Saturdays :)

I love Saturdays, no where to be and all day with my family. Yesterday was spent with a bike ride and then down to the Gateway. We went to the children's museum and had an awesome time. We were even lucky enough to get all of us in for the price of 1 admission because the people in front of us had a 6 person pass and only used 3 and they gave the other ones to us. Score :) The kids spent the majority of the time in the grocery store, they loved pretending to be cashiers and stockers and bakers. It is always hard to get the kids to leave that place but luckily they were hungry and we got them leave for California Pizza Kitchen. Joe used to work there so we always get great deals from old coworkers. It was an awesome day spent with my favorite people. <3

(sorry the only pics are on my phone)

Christmas Spirit!

I love Christmas time and this year it seems extra special. My own house with my kids and fiance. We went and picked out our tree last week and it was so cold! We hurried and found a nice full nine footer. It didn't look that big til we got it in the house. It is seriously huge. It was the kids weekend to go with their Dad and I wanted to make sure they could decorate some of it but we only had a few sets of lights so I put them on the bottom of the tree and then gave them the whole box of ornaments to put on. It was the cutest thing. Of course all of the ornaments ended up on the bottom part of the tree. I felt bad taking them all back down to put the new lights on after they left but we left some of the ornaments for them when they got home and Cadence is now constantly rearranging them.

After our huge snow storm over the weekend we decided to take the kids out to play in the snow. We finally got their boots and snow suits. It was so deep that Cadence couldn't even walk in it. We had tons of fun and made a snowman and named him Bob. He is right out our window so the kids can always see him and they like to make sure he is still there. We didn't have anything to make his face out of except for some baby carrots so Joe carved his mouth and we used balls for his eyes. After I stuck his arms in Braxton wanted to put a stick in too so he put about 6 sticks at the bottom and said they were his feet.

The other day we decided to make some Christmas sugar cookies. We had tons of fun and made a huge mess but it was so worth it. I let the kids help cut out the shapes, we had a Christmas tree a star and made some plain old round ones. We made red and green frosting and had red and green sprinkles. I gave them to the kids and let them go.

My family has so many Christmas traditions and I love every single one of them but I am so excited to be able to start some of my own and things that the kids can look back on and remember how special Christmas was during their childhood just like I remember mine.

U of U student =)

I am so excited to finally start my college experience at the U! I wanted to start there but living in Utah county it was just more practical to attend UVU but since we moved to Park City I finally transferred! I feel like graduation is so far away but I am just about done with all of my generals and pre-requisites. As of January 11th I can officially call myself a student at the University of Utah.

We have season tickets to the basketball games this year. We joined a group called Section F. Coach Boylen wanted a section for the biggest fans to be kind of like the MUSS and stand and cheer and create energy for the team. It has been way fun and the kids love going to the games. Braxton calls them the huge guys lol :) They both put up their U's and clap and cheer and Cadence dances every time the band plays Utah man, she is so adorable. We have a young team but I have very high hopes for them. Last night the football team was there and sat behind us. Braxton was so shy and kept staring at them. He asked tons of questions like who is that and what number is he. At half time they went on the court and a few captains spoke and thanked the fans for their support during the season. When they sat back down we asked a few if they would take a picture with the kids. At first Braxton was shy but he eventually walked over and sat on their lap. They loved it! I am so excited for many more good times and great games!

Jordan Wynn, Chad Manis and Stevenson Sylvester with the kids.

Life...

I haven't posted for a while because there really hasn't been anything to post about. We are just living life and loving it. We have been in Park City for over 2 months! It's crazy how fast time flies. Fall semester started and I really like all of my classes. I am taking my math class at the UVU Wasatch campus in Heber and I have 3 online classes: Biology, Nutrition and Intermediate writing. I hate writing but so far it has been okay. The kids are doing great, it amazes me how much they grow and improve in so little time. When it was warm we would put them in the jogging strollers and run/walk to a park about a mile away from our house. It was great, I hate sitting in the house all day and it kept us and the kids active. Now that it is cold it really sucks. It has already snowed a few times up here and the kids hate that we can't go to the park. I love fall because that means: Halloween, the leaves change, my birthday and football. We have season tickets to the Utah games. They are so much fun! We also have all the NFL games. I love football and Joe is really glad he has someone who loves to watch sports as much as he does. He has a fantasy football league with his friends and someone backed out or something right before they started so I was recruited to play. I really thought that I would get beaten every week but we are 4 weeks in and I am winning! =) It's really funny because they really take this stuff seriously and I really could care less if I played. They can't handle the fact the a girl is beating all 9 of them. I'm sure that my winning streak will come to an end soon but right now it's great. Besides football, school, and the kiddos we really don't have much going on right now but life is good and I wouldn't have it any other way. If any of you are ever up here don't be afraid to stop by and say hi.

Oh and we finally set a date... July 2nd. I am so excited, at times I feel like it is so far away and other times I feel like it is coming really fast. Only 268 days...

Sidetracked... haha

Well, I am supposed to be working on a paper, but some how got sidetracked onto here. This is my first post and I love reading Jess' blog entries. Here are a couple things going on right now from my (Joe's) perspective! :)

We have been together for just over 14 months and I feel closer and closer to the kids every week that goes by. Tuesday night, something special and unexpected happened. As I was leaving her house at about 10, Braxton was taking a bath and said bye to me and seemed happy. I was just getting on the on-ramp and Jessica is calling, strange I thought cause I didn't expect her to call that soon. Then I hear Braxton crying through the phone and asking for me so I told him I would be right there. It made me feel so good because when I got there he was really happy to see me and was asking for "the stinky elephant" (a character that has come from we don't know where haha) to brush his teeth. Anyways, the kids are great and I love them tons!

