Pre-Wedding Festivities (Warning Lots of Pictures)

Our massive bowl of cole slaw (Ben & I made it)

The Spread

See that roaster pan? It's full of pulled pork

Maren checking out the toys

Maren loved the water

Cheesy Sydnee

Eve is always in charge

My cute nephew Ian, he kept asking me to take his picture

How many kids can you fit in the pool?

Grandma Yancey bought the babies these darling swim suits

Look at those ripples!

Miss Mae

Ben's older brother George got married Sunday night. It's been a fun few days, but very busy. The Yancey's love to get together and eat. There is never a shortage of food at their home, if you go away hungry, it's your own fault. On Friday we had a barbecue at the house so that we could visit with the family from out of town. We had lots of fun, then later that evening Ben, Addy and Sydnee went to the strawberry days rodeo. The girls were so excited, they had lots of fun with their cousins. Maren and I stayed home and hung out. I even got to watch a chick flick while they were gone. Saturday morning Ben and the girls had to go to a rehearsal so that they would know where to stand and what not. When they returned home, we headed back to the Yancey's for more food. They hosted a rehearsal dinner/barbecue. They were expecting 50 people, made food for about 100 and had about 30 show up. We have been eating a lot of leftovers, in fact, we haven't had to cook for several days now. The kids loved playing in the pool and just enjoying their cousins. Ben's sister Sue lives in Colorado, so we only get to see her family once or twice a year. It was lots of fun meeting George and Hope's friends and catching up with Ben's family members.

Happy Father's Day

Yesterday, Father's Day was very hectic. I told my dad happy father's day at church, and I gave Ben a pair of flip-flops before we went to sleep. So, I know this is a day late, but I want Ben and my dad to know that I love them very much.
My dad is the best dad, for me. He's kind of quiet, but he is very sweet. I remember my dad working a lot, but I also have lots of good memories with him. Dad was always the scout master, or so it seemed when I was a kid. I loved going on scout camp outs with him. My mom even bought me a pair of scout pants and I had a Timberline T-shirt from my brother. I would wear these at scout camp. My dad taught me how to find and identify edible plants. I remember having interviews with my dad, kind of like a PPI.
I think most of my childhood memories are of camping and watching my dad in the garage. He still likes to "putter" in the garage. My dad is very smart. He has taught himself how to make knives, canteens out of gourds, arrowheads, and how to turn wood into awesome creations.
I have learned lots of things from my dad, but the most important are that he loves his family very much and he loves Heavenly Father. My dad is a big teddy bear, with a huge heart and a strong testimony. He's the kind of person that would do anything for anyone. I love you dad, thanks for being such a great example to me and my family!

Ben is the best dad for our kids. Ben is so patient with our kids, he very rarely gets frustrated with them. He loves to teach them new things and cook with them. These are things that I am not very good at. Ben is so gentle and loving towards all three of our girls. The girls get very excited when they hear his car pull in the driveway. Ben loves to make the girls breakfast on the weekends and play outside with them. He is also great at teaching them how to work. Ben has a strong testimony and shares it with us often. Happy Father's day, a day late, hon! I love you very much and I couldn't wish for a better father for our children!

Deep thoughts by Sydnee

The other day we had a windstorm and Sydnee said to Ben, "It's a good thing the dirt is doing its job and holding the plants down."

Ben bought some sorghum flour at the health food store for me and Sydnee asked if it was for people with sore gums.

I think I've said it before, she's our wise little owl. She totally surprises us with her thoughts.

Sisterhood of the Traveling Van Week 2

Our second adventure took us to Bridal Veil falls. I thought the kids would like the short walk and then some play time in the water. We walked the trail to the falls, took some pictures and then Addy and Camille ventured into the water. Sydnee wasn't acting like herself, so we hung out on the trail. I think the craziest part of our trip to the falls was the bare sighting. Yes, I know, I spelled it wrong. Well, actually I spelled it right. I was looking down the trail and saw a woman and I thought, "that's strange, her clothes are the same color top and bottom." Then I thought,"that's really strange, her clothes are flesh colored." Then my jaw dropped and my eyes went big and I realized, they weren't clothes. This woman who was walking up to the falls was buck naked. I quickly turned the girls around and pointed her out to Camille. Her response,"What the...." We both started to laugh and then other people noticed her. There were families with young children everywhere. She walked up to the falls and walked on into the water. We decided to get out of there before the kids saw, but it was too late. I think Addy is scarred for life. Thank goodness Sydnee is oblivious. We walked up the trail further to the bridge. We crossed the river and walked down the road to the lower bridge to avoid any meetings on the trail. We could see this woman walking down the trail across from us. When we reached the lower bridge, we crossed the river again and walked to the parking lot. When we got to the car, she was gone. Just then the police arrived, but the woman was gone. Camille and I laughed and laughed and also wanted to burn our eyes out. Who knew we would see a bare at Bridal Veil falls. We continued our adventure at Vivian Park. We had a picnic and watched the Heber Creeper. I'm such a good mom that I finally realized that Sydnee wasn't acting right because she was running a fever. The poor kid was burning up. We decided to call it a day and get the sick kiddo home. Besides the bare sighting and Sydnee not feeling well, we had a great time.

