Friday Sept 28th

Thank goodness this week is over is all I have to say. I have been so insanely busy, I hate that. I had something going on every night this week and I just have to say.....I like being a home body. I have been working about 3 to 4 hours a day, which I know doesn't seem like much saying it but between doing stuff for the kids and trying to work it just really is a lot when the schedule is full with stuff going on at night also. Don't get me wrong though, I am totally grateful for my job and the flexibility of it! Jon worked nights this week which I suppose also compounds the problem since he is at home trying to sleep during the day and then I only see him for a few hours in the evening before he is at work. Plus having the kids 24 hours a day to myself practically....good times!! Okay enough whining and complaining, I am over it, and thank goodness this week is over!
I have been battling on and off with my scanner all week too. I am not sure what the deal is but it is not working. I was trying to scan in my ad from Fit Pregnancy to post on the blog but have been unable to make it work. Did anyone else get the magazine and have a min to scan it and email me a copy of it to post? Let me know, that would be awesome. The only exciting thing we did this week was travel to the outlets to shop at the Children's Place. They had and probably are still having a really good sale. Additional 50% off already sale priced items and I live for these sales trying to cloth 3 kids. I went down with my friend Aislinn and her 2 kids to the Colorado Mills Outlet Mall in Denver. It is about an hour away. We all piled in the big green Excursion and had a great time....In the car. This was my first shopping trip with all 3 kids and no double stroller. I sold my stroller on craigs list a few weeks ago since the twins absolutely refuse to sit in it anymore and it was just collecting dust in the garage. Whenever we brave to zoo or such places we just take the wagon. I hadn't actually thought about shopping when selling the stroller but they really don't sit in it and behave so off it went. The shopping was crazy with all 3 of them running wild through the store and me trying to pick out clothes. I was one of those people who probably bother everyone else in the store and said, "Can't you just stay by me?" At least a thousand times. At the end of the 45 min even the threat of not riding on the carousel wasn't working. That's when it is time to abort the mission and eat lunch. I really look forward to the day when I am actually able to shop ALONE! Other than that the twins had their well child Dr. visits this week and everything went well there. 2 happy healthy 3 year olds, and Olivia was star of the week at school. Which means she had to bring in some pictures of herself and then they ask her several questions each day about her favorite this or that and what she likes to do. She thoroughly enjoyed all the attention. We had our carpets cleaned this morning which was LONG overdue. What a pain in the butt though. Moving all the furniture on the hard wood and then everything in the kids rooms downstairs. And then back again. But I do have to say well worth it to get all those juice stains and what not out of the carpet. It actually looks somewhat decent again. No huge plans this weekend. I am going to go to a women's broadcast at church tomorrow night and then we have our final rehearsal for the fashion show on Sunday. Hopefully lots of down time and just hanging out with my husband who I feel like I haven't seen all week.

Monday Sept 24th

Well I am officially famous, sort of. Ha! The issue of Fit Pregnancy for Oct and Nov came out today and after searching my local grocery store and Walgreen's I finally went over to Barnes and Noble and found it. I thought that they were going to put our stories in an article, but it is just the winners pictured in a ad for Bright Starts towards the back. Still cool though. I am excited to meet the other winners and spend the weekend with them. It is pretty neat to see my picture in a magazine. Here is what the cover looks like if you are looking for it and the ad is on page 112.

We were running around all weekend. We had a baptism and 2 birthday parties to go to. At my Alyssa's twins birthday party her father in law passed out and we had to call the ambulance. It was pretty scary. Good news is that he is just fine. A little too much excitement for a birthday party although all the kids though the ambulance and fire truck were pretty cool.

Today it rained all morning and then quit in the afternoon and has been raining since 5pm. It is a nice change and a good sign that fall is on the way. I went to my cancer well fit class this evening and am sitting down to do some more work.

