Photos as Promised

June:Jay's last baseball game of the season. Coach Brian in the pink dress was a great motivator for the kids.
End of season baseball party and award ceremony

July:
Alyssa got into my mascara. It was pretty funny at first then I realized that she used the wand as a Q-Tip to "clean" out here ears. Took 3 days to clean it all out.

August:
August was all about hair cuts. Alyssa got her first hair cut and I had my nieces over to our new house to cut and color their hair for back to school.

September:
Jay is discovering a new interest in photography. We let him loose with daddy's camera to see what he came up with.

October:

Jay and Gracey's first grade classes went on a field trip to the Big Red Barn in Payson. They got to tour the apple orchard and go on a hay ride. It was a lot of fun and the rain made it even better. We were soaking wet and having a ball.
Jay and Gracey turned 7 on Oct 16th and 17th. We had a small family party at Dan and Liza's club house and painted pumpkins.Unfortunately I forgot my camera on Halloween. Jay dressed up as Optimus Prime and Alyssa was a puppy. We went over to Uncle Buds and Aunt Michele's house for a fun party and trick-or-treating. Aunt Michele made us this adorable Halloween Train.

November:
Thanksgiving and Dan and Liza's new house. This was the very first time we had all of the cousins together at the same place and same time.Jeremy's parents came to visit us at the end of November. They stayed with us for a week then drove to Prescott to spend a week with Edie and her family. It was good to have them visit even though they were both sick while they were here.

December:

While Jeremy drove his parents to Arizona with Alyssa, Jay and I went on a mommy-son date. I took him to Heber to take a ride on the Polar Express. On the train we met Santa's elves, sang Christmas Carols, read the Polar Express story and met Santa. Santa even gave each of the kids a bell off of his sleigh to remind them to always believe.The kids are getting used to living in snow country. I took a picture of the mountains outside of our front door to show off our gorgeous view. Jay had a great time with his cousins making his first snowman.Christmas morning with the kids. Jay loved his new skateboard and scooter and Alyssa couldn't get enough of her princess wand and crown.

2009 Wrap-Up

For anyone that follows my blog but doesn't keep up with me personally (which I am sure there isn't anyone out there that meets that description) a LOT has changed with our family since my last post.
Most importantly, we moved from our home in Las Vegas and made the trek back to Utah. We are now renting a townhouse in Spanish Fork and getting adjusted back to Utah winters. Nowhere near as bad as New York winters, but still the kids are not used to all of this white stuff.
Jeremy finished is Associates of Applied Science in Electrical Engineering in July and is currently working at a call center doing help-desk support for Macintosh/Apple. He is taking a year off of school before going back for his Bachelors degree. We need to re-establish residency here in Utah so we can qualify for the in-state tuition at UVU.
I went back to work after moving to Utah. For a while I was working two jobs (over 70 hours every week) and wore myself out. I was working for an anesthesiologist doing all of his insurance verifications and authorizations during regular business hours then in the evenings I would go work in a deli at a grocery store. It was exhausting. I finally had to give up one of the jobs and though the logical answer would have been to quit the deli and stay with the doctors office, I decided to keep working at the deli. With night time hours it is a lot easier for me to run errands during the day, Alyssa would be at the babysitter (grandma's house) for only a few hours rather than all day long, and there is a LOT to be said for being able to come home from work and not stress about it all night. I have also been staying busy every day with taking my mom to her radiation treatments. She was diagnosed last October with squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue and though they were able to remove the visible tumors, they still wanted her to go through radiation to kill any unseen growths.
Jay is now in the first grade and making lots of new friends at his new school. He is excited for this snow to melt and baseball season to start again. He had a rocky start this school year with his reading so they put him into a reading recovery program where he gets one-on-one time with a reading teacher every day. We just had his parent-teacher conference this week and he has improved enough to "graduate" from the program in the next week or two. Math on the other hand it a totally different story. This kid is a wiz, always bringing home 100% on his math worksheets. We are very proud of the progress he has made and cheer him on as he conquers new abilities.
Alyssa can't seem to stop growing. She keeps us all amused with the new things she comes up with everyday. She loves to sing and play dress up. She actually shocked Jay's teacher when we took her to his class the other day. She was telling me what each letter was of the alphabet on the wall, all the colors and shapes on the reading rug and counted to 11. She is one smart little cookie! We are getting geared up for her 3rd birthday next Saturday. (Can't believe she is almost 3! Where did the years go???) I will be attempting to out-do last years Elmo cake with her new favorite obsession, Dinosaur Train. Wish me lots of luck!
As for pictures of the last 6 months, I will have to get those posted as soon as I find my card reader. Maybe that will inspire me to update this blog more often!

Life Imitating Literature

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Kindergarten Graduation

Well, he did it! My Itty Boo is now a big 1st grader! Jay's last day of kindergarten was on June 4th, but they had their ceremony on June 2nd. The kids sang a few songs for the parents, got their certificates then had a snack. That was about it. It was pretty cute, but they didn't do a big production by any means. Here is the video of one of the songs they sang.





