Welcome To The Badger Den

After quite a crazy week, it's nice to relax and... ...enjoy a nice piece of chocolate cake (diet starts Monday) ...take a little nap on the comfortable kitchen floor (ignore the fact that it needs to be mopped...again) ...enjoy a peaceful family walk through the neighborhood HAPPY HAPPY SUNDAY! Are we ready for Monday?....Bring it ON!!

With the beautiful weather this weekend, it was time to PLANT THE GARDEN. We started Friday night and finished up Saturday morning. Whew! I wish I could say the hardest part is behind us...but now we need to keep up on the weeding. YUCK! Oh well... (Strawberry Patch) (Vegetable Garden) Luckily we had lots of help from Kelsey and Cyrus...not quite sure was Emily is doing...but I'm sure it helped us get that garden in. We also took a trip north to Roy to celebrate cousin Conner's birthday party. It was a quick little trip, but we enjoyed some cake, jumping on the trampoline, and playing with Conner's new toys. On the way back, we decided to stop in at the local "after hours" doctor clinic. Cyrus had jumped out of our swing Friday afternoon and had been favoring his hand ever since. It looked a bit swollen so we thought we should probably have it checked out. SURPRISE! He had broken his wrist. He is now in a splint until the swelling goes down, then he gets a "r...

Why is it when I need to stick to a schedule and get things done, there are those that try to keep me from completing anything?? Let me introduce you to Miss Kelch....you can see she has had an eventful morning. I had made some chocolate peanut butter bars in the morning to be ready for the kids for an after school snack....Kelsey enjoyed the frosting off of the bars while I was using the facilities. While cleaning up the chocolate mess, I realized things had gotten too quiet. Upon opening the door to my bathroom, I found the lovely miss Kelsey applying some mascara to her lushes eye lashes..as well as the fronts of my bathroom cabinets. As I was cleaning up the mascara with my favorite tool...the Magic Eraser..I heard Alyson crying and realized she was laying (unprotected) on the ottoman. As I ran down the stairs and rounded the corner....I found this.... I must admit I was pretty impressed she was able to get Alyson into this feeding position. I'm guessing it wasn't a smooth ...

On Tuesday, we headed to the church to join in the Young Women's Fundraising BBQ and Carnival. The kids had a great time getting their faces painted, throwing darts, eating cotton candy, and getting balloon animals from the clown at the carnival while Andy and I got some time to visit and watch the auction. We bid on....and won...some babysitting and a bench. It was lots of fun on a rainy evening. Since Andy was visiting, he handed me his checkbook to take care of our winnings. When I opened up the check book to write the check, I noticed this picture. It had been a while since I had seen it and it made me smile to think he still had it in his checkbook. This is the picture of our very first date back in 1993. I'll spare all the details and just say that my mom and brother had asked him for me...as I did not want to waste my hard earned money on some boy at some dance. They had just picked him out of the yearbook...only knowing he was tall and was good at basketball. 6 years ...

Our kitchen table can sit 8 people when the leaf is in. I prefer not to have the leaf in during normal business hours as it take extra effort to walk around it and it starts to collect junk that we just move to the side of the table when it's time to eat. Last weekend we put the leaf in during a family Mother's Day party. On Monday morning, I realized I had not taken out the leaf...and was a bit frusterated as I could not figure out a way to get it out all by myself...so we kept it in. When we sat down for dinner Monday night, Emily discovered the perfect way to use up the extra space....invite 'Ol Alyson to join us. It actually worked great...and Alyson had a good time too. I'll just have to add her to the kitchen job list now.

Many people head to Thanksgiving Point during the Tulip Festival to take pictures of the beautiful flowers and wonderful landscapes. We walked through the park for over an hour and saw flowers, waterfalls, perfect landscaping, and other beautiful scenes of nature. As we were heading out, Andy mentioned that it was too bad that we had forgotten the camera. Holy Macaroni! I actually HAD brought the camera! So I whipped it out and took a couple of pictures of what was REALLY beautiful there...my kiddos with smiles on their faces. No flowers....maybe next time. No furniture at Thanksgiving point - took this one earlier that day at home. Just didn't want to leave her out...plus it's cute.

There's something about watching my child sing a Mother's Day song that makes me want to be a better mother. (especially since my last post) Cy's preschool had a Mother's Day program, and I think he was the cutest singer there. Here's proof. Of course Kelsey couldn't let Cyrus be in the limelight by himself. She decided to see what the view was like from the stage. Happy Mother's Day!

