Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving weekend we actually ended up staying home because Paul had to go see all the newborn babies at Banner Estrella and West Valley Hospital. Plus he had to be on call too, so we just decided to hang out at home. While Paul worked Thursday morning the kids and I cleaned out closets, bagged up old clothes, and made a nice large pile of stuff to drop off at DI. Then for Thanksgiving dinner we barbecued! It was so easy and I didn't have to worry about making a ton of food and not having enough people to eat it all.

On Friday we took advantage of some of the black Friday deals, not at 4:00am, more around 9 am to buy a few things at Staples and a new bed for Joel. We deliberately avoided Toys-r-us, Walmart and Target. That night we went to Matta's Mexican Restaurant in Mesa and then headed over to see the Temple lights. We had called the temple prior to leaving and they told us the lights would be on at 5:30pm. However, when we got there about 6pm and found it totally dark, we were a little frustrated. We stopped and asked an attendant what was going on and he said since it was opening night they were not going to turn on the lights until 7pm. We were not about ready to wait around with 4 kids for an hour. So we headed home and promised them we would go another night.

Saturday we took our new camera, from which all these pictures are taken (it was an early birthday present for me) and went to the Zoo. We had a great time and the kids loved it.


Jarom, Joel, Jessica, Lacey at Matta's


Making the kids pose so I could try out my camera (note the annoyed look on Jarom's face)

Me and the girls (I love the way that Lacey is making a face like she can't wait to get away from me! Ha.ha)

Lacey showing off her new Pokeman cards and Joel making a silly face

Joel, Jarom, Lacey, Jess at the entrance of the zoo

Climbing the tower to see the giraffe's

Paul looking sexy...

A tiger

Joel was getting tired towards the end

Checking out the sights

Striking a pose in front of the rhino's.

Jarom, Joel, Jess, Erika, Lacey

Jessica

Jessica and a monkey (or maybe it's a baboon??)

Jarom messing around on the little kid playground

Jessica

Lacey

Joel

I love this picture because I was probably 50 feet away from this bird and my camera captured it like I was standing next to it.

Jessica on the merry-go-round

Me and Joel sitting down on the handicap bench! He refused to sit on one of the horses.

All in all it was such a great weekend and the kids even told us "this is the most fun we've ever had!"

That always makes family outings

more worth it.

It's a goal

Joel will be 3 next month and I am still carrying 15 pounds of leftover baby weight. So I got to thinking, yes I have a terrible sweet tooth (nothing new there), but maybe I need a goal. Well anyone that knows me well enough, knows I HATE running. Always have. But I know it's really good for you. So I thought I would set some running goals for myself. Just start out small, run for 2 minutes and then increase slowly until I can run for longer stretches of time.
I have to admit I am kind of excited about this. (CRAZY - I know!) And I also didn't realize it was possible for my ankles to hurt so bad. I expected soreness in my thighs, calves, and butt, but not my ankles. As I sat in Stake Conference tonight, on a hard chair, and all my lower body was aching I thought, this pain is okay because I am working toward a goal and you have to suffer sometimes to get to that point.

p.s. I will post about Thanksgiving and include lots of pictures in the next day or two. So excuse this pictureless post about my new found eagerness to run. :)

Girly Girls

Seems like just yesterday when they were born....Can you guess who is who?

4.6 hours, cauliflower ear, & it better be fixed

We bought a new Dell computer in September and we have loved it. However when our 30 day trial of anti-virus software expired I neglected to renew it. And we got slammed with some viruses and trojans. Paul and I spent about 8 hours trying to clean things up ourselves; reinstall drivers, disk defragmenting, etc. Nothing worked. We were losing our patience and our minds.

So as a last ditch resort, we called Dell and after coughing up over $150 in service fees (and getting a one year service warranty package) the tech guy started working on our computer. It was all done over the internet. He took control of the computer and fixed it all. The only downside - I was on the phone from 8:30am to 1:10pm!

He found a lot of viruses, missing drivers, a few trojans, and some glitch in windows vista. We had to start from scratch to fix it. In other words, everything had to come off the computer and be reinstalled. Due to the lengthy process, I took a picture of my telephone, which shows how long you have been talking on it, to prove how long I was on the phone. (It's hard to see, but in the top right hand corner it says 4:23:34 - that was about 10 minutes before I hung up.)

In the end, my ear was sore, my back hurt and I was super cranky -it's really bad how dependant I am on a machine. (And another frustrating issue-30 days after we bought this computer, with windows Vista, microsoft comes out with Windows 7, which is supposed to be so awesome). The tech guy offered to upgrade our computer for an extra $120 for Windows 7, but I declined spending any more money than was absolutely necessary. We now have a great anti-virus program and hopefully we'll be spared any future 5 hours telephone conversations with the Dell Tech department.

The Pinata Arrived

After reading our last post, Paul's sisters thought it would be funny to pick us up a pinata when they came to visit on Saturday.

Now we really look like a mexican tire shop/restaurant. Just need a few tires and a stack of hot tortilla's and we are in business.

Honestly, the color is growing on us and these pictures don't do it any justice - my camera makes the room look terribly flourescent and it's not at all. It's just a very "vivid"color.

Let's hang up a pinata and bird cage....

We painted the dining room. Okay, Paul painted the dining room and I assisted. (He's so great). Anyway, we rolled the paint on and it looked like a beautiful shade of creamy yellow. Then it dried......and its brighter than we anticipated. My camera makes it look even worse - the completed pictures were taken at night.
I swear it looks lighter during the day when the sun streams into the room than it does when we turn on the ceiling light at night. Anyway - see for yourself. We aren't sure what to make of it. When we lived in North Phoenix a lot of homes around us were owned by Spanish people who enjoyed painting them bright colors. So Paul said we could hang up a pinata and a bird cage and it would be just fine! Infact HGTV says we need to embrace color! So maybe I'll add a few more pictures to the wall and some curtains to soften the effect.
Any ideas??

Happy Halloween

Halloween night was great weather! It was in the mid 70's, no one needed a coat, the wind was NOT blowing, it was perfect. We also had the ward trunk-r-treat party to attend and I always love it when it's actually on Halloween because then I don't have to take my kids around the neighborhood.

And since we were gone at the party we didn't have to worry about a bunch of strangers coming to our door. I totally like giving out candy to my neighbors and friends but when you get tons and tons of people you don't know coming, it almost isn't as much fun. The interesting thing was when we drove home from the party the streets surrounding our house were dead! I couldn't believe it - normally we have tons of kids out, but it was very quiet this year.

Being that everyone seems to be looking for ways to save money, a few of us from church got together and swapped costumes for our kids. Didn't have pay a dime for anything, it was great!

As you can see from the pictures, the girls wanted to be beautiful princesses. I should have bought some tiara's or something. Jarom is a race car driver and Joel is Woody from Toy Story. He refused to wear the cowboy hat - no surprise there. We came home from the party with an over abundance of candy and have had to place it all in one spot and hand it out in a systematic way so no one gets sick. My mom used to let us just go at it and in about 24 hours we usually consumed all the candy and then it was out of our system fast. I haven't reached the point where I am willing to do that. Maybe when the kids are older and can accept the consequences of their actions better. Ha.ha....

Joel & Jarom

Joel & Jarom again

Can you guess which is which?

(okay, it's Lacey on the left and Jessica on the right)