If I could figure out how to edit video then I would post a short clip of him going up to get his diploma, but I won't torture you with the whole thing. Here are two more pictures. The first with two of his best buddies, Chancellor & Ethan and the other with his teacher, Ms. Krumpos.
Jay had a blast this year in kindergarten. He learned a lot, made some great friends and grew up too much as far as his mom is concerned. He had a great report card as well as having PERFECT attendance for the year! WAY TO GO JAY!! Love you the most buddy! I am so proud of you!!

*Sorry this took me so long to post. June has been a little crazy so far.*

What A GREAT Day!

Days like today are what my kids will look back on and remember when they grow up. We had so much fun ALL day today. I'm just bummed I left my camera at home.
To start off, Jay had a baseball game and the kids played the best they have ever played before. At the beginning of the season they were have a hard time hustling when they ran the bases. The coaches told the boys that if they didn't pay attention and RUN then they would make them wear a pink dress up to bat. Coach Brian actually went out and bought a dress and would hang it out in the dug out to entice the kids to play better. After they were consistent with their running, Brian promised the boys that if they ever scored 5 runs in an inning then HE would wear the dress. This morning Brian proved he's a man of his word. The first inning the kids scored 5 runs (Jay getting the last run in) and Brian put it on. There were a couple of wolf-whistles and the other team had no idea what he was doing. I am so glad that Jay is on a team where the adults enjoy being there with the kids as much as the kids enjoy playing. Being on a team like this is what childhood is all about. Not that it matters, but Jay's team ended up winning 13-2.
After the game, we went home and put Alyssa down for a nap. Jeremy was playing video games and Jay wanted to play on my computer. It was WAY to nice outside to play video games. I told Jay to get his swimming trunks on and we'd have some mommy/boy time in the pool. I had so much fun with him. We played sharks and rocket launcher (where I swim under him and then launch him into the air). Jay is getting to be a pretty strong swimmer. Today he dived to the bottom of the pool for the first time. We where throwing the keys in the water and he had to get them off the bottom...no feet allowed, only hands. After starting in the shallow end, he gradually went further and further to the other side of the pool until he was reaching the keys off of the bottom at the deep end. (It's only 5 1/2 feet, but that is still pretty good for him) I then taught him how to dive off the side of the pool and do under-water hand stands.
We got done swimming around 2:30, came inside and had a 2 hr nap. When we got up, we showered and changed then left for a birthday party at Peter Piper Pizza. They have a little indoor roller coaster and all the kids got unlimited rides. Jay would get off then run right back to the end of the line. Alyssa had fun on the carousel and the slides. Filled them up with pizza, cake, icecream and lots of candy.
On the way home, Jeremy said that he wanted to go see the new Pixar movie "Up". It was 9:00PM but we said lets get the kids in their pj's and go. I'm so glad we did. It was such a darling movie. The show at 9:25 was in 3D so it was an extra $3/ticket. I was not going to wait until the next regular showing at 10:20. Do for 2 adults and 2 childrens movie tickets for a 3D movie on a Saturday night after 6PM, it cost us $46. HOLY CRAP! That was expensive. Still, I'm glad we went. The kids were (mostly) good and it was such a good movie. We will definitely add this one to our collection when the DVD is released.
We are now home and the kids are passed-out! I am so glad we don't have 9AM church tomorrow. Not that we will actually be on time at the 11AM session anyway, but at least we'll make it! :)
And a little more good news (ok, FANTASTIC news) for those who haven't heard, Jeremy got a call from a recruiter for a job in Orem. He liked his resume and had Jeremy take some assessment tests on-line. Jeremy did pretty good on them I guess because the recruiter called back and said he wanted to talk to Jeremy next week about setting up a time for an interview!!!

Kissin' Cousins

Jeremy's sister and her husband came to Las Vegas for their anniversary this week. They also happened to bring along their 18 month old little girl. After Jay's baseball game last night, we went to their timeshare to hang out together in the pool. It was nice to just sit and visit while we soaked in the kiddie pool then floated around the lazy river. Jay had a ball and once Alyssa stopped clinging to us for dear life in the water, she had a good time too.
(Sophie, Edie, Alyssa and Jeremy by the lazy river)
(All done swimming)
After we dried off and changed clothes, Edie and Curtis played foosball against Jeremy and Jay while Alyssa was giving Sophie lessons in air hockey.
(Jay scored the winning shot. Is it sad that a 6 year old shows up the adults?)
(This gets easier once you can see over the table)

We all went back up to their room to visit a little more. The kids were climbing all over the bed that folds down from the wall, cuddling and "loving" eachother. We got a pretty good blackmail picture of Jay and Sophie about to kiss and Jay's mouth isn't closed yet so it'll be a pretty disturbing picture for them when they are older. We shared Edie & Curtis' anniversary cake then came home. It was a long night and I am SO glad Jay has a ride to and from school today so I can go back to bed after posting this message!
(If you keep them up long enough, they will put themselves to bed. Jay was sad that he didn't get to spend the night)
(Give us about 15 years and this picture will be the cause of many torturous moments for these two)
(Happy 4th Anniversary Edie & Curtis!)