A mess of posts put into 1.

November felt like it would never end for me. It was one thing after another and it didn't really stop till umm . . .yesterday. So my next few posts may seem random but bear with me, I will try and get through it all, in no particular order.

While Laurie and her fam were here, we had to take them to BYU and let them experience the gymnastics room, cuz it's the best place on earth (according to my kids) besides Disneyland of course. Here's Billy (my lil bro.) acting like a whale trying to do a vault. We all had a good laugh.

And of course the girls enjoying the huge trampoline as they bounced into the foam pit.

Also while they were here, we found Malia in the laundry room (hence the sheets she is sitting on) chowing down on vanilla wafers, not sure how many she ate before we found her. I wish I could hear what was going on in her head when this happened, maybe "Oh crap they found me" or "Man, why'd ya have to go and look in this room" or maybe even, "Well it was fun while it lasted."

After Laurie left, Randy's parents stayed with us for a night and the next day we went to Sandy to visit his grandparents who live in Corvallis and had been in town for the baptism and had been staying with an aunt and uncle. It was great to see them again, as you may be able to tell by Malia's expression.

Right after Randy's parents left I had to finish getting ready for my ward's Super Saturday (thank heavens it is over). It was a great turn out, we did four cute (at least I thought they were cute) crafts. Some glass etching, wooden blocks with vinyl lettering, beaded bookmarks and memory boards. It was fun being able to hang with the ladies in my ward on a friend level. I was amazed with myself, me, who hates to crotchet, knit, cross-stitching, sew (pretty much anything with fabric unless I can glue it) learned how to make a hat on one of those looms. I got soo into it that I finished 2 in one weekend and 2 more in the next 2 days (these were for a humanitarian project). Then the girls got into them, McKenzie loves doing it and I helped her finish a really cute off-white one that she will not take off (pictured below). Morgan got a black one with a pom on the top. I'll probably make more in the near future, they go fast and when you need to take a break it won't get messed up and you can find your spot really easily. Hence why I like it, my ADD brain can handle a project like this.
Here's Micah just being a stud one day before church. What a cute boy.
Morgie and Malia goofing around the same day. Malia was spinning around in a hat a lot the morning of this shot, I will try and post the video.
I'll stop here for this post, cuz the next stuff will take a lot of room as well, and you probably need a break from all of this.

Malia Spinning

Just an update

So there have been a few things that have happened lately that I have neglected to post (due to the fact that I had a Super Saturday to get through), and no I am not pregnant.
1.) You may have noticed the last few pics of Morgan with a band aid on her chin. Well she split it open while trying to get in the van. It was pretty nasty and we were going to take to urgent care (yet again) to get stitches, but had to run home 1st for something and noticed our neighbor (who is also a nurse) was home and doing stuff outside. We asked her to look at it and see if we needed to really take her in and she (being the great neighbor she is) looked and decided it could be fixed with some NuSkin (I love that stuff). So we just kept an eye on it and made sure it stayed clean and closed and it worked. If she scars at all, it will be minimal, yeah.
2.) Malia started walking a about 2 weeks ago. She's been walking on and off for about a month but not consistently until about 2 weeks ago. She is so cute when she walks though. I'll try and get a video in the near future (no promises though).
3.) We are NOT moving!!!!! Randy had just turned in his grad application and was checking in with the recruiter to find out if they got everything and when to expect to find out anything, when he got an email telling him that it wasn't being made official yet but SUU was cutting their forensics program due to budget cuts. Randy was devastated. This is what he has wanted since he started college (alooooong time ago) and now this. He was told about another program down there that isn't the same but might be something he'd be interested in and found out it is offered at the Y as well. So he is applying here and there for a Masters in Public Administration. So we will be here at least until the end of summer or maybe here for another 2 years. We shall see. Even though this was a huge blow to him, I am very grateful that I do not have to pack up and move (yet again) and get to be in a place for more than 2 years. (Yeah for me).
4.) Since we are not moving and will be around for all of the holidays, we are going to enjoy them and go spend the first round of them with my family (all my sisters are getting together which has really never happened since we lived in the same house together). So I am really excited.
However, Randy is not as excited about going up because Thanksgiving lands on our anniversary this year which is a pretty big one. We are celebrating 10 years together and we will be with my family, and go see Twilight with my seesters, and enjoy black Friday together, how much better could it get, tee hee hee. I told him though that we could go out and not have to find babysitters, which kinda helped with the idea of going there.
5.) Randy's parents sold their home in Oregon this last weekend. It's been on the market since the middle of the summer and they were getting a little worried with the way the economy and the market have been going they didn't think it would sell for a while. But they accepted an offer, and as long as everything goes well, they will be down here before Christmas, which will be great for all of us. It will be bitter sweet for Randy and his siblings though, they were all pretty much born and raised in that house. It was a great house, with a big yard and lots of memories for them. Onto a new chapter though.
Alright enough with the updating and no photos. Have a great week.

