This is my first blog post by phone! This is insanity...Justin made us meatloaf for dinner. how's that for an update? All by himself!

I love mommy she loves me, we love daddy yes'ur eee, he loves us and so you see we are a HAPPY FAMILY!

OOOHhh lets see....We had our family pictures done 2 weeks ago and lets just say it wasn't the experience I had planned in my mind. I didn't stress and "over do" my hair or makeup we just got ready and went to a local park. So far so good...BUT once we got out of the car in took a sharp turn for the worst. We planned it for nice mid morning so kids could sleep in but not be hungry or ready for naps and yada yada, the lighting was perfect, beautiful day, photographer was VERY patient and for what she was working with man did we get some good ones, cause out of a hundred I was really sure we got a cute one of Justin and I. I was sure that was it! However. I guess they did smile simutaneously at one point cause here they are. Let me just ask forgiveness for the pants I'm wearing cause they honestly looked ok in the house... then at pictures they were kind of driving me nuts and I wish my khaki PANTS were clean, anywho. Documentation that we attempted to display a loving family for a picture I could put on my wall. If you notice the pictures with alllll the kids crying, this is how the morning really went. praise Trina for putting up with our cute mess of children. I am framing the nice one in a 10x14 ish size and then the sad ones will go under it in 5x7 frames with justin and I in the middle. I think it's necessary to show the process, cause it's through our trials that we find out how to have happiness in the end right? We struggle and then there's happiness. you can't have one without the other. I'll leave you with that! Thanks guys. can't wait to have a minute when it's not 2 am to look at what you've been upto. I sure love this family! Jennis

Good things gone bad...well just for a minute.

So I was right...The goodness couldn't last forever. Well don't feel too bad for us, we DID have a bump but nothing horiffic. The night of our Christmas party I was on my own with the kids, Justin had a union meeting that his crew from work planned to go to together due to some drama at work and yada yada.... So end of the Christmas party, night time, packing up all the food stuff I brought for the party, knowing that I was going to have to make several trips, I went to move my car to the front of the Church so I didn't have to walk as far (wearing heels that were kinda ouchy-well not kinda, REALLY ouchy). Lucas followed me out and was waiting on the sidewalk, so I kept my door opened as I backed out so I wouldn't run him over (I know how well he listens) and as I was watching out for my son.....I crunched a van that was already parked at the curb. BUMMER!! I was looking out my door and not out my back window...drivers ED, lesson #3 watch the road in the direction you're traveling. I put a very large grapefruit size dent in the bumper, didn't do any damage to the quarter panel or doors. However my insurance company said I have safe driving discounts that would remain in effect even with an "at fault" accident but my monthly payments WOULD go up for 3 years. The tricky part is they can't or won't or don't know how much your rates will go up until they actually enter the claim so you can't decide if it will be cheaper to pay for a small mishap out of pocket or use your insurance. go figure... It just so happened it was my Aunt Jimmie Jan's van and she was very sad cause they just replaced the bumper last week from a similar accident at the Seattle airport. grrrr........SOOO there ya have it. Merry Stinkin Christmas!! 630$ later I replaced their bumper and it is all taken care of, NO ONE was SQUISHED, thank goodness. I must have got it at an odd angle because I was going 3 miles an hour in reverse already braking preparing to go forward and just went 6 inches too far. "I was breaking for crying out loud." I was going so slow that my Envoy suffered absolutely NO DAMAGE what so ever. No paint rub exchange, no dent, the layer of dirt on my bumper might even still be intact. Well it was an annoying finance set back, but again I am counting my blessings that no one was hurt, and we are blessed to have the money to pay for it. 2 big blessings. Let the goodness in my life continue. AMEN to that!!

Can it be this good...really?