Friday Sept 20th

The weather has been beautiful here the last few days in the 80s. Wednesday I went and picked out a few dresses for the Hope Lives gala fashion show that I am participating in. They decided that they only wanted us in white, black, or pink and at a bridal store that really limits your choices. I was able to find a few that I liked but nothing I was head over heels about. We had to have a couple picks since we aren't actually buying the dresses and they can be sold from the store before the fashion show. I went to my cancer well fit class on Wednesday night and always seem to feel great after working out. Jon came home from Frasier on Wednesday late afternoon so it was good to have him home from the last part of the week.
Thursday I didn't do too much just worked and did some stuff around the house. Last night Jon and I went to our first rehearsal for the fashion show. Seems pretty straight forward and I think it will be a lot of fun. Thursday we also got the last package of stuff from the pink power moms contest giving us all our flight and transfer information and our final schedule. We got to choose from a variety of different things to do at the spa. We are going to get a couples massage and facials. Friday night they are taking us to eat at Emrils and then we get to shop and go to the spa on Saturday before the pink tie ball. Jon had to go and rent a tux for that, they recommended it since it is really formal. We get to attend a pre part event where we will be able to meet our honorary chairs for the event, Jane Fonda and then a news anchor in Atlanta. That should be fun. I loved her in Monster in law and 9 to 5. We are so excited to go. They also sent me an article that they will send to our local press her about me and the contest itself. I am not sure if they will print it in the paper or not.
Today more of the same work and then we met Jon for dinner at Chili's. We were both exhausted and came home and relaxed since we have been so busy this week. We have a busy day tomorrow with a baptism and 2 birthday parties to go to, so lots of running tomorrow. My sister Amy told me about this new site to share my photos called Picasa. I am going to try it out and will have all my new albums posted on Picasa. There is an option to download photos so they are easier to share and they don't turn out grainy. Follow the link on the side of my blog that says NEW Pictures from Picasa. I just uploaded the kids birthday photos on there.

Tues Sept 18th

As always I have had a busy weekend. I was just telling someone that it would be nice to be able to blog and say, I did absolutely nothing the last few days. Wishful thinking I suppose. We went to the funeral on Thrusday and it was a beautiful service. It was neat to see a church so full that there was standing room only, what a testiment to what a neat and hard working man he was. He will be missed by many. We also spent some time with my grandma and aunt Kathy who was in town from California.
Friday I stayed really busy working and then Jon and I went out to eat with our friends Desi and Aislinn. It was nice catching up with them, since the 4 of us hadn't been out in awhile. Saturday I ventured out with the kiddos since Jon had to work. We stopped by a twins club get together and it was nice to see all of the ladies from that group that I haven't seen in so long. I even was able to see one gal from another club that will be joining ours, Cyndie. It has been fun getting to know her over the past year and a half. We also went out to the Children's Place and out to lunch at Chick Fil A. After lunch we all came home and I decided to jump into a huge project...switching the kids clothes and getting out their new clothes sizes. I got out the next size clothes for 3 kids and put all their clothes they have grown out of away. I have to say if I never do laundry again, it will be too soon. I washed all their stuff and am still working on putting it all away.
Jon left for work yesterday morning. He will be in Fraiser, by Winter Park, for a few days. I went to my cancer well fit class last night and took the kids to their child care center so stayed a little longer and did the treadmill for 45 min since child care is a flat fee for a few hours. They actually had a good time and they have a train table set up with toy trains. Cody was in heaven. He loves trains.
I just found out that my brother in law who is a genius with computers opened a business. If you need computer help of any sort he is awesome. His business is called Zen Computing Solutions. Check out his website at http://www.zencomputingsolutions.com/index.htm

My sister had found some old video tape of me and the kids while we were at her house and was showing me all the cool things her Adobe video elements program can do and made me this video of the kids and I when they were smaller. There is this one part where we dressed Olivia in my brother Mason's shoes and shirt and she was saying "Wud up home boy", you can't hear it on the video because the music over it, but it was funny! I love it, so check it out!

I missed it again!

Okay ladies, Ashley kindly reminded me that I forgot AGAIN about buddy check 9 day. So, if you haven't already make sure that you do your monthly self breast exam for this month.

Yesterday I had a fun breakfast with some of my girlfriends. Abbey, Courtnee, Aislinn and myself went out to eat since Courtnee will be starting cosmetology school next week and will be one busy lady after that. But hey, I know I am excited to have an "in" for the latest hair styles. I had the twins with me so we ran over to Target to pick out a bday present with their gift cards. They really liked being able to go to the store and pick something out that they wanted. Cody picked a Thomas the train mat that has a city and train tracks on it that he can play with his trains on and Alex picked a horse that looks like the Disney princess Ariel. Needless to say that came home and Olivia already knows what she wants to buy with hers, a Jasmine horse. Olivia had her parents night last night with school so I went to that to learn about her class for the year, curriculum and expectations from her teacher. I really like her and I know Olivia is really enjoying school so far.
Today Jon and I are going to our friend's father's funeral. It will be a hard day....

