So, a few people have asked Scott about printing some temple pictures to give as presents for Christmas this year.  These are the shots he will be printing up.  If you are interested in purchasing any of these, you can go to his blog and he has the prices listed there.

Here’s his blog address:  http://scott.sphotographs.com/blog/

Cute Little Boys

Keaton and Parker had eye appointments today and it was really good.  Parker’s eyes are still good, so we get to continue tapering his medicine, and Keaton’s eyes seem to be adjusting to the surgery, so now they are lowering the strength of the prescription on his lenses and hopefully they will be able to get him out of glasses.  I don’t know how long that would all take.  Probably a long time, but it’s progress!!  And, then we had parent teacher conference with Jaxon’s teacher today.  Jaxon showed us his journal and all the things he has been drawing.  One picture bothered me a little.  He had drawn a picture of me on the computer while he was playing with his dinosaurs.  I’m not on the computer all day, and I do play with the kids and read to them, but I probably do get on the computer more than I should, so I have now banned myself to getting on this thing when the kids are in bed.  I don’t want Jaxon to just have memories of me on the computer.    So, that’s why I’m on here right now.  They are all asleep.

As for some other pictures Jaxon drew one of my favorite pictures was of a skunk and above it he had written “scumc”  I guess that’s how he sounded out skunk.  Overall it was just a good day.  It’s so nice to hear good news once in a while.  When you have really hard days, it makes you soooooooo grateful when you have a good day.  It makes all those bad ones worth it.

Now you tell me, who can resist a delicious piece of dirty snow?  I think it’s the grass and dirt that make it taste so good (at least it wasn’t yellow).

It snowed a couple of weeks ago, and the kids wanted to make a snowman.  Of course Parker goes out in the snow with no coat.  That kid is just like his father!  Scott wears shorts in the winter.  Parker even wore shorts just a couple of days ago.  Anyway, that is a different story.  So we were building this spectacular snowman, and Parker starts running in the house, and I asked him where he was going and he said “Frosty” needed a hat.  He was gone for quite a while, and came out with the hat you see on top of the snowman.  That is Scott’s hat.    I let them put it on long enough to take pictures, but had them put it back after that.  I never did tell Scott about it, so Scott—I hope you like it.    It just made the snowman seem so much more “Scott-like.”  I guess they missed you at work.  After it was all built and we all went in the house, they would keep going to the window to look at old Frosty.  Well, as the day went on, it got warmer and warmer and poor Frosty kept tilting more and more to the side.  After so much tilting, Jaxon and Parker couldn’t take it anymore, and decided they better kick it down.  So, poor Frosty the Scottman didn’t last too long.  But, it was a lot of fun making the jolly old fellow.

Parker with Scott’s hat.                           Parker about to put the finishing touch on Frosty.

Of course we can’t leave Jaxon and Keaton out of this.  They helped build Frosty the Scottman, too.  Berkley even helped—mostly by crying.  The crying helped me, because then I had an excuse to go in the house and get out of the cold. 

And, how can we forget a picture of Frosty the Scottman with the pumpkins?  Jaxon insisted on this picture.

We celebrated Berkley’s birthday a while ago.  I can’t believe he’s one already.  Time goes by so fast.  His birthday was fun.  We had another “donut cake” as Jaxon calls it.  Jaxon was so excited with the donuts for his birthday that it made me realize that I won’t waste my time in the future trying to make some clever birthday cake.  Ha ha. lol.  Actually I like to make the cakes for them.  It’s pretty fun.  As you can see in the picture above, Berkley was super excited for his birthday presents.

Here are some more pictures.

Berkley’s favorite things are listening to music, following me around the house crying, pulling all of our dishes out of our cupboards, and when I’m not looking he likes to eat out of the garbage can—yummy!!  He is starting to say a few words—well, trying to say words.  I can understand him when he tries saying them, but I doubt anyone else would understand what he is saying.  Berkley has been fun to have around.  He’s super cuddly.  I used to just sit and hold him, and he would just snuggle right up to me, and it was so cute that I hated to put him down.  Now he is becoming more active and wiggly, so he doesn’t cuddle as much as he used to.  Berkley also loves Scott.  He gets excited whenever Scott gets home from work, and reaches for him.  When Scott picks him up he always lays his head on his shoulder and just sits there for a few minutes while Scott holds him.  It’s really cute.

So on the tag below, I realized somehow one of the questions got left off.  I think it was something about where did you go for senior sluff day?  And, we went to lagoon.  Nothing funner than lagoon.

