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Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Happy Birthday Audrey!

It's my dear Audrey's birthday today! 22 years old as of about 1:00pm today.

One year old

4 years old

Three years old

a few months old

Graduating from High School

Disneyland 2006

I wish I could be with her today! I'm feeling very nostalgic as I've been looking at pictures of Audrey and Lauren when they were little. I'm remembering how overwhelming young motherhood was, but how much I loved it at the same time. I'm amazed at the love I feel for my children from the time I first felt them move inside of me. They are miracles to me and send me so much joy everyday amidst the frustrations and concerns and irritations and messes and tears and failures and successes. At the end of the day I wouldn't trade my life for anyones.

I'm feeling very privileged today. I spent a few hours reading in front of our fire. It felt so luxurious and the best part was I absolutely loved the book, Illusions of Fate by Kiersten White. It's by far the best book of hers that I've read, great characters and a very satisfying ending. I do like a satisfying ending!

I have been happy to see the temperatures getting above freezing a bit this week, but now we have literal rivers and lakes in the street as ALL that ice if finally starting to melt. Then this morning it got below freezing again and everything is like an ice skating rink! Even the sidewalks are incredibly slick. Fun times.

I'm off to my weight lifting class to add more soreness to my weak body!

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

It's wrestling time! Wrestling season is in full swing. Palmer is gone every weekend and Andy has meets every Saturday. Andy is getting better and I think he is actually liking it more than he thought he would. On Saturday there was a big meet here in Worland (it's always a thing to rejoice over when the meet is at home!). Andy came in 2nd out of all the schools in his weight class of 145! Here are a few pictures (he's on the top):

Palmer was in Lander Friday and Saturday for a big tournament. He won his first match on Friday, but then lost the other two and so didn't get to wrestle on Saturday. He had a great win on Thursday, however, and had his name in the paper for the fastest pin of the night!

Palmer also gave a talk on Sunday. He had to prepare it in the times he wasn't wrestling in Lander and did a pretty good job! It was on Family History, not one of his favorite topics! I think he is starting to have a change of heart, however. I went on family search Sunday night and by using the newish descendancy tab was able to find a name of one of Brian's dad's ancestors from Sweden who hadn't had his work done! I printed it out and Palmer can take it to the temple when the young men go in a couple of weeks! Really cool, I didn't realize how easy it was and it only took me about 30 minutes to find it! I also found a bunch of my Alder ancestors whose work hadn't been done and noticed that someone else was working on that line, I was able to get her email address (she lives in Manti) and I emailed her to ask if she would mind if I did some of their work. She called me on Monday and we had a very nice chat. She is getting ready to take all the names to the temple, so I won't be reserving them, but it was really cool to talk to a distant cousin!!

The missionaries ate dinner at our house again on Sunday. They are really great girls and we love to have them over. I feel like I am starting to pay back all the wonderful people who fed me on my mission, it's going to take a long time to pay back that debt!

On a different topic, I have started going to a weight training class at the gym. Yesterday was my first day. The gym owner is the personal trainer and he is very intense. I woke up so sore today. I sneezed and every muscle hurt! I guess it's working! I'm actually pretty excited about it, I've never been good at weight training so this should be good!

Thursday, January 22, 2015

Quick post before I go to bed:

Worland beat Cody in wrestling and Palmer pinned his guy in under a minute.

Andy pinned his Cody guy in the 8th grade wrestling in 15 seconds.

Peter was home sick a bit today.

Lucy is better and went to school.

And I was so blessed to get the quick 12 hour stomach thing as well. Ugh.

Palmer heads to Lander tomorrow for a two day tournament. Wrestling seriously is time consuming, but he loves it and his grades haven't suffered.

It was -8 this morning. Second ugh. I think I'm getting white blindness, can I see some color please? The cold frozen snow isn't as pretty anymore. Lucy keeps wanting to play her Frozen CD, I want to throw it out in our own version of Frozen!

Here's to a Friday sans sickness and below zero temps!

(Rant over, perhaps I shouldn't post when I'm recovering from my guts being twisted in a knot!)

