Where have I been... I will tell you!

So, I know I said I was going to blog every day a short journal entry and well, let's just say I haven't. But, I am going to take advice from my younger, sometimes smarter, sister Lauren. She says, stop apologizing because you don't have time to blog. It usually just means you have been busy doing fun things or with your family or doing something else you should be doing. So STOP IT! So I am not apologizing or making excuses for why I haven't blogged, I am just going to tell you where I was.

I was lucky enough to go to Education Week with my Mom last week and let's just say it was so refreshing. Then the kids started school, so we have been busy with life, enjoying each other, getting used to routines and yes, when I am not enjoying my family I will take some time to list a few of my favorites from Education Week.

I just have to note one funny thing from Tenley... after the first day of school. She said, "Guess what? A girl asked me to be her best friend and I said yes!" So, I said, "What's her name?" Tenley said "I dont know." I guess knowing someones name is not a prequalifier for being a best friend...go figure.

August 16, 2009 Sunday

Cooler but sunny. We had a hard time getting up today since we stayed up until after 1:00 AM watching Prison Break. It was worth it, but we were, oh so tired! Good thing church wasn't until 11:00. We learned about celestial marriage in sunday school today. I love having these reminder lessons on principles that we already know about. It just reinforces the gratitude I have for these blessings that, unfortunately, we so often take for granted. I don't know what I would do living my life with out knowing that our family can be together forever. If I thought that once we died it was over that would be so sad. It gives me great comfort to know that the family is what matters, that being together and doing righteous things is the most important. It's so easy to get caught up in wanting "things" when all I really want is an eternal family. I am so grateful for the temple and for the knowledge and blessings I have because of it. I hope I can live each day with a thankful heart for these things.

After church today, my Mom, Adrienne and I did a couple of crosswords. Learned a new meaning for the word "gins" it means to trap. Didn't know that. We have started keeping a dictionary close to look up words we don't know and that has helped a lot! The Memmotts came over again for dinner, so that was a super treat! We love seeing them, especially Ryder and Lindsays growing belly :). It is amazing how much Ryder is talking and doing every time we see him. After dinner we played Catch phrase and then we headed outside for a rousing game of Foursquare. For those of you who haven't played that one since fourth grade you should bust it out with your family. We just do it in the driveway with a playground ball we bought at wal-mart and it is awesome. Lauren and Tanner stopped by on their way to Logan from Price and they joined in the game too. We had about 11 of us playing, rotating in, and it was so much fun. Well, my Mom and I are off to education week at BYU and the kids are going to Omie and Papa's for the week. I am so excited. Looking through the catalog at all the choices of what to learn and how to improve myself is a little overwhelming but exciting nonetheless. I will definately keep notes and post some of my favorites from each day. I will miss my kiddies and my hubby so much but I am looking forward to one last vacation before school starts next monday!

August 15, 2009 Saturday...is a special day, it's the day we get ready for my birthday :)

So today was my birthday. One year older and wiser too, right? Well, I know about the one year older, the wiser part, maybe on account of doing crosswords! I know at least my vocabular has increased some. Well, it was a very nice day. I slept in, had a sesame bagel and a diet coke, did a crossword with my Mom. I couldn't have asked for a more perfect morning! My Mom and I then left to go do some errands...Costco, grocery store and since we were out we couldn't pass up lunch, especially a Fish Taco from Rubios. This might be my new favorite, especially since it qualifies as a sweet deal... One Taco, with chips and a side of beans and a drink for $4.95! Both of us at for less than $12. We got home and I played some solitaire (with REAL cards, not on the computer) I do have to say that not having to redeal every two seconds when you lose is quite a nice feature of computer solitaire. Everyone else was getting dinner ready. We had BBQ beef, scones, Corn on the cob and watermelon. It was soooooo yummy. Lindsay, Riley and Ryder came over to eat with us. Cole made a brownie fruit pizza, which was also delicious. We played Snorta and Would you Rather after dinner. After we cleaned up Norm and I watched four episodes of Prison Break. These are a few of my favorite things.... I couldn't have asked for better things to do on my birthday. Well, being on a cruise would be nice but since we were not being at home with my family playing games is the best!

