Pictures from Week 2 in Utah

In no particular order....here are some pictures from our 2nd week in Utah!

This is me with my youngest brother Casey. As you can see I am the short one of the siblings. My dad had to take the picture crooked so he could get Casey in the picture...and I'm not that short.

The kids and me are ready for church. We hadn't been to church in 3 weeks because the week before we were in Phoenix, and the week before that church was cancelled because of snow. Next week we are going to be blessing Holly...and I'm happy to report she still fits in her blessing dress! It's nice to have a baby that isn't a moose.

I don't know why but going to church at somebody else's ward isn't as fun as going to your own ward. It was nice to see people I knew growing up, but at the same time there is so many people in my parent's ward that I have no idea who they are. Owen did pretty good in the nursery. He cried for a few minutes when I dropped him off, but then he got to playing with the toys and I was able to sneak out. I was sitting in Sunday School when I heard him running down the hall and yelling like Tarzan though!!! I wondered if should get up and check on him, but I decided to stay hidden, the nursery leaders could take care of it. And they did. A few seconds later I heard somebody saying, "Owen, come back here!" How did I get such a wild little boy?

We added my mom to the ready for church picture. My mom doesn't let us take her picture very often...so this might be a one time deal for this trip.

My parents love to give kids Pop Rocks! Here is my dad giving Owen some of those tasty, poppy treats!

My dad is opposite of my mother, he always wants me to take his picture! He wanted me to get a picture of him with Jacob, Holly and Owen. It was quite an adventure trying to get three kids to look at the camera at the same time. This is my favorite. Jacob loves Holly...he had to take a break from picture taking to give her a kiss!

Owen found a new favorite hat at my parents house. They brought it back from Mexico a few years ago for my nephew Hayden. Owen sure makes it look good though! My brother Marc calls him Huckleberry (sp?) Finn when he is wearing it!

Holly is so happy to be in Utah.

I was able to visit with some of my friends this week. This is me and my friend DeDe. We were roommates at college. Thankfully we've been able to keep in touch all these years. It was fun just being able to chat and catch up with each other. We also went out to lunch. That's her daughter Beth in the back ground. She's so cute!

I also went to SLC to see my friend Aleisha from High School. She made some good dinner for us, and I got to see her very cute kids. Owen decided to run around like a crazy man at their house. I hope he didn't cause too much damage! Next time they will probably make me leave him at home before I come over.

I was also able to see my best friend from Kindergarten, Mindee. She came over and helped me watch 5 kids one day...which was very appreciated. She also came over last Friday night with her son Ben. We played a domino game called Mexican Train with my mom, my brother Alan and his wife. It was fun times. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures! Hopefully I'll see her again before we have to leave.

My mom and I made some Apple Dumplings for the first time last week. They were so easy, and so good! I don't really like apple pie, but these were delicious. I pealed and cored 6 apples while my mom made pie crust. Then we rolled out the pie crust and cut them in circles about the size of a cereal bowl. We filled the core of the apple with a cinnamon and sugar mixture and put a dab of butter on top of the cinnamon and sugar. Then we wrapped the apples in the pie crust and drizzled 1 cup of cream mixed with 1 cup of the cinnamon and sugar mixture. Finally we baked them at 375 degrees for 55 minutes. They were so good!

Here is Owen and his cousin Jacob. We call them Double Trouble! Jacob isn't 2 yet, but he's only about a month away.

What's worse than Double Trouble...Triple Trouble! That's my brother Marc's son Gabriel in the middle. He's also 2 years old. Those 3 can get in some serious trouble together.

So we only have one week left in Utah...how sad! We have some fun stuff planned though. I'll be back next week with some new pictures.

Trip to Utah Week 1

I know I have been neglecting my blog for the past 10 days or so. But I have a good excuse. I've been in Utah and Arizona! I think most of you already knew that though. I wanted to write down some of our adventures of the last week though. So I'm taking a break from all the fun we are having to let you know what we have been up to.

The night before we left I got very little sleep. I was so nervous about flying on a plane with two kids...one of them being two years old! But it wasn't too bad. Our first flight was to Dallas. We had the window seat and the middle seat. I sat Owen in the window seat and he couldn't go anywhere after that! Thank goodness for small seat space. The lady sitting in the aisle seat was a very nice lady named Susan. She helped me out by holding Holly for me so I could take care of Owen when he was getting bored. Holly also got passed to the nice grandmother looking lady across the aisle from us. I told both kids before we got on the plane not to poop on the plane! I couldn't imagine having to change them in the tiny little bathroom. So did they listen to me...of course not! They both decided to leave me a present in their diapers. Thankfully Susan didn't care if I just changed them at their seats....and she ran the diapers to the bathroom for me. I was so grateful to sit by such a nice and understanding lady.

