Trip to Rexburg

So it's been a week since we've gotten back from our little trip up to Idaho, but I have been in the mood to update yet, but I think I might be ready now. So a quick recap, we left on a Thursday and came back Sunday. Randy's lil bro, Rob, graduated from BYU-Idaho on Friday (it was a very long day for Rob especially since he had to take his last final earlier that day).

They had a banquet late afternoon and the commencement right after (Julie and I didn't go because there were 8 kids to tend to and neither of us would have enjoyed ourselves while chasing kids). Right after commencement was the convocation (the part where Rob walked and received his diploma (or lack thereof, they give out empty books and mail your diploma after they figure out if you really graduate, nice hu?) Julie and I carted all the kids in our vans to campus and had to wait for the commencement to get over, we were just glad we didn't go, the place they had it was flaming hot, we would have been miserable.
Here is Rob walking down the stairs, not the greatest shot but you get the idea (I was pretty far back). Then a pic of Rob and his wife Kendra and oldest Alyssa, (Kendra is very pregnant, due next month. She's soo little and cute when she's pregnant, that poor baby has nowhere to go but out on her, to cute.

Here's Micah on the way up to Rexburg. He is playing the "let's see how many grapes we can fit on our mouth" game. Not the safest I know, he got a few in before I realized what he was doing, he's filling his "Pie Hole."

The next day (Saturday) we went to Frontier Pies for breakfast before we had another long, but exciting day. Randy's grandma passed away a little over a year ago and his mom, Julie and Kristi were able to do her temple work at the Rexburg temple.

Then we all were able to be there for her as she was able to seal her mom to her parents and then for her (Randy's mom) to be sealed to her parents. It was an amazing, emotional, heavenly experience to be apart of. She has waited such a long time to have that blessing of being sealed to her parents, and I am humbled having been able to be there to share that moment with her. I am soo grateful that she was introduced to church and made the choices that she did to get to where she is today. She has blessed the lives of so many and without her, I wouldn't have Randy. Thanks mom.

Here's Randy with Malia and her french toast stick, almost looks like the steak stick she gnawed on over Memorial Day.

Later that day we had a picnic at a local park that has this really fun water playground thing. (don't know what else to call it). We didn't have the kids' suits on but that didn't stop Morgan, (she's trying to go under the waterfall in her pink shirt and shorts). It was a fun, busy, fast weekend, but were grateful that we were able to sneak away from Randy's classes and work for a bit and enjoy being with family. Randy's sis Julie got some great shots of the temple and some other pics of the weekend, check her blog out if you want to see more.

The Pie Hole

Out of the mouths of babes, that's all I have to say. So the story goes like this, we went to our favorite restaurant for lunch on Saturday, Rib City, (btw if you have one in your area, totally recommend it, the meat falls off the bone and it is oh so good), anyway back to the funny story. So we are driving home from the yummy eating and Malia being the wonderful baby that she is, is just yelling and being really noisy in the back of the van, of course why wouldn't she. Well when she does this, the other kids usually yell along with her and drive Randy and I absolutely up the wall, and may I say it usually gets the reaction of one of us yelling at them to "be quiet and ignore her" from the front. Well this afternoon went a little differently, no we still yelled at them but it was Micah's response to Malia's yelling that got me and Randy to quickly turn our heads to each other with a confused look and then quickly turning away to not let the kids see us laughing hysterically under our breaths. As little sweet innocent Malia is exercising her vocal chords, Micah yells, "Malia, shut your pie hole." I'm sorry I shouldn't laugh, but it was so funny hearing it come from a 3-year-old. And btw, that is Randy's favorite things to say to get the kids to be quiet. Not quite the same effect coming from a 3-year-old, but hey, he thought that he'd give it a try I guess. I guess RANDY and i (yes I typed it purposely like that) need to watch what we say around the little man. He can sure make us laugh with the things he says.

-K- so I lied. Here's another one, I went through the last entries and found other pictures I was meaning to add, just in the moment forgot to upload. These are kinda random, but I will explain as I go through.

Here's Ella (Shauna's baby) and Malia. You'll notice Ella's cheek, no that's not marker, it's a huge shiner. She fell on something before leaving on vacation. Shuana didn't know and Preston couldn't tell her what happened. Poor girl, cute babies though, don't ya think?This is at the reception. They have a "kids room" set up downstairs in the basement of the house that has a TV with movies, puzzles, trains, books and other random toys. The kids like it, the only problem was one of the adults had to be down there with them for obvious reasons. But it was fun.