August 14, 2009 Friday

Warm, some clouds, some rain...a storm is a-brewin! We spent most of the day at home. I did laundry, did Grayco work for my Dad, and caught up on some email, regular mail etc. Norm and I have been on this Prison Break kick and I realized at 4:45 that I didn't get the Netflix DVD in the mail so I snatched the girls up and made a mad dash to the post office. Just the thing you want to be doing at nearly 5:00... out running around in traffic. We hit the library to pick up Pride and Prejudice (the A&E version), Chitty Chitty Ban Bang DVD, the Great Gatsby DVD and the book. I don't think I ever read it, maybe did the Cliffs Notes but I am trying to make up for lost reading. I have always loved to read but in High School when these good books were required reading I was caught up in Stephen King (don't ask me why). So I pretty much "read" the Cliffs Notes. I don't recommend this to anyone, either reading Stephen King or cheating witht he Cliffs Notes. So anyway, I am intrigued by some of these "classics" and am trying to read some of them. We did easy friday night dinner, made our own wraps and then we cuddled up on the couch and watched Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Since it was a library disc it had many scratches, so we had to skip a few scenes. Hence, a nearly 3 hour long movie was shortened quite a bit, which was fine by me. I think I had slept through a lot of that movie before.

August 13, 2009 Thursday

Hot, windy and a little rain. The day started out quiet. We got right to our chore for the day: organizing the girl's dressers. I tried to keep the drawers clean by allowing them one drawer to shove in. They are "allowed" to shove their jammies. I thought this would get their clothes shoving fix by doing this and all the other drawers would stay neatly folded. Sounds logical, right? Well, apparently kids brains don't work on the same wave length as their Mom's semi-OCD organizing brain. Well, we had to take ALL the clothes out and fold them, DI some, and put some into the laundry. Shoving dirty clothes is NEVER okay....yucky! After that we had to all shower and then I got to dry three hair-dos. I have to keep a fan pointed in the bathroom because a hair dryer will generate a lot of heat and you don't want to get sweaty after you just showered! We left the house at noon to meet Adrienne in Payson at Hogi-Yogi for lunch. Thanks Adrienne for lunch. Yummy homestyle Turkey on Foccacia bread. I do have to make a "cheap" comment... $25 for two adults and two kids at a sandwhich place. WOW! It was good but sheesh. Anyway, off to Adrienne's school where we stayed until 5:15 helping her set up her classroom. She is doing a music theme so I helped her do her door where she can display all her kids names and photos. We drew music staffs where she can put their names and pictures on notes and title it "Miss Gray's Musical staff" Tenley watched Robin Hood and helped sort some things, open packages of prizes, put books in desks and unpackage binders. Madison helped put paper in binders, put books in desks, organize book shelves. We got home about 6:00 and Norm and I headed out to meet Kam and Brandy for dinner at Su Casa. They wanted to take me out for my birthday since they will be out of town this weekend. Now speaking of a good deal.... four adults for DINNER at a sit down restaurant with tax $31!

Hand Hugs...oooooooh

So, this might be the funniest thing ever! Well, at least in our family, anyway. I think it was on or around Father's Day, the girls were going to bed and going around giving everyone hugs. Apparently there was someone they couldn't get close enough to give a real hug. So Tenley said I'll give you a hand hug. Here's how it goes: Two people extend their arms out and hold onto each others fingertips, make this lovey face and go ooooooooh. That is a hand hug!

