Happy 30th Birthday Cody!!

For Cody's 30th birthday Riley and I made a list of the 30 reasons we love him.

We love Daddy because... (Riley did come up with these on his own)
1. He reads books to me.
2. He helps me put my blankie on.
3. He gives me treats.
4. He gives me presents.
5. He plays games with me.
6. He pushes me on the swings, but not too high.
7. He loves me.
8. He tells the truth.
9. He gives great hugs. (They really are the best hugs.)
10.He makes me laugh.

Now it's my turn, I love Cody because...
11. He never lets me stay mad, no matter how hard I try.
12. He makes me feel safe.
13. He is always willing to help me around the house.
14. He works hard.
15. He loves helping people.
16. He has a big heart.
17. He is patient with me.
18. He is my best friend.
19. He knows me inside and out and for some reason he still loves me.
20. He listens to me.
21. He always supports me in anything I do.
22. He is a wonderful father.
23. He takes care of me and Riley.
24. He is very considerate and thoughtful.
25. He brings out the best in me.
26. He is selfless.
27. He is sensitive to others’ feelings. (That’s why he’s such a good counselor.)
28. He puts up with all of my crap and never complains.
29. He is a great kisser.
30. He loves me unconditionally.

We hope you have a wonderful birthday! We love you very much!

Homemade Fun!!

One of my friends had this posted on her blog and I finally decided to bite the bullet and post it on mine too. I personally just did it to get a free prize! I have no clue what I'll make, I guess it will depend on the person that gets the gift from me.

The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me! My choice. For you. This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:

1. I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
2. What I create will be just for you.
3. It'll be done this year. That gives me a good eleven months to get it done!
4. You have no clue what it's going to be. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!
5. I reserve the right to do something extremely strange (but don't expect my gift to be too strange because I am not good at coming up with strange things:).

The catch? Oh, the catch is that you must repost this on your blog and offer the same to the first 5 people who do the same on your blog. The first 5 people to do so and leave a comment telling me they did win a FAB-U-LOUS homemade gift by me! *Oh, and be sure to post a picture of what you win when you get it!*

Polly Heath

My Aunt Polly passed away yesterday morning. About two years ago Polly was diagnosed with Cirrhosis of the liver. The doctors gave her about a 50/50 chance of making it two years. At that time she decided she wanted to spend more time with family. Polly lived close to my grandparents in Virginia, but it had been a long time since she had seen my Mom, her only sister.

(left to right: Polly, my Mom, and my Uncle Steve)

She came and visited my Mom in the summer of 2007. Cody and Riley were able to meet her and we were able to spend a lot of time with her. Riley and Polly developed an instant bond, they were buddies. Everytime we were at my parents house, Riley would immediately go looking for Polly. We were lucky enough to see Polly again that Christmas when she came with my grandparents and then once more this past summer.

Shortly after Polly returned from her last trip here in Utah she was diagnosed with cancer. Some of you may remember that my Mom then went to Virginia for 9 weeks to help take care of her and my grandparents. Over a week ago Polly took a definite turn for the worse and my Mom quickly returned to say her final good-bye. Polly was asleep most of the time but the nurse said that she knew Polly could hear her family talk to her. At one point my Mom started talking about Riley and Polly opened her eyes and smiled.

I'm so grateful that Riley was able to meet Polly. They loved eachother so much. I'm also very grateful that I was able to gain more of a relationship with Polly these past few years. I'm sorry for the pain that she has endured and I am grateful that she has finally been released from that pain. We are also grateful for the knowledge that we have that we will someday see Polly again.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

It's taken me a while to finally write something about our Christmas break, so here it goes, sorry if it's a little long.

We are lucky to have Cody working at a school so we got a full two weeks off and we spent one week of that with my family. We arrived at my parents, in Farmington, on Christmas Eve. We made cookies for Santa, and then we spent an eternity in the kitchen preparing food for the next day.

Even Cody and my brother, Scott, decorated a few cookies.

