3 Years Old

8:00 am

October 23, 2009

8:10am

As you can see, Jackson was SO excited that it is his birthday today! Um, maybe excited isn't the right word. More like seriously irritated that I woke him up to take his picture at 8:00 am which is the exact time that he was born. Usually he is wide awake before 8:00 am but apparently not today.

Oh well. It was nothing that a few hugs and kisses from Mommy couldn't fix.

Now that's more like it.

Playing with cars helps the happiness factor too.

And for my favorite............

Jackson running to give Mommy a great big hug.

What can I say? I'm a sucker for a hug from my kiddos.

Happy Birthday big guy!

My little Mexican

Hopefully I can get Conal to post about his Mexico trip. He has a lot of great pictures! In the mean time, I had to post this picture. I love it. I don't know how to explain it, but it is SO Conal. Those of you who know Conal really well will know what I mean.

You're the best Con!

Um, maybe I over did it just a little..........

There was a shoe sale. Online. Pages and pages of shoes for $4.95 and $7.95. I couldn't help myself. I was going to be late for Book Club.....but I couldn't stop looking at all of the shoes....in case I missed something......for $4.95.

And so I got these:

and these:

and these:
and I liked those so much I also got them in black:

and these with the fancy butterfly. What can I say? I heart butterflies. Who can resist a cute butterfly?

and I have to add that these were SO much higher than I thought they would be. Sure hope I can walk in 'em.

Not done yet:

And then I realized that they had some girls' shoes too. Uh oh. Both girls have these in white and brown for next year. Let's just say we are set for next summer. I guess I shouldn't feel too bad. I only bought 10 pairs of shoes total. Mandi bought 11. Mandi, I'll be checking your blog for your oh-so-much-better-pictures of your shoes.

Missouri

This past weekend was a 4 day weekend for us. You know what that means.....ROAD TRIP!

Early Saturday morning we packed up the car and headed out for Independence, Missouri. Our first stop was for some new tires. Yep, we had a blow-out on the highway, in the middle of Missouri and had to replace our back two tires. Oh well, we were going to replace them anyway. At least we had a fun hour in Sam's Club, playing with all of the new toys. Plus, I think we are pretty cool for stopping in Blue Springs, Missouri----home of American Idol's David Cook. ha ha. Anyone else have "Light On" stuck in their head now? ha ha.

The next morning we went to church in Platte City, Missouri. That was a great experience accept for the crabby old lady sitting in front of us who kept giving me dirty looks..........but that's a whole other story.

After church we headed over to Liberty Jail.

Now that I have spent a winter in the midwest, I have so much more sympathy for the prophet Joseph and the others who were in jail with him over the winter. It was honestly a miracle that they didn't die in those horrible conditions. I don't know how they made it, and the sections of the Doctrine and Covenants that were received there have a greater meaning to me. I love to read those sections during particularly difficult times in my life and I think I will read them with an even greater appreciation in the future.

That's the good news. The bad news is that none of the inside pictures turned out very well. It is so dark in there! I'll have to see if I can mess with the exposure a bit and post some later. This is the best one:

We are by the wall of the jail. The walls were 4 feet thick so as to prevent escape. Apparently they did the trick because no one ever escaped this jail.

Next stop was the visitors center at Independence. This was a great place for the kids! The kids loved learning more about the early saints and how they lived.

There were some fun interactive things for the kids to do as well.

I loved seeing the old Book of Mormon that was one of the first printed:

and I loved walking through the "Reflections of Christ" photography exhibit. Fortunately for us we made it for the last day of the exhibit.
Of course we couldn't leave the area without crossing the street to see the temple lot.

After picking up Ced from the airport (he decided to meet us in Missouri), we went to Richmond, Missouri to see a monument dedicated to Alexander Doniphan. He was not LDS but was a friend to the the Mormons and my understanding is that he once saved the prophet Joseph from being shot. We think this is the courtyard where Doniphan intervened to save him:

I will have to do more research on that to see if I have my facts right. My El Paso friends will recognize the name Doniphan as he is also a hero in the El Paso area and there is a street named after him in west El Paso.

Although it was getting dark, we decided that while we were in Richmond we would visit the pioneer cemetery to visit the graves of Oliver Cowdery and Peter Whitmer Sr., and on the way out of Richmond we visited the final resting place of David Whitmer.



