24Th of July

The 24Th of July weekend we decided to stay home for once. Instead of going away for the weekend, we took the girls to the zoo in Idaho Falls and the to the carousel in Rexburg. At the zoo my chicken-little Kenzie who's afraid of everything actually touched a snake, only after Ashley did, but she still did it. They also loved petting the goats in the petting area. Kenzie had fun brushing them and Ashley kept chasing them calling then "horsee!" Both of their favorite part was the monkey house. Since this trip Ashley has been obsessed with Curious George. We also took them to ride the horses on the carousel. Lo-and-behold, we finally found something Ashley's afraid of. She hated it, kept calling it scary and wouldn't remove her head from my side when it was in motion. I had a hard time getting her to pose for these pictures when it wasn't moving. Of all the things to be afraid of, it's the mechanical horses. Silly girl!

He Made It!

Well Blake made it to graduation! YEA HURRAY!!! He got his BS in Health Science, his emphasis being Corporate Health and Safety. He clustered in Biology and Physical Sciences (Physics, Chemistry, and Geology). Thank you family and friends who have been so supportive the last too many years, and helped him get through this. He's now talking about going on to get his Masters someday, and eventually before he dies his Doctorate.

Now we're going through the process of finding a job. He's put out about 100 resumes, had 3 job interviews, and 0 job offers. The problem he's running into is everyone wants someone with 5 years experience, no one wants to give the experience. So, we're still looking and praying.



Again, sorry for all the pictures!

Kenzie's Birthday

Yea, okay so I know that her birthday was back in July, but I'm finally getting around to posting the pictures. Sorry! I'm also sorry that there's so many pictures. I should have weeded through them before posting.

Kenzie's birthday was kind of crazy this year. She has bad allergies and once in a while this will cause her tear ducts to clog and become infected. Her birthday happened to be one of these times. So ignore her puffy, gooey eye in all the pictures. Her birthday was actually Monday the 14, but we celebrated it on Saturday the 12Th. She was suppose to have a friend birthday party that afternoon, and then a family party that night. Her friend birthday party didn't turn out so great. She had invited 12 kids and then our good friend Aaron and Melissa's little boy Isaac whose closer to Ashley's age. None of her friends came. The only kid there was Isaac. His parents brought him and Aaron and Melissa visited with me while the kids swam (Blake had to work for most of the party). We did manage to get a couple of Kenzie's neighbor friends to come over for cupcakes though, she was excited about that.

For her family party, my parents and my little brother Thomas came. We had pizza, Little Mermaid cake, and ice cream. She got a My Little Pony rollerskating cake toy from my brother, My First Leap Frog from us, a digital camera from my parents, and then a nursery rhyme story book from her great grandma along with a pink hand made photo frame for her Jesus picture in her room (she had requested this because the old frame was brown and purple and she didn't like those colors). We ended up calling it an early night and taking her into the doctor for eye drops and found out she had yet another bladder/kidney infection. Poor girl! She thought it was a great day though, so no harm done. Monday we took her to Wingers for dinner and she got an ice cream cookie. She loved it.

Conversation with a 23 month old

Ashley was playing in her room and then came running out to sit on my lap. She smelled pretty ripe so I asked her thinking that this was the reason for her sitting on my lap (she hates having a dirty diaper and will ask you to change it as soon as she's filled it). I asked her if she needed to be changed, she smiled huge said, "No, just gas!" and then ran away laughing. She was right of course, but the fact that she knew that means she's past the time to start potty training. She's such a tease, she's going to be a hand full when she grows up!

OUCH!!!

Well, a couple of weeks ago I had (as Kenzie puts it) a little trip down the stairs. Anyone who knows where we live has seen the cement stairs in front of our apartment, well one day we were in a hurry to get some things done so we could go to Salt Lake for the weekend, I was carrying Ashley down the stairs, Kenzie was already at the car yelling at me to hurry up, and I some how lost my balance and fell all the way down the stairs. I was just lucky that Ashley some how didn't go down with me. I think that she must have had a guardian angel with her because she somehow managed to stay at the top. I ended up in a puddle on the sidewalk. (The sprinklers had just gone off and the sidewalk was wetter than the grass of course.) I just closed my eyes and laid there too scared to open my eyes and see Ashley laying next to me, but when I heard her start crying and screaming from the top of the stairs, I finally realized that I hurt in a few places. The worst looking was the line of bruises going down my left leg, and the bruises covering my back and bum. Then I had a little bump on my head, a bunch of scrapes and bruises on my arms, and I hurt my ankle on my right foot pretty good. It's been three weeks and my ankle still is killing me. It was finally decided that I should stay off of it and see if the swelling and pain would go away. So, now I'm on crutches, which kind of sucks, but my girls have been great helps to me, especially Kenzie.




These were taken about 8 days after I fell, things were starting to look better by this point.