Also, for the jobs I had, I forgot to list one very important job I had.  I worked at the slaughter plant!!  My dad owned it.  It was actually good for the family.  It taught us to work, but I have to admit that I sure did a lot of complaining about it.  It wasn’t exactly my “favorite” job.  It was always cold, but for a while there, I really knew the meat cuts.  I should have become a butcher.  Anyways, my poor dad had to listen to me complain about it all the time (not to mention all my other siblings complaining about it).  But, we managed to get through it alive, so I guess that’s good.  It could have turned out bad.  We would all start getting ornery, and we all had knives.   ha ha.

So, I was tagged again.  I guess this is a high school tag.  My life was not very interesting at all in High school, so I hope I don’t bore you to death.  So, in order to make this not seem so uninspiring, I put a photo on here, and it has nothing to do with the questions I will answer.  That is me starting to rock climb up to a cave we found.  This is a place by my parent’s house.  I know, it wasn’t the best thing to do in front of Jaxon.  He thinks he can climb anything, so Scott had to stop him from trying to climb up where I was.

1. DID YOU DATE SOMEONE FROM YOUR SCHOOL? nope.  I flew solo all of high school.  I was more interested in breaking the school records for track times, and winning the state high school basketball championships.
2.WHAT KIND OF CAR DID YOU DRIVE? I walked.  My dad was a teacher and there were 7 of us kids.  There’s no way we could have a car.  I drove  my mom and dad’s old beat up cars every once in a while, but that didn’t happen too often.  My mom and dad needed their cars, so I was just out of luck.
3. DID YOU PASS YOUR DRIVER’S LICENSE TEST YOUR FIRST TRY? sure did
4. WHERE YOU A PARTY ANIMAL? oh yeah, if there was ever a party I was there.  Just kidding.  I guess if you call hanging out with my friends partying, then yeah I partied.  We would either watch a movie, or drag main.  Let me tell you those were some fun, exciting super maniac party times.
5. WERE YOU CONSIDERED A FLIRT? nope
6. WERE YOU IN BAND, ORCHESTRA, OR CHOIR? I sang in the shower–well, i didn’t even do that.  I avoided singing mostly.
7. WERE YOU A NERD? oh yeah.  big time nerd.  but shhhh….don’t tell Scott.  I convinced him that I was the most popular kid in high school.  He wouldn’t have married me if he thought I was nerd—You know he was so not nerdy.  ha ha.  Just kidding.  Scott and I were two nerds made for each other.
8. WERE YOU ON ANY VARSITY TEAMS? basketball, cross-country, track, and I was on varsity volleyball my freshman year, but didn’t play volleyball after my freshman year, and I was going to play softball my senior year, and I even made the team, and was put on the varsity team, and then a week later I found out I had torn my ACL, so that ended that.
9. DID YOU EVER GET SUSPENDED/EXPELLED? No way.
10. CAN YOU STILL SING THE FIGHT SONG? We have a fight song?
11. WHO WERE YOUR FAVORITE TEACHERS? Mr. Wood, Mr. Stoker, I liked a lot of my teachers (and others not so much).  But mostly I liked most of the teachers I had.
12. WHERE DID YOU SIT FOR LUNCH? Gosh, I don’t even remember.  It’s been too long.  I think I sat in the hall kind of by my locker–that’s where my friends sat.
13. WHAT IS YOUR SCHOOL’S FULL NAME? Beaver High School
14. WHAT IS YOUR SCHOOL’S MASCOT AND COLORS? Beaver, and Big blue!!
15. DID YOU GO TO HOMECOMING AND WITH WHO? Homecoming?  I think I have just tried to block out most of my high school memories.  I really didn’t like high school that much.  I absolutely loved CEU, but high school is a different story—I think I might have gone one year to homecoming with Renton Williams, but I don’t remember if that was homecoming or if that was something else.
16. IF YOU COULD GO BACK AND DO IT AGAIN WOULD YOU? No way–I liked growing up in Beaver.  I had some really good friends, but I could never go back there.  After going to CEU, and having so much fun, and finding some really good friends, I would never ever go back to high school.
17. WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER MOST ABOUT GRADUATION? I thought I would cry, but I didn’t.  I was just excited mostly–except for the part where I had to give a speech.  I absolutely hated that part.  I wasn’t even supposed to give a speech, but the kid that was a little higher with his GPA than mine got a lower grade one of the last quarters, so I had to.  I think he did it on purpose, so he wouldn’t have to give a speech.
19. WERE YOU IN ANY CLUBS? I was in some clubs, but it was so dumb.  All I did was show up to get my picture with the “club” and they put it in the yearbook, and that was it.  I can’t even remember what clubs I was in.  Having 4 kids has killed a lot of my brain cells.  I think I have alzheimers.  :)
20. HAVE YOU GAINED SOME WEIGHT SINCE THEN? Well, believe it or not, I weigh the same as I did in high school, but there is a huge difference in how my weight is distributed and carried.  My stomach used to be really tight, and toned–and now sadly it’s one big ball of flab.  Thank you childbirth.
21. WHO WAS YOUR PROM DATE? Ben Christopherson my junior year, and my senior year, I didn’t have to go to the prom, because I was selected to be on the basketball all-state team, so I got to go to a lovely dinner with Jerry Sloan as the speaker.
22. ARE YOU PLANNING ON GOING TO YOUR 10 YEAR REUNION? I’m so old, they’ve already had our 10 year reunion, and no I didn’t go.  Now if they did a reunion for CEU—I would most definitely be there.
23. DID YOU HAVE A JOB IN HIGH SCHOOL? I worked during the summers.  During school I was too involved in sports to be able to have a job.  I worked at high class Wendy’s, and burger king.  Looks good on a resume.

