On the Road Again!!

Well it is that time of year again. Pack up the ole car and head out on the open road. We are planning out summer trip and I still have way too much stuff to do at the house. We are heading to St. George on Friday night. Staying the night there and picking up two hitch-hikers aka my neice and nephew. They will act as the backseat babysitters on our travels. Early Saturday morning we head to Pocatello, ID. We will stay the night there and visit with my dad. Would love to go to chuch with him, but since church is at 1pm we will by-pass it since we have to hit the road. Then we will reach our destination of Great Falls, MT. All in all if we drove straight through no stops it would be 17½ hours in the car. We will be in MT for a week and leave early Monday the 7th to head to Salt Lake. We will be there a few days. Then head to St. George again early Thursday the 10th, where we will see Les Misérables at the Tuacahn Theatre. Then we will journey home probably Sunday the 14th. So those are our plans for a while. I may be out of connection for a bit while away.

We hope our little ones are happy travelers, which will make for a happy mom and dad. Hopefully during this trip I can continue to lose weight (an down 15 since the beginning of May, and only 7 to go) and Charlotte can find some more weight. She was 27" (90%) and only 13.2 lbs (7%). So she is very much 'long and lean'. To everyone since I probably will not be on, Happy Independence Day and I will be back with a full report when we come home.

Tagged

The rules here are that you have to take eight pictures of the following things. And you have to do it right away. No straightening, cleaning or wiping your child's nose. Then you tag five others. So here it goes:

The Laundry Room

My Closet

The toliet (the is the master)

My children

The fridge

The sink

My favorite pair of shoes.

My favorite room (because it is the coolest room right now)

Well, there you go. It is what it is.....5 lucky souls I'm tagging: Kerri, Melanie, Melissa, Heather and Andrea.

Catching UP

So it has been way to long since my last post. I meant to catch up right as I got home from Texas but the power supply and video card went out while I was away so it was a while before I had a computer again to update you all. Sorry for my laziness.


The girls and I arrived home safely from Texas. We had a great time and so did Steph and Trent while they were in China. The had some amazing experiences and Steph can't wait to go back. She brought me home a beautiful string of black pearls as a thank you. (If anyone is interested in fresh water pearls we are thinking about starting up a business so let me know.) We arrived home and Daddy had a big balloon for Savannah at the airport. She was so excited to see Daddy.










A Big HAPPY 4th BIRTHDAY to SAVANNAH!! Her birthday was May 15 and we were in Texas to celebrate. I took all 7 kids to Chuck E Cheese for an evening of fun. They all had a good time. But people were counting kids as I came into the restaurant. Savannah did have a princess party with her friends that Saturday after we got home. She had lots of fun. I should have made a post all to her but I have been a slacker.










When we were home she got her big 4 year old present. A Big Girl Bike!! She was so excited. We met up with her best bud Semanee and they rode bikes on the tennis court. Great for two little girls trying to get the hang of riding a bike. Although then we went up to the little park and there was slight hill. Instead of pushing back on the pedal to use the brakes she just jumped off. It is a good thing she had on a helmet. Live and learn I guess.





















We spent Memorial Day together and went to were else??? ... the zoo. It was a beautiful day to go there too. It was about 75 degrees with a light breeze. We had a lot of fun.
















Then on Tuesday the 27th of May I got my Mothers Day gift for the rest of my life (or well maybe the next 4 years). Chad came home with a new car. He bought me a 2008 Honda Odyssey. As much as I hate mini vans I love this car. Savannah always says, " I love our big car mom!" I think she loves the flat tv the most. Charlotte does not like it as much since it is more of a smooth ride so she doesn't get the bumpity-bumps while we drive.










Our next adventure was swimming lessons. Savannah started swim lessons last week. I thought for sure I would have a repeat of last year with the screaming and crying. But she really exceeded my expectations. She was great. She listened to everything the teachers told her. She had her "magic goggles" so she could swim. She kept her face in the water while she swam and jumped off the diving board no problems from the start by herself. She is a little fish now.