Bright and early the next morning we hit the road. First stop: Adam-ondi-ahman.

I've never been there in the fall before and it looked a lot different. What a beautiful and peaceful place.

While there, Uncle Ced got the wiggles out of the kiddos by playing "Mother May I?" and some other games.

A new experience for me was going out to the site of Haun's Mill. It is only accessible by dirt road and if it has rained recently (and it rains so much in the midwest!), there is no way you will make it out there.

Of course the mill is no longer there but this is where it sat.

The men who were murdered out there are buried there somewhere. Their grave markers are long gone but their memory is not and I am glad that I had the opportunity to remember those early saints.

Far West was the next stop. The kids were getting restless by now but I'm glad we got the chance to see this area and the 4 cornerstones that lay there ready for a temple.

I didn't know this until we were in Independence but it is the hometown of President Harry S. Truman. We weren't able to go inside but here is the home that they called "the small White House" while he was president.

After a long day of site-seeing the kids were dying to go swimming in the hotel pool. The only problem is that we forgot Conal's swimsuit. I checked two Wal-marts to see if they had any suits on clearance. No luck. We passed a K-mart and I thought I'd give it a try. There was ONE men's suit left and it was pretty ugly.
Even Jackson thought it was ugly. He kept touching it and saying "EWWWWWW!" ha ha! You should have seen Conal' face when I pulled it out of the bag. Then I told him it was only $1.99 and he said "Oh, well I guess I can wear that for $1.99!" The kids were as happy as can be that Conal had a suit so they could go swimming.

I hope we get the opportunity to go back to Independence sometime. I'd love to see all of the church history sites and there is a lot of U.S. history there that we missed out on as well.

So much to do............so little time.

It's Harvest time in the Midwest

It's harvest time and my mouth is constantly watering for the corn, peaches, apples, raspberries, strawberries, limes etc. that are plentiful in the midwest area.

Since it is harvest time AND Conal brought one of these bad boys home from Mexico:

I decided that it was a great time to try it out and make some salsa. For those of us who are uneducated in these matters (um, that would be me......) this is a molcajete. It is used to make salsa and/or guacamole. And since I am a fan of both of those we picked up some tomatoes, jalapenos, cilantro, onions, lime, and avocados from the local farmers market. I was skeptical as to whether of not this so called molcajete would make any difference in my salsa.

I am now a believer.

I've never had my homemade salsa turn out that great in the past..........until I used the molcajete. Morellia's has NOTHING on me man..........NOTHING. OK. So Morellia's probably has SOMETHING over on me. But, it really does taste different than if you make it in the blender and it was the first time my salsa has actually turned out decent. It could just be that it was Fast Sunday, and well, anything tastes good on Fast Sunday. We shall see......I'm going to try a repeat tonight.

Oh yeah, I made homemade guac too:

I know that picture looks SO appetizing. sure hope any prego people aren't checking out my blog. That could be a serious morning sickness inducer. It did taste really good though.

I made homemade chips too:

Just add a bowl of fresh raspberries and a tall glass of 7up with a fresh lime in it and voila!

I was so tired after all of that, that we had dinner on paper plates. ha ha! Oh well, it sure tasted good.

First Day of Preschool

After a month of begging, scheming and planning, the big day finally came. Alexia's first day of preschool.

The night before, she was so excited that we had a hard time getting her to go to sleep. The next morning she woke up, ran into my room, and the first words out of her mouth were "I am NOT going to school today!". After a month of Alexia's get-into-Garrison-and-Hailey's-school schemes I wondered if I had heard right. I said "Alexia, you don't want to go to school today?" She said "Nope. East High doesn't have school until Saturday". After a little coaxing and reassurance we left for school.

She loved it and I'm so glad. Each child has their own high school aged teacher, and Alexia's is a 15 year old named Amanda. She is the oldest of 5 kids and has 2 brothers and 2 sisters just like Alexia. Seeing as this is Illinois, I was pretty shocked that someone else had 5 kids. Now Alexia can't wait to "go visit Miss Amanda". Miss Amanda definitely has a new fan! ha ha.

12 years!

Better late than never..........

Happy Anniversary Conal! You're the best!