Happy 40th Anniversary

Hola,
Happy 40th Anniversary. Thanks for being a wonderful example to us and everyone you come in contact with. We hope your days are filled with love. Wish we could be there to celebrate with you. We are sure that your new family in Columbia are surrounding you with love today, with a big surprise CELEBRATION. Hope you liked all the pictures and messages that were emailed. Best wishes for the eternity ahead. We love you and miss you.
Love,
Paul, Ilene, Julia, and Haley
Flowers for you from your garden!

Haley big smiles for Grammy and Pop-Pop!

Julia can't wait to give you hugs and kisses!

Your BRAT!! Hopes he makes it 40 years : )

Happy 40th Anniversary!!

Happy Birthday

Just as sweet as sweet can be,
Under it all you are part of me.
Little right now, but you are sure to grow.
It will happen to soon, that I know.
All I can do is laugh and play

Every moment of every day.
Vast blue skies and warm sunny days.
Ever and never will cease to amaze.

Cartwheels on the grass put a sweet smile on your face.
Having everything just perfect in pink and lace.
All the love you have and all the love you give,
Put something special into all who live.
Many years will pass and I will grow old,
All the love and hope I have for you this you can not know.
Not until you have spent a lifetime with a daughter like mine.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JULIA! WE LOVE YOU BECAUSE: You are sweet, and smart and funny, and a wonderful daughter of GOD who is always smiling! And who is growing way to fast!

Things to know about Julia she loves to make up her own songs, she loves fast food, she loves her cousins. She loves to see Bryant everyday. She loves all her friends at church. She hates spaghetti. She loves having birthdays. She can't wait to start school in a few weeks. She likes puzzels. She loves her little sister Haley and wants to have a baby brother.

Our Little Secret!

Ok the 16 week secret is out 4 people know at church so it won't be long before everyone else knows. We've expecting our 3rd baby.

I realised back in February that I was pregnant. About 2 weeks after I found out I started light bleeding. That's never happened with any of my other babies. So I wasn't to happy about it. I thought I had or was going to miscarried. We still do not have insurance so I waited a day and the bleeding stopped. And 2 days later I was bleeding again and then stopped and 2 days later bleeding again. I did this for 2 weeks off and on. The bleeding was all light, so I had no idea what was going on. The Monday after we came back from our camping trip the bleeding was heavier, so I called my sister because she works at the OBGYN that I go to. She put me online with a nurse who wanted me to come in for blood work. And since I had no insurance and my sister worked there and (I'm sure she was upset after I told her) the Dr told me they would bill for the blood work as if I worked there. My hormone levels went up during the blood test. But I was still bleeding. They explained it may be a Molar Pregnancy or a partial molar pregnancy or ectopic . In either case I'd have to have a D&C done. I was pretty upset and cried all the way to the office. They did an Ultrasound. And there was a heartbeat!!! They could find nothing wrong with the baby or the placenta. The bleeding stopped about 2 weeks after the ultrasound. And everything seems to be ok. (If you want to call being nausea all the time ok!)Hey I didn't make it to 20 weeks like I did last time but almost 17 weeks is pretty long too ;)

Miss MoneyPenny and Felix

Ok everyone keeps telling me to update our blog and Julia wanted it updated about our pugs because she misses them. Felix and Miss Moneypenny.


Miss Moneypenny


Felix




We got Miss Moneypenny on our second christmas together. (I had been begging Paul for a baby and he kept saying he wasn't ready so he bought a puppy instead!) We payed way to much money for her at a pet store in the mall around christmas. Paul is a James Bond fan so he named her Miss Moneypenny. About a year later around thanksgiving (I was still begging for a baby) so he bought another male pug out of the newspaper (he was half the price) And named him after another james bond character. Over the first few years that we had them they went everywhere with us. And slept in our bedroom in a bed of there own. Until there snoring started keeping me awake and I had to move them to another room! They were the funniest things there favorite treat was pop corn. (They would get all excited and run in circles barking whenever we popped a bag.) We almost lost Miss Moneypenny about 2 years after we had her. We were visiting The Chapman's and Tristian had been playing with her outside while Paul was working on our car. I noticed he had come in and She wasn't with him. He said he left her outside with Paul. So when I asked Paul where she was he didn't know. We walked up and down the neighborhood calling for her but couldn't find her. It got dark so we left and I cried all the way to the interstate. Right before we got on Lonnis called and said that a neighbor had found her.
They were a little Hipper and chewed on way to much furniture. When we moved in with the Chapman's the pugs had to move outside. Needless to say they were a little ignored out there unless we were going off or comming home or playing outside. We didn't play with them as much. But Haley and Julia always ran over to tell them bye and hello whenever they could. Miss Moneypenny passaway a year ago in April and Felix passed away last friday. We had both of them for about 8 years. We had a funeral service for them and Julia went back out after we were done to sing them a song. We told her we'll see them again not to be to sad about it. Haley still runs over to the pin looking for Felix.