So I saw a cute thing to in magazine recently where this mom got body shots of all her family and put them on magnetic paper and put them all over the fridge that way her kids would get to know their aunts and uncles who didn't live nearby. So I thought what a great idea since none of our family lives close to us, except Billy and we're moving soon, and since we were seeing all of them minus Megan and Eric I would get every one's picture taken. Here are some of my favorite shots, there were a lot (cuz of my BIG family) but worth it.Here's uncle Scooby (as the kids call him) doing his Stewart (from Mad TV) impression. Nooo!
Aunt Shauna doing what she does best, eat chocolate.
Andy's wife Bonnie Jean striking a pose (that's my aunt Annie's manfriend Randy doing bunny ears).
Good ol grandpa showing off his muscles.This isn't going to be one of the magnets, but cute nonetheless. My mom found someones walker and the kids just needed to do something and she needed to go walking so to kill two birds with one stone she gave the kids rides and got her heart pumping walking up and down the street.
Mirror image. We were at I think McDonald's on the way home or to (I can't remember now) and I was in the play area and Lindz was obviously on the other side the babies were hitting the window at each other and we got this. Pretty cute. Now I think that I am officially done with our vacation. I think I will take a break for a bit and breath. Randy's brother Rob is graduating next week from BYU-Idaho and we'll be going up for that. Probably post after that unless I feel the urge. Have a great week or so.

Happy Independence Day!!!

So I think after this post I will be caught up, maybe if I don't think of something else. We had a fun 4th. We went to our ward's annual scout breakfast. It's their fundraiser for all the stuff they do. I was $5 a person and boy was it worth it. It's not one of those cold cereal, danishes, bagels and juice kinda continental breakfasts, there were omelette's, french toast, pancakes, hash browns, fresh fruit, cinnamon rolls etc. It was wonderful. Billy and Alina came with us and talked us into going to the big Provo parade. I didn't really wanna go because of parking and walking five miles and then finding a spot to sit and watch as late as it was. Well Alina's sister and brother were saving them spots and so we decided since this was the last year we'd be here we'd give it a try. We found a parking spot about 5 blocks away and got there just in time to see the opening of the parade. It was really hot when we got there and were worried about getting burned and so we lathered everyone up and then about 20 minutes into the parade the clouds came in. It was awesome. The rest of the parade was mostly cloudy and every once in a while the sun would pop our for a couple of minutes and then hide again.

Billy and Malia enjoying the parade.

Micah swiping licorice that Alina's sister had brought.
Morgan taking pictures with Alina's camera phone.
McKenzie in Alina's big floppy hat, I think it looks pretty cute on her.
Later that afternoon our neighbors, the Dahmer's invited us to go to a park in Provo with a good slope to go slip-and-sliding. It was a lot of fun, even some of the parents went down the hill. When Micah would slow down, he'd start "swimming" the rest of the way.

McKenzie taking her turn down the hill.Don't even ask me what Morgan is doing. Spinning or something.Later that evening we were invited to go to Alina's parent's home to for dinner, Cafe' Rio style. Her aunt made some really good pulled pork that I am trying to get the recipe for. Malia being cute, climbing on her car seat.McKenzie throwing those popping firecrackers at Billy and Randy. The kids had fun with those, Micah tried to open his by himself right over Malia's head and dumped all the sawdust the was in the bag, all over her, it was great. Alina's family also bought a ton of 2 liter Coke bottles and a couple of cases of Mentos so we could make Coke Fountains. We all drilled holes all of the place and rigged it up so we wouldn't get sprayed when we put the mentos in. We had a couple of mishaps, that made everyone bust out laughing but for the most part, we stayed pretty clean.

After we left we went to the ridge in Orem to watch the fireworks that are set off at the Stadium of fire. Miley Cyrus and Blue Man group came and preformed for it. That would have been a fun one to see. The kids love Hannah Montana and Randy and I want to so badly see Blue Man group again. They are hysterical, if you ever have a chance to see them, take the opportunity.The next night we set off some really cheap fireworks for the kids because we didn't get to do any on the forth. We invited some of our neighbors, the Youell's and the Smith's to join us. The kids enjoyed it. Micah is the bottom left of the shot and has his ears covered, the other little boy with his ears covered is Alex. Every time we set another one off they would always cover their ears, even though they weren't noisy. There were only like 2 in the entire package that were loud. It was pretty cute. After we were done, we gave the kids each an otter pop, and they all said simultaneously "I'm thirsty." So we told them to get the hose. This is Morgan attempting to get a drink, not realizing the pressure behind the nozzle. She got pretty drenched.

