so long!

we are unplugging tonight...but don't forget to check back in a little while. hopefully our internet will be up and working at the new place sooner than later!! wish us luck. I am hoping the move goes well!

b

just sharing some cuteness.

young love

(bug getting caught giving kisses)

well at this age it is rare to get the kiddos to sit still for long, so my friend Erica and I often find ourselves hanging out at church chasing these to little cuties. poor Jackson has been roughed up on more than one occasion by my little briea bug. i feel horrible about it but she literally loves him to death. she can be so rough with him when he does not want a hug or something like that. today she was trying to kiss him and pinched his cheek. the poor guy had two little red marks. i know that briea will miss Jackson when we move, but i am sure he might just take a big sigh of relief!!! ;0)

surprise charity!!

the other day we attended a surprise birthday party for a friend of mine Charity. her family decided to have a surprise party for her. it was a lot of fun and the kids had a great time!

here is charity getting ready to cut the cake!

after everyone ate the kids just played at the park while the parents got a chance to hang out and chat. it was a nice afternoon. we will miss all of our friends here and having the opportunity to do fun things like this with them.briea trying to get daddy.cutie cullan on the slide.spider man kael, running wild at the park.
ps. my boys are obsessed with spider man right now!!

Triumph!!

haircuts or "shortcuts" as the boys call them are usually a MISERABLE thing. i don't know why but they are terrified of it. we have tried all sorts of things to get them to not be scared. however, today we tried again, something i might add that we have tried before, but today something clicked!
cullan really needed a haircut and so we were bracing ourselves for the worst. cullan was starting to go into melt down mode and garran said, "why don't you cut it". for some reason this time the suggestion worked. Cullan was laughing and saying how cool it was to cut his own hair. daddy had to help with some touch up work, but i will take a so/so haircut with no screaming any day!!

Garden Buddies

the boys have recently taken an interest in being outside and enjoying the weather. these pictures are from a while back and I have just not gotten around to blogging about them. One day we were out at Garran's parents house and Garran's mom was working in her flower bed. The boys were very anxious to help.here they are getting started. they were sort of tilling the dirt i believe to get it ready to plant some seeds.grandma showing them how to get things ready and i am pretty sure Kael was just playing in the dirt at this point.time to plant. i am not sure what they were planting, but the boys were having some fun. i am pretty sure that we are going to have to do some gardening once we get settled at our new place!these were just some pretty tulips that were already in the garden. it is so nice to see flowers and to have some warm weather finally!!

cullan

Great!

i don't know where he comes up with this sutff, but it is a great way to start my friday morning!

i love my funny boy!

Naughty...

and obviously happy about it!!

Happy Birthday!

happy birthday george!! hope you have a great day.

smile

how could this picture not make you smile!

Blue

today at mom school we learned about the color blue. so here is Kael's picture of a blue sky and blue raindrops falling on umbrellas. he is such a talented kid ;0)

is this for real?

i am  having one of those days. i don't know if it is just from being exhausted or what, but things just seem surreal today. i look around my house at all these boxes and think, really? are we really moving far away in just 10 days. i guess it is not super far away, but it is three hours from everything we know right now. all our friends, all our kids friends, cullan's school-that he loves. i usually get excited about moves and changes. those sort of things keep life interesting  i think. however i have to admit that now, having kids, and having friends who you have known since we were all single, and they have kids. there is this desire to plant some roots and let your kids grow up with these kids. i am sure we will love living in our new home, but today i am feeling sad about leaving our home now.

their latest guess

so our problems with briea continue. this is so frustrating. i mean watching your child be miserable and uncomfortable is horrible. so now this is what we are trying....let me just say it is not fun. 

our pediatrician here said that since we have done allergy testing and we are pretty sure she is lactose intolerant that the next step is to test her for fructose intolerance. GREAT! he wanted to get us into a specialist before we left but they did not have any openings. so now we have to wait till we move, wait to get into a new pediatrician and plead with him to refer her to a specialist because that is what she really needs to do. ARG!!