Our last adventure Savannah was looking forward to for weeks. The Stakes Annual Princess Ball. She was so excited to go to the Ball with her Prince aka Daddy. I asked Savannah if I could come sneak into the Ball. She told me they would throw me in the dungeon if I came. Chad left in the morning to get his hair cut. He told Savannah he had to get his hair cut for the ball. So I was on the computer looking up a flower shop and Savannah comes in to say "Mom don't I look beautiful?" I glanced up thinking she had makeup on and said yes of course you do. Then she started pulling her hair out to the sides. My reaction soon changed dramatically. She had cut her hair!! I about lost it. So we had to do some serious damage controll. All my thinking of having her hair be long and beautiful for the Ball were washed down the drain. I fixed it as best I could and will have to wait for it to grow out a bit so a pro can fix it and not make it above her ears. Anyway, back to the Ball. Chad decided to wear his tux and we got her a little corsague. She was so happy. They even took pictures like at Prom. She got to dance and make a frame to put their picture in. While there they met up with Chads brother Todd and his girls. The were nice enough to call the moms after and invite us to dinner at the Olive Garden. We had a lot of fun.























In a nut shell that has been our adventures as of late. We are planning on heading up to Montana the end of the month and through the 4th to visit family. Savannah thinks we are going to 'Hannah Montana' and is so excited. We are looking forward to a break in the heat and a cool 75-80 would be nice.

100% Free Roadside Kit - Just in time for Fathers Day

Just in time for father's day. Here's what you do... go to ebates.com and sign up. Please use my email address for a referral and you get an extra $5 sign in bonus!! (use kmariewright @ yahoo . com, without the spaces)
Then under select store, go to buy.com.
search for Halberd 31pc Roadside Emergency Kit.

Add to cart. Select google checkout to receive $10 discount. Fill out information. You will have to enter in your credit card info but nothing will be charged. Select free shipping and order!! Total will be $0 and you will get cash back for purchasing through ebates, which gives you cash refunds on all purchases made online! keep clicking on stores through ebates websites, and the more you will earn!

Too Many Bodies in the Shower

There's too many people in this tub

Too many elbows to scrub.

I washed a behind,

That I'm sure wasn't mine...

There's too many people in this tub.

Shel Silverstein

So yesteday Savannah, Chase (7½), Carsen (5), and Jake (2½) were outside playing. It had rained earlier plus they had the hose on. They happened to find the only part of the yard with dirt, and began to dig. As I call them in for dinner, I hear 'We wound a worm'. Well of course you are going to find a worm if you dig after it rains. Jake was the happiest to see it. He is the funniest kid. Everything he says is about 10 times faster than how a normal person speaks. So Jake tells me he found a worm. But says it so quickly he kind of drops the 'r'. We were not doing anything spectacular for dinner since Whiney Wendell aka Carsen seems to have a corrinary with almost everything. And since I am a mean aunt and don't host a diner whats for dinner is for dinner. So I asked Carsen what he would eat. He said he wanted cream of wheat. Cream of Wheat it is then. Anyway, the mud ridden children come in and I get them to wash their hands to eat. Once they are done I sent them to get into the shower. Since Charlotte is asleep in Stephs' room the master huge shower is off limits. Savannah desperately wanted to get in the shower with the boys. But call me old fashion when they are getting a little older like Chase I say nope. So they decide all 3 boys are going to get in the regular tub/shower. Boy was that a riot. They wanted to take a shower but still wanted the luxuries of a tub with the toys, all the while trying to do their own thing. Jake had finally had enough and escaped out the back. So then Savannah got into the big shower since Charlotte had woken up. So she is in the shower, which is her new favorite thing to do since her cousins do it. It takes forever for me to get it to her 'perfect' temperature. When she is finally all clean in her standards and I turn off the water, she tells me. "Mom my brain sure is hot." I asked, "Your brain for your head?", She says "My brain, Mom!' As in duh. It just cracks me up the things she says.

