Blogging problem solved

Have you ever had the problem of double spacing when you press enter while blogging? I have had that problem happen to me a couple of times and it is really annoying. I asked an avid blogger if she knew how to get rid of it, and she said the only way she knew how to get rid of it, was to just go into the html version and just delete each one manually. So I started to do that, and as I did it, I realized a pattern. I can't post the pattern exactly how it looks, but it has < followed by a p or a /.
It ends with a >. (Man it was hard to figure out how to type that so it would show up) Those were always in front of or behind a paragraph that had that problem. So, if you start having that problem, look for that pattern in the html version and then find the first one and delete it (as well as any other ones that are already there). It will stop doing it from then on. Happy blogging!

Movie junkee

I have to give a huge THANK YOU to Eric and Julia for bringing my movies back to me. I have missed my "Lars and the Real Girl" and "Stranger Than Fiction" so much. I watched "Lars" tonight and almost cried. I just love the story. I know I have blogged about this movie before, but I just can't get enough of it. It teaches truly accepting and loving someone with a mental illness. It is loving them for who they are and not letting their illness define who they are. It is so good. I love that a community could possibly rally around their neighbor and friend like that and not ostracize him just because he thinks this "love doll" is his girlfriend. I get chills when I think about how good the acting is in this movie. Almost everyone in this movie is top notch. If you didn't see it after my last time of blogging about it, see it now. Especially if you know someone with a mental disorder. It teaches having true, Christlike love and charity in a totally different way, at least from the way I usually think of.

Thank you again, Eric and Julia. Oh, and thank you Tim and Taffy for keeping them safe until they could be picked up. Our check is getting put in the mail tomorrow.

July Update

Hello one and all. I am going to try something different with this update (logical is probably the better word). I am going to go in chronological order, instead of updating each individual of our family. I will begin with the 4th of July. We spent it with my family up at my parent's cabin.



We had a lovely time. The first night we had a birthday party for all of the June and July birthdays. We had brownies with marshmallow cream and fudge frosting on top. So yummy! Matt got in a lot of fishing. He caught quite a few fish, but we only ate 2 of them. It is very nice to be able to fish without needing to buy a fishing license. On Friday night, we all went outside and had a fireworks show in the gravel driveway. It was beautiful but the kids didn't like the sound very much. Matt had to take Beckett inside (I am sure not taking a nap that day had something to do with it as well).



The next day, Independence Day, we had a flag ceremony and talked about our great nation and how lucky we are to live here and ways that we can help to keep it great. It was special and thought provoking and made me misty-eyed. He is our handsome Color Guard.



Here is Belle saying she is ready for a trip around the lake in the raft.



It was a wonderful trip and we had lots of good food and played lots of fun games. I love getting together with family.

As the summer got hotter, I decided to ask Matt to bring Beckett's train table downstairs. I felt bad whenever he went up there to play with his trains because it is so hot and stuffy up there. Beckett is so happy to have his trains back. I think he plays with them every morning while I fix breakfast. We have put it in what used to be our dining room (I will blog more about this in my next post). I moved our table into our kitchen so the train table could fit in the dining room. I also moved the table into the kitchen so we would actually eat at it. Our dining room was anything but a dining room. It was more our "where can we put this? People are coming over" storage room. So our table was always covered with stuff. Now it is the room where we eat and we can actually eat at it. I like it better this way. I don't know if I will put it back after it cools down.

Belle loves to climb. After we moved the train table downstairs, and the kitchen table into the kitchen, she decided she wanted to perfect her climbing skills. As you can see in the background of this cute photo of Beckett, she loves to climb up onto the train table. She pulls out the little drawer on the side of the table and then climbs into that and then up onto the table (she is a thinker).


Since she discovered her new-found climbing area, she has officially earned her name, "Babyzilla". She loves to destroy Beckett's train tracks and steal his trains. It is funny but it also gets old really fast when you hear Beckett constantly whining about his trains. That is our little Babyzilla.


