Temple visit

Since we have moved here to Utah I have been struggling with myself because I really didn't want to move back to this state. I really enjoyed living in Utah when I was in Cedar Hills, but once I moved out of the state I realized how much I enjoy living outside of Utah rather than in it. When I moved to Colorado I told Clay I wanted to live there the rest of our lives. It is the most beautiful state I have ever lived in and it has the nicest people there too. We loved going to the Rockies games in the summer and were really looking forward to becoming crazy Broncos fans. We found the greatest little town named Elizabeth that we wanted to someday buy tons of land in and build our dream home. But that was never to happen because after only a year in Colorado, Clay got a promotion and transferred back to Utah. I have since than tried to find the positive with this move. I enjoy being close to family and friends again and yesterday I got to take my kids through the Draper Temple. This is an experience that doesn't happen too often and I wanted to give my children the opportunity to see the inside of the temple before it is dedicated.

Before going to the temple you have to go to a stake center where they show you a movie explaining why we have temples. You can see the small TV behind us that they had set up in a Relief Society room of the church.

After the movie they loaded us up into buses and drove us to the temple.

After the temple tour was over we walked over to the church next to the temple for light refreshments. They had the cultural hall all decked out with beautiful pictures of all the temple around the world and pictures of the Savior. This picture was my favorite of the Savior.

It was such a neat experience to be able to walk my children through the temple and explain to them the different things that we do in all the rooms. My girls loved seeing the bridal room, I know someday I will be there with them in that same room, on their special day. We were able to sit and spend some time in the Celestial room. The kids spent most of the time staring up at the beautiful chandelier and the carvings that were in the ceiling. At the end of the tour you spend a few minutes in the sealing room. I got to hold up Luke into the mirrors and show him how his refection kept going on and on forever, just like we would be together forever as a family.

It was a great experience and I'm so thankful that we are here in Utah right now and able to have an opportunity like this.

Family band

It's funny how when I want to buy something that is costly we have to think about it for a while, figure out if it is something that we really need, then I just begged after all that I'm finally able to get it. But when Clay wants to buy something, we just go out and buy it. Well that happened this weekend to us. Clay and I went out to lunch and on the way home he said to me "where could we buy guitar hero 4?" I looked at him and said "I thought we were going to have the kids save their money and buy it themselves?" He said "that would take too long", so we found a Target, went in and bought the $200 game. When we got home to our surprise my brother Tom and his kids were just pulling up. This worked out perfect for us. We had this fun new game and Tom needed to kill about five hours, while his wife was speaking at a women's seminar in Sandy. When we got everything set up we discovered we needed four Wii remotes in order to make this game work. We of course only had two. So Clay was off to the store again to spend another $100 on two new remotes and batteries.

I have to admit though, it is a really fun game and we spent almost the entire afternoon playing it with the kids. So I guess it was worth the $300 we spent for some quality family time!

Just one of the many songs we rocked out to on Saturday.

On Sunday we headed to Salt Lake to take the kids to see their new neice. I would tell you her name, but she still doesn't have one yet. On Friday, when we saw her last, Kym and Martin told us her name was going to be Lily. But on Sunday it was once again up in the air. Maybe I should have all of you take a vote and I'll let Kym know the results. It's between Lily, Summer, Grace, Faith and Martin really likes Savannah. Kym of course doesn't want to use it because we have a Savannah. But like I told her yesterday, these kids are 12 1/2 years apart, they are hardly going to know each other. I don't care at all, so if she wants to use that name, it's perfectly alright with me.

Cody was of course the first one to hold her. He wants me to have another baby so bad!

Here are the kids with "small Frey", (it's pronounced Fry). That is what we call her for now.

Savannah with baby Savannah, maybe?

Catching up!

I have to wonder if it is possible for a child to be born a "Casanova"? My little Luke is such a ladies man, and has been since a very young age. It all started in preschool, he would come home from school and tell me all about this little girl named Soffie. He would tell me how cute she looked, how he liked the ribbon she wore in her hair. And then I found out from her mother that Luke was telling Soffie how cute she looked and how cute her hair looked with a ribbon in it. I couldn't believe he would say those kinds of things to a girl and such a young age. The funny thing is Luke was terribly shy at that age. He would hardly talk to my parents or anyone else he didn't feel comfortable with.

This was Luke at his preschool graduation with Soffie. As you can see he wasn't the bit shy about putting his arm around her to take this photo.


Well, things haven't changed much, for Luke in Kindergarten. Luke came into the house last week and announced to Jessica that he was "dumping Brinley". Now Brinley is the girl that lives next door to us. All summer long she was attached to Luke at the hip. They loved to jump on the trampoline together, well actually she would push Luke down on the tramp, straddle him and then kiss him. They would hold hands and Luke told everyone that Brinley was his girlfriend. Well that summer romance didn't last too long, because as soon as school started is when Emma came into the picture. Emma is a cute girl that is in our ward and in Luke's kindergarten class. They instantly became friends and Emma spent a lot of time over at our house. Now, Brinley didn't like this one bit and the word on the street was she hated Emma. So when Luke came into the house announcing that he dumped Brinley, we weren't too surprised. What did surprise us was what he said next. He said "that means I'm breaking up with her, because Emma is my girlfriend now". Like we didn't know that dumping a girl means breaking up with her!

