Happy 30th Birthday Em!

This is James, Emily’s husband. With it being Emily’s 30th birthday I thought I would list 30 things I love and respect about my beautiful wife. Emily is field tripping with maddie for the next few hours which makes it a great time to get something posted! As I am competing with Edward for brownie points, I hope by posting the following heart felt comments it scoots me back on top. Happy Birthday Em!

1) I love Emily’s big brown eyes! (Especially when they are looking, or winking at me)
2) I love Emily’s hair the best when it’s long, but am starting to really like the short spiked look. She does look a little sassier with it short though. I like that!
3) I love Emily’s smile which leads to her sexy dimples
4) I love her ability to see the good in people, even when I can’t find any
5) I love that she is a great Mom! Maddie, Austin, & Trey are the luckiest kids in the world. I don’t know of anything she doesn’t or wouldn’t do for them.
6) I love Em’s concentration look!
7) I love how organized she is. Sometimes it makes me nervous, but I like it!
8) I love how honest Emily is! It seems there are less and less of these people these days
9) I love that Emily’s favorite things to do are with her family!
10) I love that she is a hard worker. She has never been afraid to tackle big jobs! The best is when we are working on something together. I think we make a good team!
11) I love that Emily is very smart! Thanks for all you teach me!
12) I love that Emily is a good mix between her mom & dad! She has awesome parents!
13) I love that she has confidence in me!
14) I love that she believes in me!
15) I love that she supports me!
16) I love that she has patience with me!
17) I love when she tells me I’m soooooo strong!
18) I love that she loves me! I love you to!
19) I love how em has handled trials in her life. She just keeps on going, and going, and going!
20) I love the feeling I get when Emily is home! She is definitely the glue that keeps everything going!
21) I love how involved Emily is with our kids! School, friends, church, home, you name it.
22) I love that we have been married for almost 10 years! A whole third of our lives.
23) I love how beautiful Emily is! Morning, Afternoon & Night. It doesn’t matter!
24) I love that Emily can calm me down when stressful times hit. She rubs my head and sends me directly to my happy place.
25) I love when Emily tells me her opinion on things! It has helped me out a ton!
26) I love how feisty she can get! Unless it’s towards me.
27) I love that Emily has goals! She continues to progress and get better with everything she does!
28) I love you Emily for being Emily!
29) I love you for being my friend!
30) I love all that you do for me, and those around you!

Happy Birthday Babe!

Red Ribbon Week

Our elementary school always does these fun things for Red Ribbon Week. (I'm not sure if other schools do it or not?) So last week, Maddie got to do something different each day. She was pretty excited. They didn't have school on Monday, so it started Tuesday with "wear a tie day" - "Don't let drugs 'tie' you down."
James happened to have a red tie from his brothers wedding, so of course Maddie picked it. Here she is with her dad's tie...


The next day was "wear a hat day" - "Put a 'cap' on drugs." So we pulled out the baseball hat & off she went...


Thursday was "crazy, messy hair day" - "Don't let drugs 'mess' you up." We tried several different ways & this is the one she liked the best...



Friday was "wear red day" - I'm not sure if they had a saying for that or not? I forgot to get a picture of her but she looked adorable...dressed in red from her head to her toes. It made it a fun week for her. Each night when she went to be she would ask me what she got to do or wear the next day. I think it's a cool way to get the kids involved. I'm sure they remember a lot more about drug awareness when they can remember the cool things they got to do.

Our Night At The Jazz Game

Okay, so I got a little sidetracked & forgot to post the pictures of the Jazz game. It was Austin & Trey's first time at a game. They both liked it...the size of the building, the statues out front, the blimp, the giant sling-shot were just a few of the things they thought were "cool"! Trey unfortunately is a home-body & as much as he liked it, kept saying "me home, Dad":) Another year & he'll be the perfect age to start taking. Madelyn is at the age where she really enjoys it. She throws her arms in the air & yells everytime they make a basket, dances when music comes on, claps when she should, etc. Oh, I have to tell everyone, the other day after watching Williams hurt his ankle, she said "oh no, he's the best player on our team. We are not going to be as good until he's back." How cute is that?? James is making sure our kids know their stuff:) Anyway, here are some pics of the game.

James & the kids...


Trey did this everytime they started a chant or made a basket or any time there was some noise...pretty much every few minutes:)


Austin giving James a "five" after they made a shot. He's got him trained right!


Maddie & my nephew David


Go David...a girl under each arm:)


David & Maddie dancing...

Happy Birthday Austin!!!

Austin turned 5 years old today, I can't believe it. Everyone out there knows exactly what I'm talking about when I say it feels like I just brought him home from the hospital. He was the only one of my three that was not induced early for some reason. He came on his own time, one day before his due date. He was 7 1/2 pounds & 21 inches long. He had a perfectly round, but very bald head & the cutest little baby face with huge dimples:) He was such a happy, smiley baby!