Something scary that happened in July that has to do with Belle climbing was she fell off the kitchen table onto her head. She had climbed up and was sitting close to the edge when she lost her balance and fell off, landing head first. I was so scared. I called her doctor and he told me what to look out for in case she had a concussion. One thing they asked me to check was to see if her head was mushy where she hit. That freaked me out right there. But her head wasn't, it was hard and getting a large goose egg. I was very relieved. I watched her really close and she never showed signs of a concussion, so it turned out okay. Since the accident, I have been much more diligent at watching out for her climbing up onto the table and getting her off the table as soon as she climbs on.

For the 24th of July, Pioneer Day, we went up to the Cabin again with my mom and sisters. It was actually the night of the 24th and then all day Saturday (Matt doesn't get state holidays off, I'm not complaining though, I am just happy he gets paid holidays, whenever they are). We had a lovely time yet again. In fact, we saw the most animal life we have seen all year. We saw two moose (which is a rarity in and of itself), and a big hawk-ish bird (picture not included).



We ate pizza, which Beckett thoroughly enjoyed (really he did, it's his favorite).





I had kind of a Girlie day on Saturday while Matt watched the kids. We watched musicals like "Flower Drum Song" (I love that one) and "Anne Get Your Gun." Sara wanted to do my hair and take fancy pictures of us. I told her she needs to start a business called "Glamor shots by Sara." Here are the results. I think this particular backdrop helps beautify more than most.



For a while I have been wanting to finger paint with the kids. I wanted to use pudding so it didn't stain and so I wouldn't feel bad when they try to eat it. In fact I totally encouraged them to eat it. We used chocolate and vanilla. It wasn't much of a color lesson, but we had a lot of fun. Maybe I'll use pastachio pudding next time so we have green to liven things up.















The kids have found their new favorite thing. Climbing into the cupboard under the TV. They climb in, close the door and just giggle at each other, like they have found some new secret hiding place that Mom will never find. It is so cute.



One of Matt's favorite things that happened last month was taking down the tree in our front yard. The tree was only mostly dead last year when we moved in. This year it was all dead. So we cut it down, with the help of our wonderful home teachers. They had a great time. Matt climbed up in the tree to cut down the branches up at the top (I am sure that is one reason why he loved it right there). Then they cut down the trunk. When they got to the big main part, they cut into it part way and then tried to break the rest of the trunk off by tying it to the back of our home teacher's truck. Well, instead of breaking the tree in half, they just pulled the whole tree out instead.








That about raps up the our busy month of July. Stay tuned for more updates...


P.S. I just want to let certain family members that don't have blogs of their own know that they can leave comments on here. I made it so you can. I don't know that I even mentioned that when I told you all about my blog. I love getting comments. Not that I am conceited, really. I just love knowing who reads my blog. So everyone feel free to leave a comment.

Weddings

In honor of our 5 year wedding anniversary coming up next week, I am posting a great wedding video. It is so funny. I love it. If Matt was a dancer, I totally would have done something like this at our reception.



I would have also posted another one, but youtube wouldn't let me. So, you go and search for "JK wedding entrance dance". So cool. I would have loved to do something like this if I wasn't LDS and married in the temple.

Awesome video!

I just saw this on the best Office fansite, OfficeTally.com. People are so brilliant!

Beckett's 3rd Birthday!!

Long time coming, but here it is. We started out Beckett's birthday with some real fun. My sister had recently purchased a slip-n-slide and was looking for an excuse to bust it out, so she invited us and my brother's kids over to break it in. The cousins had a great time together. The older ones were kind enough to take Beckett and Belle on the slip-n-slide for me. Here are some pictures and video of said good time:

Thank you to Ally and Brooke for generously giving of their splash time to help my kids get acquainted with the slip-n-slide.






