McKeznie's Baptism

McKenzie was baptized last Saturday (Nov. 1) and it was an absolutely wonderful day. My sister and her family drove from Vancouver to be here for it, Randy's parents were already down for a conference they had to be at, and also Randy's grandparents were able to come down for it. We had lots of family and friends to help share in her special day. I was able to get my baptism dress from my mom a while ago and it fit perfectly on McKenzie. She was really excited to wear it. Here she is with Randy right before it started.


This is McKenzie's teacher this year. (Ms Braun). Only in Utah could you ask your child's school teacher to come to your 8-year-old's baptism and not be looked at like a psychopath (there is good things about living in Utah.) She was really excited that she came.Wanna know what's even cooler than having your current teacher come to your baptism, having your Kindergarten teacher come as well. This is Mrs. Headman and she was McKenzie's teacher when we first moved to Utah. She is now Morgan's teacher which she totally loves. McKenzie would have invited her 1st grade teacher too, if she hadn't moved after the end of the year.Here are the girls just being cute. Yes the dreaded family pic. We got one done of all of us but it didn't turn out as well, (so Julie if you have any on your camera I'd love if you could pass them along, hint hint). Her grandma Tucker found this dress up in Oregon and it was just perfect for her. It is beautiful and it just looks like her. McKenzie with grandma and grandpa Tucker.
With aunt Julie and the kids. Julie gave the Baptism talk in the beginning. I forgot to mention that there were no other kids in our stake getting baptize that day. So we had it all to ourselves. So I took it upon myself to do the whole program. It was a little crazy but it made it really special for her day.

Her with aunt Dee Da.

Her uncle, Jason, gave the Holy Ghost talk and then the girls sang a really cute version of "I am a Child of God," that me and my sisters use to sing when we were little. So this next little video is for my family, sorry that it's kinda soft, but the girls would not sing loud, no matter how hard I poked my ear to remind them. It brought back a lot of fond memories of my own mother fighting with us to get us to sing together in somewhat unison. Ahhh good times, Ma enjoy. It was an amazing day, I never thought that I would be at this stage in my life. My 1st is now baptized and now accountable for her actions and that scares me. I hope I have taught her and will be able to continue to teach her all she needs to know to live with our Father in Heaven someday. She is such a good girl and we are sooo proud of her. Way to go McKenzie we love you. And thank you to all who came and supported her, she is soo grateful to all who came.

The song the girls sang for McKenzie's Baptism

Slacking on Halloween (or not)

Ya I know I've taken forever to post these, but I've had good excuses this time. We just have so many fun things to do for Halloween (on top of the fact that I got all the girls' pictures taken at Penney's on 3 different days, and McKenzie's baptism was the day after Halloween oh and ya, family coming in for that baptism, it's just been a whirlwind of fun).