Riley was so excited for Santa to come, I thought he'd never fall asleep. Every little noise he heard he'd jump up and say, "Who's that?" He finally fell asleep around 11:30 and then Santa finally came. Santa came through and Riley got his glowing red light saber. But the biggest hit was a plane that he got to go with his GeoTrax train set.

My whole family was there for Christmas. My sister Michelle and her family came from Arkansas, Robyn and her family came from California, and Hope took the long trek from Layton. Oh and of course my brother Scott was there. Not everyone was staying at my parent's because there's just too many of us. This leads into the most exciting part of Christmas. Christmas night we looked outside and noticed that it had been snowing and the driveway was covered. If you know my parent's house, you know that this is definitely a problem. If you don't know my parent's house let me describe it to you. My parent's live on main street in Farmington but the house is set up on a hill so the driveway is a big steep hill. If there is just a little bit of snow on the driveway your car can slide all the way down and across the street into the neighbor's yard in a matter of seconds. So when we saw the snow we knew there was only one way to get down and go home, SHOVEL it. So some of the men went out and started shoveling. The problem was that the snow was coming so fast that once a patch was cleared, it was quickly covered again. Cody told me that he needed someone to come and salt the driveway, so I immediately went looking for the salt only to find out that my Dad only had about 2 cups left! This definitely was not going to cover the driveway. Now the dilemma was that we had 3 families parked at the top of the hill that needed to get down to go home but we needed salt in order to do this. My nephew Josh decided that he was going to brave the driveway and drive down so he could go buy salt. Now remember, this is Christmas night, where was he going to go? Farmington isn't really hopping with retailers and everything they had was, of course, closed. So that wasn't going to help. Finally, I found out that my mom had some salt in her car that she was going to use for gifts. I promised to buy her more if we could just use the salt now. I went back in the house and told everyone that the men were going to clear the driveway one more time and salt it and then they had about 5 minutes to get down the driveway!! Now the funny thing was that it still wasn't as easy to just drive down the driveway, picture this: At the top of the hill someone was in their car prepared to drive down, the rest of their family was walking down the hill just in case something unexpected happened, then someone was standing across the street to watch for cars. Once the coast was clear the person driving the car would carefully go down the driveway and then park so that the rest of the family could get in. What a fun time!! Luckily, everyone got to where they needed to be safely.

Friday, after Christmas, my niece Mati was baptized. I thought there was a lot of family at my parent's house for Christmas (24). That was nothing, add my brother-in-law's family and our total was 74 people at the baptism!!

Saturday morning we had family pictures done. This might be the last time ALL of my family is together. Michelle's kids are quite a bit older. Her son, Josh, will probably getting married this year and her son, Jared, will be going on a mission. So we took this opportunity to get one last big family picture taken.

(If you care, here's the list of people in this picture. Back row (sort of) left to right: Michelle's son Josh, Robyn's son Ben, my brother-in-law Brian (Hope's husband), my brother-in-law Matt, Hope and her newest addition Nathan, Robyn, Scott, Me, Cody, Michelle, my brother-in-law James, Michelle's kids Ashley and Jared. Front row: Robyn's son Christian, Hope's kids Justin and Katie, Robyn's son Cole, My Mom, she's holding Hope's son Zachary, My Dad, he's holding Hope's son Camden, Riley, and Michelle's daughter Mati) Whew! That took a lot longer then I thought.

After the picture we all decided to go bowling. It was Riley's first time bowling, he loved it! I represented the girls with a 101 and a 102 but then my Mom beat me on her second game with a 109. My Dad was the highest scorer of the guys, I don't remember what it was though. Here's a few snap shots.

Later that night all the girls went to see Twilight (that would be my third time)! We definitely had a fun-filled weekend.

Monday, Robyn's boys and Riley went sledding down my parent's hill. Here's Riley going down the hill on his belly. One time feet first and then head first. For some reason he wouldn't use the sled.

We had a great Christmas, with little drama, which is always a plus when you have 4 girls in the family. I hope everyone else had a wonderful and safe Christmas!

Happy 8th Year Anniversary!!

