Where has the time gone?

It's been so long since my last post, at yet, it seems like just yesterday. I was hoping my days would become relaxing and I would have all the time in the world to get the things done that I need too now that my kids are in school full time, but it's just completely the opposite. I'm so much more busy than I ever was and the days and weeks go by so quickly I can hardly keep up.
The number one thing taking up so much of our time is football. We have practice 3 days a week and then a game on top of that. I know it doesn't sound like much, but because Clay is the coach practices are longer for us, planning, making calls, sending emails and even game day is longer.
But I'll admit, I will be sad when it's all over. I love to go to practice and the games and watch Cody play. I can't wait until he is in High School and we get to go to all his games and watch him play.
Anyways, enough about that, for the past few weeks we have done some pretty fun things. First, we got to babysit our cutest niece Lily. Cody and Luke act like it's Christmas morning when Lily comes over, especially Cody. He has a special little place in his heart for babies. He would love for me to have another baby, but I keep trying to explain, it's just not going to happen.


He is so cute with Lily! He just wants to hold her and take care of her the entire time she is with us.

We also had everyone over a few weeks ago for my mother in law's birthday.

I love to have people over for Sunday dinner so we decided it would be fun to celebrate her birthday and have all the Collins' that live in Utah over to help us celebrate.
I don't know why Jessica didn't get in on this picture, but here is Nana Collins with 4 of her grandchildren. Happy Birthday Susan!

After the team's win on Saturday Clay announced he was throwing a pizza party at our house!
So I hurried after the game to the store to buy 4 cases of the 24 pack of soda, 8 pizza's, 6 bags of crazy bread, five bags of cookies and a few bags of chips. We didn't have any leftovers!

20 boys ended up coming for 2 hours of more football, 4 wheeling, food and of course a water fight to end the party!
This is Cody's behind! His friend picked him up so that the other boy could dump a cup of water on his head. Now that is what I call team work!

This past Sunday we decided, along with most of Utah, to take a ride up American Fork canyon to see the pretty fall colors.


So there they all are, our trip to Cascade Falls in American Fork canyon.

Yesterday the kids came running into the house and announced they had caught a snake in the backyard. Now for those of you who have never seen our backyard, we have a huge empty field behind our house, which hopefully soon will be a park, but right now is full of all kinds of furry friends. We have snakes, mice, moles, deer, fox and even a cougar sighting back in the field. But I have to say this is the first snake that has been caught. Susan, if your reading this, you probably want to stop right now.
Now your probably thinking after seeing this picture that we let the kids keep the snake, but in fact he is free, back in the field as we speak. The kids thought they would keep this snake happy and fed on insects, but I informed them that he is used to eating the mice in the field and there is no way I'm going to provide this snake with that sort of meal. So back wild and free he went today, and I'm guessing pretty starving as well!

Homecoming 09

This is Jessica's last year to go to Homecoming. I can't believe how times flies! This year she went with a big group of her friends and the guy she went with is just a friend as well.

Jessica with her best friend, Kaylie, or just "best friend" as she is know to us.

This is just the start of the big group she went with. They were meeting up with the rest of the kids at another home.

It's so nice to see boys being gentleman. Sometimes I think it's a dying breed!

Keith Urban concert

On Wednesday evening, my good friend Stephanie and I went to the Keith Urban concert. Not only was it an amazing concert, Keith is just yummy to look at! I could spend every night of my life just sitting and listening to that man sing and play the guitar.

It was so completely hot in the building, if you couldn't tell from my very shinny face, but it was all worth it to be up close and next to this guy!

Yes, he was pointing right at us. OK, maybe not right at us but it's fun to think so!

It's the Stephanie's at another concert together!

Unfortunately, we didn't win back stage passes to this concert, even though we tried our hardest. This was as close as we could get to him.

Brittany's hike

Brittany's Mia maids class got up last Saturday morning at 2:00 am and hiked Mt. Timpanogas so they could see the sun rise. Her leader thought this would be a good bonding time for the girls and I think it might of worked. Brittany had a fun time and even ran into a moose along the way.

The money shot, Mt. Timp at sunrise!