Our second flight from Dallas to Utah went really well too. Owen fell asleep and slept the whole time. Holly drank a bottle and fell asleep herself. So overall the flights went really well. Hopefully the ride home goes as well.

My oldest brother Alan's birthday was on the day after we got to Utah. So we were able to celebrate his birthday with him, something I haven't done for probably 12 or 13 years! It was pretty crazy with 8 grandkids in the same house, but we had a lot of fun. Owen has been loving hanging out with his cousins. He has 2 cousins about his own age...and they have been getting in lots of trouble together!

I wanted to go down to Phoenix while I was here so I could visit my brother Khyl and his family. So on Thursday afternoon my dad, my brother Alan, my nephew Hayden, my kids and I drove to Arizona. I got to sit in the back with my nephew Hayden asking ever 5 minutes, "Are we in Phoenix yet?", "Are we in Arizona yet?" and I had to keep disappointing him by saying "NO!" We stayed Thursday night at my grandparent's house in Flagstaff. Then on Friday we went to my brother's house.

We had a lot of fun in Phoenix. My brother Khyl got a Wii for Christmas, so we spent a lot of time bowling and playing tennis on the Wii! Wii Sports has a fitness test that shows your fitness age after playing three different games. I tried it out and my fitness age was 60!!! My dad's fitness age was 33, so you can tell how good I was at playing the Wii. We had a lot of fun though. We also visited my Grandma Owens. She was excited to meet her newest Great Granddaughter. Owen and Hayden amused themselves at my grandmom's house by picking old oranges off a tree and tossing them around like balls. One of the reasons I love going to Phoenix is to get good Mexican food. I LOVE Mexican food...but the stuff they have in Massachusetts is just horrible! So on Saturday we went to lunch for Mexican food, and we also had Mexican food for dinner. It was so good!!!! I wonder why nobody opens a good Mexican food restaurant in Massachusetts...they would probably make lots of money.

Now we are back in Utah for another 2 weeks. I'm looking forward to contacting some old friends and visiting with them. I will post a few pictures here...but for more you can always go to brisheaf.shutterfly.com

Alan's youngest son Jacob LOVES babies! Ever since Holly has shown up he has been after her, trying to get to hold her, or feed her, or point out her nose and eyes to us. Here he is giving her a kiss!

Here is Owen and my dad at my brother Alan's birthday party.

Holly and her cousin Kelsy.

Here is Holly and her cousin Julie. Khyl's kids loved getting the chance to hold Holly and feed her.

Holly and her Uncle Khyl.

Holly and her Uncle Alan.

Holly in the warm Phoenix sun!

Grandpa Owens, Holly and Owen at Great Grandma Owens home.

At Great Grandma Owens house.

Owen sure loves his Uncle Khyl. They had lots of fun playing together. Owen had lots of fun in Phoenix too. It was about 80 degrees there, so he got to run outside for hours! At about 7:30 at night Owen would strip off his clothes and put himself to sleep. It was pretty nice having him fun himself to sleep!

Owen on the ride back to Utah. Owen and Holly took the long car ride pretty well.

Holly was sleepy last night. She fell asleep in the walker!

Owen's Kidneys

When I was pregnant with Owen the doctors noticed on an ultrasound that his kidneys looked a little more dilated than they like them to be. Because of this I had about 5 ultrasounds before he was born. I wasn't complaining about it though, I always loved getting to see my little guy! His kidneys didn't get better though. So after he was born our pediatrician referred us to a Urologist. Owen has had to have about 4 ultrasounds on his kidneys and bladder since he was born, and he also had to have a test where they inserted a catheter so they could inject a dye into his bladder and take x-rays. They were checking to see if the dye would travel back from his bladder into his kidneys. That wasn't the problem though. He was only about 4 months old when he had that test done. The x-ray technicians were amazed at how well he did during the test too. He just laid there and sucked on his binky!

