Sugar and Spice and Everything Messy

Grandma Owings came up to spend Christmas with us this year. She brought sugar cookies for us to decorate. We had tons of fun!!! (yes, Remy is in his underwear...apparently he is more cookie creative that way)

Goodbye Old Friend

****The following is NOT a paid advertisement for Chevy****

In 1996 when I was graduating from high school I went to the local car dealership and bought my very first car...a 1991 Chevy Cavalier. I went to CEU with that car, she went with me to BYU, she went to the Bountiful Temple to get married with us, she took Darrin to and from work for many years after. She has been a good car! After 173,000 miles, 11 years, a new engine, brakes, clutch, a couple of starters and alternators, she finally gets to retire! Go Chevy!

We purchased a 2008 Chevy Impala last week due to the retirement of our Cavalier. We got a great deal on it. It was part of the Chevy car show tour so it was considered used so we got a used price on it, even though it was technically still new. Chevy now has a 100,000 mile/5 year warranty on all new 08's so we are looking forward to another 173,000 miles and 11 years!

AAAAaaarrrggghhh!

WHY are toddlers SOOOooooo...stubborn? I am sitting here listening to my Tate scream his little heart out (has been for the last 60 minutes!!!). He has started not wanting to go to sleep unless someone is standing by his crib and waking up many times thru the night and not going back to sleep unless....you guessed it....someone is standing by his crib. So, I just decided to put him down for a nap and let him "cry it out" because I just don't know what else to do!!!! I honestly don't ever think he is going to stop. Remy was never this stubborn when it came to going to sleep. Why don't they just do what is best for them???

Creo en Milagros

I believe in Miracles!!! After 8 weeks, our internet is up and running!!! Halelujah!

My house was semi clean so I took some pictures so ya'll can see the new digs. I am still waffling about how to do the boys rooms, so if any of you have any ideas....

The one of the sideways bathroom...grrrr...is the half bath on our main floor. Thanks to the help of Darrins dad, we were able to get it mostly finished last weekend. Who knew we'd be so excited to have a loo that we don't have to race upstairs for!!

Kings Hawaiian!

Hey, if you have ever had those scrumptious rolls from Kings Hawaiian (they carry them in most grocery stores by the deli) you will know why we were excited to go to the one and only Kings Hawaiian Restaurant/Bakery. We had really good Hawaiian pulled pork and Katsu Chicken and yummy macaroni potato salad. The boys loved their pb& j on rainbow bread. We rubbed the lucky pineapple on our way out....what fun!
P.S. I don't know WHY this keeps uploading sideways....aaarrrggghhh

I've been tagged!

My friend Mikelle tagged me for this little game so I thought I would give it a try.
Here’s the rules:
A. Each player lists 6 facts/habits about themselves.
B. At the end of the post, the player then tags 6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know that they have been tagged and asking them to read your blog, for these rules.

1. I am a shower person, I absolutely loathe baths. Won't do it!
2. I love to read. I have to be careful about having a good book around. I will neglect my children if I am too into a book...here, just have some candy and watch a movie and be quiet while mommy reads!
3. I recenlty started OAMC. When we moved into our new house we got a freezer, so I started making tons on freezable meals to be a once a month cook!
4. I am a scatterbrain. I am always loosing my keys, cup of water, etc...it drives me crazy!
5. I am a huge Judge Judy fan. I have her set to record on our DVR. Darrin says I am cheating on him with Judge Judy
6. I love chinese food

I now tag Betsy, Becky, Lisa, Ruth, Dawn and Shanna

Sunny California!

Hey, we rolled into my sisters driveway in California at 2:00 am today. We had a fantastic trip, the boys were exceptional during the drive....way better than we expected them to do! We drove to St. George and had dinner and let the boys play. We were going to stop in Vegas for a while but the boys were both out, so we just stopped and filled up the tank and kept going. We are all still a little out of it from lack of sleep, but we are doing good! We are having a family party tomorrow and then Disneyland on Wednesday and the Aquarium on Thursday. Should be fun!!!
We are surprised by the fact, as I am sure you will be too, that our internet and phone still aren't hooked-up. I will have to do some mad blogging while I am at my sisters house and have the internet.

still waiting....

This is turning into a nightmare! Because we were the first ones in the neighborhood we have the joy of being the utilities test run family. We are still waiting (not so patiently) for the internet and phone hook up. I guess the developer moved the control boxes and switched a drive way and somehow that is disrupting the service until they get it fixed (a minimum of one week, maximum three).
In other news, we all received our flu shots this week! What fun, especially for the boys!!! Tate is starting to talk up a storm. I love his little voice so much!
"Peak" season at UPS is starting early this year, Darrin is getting busier at work and I am dreading the holidays :( It is sad, but true! I know I have to look at the bright side, but it is just no fun to not see Daddy for a couple of months.
We are going on vacation on the 9th of November though. We are going to California for a week and taking our maiden voyage to Disneyland. Remy is excited!
We will post pictures as soon as our nightmare is over!!!