After the splashing good time, and some much needed naps. We went home to have pizza and cake. Here is what the cake looked like prior to the festivities:




























Isn't it beautiful! I did not make this, as I am sure you could all tell. When Beckett first laid his eyes on it, he of course wanted to drive Thomas on the train tracks in the frosting. But I had to stop him because we hadn't blown out the candles yet. (I am so glad I thought to take pictures before he saw it) It was a major temptation to resist, but as soon as we lite up those candles, he was fine waiting. He did pretty good with his first try at blowing out the candles and blew one of them out right away. I thought to myself, "Wow, this kid is good. The other two will be easy." I was so wrong.





Sorry it was sideways and that it got jiggly there at the end. I couldn't keep myself from laughing. It was so funny. Eventually Matt and I were able to stop laughing and help him blow out that last one.

Then came the cutting of the cake. Beckett was pretty anxious to get Thomas moving on those delicious tracks, so it was a little difficult to cut it up. Eventually, Matt just cut to the side of the tracks so that Beckett could still play with Thomas. If any of you have watched the Thomas movies, you know that Thomas and the other engines at some point get stuck in the mud or fall down a hole or some sort of mishap like that. I guess Beckett saw his cake as the perfect place to re-enacting those accidents:




Poor Thomas had no idea what was coming.

















After the cake eating (or frosting eating in Belle's case), the kids were promptly put in the tub.




























Mr. Ledger, we have found your replacement for The Joker.


Once the kids were all shiny and clean, we opened presents. Beckett loved it. He has so often been told, "No, you can't open those. They aren't your presents." in the last 6 months that he reveled in the joy of selfishly ripping the wrapping paper. Baby Belle was the one this time to get the reprimand.




















He got some much needed summer shirts and pajamas, some new sandals with Diego on them, and his first baseball and bat.
















Here is the trying on of said sandals and pajama shirt.



Beckett slept peacefully that night in his new Lightning McQueen PJs and so did I. I don't have to worry about buying him any more presents for another 6 months. I think I really like having his birthday half way to Christmas.

Holy update, Batman!!

Wow, do I have a lot of ground to cover. It has been so long since I updated our life on this blog that you must all be dying to know what has happened to us. :) Well, I am happy to report that we are NOT pregnant. I just want to get that out in the open right away. I am sure you were all secretly hoping we were, but you were way off. Not going to happen for a while. I need to become at least somewhat sane again before we even start thinking about another one.

Okay, so we will go youngest to oldest. Anabelle is totally in love with dogs. She just adores them. Seriously, her first word was "woof". Here are some very good example of her adoration:





She still has her obsession with toilets. I think she has given up on getting to actually play in the toilet water, since we keep the lids down and the doors shut almost constantly, so now she just goes for the toilet brush and plunger. So gross. A new obsession for her is purses and shoes. We have a girlie-girl in the making. She will just walk around with my purse (a little hand bag) on her shoulder, with her arm in the air to keep it from falling off, all over the house. Or she will bring me her shoes (especially her Sunday shoes) and hand them to me, meaning that she wants me to put them on her. Here is an example of that:


She is saying more words now. She says Mama and Dada, and nana (banana), and she says something that could either be "brother" or "Beckett". I don't know how to spell it so use your imaginations and think up a repetitive, two syllable word that sounds like it could be either one. She also says "night, night" which sounds a lot like banana, but that one is really easy to figure out because she doesn't like to go to bed (so unlike Beckett). I can't think of all of the words she can say right now. She is extremely expressive in her pointing and grunting when she wants something. This is extremely true about Beckett's gummy vitamin bears. She will walk over to where they are and make noise until you come over and get her one, which usually ends in tears because she has already had her vitamin for the day and so cannot have another one (in case you are concerned, I do bite it in half or smaller for her so she does not choke or OD on vitamins).