(Engagement Photo)

I can't believe that 8 years ago today Cody and I were married in the SLC temple. As I look outside this morning I notice that the day is nothing like it was 8 years ago.


Cody and I were married at 7:00 am, which meant everyone had to be at the temple at 6:30. We had to be at the temple at 6!!Since it was so early in the morning I had my hair done the night before at midnight. Then I slept on the couch and I tried not to mess up my hair. Not that I was really going to sleep much the night before my wedding. Then Cody came and picked me up at about 5:30 am. We started our trek to the temple in a BLIZZARD! The weather was so bad that we almost missed our exit because we couldn't see. Thankfully, we made it to the temple (and so did the rest of our families) safely and we were married bright and early. But after the ceremony we looked outside and realized there was no way we could take any pictures. Our photographer was so understanding and said that we could just come back another day. So we went back about a month later and took all of the temple pictures. Our families weren't there but it was so much more laid back and relaxing then it would've been the day of our wedding.

(Cody's favorite pose, we even had some tourists take our picture!)

After we left the temple, we all met at Joanie's restaurant in Kaysville to have our wedding brunch. It was really a beautiful luncheon. Then, since we were exhausted, we went to our hotel room and took a nap. And so did everyone else. Thanks to the nap, we were well rested for our reception at my parent's church in Farmington. The next night we had another reception in Idaho Falls.

Thank you Cody for marrying me that cold December morning. These 8 years have been wonderful and I look forward to spending FOREVER with you.

Santa Claus is coming to town!

We had our Ward Christmas party this weekend. Santa came and all the kids got to sit on his lap and talk to him. Santa asked Riley if there was something that he wanted to tell Santa about. I think his mind suddenly went blank because he nodded his head with this dazed look on his face. We had to tell him to tell Santa what he wanted. Then he remembered and he told Santa that he wants a red light saber that glows in the dark. Santa told him that he thought his elves had been working on some of those, so I guess we'll see!

I've been tagged!

I generally don't do these but I thought this was simple enough that I could handle it.

8 Shows I watch:
1. Chuck
2. Dancing with the Stars (Now that that's over I'll start the Bachelor in January)
3. Biggest Loser (Go Michelle!!)
4. Ugly Betty
5. The Office
6. Smallville
7. Numbers
8. How I Met Your Mother


8 Restaurants That I Like To Eat At: (These are restaurants I like to eat at but rarely do.)
1. Robintino's
2. El Matador
3. Olive Garden
4. Red Lobster
5. Sakura
6. Black Angus
7. Chili's
8. Sandpiper in Idaho Falls


8 Things I Did Today: (Very exciting!)
1. Decorated the Christmas tree
2. Took Riley to preschool and then realized that preschool had been cancelled for today so I brought him right back home.
3. Cleaned the Kitchen
4. Went to Enrichment night
5. Practiced our Presidency lesson for Relief Society.
6. Played the piano. I just love when I can pull out my Christmas music.
7. Updated Family and Friend mailing addresses
8. Made Crock pot Chicken for dinner.

8 Things I Am Looking Forward To:
1. Christmas!!!
2. Spending time with family.
3. Giving people their Christmas gifts!
4. Our 8th anniversary (coming up on the 15th)
5. Cody's Christmas break and just hanging out.
6. Watching The Office.
7. Doing some crafting tomorrow for fun not because I have an enrichment night to do it for.
8. Getting my house totally clean. I hate unpacking after a long trip!

8 Things On My Wish List:
1. A House! Our condo is great but it would be nice to have at least one more room that I could put my Cricut, sewing machine, and any other crafts out.
2. I'll have to copy my friend Liz and say a walk in closet. I would love to have more closet space to hang all of our clothes. I feel like our rod is going to break one of these days.
3. A bigger kitchen. Maybe we'd eat in the kitchen more often if it was bigger.
4. Finally feel great! At least I'm feeling a little better, every little bit helps.
5. Lose 20-30 lbs. That would be awesome.
6. More patience.
7. To go on a cruise some day.
8. An hour long massage! That would be nice after spending all day crafting!