My Baby is 3!!!!

My little guy turned 3 years old on Jan. 7th. I am amazed at how quickly he is growing up and he is so much fun. Grady constantly keep us laughing. He says and does some of the funniest things. MY 3 Favorite things about Grady right now are:

1. His Alvin-Alvin dance (you just have to see it to appreciate it)

2. The way he says "Thanks Mom" about everything

3. The way he cries for his daddy when he is in trouble with me.

This year we had a combined birthday party with Grady and his little buddy named Cooper who just turned 4. It was a huge hit. The theme of the party was tractors and so every little boy was in tractor heaven. We had tractor cake, tractor hay rides, and tractor gifts. We also had a potato bar for lunch which I thought was great since it was pretty darn cold outside, those nice warm potatoes and chili were perfect. Grady and I as the tractor is about to head out for the hay ride. I know he looks really thrilled, but he did enjoy it. He kept saying that we were faster than the other tractor (because we were leading the way) and "where is this hay ride going?". We are blessed with amazing friends that loaded up trailors with hay and brought their tractors over to pull this HUGE group of family and friends.

This was the most random present opening ever. We were waiting for the second trailer to get ready for the hay ride (since we had a large group) and so we decided to open presents and it was kind of like a free for all, funny.

The boys playing on the big tractors before the festivities began. I guess they felt they should check them out beforehand just to make sure we wouldn't have any problems with them later, ha ha.

"Hey Grady, everything looks good here, what about from your view?"

"Yep, we are good to go"

Thanks to Brooke for being my party planning buddy and to all the help of our friends and family for making Grady and Cooper's party a success. I know my family enjoyed it so much we all came home and slept for like 2 hours.

Starting the Year off right....

So i should have posted pictures and then the words, oh well, loook on... The "girl" cousins at the Temple Lights.

Travis and Grady. Grady was at a really fun age this year to see the lights. He thought everything was so cool and would ooh and aah over it all.
The Girls. My mom, Lori, Emily, Me and Erin. Only missing my sister Shannyn and sis-in-law Sarah.

I am not sure who or what Grady is looking at in this picture but its cute anyway.

The whole gang. We had a family party one night at my mom's that was full of yummy food, family, games and a trip to the Temple Lights. It was fun and we enjoyed the time we spent with all of our family.

We stayed home for Christmas this year, which was a big change for us. We enjoyed having Christmas Eve with just our kids and waking up and having Christmas morning just our little family! It was nice and I am glad we did it, although by about noon we were like "so, now what do we do?" Ha ha. We headed to Az. for the New Year and here are a few pics of our time there.

WE also had a great New Years Eve with Hillary and Brian's house but of course I forgot to ever take out the camera.

New Year, New Goals, New Priorites

I am back from my break with a new blogging outlook. I am starting this year off with new goals and new priorites and therefore it will be a new blog. I am going to be blogging for journaling purposes with the plan of turning it into a book at the end of the year that we can have and always remember 2010. I am very much looking forward to this year and the fresh start that it will bring. I have a different perspective on life and the things that mean most to me and I want to capture those things and those moments. I have a wonderful life and am very grateful to my Heavenly Father for everything that I have and everything that he continues to bless me with. I have the MOST amazing husband who I love more and more each day and that loves and provides for me and my kids in a way that nobody else ever could. I will forever be grateful to him and the example he is to me. I have 3 beautiful children. who are all healthy and have wonderful spirits and strive to do what is right and love to learn and grow. I feel very blessed for the job that my husband has, especially in this crazy time and that he is able to provide for our family the things that we need. I am grateful for the Atonement and the Sacrifice my Savior made for all of us that has made it possible for me to make mistakes, learn from them, grow from them and bring me closer to my Savior and Heavenly Father. I am blessed with wonderful extended family on both my side and Travis's side that have amazing talents and are so much fun. My goals this year, some personal, some not include: famil, family and more family. My little family is my number one priority this year and my desires and goals to grow even stronger and closer as a family are something I cherish. I am glad for this new year to begin and look forward to all that it has in store for me and my family.