I LOVE YOU BECAUSE

This is from Julia, she wanted to send grammy and pop-pop an email.


Happy Valentines!

Late Tag

I forgot to post this several weeks ago oops!

A-Z Tag
brought to by Kim
All you need to know about me from A to Z!

A--Attached or Single: Attached for 8 ½ years
B--Best Friend: Jeannie
C--Cake or Pie: cake - cheesecake? Is that cake or pie???
D--Day of Choice: Sundays
E--Essential Item: wet wipes
F--Favorite Color: purple or blue
G--Greatest Accomplishment: starting a family
H--Hometown: Jacksonville
I--Indulgences: blogging
J--January or July: July
K--Kids: Julia (4 ½ ) Haley (19 months)
L--Life is incomplete without: my husband
M--Marriage Date: June 3,2000
N--Number of Siblings: 5 (3) younger sisters and (2) younger brothers
O--Oranges or Apples: Oranges
P--Phobias or fears: SPIDERS
Q--Quotes: “What would you do if you knew you could not fail”
R--Reasons to Smile: My kids, they say the funniest things
S--Singer/Songwriter:
T--Tag 4 Friends: Afton, Melinda, Savannah, Jesse
U--Unknown fact about me: I keep having dreams of triplets…
V--Very favorite stores: Wal-Mart, Target, Burlington
W--Worst habit: picking at my cuticles
X--X-ray or Ultra Sound: ultrasound.
Y--Your favorite food: Japanese
Z--Zodiac: Aquarius

The One-Word Thingy
made possible by Kim

1. Where is your cell phone? Paul.
2. Your significant other? Paul
3. Your hair? bun
4. Your mother? Strong
5. Your father? Loving
6. Your favorite thing? Family
7. Your dream last night? Weird
8. Your favorite drink? Coke
9. Your dream/goal? exaltation
10. The room you're in? Living room
11. Your fear? SPIDERS
12. Where do you want to be in 6 Years? HOME.
13. Where were you last night? bed
14. What you're not? organized
15. Muffins? Blueberry
16. One of your wish list items? Solar oven
17. Where you grew up? Florida
18. The last thing you did? Made pancakes
19. What are you wearing? clothes
20. Your TV? Dora
21. Your pet? Pug (Felix)
22. Your computer? old
23. Your life? average
24. Your mood? discouraged
25. Missing someone? no
26. Your car? jeep
27. Something you're not wearing? socks
28. Favorite Store? Walmart
29. Your summer? Hot
30. Your favorite color? Purple
31. When is the last time you laughed? yesterday
32. Last time you cried? Wednesday
33. Who will/would re-post this? Who knows

A) FOUR PLACES I GO OVER AND OVER: Library, Walmart, Winn Dixie, Church
B) FOUR PEOPLE WHO E-MAIL ME: Aunt Pati, Dad, Emily,
C) FOUR OF MY FAVORITE FOODS: Pizza, Fried Rice, Shrimp, Chili Rellenos
D) FOUR PLACES I WOULD RATHER BE RIGHT NOW: Hawaii, on Vacation, With my family, cabin in mountains
E) FOUR PEOPLE I THINK WILL RESPOND: zero, nobody, zilch, nada

Tagged

OK I'm laughing about this because I just scanned these photos from my mom’s box of pictures to get them ready to go into my scrapbooks, and didn't pay attention to what folder they went into. I can't tell you much about the photo except the little curly haired blond is me and the other person is my mom. It must be in Florida because I’m not wearing much clothing. I look like I'm about 2 ½ in the picture. But none of the pictures has dates or names on them, so I'm not even sure where we are. I'll have to ask my mom but she may not even remember. It was probably 26 ½ years ago.

I was tagged by Afton

Here are the instructions
1) Go to your picture folder, or wherever you store your photos on your computer
2) Go to the sixth folder and pick the sixth picture
3) Post it on your blog and tell the story that goes along with the picture
4) Tag four friends to do the same thing

So tag Katherine, Kelly, Kim, and Savannah.

Happy Birthday Grammy

Julia also picked you some of your favorite flowers.


And we had some birthday cake.



It was yummy! Chocolate with raspberry filling and Buttercream icing. Hope you have a wonderful day! WE MISS YOU.

Merry Christmas Grammy and Pop-Pop

Hope you two had a Merry Christmas in Columbia. WE MISSED YOU!

Emily and Bryant

Julia

Haley

Christmas Newsletter

For anyone I missed!

