Dustin my love

1. Where did you meet your husband? At BYU ward prayer. Although he said we were in a class together before that, he sat in the front, I slept in the back. (It was my minor - his major.) He thought about asking me out then, but he was on a "dating strike" - said too many girls had "played him". How funny. (oh yes - I ended that dating strike.)

2. How long did you date before you married? 8 months, broke up for 10 months, dated for another 3 months, got engaged for 5 more months. :) Got married the day WE graduated. Didn't do the walk. Through a Bouquet instead of a grad hat.

3. How long have you been married? five years.

4. What does he do that surprises you? Never swears or yells at me. He has NEVER yelled at me. I swear. He doesn't. We haven't ever had a bad fight though. He also surprises me that he never spends money. He has one thing that he buys - a playstation game every year. $50 that is his only splurge! No boy toys or junk like that. How amazing?!

5. Favorite Feature? His smile for sure. I love his waist too. It is a love-hate relation ship really. Most days it is smaller than mine, definately more tone. Hate that! But I love huggin him tight and just love his waist. Did you know that I came out one day and he was wearing my jeans? (He didn't know they were mine) Looked better on him than me! :) OUCH!


6. Favorite Quality? His kindness. He treats me SOOO good. He is an amazing husband and father. I couldn't ask for more.

7. Does he have a nickname for you? He doesn't say it so much, but when ever he writes me love notes he calls me his Bride. I love that. Makes me feel young! )

8. Favorite Food? mint chocolate chip ice cream for a treat - Chicken Spagetti for a food

9. Favorite Sport? Football, BYU Football. When BYU looses, he needs his space for a few days. :)


10. When and where was your first kiss? In my apartment at BYU, sittin on the couch. Dang like 7 years ago I guess. We had been dating like 3 months and I felt like a skank kissin so early. ;) I had told him that since I was going home for the summer I didn't want to kiss and do the whole "long distance thing" but he SWEARS that I gave hime "the look" like three times. (I DIDN'T) But I also didn't mind. :)

11. What is your favorite thing to do together? We love to play games. We play video games together, lots of board games. We also love to ski (both kinds together).

12. Do you have children? Two little girls, ages 3 & almost 2 .

13. Does he have any hidden talents? He is kinda a keep to himself kind of guy. He is wonderful at sooo many things. He is the greatest listener. He can fix any injury. He is amazing with kids. He cooks quite well and often too! :)

14. How old is he? 30


15. Who said I love you first? That is a good question. You never know with me, I don't hold a lot back. It could have been me, but I usually tried not to break that cardnal rule. It might have been him in a letter? Honey, help here? (He is laughing right now because for the longest time I couldn't get straight how many years we had been married.)

16. What is his favorite music? He loves BareNakedLadies.

17. What do you admire most about him? His forgiving, loving ways. He is the kindest man I know. He does so much for all of us, and asks for nothing in return. He is AMAZING. The best Hubby ever really. All my sisters know it too, and like to remind me how good I have it. :) Heck even my mom and dad tell me that. :)

18. What is his favorite color? Blue (BYU blue)

19. Will he read this? Someday I am sure. Since he has even posted a few of the blogs for me before. :) I know, cooks, cleans, sweet, loving, never spends money AND blogs. I know I know. SOOOOO LUCKY! :)

Well, this was due to a fun tag I saw. Never done it before. :) But it was fun to write about my superman hubby instead of just my kids all of the time! :) So I would love to hear any of your love stories . . .just copy and paste. RONNIE? :)

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! :)

Well, Grandma sent some ADORABLE Halloween Costumes just in time.
(They arrived
Halloween day
at about 3 pm!)

So glad they did, the girls were

such Beautiful Princesses!

Mia came in yelling, "Mommy, mommy, Kaylee needs to fly up in the sky!"

My other favorite of the night was watching Kaylee's inventive way of trick or treating. . .
no need to wait for anyone here!

My Girls Rock!

Today, might be the only day that you hear me say Arizona rocked! Where else can you go water skiing mid October on a beautiful afternoon 95 degrees! Yep, and all the other fellow Arizonians are such whimps (I mean the water was only 75 or 80 degrees) that there was hardly anyone on the lake! :) We got beautiful water and beautiful weather. (At least for a Washington girl.) So here is the real reason for the post. My girls 3 years and 1 1/2 years rode the tube with me!:) And I have pictures to prove it! They rode for about 10 min or so and did
GREAT! I must give Kaylee

(the youngest) the credit of being first though. Then her big sister decided to join us when she saw her little sis do it. :)

The unfortunate thing was that at some point my leg got a cramp. Mia wanted to lay down on the tube and I thought it would be a great idea if we all did. Well, Kaylee laid down, Mia did and then as I went to get myself comfortable (because of the slow speed) our tube did a nose dive in the water and acted more like a submarine than a tube. So I am trying to pick up two girls out of the water, and lean back myself to try to get the tube out of the water, it was sinking deep. :) Of course now they go from having a ball to crying hysterically. :( But I don't care. I don't think there are many kids who have the guts to do what they did at their age! I have never been prouder of them! :) (I know most of you wouldn't understand- but being a water baby myself, loving water skiing more than (dare I say) life itself, I just can't stop beaming of how awesome my kids are! Sure they didn't get on the tube again after that, but I am hoping that in a 6 months or so when we go again, the submarine saga will slip their mind and only the happy pictures here will make

them want to go again. :) (I can't help but be proud, their boy cousins that are slightly older haven't even gone on the thing! :)
OH YES KAYLEE IS STANDING ON THE TUBE!
NATURAL BORN SKIERS!