He had a list of things he wanted to do for his birthday...a big list. He couldn't decide which one he wanted to do for his party. I mentioned to him that if he didn't want to have a party with his friends than we could do more of those things on his list. I thought for sure that the presents from his friends would be too important...I was wrong. He decided to spend the day with the family & go do the things he wanted to do. He was very excited that it would be "his day" & we would do whatever he wanted us to. I was pretty proud of him. I think that was an interesting choice for a 5 year old to make.
So, since our day was being controlled by a 5 year old, it was pretty jam packed with fun. He opened presents, went to Kangaroo Zoo, to dinner(where he was overjoyed that the servers sang to him), shopping(since this cost nowhere near what we would have spent on a party, we let him pick out a few more toys), back home for cake & playing with all his new toys!! To be honest, I'm surprised he didn't try to drag us to Classic Skating, McDonalds, the park, to get icecream, etc. These were all on his list. Needless to say, he fell asleep a very happy 5 year old boy:)

This is just too cute not to share...I knew this would be his favorite one:)



And some pictures of his day...

Make a Smilebox slideshow

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MY AUSTIN!!!!

I Love My Insurance Agent!!!

Yes, I do absolutely love him. And not just 'cause he's my baby brother:) I knew that he had gotten our deductables below what we had with our previous company, but I had no idea how low. We only have to pay $100 out of pocket. Insurance will cover the rest. YEAH!!!!! We were figuring $750, so you can imagine our joy:) It was funny the relief I felt (even before we knew what we were going to have to pay) knowing that my brother was going to be the one helping us take care of this. It was cute to see how quickly he got into that protective mode:) So that's my great news for the day. THANKS BRYCE!!

Pumpkin Patch

Every year we have the funnest outing with James' family. His dad takes us all to a pumpkin patch & buys everyone a pumpkin. Of course, the kids think it's the most wonderful thing ever:) They get to run & jump through rows of pumpkins until they find their favorite one & then they get to cut it off the vine. This year the patch had a cool kids maze & a haystack that the kids could climb. This obviously made it that much more fun for them. We then go back to James' parents house & I make my moms homemade scones while the kids paint their pumpkins. It's such a cozy little get together. It sort of gets everyone into the holiday spirit & kicks off the beginning of "Fall".
Madelyn always looks until she finds what she thinks is the biggest, roundest, & pretties orange pumpkin in the patch. Sometimes this takes a while:) Austin got to use the clippers by himself this year & proved to be a pro at it. He walked around clipping every branch in sight. Trey just followed his big brother around (surprise, surprise) jumping & running all the way. He even turfed it a few times, but got right up & kept on going!
They look forward to it every year...so much that they drive me to the point of breakdown. Starting about a month & a half early, they ask me each day how many more days until we go to the pumpkin patch. And every day I tell them, 45...44...43...42...41...40...39...and so on:) By the time we get to within a week of going, I'm ready to pull my hair out:) But what never fails to amaze me every year, is how happy it makes me to see them get so excited when the day finally comes!! Gotta love the enthusiasm kids bring to our lives:) What would we do without them??

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

WANTED: A Shoulder to Cry On

My husbands shoulder is currently unavailable as he is crying himself. Our evening last night started out very nice. We took the kids out to dinner & to the Jazz game. So far so good, right?! We were headed home on the frontage road along the point of the mountain. It's a dark road, but we know it well...we drive it often because there is less traffic. Last night however, we would have done better to stay on the freeway. A giant raccoon decided to dart in front of our car. You know how in one small moment a thousand things go through your mind? James knew there were two options: swerve to miss it, or hit it. If you have ever traveled that road, you know that if you are heading South & you swerve right (which was our only option since this raccoon was attacking from the left) to miss something, you drive right off the side of the mountain. That quickly took away our swerve option. Which of course meant we had to hit it. It made the loudest, most aweful sound in the world & scared the crap out of the kids. We did feel bad for the poor animal but quickly moved on to figuring out if our alignment was all screwed up. It seemed to be okay, so our focus turned to what kind of mess we were going to have to clean off the front of our car when we got home. We parked in the driveway & James got out to make sure it wasn't bad enough to scare the kids (we were sure that pieces of that animal were all over our car). Fortunately there were no pieces of the raccoon, unfortunately the pieces of our car that were meant to be there were not there either. James & I both let out a few choice words as we noticed that the entire front, left side of our van was gone. AAAHHH!!! STUPID RACCOON ON STEROIDS!! Darn thing took a chunk out of my Odyssey. So the bad news is that we haven't had to put any money into this car yet, so we have our deductable to meet before the insurance will pay anything...CRAP! The good news is that none of the internal parts of the car are missing or damaged...whew!! Plus, it's a Honda (one of the reasons we haven't had to put money into it), they're built so well that once it's all pretty again, we're sure there will be no long term problems. Needless to say, I have this feeling in the pit of my stomach that makes we want to cry everytime I look at it.

Can you believe a raccoon did this?


And here's the pieces we could find...


Trey has been replaying it for me all day. This is his take on it...
(Sorry, you'll have to pause my music at the bottom before you listen to it)