The last time he had an ultrasound was a year ago. That test showed that his kidneys were shrinking back to a normal size, so the urologist decided to wait another year before we did another ultrasound. Last night our year was up. I was so worried about taking Owen to get the ultrasound because he is 2 now! I set up an appointment for 7:00 PM because I wanted to make sure Scott would be there to help me hold him down. He doesn't sit still for anything anymore! Before the appointment we took him out to eat and made sure he ate plenty. We didn't want hunger to cause him to have a tempter tantrum. We got to his appointment well before 7:00, but they were ready for us. We only had to wait about 5 minutes, if that. We went into the room where he was having the test, he jumped up on the table, laid down, stuck his fingers in his mouth and just looked at the lady who was doing the test. He laid there for the 10 minutes it took and didn't cause any problems. We were all pleasantly surprised. The lady doing the test said 2 year olds were never that good. She had to watch his bladder for 5 minutes. She said with a 2 year old they are usually happy to get to watch the bladder for 1 minute, but Owen stayed still for the whole 5 minutes. So I was pretty happy. We didn't get a lot of information. The lady said his kidneys looked a little bit better than they did last year, and she said we would probably see her again in a year. I guess we will get more information when we see the Urologist next month.

As for a treatment if his kidneys don't return to normal...the Urologist said he would have to have surgery. She thinks that the tubes going from his kidneys to his bladder are too narrow, so the urine can't flow easily into his bladder causing his kidneys to dilate. So the surgery would remove the narrow part of the tubes and reattach them at a lower part of the kidney. I really don't like the idea of Owen having to have surgery, so we are hoping they go back to normal on their own.

Jumpin' Holly

Yesterday we had one of those fun New England winter storms! I hope you can hear my sarcasm. I don't ever remember having storms like the ones we have in New England when I lived in Utah. But then again I never had to shovel the snow in Utah. So yesterday we had snow, then ice, then sleet, then rain, then sleet, then more snow. I don't know the exact order they came in, but it made a mess. Instead of just fluffy snow to shovel we had heavy slush and ice to try to pry off our drive-way. Scott worked from 5:00 AM - 6:00 PM yesterday...so he was beat by the time he got home. I told him I would shovel if he would watch the kids. We didn't want to let it freeze overnight. So for 2 hours I was out in the rain chipping ice and slush off the driveway. What fun that was! Today my back is killing me...my legs are like rubber and my hands have blisters. I guess I need to get out and exercises more! Hey...at least I might have lost a few pounds!

Since we had all the bad weather daycare was cancelled for Owen. So we stayed home in our pajamas all day. Holly has been holding her head up very well, so I decided to pull out Owen's old jumper to see if she would like to hang out in it for a while. Her little head barely poked out over the top, and Owen seemed determined to swing her as high as he could. So maybe we'll try it again when we get back from Utah.

Here is little Holly today...doesn't she look happy that her brother isn't home trying to swing her from the rafters! Actually, I was just talking to her. She loves it when people talk to her. She is definitely a girl...and a social butterfly already!

New Year, New Project

Happy New Year everybody! I hope you had an enjoyable New Years Eve and Day. We almost had to stay home on New Years Eve because of snow, but we ended up going to Scott's sister's house. We ate some ham and played Trivial Pursuit. It was a memorable night!

I'm not big into New Years Resolutions being made on January 1st. The new year for me starts on August 27th...my birthday. That's a real new year for me. But I've decided I need to get a little more serious about losing the extra baby weight from Holly...so I'm going with the old cliche resolution to lose some extra pounds. How will I accomplish this? I figure that by telling all of you out there about my plan and posting each week how much I have lost (or gained) that will give me some motivation. The only problem is I'm going to Utah next week. Utah, the home of good Mexican food, my favorite donuts, my parents cooking! Pretty much all the food I love lives in Utah. So maybe it's good that I don't! So if you notice that I'm not losing much this month, you will know why.

I've also decided to get to work on the cross-stitch stockings I bought about 5 years ago. I had big dreams of cross-stitching two stockings, one for Scott and one for me. I love to cross-stitch, but I haven't done much with it since I finished a cross-stitch for my mom of Jesus that took me a year to complete. But I order two more stocking cross-stitch kits to get myself psyched up about it. I'm starting with Scott's and mine. I thought that if I did the kids first I might not be motivated to finish mine and Scott's. So this week I started on Scott's. I don't know if I will finish them up this year...they are 16 inches each. But hopefully in a few years they will all be done. Wish me luck!