Belle is also very social. She loves to play with other kids. I think going to nursery is going to be a breeze. Over the 4th of July, we went up to my parent's cabin for a family reunion and she just adored her cousins. She couldn't get enough of them (and they couldn't get enough of her :) ). She plays shy with new people, but I think she secretly loves the attention they give her trying to get her to smile at them.

Anabelle is still in love with her brother. When she wakes up from her nap before Beckett, she will point at his door while grunting, telling me she wants him awake. To which I then respond "No, brother is still sleeping." She then proceeds to knock (and sometimes pound) on his door. Lucky for me he is a sound sleeper. She has also become quite the little mommy. She has a little Care bear, a couple of baby dolls, and a little lamb that are all her babies. She puts them in and takes them out of their little bed over and over again. She also sleeps with said babies. I think she is going to be a very loving mother.

Both of my kids have become little fishes. I should have known since they LOVE baths and Belle loves to play in toilet water (and both Matt and I love to swim too). I was worried about Beckett there for a little bit. In May we went up to my parent's cabin and got in the hot tub. Unfortunately, Beckett went under the water for a few seconds and he couldn't get up without some help, so he naturally became afraid and wanted out of the hot tub immediately. Within a week of this happening, I thought I would take him swimming at the Bountiful Rec. Center (aka, the Super Bubble, formerly the Bubble). I had this vision of me being able to get him used to water and everything was going to be fine, but I was wrong. That kid freaked out. He did not want to go in the water. He didn't even want me and Anabelle to go in the water. After that, I figured he needed some time to forget his traumatic experience. I am happy to report that a month after it happened, he is now a little fish again. A couple of days before his birthday, we went to the Layton Surf-n-Swim. At first he only wanted to splash his feet at the water's edge, which was fun. Then he got comfortable enough for us to walk out into the water. Then it was like nothing ever happened and I had my swim buddy again. I think I might be able to do swim lessons this year after all.



The kids and I have started to play out back. Thanks to my sister-in-law, Kim, we now have a little slide in our backyard and the kids love it. I would love it more if we didn't have so many spiders living on that thing. I have to kick it a few times and then get a stick and flick them off before I feel comfortable letting them play on it. (I know, over protective Mom) Here is a picture of kids on said slide:



Beckett is growing up so fast. He had his yearly doctor visit on the 29th and he has grown. He is no longer a shrimp. He is still small, but he is much bigger than he was. Last year he was in the 35% in height and 2% for weight. This year he is in the 58% for height and 13% in weight. Not bad. He did some pretty good catch up this last year. Yeah for Beckett getting bigger!!

He is still in love with trains. He still has eagle eyes for trains or anything resembling a train. For his birthday we had a Thomas cake. He loved it. He now has 5 different Thomas trains (including the one from his cake) and he plays with all of them. He has started to differentiate size with Mommy and Daddy. The big trains are mommies and daddies, and the little ones are babies. It is fun to watch him figure something out. (I am going to blog separately about Beckett's birthday because there is a lot to tell and this is already ridiculously long)

In June, we went to the Living Planet Aquarium for the first time and had a great time. Beckett loved seeing the fish up close and watching them swim. Anabelle didn't quite understand what all the excitement was about, but she still had a good time. She liked the gift shop at the end more than looking at the fish.


Beckett is talking more and more clearly, but we still aren't understanding 50% or more of what he says, so I guess I am going to have to see a speech therapist. I think Beckett's problem is he just talks so fast, he leaves out parts of the words. Once we unlock how to get him to slow down, then we are going to be able to understand almost everything he says. It will be really nice.

