Sunday, November 5, 2017

Summer, Fall, Virginia, Weddiing...

I got to coach Rachel's soccer team which was a blast. Rachel did amazing and grew a lot during the season. We really worked on passing and teamwork. It paid off with only one loss on the season!


Dinner at the pool.

Rachel and I had a night out looking for dresses for Carrie and Loren's wedding.




This boy has the side glare down.



Helping me pick tomatoes in the garden.

Just a cute little boy in overalls.

At the youth rodeo.






Anne scuba diving in our bathroom sink.

Sarah :)
Day at Manila Pond





Saying hi to our neighbors.
Popsicle time.

Wahoo :)
Heritage festival in Pleasant Grove










Soccer

Sarah and Jet's new bunkbed from Aunt Carrie.

Trial run of Carrie's wedding cupcakes.



Bike ride


(Copied post from Facebook on August 16, 2017):
I have never shared this on Facebook before, but I do today with the sole purpose and most sincere hope that it might be able to help even just one person. Ten years ago today I delivered our oldest son, William. He was born stillborn when I was 20 weeks pregnant. It was one of the most heart-wrenching experiences and trials that I have had to face in this life. At the time I saw two paths I could take. One was of despair, anger, and darkness. The other was filled with hope, peace, and light. I chose the path of light. That does not mean that it was easy by ANY means. I cried almost every day for a long time. I had to work to move on and press forward. Ten years later I am so grateful that I made that choice. My life is not perfect but it IS full of peace, joy, and hope. Right after the experience I felt strongly that Zac and I should sit down together and record what had happened. Years later I felt prompted again to get that journal entry edited by my good friend Krista Holmes Hanby. I thought that that was what I was meant to share with the world. But I had the feeling of not yet. Years again later while pregnant with our fourth child, our son James, I felt very strongly that I should write a children's book. Lizard Boy is a result of that prompting. It is a story of a conversation between two voices, James and his older brother. The purpose of this story was to help our kids understand about William because we had never told them about him yet. It also recounted some fun experiences we had with Jet while he was in my yummy. On Monday I read this story to the kids and it went perfectly. They laughed at the goofy parts and were just tickled that it mentioned their names. At the end we talked about who the different voices were and about William. They asked some awesome questions and had some interesting comments. If that was all that this book was intended for, awesome. It was perfect. But I have a feeling and hope that others could benefit from this as we have. The book contains the Lizard Boy story, the journal entry, pictures and an afterword. If you think you or someone you know could benefit from reading this book I can order them from the publishing website for the same cost that I paid which was $10 for the paperback (I ordered a really nice hardcover copy for my family for family history and heirloom purposes. That one was more expensive.) This is not a money making scheme at all. I am not making ANY money from this. I just want to help others that may be going through something similar to us. I know that our son is with his Father in Heaven and I am so grateful for the peace that that knowledge brings to my heart.
P.S. If you would like a copy of just the Lizard Boy story I can do that as well. I just haven't ordered any like that yet so I'm not sure of the exact cost. But I assume it would equal or less than $10.

Day at the lake with our buddies the Evans.


Soccer hair.
Soccer pictures.




Total Solar Eclipse in Idaho with our buddies the Taylors.

















It was absolutely incredible and well worth the drive. We would've driven across country to witness that event. I hope our kids will never forget it. I can't believe how dark and cold it got during totality. It went from upper 80's down to the low 60's.
Traffic on the way home was a little crazy but manageable.

Sleepy kiddos.

First day of school for these two cuties. 3rd and 2nd grade here they come!
First day of at-home Preschool for this cutie Sarah and of course James wanted in on the action.



Beautiful flowers from Zac just cause. :)





First apples of the season.


First BYU game of the season. Boy was it hot!






This is how 4th children take naps.

I don't care what people say, boys take dirty to a whole nother level. :)


Morning at the park.



Jet sure loves his dog.
Holy busy.
New haircut.
First batch of tomatoes.
Homemade bottled pasta sauce.

Cool praying mantis


Fun time with Daddy at UVU.

Helping Daddy put together the bunkbeds.

Reading Lizard Boy with the girls. I will remember those moments forever. :)

Soccer team pictures. Sarah loved playing soccer and was quite the entertainer. She would often run to the side lines and say "Mom! Dad! Did you see that!?" And give all of us high fives. One of my favorite memories of Sarah during her soccer season was a time that she got to do the kickoff and she ran up to ball and kicked it as hard as she could. So hard that it passed all the players and went straight into the goal. It was pretty amazing and she will still tell you all about it to this day. :)



It's a bit of a blurr but this is hummingbird  moth that we saw in Idaho when we saw the eclipse. So cool.










Just cute.
Harvest time.



My favorite picture I've found of the Timpanogos temple where Zac and I were married. Sarah's 4 year old picture.




Riding horses with some friends :)


Kevin Bacon. Biggest pig I've ever seen.