I need to give some props to My In - Laws!
Especially my Mom-in-law. I love her to death and she just rocks! Anyways, she got on the tube with her hubby too! I hope that we are the fun grandparents that they are! :) What a fun, fun day!

Some Randomness

So Mia asked her dad for a Popsicle, and upon finishing it asks him to throw it away. Mind you she only had to get off her chair, and take 2 steps to the can, Dad is across the room. I said, "what's the matter Mia, are you legs broken?" she looked up at me in all seriousness, "No, they not broken." and waited till her dad waited on the princess. (I have no idea where she learned this from. :) )

I saw a TV show with a scene that optimized my sister. ;) I will just tell is as IF my sister did it, because, it could happen any day now. :) Upon an argument with a family member she walks to the door, opens it and turns to say "I would walk right out this door right now if I had any money or a place to go."

I was folding laundry or something and I should have realized sooner than I heard the beeping of buttons being pushed on the stove that my girls were being "too good for too long" so they had to be up to something. I see them, cooking on the stove, plastic bowls of fish crackers on each burner. Luckily they were only trying to turn on the oven, because there is no beeping to catch the attention of an unsuspecting mom on the knobs for the units ! :) So I explain that they can play on the Toy kitchen we got them, but not on Mommy's kitchen because you can get burned etc. ;) Not five minutes later my 1 1/2 year old Kaylee is standing on the counter cooking something in the microwave. . . I guess they listened ?!?

I am still deciding if I am a bad mom or a good teacher. My 3 year old gets into the freezer and gets out an ego and puts it in our toaster oven by herself. My 1 1/2 year old can run the TV, VCR and DVD and know the differences for each. She even holds the DVD with one little finger i the whole in the middle, and sometimes I will catch her wiping it off on her shirt like I do to clean it. :)

Mia has now discovered super mommy spider ears and will often hear her baby crying, from in the van where she left her. Her baby also tells Mia that she needs to sleep in Kaylee's crib when she wakes up and that she needs certain night lights on.

As I stare at the mess of a house I am procrastinating cleaning by typing this, I see the Foosball table. Which my daughters also love to bring chairs to stand on to reach and play with. On day Kaylee learned her lesson. She decided to crawl up onto foosball table. Again I would have had no idea except that she started screaming because her sister decided to whack her legs with the men instead of the ball, she stood, screaming and trapped as her sister whacked away.

I am afraid that this did all happen the same day. Wow what a day! :)

The Slip

I hear my little Kaylee slip and fall in the bathroom. Poor dear. I figured she fell off the stupid step stool that she loves to play on. As she comes around the corner I bend down and give her luvs, to feel her back, bottom and the back of her hair soaking wet. I am like "what on earth?" I turn into the bathroom to find a puddle. Not just any puddle. A puddle that my older daughter Mia made when she didn't quite make it to the poddy. That's right I hugged my pee soaked daughter! I would love to say that I handled the situation with great poise, but I didn't I screamed & yelled and we all 3 had a bath. (But the ranting and raving did result in Mia never "missing" again!)

REVENGE

So this is just revenge. I got cornered by a few friends who are pictured here because I never updated my blog. Well, I don't know when the last time they threw a girls night so I could come play. Maybe if they didn't blog so much, they could! :) jk. Anyways, this was boxing on the wii. I thought I had a video, but it didn't turn out. MUCH better than the pic. oh well. So this blog is for your girls! :)

Getting Kaylee out of bed

Kaylee always wakes up later than Mia. So when she wakes up and I am busy, I tell Mia to go and keep her company. She will jump in the crib and play with her until I come get them. One day I was confused, Kaylee walked out, but I swear I didn't get her out. After the next occurrenceI finally figured it out. The video is a reenactmentof the crime.

Bumps and Bruises

So the pic on the left is just cute, the pic below shows a nice shiner that Mia got some time ago. Of course I wanted to get some family pictures taken, and she does this. Nice shiner!