The Sisterhood of the Traveling Van Week 1

Insert fun pictures of Nielsen's Grove

2 sisters + 3 kids + 1 minivan+1 adventure= the sisterhood of the traveling van. My sister and I have decided to go on an adventure once a week. Week 1 was our first adventure. We decided to stay close by and visit Nielsen's grove. It is a beautiful park in Orem with lots of fun things to do. It was originally built by some of my ancestors. They came here from Denmark. Jorgen Nielsen's father worked in the Kings garden in Denmark, when his sons immigrated to Utah they wanted to make a park that was like the gardens at home. After many years the park was used for growing crops for the war effort and eventually became swampy and unusable. The city of Orem bought the property and restored the park as best they could to make it like the original. It has a playground, a pond with lots of ducks, fountains, and these swings that go around kind of like a carousel. We all enjoyed the park, we even had fun watching the birds, I know mom, I'm a bird nerd! Unfortunately, I forgot my camera. I guess we will just have to go again. Afterward we had lunch at the Village Inn and then came home to crash. Week 1 was great!

Addy's First Piano Recital

Addy had her first piano recital on June 3rd. She played some of her favorite songs from her lesson books. The great part is that each song has a duet part that my mom played with her. It was a great evening. Addy did great!

Odds and Ends of May

Here I am way behind again. Let's catch up. May was super busy, especially the end of the month. Sydnee graduated from pre-school, she was super happy and loved the attention. One day, I will post a picture of it, but unfortunately I forgot my camera. Maybe my nice friends will e-mail me one. Amy, Jamie? Anyway, we had to leave right after the graduation to make it to our senior recognition night. It's a little celebration for our young women and young men who are graduating.
The next big thing was Addy's dance festival. The first grade danced to "I want to be like you" from the Jungle Book. It was fun to watch the dances that the kids had worked so hard on. Addy finished up the school year and celebrated on the last day of school by having a pancake breakfast with all of the first graders. We also celebrated as a family by going to Rib City. I can't believe Addy will be in the second grade soon. She will be in a split class next year with 3rd graders. It will be interesting to see how it all works out.
Addy also insisted that we have ice cream to celebrate. I made the mistake of sitting on the floor while I ate mine. Maren wasn't going to be left out. She would hang on to me and cry until I gave her a taste and then she would be happy, we repeated this until the ice cream was gone. I have a video, but I can't get it to post, oh well.
Sydnee learned how to ride her bike without training wheels. She is thrilled to ride her bike like a big kid. Over Memorial day weekend, Maren took her first steps. She's starting to walk more and more.
Well, there you have it, the end of May, I guess I better get working on June...

10 months

All I have to say, is that Maren is growing way too fast! Slow down kid, I'm trying to soak it all in!

Snow, Snow Go AWAY!!!!!

I wanted to cry this morning, okay I did cry when I saw the snow. I am so tired of it, and all I could think about were my poor flowers and my vegetable garden. Sigh. The scene from the movie A Christmas Story ran through my mind with the Bumpus hounds that ate the turkey. "there won't be any turkey casserole, turkey hash, turkey sandwiches and gallons of turkey soup, all of it gone!" I thought the same thing about my tomatoes, there will be no BLT's, no salsa, no spaghetti sauce, no fresh tomatoes to eat any time, all of it gone. Stupid snow!

