Tribute to Gordon B. Hinckley

There are a lot of tributes to President Hinckley being produced - I've watched many, but this one, above any other I've seen, touched my heart and brought me to tears. The images, combined with his familiar voice and the music, was overwhelming. I hope you find joy through the tears in watching this beautiful tribute.
I love Gordon B. Hinckley and will miss him dearly. We have been a blessed people to be served by such a choice soul as his. I've wanted to post something in tribute to him, and this video has become my voice to do so.
Enjoy!

The Example of One Man

Rich's brother posted this on the Dougall family blog and I appreciated it. Thought I would share it as well....

He's Walking

I know it's hard to tell from a still photo - but look at the feet. They are in motion. Two days ago I would have reported Jake wasn't even attempting walking and probably would stay a crawler for a while longer. Then yesterday he kind of just took off. It was like once he took that first step he realized what he'd discovered and there was no going back. By last evening he was taking 8-10 steps at a time, and laughing the entire time. He loves his new skill and it is fun to watch our little guy become a big guy!

Hail to the Chief....er....Happy Birthday Kaitlyn

We are finally done with birthdays for a few months. Kay's birthday seemed a bit drawn out - with her friends party on the 14th and then donuts to the school class on Friday and then dinner out as a family Friday night and then finally the gifts and cake today! It was a fun day, celebrating our Kaitlyn who we love so much! Here are the three birthday outfits she recieved, in response to her request for clothes...

Kaitlyn's Turning SEVEN!

How did this....

grow up so fast to become this...

Kaitlyn's seventh birthday is tomorrow! If she didn't seem grown up to me before, I asked her what she wanted for her birthday and she replied "clothes and money". When did she become 17? Tonight we ran out to the outlet mall and she wanted to go into every store she saw and right before leaving she declared "I love to shop for clothes". Yea, she is definitely growing up!

Pregnancy Update

I've been meaning to get a photo of my baby belly for a couple of weeks now and finally had Kaitlyn just take it earlier this week. She did pretty good for a novice photographer - it only took 3 tries! As you can see, we have the pooch! I'm looking pregnant enough that my primary president that I serve with said that she has had about 5 people stop her and ask if I'm pregnant. The fact that none of those people asked me directly tells me that I'm not looking THAT pregnant. It still may be considered leftover from Jake :) Also, earlier this week we had another ultrasound - I'm far enough along to know the gender and WE DIDN'T FIND OUT! What we did find out was that everything is developing well and that my baby takes great photos, even in utero! P.S. I'm still waiting for suggestions on a boy name - we will need to go into this prepared for boy or girl, so please help! I felt so bad with Jake when the doctor announced that he was a boy and said "so what is his name" and we had to admit that we didn't know yet. So lets hear the suggestions - we lean toward the more traditional so don't go too weird or unique.

My Football Guys

Jake was so cute yesterday, playing with Cason's football helmet. I grabbed the camera and got some pretty cute photos before he lost interest. As I uploaded them tonight, it reminded me of one of my favorite photos of Cason - his tough football guy look! I had to post them both because they make me smile!

Hand print on my Heart

I have been very neglectful of the blog, as of late. I have been spending the bulk of any spare time keeping up with my "layout a day" goal (which is going AWESOME!). I've also been catching up on the kids journals and other odds and ends. This little gem is a project that I stole from Becky Higgins website (check out what she has done to inspire me) - I found the canvas on sale at Joanne's and painted it a base color with acrylic paint before I put Jake's sweet little one-year-old hand print on it. He may be a third child and will have half the journal or scrapbook of the other kids, but hopefully he will have a hand print gallery that neither Kaitlyn or Cason can claim. We have to do something for those later born babies that we love so much!

Monte Carlo fire

My mom called this afternoon and asked if I knew that the Monte Carlo, on the Strip, was on fire. I had no idea...I just happily live my life in Vegas, away from the strip. I'm sure if I had known that I would have been able to see the smoke from my house. As it was, about 2 hours later when I went to get Kaitlyn from school, I intentionally looked toward the strip when I drove out of our community (we can't see the strip from our house, but can from the entry of our neighborhood) and, sure enough, even from our distance it was very evident that there had been a fire. The top floors black, even from my vantage point.