I was sad that Brittany took off her forehead flashlight in all the pictures!

Our Mia maids and leader group shot. (The guy is one of the dads) Brittany is in the back next to the girl in the red jacket.

Last shot of the girls on the top of the mountain, before their long hike down.

Brittany got home around 10 the next morning and went straight to bed. I'm so thankful there are moms out there that are willing to give up a nights sleep to do such fun things with these girls. I think I'm just too old to be hiking a mountain while I could be sleeping!

Bishops warning

We had a combined meeting yesterday in church taught by our bishop that was titled "Person Purity Plan". This is the second time this year he has combined the Relief Society and Priesthood meetings and spoke to us on this topic. I thought it might be good to write a little about what he is teaching us, since we are all parents and this will affect your lives if not now, but sometime in the near future.
He started by explaining that we are all in charge of and responsible for the content that enters you life, your home and your children's home. The content habits you form for your children will stay with them for life. It is OK to be bold and straight forward with your kids, their friends and with your spouse about what is acceptable and what is not for your home. He gave some statistics that he has obtained from the FBI, they are;
-it is a 100% fact if you are in a chat room you will run into a sexual predictor.
-There is no safety in cyberspace for children and teens
-1/3 of teens browse the web on their cell phones/ipods
-1 in 5 youth have used sexting (sending nude pictures, or sexual talking)'
-Heaviest texting traffic is between 11pm-3am

Things he told us were a necessity to have in our homes were some kind of computer filter that has an administrator with password-blockers. Never let you kids have free access to the computer/Internet! We have Net Nanny, and love it!
Kids can get on the Internet through X-box, wii and other game boxes. Lock it with a password!
He also encouraged us to never buy our children a phone or I-pods (the I-touch) with Internet access, especially the I- phone. They are almost impossible to have parental locks on and run some of the highest risks for your children. He told us a story of a 9 year old that he is treating for pornography addiction. He saw some pictures on his I-touch and just that one time he became addicted. Our bishop is a doctor and he told us why boys especially, become addicted so quickly to pornography. When anyone sees explicit pictures or anything that stimulates us in a rewarding way it instantly recorded into our brain in the lower part of the brain. This part of our brain is the "reward" part. It is a part that remembers the best, and these images we put into this part of our brain are almost impossible to erase. That is why it is so hard to treat this kind of addiction. It takes years to treat someone with a sexual addiction that has only been addicted for months or weeks.
Also something that should NEVER be allowed is a computer or television in your child's bedroom!
Something that we have for a girls cell phones is parental control. We have Verizon and they offer it for $5.oo a month, per phone. This allows us to control and watch who they call and text. It also allows us to turn off their phones when we choose. We have it set so our girls phones turn off at 9:00 pm every night except for Saturday's they turn off at 11:00. They can not text or call anyone when their phones are off. This is something that we don't have to do, it is automatically done every night for us. They best part is you can have an emergency number they can call when their phones are off, so that if they are still out, they can call our home or cell number, but that is all! It is worth $5 a month!
Our bishop asked us to hold Family content night, monthly. That is, you discuss with your kids what is and what is not acceptable to watch or listen too.
Have family "fire drills". We teach our kids what to do if a stranger talks to them, but do they know what to do if they happen to receive a filthy text message, or stumble onto something on the Internet or TV, or hear something at school?
Treat cyber safety as you would any other predator prevention plan.
Have one on one dates with each child, regularly!
Have one person be the administrator that controls the content that comes into your home.
Have total transparency in the home.
And when all else fails, blame it on the Prophet or Holy Ghost. You can tell your kids, "Do you believe the prophet, well he has asked us not to listen to this, or watch that". Or you can say "The spirit is telling me something isn't right".
He really emphasized that this is a war! We are the parents and we need to love our children enough to be tough on them when required!
The last thing he warned us about was theater rooms. He said, that he knows a lot us have them and spent a lot of money to put them into our homes. He then said "if you want to save your children, get rid of them and never let your children into a home that has one"!
Like I said before, this is the second time our bishop has talked to us parents about this subject. It is something that all of will deal with and have to face, if we have children. Lets do everything we can to protect our children from Satan enticing's! It is such a different world from just 10 years ago and our kids are facing a hard battle!
I hope this helps you out, I know it's always good for me to hear again!

