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Happy Birthday, Happy Halloween, and Happy Thanksgiving!

Seeing everyone start to post on their facebook page about what they are thankful for has got me thinking today about some of the things I am thankful for. I guess I'll share a few of them along with our pictures. Hopefully it won't come across as being TOO cheesey. :)

1. I'm thankful for my little boy! I can't believe he is three already! He had a great birthday and is so very happy with his new Buzz and Woody toys! He is also taking after grandpa Wyckhuyse and grandpa Carl by sharring their love of trains.

2. I am thankful for my little princess, Miri! She has surprised me in many ways and one of them is that she loves her cars, dinosaurs, Buzz Lightyear and Woody just as much as the boys do! I peeked in the nursery window a few weeks ago to see her playing dinosaurs with the boys in her class!

3. I am thankful for Ella and what a wonderful big sister she is. Just tonight she was giving Miri rides around the house in the laundry basket and they were giggling wildly the whole time. She was so careful to watch out for her brother while trick-or-treating and is ready to share her candy with Miri.

4. I am grateful for a husband who honors his priesthood, adores his children, loves and respects me. It was said during conference a few weeks ago that the best thing a father can do for their daughter is love her mother. All I could do the moment I heard those words was smile happily because he definitely does and given Ella's sick looking faces just after her dad hugs and kisses me, she knows it too!

5. I am grateful for the blessings the temple promises us as a family and am so glad that we have a temple 5 minutes from our house. The kids love stopping by and taking a walk around the grounds and I love that they are learning how important the temple is.

6. I am grateful for our heater. It got cold today and I think over the summer I've forgotten how cold it gets here. The heater really helped take the edge off. :)

7. I'm thankful that marching band season is over. I love it in the moment and I wouldn't trade it for anything, but I am certainly ready for the break and to be a real stay at home mom again! (I think my kids and husband are too!)

8. I'm grateful for wonderful parents who taught me to do my best. I'm not a perfect mom nor will I be winning any "world's greatest mom" awards anytime soon, but I do the best I can. My kids feel loved and safe and that is proof that my best is working out pretty well for them!

9. I'm thankful that I have enough. We don't drive big, fancy cars, I don't wear designer jeans, my kids don't get everything and anything they want, but we have what we need and I know that's a lot more than many people can say.

10. I'm grateful for my Savior Jesus Christ. He makes me want to be a better wife, mother, and person. The knowledge that He lives brings comfort in times of need and happiness during my daily life.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I hope you can take a minute over the next few weeks to remember and appreciate all of the blessings in your life!

School Begins!

I guess we've been back into the whole school scene for over a month now, but I'll post pictures anyway! Ella was excited to go back for about a day and then she was over it! She just hates having to get up early in the morning and has told me many times that she would much rather sleep in and be late to school. :) As you can see, her school is still under construction, but it is getting better! Brock and Miri were not too excited to see her go and I think they are happiest every day when they see her bus and hear her walk in the door.

Ella got to participate in a cheerleading clinic the first week of school and she had an absolute blast with that. I'd annoucne that she decided she loves to perform, but I'm pretty sure you already knew that!

Over the past few weeks we've done a handful of football games and marching band shows and the kids love coming to these. Miri was thoroughly entertained as one of the band kids let her "help" play the bells! And Brock will dance around to the band's music and let out a spirited, "GO UTES!" every now and then.

Chad and I are doing well. Thanks to my parents, we were able to escape to Salt Lake for a night and although the trip was much too short, it was nice to get away together! We are all looking forward to Brock's birthday coming up this month as well a much anticipated Halloween! Ella is going to be a mermaid, Brock is going to be his new favorite superhero, Buzz Lightyear and Miri is going to be the cutest little sailorette that ever lived! I'll be sure to post pictures as soon as possible!

Summer Fun

Hi everyone! As the summer wraps up, I thought I'd take a few minutes and let everyone know how ours has gone. It's been busy of course, full of parades, races and all sorts of outdoor fun. We had two parades here in Vernal, both of which I marched in with the marching band and color guard, while Brock and Miri rode along in style, and Ella and Chad enjoyed watching all the cars and horses. I can't say Miri was too thrilled after the first parade and I was nervous to make her do a second but for some reason she enjoyed the second one much more than the first! No cries of protest for that one!

We decided one weekend to get a little brave and take the kids for what we thought would be an easy hike. Well, we were severely mislead and it was quite steep! Lots and lots of climbing, but the kids really enjoyed it. Ella thought the Indian Petroglyphs on the mountain were really cool while Brock's favorite part was...the giant rocks.

We had my sister Brittany and her husband Mark come out for a weekend to visit and while they were here we went to an awesome car show and enjoyed some delicious steaks that Chad BBQed up for us.