August 12, 2009 Wednesday

HOT, but not that I would know. I felt like a basement hermit today. I actually had a jacket and my slipper socks on all day. I was doing work for my Dad and sitting at a desk with the air conditioner blowing on me. I was so surprised when I came upstairs to finish getting dinner ready when they said it was 100 degrees! I have been freezing all day! So, as I said, I spent the majority of my day at the computer doing Grayco work for my Dad, going through mail and bills (blech) and laundry (double blech). Since we are still on Girls Only Days this week with Cole at camp, I had told the girls they had the morning to play, after they did their chores of course. I LOVE that they still play together, that even though Maddy is almost 11, she still likes to play "Big Girls", which is pretty much the same as house. They play with their babies, play cooking show, play office, and pet store. They played until about 2:30 and then we sat down to watch My Fair Lady, which I LOVE, but it does NOT need to be three hours long! I painted Maddy's toes and fingernails, Tenley passed. She was all snuggled up in a down comforter laying on the couch. See, I told you it was cold! After dinner the girls made up their own words to a song from Sponge-Bob (for those of you who are familiar, its the song from Pearls 16th b-day... Boys Who Cry, i think) and sang the four verses to us with actions of course :) What a treat!

August 11, 2009 Tuesday

Hot, I much prefer the cooler 70s we had over the weekend. I am ready for fall now! I had actually planned to go down to Adrienne's classroom to help her do some organizing today and she called me about 9:00 last night and we changed to Thurdsay. So, I woke up this morning with nothing really planned to do. It was quite nice. My Mom and I did a crossword, for those of you who don't know, we are kind of addicted. I then spent some time emailing, reading others blogs, etc. The girls and I watched the finale of So You Think You Can Dance (one of our favorites). We made a "picnic" lunch and ate on TV trays while we watched. After it was over we headed out to run a few errands. We want to watch My Fair Lady while we are having "girl days" since Cole is at scout camp. We went to the library to pick it up. Ran into Old Navy and TJ MAXX. we are doing family pictures in ten days and we need orange, brown, green or cream shirts. Luckily the only one that needed to buy one was Cole. So, being the bargain shopper that I am, I found a shirt for $6 at Old Navy. Then I found a t-shirt and some plaid shorts for Cole for School at TJ... entire outfit with tax $9.39! I love bargain shopping.

This reminds me of a conversation I had with Cole when were out shopping a couple of weeks ago. He has been asking to go into Aeropostale, so we went in to search the clearance racks. He was quite surprised at the regular prices on the clothes.. $49.50 for a pair of shorts! In the van after he says "Wow, those clothes are expensive." I proceeded to explain that in the real world of shopping, not the bargain world, those prices were pretty normal and quite a bit less than other stores. I told him some people pay over $100 for jeans. He was flabergasted that people would pay that much. I again explained that he was just used to shopping with me and we only look for "super sweet deals" Basically anything less than ten bucks, less than 8 is even better. He begins to ponder, looking out the window. After about a minute he turns to me and says, "Does that mean we are cheap?" Luckily this was one time I actually thought of a good response when I needed it, not an hour later. I just said, "No, it means we are smart!" I think he bought it. Hopefully it lasts and he doesn't start demanding $50 shorts, because that is not a Super sweet deal in the Warren family. Oh, by the way, we walked out of Aero with two polos, two t-shirts and a hoodie for $44! Love the clearance racks!

Boondocks

Maddy and her 500 tickets
Mini Golf

Laster Tag...watch out, these are some seriously inexperienced laser taggers!

I almost forgot another sweet summer activity we had. My Mom's AFLAC company party was at Boondocks this year. It's been at raging waters in the past which has been fun too. We were excited to go. I was especially excited that we only had to buy Tenley a ticket and the rest of us got to use my Mom's free passes. I am confident that we would never spend the $125 it would have cost us to buy 5 unlimited day passes. We loved the Bumper Boats, especially cole loved following me around and pelting me in the back. The back of my head looked like I had just got out of the shower. One of the days I am grateful for curly hair! The gocarts were fun, and the kids enjoyed mini golf a little more on the upscale course. Maddy was just too hot and bored with the golf. They loved the arcades (I loved that we got over 80 free tokens with our passes) MAddy hit the jackpot, literally on a spin the wheel game and got 500 Tickets! I wanted to scoop her up and take her to Vegas :) We all played Laser tag which was a first and I surprisingly enjoyed it. It would be so much fun if everyone in there was people you knew.