It's been too long, but not due to lack of plenty going on around here. I have been talking to so many people lately who are sick, hurt, lost, struggling or otherwise. I am at one of those points in my life where things are so good and I am so richly blessed that I feel bad about it. I am really content and have so much that I feel like I am in store for some trials or some tragedy. I am trying to counter these feelings with extreme gratitude and thankfulness, with a sincere recognition of where these blessing are coming from, keeping my pride out of it and definitely not saying out loud or having a single thought that I am "deserving" of any of it...So where do you go from there? Lots of prayers saying thank you, thank you and trying to stay aware that it's not "lucky", they're blessings. That being said.

We had our primary program late October and it went great. The kids made me cry and the spirit was definitely a part of the program.

Justin's Dad and Little sister Kelsey came over for Thanksgiving and we enjoyed having our dear friends Kirk and Jill and their kids for dinner as well,(we appreciate them caving in to all our pleading and begging:) Kelsey helped me make pumpkin pie filling and homemade crusts and I think this was my favorite part. I really enjoyed spending this time with her, laughing, teaching, and just spending time together. I miss that part of our family and really loved having them stay with us for a few days. My brother in law Chaser was going to come but had to stay home sick. BOOooo. we missed Grandma Wendy and Uncle Chase. If you ask me dinner was really good, none of the nightmares I had about raw turkey, burnt stuffing, or runny pie happened. It was the first Thanksgiving I ever did from scratch. I've contributed up to this point but never planned and executed an entire thanksgiving.
However Dad and Kelsey did come the same week that I started building my wall. Justin and I talked a little bit about turning our formal livingroom into a den/craft/guest room. So I called a long time friend and he came over we framed it up and we hung sheetrock. Then company arrives. It wasn't finished but fun none the less. Justin humored me and helped me finish sheetrocking inbetween visiting and cooking.
The next morning my buddy Jill and I started out to do some black friday shopping. 2:30am it looked a little like this. "testing 1.2. testing..." walkie talkies, CHECK. wallets, CHECK. lists, CHECK. plan, CHECK-CHECK.... we hit toy's R us first, then old navy(the line was ATTROCIOUS) so we bailed, stood in line for a few minutes at Kohls at 4am. by this time we are noticing the walkie talkies were the best thing EVER! (no joke- we really had 'em) then to Walmart for my cricut by 5am, success. Next- bestbuy, where I got us a new canon T1i digital camera on SALE. Then to target. While I was in line at target Jill ran to michaels and was back by the time I got to check out. THEN fredmeyer,K-mart, back to target and I think that might have been it. We got to see the sun come up, laugh, find things we didn't come for, smile about the things we got that we did come for. So black friday was a success. So much fun. thanks Jill.
The family is healthy except for the occassional cold- which is short lived due to our new found winter cold killer YOLI... whoo whoooo.
And I will have pictures soon, but I have a lot of software to upload since I did a PC recovery on my computer. so the computer is happier now, but naked of all it's normal software. I will get it back to normal as soon as possible with fun pictures of my new wall.
Heads up- watch for more fun news on Justins blog soon. If he doesn't post it soon I'll post it. Thanks for waiting so long between posts. we'll be back soon. :)

Z-X-I. I got em back...

I got my laptop keyboard fixed today- only took me a year, but none the less it DID get done. I know have "I, X, Z, and the caps lock" keys. YESSSS!!! It now feels weird to have them work properly verses not. Funny how we get used to the messed up things in our life and after a while they become normal.... Let that be a lesson to us about getting the real broken things in our lives fixed before they start to feel normal. Oh I'm sooo insightful. :) Love ya dearies.

When you say dots...your really mean spots...

I wanted to add Jacey's birthday cake picture and a picture I forced her friends to take so I have a reminder of how big everyone was at this party. So here are those and now for more updates.

I had another one of those weeks here recently, the kind where there is multiple things everyday. I took Lucas to get his blood drawn (which he sat amazing for) early tuesday morning for his pre-op apt later that same morning Tuesday the 13th at 10:40 and then he came with me to mine at 1? or 2pm the same day. (I brought his car seat in and buckled him in it with a variety of snacks and other bribery, he did amazing at my appt. and he is always great for his) He was having his 2nd set of eartubes put in and possibly his addnoids removed. I was having "vein mapping" done for my vericose veins. they draw "dots" on you to show where you veins run and how they branch off and where they will inject different fluids, and anethesias, etc...Mean while my girls are at 2 different sitters because Jacey was going to the pumpkin patch that day for school (refer to Jill Smith's blog) and Taylor needed a nap so she played with Sheila and Chloe that day.

