POTTY TRAINING COMPLETE!

YAY!!! Morgan is finally potty trained! She is doing amazing! She is at the point where she is actually telling me when she has to go...and she even just goes in on her own now too! She let me know today that she is a grown up and is ready to go to High School! Watch out world! Here she comes! I am so proud of you Morgan!

Getting Out of the Funk

It seems like the past couple of months, I have been in a little bit of a funk! (Word stolen from my sister today...because it fit perfectly) Ok, a big funk! I usually am just happy by nature, but it seems like the last little while I have been barely hanging on. My happy nature, has been more effort and really changed to major survival mode. There are a lot of reasons for it and no reason at all! What can I say? It is my choice how I choose to be and really in my mind, there are no excuses for it! I am happy to say that I am feeling like I am coming out of it...and quickly! Especially the last few days! Maybe my talk in church was a good reminder to me of all the things that I usually do to stay happy! (Elder L. Tom Perry's talk in October 2008 General Conference was the subject) Isn't it funny how that happens! So between my family, my long time friends, this blog, my new friends in my ward (that play volleyball! :)), the sunshine and my new attitude for life in general I am back to the old Lindsey (really close at least), who I actually really missed! Is that weird to say? Well, that is my personal truth, and I feel like it is a cause for an inner celebration! I love my life!

More pictures

Here are some more of my favorites! We need to fix the shadows on the top one, but I still LOVE this picture, so I had to put it on! I am so excited to finally have pictures that I can blow up and hang on my wall!

Morgan

This is my absolute favorite picture of Morgan! Could she be any cuter?...I don't think so!

Family Pics

A while back a friend of ours, Trevor Dayley took our family photos. www.thewayIamstudio.com. I am just posting some of my favorites. These are definitely the best family photos we have ever had done! The best part is that it was soooo low stress the whole time and we got pizza after to celebrate! Can't beat that!

Taylor's Art Masterpiece

Taylor brought home this amazing art project today. Everyday at school they go to a different "special", i.e. music, art, p.e. She has been working on this project for a couple of months now in her art special and it turned out so great! The face is made out of clay and everything else on the picture is made out of different materials that she designed and cut out herself. They had to chose an action for their person to do and Taylor chose jump rope. This is my favorite art project so far and one we will treasure for a very long time! Great job Taylor!

Lemon Glaze Cake Recipe

One of the things I LOVE to do is to cook and bake! I love to try new recipes and I do get very proud of myself when things turn out to be yummy! I have so many lemons from the tree in our last house, so I have been trying to find recipes to use my lemons. A friend gave me this recipe and I modified it a little and it is soooo good...maybe a little too good! :)

Cake
1 pkg lemon cake mix
1 pkg Jello instant lemon pudding
3/4 c. water
3/4 c. oil
4 eggs

Bake in 9x13 greased pan at 350 for 35 minutes. While cake is baking, prepare glaze.

Glaze
2 c. powdered sugar
2 tsp. melted butter
2 tsp. water
1/3 c. fresh lemon juice

As soon as cake comes out of oven, punch holes in cake using fork. Pour glaze over cake.

This cake is really moist and yummy! Enjoy!

We took the kids to my favorite park yesterday after their half day at school. Morgan loved the birds. She found her way into many families who were feeding them and got a lot of free bird food! She knows how to work the system. She did not want to leave them! We had to make many promises to come back soon...which was fine with me. She is my girl who really stops and smells the flowers (literally) and enjoys the scenery along the way! She is a good reminder to me to slow down and enjoy what is right in front of me instead of being in a hurry all the time. Rylee showed off her abilities on the monkey bars and we were impressed with Taylor's scooters abilities. We had a great time together as a family! It is amazing how the simple times can be the best times!

The Park

So I have found my new favorite place here. I went twice yesterday. I walked the dog in the morning and it was so relaxing and felt so good. This park is huge and has everything you could imagine. There are beautiful waterfalls and ponds where all sorts of birds hang out. There are tons of grass hills and fields, playgrounds, softball fields, basketball and volleyball courts, and a little carnival area complete with train ride. The sidewalks connect to make one maze of a walking path and with the hills, it is easy to keep it interesting. And best of all, it is very close to my house. I remember practicing volleyball there on summer mornings when I was 14. We had to show up to run around the park while it was still dark. Then we would practice on the sand to strengthen our legs. We had to be done by 7 or 8 a.m. because that is when the sand would start burning our feet! But, I am glad it is winter here now because the weather is AMAZING!!!

Jessie's New Bed

Little did we know, our Jessie was ripping the boxes to shreds in our backyard for the greater purpose of making herself a comfy bed right on the grass! Here's to creativity Jessie!

Mountain Biking Mania

Jason already found some mountain biking buddies in our new ward. He went for the first time today and had some fun guy time! It was a pretty technical trail, which of course, he can handle! Glad I didn't go though! It did make him miss our old trail in Herriman where he could just cruise down the mountain the whole way!

Missing Tooth Alert!

Our Rylee Roo lost her first tooth about a week ago. I think they look soooo cute when they lose their first tooth! Her teacher pulled it out at school! We got it home in a ziploc bag that her teacher put a big smiley face on! :) She wouldn't let us touch it, so I am glad that she let her teacher!

On Valentine's Day we started the day with a breakfast of crepes! We love crepes at our house with warm vanilla pudding, berries and of course the whip cream! After our yummy breakfast, we went to the zoo as a family. It was so much fun! I had no idea the zoo here was so big! We were there all afternoon and didn't even cover half of it! The girls had a great time and after all of our moving around lately, it was fun to get out of the house together and do something fun! Rylee and Morgan loved all of the playgrounds and loved seeing a real Jaguar. Funny how you can just stare at an animal like that for so long and be completely intrigued! I think they liked that animal because of Diego and his baby Jaguar! :) Taylor loved having the camera around her neck and being the zoo photographer! Jason and I really enjoyed the monkey area where there are no barriers between you and the squirrel monkeys. It was fun to watch them eat and play and run right by us! After the zoo, we went and ate Italian Food! Yum! Then we had to top it off with ice cream! Of course! It was a great day and we loved spending it together!

My First Post

How exciting! We finally have a blog and just for the record...Jason thought it should be 4 babes and a muscular, burly man, not four babes and a boy! So if enough people would like me to change it...I will! :) We know that he is our muscular burly man anyway! I have been thinking over the past week about how much I used to love to write and to keep journals. I know that hasn't changed...I just haven't been doing it. So, after much introspection...I have decided to change that...among a lot of other things in my life! This is the first step to that change. The girls have been doing so many cute things. It will be fun to share all of it! Thanks for visiting!