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Monday morning I woke up excited to be heading to Billings with Brian for a night. Andy informed me that his stomach was killing him and I told him to go back to bed. Then Peter said the same thing. Oh no, perhaps we weren't going after all! The other kids left the house and I said a prayer that these two boys would be well and healthy. Peter woke up awhile later and I sat with him for awhile. Around 8:15 he said he felt fine and wanted to go to school, so he did. Andy still didn't feel well. I told him that we would stay and not go and he said he would be fine just being home by himself.

We left around 12:00 and hoped for the best with Andy and the rest of the kids. Andy ended up watching hours of cartoon network and said it was the most boring day of his life! Perhaps that will break him of watching monotonous tv! He was fine the next day and went to school.

We had great roads and the temperature in Billings was in the 40s which was a nice break from the single digits! We grabbed a hamburger in Basin at the gas station/burger joint (they are better than fast food burgers). Once we were in Billings Brian needed to do some work related stuff and then we checked into our hotel--Crowne Plaza. It very nice hotel, all 20 stories of it. I forget what tall buildings look like since the tallest one here in Worland is 2 stories! Then we hit a couple of stores: a music store, Target, Great Clips for a haircut for Brian. We decided to see a movie-the third Night at the Museum, and had dinner at Olive Garden. We headed back to the hotel and decided to work some of those calories off at the gym at the hotel.

The next morning we hit the gym again and then headed to the temple. It was so nice to be there, I really enjoyed it. We hadn't taken the time for breakfast and by the time we left the temple it was 12:00, so we looked for a place to eat and settled on Famous Dave's barbecue that had been recommended to us by our friend. It didn't disappoint, very good. I even tried some of the spicy barbecue sauce:

Then we tackled the real shopping: the Mall, Walmart, and Costco. Brian and I both scored some major deals at the mall--$9 pants at the Gap, $3 shirts at Abercrombie and Fitch, and Brian got some shoes that were normally $125 for $66. Success! The icing on the cake was the gas at Costco--$1.85! We were back home by 6:00 and the kids had mixed feelings about seeing us! Lucy and Peter missed us, Eric said he missed us a little bit and Emma said she liked it when we were gone!! Next time we are staying for more than one night, and maybe we should branch out and go somewhere besides Billings!

This morning Lucy woke up with whatever Andy had. What a blessing that she was fine yesterday! Today is a hang out on the couch with Lucy day and watch PBS kids. There are definitely worse ways to spend you day!

Sunday, January 18, 2015

Almost exactly to the hour 24 years ago today Brian and I got married in the Salt Lake Temple!

We've had quite the adventure and I hope it continues for the next 24 years and beyond!

We are going to Billings tomorrow afternoon and spending the night in the big city Yahoo!

Palmer and Andy are in the thick of wrestling season. Nearly every weekend Palmer and the wrestling team leave on Thursday and don't get back until Saturday. They have been to Utah, South Dakota, and Green River (Wyoming, not Utah). Palmer has been doing pretty well, he wins more than he loses. It's Andy's first time wrestling and he is doing pretty well. His first meet wasn't the best, but he is learning fast and improving. Thankfully his meets are only on Saturday and just an hour or two away. (That's close compared to 5-7 hours away!) Next week both of them wrestle here in Worland!

Palmer got his second college acceptance letter--North Texas University! That's 2 out of three so far. He won't know about BYU for a few more weeks. I'm proud of all his hard work and taking the time to apply to schools that require so many essays!

Lucy has started gymnastics and absolutely loves it! They have a pretty good program here with a complete gym and all the apparatuses. She is trying to get stronger by doing push-ups, I've watched her do up to 25 push-ups--the full length ones! She's pretty strong!

Eric came home from school the other day excited to tell me they climbed the rope in P.E. and only one other person climbed higher than he did! Looks like we have a couple of strong armed kids!

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Jack Frost has visited! Everything looked beautiful yesterday morning. People here tell us that this winter has been unusual for Wyoming. There has been record snowfall this year and since nothing ever melts the snow drifts are growing!