Safe and Sound

Just a little FYI that I did finally hear from Trent this afternoon. He said that they are fine and did not feel anything. There were some people in the upper floors of Trent's building that felt the building sway a bit but that is all. Because the phone and internet lines were overloaded it took in a few hours to finally recieve my messages. I am glad to hear they are both safe and sound. But my heart goes out to those who lost one of the almost 10,000 people whose lives were took by this earthquake. I hope we will all be very thankful that our families are safe and how much they mean to us.

Mothers Day and China

I hope all the Mothers out there had a fantastic day!! Mine was one that will go down in the Mothers Day hall of fame. Let me recap. Since I am in TX with Steph's kids, they made me scrambled eggs and toast. Garrett even had a neighbor run him to the store Saturday night and got me some flowers. It was really sweet. They all made me a card. We had church at 1pm, and we got all 7 kids ready and we were out the door. Since we only got there 10 minutes early we had to sit in the chairs, which was okay. All kids were so polite, even Jake the 2 y/o sat there with his arms folded. After the sacrament, I noticed that Charlotte had blown out her diaper. Savy said she had to go potty so the 3 of us ran to the bathroom. I got the girls are cleaned up, and went back into sacrament. I sit down and Carsen (5 y/o) had his arms inside his shirt and had an awful look on his face. I ask if he is okay, he says yes then totally upchucks all his mac n cheese he had for lunch. I was holding Charlotte so I reached out with one had an caught some of it in my hand. Now if we had gotten there when Steph usually does at 12:30 to get a bench he would have upchucked on the whole row ini front of us. I am grateful for only getting there 10 minutes early. I set Charlotte on the seat and told Garrett to hold her while I took Carsen out and to the bathroom. I had him sit in one of the stalls and told him to stay there and I was going to go clean up the mess. Luckily one of the sisters offered to help. Everyone else just looked at me like 'Glad its not my kid'. Given they may not know me but they sure know who the kids are. I was pretty bugged. We got everything cleaned up and I took the girls and Carsen home. A few ladies said they would get the other kids home. So I stopped at CVS which is right by the church and got some gatorade. The CVS is about a block away not inside the church like 'the great and spacious building' (as Steph calls it), that church also has a McD's in it too. We get home, and Carsen says he is fine. Why did he have to come home. I put on a movie for him in the game room and gave him a puke bucket. Not 10 minutes after that, it hit me. I have never thrown up so hard that it came out my nose. Yuck I know. So I hung on the couch most of the day, trying to keep liquids inside my body. If I moved it came out one way or the other. I was pretty miserale most of the day, but the kids were great. Charlotte slept a lot but for the couple hours she was up when the kids got home from church, they took care of her and made her happy until I could function a bit. Garrett made pizza for dinner since my original plan of salmon was just not going to fly today. Just wanted to say how lucky I am to have such great nephews and niece.

China

Not sure if any of you heard there was a 7.8 earthquake in central China Monday afternoon. Steph and Trent are in Shanghai right now and I have not been able to get a hold of them yet to see how they are. From what I have heard they felt after shocks there. I have sent IM's and Text messages to Trent to see how they are. I am a little worried since I have yet to hear back from them. I know that Trent was working today and Steph was out shopping with a friend from Mexico. I hope they are alright, but if you could all say a small prayer that they are okay that would be great. I will let you know when I hear from them.

Free Money

Just an update on the Money Exchange program. After verifiying account info I have to announce that we had $60 of free money hit our bank account. ($25 for Chad, $25 for me and $10 because I referred Chad). It is a great way to make a little bit of money for doing nothing. However with my mystery shopping I have already found that one of my companies is already using it rather than paypal so I'm sure I will get use out of it.

My Life with SEVEN children

So I arrived in Texas on Monday afternoon. My sister Stephanie flew the girls and I down because she was heading to China to meet her hubby Trent. I had a few days to get the hang of their schedule but I am officially in charge now. Between her five and my two it is going to be a crazy two weeks. I can't believe how many things the kids are involved in; soccer, gymnastics, violin, piano, tennis. Then of course there is the Young Mens and Activities Days with church. I have to say it will not be dull. I did successfully get the older three off to school this morning. But it was just pushing them out the back door since they are riding with neighbors to school. Right now I think things are good but ask me again in a week.