Oh yeah, I’m supposed to tag some people.  Most of the people I know have been tagged already, so if anyone wants to do this–go for it, and if not then just enjoy my good old high school memories.

Parker had a doctor’s appointment yesterday, and it was really good.  The doctor said he looks good, and she is going to start “weaning” him off the chemotherapy.  Yay!  So, we start giving him lower doses now.  Now we just have to see how his eyes are doing.  If they are okay at his next eye appointment, they will keep going down with the chemo dose.  Parker is funny at his appointments.  He won’t ever talk to or even make eye contact with the doctors.  And, I think when we go, he gets really nervous, and he starts climbing on everything…including my head, and sometimes he will start pulling my hair, and he’ll run around the room going crazy.  They gave him a flu shot yesterday, and he was not happy at all.  Then he had to go get his blood drawn, and he started yelling at me and the nurse, “Get your hands off me!”  He’s really sick of shots and needles, and all the doctor stuff, so it will be nice if we get to take him off his medicine soon. So, things have been really good for Parker and Keaton the last couple of months.  They are doing really good. We just feel really blessed.  I love my cute little boys.  :)

Here’s a conversation Jaxon and I had a couple weeks before he turned 6.

Me:  Hey, Jaxon you are going to be 6 years old soon.  Can you believe it?

Jaxon:  I’m going to be 6?

Me:  Yeah.

Jaxon:  Mom, when I am 6 will I still be Jaxon?

For Jaxon’s b-day we went to the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point.  Jaxon is really into dinosaurs right now, and that is all he talks about.  So, even though the museum is a little pricey, it was soooooo worth it.  I was going to have a friend birthday party, but this was so fun, and the kids were so excited to see all the dinosaurs.  And, they got to play in the “erosion table”, and they got to dig up dinosaur bones in the big sandbox.  For me, it was one of the funnest birthday parties we’ve had for the kids.  I was just tired when we got home, so instead of wrapping presents, I threw them all in gift bags (that other people have given gifts to us in), and his “birthday cake” was a bunch of donuts with little toy dinosaurs stuck in each donut.

Opening presents….I let Jaxon pick out a book at the bookstore for his birthday.  He sat and looked at two dinosaur books for a really long time, and then I told him he needed to pick out one book for his birthday.  For some reason he chose the snake book….go figure.  But, it has been fun.  We’ve spent hours reading that book.  It’s a very interesting book.

A few weeks before halloween Jaxon decided he wanted to be a pirate for halloween, so then Parker and Keaton of course had to be what Jaxon was going to be.  On halloween day Jaxon was supposed to get dressed up and go participate in a halloween parade.  Well, he woke up halloween morning, and decided he didn’t want to be a pirate anymore, he wanted to be a knight.  Scott finally convinced him to put his costume on, and we all got to go to his school and see him in the halloween parade.  I even bought these little parrots that they could wear on their shoulders, but the more times they put the costumes on, the fewer things they wanted to wear.  So, by the time we got home, they had hardly any of their costumes on.  Oh well….at least they got loaded up on candy!!  Berkley was a cute little bee, and he hated his costume.  But, he was still a good sport to wear it for a couple of hours.