So to start we went to pumpkin land and had a fun afternoon. We went in the corn maze, played on their play ground, saw some animals, and got to jump on some bounce houses. We carved those pumpkins the weekend before Halloween, and this is is the finished product. We got an email last month showing this pic of a carved pumpkin that had beer bottles around it and it looked like it was vomiting. The funny thing was this guys had carved his other pumpkins to look at the puking pumpkin in disgust. It was hysterical. So this is our attempt at Pumpkin Ralph. Pretty funny I think. McKenzie wanted her's to be a vampire, Morgan (the one below, is a pretty basic one (but she came up with the design herself), Micah's is the multi colored red one (he likes to paint) and the other's are one's that the girls got from going on pumpkin field trips. Halloween evening, my sister from Washington was able to come down for the baptism, and made sure they got here early enough to go trick-or-treating with us. They made it just in time to enjoy our annual tradition of eating Pumpkin Bob (this year was Pumpkin Bobbie, I made a girly face this time on it). It's actually pretty tasty, it's dinner in a pumpkin, you puts lots of different things in and cook in a pumpkin, when it's done cooking, you scoop the dinner along with a little of the pumpkin onto the plate. In the beginning of Pumpkin Bob the kids weren't thrilled about it, but as years have come and gone, they get a little more and more excited to see for this tradition. Unfortunately I was unable to get a pic of it cuz we ate it soo fast. Next year maybe. This is Ellen's little man (Spud) who is a month younger than Malia.

Here's the rest of the crew minus Elvis who was much too busy running around with his dad to sit still for a quick shot.

Earlier that day I was pretty much at the school all day. Each of the kids had parties that I helped with and their annual Halloween Parade through the school that I didn't want to miss. McKenzie is a Asian chickadee. (pretty much a Geisha without all the accessories that go along with that costume).

Morgan was a cheerleader who apparently does not have pom poms. She forgot them and then i forgot to bring them with me when I went back. Oh well, she's still cute.

All in all it was a fun day/week. The kids were counting down the days and just really enjoyed themselves.

My smart kids

When school started, we asked the kids what kind of things they were worried about. Morgan really didn't know what to expect so she really didn't have anything but McKenzie was on this math kick. She was really worried about harder math and not understanding it and doing really horribly. I just kept having to reassure her that there was nothing to worry about and that she was already really good at math. (in my biased opinion I think she has a good grasp of the concepts and does really well). Anyway, so on with my story. She came to me the other evening and brought up again math and being worried about it. I asked her why and she said because they are going to start learning multiplication and she didn't think she could do it. Now I am not a good teacher, I probably will not teach my kids to drive, I will force them to learn the piano (like my mother did to me, and am grateful for it), but I never felt like I would be able to teach my kids important concepts, I just get to flustered that they aren't understanding me and it doesn't do either of us any good then cuz we both get frustrated. Anyway, so I told her that multiplication is really easy and nice to know and I use it every day. Like for instance when we play Ticket to Ride I can use my times tables and figure out what my score is, instead of adding up each and every train piece. Than I started making kinda these graph looking things and showed her what I meant. And oh my goodness she got it. I couldn't believe it, me the impatient mother that I am connected with my daughter enough to teach her multiplication. Not saying she can multiply 43x13 but I think she understands or is at least starting to understand the basis of it. I am soo proud of her for wanting to learn it. I am even prouder of me for figuring out how to explain it for her to grasp it and not giving up. I think I can handle this parent thing maybe.

(I know I've used this pic before but it's so cute of the two)

Morgan also amazed us recently. Her teacher started sending home the little beginning reading books that she has. They are seriously like 10 pages long and are very repetitious with sounds, I love them. Anyway, Morgan being as young as she is, I was a little worried about her grasping new concepts quickly, but she never ceases to amaze us. She has brought home a new book every day (except the day they had a sub) and she is just devouring these books. Because of UEA she was able to bring 2 home and finished them both in one day. When she gets home she wants to read them right away and is excited to try a new one. She gets frustrated every once in a while and granted she needs help, but for the most part is doing it by herself. She is doing so good in Kindergarten. At her parent teacher conference we just had we asked if we should be worried and the teacher said, "you know I usually can pick out the youngest in the class (sometime just by sheer size) but Morgan is not the smallest and she's right up there with the other kids in her attentions span and following directions. I wouldn't have known if I didn't know her birhtday." She is doing awesome, good job Morgie