An Award

Tulsi was kind enough to think of us for this award. I really don't know what to say. I guess I'm not used to receiving awards. haha. I'd love to pass this award along to others, but its going to take me a while to pick someone. There's so many great bloggers out there and I don't have a lot of time right now. Thank you Tulsi for being so considerate.

A Day in the Life of Kendi

Kendi is very good at entertaining herself. The things she comes up with entertain us as well. One of her favorite things to do is wrap up random things and give them to us. Almost everyday Kendi will come up to us and say, "Here's your birthday present." She wraps up things like movies and baby dolls in things like kitchen towels and bubble wrap. In this picture she had found grandma's gift bags and was having the time of her life.
Kendi has never been a climber......ever. Recently I have been teaching her to put things away and keep them organized. The other day I found her umbrella on the top shelf in her room. I asked Jared if he had put it there and he said, no. When I asked Kendi how it got there she told me she didn't know. The next day, I saw her playing with it again. I asked her how she got it and she said she didn't know. I decided to probe her a little more. I asked her where the umbrella was and how it got down. All she said was, "Kendi climbed." I still don't know how she reached the top shelf, but the other day she had closed the door to her bedroom and was being really quiet. I went to check on her and this picture is what I found.
Another thing Kendi likes to do everyday is help me cook. I love having her with me in the kitchen. It makes cooking so much more fun. In this picture she was helping me stir batter for zucchini bread.
Another thing Kendi likes to do is read her scriptures. Mostly she talks in jibberish, but occasionally you can hear her say, "And it came to pass," and "Nephi." She also loves to find little places that are just her size. Most of the time she'll find a place and tell me that it is her new bed. I'll watch her playing and all of a sudden she'll lay down in some tiny spot for a second like she's trying it out and then goes back to playing.
One other thing she does a lot lately is ask for treats. I've tried explaining to her that treats aren't good for her and if she eats too much they will make her feel sick. Her response to that is, "Nope, I'm tough!"

Pool Party

Thanks to the Lovell's for inviting us to the pool. They rented it for a few hours and it was a blast. I'm trying to convince our families to do it so we can go again. It was tons of fun.
Kendi's favorite thing was floating in the water. She was so exciting about just being pushed around the pool. This was her first time at a real swimming pool.
One of Kendi's favorite things is a slide. She talks about them daily. So we thought that she would be really excited for the Hydra-tube. After taking her down it a few times she said that she liked it, but didn't want to do it anymore. While I was waiting at the bottom to take this picture I could hear her yelling "wohoooooo" the whole way down. Jared said that she even put her hands up like she was on a roller coaster.

Jared and I tried to see who could get going the fastest down the slide. We figured out that if you roll up the pad and sit on it you could go really really fast. The trick was staying on it this way because we would fly up onto the sides when we went around the turns. I was only able to stay on it once all the way down. Oh, please excuse the farmer tans.

Sad News

It seems like there has been an awful lot of tragedy surrounding us lately. It also seems like it is the strong faithful ones that suffer the most.

Most of you already know about the plane that crashed carrying ten people from Cedar City yesterday. Our hearts go out to their family members and friends. We knew several of these people well enough to know that they were great people who have left strong, faithful families behind. If you would like to witness it yourself click on Marie and Dan's blog.

I felt like had to say something about these people and what a great loss it is. All the the families are being effected in every way. I can't imagine becoming a widow just a month before my first baby was due. Or losing a husband and a child at the same time. Jared's mother has traveled on the plane that went down and knows that the pilot would have done everything he could in his power. He was a good pilot.

We are praying for them and hope that they can find the strength and peace they need through the gospel and the knowledge of the plan of happiness.

Big News!!!

Jaelyn has been working so hard to get this done. Check out her amazing new website.

All the Way from China

WARNING: This is a bragging post.

This past week Jared and I spent some time up north. We went up for the LDS Booksellers Association Convention. We did not go as vendors this year because Cedar Fort, Inc. is carrying Jared's images for us now. So this year was much more enjoyable than last year.

Cedar Fort held a dinner the night before the convention started. They featured Jared and some other artists and authors. It is so fun to meet other talented and knowledgeable people. I've got it pretty easy. I just sit there and enjoy the food while listening to these people give presentations. Jared did a wonderful job with his. They also introduced the software that Jared and Bryce Mortimer have been developing this last year. It is truly amazing stuff they've been working on. Anyone with a retail business can have an amazing website very easily. We will be converting Jared's site over asap so I'll tell more about that as soon as it happens.

After the dinner, Jared and I went in to Cedar Fort's warehouse to pick up some products of Jared's images to sell. We were surprised at the amount of items they have of Jared's art. When they handed us a box I was like, "Jared, your name is printed on that." I don't know why it hit me so funny, but then Jared said, "That is almost as fun as seeing the products on store shelves." They came all the way from China that way.

After that, we went up to Tammy and Adrians to stay. The convention actually started a day later than we thought it did so we ended up just playing around the next day. Tammy and Adrian were a lot of fun to stay with. It was also two buck Tuesday at Thanksgiving Point so Jared and I went down to see the gardens. They were nicely kept, but quite frankly I was disappointed.

The next day went spent the entire time at the convention. Getting the Internet to work was a nightmare, but after it was up and running things went well from there. We were there mostly to show retailers about the website software. Everyone was thrilled about it.

They wouldn't let us take kids into the convention so we had to leave Kendi in Cedar with my parents. We let her pack her own bag. It got so big that she kept saying, "I can't lift it." She had at least ten movies, two baby dolls, random shoes and all kinds of odd things.

At the convention I was a bit bored out of my mind at first, but then I got to know Bryce's wife, Jessica. It was almost weird how much we had in common. I was so grateful to get to know her and hope that we can spend some more time together.

This has been a great week for us, but we are glad to be back home with Kendi. Sometimes its nice to get away so that it feels good when things are back to normal.

Fishing Trip

My family went up to Panguitch Lake last weekend to do some mountain biking and some fishing. Kendi and I tagged along. She talks about the mountain and how big it is all time. She was thrilled to get to go and loved watching out the window the whole way up. Until she zonked out right before we got there.
My dad has been showing Kendi his worm collection and telling her about fishing for months. He would even tie a key to end of a pole to show her how to cast a line.
Kendi kept saying, "Hey Mr. Worm. Get on there Mr. Worm. Don't fall off Mr. Worm." And then she would eat some of the marshmallows.
My dad wanted her to help reel in this fish, but all she would do was hang on to the rod.

She was so excited about catching these fish. When we first got there, there were quite a few fishermen already, but no one was catching much. My dad started bringing in fish after fish after fish. Soon enough, all the boats started congregating around my dad's spot. Some little boys whose father wasn't catching anything came over to "help" my dad with all his fish. It was funny to watch.
Aunt Cari went wading in the water with Kendi.We cooked dutch oven, rode the 4-wheeler, relaxed and watched a beautiful sunset over the lake.