What you probably don't know about our week...

• We have a new addition to our house...a mouse! I heard it Thursday afternoon scratching underneath our entertainment center. That night, I went out and bought 6 mouse traps, and stuck all 6 under the entertainment center because I was that determined to get rid of it. However, I didn't catch the mouse yet...instead, we caught Hayden's little fingers. Luckily he wasn't too hurt, but I don't think he'll chase his cars under there anymore.
• Roman is in a new stage of napping...basically he refuses to do so. He cries and cries (and it really is a sad cry) for over an hour, sometimes he falls asleep, other times he doesn't and instead he goes down to bed at 7pm. I can't figure out what caused this, he's always been a good napper. Today I finally took my pillow and fleece blanket and curled up with him on Hayden's bed (Hayden was asleep in the office) for half hour. At least it too the edge off for him, but it just worsened my own migraine.
• I am in charge of the Relief Society birthday party on March 6. At our next meeting in two weeks I need to have the menu planned and the program outlined. I was thinking of doing lasagna, a salad bar, rolls, and an array of desserts for the food. For the program, I was thinking of having a few women in the ward spotlight women who helped start the Relief Society program and have a few musical numbers. Any other ideas or is that just pure genius?
• Mickey Mouse Clubhouse has 4 new episodes this weekend! Say it with me - IT IS ABOUT TIME! I am sick of "Daisy's Dance" and "Pluto's Ball" and all the other shows they play over and over again. And speaking of movies, we saw "License to Wed" and "The Gameplan" and liked both a lot, in case you were trying to find a movie to watch sometime.
• I'm thinking of changing Hayden's preschool hours from 8:30-12:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays to 9am-4pm on the same days. I only want to do this because his class does a lot of activities in the morning and the afternoon and sometimes I feel bad that his teachers talk to the class about activities that he gets all pumped up about, only to find out he can't participate. But then, that seems like a long time for him to be gone. But then, I love his preschool class. Hmm...
• Jeremiah and I bought a Thomas Kinkade puzzle last weekend and I've been working on it while the kids eat lunch and it's coming along nicely. But...we lost an edge piece already. I can't find it anywhere! We got Hayden a 25-piece Mickey Mouse puzzle for Christmas and he is getting really good at it. It takes him about 5 minutes to finish it, but he does it all by himself. He's so smart!
• Finally...I bought my plane tickets to Utah! If you remember, Hayden and I got free round trip tickets when we volunteered to stay overnight in Minneapolis after our Christmas vacation. So I used those and now we are headed to Utah from April 23-May 7, which leaves Jeremiah at home alone to concentrate on his finals. Can I just say I am so excited! Even after 6 months here, I do not like it and I miss Utah terribly. I'm excited to see family and friends and be surrounded by all the familiar sights of Utah...oh, and places to eat like Rumbis!

Alexander Logan Dunn

One of my best friends just had her second child, a little boy they named Alexander Logan Dunn. He was born January 4. Isn't he gorgeous?!

Why We Need a Girl

It all started when a store was closing at the Provo Towne Centre, it was one of those stores that sold blessing outfits, little girls' fancy dresses, and little boys' tuxedos. Eveything was like 75% off and we fell in love with a few of the dresses...and subsequently bought them. Since then, we've fell into a sad pattern of purchasing little girls' dresses that we find on sale. We have about 15 dresses, including dresses that my Aunt Wendy gave us (see, we've even got people supporting our little habit!). Here are a few of our favorite...


This is a dress that Carissa and I found at H & M for $10. You can't tell but the bottom half is all glittery. Not all girls look good in grey, but it was too cute to pass up.

This is one of those dresses from that store that was closing. Quite fancy, but so cute!

Jage calls this the hooker dress because it is bright red, but I think a little girl with dark brown curls (if she's anything like my boys!) would look adorable.

My latest purchase, a $3 dress on clearance at Target. Sadly, I didn't even get anything for the children I actually have, just my imaginary daughter =)

Tidbits of our weekend...