This is Luke with cute little Emma. Emma's mom told me that Emma tells her all the time that her name is Emma Collins. I just noticed how much Emma and Soffie look alike! And Luke still knows how to charm the girls. I was told by another mom in Luke's class that he is always complementing Emma on how cute she looks. That's my boy!! I'm just nervous about his teenage years.

Well, this weekend, we headed down to So. Utah for a little break from all the snow and smog. On Saturday, we went to St. George to spend the day with my sister Libby and her family. It felt so warm, even though it was only 65 degrees. And it was nice to actually see the sun! We ate lunch at Red Robins, hit Costco and let the kids play at Libby's house while the adults had a chance to chat with each other.

On Sunday, we had everyone over at my parents house for dinner. The adults got to play a fun game of Bunches and Runs, Tom ended up winning, while the older kids took all the younger kids and kept them out of our hair for a few hours. While we were getting dinner ready I had a little accident with a knife while cutting a pineapple. I ended up cutting off the corner tip of my middle finger. At first I didn't think it was that bad, but later on that night, when we couldn't get it to stop bleeding, I knew it was worse than I first thought.

My mother bandaged it up with so much gauge that night, it looked like a hammer head shark on the end of my finger. When I woke up the next morning I had completely soaked though all the gauge she has put on my finger and that is when I knew it was time to see a doctor.

I look so trashed in this photo! I didn't sleep at all the night before thanks to my throbbing finger and didn't even shower before going to the doctors.

But it all wasn't bad, Brittany and Savannah had fun playing games on Nana's computer.

Cody and Nana played a lot of card games.

And Luke enjoyed watching his favorite TV shows with Nana's "TV Ears".

When we arrived home we found out that my SIL Kym was in labor and at the hospital. She has been trying to have her baby for a week now and kept getting sent home from the hospital. This time it was for real and at 1:30 a.m. January 21st. she welcomed her first daughter into the world. This is something that is so incredible because Kym is 41 years old and this is her first baby. They still haven't named her yet, so right know it is baby girl Fry. I'll post again when they finally pick a name. Her baby is so adorable and reminds me of my Savannah. She has tons of dark hair, dark eyes and chubby cheeks. From the time I had my first baby I always said my kids looked more like they belonged to Kym then they did me. Clay came with me to the hospital to visit Kym and the new baby, which probably wasn't the best idea since he left wanting me to have another one!!

Pumps, pumps and more pumps!

Yesterday, Savannah and I spent 4 hours in a pump class up at Primary Children's Diabetic Center. Not to mention the fact that it took us an hour to get there and another hour back home, it was a 6 hour adventure for us. I didn't know what to expect when I got there and thankfully I didn't know how long it would take. This is a required class that has to be taken before your doctor will sign off on a pump for you. The first hour they explained the pro and cons of having a pump and all the new lingo that comes with having a insulin pump. It felt like the first week Savannah was diagnosed all over again. There is just so much information your head starts to hurt just sitting there listening to it all.

Then we had a break and when we came back our tables will filled and when I say filled I mean filled with pamphlets of all the different pumps that are on the market right now. Then started the fun...... One after another one, different sales men/women came in the room and told us what their pump does that is better than all the other pumps out there. I tried to explain this craziness to Clay like this. Pretend the next time you go and buy a car you just go to one dealership and they take you in a room and you tell them what kind of car you want to buy but 20 different companies make that kind of car you like. So instead of test driving the cars to find the one you want, 20 different sales men come and explain why there car is better and why you want that car over all the other ones. That is what it's was like last night. Every different pump does different things and they do so many amazing things you don't know if you would ever need it to do that much stuff. It's like when you buy a really expensive camera that has so many options. Do you ever really use all those options, or do you just take the pictures with it, like with any other camera? Anyways, we came home with tons of paperwork to look through and try and decide what will be the best match for Savannah.

The best part about going to this class is you get the chance to "test drive" the pumps for a few days to see if this is something she will really wear for the next four years. I say four years cause once your insurance pays for the pump they wont buy another one for four years. And they are way to expensive to buy and maintain on your own! Just an example of how much one cost: the one Savannah is wearing in the picture is the cheapest one up front, only $800- but it cost $370 to maintain a month!!