Tues Sept 12th

We had a busy weekend as usual. We did a day trip up to the Wyocolo area in Roosevelt National Forest to ride the four wheelers on Saturday. It was fun and we were joined by a bunch of friends. We rode for most of the day and Olivia actually rode her four wheeler for a few hours. The last time she only rode for about 30 min before her thumb hurt too much. The throttle is controlled by your thumb. She did very well and Jon and I were both pretty impressed with her. I forgot my camera though, darn! It makes for a long day and we didn't get home until about 9pm, so we were all very tired. Sunday we had church and then a BBQ get together to celebrate all the kids birthdays. Olivia turned 5 on Sunday and the twins birthday was a little over a week ago, so I figured we would just have a get together for all 3 at the same time. It was great having everyone over, but a bit overwhelming for the kids. They got a lot of nice things. Olivia has been talking about getting a doll house for awhile and we found a nice one at Target that is Kolcraft brand. Her toy kitchen is the same brand and is all wood and very sturdy. We have been really happy with it and so chose that one. She of course was so excited. And all of the kids got a new bikes from Jon's aunt and uncle, Clara and John. They have been playing with all their new stuff for the last 2 days and haven't had a boring moment in the day. Between coloring, playing dolls, playing with cars and trains, and riding bikes they have kept very busy. Alex has caught on to peddling with the training wheels really well but Cody still doesn't really get how the peddling is actually key in riding the bike. It is pretty cute though, and I can't believe my kids are 3 and 5 already. We also found out on Sunday that Jon's really good friend's dad passed away last week. He was diagnosed with cancer only a few months ago, but I guess it was all over. I am just amazed at what a terrible and wide spread disease cancer is. I feel like it is all around me and just feel so blessed that we had caught mine when we did. Jon has some really great memories of his buddies father and I know his family and friends will all miss him dearly. We love you guys!!
I am still having issues with my allergies and am wondering now if it didn't just turn into a really bad head cold after our trip. It hasn't seemed to let up much over the last week. I am hoping that it will get better soon. I was able to go out to lunch with some ladies that I work with today which was fun. Jon worked last night so he was home and was nice enough to watch the kids while I went and played for a bit. My aunt Kathy is in town visiting my grandma so we were all able to get together for dinner this evening to visit. It has been fun having my grandma here and nice to get to see some of my dad's side of the family over the past few months. I posted our Salt Lake trip pictures on my pictures link on the side bar of my blog if you want to check them out and will try and get the kids birthday pictures up there sometime this week. That's all for now, I am off to bed.