Blogging Break....

Not that I am great on keeping a regular blog anyway but I will be taking a break for a while.

Carlsbad Caverns

My mom and dad and sister Emily all came into town last week and while they were here we went to Carlsbad Caverns. If you have never been it is amazing. This is the beginning of the natural entrance. We all went into the cave this way except for my mom, grady and Emily's baby (Jace). My mom has a bum knee and since this hike is all down hill for 800 ft. we figured it would not be very smart for her to try to hike it, which worked out well to send the two little ones with her. So this first picture is at the beginning of the hike.

Here is Cayden and Ally, they did AWESOME!! Ally only complained of her legs hurting at the very end after hiking down for 45 minutes and then for an hour on the floor of the cave.

Here is my dear dad taking pictures for my mom. He was so cute, the first 10 minutes we were stopping every chance we got to take a picture and he would always say "me me will love this one" (meme aka my mom). We quickly decided we will never make it to the bottom if we don't move it along.

Here we go....

There was so many little walkways where you went in tunnel like areas and a few places you had to duck. For the most part it was wide open, it is a huge cavern, biggest in the US I think.

My dad and Cayden. It was so nice for Cayden to have my dad there because they both wanted to stop and read every sign and Cayden loved pointing every little thing out to my dad. From the picture it looks like the cavern is gray but it is not, it is much more colorful.

After we got to the bottom and met my mom with the two little kids (who took the elevator) we walked the loop of the "Great Room" which size was equivalent to 14 football fields, it took about an hour and was amazing. Jace was a trooper, he actually fell asleep in the backpack and his poor little head was bobbing all over the place.

I carried Grady most of the way on the bottom. There are some pretty good size drops, although there is a railing, but it still made me nervous. I told him over and over about the danger and that he could fall far far down. I think I may have overdone it, he was too scared to walk after that.

The kids with their meme and grandpa. They absolutely LOVED having them here. Funny thing, my mom came here 50 years ago with her grandma and now was here again with her grandkids. She told my kids that in 50 years they need to come back with their grandkids.

We had a great time and I am glad we made the trip.

Trip to Prescott

Over Labor Day weekend we went to Prescott to my mother in laws little house to help work on it and try to speed the process of getting it in live in condition. It is the cutest little house and we had a great time with family working hard, eating lots and laughing even more. Here are a few pictures of the house and us working. This is the front, isn't it darling???

Here's Kristi, takin it easy just like she should be.
Wierd, this one is sideways but this is Grandpa Rowley workin really hard on ripping out a bathroom. I hope I can work half as hard as him when I am his age, he amazes me.

Travis in the backyard AFTER we got all the weeds pulled. I wish I had gotten a picture before. He is visualizing the masterpiece we are going to create.

Here he is hard at work leveling the ground inside the pathway we made so we can lay a brick border and fill the path with pea rocks.

Grandpa Rowley taking a quick break and on the phone with his sweetheart.

Wow, Brian, lets try not to make that face again EVER!! Putting up the white picket fence.

Kristi outside enjoying the BEAUTIFUL weather. Seriously we couldn't have ordered better weather, it was so great. Little Owen in the background playin, he is such a good baby

Laying the brick border. I am not sure what Hillary is doing,lol! Here is proof that I DID work and not just take pictures, ha ha

I just loved this random picture that was on my camera. I am not even sure who took it, I think Kristi did but it is so classic Hillary I had to post it.

We had a wonderful time and really got a lot of work done!!!!!