As many of you know, I (well, my sisters and I) turned 28 on Saturday. I opened my birthday present from Jeremiah while we were in Washington because I kind of saw the charge on the credit card, so he gave in and let me open it. Anyway, he got me a binder to hold my scrapbooking pages and a circle cutter for scrapbooking that cuts circles 2-inches up to 9-inches. For those that are crazy enough to scrapbook, these are exciting tools, especially because a) I have like 100 scrapbooking pages in a pile that are not yet in a book and b) I HATE cutting circles by hand, but I do it anyway =) We went to Red Robin for dinner because hello- free birthday burger! We then walked around the mall for a little bit before returning home. It was a great day, even though I feel just a little bit older.


Both my kids are in new places at church. Roman is finally in nursery, which actually occurred during our Washington trip, but at that point he had Hayden and his cousins in nursery with him. This Sunday Roman entered nursery and immediately began crying and clinging to me. It was pathetic and I wanted to cry with him. I stayed with him for about 15 minutes and then decided to just make a run for it, making the nursery leader promise that if he cried longer than 10 minutes to come get me. I could hear his sad cry down the hall, I hope he gets used to nursery because that was really hard for both of us! Also, Hayden is now offically in Primary as a Sunbeam. He was way excited to go, and here I thought he was going to have a problem with the lack of playtime. Instead, he was eager to answer every question presented to the kids. When they finally called on him to answer the question, "How do we get to Earth?" his response was, "We go to the airport!!!" He also got a Primary crown and a CD of primary songs that he insists we listen to in the car. He also insists that I not sing when said CD is playing.

Hayden smiling but not looking, because of course he looks at me until just before the picture is taken.

After six months in our ward, I finally have a calling...ready for this?! I'm the 2nd counselor in the Relief Society and I am responsible for Enrichment. I've never had a calling that required me to actually do much of anything, so this is a huge calling for me, wish me luck. Jeremiah laughs that there must have been a lapse in inspiration...I guess I'm going to be needing support from the rest of you just to make up for his lack of...=)

Lastly...as mentioned in my previous post, our luggage did not make our flight from Minneapolis to Cleveland. It has now been 6 days since our flight and our luggage is still MIA. We have repeatedly called Northwest Airlines trying to locate our luggage, and every time we hear a different story. Our kids are without their Christmas presents, Hayden is without his blankie, and we are without a lot of our clothes and our own presents. Anyone want to scream with me?!

Christmas Cheers

We are finally back from our Christmas vacation to Washington. We enjoyed our time with family and friends, but it is nice to be back in our own house, in our own beds, and not quite so much noise!

Carissa and I flew out early with our kids because my brother returned from his mission and we wanted to be there at the airport. We held up a cheesy welcome-home sign and took turns giving him huge hugs. It was sort of strange for him to be home, but because I lived in Utah while he was on his mission, it didn't seem that strange having him home. It was my parents who needed the adjustment. Not only was Kory home, but they now had 4 extra adults and 4 loud kids. So must for empty-nesting!

I love having Kory home. He has changed a little, definately more church-oriented (obviously) and thoughtful (he used his Christmas money to buy some of his converts in Kentucky some scriptures). But mostly, he is the same old Kory we all know. He still takes forever to get ready in the morning, procrastinates everything (packed for college the night before!), and hung out with a different girl every night =) He is now at BYU, I wish we could be back there too but we're stuck here for now. Good luck Kory!

Another highlight of our vacation was going up to Issaquah/Sammamish to see Jeremiah's family...although I'm not sure how much of a highlight it was for them. Roman had contracted a stomach flu from Jack, and...well, let's just say his blow-out diaper that we noticed half-mile from Sophie's house should have warned us of the weekend to come. Between blow-outs and vomit, we were cleaning him constantly and Sophie was doing one load of laundry after another. Then, to top it all off, Sophie, Brooks, Cecile, and Josie all started feeling sick. Aren't we the worst?! However, Sophie spoiled us with amazing meals, and we spent some time at Bellevue Square. It was nice to see Jeremiah's mom again, as well as Sophie's family. Amy and Brian were out of town, so we met up with them at the SuperMall for lunch. I think Jeremiah felt a little cheated on time with his family, but that's why we are headed to Utah next Christmas! The picture is of Sophie feeding Roman applesauce, a safe food for his sick tummy.