In the pretty garden, the flowers are blooming

For mother's day, Ben dug out a new flower bed for me. Ever since we moved in, I have wanted another flower bed in front of our bay window. Ben hurt his back in the process and with 3 children who like to "help" It has taken much longer to get it done than I had hoped. Ben has taken a few days off of work to help get yard work done and finally on Friday afternoon, I finished my flower bed. I love it! Ben's dad found these cool old mining carts that once held coal on my brother-in-laws property. I filled it with bricks and dirt and planted flowers in it. I think it turned out really cute. I also planted flowers in front of my butterfly bush. I just need to add some bark to finish it all off, but all of the planting and such is done. Yeah!!!

Testing the sprinklers

Ben and I have been working hard on our yard. Friday afternoon Ben tested (drumroll please) our new automatic sprinklers to check for geysers. When we moved in there were sprinkler lines underground, but they didn't work and they weren't automatic. They were manual, which means you would have to get down on the ground and stick your hand in a dark, damp, slug infested box and turn each valve on one at a time to water the yard. It wasn't much fun, I know it's not as bad as dragging hose, but it was still bad, especially last year when I was pregnant and Ben was out of town. For Ben's birthday and my birthday, my parents gave us the valves and control box. Ben took some time off of work and got it all up and working, it's wonderful to just let the box control everything and wake up to a watered lawn. Thanks mom and dad! Anyway, with all of our work, we've driven the truck on the lawn a few times and wanted to make sure we didn't break anything. Friday Ben did one more test just to make sure that we hadn't broken any sprinklers, the girls were begging to run through the sprinklers. We said no, but they didn't listen. When the neighbor boys came out in their swimsuits, we lost out and had to let the girls put theirs on. After all of their begging, I think our girls only ran through once or twice. The little 2 year old next door kept running through the sprinklers and then over to me. He would say "that was fun" over and over again. I'm glad they could enjoy a few minutes of summer that day. As our gospel doctrine teacher said today "Did all of you enjoy the four seasons we experienced this last week?" I thought that was the perfect way to describe our weather as of late.

The fruits of our labors

It's more like the veggies of our labors. Ben and I decided to try our hand at making our own baby food. Ben did most of the work, he cooked a whole bunch of veggies and some chicken. My job was to puree and re-bag until we decided on a storage method. Well, as you can see by the pictures, we had a little problem. Ben stuck the mashed potatoes in a zipper top bag in the fridge. When he opened up the fridge again, the bag had opened and there were potatoes everywhere. It was a huge mess! Ben spent the next 10 minutes cleaning up while I pureed. We decided to just package the food in little zipper top bags and freeze it. It wasn't hard work, but it certainly was a little time consuming and we didn't get as much food as we thought. My thought is that I will try it again, because the homemade stuff certainly tastes better, but it is certainly time consuming and messy.

Towels and Toes

Last night, Ben ended up working late. I got Maren in bed for the night and got the older two through the shower. I was helping Addy with her hair, drying it with her towel. She then asked if next time I change towels if she could have a grown up towel. She then proceeded to tell me that she did not like using a baby towel. I told her it was a kid towel, it has Elmo on it. She then told me said "Elmo is so babyish, I don't like Elmo." This from the girl that fell in love with Elmo as a 2 year old. It made me laugh that the Elmo towel is too babyish for her to use. It also made me a little sad to realize that she's growing up and out growing some of the things she used to love.

Monday afternoon, I was trying to get some yard work done before Ben got home. I put Maren in her walker on the grass and Addy and Sydnee were riding their bikes. Addy came and took Maren for a ride. Maren's legs were going really fast and I told Addy to slow down. Addy took her to the top of the little hill by our house and started running with Maren. The next thing I hear is Maren crying. Addy stopped and then got really upset. She said that she accidentally put holes in Maren's socks. Then she started to get even more upset, Maren's toes were bleeding. I went and rescued Maren and sure enough there were holes in her socks and she was bleeding. Addy pushed her too fast and her feet drug tearing holes in her socks and scraping the skin off of her toes. Poor girl, no wonder she's trying to walk, she needs to be able to escape. Maren didn't seem to mind too much. I washed her feet and put on some clean socks to keep her toes clean. Let's hope that all three children live through the summer!

If you can't find it...check the lost and found

For the last few months, Sydnee's favorite pretend play has been working at the lost and found. I guess it all started with Ben losing his wallet at IKEA. He went to check for it at the lost and found at the store. All along it was at home in his pants pocket, in the hamper. Behind our love seat is a small space, perfect for small children. Sydnee collects things from around the house that are "lost" and puts them behind the couch. Needless to say, I have "lost" many things. Sometimes, I would set something down for a minute, turn my head, and then poof they're gone. Then I would hear the announcement from Sydnee about all the items in the L&F. After several days of having my things "lost" and then found by Sydnee, the general manager of the house, AKA me, shut down the L&F. I love to see my children use their imaginations and play, but after having my socks, soap and other such items "lost", I had to shut it down and move it to the playroom. Who knows, maybe they will find their toys down there that have been lost for months.