Oh a sad note though I felt bad because Stephanie got a touch of the flu last night. Puked a couple of times then got the runs. I hope she is feeling better on the plane. She said she was feeling better before she left at 4:45am. I will have to call her when she lands in Chicago before she boards the dreaded 14 hour flight to Shangahi. Hopefully it was only a 24 bug and she has fun. Here is hoping to good weather in China and in Texas. I hate it when the tornado watches and warnings go out. I will try to keep you all updated on my progress and my ask for pointers for a 2 year old Mammas boy. He has yet to get up and realize his mommmy is gone. I think that is when my day will really start.

Revolution Money Exchange

I've been seeing a lot of talk around the blogosphere about RevolutionMoneyExchange and how you can earn $25 for signing up for an account. I'm usually someone who blows off things like this as "too good to be true" but after being repeatedly encouraged to sign up and try it out myself, I did just that today.It was a simple 5-minute sign-up process and I now have $25 showing up in my account. I am not sure how this company is affording to hand out $25 like this to everyone, but it's worth signing up for if you have a few minutes and could use $25.

This is a new online banking system exactly like paypal. But there is not extra fees like you have with paypal. I know when I have had people send me money through paypal I don't always get the pull price. Like I had a friend send me $10 and I only got like $9.82 of it or something. Paypal pulls a little off the top to cover their fees. This company does not. I looked into in before I signed up. But even if you never use the account they will give you $25 for free just for signing up. Normally I don't do things like this because it looks like it is too good to be true, but after further research I found that it was true and I had $25 hit my account. Since this is like paypal you will have to enter in your SS# and also if you want them to direct deposit the money they will need your bank account info. But if you want them to just mail you a check they will, however they will deduct $2.50 from your amount to mail it. It is an actual bank too. Account issued by First Bank & Trust, Brookings, SD, Member FDIC and part of the Fishback Financial Corporation.

I think it is a great alternative to paypal, even if you don't use paypal it is an easy $25 bucks. They also have a referral program which allows you to refer others and receive $10 per referral (up to $500). So if you link through my referral then I will get an extra $10. After you sign up, add a link to your blog or site and get referrals as well. *you will only recieve referrals if people sign up by May 15.

Anyway, I use paypal once every couple of months so this is logical for me to help save a few more pennies. Whatever I get from the referral program will go towards my new car fund (which we are in need of, see previous post about Chad's car). So I would love to have you sign up.

Arizona

So on Monday I get a call from Chad saying, 'I had to bring my car into the shop again, can you come get me'. What I heard was, ' I had to bring in my big heap of junk car in so we can dump money into this bottomless pit I call a car.' Needless to say, i don't like the Saab. It has SO many problems. But I really don't think we would get too many buyers on it because of the problems, so we would need to fix a few to sell it. It is a neverending vicious cycle. So since I was 3/4 of the way to the zoo we decided to go. Lucky for you I did not have my camera so no pictures. We did learn a thing or two about Arizona while we were there. Did you know that there are 15 different species of rattlesnakes in the world and 11 of them can be found in Arizona? Bet you really want to come visit now. One of those we found on our front porch 2 years ago.

(I was not about to really get out there to check him out. So I had to zoom on the camera. I also did a little online editing of him so you could see him better)

Here is some more little tid-bits I have learned over the almost three years we have lived here.
-I good parking space is determined by shade not the distance to the store.
-Seat belts = branding irons. Unfortunately we have found this out the hard way.
-At 113 degrees you can successfully cook an egg on the sidewalk.
-Our state tree is called the Palo Verde. It literally means 'green stick'. I think they are weeds that someone let grow a little too long and wahla it turned into a tree. I am pretty sure I pulled this weed out of my backyard in UT. Never the less this is the little 'stick' of a tree I have to find shade to park under.

-It takes 75 years before a Saguaro cactus will shoot out an branch. It also will not blossom until it is between 50-60 years old, and the flower only opens for one day.