Wednesday morning I go in for surgery, Justin takes the day off to take care of me and Sarah comes in to take my kids. Then we get home, I wave to Sarah (I'm 60% drugged at this point) and fall into my bed where I procede to sleep most of the day away. good sleep too. :)

The following morning, Thursday I wake up at 5am to leave at 5:30 to take Lucas to his surgery which starts at 6:30. Justin's off to work. My mom comes over at 5:30am to watch kids until 8:30 when she leaves to teach school at which point my neighbor friend gets roped into switching with my mom until 9:30 at which point Jill comes over to let him off the hook. Lucas' surgery went great, his addnoids were "huge" says Luky's surgeon (who is amazing) so they were removed. His tubes are once again in place, he is a new boy. AFTER he wakes up from his anesthesia and is all loopy we go home? seems like we made one last stop while we were in town? hhhmm. don't remember. So I limp him to his bed where he sleeps off the rest of his anesthesia. maybe we went to the bank... what was it???

THENNN, friday I went in for a recheck of my surgery and have my bandages changed and leg rewrapped. The ultrasound technician that rechecked my leg saw me come in for my appt. and just started smiling like there was something really funny. Besides the fact that I am carrying my son's carseat into my appt to strap him into.... He then tells me all about how the rainbow is a cleaning system not just a vaccum and such..(this is what I talked about while half asleep in surgery). I try to defend myself for selling my vaccum by telling him "we just had it serviced, so I'm sure that's why it was on my mind" and he then says, "I know, you told us." I'm thinking I must have sounded like a nut case...Ohh mannn. He then said "normally people talk about they're dog or a loved one, but you told us about your vaccum..oh sorry, your 'cleaning system' ". At which point I had no words...I could only smile and nodd and be sheepishly embarrassed. ohhh the things anesthesia will dooo... :)

Saturday.....recooperate from that week. That is as quick as I can make those stories. There are some funny stories that I might have to try to write down later but for now we'll call that good. (personal reminders of the surgery: remembering telling them I was awake, washing off my dots, drawing them back on myself. Justin telling me to chew my whopper jr.

You've had a Birthday shout hooray!!!

Sorry it's been a bit fellow bloggers, We have been getting used to a different schedule around here. Jacey started preschool this year and it's right in the middle of the darn day. It's ok, but nap time is CA-RAZY. So while my kiddo's are sleeping for the last couple minutes I wanted to do one of those cute "show how much they've grown" birthday montages. Here Jacey now from birth to now. It's funny to see how much she grew from 3-4 she really changed that year.
Happy 5th Birthday Jacey you started out as a "hard" baby, you were colicky (I know that know-though I had no idea what was wrong with you back then) we figured that out with some help. I still remember doing power rocking with you because it was the only thing that made you happy when you got into one of your colicky spells. For those of you unfamiliar with power rocking it is a term I made up, it is basically is a power squat with a jump. hold baby like a piece of firewood (not a football) and bend down as far as you can then, jump up and continue this move several dozen times until baby stops screaming. It's also a great glute, hamstring and thigh workout. Once you were old enough to walk you got really good at climbing and hanging and talking. You will always be known for being my baby with adult type enunciation and pronunciation. You had an incredible vocabulary and the general public could understand you from a very young age. Some of you most impressive words were: Mississippi, quesadilla, supercalafragilistic....just kidding. but the other two were really funny to here your little bitty voice say, people couldn't believe such big words were coming out of such a little person.

You were also know for your great blond curls, and always funny expression. Some of those expressions have been caught on tape and in pictures, which are some of our very favorites. Here are a few. You were the reason the term "sprouts" came about as a reference to yours little bitty pig tails. I hope you always stay as funny as you are now, we love having you as part of our family.