so can i just say that i had not idea how limited a fructose free diet is. i mean you think of it being in soda, candy stuff like that but not apples, grapes, and about a million other things. if your interested just google fructose intolerance. it is very eye opening. so for now this is what we are trying until we can get to a specialist who can test her to make sure that is what it is or find out what is going on with my sweet little girl. say a little prayer that her pain and discomfort will go away soon.

garage sales and beautiful day

today started off kind of chilly but ended up being rather nice. a friend of mine had told me about a big neighborhood garage sale. I found a couple really good deals and then just some fun stuff.
first off..i saw this and knew that Cullan would just love it. He is not really into power rangers, but he loves super hero's, and this had a cape. i was right. he has had it one almost all day.
Garran and I had been talking about getting the boys bikes, especially with our new place having so much room to ride them. so today i found these.Kael with his new wheels.Cullan showing me that he knows exactly what he is doing. He is really good already.
I was very excited. I found these bikes for just $5.00 a piece. I LOVE find a good bargain. The kids were so excited, that we spent a good portion of the afternoon out side. even Briea was having a good time running around.
ps. Britt, if you are reading this, Briea loves those hello kitty shoes you sent. They are a little to big but insists on wearing them. It is so funny.

T

some of Kael's work from mom school.
the letter T.
2010

my kiddos

this is the closest we got to an Easter picture this year. don't they look excited?

primary activity

this weekend we had a primary activity at church. the kids had different stations to go to that had that had different activities to do. the first was a video.there was another where they got to play games, and learn about the reason we celebrate Easter. then at the end they got to plant a flower in a cup to take home.the boys had a great time. thanks to everyone who put in time planning the activity! it was great.

six

(this is a picture taken of us right before we started dating. sorry about the quality. it got wet.)

in six years you can accomplish a lot.
you can move a lot.
you can have three kids.
you can have happy times and sad.
you can get through an undergraduate degree.
you can also realize more and more how grateful you are to get to spend each day with the love of your life.
and...
you can laugh a lot!!
i could type a book on the reasons that i love this man, but for today i will just say that these first six years have been great.
i am excited to get to spend the rest of my days with you!
i knew almost instantly that you were special and each day you prove that to me over and over again.
i love you garran.
happy anniversary.

look-a-likes

I found this old photo of me. As soon as I saw it, it made me think of another little girl...and for the first time I saw a little resemblance!That holding your head back and smiling has always been a briea thing..or so i thought..maybe it got passed down. ;0)

washer and dryer?

i will be in the market in a few months for a new washer and dryer. i am wondering what everyone likes and doesn't. if you have had good experiences with any particular brand or any bad experiences. i want to know it all. please leave me a comment and let me know!!

preschool conferences

today was cullan's spring parent teacher conferences at pre-school. his teacher had nothing but wonderful things to say about him. she said he had really changed since the beginning of the year. he has really come out of his shell and is much more social and engaged in his class. he had improved on counting, identifying numbers, colors, letters. It was very exciting to see his growth. I could tell from practicing at home that he had gotten a lot better as well. Anyways, the teacher was explaining to me that all year long they listen to this cd. It is set to music and it talks about this character. As it plays, it goes, it describes the character, like Max has one head and two eyes. As the music plays the kids have to draw what they hear.

Cullan's drawing from the beginning of the year.

Cullan's drawing at the end of the year. Much more detail.

They also interviewed Cullan. I thought I would post it, only because this is a family journal and it will be fun to look back and remember it.