Gingerbread Carousel

This Christmas I wanted to start a tradition baking a ginger bread house with the kids. Ours didn't quite turn out (good thing I wasn't an architect) the roof was way to heavy for the house and after half the shingles were on it caved in. Luckily I live with a Culinary Arts Graduate, (Emily) who decided to help us build another one. But instead of a house we built a carousel with reindeer. It was fun, it helped get us into the holiday spirit. We really enjoyed it. I let her know I expect her over every year now to help us build one, because she did such a great job.

ROOF

TOO CUTE

Our last trip to the zoo for the year!

Every year for Christmas my dad buys me a year family pass +2 to the zoo. So this is the last trip of the year. We had a lot of fun! Paul had the day off work and got to come with us. The Jaguar was moving around alot so we got really good pictures of him. The kids love going to the zoo, and this trip it was nice and cool outside not to hot and not cold yet.

Decorating the tree for FHE

We put up our christmas tree 2 mondays ago for FHE. The kids loved it. Haley likes to sit in front of it and watch the lights flash. She blows at them like they're little candels. After we put up the tree, we had some yummy brownies and sang christmas songs. Paul tried to play the Piano. Grammy has a childrens song book that has numbers for the keys and Paul remembered how to count the keys...Grammy was much better! He played way to slow for us to sing along.
CAN YOU NAME THAT TUNE?

Ward Christmas Party

This year for the ward party each organization put on a skit and the audience had to guess what they were doing. Kinda like a Who's Line Is It Anyway. It was cute and way fun. The bishopric was acting out Christmas caroling to a deaf person, I think the Primary presidency's was one of the FUNNIEST and kept the kids attention. They helped Rudolf get her light to work on her nose, because she was sick. The Young Men and Elders Quorum together was fixing santa's sleigh, the young women was christmas cooking with the food network, the High Priest was keeping frosty from melting, and the relief society was christmas shoping with a bad GPS system. They were all too funny.

Happy Birthday

Today is Paul's 31st birthday. We cooked him his favorite dinner shrimp, and his favorite dessert cherry cheesecake. Julia also said he needed some balloons so I blew up balloons. We put little paper messages inside some of them and the others I put stickers on that we're some of the things he brought to us as a family. I also helped the girls make cards for daddy. When he came home Julia ran to the door and said no dad you can't come in yet wait right there! She knew I was finishing up Haley's card. When I was done she ran back to get him. When Haley saw the balloons she was so excited that she would not eat dinner. She kept pointing at them and saying something incoherent to me and Paul.



We love Paul because he is the BEST daddy and Husband in the world. He's FUNNY and plays SILLY games and sings silly songs with the kids. He shared the gospel with me. So I now have an eternal family, and all the blessings that come with it. He has brought so much goodness into my life and now our childrens lives. Happy Birthday

Canning chicken

Last Wednesday I canned chicken. I never really thought about canning meats before. I've canned pears and tomatoes, and made jellies and jams, and pickled okra, and peppers but never meats. We had a combined lesson a few weeks ago about food storage, and they showed a video clip by Wendy DeWitt about canning and preserving other stuff. I was sick that Sunday so I missed the video, but Paul came home and told me about it and brother O'Conner sent me the link to watch the video on the computer. In Relief Society this past Sunday they were ordering 40 lb boxes of chicken breast for $44.00 so I ordered a box. I put half of it in the freezer and the other half I canned. It was pretty easy. I actually cleaned up the chicken before I froze or canned it and boiled all the skin and other pieces that I cut off and also canned 4 quart jars of chicken broth. It smelled so good. No idea how it will taste, but it is suppose to last for about 5 years. It looked like a weird science project after it was finished. Next thing I have to do is set down and make up a menu so I know how many and what else I want in our year supply of food. Does anyone else have a year supply of food? How long did it take to store it up? The link to watch the video is on my blog.

Our Fun Family Week

Last Sunday Bishop Graden announced that it was suppose to be family week this week. So we decided to try and do something different each day that we normally don't do as a family.

On Sunday we sat down as a family and tried to read a book on Wilford Woodruff. Julia and Haley got bored quick and we had a small pause on the story when the phone rang. We eventually finished the story but the kids weren't paying any attention.

On Monday we had fun for family home evening. Emily and Bryant stayed and we also had Anthony Holmes over. We had a lesson on how Nephi built a boat to get to the promise land and Paul taught us all how to make boats out of paper. Then we played a few games and sang a few songs. Then for treat we had pecan brownies with marshmallows melted on top.