-When you turn on the cold water in the summer you have to let it run for a bit so it turns cold, not hot. Kind of the opposite of letting the hot water run to let it get hot.

Arizona Diary
May 15th: Now this is a state that knows how to live! Beautiful sunny days and warm balmy evenings. Mountains and deserts blended together. What a place! Watched the sunset from a park lying on a blanket. It was beautiful. I've finally found my home. I love it here.

June 14th: Really heating up. Got to 108 today. Not a problem. Live in an air-conditioned home, drive an air-conditioned car, work in an air-conditioned office. What a pleasure to see the sun every day like this. I'm turning into a real sun worshipper.

June 30th: Had the backyard landscaped with western plants today. Lots of cactus and rocks. What a breeze to maintain. No more mowing for me. Another scorcher today, but I love it here.

July 10th: The temperature hasn't been below 100 all week. How do people get used to this kind of heat? At least it's a dry heat. Getting used to it is taking longer than I expected.

July 15th: Fell asleep by the pool. Got 3rd degree burns over 60% of my body. Missed two days of work; what a dumb thing to do. I learned my lesson though: got to respect the ol' sun in a climate like this.

July 25th: Dry heat, my butt. Hot is hot! The home air-conditioner is on the fritz and the A/C repairman charged $250 just to drive by and tell me he needed to order parts.

July 30th: Been sleeping outside by the pool for three nights now. $1,600 in house payments and we can't even go inside. Why did I ever come here?

August 4th: 115 degrees! Finally got the air-conditioner fixed today. It cost $1,200 and gets the temperature down to about 90. I hate this state.

August 8th: If another wise guy cracks, "Hot enough for you today?" I'm going to tear his throat out. Crappy heat. By the time I get to work the radiator is boiling over, my clothes are soaking wet, and no deodorant works well enough!

August 10th: The weather report might as well be a dumb recording: Hot and Sunny. It's been too hot to sleep for two months and the weatherman says it might really warm up next week. Doesn't it ever rain in this barren desert? $1,700 worth of cactus just dried up and blew into the pool. Even a cactus can't live in this heat.

August 14th: Welcome to Hell! Temperature got to 120 today. Forgot to crack the window and blew the windshield out of the car. The installer came to fix it and said, "Hot enough for you today?" My wife had to spend the $1,600 house payment to bail me out of jail.

August 30th: Worst day of the summer. I'm not leaving the house. The monsoon rains finally came and all they did is to make it muggier. The car is now floating somewhere in Mexico with its new $500 windshield. nobody told me about staying out of the washes during a "flash flood" warning. That does it. We're moving back to Utah and buying a house next to the freeway for some peace and quiet.

Now I leave you with a poem that really just sums it up here in especially here in the summer time.

Ah, Arizona!

The devil wanted a place on earth
Sort of a summer home
A place to spend his vacation
Whenever he wanted to roam.

So he picked out Arizona
A place both wretched and rough
Where the climate was to his liking
And the cowboys hardened and tough.

He dried up the streams in the canyons
And ordered no rain to fall
He dried up the lakes in the valleys
Then baked and scorched it all.

Then over his barren country
He transplanted shrubs from hell.
The cactus, thistle and prickly pear
The climate suited them well.

Now the home was much to his liking
But animal life, he had none.
So he created crawling creatures
That all mankind would shun.

First he made the rattlesnake
With it's forked poisonous tongue.
Taught it to strike and rattle
And how to swallow it's young.

Then he made scorpions and lizards
And the ugly old horned toad.
He placed spiders of every description
Under rocks by the side of the road.

Then he ordered the sun to shine hotter,
Hotter and hotter still.
Until even the cactus wilted
And the old horned lizard took ill.

Then he gazed on his earthly kingdom
As any creator would
He chuckled a little up his sleeve
And admitted that it was good.

Twas summer now and Satan lay
By a prickly pear to rest.
The sweat rolled off his swarthy brow
So he took off his coat and vest.

"By Golly, " he finally panted,
"I did my job too well,
I'm going back to where I came from,
Arizona is hotter than Hell. "

Now when can we expect the vistors?