INTERVIEW

1. What is your name: CMG (he got it right, but for privacy reasons i will just post this)

2. What is your address: Blue (this might not make sense to anyone else, but we live in a blue house now)

3. What town do you live in?

4. What is your phone number? 4 (this is my fault. I never thought to work with him on that)

5. Who is your family? Kael, Briea, Mom and Dad

6. How old are you? 4

7. When is your birthday? Spider man (he had a spider man birthday, that is all I can come up with)

8. What is your favorite movie? Hero's

9. What is your favorite video? TV in car

10. What is your favorite color? Blue

11. What is your favorite food? Chicken, Waffles, Pancakes

12. What do you like to do? Run Circles

13. What do you like to do at school? work, have fun

his teacher than shared some very sweet stories with me. she said that cullan was one of the most compassionate kids in the room. every mom loves to hear stuff like this about their child. she said that he is very attentive to someone having a bad day and that the other day in particular just melted her heart. she said that Cullan was standing next to a little girl in his class that has to wear leg braces. the teacher said that she is a little wobbly and falls often. i guess cullan was standing near her, and she fell. the teacher said that cullan had nothing to do with it, but he thought that he did. She said that he bent down by here and kept saying, "I'm so sorry friend" Then he helped her up and gave her a hug.

I am so happy that cullan is kind to others. I have seen evidence of that with how patient he is with briea. she will pull his hear or lay on him and he just says "oh miss". So that is cullan's big report. I am so pleased that he is doing so well. I know he will miss his friends and school when we leave in a few weeks.

this girl

this girl has really started to show her personality. she is wild and fearless. climbing all over the place and just being silly in general. these pictures are proof as to her silly behavior lately. she is so cute though, I could not help laughing.

new place

today it became official. we just got back from finishing up some last minute stuff. this is our new place. well new to us and new for the next three years of our life. at least until grad school is over and we move on to a new home. the kids were excited to see it and pick out which room they wanted. i'm sure their minds will change but by the end of the month we will be living here.this is what our kids are most excited about. this is pretty much in our back yards. probably 100 yards or more from our back door. so while we are sad to be leaving all our friends here, we are excited to be moving to a nice place!

i have our new address if anyone needs it. just message me and I will get it to you!

Saturday's Confrence

well since sickness is still lingering a little at our house and things have been super busy, we decided to just take it easy this weekend and enjoy general conference. my dad made a trip up today to bring some moving supplies and a few items for the kids. one of them being this chair. the kids love it. it is big enough for all three of them to sit in. it used to be my aunts and she thought they might enjoy it. anyways. here they are sitting quietly (for a few minutes) during conference. as usual we had our "super bowl tradition". every year we do this and our kids think that general conference is some kind of party. they get so excited. we set up a picnic on the living room floor and have some yummy food in between sessions. all in all they did pretty well. we had coloring pages for them and i had downloaded some cards about the general authorities for them but did not get them done in time. packing and cleaning have kind of taken over my house at the moment. anyways here was our spread.i think my favorite was the fruit tray. i found the most delicious black berries ever!! i think i ate most of them ;0) I always try a new recipe and so this year was a new Mexican dip. garran really liked it and so did everyone else. (we had the missionaries over for lunch) I personally thought it was a little to salty. I am not sure how to fix that because you do not add salt or anything, maybe i will try a variation of ingredients next time.
anyways, we really enjoyed both sessions today and look forward to re-reading them and hearing tomorrows. hope everyone else is enjoying this wonderful weather!!
Happy Easter Tomorrow!
ps. got to love the moving boxes on the table with the food. we are just running out of room to put them.

easter surprise!

yesterday the kids got an Easter treat in the mail from my mom. i thought i would post the before and after. they were very excited about each of their little chocolate bunnies.
briea could not wait, it just went straight in her mouth.thanks for the treats mom!! they love getting fun mail and yummy surprises!

and the count down is on

one of the few pictures i can find of us together!

Kael Update!

our boy will survive. the eye doctor ran a bunch of tests and all of them came back just fine. he said that kael probably just broke some of the smaller blood vessels in his eye from the pressure of the scissors. he also said that this is not the first time he has seen this. not that that makes me happy but in a small way it did make me feel a little better that my child is not the only one that has got a hold of scissors that he was not supposed to have.
thank goodness he is ok. now his eye will just look gross for about two weeks.