Scouts

The last couple of months the cub scouts have had a lot of activities. Last month they had the opportunity to do service at someones home cleaning out the area where the horses lived. They were troopers shoveling horse manure and dumping it where it needed to be dumped.

In the first part of December they took a trip out to Wagon Wheel and climbed rocks, did some compassing, and roasted marshmallows. I missed that activity because Tyler wasn't feeling very good. It sounded like they had a great time!

Yesterday the cub scouts were in the Christmas parade and then later had Push Car races. In the parade some of the walked, others road bikes, and others got to ride on a float. The Push Car races were a lot of fun. The kids had a great time pushing and driving the cars around tracks made in the church parking lot. They also had a hammer toss and a wheel roll. Tyler was excited to be able to participate in that. He had been so excited to be in scouts. Only 9 more months to go. I am grateful for this program. The kids really learn a lot and have a lot of fun at the various activities.

Thanksgiving and after...

Me sorting chocolates

I have been an incredible slacker in the blogging area. Mainly because it takes time to do and I have been spending too much time doing other things that I have not got around to it. Anyway I will take a few minutes now to blog.

Starting backwards, after coming home from our Thanksgiving trip to Utah the very next day I hosted a craft group. We decided to make chocolates. It was a lot of fun, but a messy job. Luckily I had made everything ahead of time (before we left) so all we did was dip the chocolates. We made Carmel, fudge, butter pecan, maple walnut, orange, lemon, and mint chocolates. It was a fun morning, but a tiring afternoon cleaning up from the chocolates and our trip to Utah.

The day after Thanksgiving was special to me because it is something haven't been able to do with my family for quite some time. My family gets together the day after Thanksgiving every year and makes Chocolates. It has been a tradition in our family for a long time. My mom, aunt and Grandma Hill started it over 30 years ago. Since we live in California and we have spent a lot of Thanksgivings with Justin's family I felt like it was my turn. It was wonderful to be there with my parents and sister making delicious treats. I will cherish the memory! (I could kick myself for not taking pictures though)

Justin took the boys to see a movie and out to pizza while we worked. They went to see Megamind and out to some Chicago style Pizza place. They had a good time!

For Thanksgiving we joined my family - something we haven't done since we had Mackay sealed to us 9 years ago. It was great for me! I loved it! I loved playing with my sisters little ones, helping mom with the dinner, and just relaxing. Justin had a blast playing with the kids outside sledding down the small hill in my parents yard. They were out there for an hour after we had our Thanksgiving feast.

Good times!

The day before Thanksgiving was Justin's dad's birthday so we stayed the day in Parowan with this mom to keep her company and drove to my families house on Thanksgiving morning. We decided to go and get some helium balloons and put notes in them to send up to Grandpa for his birthday. The kids had fun picking out the balloons. We also picked out a nice floral arrangement for the grave site. Our family and Justin's mom went to lunch at Hamburger Haven and then went to the cemetery where we watched the balloon float to the sky. We had one balloon pop on the way home from buying them so we sent three of them skyward. I think this would be a fun tradition to have, we will see if we can continue it in years to come.

I have a video of this, but can never get my videos to upload so you will just have to imagine this.

Halloweekend

We made it home just in time to see our kids parade at school. It was fun to see all the costumes and be at the kids parties. The next day we celebrated Halloween first with pumpkin carving then with friends at the church with a chili pot luck (I made a soup instead because I don't care for chili and wanted to be able to eat something). We then participated in our annual trunk or treat. It was great!