Beckett recently overcame a fear of his. Back in October, my mother bought some fun animal costumes for Beckett for Halloween and dress-ups. They were a giraffe and a lion. When they showed them to him, he liked them, but only to look at. He didn't even want to touch the lion. We tried putting him in the giraffe for Halloween, but that turned out to be way to traumatic and so we just went with a baseball fan (same as his cousin Grant, totally unplanned). I think he somehow thought that the costumes really were those animals or something. That is the only conclusion I can come up with as to why he did not want them on him, not even the hood part. Anyway, earlier this month, the kids and I were playing up in the playroom/storage room/attic, and I decided to put Belle in Beckett's Halloween monkey costume. Beckett laughed and Belle had fun too. Then Beckett wanted me to put the hood of the monkey on him. That got me thinking and I pulled out the giraffe costume and put the hood part on him, and then he totally surprised me and wanted to get in the costume. He had so much fun pretending to be a giraffe. He jumped around and ran all over the room. I had to grab my camera, it was so cute. My favorite part was the bum of the costume. It was all stuffed and made his hips huge. I laughed so hard the first time he turned around in it.




I guess it is time to talk about me. I have been busy trying to beat the heat in our house. Due to the generosity of friends, last year they lent us a a window A/C unit to use in our house and I don't know how we would survive the summer without it. We have been pretty lucky that it has been such a wet summer so far so it hasn't been too bad in the house, but this last week it got up to 80 in the house. Last year we had the window unit in Beckett's room, which is just off our living room, but this year we decided to put it in the kitchen (also off the living room) to see if that worked better to keep the house cool. Also, it makes it possible for us to keep the house cool while Beckett takes his naps. If it does continue to get hotter though, we might have to change it back to Beckett's room and resort back to all sleeping in the same room again. We are really praying it doesn't. That was not fun.

I have also been busy with my 11 flowers and the 3 bushes we planted in front of our house. I have found it very rewarding to have my own garden. It is very fun. All the rain has brought lots of weeds though, but at least I haven't had to get up at 6 in the morning to do the watering before the kids wake up (we have to do it by hand and the kids helping me do it would just be a huge pain).





I got a sewing machine for Mother's day and so I have been planning all kinds of sewing projects, most of them having to do with altering my curtains so they repel the heat as much as possible. Also in May, I helped to put together my Dad's 60th birthday party. It was so fun. It was a surprise, sock hop party. Beckett had a hard time keeping quiet while we sat in the dark waiting for my dad to walk in, but it all worked out and it was a total surprise. We had it at my parent's church. We all dressed up in 50's clothes and ate hamburgers, fries, and malts. We danced, had a bubble blowing contest (which my dad totally became an expert at getting all over his face), did hula hooping, had the world's best cake, and watched a slide show that I made. It was a lot of fun.





Matt is going to summer school. Most of his classes are online, but this month he has a night class. Thank goodness it is only for one month. He is doing pretty good in his medical classes. For those of you who don't know, Matt has decided to go to Physician's Assistants' school. Luckily, he will only have to go to school for one extra semester than we had planned. So we are hoping for a spring graduation. Another bonus is all of the medical classes available online. So win, win.

Matt's latest obsession is picking out our new car. He kind of is always doing this, usually it is only wishful thinking, but now there is a very real possibility. Obama passed a new stimulus bill called "Cash for Clunkers". You turn in your old car that gets bad gas mileage to be recycled and get a brand new one with a $3500 - $4500 voucher. We have mostly narrowed it down to a Mitsubishi Outlander and a Kia Rondo. We want something that we can grow into but isn't too big, like a van. And we want something with a long warranty. It isn't definite yet, but we are looking into it. We want to get rid of our Saab. We have owned that thing for almost 3 years and have driven it a total of 1 month and 1 week. The Passport is the car that we will turn in to the government, but the Saab will just have to be a trade. If they will take it and get rid of that loan, that is all we care about. So long sucker! Matt is almost constantly on the computer checking pricing, looking for rebates, and trying to find us the most bang for our buck. We have until November to do this, so hopefully we can find the perfect deal and make it happen.

Matt is still loving his job. Last month was one of his most successful so far. Hopefully this month will be even better.

Well, I think that is about it. I will try to blog about Beckett's birthday and our 4th of July later this week. I was lucky to just get this blog done.