
2. clean the bathrooms
3. go to a couple of the Parade of Homes houses with Hollie
4. water my flower pots
5. probably another load of laundry


Places I have lived...
1. Sandy, UT
2. Ephraim, UT
3. SLC, UT
4. West Des Moines, IA
5. Midvale, UT
6. Riverton, UT


If I were a millionarie.....
1. I would pay off our house and student loans
2. Pay off all of our siblings mortgages
3. Put money in the bank
4. Take our whole family to Hawaii
5. Hopefully do a bunch of philanthropic stuff to help out other people
6. Travel... I would visit all my friends that live outside of Utah and I would go to all the fun places in the world that seem impossible to see because it's too expensive to get there.

Snacks I love
1. String Cheese
2. Jello Pudding Sugar Free Chocolate pudding...only 60 calories!!!
3. Pringles
4. almonds
5. Yoplait yougurt
6. frozen grapes


I tag: Shana, Kim G, Jacy, Holly, Kara, Sandee, and Elisa.....anyone that wants to.

finally...we can access the storage room

I didn't think I would ever be so excited about a storage room, but really it's probably my favorite room in our house right now. I love the organization! Our storage room has been done for a few months, but we had to cram a bunch of stuff in there and seal it off so we could have a sheet rock hung in the rest of the basement. Today I was determined to clean it out so we could have access to it and continue building up our year supply of food. My awesome father in law, Merwin built the shelves for us, along with Shane. We've slowly been finishing our basement since we moved in to our house almost 4 years ago. Merwin did two rooms downstairs right after we moved in. He did a great job on the play room and our office/guest room. My in-laws are great sports about staying in our messy (oh and I do mean messy) office. There is so much furniture in there right now because we had to empty the rest of the basement a couple of months ago to sheet rock. Before we did the sheet rock, Shane and Merwin did the storage room, and I love it! If you know Merwin, you know his work is top notch and he is a perfectionist. I didn't care if we had shelves made out of 2x4's and mdf, but noooo, that just wouldn't do. I'm so glad he told us we would be much happier if we spent the extra money to do laminate shelves trimmed in wood. They look awesome, are so easy to clean, and you could hang from them, they are so strong. I just want to give a shout out to Merwin-I think you are awesome! Thanks for being the best father-in-law ever! I didn't mention, all of the finishing to get our basement ready for sheet rock, and finishing the storage room was done while Merwin was going through Chemo. He is truly amazing and doesn't let anything get him down. He's a great grandpa and such an example to our whole family! We love you! (on a happy note, Merwin is done with Chemo and has no cancer after 6 months!!!)




This is one of the main shelves we have for food. Don't you love all the cereal??? Gotta love it!





We have a barrel in our storage room floor that is in the corner that we can install a sump pump if we felt like we needed one. Anyway, we couldn't really build shelves over it because we wanted to have access to it, so we did two hanging rods. They work out great for extra coats, etc. We do NOT have enough room in our tiny coat closet upstairs.




Here's a closer look at the shelves. We are tying to reserve at least 1/2 of the shelving for food, etc. We've done a pretty good job of getting rid of extras we don't need. One thing that is taking up so much room is our giant Christmas tree that I wasn't smart enough to keep the box and now I can't find a box big enough to fit all three pieces. We also have a ton of baby stuff that is bulky and hard to store, but we don't want to get rid of it...........we need a baby!





This lower shelf is right under our electrical panel. We couldn't put shelves in front of it for obvious reasons and weren't going to do anything thing there but a small raised shelf on the floor to store flour, sugar, etc. I saw my friend, Diane's storage room and she had this idea. It is a wrapping station! I don't have it fully functional yet, but I plan to soon! You can't see it in the picture because of the honkin' baby toys, but I have a three drawer plastic bin under the desktop that will hold, ribbon, bags, tags, scissors, tape, tissue paper, you name it.