On Christmas Eve, Santa came and visited the kids. Hayden, Rix, and Olivia freaked out and couldn't wait to sit on Santa's lap. Jack just stared, but Bryce and Roman cried hysterically. They were not impressed with Santa at all. The kids even decorated cookies for Santa. They did really well, even though they snuck in bites of frosting, and Hayden was sad that he had to give up his cookie to put on Santa's cookie platter.

Hayden's sad face as he puts his Christmas cookie on the platter for Santa.

Jeremiah was up at 6am on Christmas day. He's like a kid! The rest of us slept until about 7:30am or so, and then we went down and opened up stockings. Hayden's and Roman's Santa present was a Fisher-Price Imaginext Castle, and they got cars and candy and other little toys. We had a great Christmas! We were spoiled, as were our kids. I'm not sure how we fit it all in our luggage coming home, but by some miracle, we did. Even more fun opening our gifts was opening the gifts that we gave the others. Maybe that's the idea of Christmas, but I loved it.

Roman got little Mickey's Clubhouse figures. He was so excited he squealed!

Jeremiah with his new Spinbrush and Daughtry CD (which he exchanged later for the Simpsons movie)
Hayden opening up his stocking, including StarWars characters and a Disney puzzle.

December 27 was Jeremiah's birthday. He is the big 2-9! He just keeps telling me how happy he is that at least he's not as old as Joe. All us kids (without our own kids) went to lunch at Claimjumper (not to be confused with the Claimjumper in Utah!) where we met my parents and grandparents, and had a great time. That night, we went and saw National Treasure. I got him XBox's Call of Duty 4. Luckily, his friends got that game, too, and they now have another excuse to meet online and play.

That next day (Carissa and Adam's 6th anniversary) we held a surprise birthday party for my mom. Her birthday isn't until January 21, but my dad thought it would be a great surprise to have a party while everyone was there. The girls and I have been planning this for months, and luckily it all went well. We had a lot of food, great friends, and most of all, Mom was surprised. It was a lot of work, but it was worth it to show my mom how many people love her.

I met up with Heather, whom I have known since 4th grade, at Panera Bread. First of all, what a great place for breakfast! Not only was their hot chocolate the best ever, but they have souffles that are amazing. Anyway, it was good to see her and hear about her boyfriend-soon-to-be-fiance.

On New Year's Eve, Carissa, Celeste, Kory, and I went out to Applebees for dessert. We felt we hadn't had a whole lot of time together without kids, and so we decided to make some time before everyone left. We were all in giggles (well, not Kory, he just rolled his eyes and thought we were so weird...see? nothing changed!) and had a great time. I'm not a huge New Year's fan, mostly because midnight is way past my bed time. I drank a quick sip of sparkling cider, handed my glass to Jage, gave him a quick kiss, and went to bed.

The following day was our flight. Jeremiah and Roman were on a different flight, so we parted ways at the SeaTac airport, and I met up with the Poyfairs for our flight home. We had a layover in Minneapolis, which is a huge airport. They had a nice playarea for the kids, and enough shops to make us think we were in the mall. We had a 3 1/2 hour layover, and when we went to board, we found out that the plane was overbooked and they were looking for volunteers to stay overnight in a hotel and fly out the following morning. I volunteered Hayden and I, and they gave us dinner vouchers, a hotel voucher, and breakfast vouchers...oh and the best part...2 free round-trip tickets that are good for a years! So guess what that means?! Yup, we are for sure coming out this April/May!!! I always wanted to, but had to wait to see what ticket prices were. But since I now have two tickets and Roman will still be under 2, we can basically go for free! I'm so excited!!! Anyway, Hayden and I said goodbye to the Poyfairs, who stayed on the flight, and used our dinner vouchers at TGIFridays at the airport. We then went to our hotel, the Raddison, which has the world's largest indoor waterpark (of course, it was closed by the time we got there). Our room was nice, with a king bed and a little bunkbed just for Hayden. He was so excited about it.

Hayden on his bunkbed. He loved it so much that he ate his dinner on it. The hotel is across the street from the Mall of America. Too bad our flight was so early the next morning!!!

Anyway, we are all back home and doing well. Sadly, Northwest lost our luggage (it should have flown in January 1) and as of today, we still do not have it. The kids can't figure out where their Christmas presents are! Oh, and Jeremiah starts his 2nd semester on Monday, wish him luck!