Farming With Grandpa

I have been promising Taylee for a couple weeks that I will take her out onto the harvest combine with Grandpa. Every morning she asks me if she gets to ride on 'nice Frank' (from "Cars") and gets so upset when I tell her no. Well, today I got to tell her yes and she was so excited.

While we were waiting for Grandpa to come close to the car, I kept warning Taylee that it might be loud, hoping that if she was prepared for the noise she wouldn't be scared. But my brave little girl just informed me that she would simply cover her ears (duh, mommy). When the combine got close she held my hand really tight, but when my dad stopped so we could get on, she turned to glare at me and said, "Mommy, its not loud. It's quiet-loud." (whoops! my bad.)

We had so much fun riding with Grandpa. He was so good about explaining to Taylee what the combine was doing, using things that Taylee would understand...the knives, a straw, an arm. She loved it and kept talking about it in the car ride home.

Taylee was prepared for the ride with Grandpa with two 'pink candies.' Grandpa and Taylee have a contest every time they are together of who can suck on these candy and get it the smallest without biting. Taylee is pretty good at it. Unfortunately, Grandpa won today by default. As Taylee was trying to show Grandpa how small her candy had gotten it fell out of her mouth onto the floor of the combine and Mommy wouldn't let her put it back in her mouth (such a mean mommy).

Here we are on the combine.

Taylee making kissy-faces at the camera with Grandpa behind us.

Taylee's point of view

Thank-you Grandpa for letting us come out and see what you do. Taylee is excited to eat her cereal cuz now she knows that Grandpa helps to make it!

New Store

Sean's new store in Rexburg opened today and we are so excited. Between lease agreements, jealous competitors, and constant trips to Rexburg it has been a serious pain! But it has been well worth it cuz it looks awesome!

Here is the front of the store. It always takes a while to get signs approved by Verizon, so until that hectic process is done, a banner will do, right?

Here is the 'before' shot. It was a T-Mobile store, hence the pink and grey walls :-). This was the night that Sean and I pulled carpet up for three hours! We had to stop about five feet from the front door because there was 'rock carpet.' Sounds pretty cool, right? WRONG. It was tiny pebbles glued to the cement! It took Sean and two other men almost a full day to chisel that stuff away. So, please never ever use rock carpet!
Here is an 'after' picture, though it is not the best angle (I really should have been at your class, Cami!). This was the night that we cleaned all the construction stuff out, organized the inventory and office supplies, and scrubbed everything down. We had the girls with it, and I'm not sure if they were more help or hinderance...oh well, it was still a lot of fun to do it together.

Here is just a side note to the new location. This is the view from the front sidewalk. And whenever I see it I have to smile. This is Carousel Court!! This is where I spent my first year at Ricks College/BYUI!! I have the best memories there. Great roommates, great friends, great school. I seriously loved it! Not to mention, my first kiss with Sean was on that deck...wow, that was a long time ago!

I Finally Did It!

For everyone who has been pestering me (you know who you are!), I finally got my vinyl accentz site up. It only took me three months! Not bad for me, eh? t is linked with the recipe site. Hope you enjoy it!

I'm Getting Worse...

Golf. Golf. Golf. Ok, so it has been a good month since the last time I went golfing and I have been so proud that I am slowly getting better. Well, I went today with Sean and somehow I got worse (maybe the month break from it?!?). On the first hole I about threw my club! I just couldn't hit that stupid ball for anything. But, luckily for Sean, I quickly calmed down when I realized how stupid I was being and we had a great time.
Except, before we went I told Sean that I wanted to walk the entire course. Why not, right? Its about four hours to play the course and its at a pretty relaxed pace so I thought it would be a nice workout. But, like always, I did not think this decision all the way through. We went at noon. It was 95 degrees. It was hot!! I don't think we will do that again :-)
By the way, Sean played awesome today. He had his best round ever with a 79. It is the first time that he has shot in the 70s and he has been pretty happy ever since. I was amazed by how well he is doing. His drives make me sick...it takes me at least 3 shots to reach his 1. And he can sink putts from like 15 feet out without even trying...it takes me about 4 hits to get it in from the same place. But, luckily if I have a great par 3 and he has a bad one, we sometimes have the same score (4), so then I feel better about my golf game :-). I think he might do this on purpose though, but thats ok, sometimes I need the confidence boost after I have quit counting my strokes on the previous couple holes!

Playing With Our Food

Taylee has always loved letters and numbers. She amazes me with how quickly she learns things. Right now we are working on simple addition and reading and writing simple words (like cat, dog, bat, etc.) But her favorite word is her name. She is always writing T-A-Y-L-E-E out on any piece of paper that she can find, types it on the computer, uses Sean's label machine to make her own labels, and moves the letter magnets on the fridge to spell it. We find her name all over the place. Well, today during our snack time (in the midst of our princess dress-up time :-), she amazed us again with her creativity!

Monday Morning Fun

I just love my girls! They make me laugh all the time. Just Monday morning as I was trying to put my house back together after the weekend, they both kept doing things that made me laugh. Here is Bryns helping me to clean. She pushed this broom around for about a half hour! (Which was wonderful cuz it kept her from trying to break her neck climbing all over EVERYTHING!!)
Taylee walked up to me with two balloons stuffed into her shirt. But the best part was when she said, "Look Mommy, I've got pads like you!" (She thinks they are called 'pads' from when I used breast pads when I was nursing Bryns). Hmmm...I don't know if I should feel complimented or insulted...good thing she's only three. Plus, she is so freaken cute!

Learned my Lesson...

It feels that every week when Sunday morning rolls around, my house becomes the center of complete utter chaos! Whether I wake up at 6 or at 8 it always feels that I am running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Does anyone else feel this way??

This morning I was stressing out of control to get to church on time. I have not taken the sacrament for three weeks and I am feeling it. (We were in McCall over two weekends and the girls were sick last week.) I was frustrated with the girls for not listening (well, not listening fast enough) and I was frustrated with Sean for not knowing exactly what I needed him to do exactly when I needed it...again, sorry honey...

By the time we got to church (only five minutes late!), we were all frustrated with each other. Well, we sat down and everything was going okay, but then right as we were starting to sing the sacrament hymn, Bryns went crazy. She started headbutting me in the chest and wiggling all over the place trying to get down. When I didn't let her loose, she began to scream at the top of her lungs. To top it all off, we had a senior missionary welcome home so our meeting was PACKED! As everyone turned to find out whose child was screaming at the top of their lungs, I rushed out to the hallway. I thought I would still be okay to get the sacrament, but the foyer that I was in was skipped for some reason...maybe they knew there were quite a few unhappy babies out there :-)

So, the lesson that I learned today was that I should not rush everyone into a frenzy on Sunday morning. Not only does it ruin the Sabbath morning mood for my family and myself, but in the end, as long as I have young children, I really don't have a lot of control over what happens. So, hopefully, no more crazy-Sunday-morning-mommy will appear in my house. Heavenly Father definitely has a way to teach us what our priorities should be.