I think we all have our days in which we feel like we could be the Mother of the Year and other days...well...you know. Thursday was one of those...well...days. I think my kids heard many, if not all, of the following... multiple times (and not in a soft, peaceful voice): WHY CAN'T YOU BE MORE CAREFUL?!! HOW MANY TIMES DO I NEED TO MOP THE FLOOR?!!! WHEN ARE YOU GOING TO LEARN TO OBEY?!! DO YOU ALWAYS HAVE TO MAKE MESSES?!! PLAY THAT MEASURE ONE MORE TIME!! WHY CAN'T YOU JUST FOCUS ON YOUR PRACTICING?!! I'M SO TIRED OF SITTING HERE LISTENING TO YOU MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE OVER AND OVER! Ya...you get the picture. It was a home full of anger, verbal abuse, mild violence, pouting, disobedience, and more anger. I was so happy when Andy got home (as were the kids). We had dinner, and I headed upstairs to finish folding the clothes. I didn't care what everyone else was doing. I just needed to get away. I came downstairs later on and Andy had everyone gathered together with popc...

Gotta make sure that pacifier is clean before putting it in Alyson's mouth...what a great sister. And of course a baby can't go to bed without a nice lullaby....like YO GABBA GABBA. She makes her mom so proud.

We're turning over a new leaf and going to try to keep this blog a bit more updated. Apparently some people think that every 6 months is a bit long between posts...so we'll try to do better. We'll start off with the newest member of the Badger Den...little Baby Alyson. She joined us March 9th. There will be plenty more pictures of her to come...thanks to the photo talents of Grandma, Emily, Cyrus, and Kelsey. Stay tuned.... And speaking of kids, my mom has a great giveaway going on at her blog this week. Check it out at http://www.aclangston.blogspot.com

It's been a while since I've been out here, if you couldn't tell. Just wanted to let you know of a great giveaway that my sister is doing on her blog. Check it out on www.makeitworkmom.com You won't be sorry....but do it quick...the giveaway ends tonight at midnight. Good Luck!

When Andy asked what I wanted for my birthday, I told him that I wanted to go back to New York and see Wicked. I got what I wanted. My parents, my twin sister Camille, Andy, and I headed to New York on the red eye for a fun filled day. We saw the Statue of Liberty again and even went up the pedestal this time. That was a good little hike. We weren't allowed to go up to the top of the statue. We saw the Trump Towers and walked around the tip of Central Park. Of course our trip wouldn't have been complete without a New York hot dog. (It tasted a lot like a Utah hot dog to me...just to be honest) We then went and saw Wicked....awesome show! I wouldn't mind seeing it again...next birthday maybe? It was a great trip and a wonderful birthday celebration! We were pretty tired, but it was nice to come home to these three hoodlums! THANKS JILL and VILI for watching the dogs and kiddos while we were gone!!!! We owe you big time....what kind of cookies would you like me to make for yo...

We took advantage of some good weather a couple of weeks ago to get out on the mountains up American Fork Canyon. Our intention was to drive to a .5 mile easy hike that we had read about on the internet. It was rated 5 stars on the easy scale and had a couple of small lakes we would see. We thought that would be perfect for us inexperienced hikers. When we got up the canyon, the road to this easy hike was closed. We pulled off and decided to just "walk around" for a bit and see the mountainside since we were already there. We found another trail that other people were going on and decided to give it a try. It was a bit steeper than we had thought. The kids were fine, but I started to sweat a little bit (not something I was planning on doing). Most of the trail was a one person trail and about half of the time, there was a pretty good drop off. To make matters more exciting, Kelsey decided that she didn't want to be carried or hold anyone's hand. Only Emily was allowed...

Kelsey loves fruit. She will eat any type and at any time. Her favorite though is the apple. She went around asking if anyone wanted a bite. No one wanted one..... EXCEPT.....Tabrina. Thanks Kelsey!

Cyrus loves these Itty Bitty sports camps. This time around it was Baseball. He said his favorite training station was the hitting off of the T. He loved playing, but I think he loved it even more when his "girls" would yell for him. Adalyn and I would see who could yell "Go Cyrus" the loudest....I think Adalyn won....and we've been asked not to sign Cyrus up for any more camps. What can you do?