We're still alive!

Hey, I am sure you have all but stopped even checking to see if we are even alive and posting! We have not (and still don't) have internet access at our home. Some fiber stuff is on back order. So, I can only access the internet from work, which as you can see is pretty hard to do! We are almost settled. When you work 35 hours a week and have two crazy kids the un-packing goes really slowly. We will post some pictures hopefully by the end of next week when our internet should be up and running.
Tate and Remy just love the new space and especially the back yard which is a boys dream. All dirt (and mud, of course) and there is no one behind us, so it literally goes on for miles. I hope it stays that way for a long time too! The other day I was out planting bulbs in the front yard and by the time I was done Tate was covered from head to toe in mud and dirt. What fun!!!
We hope all is well and will be in touch more often when we have internet!!!!

What a Deal!

The Albertson's in our area are having a sale on Quaker products. If you buy in quanities of 10 you get 10 for $10!!! We bought 30 boxes of Life cereal (a huge favorite in our house) 10 boxes of Oatmeal, and 10 boxes of granola bars. We spent around $53. But, more importantly we saved about $141!!!!! What a great deal!

The big migration

We have started to move in. Oohhh, I am really trying to dis-engage my self from the whole process. If I start to think about all the work left ahead I will just have a melt down. So, I just take the advice of Scarlett O'Hara...there is always tomorrow! With God as my witness, I'll never go hungry again! (OK, Maybe that is a little overboard.) But, I just think about what I can do today and know tomorrow will come soon enough!

I am so lucky to have a loading professional on my team. He gets the trailblazer all "bricked in" and we are so much more efficient!

If you "Carrot" all...

Remy has become such a big helper with Tate. I am pleased to see that his indifference towards his brother is changing into a sort of primitive relationship. (You know, fighting over blankets and food, caveman style hugs and tackles, etc...)

I was trying to pack the kitchen up and Tate had eaten all his lunch and was still hungry. I asked Remy to give him some carrots for me. I turned around a few minutes later and saw how generous Remy had been with his brother!

Can I drive?

We met Darrin for lunch at a church the other day. The boys love looking at daddy's "office". They want to get in so bad and take that truck for a spin! I was noticing that Tate isn't even as big as the tire! We love our dad and all the hard work he does for us!!!

Done in Less than 2 months!

Here are some pictures of our house. They just have some clean-up to do and the landscaping to do. I honestly can't believe how fast everything got done. They did an excellent job too. We have been very happy with everything. Anyone up for helping us move??

Re-decorating and giving away the first born...

We just turned in all the documentation for our house loan. I swear it feels as though we are signing away our lives and our first born! It is always so scary!! We go on our walk thru on Tuesday afternoon and we close on the 12th. They were asking us if we wanted to close sooner! What? 2 months isn't fast enough?!?! We declined the offer by reasons of mental health!

I am trying my best to pack up our house while still living in it. I took all of our decor off the walls and got them prepped to paint. There was one wall that still had nails in it, and I came in to find Remy "re-decorating" with a new trendy decor. I had him show off his decorations for a picture. He was very proud!

Tate got a hold of the camera and was trying his hand at photography. He took a great "Blair Witch Project" shot of himself, and a nice shot of my backside...I won't post that one, I'll save you the pain!!

Tate expands his vocabulary!

We have been having so much fun trying to decipher what our little Tate is trying to tell us, but he has added a new word to his budding vocabulary....."That!"
He really is a good communicator, we really do know what he is saying most of the time, but he is very persistent now, saying "that, that" until we get it right. And if he needs something he just waits until Remy asks for it and then he perks right up and signs "more" so we realize he wants in on the action too!

...And we're back

Hello! I don't know if you have given up on us, but we are back! We got hit hard with a nasty parasite that is lurking in the local pools, mom was down for 2 weeks! Now you know what happens when mom is not functioning...I feel as though we need a disaster clean-up service to come and save me!
We hear that we will be closing on our house on September 12th and things are looking fabulous. This is the exciting part. We are happy because all of the little sample squares of tile and counter tops and cabinets and carpet actually look good together in real life! Whew!
We will be back to regular, fun, postings soon!

Holy Cow!

Well, we checked in with our builder on the time line for our house and because it is summer time they will be done two weeks ahead of schedule! We should be able to close around Sept. 13th. Here are some pictures of the recent additions. My cousin Sara is visiting with us for the week from California. She and Remy graciously tried out the shower for us...

We are very excited to be in before the holidays.

We have some fun activities planned this week with Sara. We will be checking back in with some picutes of our mini vacation at home week!

Roughing It!

We took a little weekend camping trip this past weekend. We went to Potters Pond by Joe's Valley. We went with Darrin's parents and his sister and her boyfriend. It was so beautiful! The boys had so much fun. Remy and Tate both went fishing with Grandpa and Dad, Tate found many pet rocks and enjoyed eating tons of marshmallows! Remy was entertained the whole time running after squirrels and helping set up and take down tents, and canoeing in the inflatable canoe in Potters Pond. His most favorite thing though, was pretending that Grandpa and Grandma's trailer was his very own house (knock before you come in, please!). On the way home we took the scenic route, which was absolutely beautiful (even though it turned out to be a 3 hour detour). We had a great time enjoying all of God's amazing creations!