T.E.A. Party Express

I don't know if any of you are familiar with this movement, but it is a huge bus that is traveling from Ca. to Washington making like 30 stops along the way. It is a rally getting people excited and standing up for what they believe, quit raising the taxes, no on the health care bill, etc. Well one of the stops was Las Cruces last night. We decided to take the kids and head down and show our support. We all wore our red shirts and made posters. Travis and I talked to the kids about what we were doing and why, Cayden understood pretty well but I think Ally was just excited to go to the "Tea Party". We were so proud of the kids, they held their posters high and wanted to get right in the middle of it all. We knew there would be reporters there and so we had asked Cayden what he would say if anyone asked him why he was there. His response was "I am here because I like my country the way it is and I don't want them to change it". We had a great time and there was an awesome turn out. Towards the end the kids headed over with Travis to where there was a bunch of commotion. It was the reporter from Fox News there reporting for the Greta Van Susteran show. That was pretty exciting cause that is national news. The kids of course jumped right in with their posters in hopes to make it on TV. Sure enough Cayden was in view the entire time the guy was interviewing the lady who put the party on. It was so neat. We rushed home and set our tv to record the later showing of her show since it was live and we got up this morning and watched it. I was so proud of my kids. Cayden is there behind the reporter holding his poster that read "Dude, where's my country" and his flag and just as happy as could be. A couple of times you could see Ally's head poke out from behind the lady and I saw myself a few times when they spanned all of the crowd. It was a neat thing and I am glad we took the kids and hopefully they learned a little bit about the importance of standing up for what you believe in. Of course I forgot my camera, luckily Clayton had his so once I get pictures from him I will post them.

First Days....

First Day of School, Aug. 17th 2009

Cayden is in the 4th grade and it still blows my mind that my little boy is this big. He is such an awesome student, he loves loves to learn and always tries his hardest. Thanks for being you Cayden and wanting to be the best you can be.

Our sweet little Ally girl is in the 2nd grade now, wow! It seems just yesterday she was so sad that Cayden was going to school all day and she was in preschool for only half day and she would get so bored at home without him. She is a little social butterfly and has ALL of her friends in her class this year, poor Mrs. Hendon! She is seven going on seventeen and Travis and I are doing everything we can do keep her "our little girl" for a little longer.
They were both so excited they could hardly stand it, they were both up and dressed before my alarm even went off to wake them, I am so glad they both LOVE school!

"Bye mom" she is off, Cayden was already long gone.

Now another first day, if you have a tendency to get queesy (sp) easy then maybe this next post isn't for you...

My first day of canning meat. Yeah I know alot of you could probably do this in your sleep but it was my first day and I got 4 other suckers, I mean people, to do it with me.

I have canned before, beans, applesauce, jams, etc. but my first time doing meat. We had 180 lbs. of beef. Yikes!

Here is a small glimpse of some of the meat in an ice chest being transfered from the "thawing staion" aka bathtub to the kitchen.

Here is a very small portion of the lids and one of the three canners we used.

Shannon Carver very studifully picking out the thawed meat to put in jars and the still frozen meat to go back to thawing. *Notice the clorox wipes on the the counter by her. We used many of these through out the day* Shannon and Lori were AWESOME and had their system down of putting the meat in jars, while the rest of us salted, sealed and dealt with the pressure cookers, oh and the 5 kids we had.

Again just a GLIMPSE of the jars. I think there is about 30 jars in this picture and I believe we ended up with just about 200 jars, give or take a few.

Lori, such a good sport to transport the meat from the "bloody bath" to the ice chest to the kitchen. Not the job I would have most preferred but we all did a little of everything. Kind of gross to see that bathtub full of bloody water. We joked all day about that Brooke and Heber (we were at Brooke's house and Heber is her hubby) better not get in a fight and have the police called, cuz with all the DNA all over the place it would have been quite the seen, lol! I know kind of twisted synical thinking huh?

We had a good time, it took us 12 hours to do it all. We could hardly stand on our two feet by the end of the night, well except Shannon who was playing the wii at 9pm while we waited for the jars to finish pressuring, but with some energy strips, coke and dr. pepper we did pretty dang good! Look forward to our next canning adventure ladies.