Blakey's a big boy now!

Happy Birthday Blake!

ryan tried to let daddy sleep in, but couldn't so here they are pretending to sleep.

A little snl sprockets mike myers pose--actually, Blake was getting ready for snowboarding

As we all know, as we get older birthdays just are not the same......totally true statement. But Blake has never been one to really want to do much for his birthday. For years I've heard over and over again: "it's just another day." Bah Humbug! Birthdays are a day for celebrating the person. And it seems odd to me that someone such as Blake, that has no problem being the lime light, man on stage, presenter to hundreds and hundreds, would be so shy when it comes to his birthday. Again, bah humbug!

So to celebrate Blake we did nothing spectacular--since it is HIS birthday, HIS choice. He did get to sleep in (but only 15 minutes). Since he loves cars, he got to do some car stuff (take my car in for a tune up and oil change, and fill it up with gas). We went out to the house to check things out and see how the electrical all turned out. We sent to lunch and he got to sit and day dream his favorite dream (he sat there in the restaurant and counted how many table and people and costs of things and figured out how much the restaurant was making in profit for the day so that when he has his restaurant he can figure out just how he wants to do things--just ask him about his menu sometime, he's got it mostly figured out). Then we came home and he got to work. As soon as he was finished working we did get to go down to Old Town Mantel (as mention below in previous post) and pick out a mantel to go in our new house. We rushed home just in time to put the cool whip on the jello salad to go to the cub scout blue and gold banquet. Now this part was definitely not what Blake had planned but he was a sport and went to support the boys. Sam got his bobcat and both boys got a couple other things. And as soon as Sam and Ethan had their awards in hand, we were out the door. To come home to have cake with fellow blue and gold early ditchers, and friends, Rob and Sandee. And for his present since i really couldn't get him what i wanted to give him i had to pass for "Dark Knight" the new batman movie (that will have to be good enough since we're getting a house for each other for all gifting holidays this year). So he got his way this year.....it was "just another day."

Either way, I wanted to take this post to do what I wanted to do. Celebrate Blake!

Blake is a great friend (my favorite one to be specific). He is great father, support, teacher, listener, chef, bathroom cleaner, car washer, computer fixer, cart pusher, bed maker, night watchman, person what goes and checks the scary noises out, and he's strong too (to name just a few things). I consider myself pretty lucky/blessed to have Blake as my husband. I've now known Blake over half my life, and have been smitten with him for most of that time (oh who am i kidding, the entire time I've known him I've been smitten). Blake is many things to many people and today i wanted to tell him thanks and i love you and i am "glad you got borned!" Thanks sweetie. You're the best. Love you infinity +1.

Home, Sweet, Home!

I love how fast this house is coming together. I highly recommend having a house built under the pressure of a rigid timeline. One of the best parts of this is that we know the house will be done by May 29th at noon. these are the pics we took on saturday when we went out with the boys. we went out again today and we have doors and shingles. i'm so excited. (who gets excited about shingles?.....ME!)

(above) garden tub with double windows in the master bath. YEAH!!!!

We are doing a fireplace and are lucky enough to have a friend/associate, Paul George, that is going to do a custom mantel for us, he owns Old Town Mantel, he is the friend that helped Blake build a dinning kitchen table for me a number of years ago. (if you want we can give you his number, he does amazing stuff-he can carve anything from grapes to lion heads out of wood). This pic is of the future fireplace in the family room just off the kitchen and dinning room.

this is the actual fireplace insert (above). and this is the mantel we're doing it with (below), but we have a few other things we have to figure out before we can really decide on the color/stain we want. there are so many things to pick from and it can be totally overwhelming, but it's getting more exciting as we make all these choices.

All in a weeks work......

living room window/front door view.
kitchen window (i can't wait to do dishes there, well maybe i can)

Family room off kitchen/dinning room (you can see the back door that will lead to the deck)

Garage

It is amazing what a crew can do in a week. I guess we should get started on the list of things we have to do for the house (ie; flooring, cabinets, lighting, etc). We are so excited.

Shredding the gnar gnar!

Weeeeee!
Diogo trying to convince Polly to go down the hill.

(aka: Snowboarding)

This last weekend Blake and I were invited to go snowboarding with Polly and Diogo. Polly is one of Monica and Fernando Silva's kids. We've been fortunate enough to be good friends with them for many many years. We were more than happy to accept the invitaion to go. We had only been once before with one of blake's work friends who was kind enough to teach us. After that first trip we both agreed, beyond the soreness, that it was a lot of fun and defnatly something we wanted to do again.

I am just stoked that blake was happy to be out in the snow, on the slopes with me. Again as mentioned in previous posts, blake is much more the summer water skiing type. Winter is not his thing. In my family we enjoyed the summer by going up the canyon to escape the heat. His family would go to even hotter places and water ski and bask in the heat. Durring the winter my family would go skiing or tubing or something (again mostly up the canyon) in the snow. Blake's family would hibernate if they could. So as you can see i am very thrilled that blake is even interested in a winter sport at all. Yeah for me.

It was fun trying to remember the good lessons we had last year. Especially since in our last lesson we did a lot of falling. I remembered that part pretty good right off the bat. Once we had the stopping part down we headed to the ski lift to go down the bigger hill. I can't quite explain the joy that fled my little heart as we headed up the hill. I don't know what it is about being out on the slopes like that with the sun and the snow-- it is exhillerating.

I still like skiing better (partly because i can do it better) but i will do snowboarding again. Blake loved it and will probably be happy to snowboard anytime over skiing. We both think it will be great to get the boys out on the slopes sometime in the near future to let them try both skiing and boarding. YEAH SNOW! YEAH WINTER!!