Temple date

I love this picture of my three girls standing in front of the Mt. Tempanogas Temple. Clay decided in August that he wanted to start this new tradition in the family and it would be taking all the kids, who were old enough, to the Temple to do Baptisms for the dead every week. The first week was the hardest, I swear Satan was out to make sure they didn't make it! Every night some thing would come up and they wouldn't be able to go. But finally, by Thursday evening they were able to make it! Thankfully, they have been able to keep this up, only missing one week when the girls were at Lake Powell, with their Aunt Kym.
It has been a wonderful experience for the girls and Clay to be able to do this Temple work with each other. We have noticed that the fighting amongst the kids has decreased and the girls have been more patient. Yes, my teenage girls have been less moody! But more importantly, it's helping them realize the importance of the Temple in their lives and hopefully this will start a wonderful habit of going to the Temple frequently now and when they are older.

Choir Weekend

This last weekend I was able to travel with the Jenny Philip's choir to preform two firesides in Southern Utah. We all met up at a park in ride in Orem to carpool down to So. Utah. I volunteered to drive and was assigned four other choir members to drive with me in my car. I was given a newly married couple (8 months to be exact) who are attending BYU, and two single sister, one from South Africa and the other from somewhere in South America, I can't remember exactly where. It was a new experience for me to be the older, more mature person in the group. I have to admit I didn't like the feeling of being so much older than everyone else. But, it was a fun car ride, we talked and sang and played cards, of course I didn't play, I was driving! After 5 hours of driving we finally arrived at our first destination, Panaca Nevada! If you have never heard of Panaca, join the club, nobody had in our group. It's a very small town, 1 hour and 15 mins. West of Cedar City, Utah. It has a population of only 800! We passed the one building elementary school and knew we were in a very small town.
We arrived at the one and only church in town, were able to clean up a bit and then headed into the chapel for our sound check. After that was all complete they took us into the cultural hall where they had a yummy dinner ready for us to eat. It was soup in bread bowls and I can't complain because it was really good. After dinner it was time for the fireside to start. During the fireside, Jenny told us she felt prompted to tell a story about the time she went to Rio De Janeiro with her choir to preform. After the fireside was over one girl in the audience came up to her to tell her how touch she was with the fireside and that she was from Rio De Janeiro. She is here in Panaca right now as a foreign exchange student and is not a member of the church. Jenny asked her if she would be interested in receiving some music from her in her country's language, and the girl began to cry. She was so excited! Jenny was able to get her address and is planing on mailing her all of her CD's when she returns home.
After the fireside was over we were given a host family to spend the night with. I was nervous about this part because I have never spent the night with someone I didn't know. But I was given a great family and I also had 3 other choir members staying at the same house with me. We were all pretty tired so after staying up talking for an hour we all went to our rooms and went to bed.
The next morning our host family had a wonder breakfast waiting for us after we got ready for the day. We met back up with the rest of the choir and caravan to St. George for our next fireside. We met for lunch at one of the choir members house that lives in St. George and then attended church near her home. We made quite the scene when we walked into Sacrament Meeting 5 mins. late. There were about 30 of us all together and we were all dressed in our choir clothes. Which are long black skirts and either a white, blue or black shirt.
After church was over we headed to another church, the one that we were preforming for, and set up and had our sound check, and all the fun stuff we have to do before each preformance. Again, we had another fabulous dinner previded by the host stake. After dinner my family showed up for the fireside. The main reason I signed up to preform at this fireside was because I wanted my family to be able to come out and see it. My parents and Libby, Tom and Rachelle and even Nana Ora all came to see me that night. It's always more fun to have someone you know in the audiance!
After the fireside was over, we changed our clothes, said goodbye to the family and than headed back to Salt Lake. I have to admit, even though it was a very fun weekend, I was really ready to be home again. I guess I'm just getting too old to spend my weekend driving and staying up late.
How sad!