Big weekend for Tenley

I mentioned earlier that we have been slacking on our parenting duties, such as the tying of shoes and bike riding. Well, I can now say these are checked off! Tenley successfully tied her shoes, she rode her bike, but she says she didn't. We cannot quite figure out why she is so grumpy about this. She does it and then stops and gets off and says its hard. I wish I could open her brain up and see what she is thinking!

August 10, 2009 Monday

Pantry Before
Pantry After

Glass Jar of Honey meets concrete

The day started too early...5:30 am wake up call to get Cole off to scout camp! It is still weird to imagine that he is old enough to be gone from us for six days! He was excited and hopefully had a great time! The girls and I got our working clothes on (which means we stayed in our jammies) and got to cleaning. We did bathrooms and the kitchen and vacuumed. We had lunch, showered, finally got dressed and got ready to tackle the pantry. It was in need of a serious clean up. Tenley helped for a couple shelves and lost interest and she curled up on the couch with a book. Since Maddy didn't care, it meant she got more vacuum and can organizing time I just let her read. We filled up an entire black garbage bag, I have no idea how there was that much trash in the place where we keep our food! We organized, sorted and hauled extra food down to the storage room. Which leads us into another project. Tenley was carrying a canning jar full of honey, she was trying to pull the string to turn on the light and oops... you can imagine, glass jar of honey meets concrete. This may have been one of the worst clean ups in 13 years of kid raising... although a gallon of milk on the garage floor was fun too! I then sorted and matched up tupperware and lids, threw out a paper sack full of unmatched items, which led to vacuuming cupboards. Now I am tired!

Summer activities...

I just saw a good idea on someone elses blog. Since summer was busy and they got behind they just posted a list of what they had done so they wouldn't forget. I know I will never go back and catch up so here goes (THANKS JEN!)



Memorial Day -
Mini Golf (our first time as a family... the kids weren't nearly as impressed as I used to be at the 49th street galleria)

Bridal Veil falls- much more impressive

Visiting the cemeteries - we have a tradition of visiting the cemeteries and taking flowers. I made a goal by next year to have a memory book made. I want to find pictures and info about the ancestors we are visiting and also list specific information about where the headstones are. I don't know if i could find them without my Mom. The kids don't know hardly any of the people and there are quite a few that I never met so we thought a book would be a good idea. Hopefully a year is enough time to get that one done!

Cookout up Butterfield Canyon - never forget Norm and Riley making their own rope swing, hilarious to watch and even more fun to watch everyone swing!

May 29th

Family trip to the Bear Lake Cabin... fourwheeler/ranger ride, getting stuck in the snow, Lauren teaching the kids yoga (heehee... love the cat one)

June 18
Rick and Alli's wedding... my cousin Alli got married and we were glad to be here so we could attend the wedding at the Bountiful temple. We had never been there before it was so pretty. They had their reception at Red Butte Gardens, another place we had not been. It was also very beautiful.
July 11
Sean and Meri's wedding... another cousin on my Mom's side, got married in Mapleton. They had their rehearsal dinner at the Train Depot downtown, a yummy mexican food restaurant we had not been before. Their wedding was at this adorable barn in mapleton. The ceremony, conducted by my cousin Nate, was out by the lake. They had a delicious dinner inside the barn, some of the yummiest chicken and potatoes ever! We were leaving to go to the cabin for the reunion so we missed the dancing, which we heard about and wished we hadn't. It was a beautiful day, at a unique and fabulous place. I absolutely loved it. They gave out little jars of honey as a gift!

July 12-15
Clark Family Reunion at Bear Lake. This was a first but hopefully not a last. We had such a great time with almost 50 people there. We boated, golfed, hiked, earned beads for our necklaces, did trivia, looked at the 150 pictures we had taped up all over the cabin, karaoked, danced, layed on the beach and did crossword puzzles. It was so great to be all together and it was a time we will never forget!