On Tuesday I talked Paul into taking us to St. Augustine Beach. It was very windy and cold. It was also the first time Haley has ever been to the beach. I've tried to get Paul to take us all summer, the answer was always no. But I guess he finally broke down to bad it wasn't a few weeks ago, when it was warmer. It didn't matter to the kids that it was windy. They loved the beach. Haley kept running toward the water, and Julia and Bryant loved throwing the sea shells back into the waves. We also brought a kite and decided to stop at Volano Beach to fly the kite. It was so windy it only took Paul a few seconds to get it up flying in the air. The kids took turns holding the string on the kite. After wards we stopped at the park on the way home and had a picnic lunch and let the kids ride the carousel and play for a while.



On Wednesday we decided to make it a game night so after we ate dinner we pulled out the game Paul got for Father's Day Disney's Picture it. We let the DVD player draw all the pictures. We had lots of fun. The score got very close towards the end, but Bryant and Ilene won by 1 point. We only got to play one game because Paul had to leave for his bishopric meeting, and Bryants dad picked him up around the same time.

On Thursday we decided a movie night would be fun so after dinner, I popped some popcorn, and we watch Kung Fu Panda. Julia and I likes it but dad was tired and fell asleep after only 15 minutes of the movie. So I guess he thought it was boring. Haley wasn't all that interested either. But she loved the popcorn and laying in daddy's arms staring at the TV.

On Friday we invited the O'Conner's over for dinner. We had a great time. We had roast and dumplings, and carrots and potatoes, and biscuits for dinner. Afterwards the kids had fun playing with Julia's barbie house and all my really old barbies. And the adults got to socialize.

On Saturday I was sick and had to visit a doctor's office. After I got home, I took some Tylenol for my fever, my prescription and crashed for the rest of the day so most of the week we were able to keep up family week.

New Calling

We've had an exciting Sunday! We got a call Saturday night that we missed they didn't call until about 9:15 pm and I was putting the girls to bed and had the ringer on low so we didn't hear it. The phone rang again Sunday morning at 7:19 am it was Brother Price, again we didn't make it to the phone in time, he left a message wanting to make sure we were going to make our 8:15 appt with the Stake President that morning that we didn't know about until then . So we rushed to get ready and be there in less than an hour. With no idea why he needed to meet with both of us. I suspected maybe a stake calling for Paul (hoping not me). Getting into the jeep it wouldn't start, we had to jump it off. We arrived about 5 min late... To find out that we were getting a new Bishop and Bishopric, and Paul was being called as the 2nd counselor in the bishopric.

I'm grateful that I've found a husband that is worthy to hold the priesthood. And can receive a calling like that. I know Paul will do his best. And I guess he is now the youngest High Priest at our ward now. He turns 31 in 2 weeks. He told me when we got home that he feels old now. My comment was now we can't go to the elders quorum socials, and the High Priest don't have socials.

I know I'll be a single mom on Sundays now, but I was already. Paul normally had meeting for Elders Quorum in the mornings and I already had to get everybody ready on my own. I actually like Paul serving in the Church our home seems to be much happier when he has a calling that he is fulfilling.

Although now he says we can not turn the TV on Sundays and we're trying harder to say our prayers together at night and read a few chapters together at night in the Book Of Mormon. Hopefully we can stay with it. You don't know how many times we've read the book of Nephi together but don't normally get much further than that.

As long as he is serving in the Church I can handle him being away from us, because I know he is where the Lord wants him and we will have what we need without him. And he will be with great men of the Church doing the Lords work.

Trick or Treat

We went trick or treating with my sister and niece in Greencove Springs. Julia’s favorite house was a big 2 story historical house. They had both stories all decorated, the owner stood out side, a guy in a blow up suite that made him real fat, and he had on a tutu and was dancing. Julia thought that was the funniest thing. This year the kids got to dress up for trunk or treat at church on Wednesday, for trick or treating on Friday and Saturday we went to the last day of Spooktacular at the zoo. They had so much fun wearing their costumes. Julia loves to dress up so of course she’s wore it everyday since Halloween. At Spooktacular she loved the animal costumes. She hugged the poor tiger about 6 times, he almost tripped over her trying to walk away . They had several areas set up where they played music and let the kids dance. Both Julia and Haley loved these areas! It was a little crowded for mom’s taste but the kids had fun!

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

Make a Smilebox slideshow

FHE fun

For family home evening a few weeks ago we went to the pumpkin patch and picked up some pumpkins to carve. The kids had fun running around looking at all the different shaped pumpkins. After we finally chose our pumpkins we took them home. They sat on our porch for about a week and on Halloween we carved them up. Bryant had no problems sticking his hands in to clean out the pumpkin. Julia on the other hand wanted nothing to do with cleaning out the pumpkins. She said it was gross! She stuck her hand in but wouldn’t pull anything out. Bryant had fun he said is was spooky!

Make a Smilebox slideshow