Yay for Moms!

I have to give a huge shout out to my mother. She, unselfishly, offered to take care of me and my kids for 2 weeks because I am still on bed-rest and Spencer is off track from school. She is so awesome! She has put up with me being grouchy (mostly from excessive boredom, and pain from my still dislocated pelvis), my 3 year old who is the busiest child I know, and my 9 year old who keeps teasing her. She has made sure that my kids are not only well taken care of but that they are happy and have things to do. She has also helped me to have activities to keep me busy and has endured many hours of talking to me to keep my mind off my current situation. She is so good to us and I just wanted everyone to know how amazing she really is.

I LOVE YOU MOM!!!!

Just a Little Something

So, as many of you know, we had a pretty busy summer. Fall is looking even busier, but things are pretty good for us.

~Spencer is currently in Cub Scouts and Karate. He loves them both and is doing very well in both. He also has a 4-wheeler that he rides every chance he gets. Jared and I set the rule that he has to have all his homework done before he can go for a ride, thus virtually eliminated the daily war when homework time rolls around and making us very happy. ;) He is doing really well in school and is testing at the top of his class. He is even in some accelerated classes that his school offers. We are so proud of him!!!

~Jamie is getting so big now. She is growing out of all her clothes and has started opening up a lot more. She talks all the time whether there is someone there to listen or not. She is the busiest kid I have ever known. She isn't necessarily a trouble-maker; she just has an unlimited amount of curiosity, which keeps me pretty busy as well. She loves playing with Chester. She has figured out that she can boss him around all she wants and he can’t get mad at her, and will still play with her. ;) She is such a happy kid all the time and makes all of us very happy too.

As for Jared and I, we are just doing our best to keep up with our kids. Well, at least Jared is. He has to be both the dad and mom right now because I am on bed-rest per doctor's orders. I have been having contractions for several weeks now and the doctor thinks that is a bad thing (who knew. lol). Needless to say he wants me in bed, hopefully, to cook Jacob a little longer ;). I have been in bed for 3 weeks now and am going a little crazy. With any luck, the contractions will stop or at least not come so often and I will be released from bed-rest soon. I know that once I reach 30 weeks, he will likely change my treatment to medication and rest but not complete bed rest. Needless to say, I am counting down the days.

Jared is so good to help with the kids, house, and taking care of me. He has brought me movies, video games, and ideas of things to do to help me pass the time. I know that he is overwhelmed but he never complains and I really appreciate all that he does for our family and especially me. Thank you honey, you are AMAZING!!!

Well, I am on a roll with these new posts!!
Here are some more pictures of our trip.

The Little Grand Canyon,




Jamie and Celeste,



our camp site,



Heather and Jamie (we found out, it's not just car rides that put kids to sleep!)



We had to tie Jamie to Heather so she wouldn't fall off!

Our 10 days of fun in the sun!

We filled the van with tents, sleeping bags, two ice chests of food, guns and hooked on the 4-wheelers and from May 29-June 7 took a road trip. Here is the path we took. ABQ through Gallup, Flagstaff, back and forth across Utah and Arizona around Page, Colorado City, Hurricane, Leeds, Richfield, 20 mile dirt road, back down the 20 mile dirt road, Green River, Moab, Monticello, Shiprock NM, back to Gallup and then home! It was a lot of fun!

We spent five days in Leeds with my dad. We went water skiing and swimming, 4-wheeling, took my dad to WalMart and the store didn't collapse, visited with family (Ronald and Susan and Fam and Merrill and his fam) ran into some friends (Nathan, Brent, Jenny, and Ron and Pauline Fowlks).

While at my Dad's, our "Yo quiero Taco Bell" dog, Kujo, decided he didn't like Jamie, so we decided we didn't like him. We called the humane society in Hurricane and they gave us the name of a family looking for a small dog, the ironic part is Kujo wasn't very fond of men, and the guy who answered the door was a 300lb Tongan/Somoan, but I am sure he is fine! lol.

On Thurday, we loaded up again and went to the dirt road, mentioned above, which took us to almost the middle of nowhere Utah! Haven't heard of it? I can send you a map! Here we met up with Jason/Heidi and fam, Ron and Sue, Bryan/Heidi and fam, and Mike/Johanna and fam. It was a good time! Other than going deaf from the most obnoxious, big, ugly, uncoordinated bugs I have ever seen! We did more 4-wheeling, sight seeing, and visiting with family around the fire. This should be a monthly ritual!

Breaking News: You don't need good eye sight to become a college Professor!

So one night after a long day at work, I walk out to my still new bike and notice a sticky note flapping in the wind on the gas tank. It wasn't until after I read the note, that said "Please come to the Security office", that I realized half of my clutch lever, signal light, mirror and paint were scattered on the ground! Apparently, the onsite Strayer University professor was in a hurry when he walked passed my bike, jumped in his F-150, backed out turning immediately and knocked my bike off the kick stand! At least he had the decency to notify the security desk, even though there are cameras all over the place! To make a long story short, after $1600 in damages, I got it fixed, with about a remaining $400 credit at the bike shop!

My Deprived Toys!

Well Heather's 4-wheeler and motorcycle seems to have managed to make it to this site, but mine got kicked to the curb! It's fend for yourself, I guess! lol. So here is my bike (Suzuki SV650s) and 4-wheeler (Honda TRX450R)! The picture of the bike is a little dated as we go it the end of April '08. I have added a pipe and a seat cowl (cover). We got the 4-wheeler at the end of April, '09. Oh yeah, our trailer too! Ken and I built this in his garage on April 2nd. Thanks for the help Ken!

Technology

I am a full-time student, as most of you already know, and am studying from home. All my classes are online and all my homework is done on my laptop. I depend on my laptop for everything right now. Yesterday, I wanted to add some different music to the mp3 player on my phone so I could listen to it while doing homework. I had gone online to download a program, which we already had on our home computer, so I could transfer the music from both our computers on my phone. Apparently this program now comes with a lovely parting gift, a VIRUS!!! My computer crashed shortly after that. I freaked out. The biggest problem that I saw was my transcription class. In order to complete each week's work, you have to download the assignments through a program that the school gives you. You are only allowed to have it on one computer to make it run properly and it was on my laptop. I lost all of that work (or so I thought). I texted Jared at work and told him what happened. About 2 hours later, he came home to help me. After spending hours troubleshooting my computer (which would only open in "safe mode") and a very lengthy call to tech support, we found out that we were going to have to wipe the hard drive and reboot the computer. To those of us (me) that do not understand computer lingo (me), that basically means that anything you had stored on your computer is lost and the computer goes back to the way it was when you bought it. Luckily, for me, my husband is AWESOME and he was able to pull all of my documents, pictures, and music off the computer and put it on an external hard drive before he wiped the memory out.

At about midnight last night, my computer was up and running and around 2:30 am all of my settings, documents, pictures, and music had been put back on it. Thank you so much Jared for all you do for me and for bailing me out of this ugly mess!! ;-) You are AMAZING!!!