July 4

Fourth of July in Idaho Falls. We had a BBQ and went to the best fireworks show EVER! We love the Melaleuca fireworks. The kids painted outside and Norm's Mom made tons of yummy food, as always.

July 24-26

We went to Mirror Lake, for something different, and apparently a bazillion other people had the same idea. It was so crowded. We found a picnic table but there were just so many cars everywhere, so even though we were nearly 10,000 feet up it felt like we were in the city. Norm and Riley were pretty ticked about it. I still really enjoyed myself. The kids fished a little, but didn't catch anything. I brought catch phrase to play but couldn't convince Norm to hang around. The Nehmers brought KFC and we made potato salad, watermelon and chocolate chip squares. Lindsay fell walking across the stream carrying Ryder. Luckily the only injury was a pretty good whack to her ankle.

On the 25th, we picked Sydney (our neice) up at the airport. She was heading to China to teach English and got to stay with us for a few days. They live in Virginia so we don't each other much so we thoroughly enjoyed having her. We went to the rodeo in Pleasant Grove. It was Sydney's first and I think she liked it, other than it was too long! 2 1/2 hours...YIKES. She did say she had never seen so many Bump-its in her life... I had to agree:).

On Sunday the 26th, Norm's parents and sister Becca drove down from IF to see Syd (and us too). We met at Temple square where they have some friends, the Meikles, serving a mission in the transaltion department. They took us on a tour around temple square, the conference center and in the translation department. It was amazing to see all the languages they work on. I felt really uneducated when there were over 20 languages I had NEVER heard of! It was really hot and we walked alot! We were going to go up the canyon for a picnic but we were all too tired and hot so we hopped on Trax and went to the foodcourt at Gateway! Almost the same as a picnic :)

August

This week Cole is at Scout Camp and the week after I am going to Education Week with my Mom and then school starts!

August 9, 2009 Sunday

Warmer and sunny. Creeping back up to the 90s. Not my favorite. Slept in until 9:00, showered 5 people, dried and flat ironed three hair-dos, norm ironed for four, breakfast, and out the door at 10:45. Nice day at church. Learned about temples in Gospel Doctrine. How we cannot reach salvation without the dead and they cannot without us. Learned how important it is for us to sacrifice our time to get to the temple more. Learned about Charity in Relief Society. Always a good boost to urge us to love each other more. Took a good nap. Those who didn't nap watched Back to the Future. Didn't remember that much swearing... YIKES. The old PG rating of 1985 is not the same! Took Tenley to the parking lot at the club house to get her to ride a two wheeler. She can do it but she keeps saying it's hard and puts her feet down but she totally can do it. Now we just need her to tie her shoes. Wow, we are dragging our feet with our "baby" almost 8 and just riding a bike and tying her shoes. We are kind of slackers. Good thing we didn't have 17 or they'd be lucky to be graduating high school and being able to tie their shoes :)

August 8, 2009 Saturday

Cooler and breezy. We are really enjoying this cooler weather in the 70s. Its supposed to be back up in the 90s in a few days so we will thoroughly enjoy it. We spent the morning doing some tidying and cleaning up. The girls spent the morning organizing their kitchen and baby things we brought down from Idaho. Cole mowed the lawn and then spent most of the day getting his things together for Scout camp. He leaves on Monday for six days! He realized he didn't have enough socks or unmentionables to last the week so we had to run a few errands later in the day. Norm spent most of the morning trying to register for classes that start in two weeks. Helping him look throught the catalog was making me itchy to learn something. Madison got a call about 3:30 to go to a friends and the rest of us went out to run some errands. We hit Wal Mart for camp stuff and groceries. We then ran into blockbuster to get some movies. Norm and I are on a Prison Break kick and are almost done with two seasons. They have been really good but not sure how the next one will be. We also rented Swiss Family Robinson and Back to the Future for familiy movies. We picked Maddy up and went to Sams came home and fixed some dinner. Watched prison break until midnight and then to bed!