Friday morning we will be AT&T getting our new iPhones and getting one part of our lives that were separate, together. It is very exciting!! Not only for our phones, which is gonna be freakin sweet, but because its combined out cell phone plans and saving us some money. We will keep you posted on how they are, but I will tell you from my experience of the first iPhone, it will be amazing!

Also, professional things are moving in the right direction for me! I am well on my way to getting out and training on my own (rather than getting $12 per session when the client is paying around $55) Keep you posted on this as well!

Hope ya'll enjoyed reading this :)

Joe

Catch up...

It's been a while since I posted. Life has just been so busy. I have started my summer semester at UVU and my classes aren't hard they just require A LOT of reading so when I'm not at work I am usually doing homework. I try to spend as much time with the kids as I can too. We have been going to the park a few times a week and they just love it. Joe and I also bought Lagoon season passes! We bought them last year but didn't use them as much as we would have liked to so this year we decided we would buy them and go on the weekends the kids are with their dad. We've only been once so far but we are planning on going alot more. We took a trip to Denver to visit Joe's mom over Memorial Day weekend. It was tons of fun. We got up at 3:30 on Friday morning so we could be out by 5! It was crazy but worth it to have the kids sleeping for half of our long drive. They did really well until we were about 30 minutes away. I think that they could sense that we were getting close and they got really anxious. We got there about 12:30 and just hung out at his mom's house. We went to a restaurant call The Elephant Bar for dinner and it was so delicious. The best part was the desserts. They were so good that I would plan a trip to Denver just for the desserts. On Saturday we went to this really cool ampitheater called Red Rocks, it was gorgeous! We took the kids to a park and went shopping. We went to dinner and watched the Lakers/Nuggets game. On Sunday we went to a town south of Denver called Breckenridge. It looks just like Park City. They had a main street just like Park City that has a bunch of little shops that were all way cute. It started to hail and rain really hard. We were quite a ways from the car and we covered the kids with some jackets and ran all the way to the car. We were soaked but the kids were pretty dry, Cadence actually fell asleep. I don't know how you fall asleep in a stroller with a jacket over your head and pouring rain but she managed. As we were on our to Joe's mom's house it was still raining but now there was lightning and thunder with it. I've never seen so much lightning in my life and it was so close to us. We went to dinner at Carinos which was really yummy. Cadence was stealing my salad and noodles off my plate, she didn't want her own dinner. She is the only 2 year old I know that likes salad, most of them just spit it out. After dinner we went back to the hotel and decided to go swimming which was a really bad idea. There was WAY too much cholrine in the pool and hot tub and it gave all of us chemical burns. I felt so bad for Braxton he had it really bad. It mostly just burned his private areas, and we tried to put him the bath to wash the chlorine off but he just wanted to take a cold shower because it felt better. Poor guy. I was so mad that the hotel didn't test the water before letting people in the pool. We were all pretty much better by the next morning though. Monday was Memorial Day and Joe's mom and Cousin Julie were running in the Bolder Boulder which is a 10k race they hold every year. It was a really fun atmosphere to be in and they did great. We enjoyed cheering them on and watching them finish the race. There were so many people there, they had about 50,000 people in the race and then all of the people that were there just to watch. It was crazy. Joe and I are going to do it next year, I am really excited. After the race we went to downtown Denver and walked around, ate lunch and bought souvenirs then Julie had to catch her flight back to Ohio. We just hung out at the hotel for the rest of the night. We had to be up at 6 so we could catch our flight (Joe's dad flew out and was driving the car back). Braxton was really excited to fly. We made sure to get window seats and the kids got to watch us take off. They loved it! Braxton thought it was the coolest thing ever and Cadence wasn't really sure what to think. They were surprisingly good, I thought they were going to disturb everyone by being loud and obnoxious but they didn't. It was a fun trip and it was great to spend time with some of our family.

Easter

We go to the Benjamin Easter egg hunt every year instead of trying to fight the people at the Spanish Fork one. It's short and sweet and every kid gets a prize. On Easter we woke up and the kids found their eggs and baskets. After church we went to my grandmas house for another easter egg hunt. It was a great day and they had lots of fun.

Weekend

I hate just sitting around on Saturdays so we are always looking for things to go do with the kids. This weekend we decided to take them to the Living Planet Aquarium. It was pretty fun. There were tons of people so it was hard to see the fish and you had to wait for a spot to open up in front of the tank to get a good look at them. Braxton loved it and Cadence just kept running around saying "fish, fish" it was funny. They had an area that you could pet stingrays but both of the kids were too scared to put their hands in the water. I was going to show Braxton that it was okay to touch them and tried to work my way up to pet them but no one would move and when I finally reached the front some redneck jerk got in front of me and then scared the stingray away so I just gave up and decided that I just wasn't supposed to pet one that day. All in all it was a pretty fun experience. I think if we go back it would be on a day that wasn't so busy. I forgot my camera so we have no pictures, sorry.

SPRING!

I love that it is finally getting warm and so do the kids. On Saturday we took them to the park for the first time of the year. They loved it. We have already gone again. They would go everyday if we would let them. Hopefully we can go alot more once it gets a little bit warmer in the evenings. Here are a few pictures.