Ryan-isms

Can a kid get any cuter?
*The boys have created many mii characters. One for most members of the family just in case someone stops by and wants to play some wii. Today in church ryan was sitting by me and was sitting so good and quiet. He looked up on the stand to where he could see the bishop and the counselors. He thought for a moment and then turned to me and said, "mom that guy (the bishop) looks like gramps mii." I had to hold back a giggle since he was right. Gramps mii has gray hair and looks an awful lot like the bishop.
*The other night as i was helping him get his clothes out for the next morning i had pulled out a blue shirt. To which Ryan then informed me that he didn't like blue anymore. I said, yes you do. Most of your shirts are blue. He said no, i like red. I said well, you have lots of blue shirts and you can still like blue. I pointed out that just that day he had been wearing a blue shirt and the day before he wore another blue shirt which is his favorite shirt too. Sam of course wanted to help in the discussion and started pointing out that spiderman is blue and red and that superman has blue and red. Ryan started thinking about it some and then i asked him if he knew how to spell blue. He said yep. "b-l-u-e spells blue, b-l-u-e spells blue. hi- ho- did you know b-l-u-e spells blue." I knew that they were learning the colors in pre-school and i knew that he knew that he could spell red, but i was totally impressed. Way to go Granma school!
*Today ryan was helping me set the table. He normally sits at the end of the table by me. Today he said "mom i want to sit by dad, he's my favorite." Just makes me smile to know he loves us so. Blake said i'm dying inside cause he wants dad instead of mom to sit by him, which i would normally said yes that is true to, but he loves me to the aliens and back so i'm ok to let dad be the favorite from time to time.
*i love how ryan prays lately. he prays: "for granny and papa on a mission, that we have a rabbit named toby, that we have a wii and we play games, that dad can be strong and he can keep us safe, in the name of jesus christ, and that we be healthy and be strong and happy." And that is a direct quote. he's still learning how to phrase his words in the prayer but i love how he prays for the things we have already. We all know how grateful he is for what he has.
*The other day when i dropped ryan off to pre-school i talked to blake's mom for a bit. As i left i said thanks mom. After i had left Ryan said to granma "my mom called you mom" to which granma said "yeah, i like it when she calls me mom." So after school when i picked ryan up he told me "granma likes it when you call her mom." The next morning when i was taking him to pre-school again he was telling me again "granma likes it when you call her mom, why do you call her mom?" I said well i'm lucky enough to have my own mom and dad's mom so i get to have two mom's. Later when you get married you'll have 2 mom's too and maybe you'll call your wifes mom "mom" too. To this he started saying who am i going to marry? I said well you'll get to pick your favorite girl when you get back from your mission and you are going to college. He said to me "mom you picked your friend blake huh?" I said yep, he was my favorite. He then went back to worrying about who he was going to pick but i helped him understand that he didn't need to worry about it for like 15 years. He seemed ok with that and we got to granma's. When he got into school he told granma "my mom picked her friend blake to marry. he was her favorite. and he's your son." Dang that boy is so smart.

X-country skiing

For the month of January Ethan's class got to go cross country skiing for 3 Thursdays. What an awesome opportunity to learn something new. I have had lots of people ask me how it is that the school can afford to and why they have the kids do this particular activity. I in turn asked Ethan's teacher about it and his response was totally appropriate. Sharon Elementary is not the school that it used to be when i was there as a kid. Ethan and Sam are a minority now. There are a lot of low income families that feed into the school so we have extra funding for different programs which is nice. It is also the reason that we have smaller classes. The larger classes are 23 students. But even that is only part of it. There are extra aides and helpers in each class rooms so even when there are 23 students in the class there is still extra help. One of the added bonuses is this particular ski trip. Ethan's teacher said that most of these students will never have the opportunity to be exposed to activities like this. It gives them this opportunity to try something new and really does give them some added confidence to try new things later. I totally agree after going with the class for the 3 different trips. It was amazing how fast the kids picked up on it and loved it. There were a few that struggled and even those that "hated" it, but for the most part it was something they each did at their own level and pace but improvement was obvious. I was talking to a friend about this and he said that cross country skiing is one of those activities that you can do once and you are still learning it after you're done so that the next time you go you are already better cause of how your mind processes it. Interesting eh?

Anyway, it was a really fun experience. I enjoyed the time of course with Ethan and the scenery was to die for. There is a major difference in cross country skiing to down hill (among many of the obvious ie: ski boots that don't kill your legs and speed). I will fully admit that i still love down hill more, but i totally appreciate and even enjoyed cross country skiing and will look for opportunities to go again. Ethan absolutely loved it and wants to go again soon. Maybe I'll be lucky enough to have all 3 of the boys love winter the way i do. And then we will just drag Blake along. (He is more of a summer water skiing guy, for now.)

Azure Grace

We are lucky enough to be building a house, for those that don't know. We are even more lucky to have it be the Parade Home for Knight West this year. The timeline on it works out great since the deadline for the house is May 29th at noon. How many people can say that they know their house will be done by that strict of a deadline? Ok maybe other people that have their houses in the parade too, but still, work with me. We're pretty excited.

We wanted to share some of the highlights as we go. Today, we will start with the views. I thought when we bought and built our home in Lindon we had great views (cause we did). And i was torn appart leaving them when we sold the home. But alas we are blessed again to have the incredible views. We got to pick the name of the house for the Parade since we are the home buyers so we picked Azure Grace. Azure meaning both blue and heavenly. The times we have been out there the sky has been so blue and beautiful and the views compeltely remind us of the amazing creations all around us. Grace is both for the blessing of having home as well as for Gracen, the newest neice in the family. We are all so excited to have a home in such beautiful surroundings.

boys standing in front of marker saying our address (they loved being out there at the lot and asked if we could go back the next day).

walk out basement view to the east
east view

back yard/ north view

west view