Cason's Gone

See my lonely view from my kitchen window? That soccer ball has sat there in the cold wind since Wednesday, without a Cason to come kick it. Every time I look out the window I miss my Cason, who went to Utah this week with Rich. Sometimes it pays to be in preschool because mom is more willing to let one preschool class slide, but I wasn't willing to even entertain the idea of Kay missing three full days! Anyway, Rich had to be in Utah the later half of this week and so we let Cason go so that he could spend a couple of days with grandpa and grandma. Cason has been having a wonderful time - I know that because every time I've tried to talk to him on the phone he has been "too busy" to talk. But thanks to my sister-in-law, I at least have some pictures of his fun....check out Cason's day with his cousin Austyn: http://wegotthewrightstuff.blogspot.com/2008/01/hanging-out-with-cousin-cason.html I'll see you tomorrow, buddy!

Pump it Up

We celebrated Cason and Kaitlyn's birthdays yesterday at an indoor jump house, called Pump it Up. It seems to be the latest rage here in Vegas for birthday parties. The idea of showing up, letting the kids jump till they are exhausted, having treats in their party room, and leaving without worrying about clean up really seemed to fit my schedule right now. So we joined the Pump it Up craze. The nice thing about KK and Cason having birthdays one month a part is the "joint" party - this is the second time we've done one party for both kids and it really is great!

Both Kaitlyn and Cason have such cute, sweet friends. It was fun to watch them all play together, without any consideration of the age differences or whether they were there for Kaitlyn or Cason. They were all just having fun!

Even Rich got in on the action, taking Jake down the slides. But he must have had some real speed going because all the photos I took of him and Jake came out blurry :(

stuck without my camera...

Try to imagine my Cason with pink swim goggles on his eyes while we ran errands - that was him on Friday. Running through Lowes and Ross with pink goggles covering his eyes. I couldn't look at him without laughing - but of course I had no camera! He did put them up on his forehead for lunch at the restaurant. A little better, but still a site to see.

Same shopping trip and Jake discovered that if he stands in the shopping cart when he is buckled, the belt falls to his bum and actually helps support him in standing and so there is my one-year old in a surfing stance (arms out and all) as I have a hold of his back belt loop trying to prevent any ER visits for the day. He was in heaven with his new view of the store.

Oh, my sweet boys. They keep me on my toes, never knowing what the next adventure will be.

Science Night

Friday was our Family Fun Night and Kaitlyn was in charge. She had us doing experiments from her Science book that she picked up at Powell's in Oregon back in October. She LOVES science experiments. Our evening consisted of:

making ice cream

blowing up balloons

making a piece of paper seal a cup of water

making our own invisble ink

as well as turning white carnations into colored carnation and making a rainbow in a pan of water (no pictures)

Watch out world, we have a couple of scientific minds in the making!

our January slow start

Can it be that it is really January 11th and it's my first post of the new month, and the new year? I'm not sure if that is because we've been too busy to post, or too boring to post. Maybe a bit of both. But it's time to make a quick update.... and probably time to remove Dan Fogelberg...goodbye Dan!

Busy...yes! But I'm glad to report that one of my busy tasks is keeping up with my scrapbook LOAD (layout a day) goal. I finished my 12th layout today, so I'm even one day ahead. My desk has been busy with use during afternoon naps and any other quick minute I can steal away!

Boring...also yes! It seems after the holidays there is just a lot of catching up to do. Let's see, I've been finishing the Ward annual history, reorganizing our ward's cub scout leadership, preparing my entire years plan for primary sharing time, assisting with our primary party and two primary firesides this weekend, refinancing the house, applying for new insurance coverage on all 5 homes and 2 cars, doing year-end paperwork for both corporations in preparations for taxes, cleaning out the "excess" and selling it on Craig's list, and planning Kaitlyn and Cason's joint birthday party for this Monday. Not to mention the usual laundry, homework, child care and meals.

Yup, boring but busy. We'll see if we can't kick it up a notch and have something post worthy soon. But for now, just checking in.

Oh, and I went to the OB yesterday for week #16 check up - all is well! Yea! My first 4 pounds of weight gain, but really, is it baby or is it just holiday? We see the perinatologist next and will do our best to keep the gender a surprise.