Malia cut a tooth (finally)

Yes it is true, only 10 months old a her and her tooth has made its debut (do ya feel the sarcasm yet). It popped out sometime either in the car ride over to Cali or sometime Friday. She figured she would not make it a big deal when it happened, just the four months before. You can see it if you look closer on the bottom left in her mouth. And can I say holy cow to her blue eyes, whoa mama. Yeah Malia, you're are growing soo fast.

Schmidt Family Reunion 2008

This post will have quite a few pictures, I actually remembered to take my camera out of the case and take a some candid shots. Some of these are also from my sister Lindsay's archive. So Thursday morning we all, (three vans full of Schmidt's) caravaned from Utah to Sacramento area, California. In the lead was my dad's beast of a van that we all have fond memories of taking looooooooong family road trips, usually cuz we were moving. This van is was bought back in 1991 right before we moved to Oregon and has gone through a lot of fixing up. I swear, every time we drove to CA to visit my grandparents, we would usually get stuck cuz something went wrong with the van, and then end up going back to grandma's for another night. My grandma got used to it and never changed the sheets until she got a call from us AFTER we returned home. Good times . . Here is McKenzie and Kyra being ducks in my dads van fully equipped with a 13 Inch TV/DVD players that sits on top of out huge cooler. Ahh memories, only back then we did not have the luxury of having a movie to watch, we had to entertain ourselves with books, music, fighting, asking incessantly are we there yet and begging for a drink of water to whomever was sitting on the front bench. Lindsay and her boys rode with my dad, Shauna had her minivan with her kids and Jon and then in my van (I was Randyless) my mom and 3 of my 4 kids (remember Morgie was with Lolly), rode with me. Oh yeah, so Randy had just started his second session of summer semester the day after the wedding and knew that he wouldn't be able to go with us, so he scheduled to take his GRE test that weekend. He had been taking a test prep class for the past 7-8 weeks to get ready for it, since he hates testing, me too.

Oh and did I mention that we had to follow behind dad at 67 miles per hour, because the van is soo old, dad wanted to make sure he got there in one piece and noticed that every time we went over 70 is when the van would break down quicker. So Shauna and I decided to follow him, just in case something did go wrong. Oh and Shauna's baby Ella barfed the night before (of course she did, why not, every other baby had gotten sick, she felt it was her turn). So we had to stop a few times to change the lovely diapers and puking baby. Gotta love road trips.

So we get there late Thursday night (a 12-13 hour trip took more like 14-15) and slept and the next day hung out with our cousins and such.

This is my cousin Sara, (she's Lindsay's age) and her youngest Zane, he loved getting into things, it was a fun to watch him.
Billy with 3 of the 5 babies, I had to laugh cuz Malia is looking at Bradley like, what is up with you, this is fun.
This is our 2nd cousin Lenora and her two girls Tianna and Meli. They are Polynesian dancers, and every year they preform and attempt to teach us how to dance. The kids love it, and the adults just laugh at our sad attempts to be limber.
Billy, Micah and Jon doing the boys part of the dancing.
Morgan and Jon enjoying the Cali heat , or something like that.
Sara's oldest, Willow and Meli splashing in the water, kinda looks like Meli is going to do a water attack.
Morgan got up there right away to dance, but as soon as they got started she became shy and decided she didn't want to do it anymore. So I attempted to move her hips for her, we had a good laugh
Andy holding Collin, Polynesian dancing. There weren't enough sarongs for everyone so Lenora gave her feather boa she was wearing around Andy. Isn't he cute, ha ha ha ha. Come on Andy shake your thang.
This is the drive home on Sunday, Malia all Tucker'd out. The funny thing is something startled her awake in the car and she immediately fell back asleep with her head propped up, hysterical. All in all it was a fun/fast trip, and I'm glad it's over, not the part of being able to see everyone, but the part of driving without Randy, I HATE DRIVING, that's why I married Randy.

The aftermath

The next morning we kinda just took it easy. Laurie and Jason packed up to leave earlier than the rest of us. They stayed at Lake Tahoe at their timeshare (which is about 45 min from where my grandma lives). Morgan was invited to go with them to hang out with Grace. The rest of us had to do some major laundry and packing to ready to leave for Cali the next day. While I was getting my fam ready, Randy and Shauna took the remaining kids to our local pool. It's a lot of fun, equipped with water slides, fountains, water tumblers and beach entry. I love those kinds of pools, all ages can play. Anyway, I couldn't go (due to the fact that we had no clean clothes or anything packed, but I know the kids had fun. This is a pic of the pool I found on there website, FYI don't try and find Waldo, he is not there.