What the man won't do for a dollar...or 50

When Ben was in the MTC in Brazil he wanted some hot sauce. If you know Ben, you know that he likes hot sauce on just about everything. Well, in Brazil they don't really have hot sauce, they have hot peppers in vinegar, and you just pour the vinegar out and that's your hot sauce. Well, someone bet him to eat one of the peppers. Ben pulled one out and popped it in his mouth. Where it touched his tongue, it bled. It burned all the way down, around and through. It completed its noisy, burning trip start to finish in about 45 minutes. There was no prize to be had or reward for this crazy act.
Flash forward about 11 years to the Happy Sumo in Provo. Ben and his co-workers were treated to lunch by a vendor. After finishing lunch the vendor told Ben he would give him $50 if he ate the golf ball size wad of wasabi. Ben told the man to give him the money, with 5o dollars in his hand he picked up the wasabi and popped it in his mouth. He described it as being like playdough in consistency. He got it down and kept the money. His coworkers rolled their eyes and said "whatever" while the vendor was shocked. You see, Ben has an iron gut and nothing he eats really bothers him. In our 9 years of marriage the man has never thrown up once. I must say I'm jealous. Ben's co-workers know he has an iron gut and weren't surprised at all by his wasabi eating. Ben said that it took about an hour before he knew it would stay down, crazy I say. I guess that's one way to make a quick buck. So, I asked if he would eat another Brazilian hot pepper if offered $5o, he thought for a second and then said yes. Crazy!

Mother's Day 2010

My Pride and Joy

One of my favorite photos of the day

The Cousins

Mother's day was great this year! I think my favorite part of the day was hearing my girls sing in church. Both Addy and Sydnee sang, their mouths actually moved and everything. It was so sweet. I just sat there smiling at both of them and thinking that I am so lucky to have them. I was listening intently to the speaker just before they sang. When it was time for the kids to go up, Sydnee didn't have her shoes on. I should have just sent her up without them, but it was too late. She was on the floor trying to get her shoes on, Addy was too impatient and climbed over top of her to get out. I was wrestling Maren and couldn't help. Finally, Sydnee moved to the aisle and got her shoes on. She then ran to the front and made it up on the stand just in time. It was so cute, but next time I'll just leave her shoes off, or maybe have her keep them on during church.
After Church I had a few moments to myself while the kids played and Maren napped. It was nice to have a few moments of peace and quiet. Then we walked to my parents for dinner. It was fun to be all together. All of the kids play great together, and it was fun to visit with the adults. This year I also celebrated my birthday on mother's day. I was given some very nice gifts and had a nice relaxing day. I am very grateful to be a mother to 3 beautiful little girls.

My Mom

First, I have to say something about my mom. I didn't give her a card this year or tell her anything except I loved her. Lately, I have had a hard time expressing myself and I don't know why. So here goes... My mom is the best! She is my mentor and example. She teaches me so many things just by the way she lives her life. My mom loves to write notes of encouragement and gratitude. I received many while I was away at school. I remember coming home from church and she would sit and write notes to the speakers and teachers that day. She especially loved to tell the youth speakers how well they did.
When my mom teaches a lesson at church she spends the whole week preparing, and she always does a great job. I'm really trying hard to work on my teaching skills. My mom was able to stretch the family budget to keep all of us fed and clothed while many times neglecting herself. My mom truly made do with what she had and was happy with it.
My mom has a true love of learning. She has always found a way to learn new things. Either by taking classes or reading books. My mom is taking a class from BYU right now, hoping to get accepted so that she can finish her degree online. It has been 42 years since she went to school. She is my inspiration. I hope to one day finish my degree as well.
My mom loves all of her children unconditionally. Even when I made some dumb mistakes she still loved/loves me. I am so thankful for my mom. I am grateful that I was sent to her, even if I was a surprise. I am so glad that my children have the opportunity to know my mom and spend so much time with her. She is an amazing woman with a strong testimony. She helps me to remember that "Utah women are tough" and that I can make it through any trial in life, no matter how hard it is. Thank you mom for giving me life and such a great example. I love you!