Fantasy Island

This past week we felt like we were on Fantasy Island. We did a lot of thinking about what we were going to do for our 15th Anniversary, which is actually next year, and decided now would be a good time to take that trip. Also October is an off month for most of the resorts in the Caribbean so it was a time to go with less people and it is less expensive (big incentive there). We also heard about this place from some friends who absolutely loved this all inclusive resort that they went to. Another factor to add into the equation is my parents usually come and visit in October and they were happy to come and watch the kids for a week. We totally appreciated them doing that. The kids had a great time with them.
On Saturday (October 23) of last week we started our trip by going down to the temple and doing a session and then we stayed at the Doubletree Inn because our flight was at 6 am. We woke up at 3 on Sunday and made it to the airport by 4 am to get all ready for our flight. We had a lay over in Arizona and then we were on our way. We landed in Cancun and made it through immigration and customs in pretty good time. The ride to the hotel was a little long because we were dropping people off and their hotels and resorts. Some of them looked like they were in the middle of nowhere. We were the last to be dropped off and the service people at the hotel took great care of us by lining up dinner and getting our bags to our rooms. They resort is called the Royal Hideaway in Playa Del Carmen. It was absolutely gorgeous. Justin kept saying, "I feel like I am on Fantasy Island". We were just in awe with the beauty around us (living in the desert does that to a person). Anyway we ate at fabulous restaurants, played in the ocean (which is way warmer than the beaches we usually go to, and cleaner), swam and floated in the pool, drank lots of pina coladas and margaritas (no alcohol, of course), went on a tour of the Mayan ruins, and relaxed. It was fantastic. We even had some rain, a major down pour on Sunday night and Monday morning, it was great! The only thing we didn't like was coming home and how long the day was. We almost missed our flight because of all the the people going through customs and immigration at the same time. Our luggage didn't make it back with us so we had to schedule for them to be sent to our house. We felt like we were on The Amazing Race running through the airport to make our flight. Crazy. It was a fantastic week and we would do it all again, but not for a few years.

These pictures are of the tour we took to Chichen Itza. It was interesting to see these structures that were built about 1,500 years ago. It was also interesting to here some of the Mayan history. We also went to a underground cave where you could swim and to an old city, but our camera battery had died so we didn't get any pictures.
These are pictures of the grounds at the resort and near by.

The beautiful Caribbean Ocean. It was great swimming and boogie boarding in warm ocean water rather than super cold ocean water.

Real Mom

I often get asked by my kids "Who is our real mom?". I have to admit it is a tough one for me, sensitivity wise, since my two precious adorable boys weren't able to come into our lives in the way it happens for most people out there. Although I know that Heavenly Father wanted them to be in our family and adopting was going to be the only way that this was going to happen for us. To answer their question I just said, "A mom is someone who loves you no matter what you do and also takes care of you". They seemed okay with this answer, but to add more I told them, "their birth mom did love them, but wasn't able to fill the roll as a mom at that time in her life so she wanted them to have a mom who could take care of them and so she chose me to be your mom and dad to be your dad. Aren't we lucky!" This made them happy and so it will be until the next time I am asked this question. I know they will always be curious and I am okay with that, but at the same time it will always tug at my heartstrings and bring on thought of why I couldn't have these two great kids myself, but Heavenly Father knows all things and I do not. I am just grateful that he has blessed me and one day I know that I will be blessed with more understanding.

2010 Patriot's Day

We have had it as our tradition to attend the 1000 Flag Parade here in our city for the last few years. This year we decided to step it up a notch and actually walk in the parade along with the other cub scouts. It was a neat experience but pure craziness herding along the cub scouts. Our line was not as straight as it should have been needless to say. Most of the boys got tired of carrying their flags so the leaders each carried two. Great arm work out I must say. Needless to say my heart was touched and my memories not forgotten of the day 9 years ago when so many good people lost their lives for no reason but to cause terror and fear in the lives of Americans. Needless to say I don't think it worked because what I remember is people coming together, sending money to help others, and also many prayers being said. It would be great if everyone could always get along and we could have world peace, but that doesn't always happen and we as individuals can only do our part in making the world a better place by our attitudes and our actions. I am grateful for those who go out and fight for our freedoms. I am grateful for the selfless acts of service. I will always pray for there to be peace though so they don't have to. Oh how glorious heaven will be!

Oh, So what did you do this weekend...

Me worried that this project is never going to get done, because I really wanted to take a shower.
Diggin' in the trenches

Okay, so I was doing yard work on Thursday and noticed that our front flower bed was a little more soggier than usual, especially up by the house where it isn't suppose to be watered. So I thought maybe our watering system is leaking. Anyway Friday we thought we would check it out. Both Justin and I dug and dug and dug. We discovered we had a leak in our main water pipe going into the house. Boy was it down quite a ways. Anyway we were covered in mud so we decided to just call it our mud wrestling afternoon. Our neighbors the Clayson's came and joined in. The kids got all muddy and Jesse helped us especially when we put the new pipes in. I did the most of the digging (I didn't want my hubby to mess up his back). Anyway after 5 or 6 hours be being dirty and grimy I was done. Actually I was done way before that but I did survive and am very soar today especially where my skin is scraped away from my hands. We thought that we were going to play all weekend. Not so I guess we labored and will still labor on Monday to get the whole mess cleaned up.

Photos courtesy of Karen and Jesse Clayson