Today Savannah is wearing the Omnipod. This is the only wireless pump on the market. It's the one the Jonas Brother, who has diabetes wears. And yes, they use him a lot to sell this pump!! You fill up this pod with your insulin and then you stick it anywhere on your body that is comfortable for you. This is one of only a few pumps that is waterproof as well. So she can wear it swimming, to shower, whatever she wants to do! There is a controller that you don't have to wear, you can keep it in your backpack at school, any place, just as long as she has it when she needs to give herself insulin. When she wants to eat something she just punches in how many carbs she will be eating and it remotely tells the pod how much insulin to give her.

In the next few days we will be trying out two more pumps that we are interested in. And hopefully by Feb. if we can get everthing figured out, she will be on the pump for real!

snow, snow go away, don't come back another day!

This is a picture of my lovely backyard. I have one question that needs to be asked....Where did my trampoline go????? We don't have a trampoline that is built into the ground. Ours stands about 4 feet high. The trailer that is next to the trampoline is almost completely covered as well. I guess we wont be using that until spring.

I've had a hard week and I can blame it all on the snow and sick kids. Cody stayed home from school 3 out of 5 days last week and I'm so sick of all the snow, I seriously don't like to get out of bed on mornings I know it's going to snow. The days Cody was home I was trapped inside the house all day, which drives me crazy! And then with all the snow it made me even more crazy!

But there were some good parts to the week. On Weds. I met up with Melinda and we had lunch in Orem and then went shopping. It was good to get out even if it was only for a few hours and see my sister.

On Friday I went out for a girls night out with my good friend Stephanie. We did some shopping, had a great dinner, tried to see Bride Wars but it was sold out, so we headed to Goodwood for a treat. We ordered some hot chocolate and their chocolate brownie dessert. I swear the waitress thought we were crazy, but it was heaven! You can never have too much chocolate.

On Saturday Cody, Brittany and Savannah started Basketball so we spent the morning at their games. When we arrived home Jessica had the whole house clean. She knows when I've had a bad week and how to make me happy again! I'm very blessed to have such a wonder family. :)

Clay

You know when your just having one of those days and everything seems to go crazy. Well, poor Clay had one of those days. Of course, he was so funny to the rest of the family, but it was all at Clay's expense.
It started when Clay and I went to lunch today. We were at the register ordering our food when the employee asked Clay "do you want a receipt"? Now for all of you that know Clay well, we know that he doesn't hear very well. Years of playing his music too loud in his car as a teenager ruined his hearing. He fights this accusation with "everyone is just mumbling". He is often seen cupping his ear when someone is talking to him in an attempt to hear better when he is in a noisy room. Well, when the employee asked Clay if he wanted a receipt, he thought she said "do you want beef", so instead of saying "Yes, I would like a receipt, he said, "No, I want chicken".
Oh, if only you could have been there. I looked at him puzzled, so did the employee, and I had to explain to him what she had said. When we sat down to eat, we were both laughing so hard, I was crying!

So if that wasn't enough, after lunch we took the kids to see Bedtime Stories. Today was a very sunny, but windy day. The wind was blowing the snow all around and because it was sunny as well, it was very bright. Clay was driving and we were in Suburban (the car I drive most of the time). Clay asked if his sunglasses were in the car but they weren't, so he asked if there were a pair he could wear. The only spare I had were an older pair I used to wear a few years back. Clay put on the sunglasses and kept refering to himself as Elton John, the rocket man!
On the drive to the movie theater Clay saw a car pulled over on the side of the road stuck in the snow. We were already late to the movie so I was upset when he pulled over to see if he could help. Forgetting that he was wearing my sunglasses Clay got out of the car and went over to talk to the guy stuck in the snow. He told Clay that he was expecting his friend shortly to help him out so Clay came back into the car. It was just then that he realized he had gone out and talked to that guy while wearing my sunglasses.

I had to take a picture of him wearing the sunglasses so that you can see just how funny he looked in them.
Clay said that it was no wonder the guy didn't want him to help him out.
Once again I was laughing so hard I was crying! Poor Clay, two embarrassing things happen to him in one day!
But I have to give him credit, he was laughing just as hard as me. I love ya babe!

Utes Victory!

Last night after four hours of biting my nails, jumping up and down from the couch, screaming at the top of my lungs after every good play (which were many) my beloved Utes killed Alabama in the Sugar Bowl. My very lucky parents were there in person to watch this amazing game. I talked to my father during half time, but it wasn't very long since he couldn't hear me very well. He said that they were out number 50-1 at the game (50 Alabama fans to 1 Utes fan). And that it was completely crazy during the game. I'm soooooo very jealous we weren't able to go to New Orleans to see the game in person. But it was so sweat to see them kill Alabama and to see Kyle Wittingham holding up that trophy in the end. We grew up with the Wittinghams in our stake in California. My brother Tom and I were friends with Kyle's younger brother Brady. He posted pictures today on his face book page that he took after the game. They looked like they were having the time of their lives. I couldn't be more happy for them!

Today while we were driving to the movies we passed this church and saw the Utes flag waving proud in the wind. I told Clay to pull over and take a picture of it. How awesome is this???? Could life be any better right now?