Happy 7th Birthday, Jenna!!!

Okay, I'm in denial here. My baby is 7 years old today. 7!!!!! How did that happen?! She is such a sweetheart. Jon had to be out of town this week--he couldn't get out of it--so we skyped and opened her gifts after school. She's in such a good, happy mood. She wants crepes for dinner and she wanted a vanilla horse cake. That was interesting, considering how artistic I am--NOT!! Her first gift of the day must have been a prank--not funny--SNOW!!! She got a lot of butterfly stuff, some littlest pet shops, and a webkinz wolf. What a fun day!!

Bad Momma

Jon had to go out of town again this week and had to leave early Sunday morning in order to be there and ready for early Monday morning meetings. I took the kids up in one of the local canyons on Sunday evening for a nice little walk and to enjoy the beautiful weather. Kendall had wandered a little bit ahead of us and the other kids found some cacti on a little hillside. I was snapping pictures, thinking about the fun they were having. Little did I know, cacti have little, teeny, tiny slivery needles, along with those big, sharp ones. So...after touching them for a few minutes, we were digging out microscopic slivers for the rest of the walk. And all the way home. And all night. And the next morning. Ugh. Lesson definitely learned.

jenna

touching the cacti--ouch!

self-portrait :)

jarren in a little pain from the slivers

kristen

jenna's nature collection

jarren crossing the river/stream

jarren kicking up a dust cloud

there were some fresh horse droppings and kristen was pretending they were hers. haha

kendall--looking more and more like a man every day

kendall

HUGE Favor...

I have a favor to ask of anyone who is willing. I've been debating with myself for awhile now about starting another blog. Haha--I know, it's kind of funny, since I'm not the best at posting. As many of you know, I LOVE to read!! And I read a lot. A new friend of mine sent me a message asking if I have a book blog and if I don't, I should. I don't know what it was about that, but it was what I needed to push me over the edge to starting one. I follow a lot of book blogs and some of them have thousands of followers, so at first I was wondering how in the world I could accomplish that. My friend said she did hers mostly for her and that made me think: I do this one mainly for me, so I could do a book one the same way. I want to use it as a way to keep track of books AND I'd also like to get to the point where I could help with book tours (promoting new books) and do giveaways. I feel like it would be better to have more than one follower to do this, so...if you or anyone you know would be interested in following me, please stop by my new book blog to do so. THANK YOU!!!!
katiescleanbookcollection.

School Spirit

Jarren and Jenna have a school spirit day today. They have the choice to wear either their school t-shirt OR to dress up like a favorite character from a book or movie. Jarren chose the shirt; Jenna chose the movie character. Do you think she'd pick something easy? Nope.

Her rejected ideas were:
*Rapunzel (she doesn't have blond hair)
*Cowgirl Kate (her boots are too small)
*Annie from the Magic Tree House books (too boring)
*Hermoine (um...she just didn't want to)

She wanted to be an animal. She had her heart set on a tiger, so...she's Raja from Aladdin (Princess Jasmine's pet). Yeah. That was fun to try and hurry and paint her face. I didn't have face paint, so I used washable craft paint. And the only orange t-shirt she had has a sparkly pumpkin on it. Haha! I am so NOT an artist.

no more google reader

I don't know how (or even IF) any of you follow your favorite blogs, but as for me, I use google reader. I add a subscription to a blog I want to follow and every morning, I get on there and check out the new posts of my favorite book, recipe, friend, and family blogs (I can't get it to work on private ones though--so no worries). As of July 1, 2013, google reader will be gone!! I was a little worried about what to do. How would I remember who to follow? Would I remember all the blog addresses? Change...it can be good and sometimes hard. Well, if any of you are in my boat, I recently discovered this site that is just about as good. I can sort my blogs into categories of my choosing (ie. book, recipe, family, etc) and it transfers it all over from google reader. I hope this helps any of you in a similar situation!!

dreams

I think dreams are so fascinating. And I think dream interpretations are even more so. I remember when I was a teen, my grandma gave me this book on what your dreams mean. I'm not sure what happened to it, but I remember looking up the meaning of my dream every morning--at the on the mornings when I remembered what I dreamed.

Kristen and I were talking last night. She's been having some really crazy dreams and she told me she feels like she's going crazy because of them. I had the thought to do an Internet search to find the meanings (since I have NO idea where that book is) and came across this site. We had so much fun this morning, looking up meanings to our dreams. I thought it was great that she realized she's not going crazy, but these dreams are her way to cope with her life. She was totally amazed that the meanings were pretty much spot on to her "hidden" feelings.

So...if you want to have some fun and have a few minutes to kill, check it out!

random acts of kindness

Jon is out of town again and I had to run Kendall downtown for a meeting. He and Kristen had mutual tonight, and I knew we'd be cutting it close, so I decided to grab some pizza on the way home for dinner. Kendall just stayed in the car while I ran in. Haha...while I ran in. I was sooo busy! I ended up waiting for about 40 minutes. I came out and he'd been listening to the radio. What he didn't realize, and I neglected to tell him, is that if the car isn't running, the battery drains. Yep. It was dead. We have jumper cables, but they were at home. I didn't know what to do. I finally called my neighbor and begged them for help. She told me to call Kristen and have her let them in the garage to get our cables. Well, Kristen wouldn't answer and I knew she wouldn't answer the door. I called my neighbor and relayed all of that and in the meantime, a guy backed out of his parking spot and backed in right next to me. I thought he was going to hit me, but he got out and said, "I heard you trying to start that and knew it was dead. Do you want a jump?" Wow! He didn't know me; he didn't have to stop; I'm sure he was hungry too, but he came to our rescue. What a random act of kindness that really meant a lot to me, even though he insisted it was no big deal.