Cabin on the lake in London, Kentucky!

I have had some work out in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio over the past couple months. I saw the chance for a long weekend at the beginning of December, so I cashed in some frequent flyer miles and Keli was booked on my next trip.

Once Keli is on the case, you're sure to maximize your time and the possible adventures available to you in any given set of days. She said to me casually about 4 days before we left, "Did you realize that we are only going to be about 5 hours from your sister?" My sister Lisa and her husband Dave and their 3 kids live in Madison Alabama. We miss them terribly and I truly enjoy anytime we get to spend time with them. But 5 hours on 4 days notice I thought might be a little much. I made the call. She sounded excited and mildly optimistic, but that's where I left it.

By the next afternoon, her and Keli had not only figured out a way for us to spend some time together, but we rented a cabin that was cheaper than what we would have spent on a hotel and allowed us to spend the maximum amount of time together.

There was a very complicated network of decks leading down to the water. It was very beautiful there.
Benjamin is very used to having his picture taken and makes some great poses. I'm not sure why. :)
A little pontoon boat at the bottom that I think you can use.

Dave taking the same picture that I was about to take.

And there it is!

I wish I would have gotten more pictures, but here are a few. That was really fun and I'm glad I made the call.

Update

My sister has been bugging me about the fact that this has not been updated since easter. I think she is one a only a few people that read this so I'm not sure why she cares. She sees me enough that I don't know what else she want to know. But here you go:

Jared has been traveling A LOT with work. He and his parnters wrote a point of sales program that he has been installing in little ceasars pizza stores. It is good because he has been busy which in turn makes money but having him gone is hard.

We went to disneyland in Sept for about a week. We had a great time and for christmas we are giving the kids another trip in april just before our annual passes expire. Hopefully they will still be okay with it when Christmas comes around that they don't have TOO many gifts to open I will have to just remind them about Disneyland which they are really excited about.

The kids are loving school and I love there teacher she is so patience with my two perfectionist children. They both get so mad when they can't get things perfect. Isabel won't even try most of the time in front of people until she can do it perfectly which is hard when the teacher is trying to teach them and wants to see the work. Their teachers is great and is helping them a lot, they LOVE learning.

Lilly is a sassy little thing I think I hear "mom you don't make me happy" at least 20 times because if you don't let lilly do everything and give her everyhting she wants she is unhappy. She tells you this and then stomps off into another room. I must admit sometimes it is cute.

My furture is Jared being gone, hopefully I get to go with him in a couple of weeks, Thanksgiving with Jared family his grandma from Hawaii is going to be here, and then christmas with My side of the family. Life is good and I am grateful for all my blessings that I have. Good family, good health, and Great life.

Easter

I really have a hard time with Easter probably more than I should. I HATE buying the kids a tons of candy because for the next week or two I feel that all I am doing is saying stop eating the candy or get off the counter we are eating dinner soon no more candy. I love reflecting on Christ and what he did for the world and that he is my Savior. So how does that translate to buying candy for the kids. I was at the store staring at all the "Easter Stuff" not wanting to buy Sweets. I put a kite for each of the kids bubbles and a little basket in the shopping cart and tried to walk away. I did stop myself because I knew that if I didn't buy the kids some sweets there dad would and it would 4 times as much as I would buy them. Before I told Jared that I bought things for the kids I talked with him about my urge not to "buy" things for Easter. He said I don't care if you buy things as long as you get them some candy if you don't, I will. (exactly what I feared) I told him against my judgment I did buy some. Needless to say we had a great Easter focused on Christ during Church which was amazing. I feel so blessed in my live for my Savior all that he endured in Gethsemane for me. Then enjoyed the rest of the evening at Jared moms house with the family. Here are the Pictures from the day ENJOY!!

More b-day pics

Isabel's Birthday Party

Isabels birthday is on the 7th but Jared had to go out of town for the week so we had her party on Thursday. I made her Belle castle cake. It was fun to try and I think it turned out pretty good. If you can't tell the figurines on the cake on Belle from beauty and the beas and then in the water it is ariel and her sisters. I had so much fun making the cake but it was so much funner (nice word ) to see Isabel's reaction to all the parts of the cake while I was decorating it. I love her with all my heart and I am so glad she is a part of my family.

Our first fracture...

So, for those of you who don't know, Brady hates doctors, dentists, nurses and basically anyone who he can identify as people that might poke at him or give him a shot. So today, he was playing on the trampoline and was trying to get off while someone else was trying to get on, bada bing, bada boom, hits his shoulder really hard on the ground.

He came in the house crying and complaining of pain in his shoulder. Just for some reference, Brady hurts himself daily. It's usually pretty dramatic, but is over within a couple of minutes unless someone new comes over and he has to retell the ordeal complete with tears.

So 15 minutes later, he was in the living room playing a video game by himself, and he was just whimpering because of pain. So Keli and I went out there and he quickly tried to hide the pain because of course pain means he has to go to the doctor. So we talked him in to walking up to Melissa's house (his pediatrician is one of our neighbors) to check it out.

She looked at it, despite Brady's screaming and complaining and said we ought to go and get it x-rayed. First pictures.

So he thought the lights were pretty cool and he loved that the guy had this remote control that allowed him to move the camera and adjust where the light was.

So this might be the only doctor Brady has liked. The fact that he never poked him probably helped.

There was a little bit of a scared look here. So afterwards, they showed him the x-rays and he thought it was pretty cool that you could see his bones, but it seemed to also freak him out a little bit.

After the doctors reviewed, it was a clavicle (sp?) fracture. So he's all slinged up.

Here is our life for the next 3-4 weeks. Should be pretty fun.

Whats been going on?

Well I know that I have not blogged for a long time so I woke a WAYYYY to early this morning and decided I would catch up a little. This month has been full of very excited things. My parents who have lived in there house for 25 yrs moved to a new house that is about 2 blocks away for me. I am so excited to have them this close. They have been in Hawaii for a month and are coming home today. I have missed them so much they are a great support to me. I don't know what I am going to do when they go on a mission. On the 24th of Feb we were able to adopted our two girls officially. It was a great experience. We have know that we were going to be able to adopted them since July but it has just been a long process. We will be sealing them to us on the 7th of march which I am sooo excited about. It is one of the neatest experiences I have ever done.(I talking about when we did it with Brady) And of course we will have a big party after. I think back about my past two years and the things that I have learned about myself and I am grateful for the ups and the downs along the way. I have grown so much. I have learned that you don't always have to be the strong one and I can rely on people other that my own family. Asking for help is not a bad thing. Our next journey will be just a great and I know that I can handle anything they throw at me. We are going to continue to do foster care because they are so needed and I feel we can help families get back on track and do the things they need to do to become healthy and stable families. We are going to get older girls. Here are some of the pictures from court and I will post the temple pictures soon(first we have to go).