Friday Sept 7th

Wow, it has been a busy week. Every day I kept meaning to update my blog and just never got there. There's lots of stuff to do to catch up from being gone.
We had a great trip out to Salt Lake. We ended up leaving at 2am on Friday morning when Jon got off of work. I think it worked out well since the kids slept for 3/4 of the way there. Much less time to entertain them. We got to my sister's house at about 10 in the morning and then tried to take all the kids over to the pool. Unfortunately there is some virus going around Utah county that is easily transferred by the combination of kids, swimming diapers, and use your imagination from there. So they weren't allowing any kids under the age of 5 in any pools in the area, even hotel pools. Then we had a bunch of unhappy kiddos on our hands since we were all dressed to go swimming and weren't allowed in. It was funny the lady at the front desk of the pool was like, "Haven't you seen the news?" I guess it had been going on for a few weeks and when we said we weren't from there she acted like she had never been around ANYONE that wasn't from Salt Lake. "You aren't from here?" "Wow, where are you from? How could you have not heard about all this?" It was crazy. Any-who.... We ended up taking the kids down the street to the park for lunch and then my sister Amy remembered that we had 2 kids that were 5, Olivia and Cole, and suggested we just take them back to swim. So the guys took the other 4 kids to Cabellas to look at the animals and the fish tank and then back home to nap while the rest of us took the other 2 kids to the pool. They had a great time and we were practically the only people at the pool. It was fun to sit and visit since the kids are pretty much old enough to play without having us right there with them at all times.
Saturday we went to Farm Country which is this mini farm where the kids can see, pet, and feed all sorts of farm animals, go on pony rides, and a wagon ride. I think everyone had a good time there but it was pretty hot so we only stayed for an hour and a half or so. We went out to eat at Cafe Rio which according to my sisters is the best Mexican food ever. They are supposed to be opening a similar place out at our new shopping center here in Loveland that is owned by the same company. It was actually really good so I am looking forward to this other place opening by us. In the afternoon the guys took the older 2 kids to the BYU vs. Arizona football game and we stayed at Toni's for her baby shower. It was fun to be able to be there for that and meet some of Doug's family and the little kids napped through most of it so that was nice. We met the rest of the crew down at Brick Oven in Provo for dinner which was also really good. They had a balloon artist there that made each of the kids a balloon figure and we also saw the BYU cougar mascot at the restaurant. The kids got to take a picture with him which they thought was awesome since they saw him on the field during the game.
Sunday we all got up to rainy weather and went up to Ogden to see my grandpa Harris. Since it was rainy we all had to visit inside and my grandpa had out all his model plane stuff. The kids wanted to be all over that, so we weren't able to stay as long as we would have liked but we did have a really nice visit and it was fun to be able to see him. Jon and the kids had never been out to see temple square so we headed over there. We walked through the visitor's center and took a few pictures by the temple but since it was during the kids nap time the trip was a little short lived. It we neat to be able to see the new conference center and the kids loved the water fountains out in front of it. Cody is obsessed with water. He was more excited to see the waterfalls at the zoo then the animals so he was in heaven next to all the water there. The one crappy thing for me out there was that my allergies were horrible and haven't really gotten too much better since I have been back. Hopefully they are bad all fall.
Amy and Trevor had to leave on Monday morning so we all got up to see them off and then went out to Park City. What a beautiful place. I just love the Salt Lake area and all the beautiful mountains. It is neat to see all the huge mountains surrounding Salt Lake and there are no foothills, just the valley and then giant mountains all around. We walked around the outlet mall in Park City which was a zoo, but I was in heaven. I wish we had great outlets here. They had all the good stores. Then we went up to Olympic Park which was so neat. We saw all the freestyle ski jumpers practicing jumping off and into the pool and then Jon and Doug went on the bobsled run. They said it was intense. They went about 70 miles an hour and 4 G's. Jon was sore all the next day from having to hold his body stiff. It looked like a lot of fun.
We left Toni's early on Monday to make it to my Dr. appt by 9am. Toni ended up driving back home with us so she watched the kids while we were at the Dr. I really liked the doctor a bunch. She seemed to be really on top of her game. She explained all about the microsurgery and what it would entail. She also explained the option of reconstruction using the latissimus muscle from my back. This one they tunnel that muscle from my back under my arm and use skin from my back. She said that I was a good candidate for either procedure but that she didn't think that they would be able to get a very large amount of tissue for the microsurgery. With microsurgery they can't use an implant because they don't want to have any pressure on the newly formed artery and vein. She definitely didn't pressure me either way on making a decision but did say that it might not be worth while to do the microsurgery since they wouldn't be able to form much a breast with the tissue I have. She also said that it will probably look cosmetically better if I did the mastectomy on the other side since it would be easier to match. But they wouldn't do all of that in one surgery. So this will probably be a process of 2 to 3 separate surgeries. I feel like I am much more informed on my options but still haven't come close to making a decision either way. The microsurgery is a longer recovery process too since you are very limited on bending and moving with tearing apart your butt muscles. I suppose there are many pros and cons on both sides. She also recommended waiting about 6 months after radiation to do reconstruction so that puts me back to Dec or Jan-ish. If I decide to not do the microsurgery though I would probably choose a surgeon here since they all do the other surgery and obviously more convenient to have it here than travel back and forth a bunch. Although I REALLY liked Dr. Chen in Salt Lake. I guess we will have to see how I feel about it in a week or so.
The car ride back was pretty uneventful. Toni got stuck in the back with the kids but they were actually really good and kept themselves busy with movies, books, and coloring. Jon drove the whole way home and I finished my Harry Potter book. That was good because I knew I wouldn't have time to finish it after I got home. It was an awesome book. I really enjoyed reading the series. The rest of the week has been pretty uneventful. Laundry, working, Olivia back to school. We are taking the four wheelers out tomorrow and having a birthday party BBQ for all the kids on Sunday since their birthdays are all so close together. I will upload our vacation pictures this weekend sometime.