August 7, 2009

Cold and windy (in Idaho) We got up and it was only 55 degrees and windy. Norm, Cole and I drove out to our house to do some packing. Cole got busy mowing the 2 foot high weeds. One and a half hours later and a couple of blisters the weeds were gone! Norm and I worked in the garage and in the storage room. We were glad it wasn't hot since we don't have air conditioning. Madison and Tenley stayed with Omie and Papa. They took Togo for a walk with Papa, Maddy helped Papa build a gate and they got to paint. We got back to their house about 1:15 and they had BBQ hamburgers ready for us for lunch. We headed out about 2:30. We got home about six and hit Wendy's dollar menu for dinner. We let everyone pick three thing off the $ menu so all five of us can eat for $16.

August 6,2009

Hot, sunny, windy. The kids and I left the house about 11:00 to go run some errands and get to a hair appointment. We went to the mall to look for some shirts for the girls school. We had some coupons for chick-fil-a. The four of us at for $7.50! Quite a bargain. We went to the bank and then to Brandy's for the girl's before school haircuts. We love Brandy and the girls love that she gives them highlights for school. This was the first time in a LONG time that the girls got different haircuts! Tenley got hers a-line bobbed to her chin and Madison went for a little longer with her ends really textured so it flips out. Both are so cute and they are ready for school.

We got home about 4:30 and left to head up to Idaho to pack some things up. We got there about 9:30 and went to bed.

Daily Journal

So, I was helping my Mom clean out her storage room and we found a daily journal of my Great Grandmother. She just wrote a paragraph each day of what they did, what the weather was like, and occassionally included a random price of something they bought. I thought I could handle that kind of journaling so that is my new goal. So hopefully you will see a daily record of what goes on in the Warren household!

August 5, 2009

Hot today. Took Madison and Tenley to register for 5th and 2nd grade at Bennion Elementary. The principal, Mr. Layton, gave us a personal tour. It seems like a great school. We are excited to get school started. Cole is making Peanut Butter and Fudge Oatmeal bars. We had spaghetti and garlic cheese biscuits for dinner. Madison and Tenley have been playing office today. Norm was practicing for his math placement test at Salt Lake Community College tomorrow. It was fun trying to remember things I learned over 18 years ago!

We have been in a state of "unstructuredness"... if that's a word...

We moved down to Utah the first of April since jobs for Norm died off in Idaho over the winter. We have been trying to sell our house and we have been living with my Mom and Dad. We were only going to be there for two months but it has now been four. We never wanted to set up anything "permanent" at my parents but living "unstructuredly" (again not sure if that's a word) has been kind of chaos. It's been more like we have been on vacation for four months. Which if we were on a beach somewhere that might be cool. But, when you are actually not on vacation and you live like you are it is not good. We have realized that we will probably be here another four months so we decided to set up a "structured" environment (nor a permanent) one. We spent the day today rearranging and cleaning up in my parents basement. We were able to get Cole in his own room and the girls in their room with a bunk bed to share. My Mom was willing to move her office to another place in the house so we could do this. We are so thankful to both my parents for letting us live with them for a while. We finally got the computer set up in our room with internet so maybe I can actually blog now.

I probably won't go back and play total catch up but I will go back over the last month since we had many activities in July.

Here are a few things from June...

Glad to be back in the blogging world...I spent almost an hour looking at all the blog posts I've missed.

Maddy did a summer track progam during June and July. It was a new thing for our family so it was a lot of fun to watch the events. Her favories were the 4 x 100 relay, the 100 M dash, the long jump. She ran the 400 meter once and didn't love that so she switched to the 200 but those are not her favorite. She wants to do hurdles next time. Hopefully she will keep it up!


The girls found a chocolate face mask that Maddy got at an Achievement Days activity. They had fun playing "spa". It actually smelled like chocolate... a little weird!

Aunt Lauren said "sure you can have all this old make-up"... here is what happens when little girls go to town with free reign of make up. YIKES!