New Sunday clothes.
Rachel's new dress from Aunt Dawn. So cute.
Cleaned out our piano trying to find what was making a buzzing sound...never found it.

But we did find a bunch of other stuff.


Fishing at Manila Pond

Seeing Cars 3 at the dollar theater. The three girls sat by themselves in the row in front of us.



Our neighbor's birthday party.










She marches to her own drum. And I love it.

Rachel loves making her own after school snack of scrambled cheesy eggs after school.
Little garter snake we found at a family reunion at Wheeler Farms.



That boy is a sound sleeper.
Celebrating the girls getting 100 "OK Mom's".  When we told them to do something or not do something if they said OK Mom (or Dad) they would get a point



A new high on my fitbit step count.
Warms my heart.




Anne's Birthday! Our big girl is 9! Nine! Isn't that crazy? This girl is still my kind, sweet, snuggly, usually happy, fun-loving, lover of all things shiny and pretty sweetheart. She loves to play with her younger siblings, is excited to learn to ride horses, loves Elephant and Piggie books, and is becoming quite the piano player. We love you so much Anne! (Rachel made her that birthday crown that she wore to school the day of her birthday because she was in a class play and was a princess :)



Anne's request for her birthday dinner. Chocolate chip pancakes and sausages.

Anne received basically a whole new wardrobe for her birthday (because she is already wearing size 10/12 clothes and we didn't have any!  Thank goodness for Walmart's after season clearance :) Here she is in her changing room.






Daddy got her some sweet new headphones.

She loooooves listening to music.

He also got her a fidget spinner which Rachel liked putting on Jet's forehead. He actually thought it was pretty funny.




For Anne's birthday this year she asked to go on a train ride so we rode the frontrunner up to Salt Lake and went out to eat with Jen. Then Anne spent the night with her and we all rode home. We had quite the exciting trip home when our train hit two cows. Thankfully it wasn't a person and we were all ok, just took a little longer to get home than expected.






The kids were angels and just watched a movie on Zac's phone while we waited for the train to get fixed. Rachel was very curious what the outside of the train looked like.

I tried dying my own hair the fire colors using a paintbrush and foils but unfortunately it just turned out splotchy light pink so i just went all out and dyed it all bright pink. At first I wasn't sure about it but I ended up loving it! The only reason I dyed it back to brown was because I was going to be in Loren and Carrie's wedding and I didn't want to stand out in the pictures. This pic was also celebrating losing 10 pounds on Zac and my's fitness challenge. We said whoever could get to their percentage weight loss would get a certain amount of money and if you got to your goal weight before Thanksgiving you got a certain amount. Zac got to his percentage the day we left on our trip to VA. I got to my goal in October. Glad we could finally put our competitivness to good use. We also had a daily step challenge to see who could do more steps and the loser had to give the winner a massage. It worked for a while.


These guys love playing trains together.
Especially this little dude.

Cute new light up Spiderman shoe that we bought with the giftcard from Grandma Thatcher.


I like to workout in our playroom in the basement and even do some live workouts on facebook to stay motivated. This is some of my song and workout planning.
New high.
Zucchini baking.
My new kitchen utensil for cutting onions.
Still likes to dress up as Elsa.
Made a batch of salsa, wore gloves, still managed to get some jalepeno oil on my finger which I accidently rubbed right next to my eye. Yeah it burned but luckily it didn't last as long as last time.
End product.

I just loved the colors of his outfit :)

Never had this happen before, just heard about it. I also ended up cutting myself pretty good trying to wash it out.
Anniversary present from Zac. So awesome and hilarious.

Anniversary dinner. Maccoroni grill was closed :(

Waiting for the Paramore concert to start. It was absolutely amazing.  One of the best concerts I've ever been to.
Beautiful flowers from Zac that happened to match my hair :)

The morning of our last summer league soccer game. It frosted!
I'm tellin ya when he's tired....

We went through our wedding album and posted some of our favorites on facebook.































Our kids love football.

Sarah is doing a homeschool preschool group with our neighbors and their friends. I got to teach in September which was actually a lot of fun. They are so cute.
Rachel really wanted me to put my hair into a mowhawk.


Anne's field trip to the Curiosity Museum.





Preschool

The kids' toothbrushes. Love it.

Our catches from our fun fishing day.

The gardens at Wheeler farms. We want to try and mimic them in our garden next year.

Zac's pictures of the cow splatters on the train.



Went went to Pizza Pie Cafe after the last game of the season with the team. What a great group of girls. So sad that they all aren't moving up with Rachel.
Looking at our wedding album with the kiddos.
He has a grasshopper on his pants.
Our little monkey.
And smarty pants.

Anne's first day of school.
Rachel's first day of school.
On the way back from Idaho.
Eclipse time.
Sooooo cool.


The kids' favorite movie during the summer was Sing. They loved acting out the song scenes.



Good music at the festival.

So very almost two.



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