T

All be it not a nice pic of me, the battle wound is quite visible in it. This has been over 2 months ago and I am still carrying a little color from this bruise on my leg. This must be how your body reacts when you try to be 20 again. :) My sisters and I went heading down the provo canyon in a couple of innertubes. Ronnie tells me that it is such a relaxing thing, you just float down and get a tan. Infact, she usually just takes her life vests and puts it under her legs, so as to not get a bad tan. Well, i would have died had I been so vain! :) First of all the water was ridiculously FREEZING. Oh yeah, the mountain run off water 1/2 up the utah moutains tends to be that way. My sisters wouldn't really know because they managed to stay in their tubes! So I was ahead of them as usual, and they said, hey, grab a branch (that hung over the waters) and just hold on so we can catch up. Well, there was a lot more snowfall this year, and the river was much higher - thus faster - than normal. I grab branch, water grabs my tube and I flip clean out! I see one of the flip flops I borrowed from my sister floating away - and frankly didn't give a rats butt. (She latter took the cost of those flip flops and deducted it from my Bday gift - nice I know.) I am just trying to get in my tube, then the rapids come. Not that big of rapids I know, but when you throw your body unexpectedly into 38 degree water, it tends to NOT BREATH very well, making getting into a run a way tube very difficult. I don't know when I got this bruise for sure, but it was somewhere between the fall and the retrieval of the tube (not the sandal). Oh yes, this picture doesn't quite do it justice either. See, the part that isn't as colorful in the middle? Well, it was raised up about 1/3 inch. It was as if someone shoved a giant pickle into my leg and left it there for several weeks. (Again I stilll have a little coloring from it 2 months later!)

So we never got a tan cause the @#$$% sun when behind the clouds as soon as we got on our tubes, and came out as we were leaving. Leaving, yes this was the SECOND time I had to encounter the water. There is a certain place that you have to get over to the right of the shore to get out at the place you leave your car. Of course I was once again a head and the current taking me away from the destination. So once again, I was in the (insert your fave adj here.)FREEZING cold water, climbing up this muddy slope. I think I scared some of the people there as they see this HUGE Bruise, on shoe, muddy and a little bloody chick hobbling back to my car. I am sure the owners were thinking... "did she sign the release?"

Trips and Growth

Kristina has been taking the girls on a travel tour of Utah and Las Vegas lately heading up there 3 times in the past month already. More will surely follow I am sure. Mia and Kaylee are both changing by the minute and no longer resemble the babies we once knew. Mia is gaining more with her vocabulary and being more and more like her mommy. She has some plastic toys that resemble Dinsney princess characters and she treats them as if they were her kids. She calls them "my girls" and heaven help the person who tries to do anything to them because Mia will surely pour out her wrath on that person to protect her girls. She is truly a caretaker.

Kaylee on the otherhand is the adventurous one. She is never hesitant to climb any obstacle. She loves playing on things whether it be a table, a couch, a bed, or somebody's shoulders or back. She is also not like her father in that she'll eat anything you put in front of her. Pickyness is definitely not in her blood right now.

So lately their trips have taken them to Utah to see their great Grandmother and then to her funeral 2 weeks later. They made a pit stop in Las Vegas to visit the Bellagio fountains and past friends there. Kristina and her sisters got speed into their blood with go-cart racing and although you'll notice their helmets on, Bree (Kristina's youngest sister) somehow managed to hit a wall during their race and knocked her helmet clean off. You'll never see never see a more competitive bunch of girls than Kristina and her sisters racing! Now the trick is to keep Kristina from driving that way on the highways!

Lately with working with the elderly Dustin is seeing some qualities and traits that lead to success in life. In the patients who get better it is the one's who are consistent and faithful to their rehab techniques who succeed. The one's who are on and off again with their rehab take longer to heal and deal with more set backs and pain. There are those who don't like doing what it takes to heal and never put forth an honest effort to get better. They would rather persist in the "sick" roll or suffer with the pain for ever than do what is necessary. The funny thing is, rehab is a relatively easy process to go through. It just requires showing up and doing what is necessary. The comparison is the same for life. Being successful is relatively easy, but the hard part is getting ourselves to show up and to be consistent with what is required of us. Success lies in doing and fulfilling your duty or your role in whatever it is you are doing. Everything else always falls into place if you do your part.

So I turned 30 this year! I deal a lot with the elderly and the most often heard quote is "Don't get old". Well, that's kind of impossible to do and I am learning that those who enjoy life the most are those who complain the least about it.

Our girls are growing up and imitating their parents more and more. Mia, as you can see, imitates her mom by wearing PJs all the time. If you don't mind losing a finger, just try and take them off her! Mia is also getting adept at

repeating her dad's frustrations while driving with frequent repeating of

"What the heck are you doing?" and then dad hears her and with a sudden realization what just happened says out loud "Oh crap!" followed by Mia's "oh crap", which is then followed by dad's "Dang-it!" with Mia again repeating "Dang-it". Yeah, dad is still learning that Mia is good at copy cat games.

Kaylee is now a full fledged furniture climber and is great at following you around. She is just now getting her first teeth and is still gifted with being able to create a piercing, loud cry. She also does a great job at making you forget that cry with being able to smile and laugh at will!


The quote of the day belongs to the Simpsons and the character Apu who is suddenly faced with the challenge of being a new father to 8 babies. After weeks of being frazzled with the babies he is found sleeping amongst the babies in their room when his wife wakes him to go to work. Apu says"Oh, I just had the most beautiful dream where I died." Sometimes we all feel like that! Thankfully it never happens.