Time to pull our hair out...

When the average child is just getting walking down pat, our audacious Tate is going full throttle! He runs everywhere he goes, and he loves to climb!! A couple of weeks ago we came into the dining room and found Tate climbing up the back of the dining room chair to get to the table. Aaahhh! We currently have no real place to sit and eat because all of our chairs (except for Tates high chair and a little chair and table for Remy) are down stairs in the laundry room until we figure out what we are going to do. (Just putting them on the top of the table doesn't work because Tate just finds a toy box or pot/pan and tries to pull them off the table)

His current love is shoes, he thinks it is great fun to carry around and try to walk in everyones shoes (everyones, that is, except for his!). Also, if you look very carefully at this picture you will see Tates first black eye (right eye). Amazingly, he did not get it from climbing (and falling) off something or from his big brother. He and a little friend ran into each other...ouch! We are currently taking bets on how long until our first broken bone or stitches!

In other news, we had a hostage situation yesterday. (see picture)
Some little friends of Remy and Tates came to play yesterday. They left their precious monkey friends, and being the good friends we are, we decided to take them hostage...We took a picture of them and wrote a ransom note demanding 1 million un-marked bananas by nightfall.
To our delight later that afternoon we had a knock at the door. We opened the door to find a pan of brownies and this note:
US ARMY FOREIGN POLICY HANDBOOK (their daddy is an officer in the Army) "As an official of the US Government, I must offically and regrettably inform you that we do not pay ransom. However, due to extenuating circumstances we are prepared to offer you an untraceable account in the Caymans. We appreciate your cooperation, and further state that the parents of said primates will do anything for their safe return."
We returned the monkeys without harm and Remy and his friend Neal got a real kick out of it all! (and what can I say, so did we!) It just goes to show how far we will go to get some excitement in our lives!!

Discovery Gateway

On Saturday we took the boys to the Children's Museum at the Gateway in SLC. It is such a fun place for them. They have a "beehive" where the kids can play with plastic balls and all sorts of tubes for the balls to navigate in. There is a kids village with a construction zone, market, farm, gas station, post office, and water play area. Tate loved, loved, loved the water area and got totally soaked. He also liked the house and the vacuum inside. Remy just had a ball taking his motorcycle to the market and buying food for his house and stopping along the way to fill up at the gas station. Remy has a great imagination and loves to pretend, so this was heaven for him!

After convincing Remy that there was more to see, we ventured upstairs and played "anchorman" and "weatherman" in the mock news station (complete with cameras and video screens). Then Pilot Remy took us for a ride in the life flight helicopter out on the helipad outside. It was so much fun for all of us!

House Update...

We went out to Eagle Mountain to see how our house was coming along. It is going up much faster than we could have anticipated. What fun! Here are the latest pictures.

4th of July

We had a great Independence Day. We started out the day by going to Provo's Freedom Festival parade. Some friends of ours always stake out a spot 3 or 4 days in advance (we are glad SOMEONE is willing to do it!). So we took our offering of grapes and watermelon to the campers and had a wonderful time watching the parade. It is about 2 hours long and has everything from floats to F-16 fly-overs to the Berg Mortuary horse drawn herse (say that 5 times fast). Tate especially loved the many high school bands and Remy liked the HUGE Bob the Builder and Garfield balloons.

Then I drug Darrin and the boys (no, not drugged) to the Colonial Days festivites. We saw the printing press where there is a replica of the Gutenberg Press. Remy signed his name on a replica of the Declaration of Independence, and we saw some Minutemen shooting off their black powder guns. It was fun, but very hot!!!

Later in the evening after some great naps we set off some fabulous fireworks selected by mommy (sarcasm, anyone?) and Remy and Tate tried their hand at sparklers. The boys loved the fountains and sparklers so much Remy begged to do them again for the next two nights and we had to convince him to wait for more firworks until the 24th.

Our House Update...

We are in the process of having our house built. It should be done the end of September or First of October. We have been having lots of fun visiting each Saturday to see the progress. The boys love "exploring" and Remy has been very keen on learning how things are built and put together. Here are some pictures. We'll keep you posted!

Well, apparently we definitely need to get in on the blogging trend! My sister and her family just set one up and while I was in the process of setting up ours some friends of ours (the fosters) set up one as well :) Well, here we go....

I am not very computer savvy, so we will see how all of the "features" turn out. It may take a little while to get photos up and running.

In this crazy, fast paced, world we live in, this is definitely a great way to keep in touch!!

I know like many of your children (and even significant others and/or roommates) our Remy comes up with the funniest stories and questions. So we will feature the "Remy says the darnedest things" spots in our blogs. Keep an eye out for this and other equally exiting posts to come!