Lindsay's wedding pics

These are pictures I downloaded from Lindsay, my ma and pa at the temple












Here is the reception spread. Don't those cakes look yummy?

So many decisions, so little time.













Me and Randy, doing what we do best, standing around, or something like that.

The Real Story (by Randy)

Being the editor of the blog;), there was a blog about the husbands not changing a dirty diaper, which has some inaccuracies in it. The time was 9pm and the wives said they would be home from the bridal shower at 8:30 (we, the husbands, know that when the sisters get together they normally give us a time when they will be home, but that typically is not when they return). We were getting restless for the wives to come home, so we made the call. When making a call to the wives, one needs to make sure that the information that is in the call, is very convincing and that it sounds like an emergency, or they will not come to the rescue. Hence the information in that blog post provided misinformation to the general public.

#6 The Wodding (as my mom would say)

Where do I begin. We obviously all woke up early to get ready in time to be up to the temple by 10:30 am. Alina made hair appointments for my mom, her and a few other people, my mom looked really cute, they trimmed it and gave her big curls. Alina's hair was done up fancy, I loved it. Anyway, I had found a few people in my ward to help watch all the kiddos while we were in the temple. I figured it would be hard for a). Jon and James to handle 13 kids at the temple (5 of which are babies) and b). I would no longer have friends in my ward if I dumped all 13 off at someones house. So I got smart and had a few lined up, trying as best to split the babies up. Poor Bradley was still sick at this point and diarrhea had set in at this point, so I had someone with no kids come to my house to watch him and Collin. We got to the temple on time but the bride and groom were a little late getting there. It was a great ceremony, we were able to see some old friends from when we lived in Montana (they've come to I think almost all the Schmidt weddings so far, what great friends). After the sealing we took a few pictures and then booked it over to the church to set up table and chairs and get the last minute food preparations done.
This is a pic of Billy (I mean Will I will never be able to say his name) and his new bride Alina (or my new SIL) at the luncheon. Aren't they sweet. The food was yummy and we had a good number show up. We bought I think the right amount of food. Nothing ran out but it wasn't like we had a ton of leftovers. Enough to feed the troops at my house a few more days. After the luncheon Randy took our kids home to get naps/quiet time, while a few of us cleaned up.







We were home for maybe 1-2 hours, enough time for naps and teaching some of my family Ticket to Ride, (which we love btw) and then realizing we had to hurry and get our dress clothes back on for the reception. Alina and Billy wanted us there early to get family shots taken, since we didn't do them at the temple. We decided to not do them there, otherwise the kids were going to be in their white dresses and shirts while being babysat and then someone rushing down to get them and bring them all the back up. It just didn't seem that fun to me. However I didn't get any pics of my kids in their cute clothes, I'll tell you why in a sec. Alina said she'd send me some when they got them back, so that will have to be a later post. Anyway, the reception was beautiful. It was at an old house in Provo with a gorgeous set up. Oh and did I mention that Alina's twin sister made her dress for her? She's going into fashion design and heading to Italy pretty soon. It is beautiful gown.


At the reception there were an assortment of different cakes. I don't know the name of any of them but holy cow there had to have been about 15 different desserts, each one looked irresistibly good. I had two pieces and wanted more but just couldn't eat another bite. I wish I had gotten a picture of it, maybe Billy and Alina's photographer did, I'll cross my fingers. This is a pic of Laurie and her youngest Tate, (he's about a month younger than Malia) he wanted some dessert to, what a mean momma, hee hee.













-K- so the reason I didn't get shots of my kids in their nice clothes was because Randy and my BIL Jason went to go decorate Billy's car and took the camera so he could take pictures. So my sisters if you have pics you wanna send me, feel free. The reason why he had to take pics of it was because Billy had to go hide his car from Alina's family. Apparently in the past they have done some pretty crazy things to family members cars during the reception, like taking the wheels off, filling them with saw dust, putting the car up on blocks. Randy had to pick him up from his hiding place so he knew where the car was parked and we couldn't have let them leave with out it being decorated somehow. Randy and Jason wrote on the windows, "I am the ball" "I am the chain" "We love marriage" "Kids welcome" and my personal favorite "Doin Da Laundry" (it's an inside family joke for a little hanky panky), don't even ask how that got started.