We were able to get a can holder that rotates your canned food for you. I am proud to say that I put this baby together almost by myself. Shane helped me with the main frame work and then I finished..it was a beast, but I love it! Peyton loves to go down and get me corn, or soups. You can barely seen in the picture, but it came with magnets that say the name of what you are storing in each row. How clever!!! You can look these up at http://www.shelfreliance.com/ They have all sorts of different options to fit your needs. We got ours at Costco when they were having an event there, but I have seen them at Walmart. I think ours is The Harvest which holds up to 460 soups cans. To be honest if we had room I think I would have bought two of them since I still have to put cans on shelves.



And now the man responsible for it all....Merwin. Thanks again!!!! I love, love, love it!

First Day of 2nd Grade

Yesterday was Peyton's 1st day of 2nd grade!! I can't believe my baby is getting so big. He loves his new teacher and was really excited to start school again. He is a great student, and loves to learn. He is interested in math and is a great reader! We are so proud of him! When he got home from school on his 1st day he was exhausted! We sent him to bed early the night before, but apparently school was longer than he remembered. Doesn't he look cute? He was darling and said he wanted to wear his "best clothes" on the 1st day. What a sweetie!

Tim 2008

Here is Lisa and I next to one of the Tim signs at the concert. We usually always take a picture by the larger than life posters they have hanging up.

This is the group I went with. It's me, Lisa, her sister Candice, and her daughter Hadley, her other friend, Jenn and Lisa's other sister, Andrea.


Here is our classic "tim" picture.

We're just hanging out waiting for Tim to come out. The concert was at USANA, which I love! The atmosphere is so fun and light and the sounds is great!

We had such great seats!!!! We kept walking further up on the floor and Lisa was dying. She thought I was going up too far. When we sat down we realized we were about 8 rows from the front on the side. Lisa, and I sat by her sister Andrea. We all said that we would run up by the stage if we could get through when Tim came out. There was no one to stop us and we ended up touching the stage the whole concert!! After 5 years of going to Tim, this was the best ever!

This one is right after we touched Tim. Can you see the excitment on our faces? My heart was seriously racing!!!!

This is one of my favortie pictures I got of Tim. He was singing "I like, I love it" and when he says "Can't get enough of that little gal's lovin'..." he tapped his arm where he has his "Faith" tatoo. Now I'm not a fan of tatoo's at all, but can we have a big..."ahhhhhh". It was so fun to be so close and see so many little gestures like that!

Here is Lisa holding her autographed ticket!!!! I held mine up too, but there were too many hands and she was so lucky that he grabbed her ticket and signed it. What a night to remember!!

update

it's been such a long time since I updated. I have a ton to post about, but my computer is so slow at uploading pictures. Here is a quick re-cap w/o pictures. I will try to post them later this week.
#1-I went to Tim McGraw at the end of June and are you ready for this....I-touched-Tim-McGraw!!! Lest you are scared that I was throw out for inappropriate behavior let me just say he was right by us grabbing fans hands and I was able to touch his knee and forearm. I was dying. Lisa and I were screaming so hard and loud it was hilarious and really so exciting!!!
#2-I surprised Shane the next night and took him to see Richard Marx at the Sandy Amphitheather. I know-total 80's, but it was so much fun. We got Quizno's and sat on the grass and just hung out before the concert started. He was very good and so funny. Great concert!
#3-4th of July. We spent it in Moroni and had so much fun. I will post pictures later.
#4-I have a new calling in our ward. I got released as Enrichment leader and got called to.......2nd counselor in the Primary!! I am really excited about it and was ready for a change.

Peyton starts school in one week, and let me say we are ready for school to start. Connor starts pre-school the 1st of Sept and is so excited. It's been a fun summer and we are ending it this week with a trip to Lagoon. Our kids are really excited, and frankly so am I. It's been YEARS since I went to Lagoon, or as we used to call it..Galoon.

I've been working on getting our profile on another adoption website: Parentprofiles.com It's a ton of work and I feel like we are trying to get approved all over again, but hopefully it will get us some more exposure to birthmoms.

So now....at least I'm updated.