And then of course, probably mine and Chad's favorite summer activity so far was our river rafting trip. The kids did not join us on this one, although we told Ella that we would consider bringing her along next year. The rapids were great and we had an absolute blast. We had a spilt second when we hit a rapid that I bounced up so high that we were both thinking I was about to end up in the water, but thankfully, I did not. It was a great trip and we will definitely be doing it again!

One of the most exciting things that has happend in our family most recently has been a major change in Chad's work schedule. He now works Monday-Friday with every weekend off. Horray! It has been just over two years since he has had a nice schedule like that and we are so grateful for it. He can now attend church regularly with us and I no longer have to struggle alone to maintain at least a little bit of order during sacrament meeting...now I'll have someone to help out during the struggle! :) The kids are happy too since this means that (for the most part) Chad gets home earlier in the evening and he gets to help tuck them in bed every night. They sure love that!

Now, I'm not sure when exactly when I will blog again as next week we officially go back to school and that marks the beginning of just over two VERY busy months for us full of marching band practices and shows. But, Ella is excited to start second grade, return to girl scouts and this year we will be adding dance classes two days a week for her to our schedule as well. She also has a week long cheerleading clinic with the high school cheerleaders and they get to show off what they will have learned during half time of a football game. She can't wait and I promise lots of pictures!

Brock continues to grow and learns new words every day. He is constantly asking me what things are so that he can try new words out and see how they sound. He loves having dance parties with his sisters and attempting to wrestle with his dad.

Miri is finding her voice in life as well. She still doesn't say too many words but recently, she has learned how to shriek like a wild animal. Where she learned that sort of behavior we cannot seem to figure out because there is no way she could have picked it up from her incredibly mellow and soft spoken older sibblings. ;) She too loves to dance and has even learned that getting a running start before jumping on dad makes it even more fun! All three of them are an absolute joy and we are constantly talking about how lucky we are to have them.

We hope that everyone has had a safe and enjoyable summer!

Our Spring Vacation

Hi everyone! I hope this blog post finds you all happy, healthy and ready for summer! We sure are! Lucky for us, we have settled back down a little bit into our normal routine. April sure was a busy month for us! I participated in my first triathalon last month and had an awesome support team to cheer me on along the way. Just a few days after that, we were finally able to make our way up to Washington to visit with our Jordan/Elmore family and had a blast! The traveling part was really not so great, with a 3 hour drive from Vernal to Salt Lake, a layover in Portland and then finally arriving in Spokane. The kids did really well considering all of that, but boy they sure were happy to get off of that last flight! And of course, what would a family vacation be without jam-packing it with every possible outing? We had it all! We went to Jump and Bounce, Chuck-E-Cheese (in the same day of course!), went 4-wheeling, had a bonfire, and Easter Egg hunt, an Easter pinata, went shopping, Ella lost a tooth, Brock decided to throw in a trip to the ER for good measure (he's fine, it was nothing...literally!), and we even got snowed in on our last day there! We did miss a few people, due to the whole ER trip and then being snowed in, but we had a great time with those that we did get to see. We're definitely going to try and come around the same time next year!


Then of course, our last night there, Brock and Miri decided that Chad and I would not be needing any sleep and wanted to party all hours of the night! We of course had two more flights and a three hour drive in order to get home. We were wiped out! Chad went back to work right away and we hadn't even been home for a full 48 hours when I loaded the kids back up in the car and we drove 2 1/2 hours out to my sister's house so that we could get up the next day and run a 5K. That was a lot of fun as well and the kids did great! We came home later that afternoon and I think it goes without saying that we became serious homebodies for about a week after that.

Future plans for us are exciting as always! Ella has 2 more weeks of school before summer vacation. She and her brother and sister will spend a few days with their cousins and grandparents while I do band camp with my high school students the first week in June. Then we will be busy with marching band/color guard practices throughout all of June. I also hope to squeeze in another triathalon (not an indoor swim this time folks...brrrrr!) and start some potty-training with the Brock-man. (Ahhhh!) Ella will be doing some swim classes soon and was working hard last weekend with Chad to get her bike fixed up. She wants to run a kids triathalon in June that is a 50M swim, 3 mile bike ride and 1/3 mile run. What a trooper! Miri is always chasing after her brother and sister, never wanting to be left out of the fun! And Chad is working hard as alwas! He puts in so many hours without a complaint and no one deserved that vacation time more than he did! I'm hoping that I can kidnap him for a few days over the summer and get away, just the two of us! Take care, love you all!





Toothless!














Brock in the ER...he just looks like he's on his deathbed, doesn't he?






We were snowed in for a few hours, but Cobe and Ella didn't seem to mind!















Some of our Brock family.








Meer-Cat!

Well, here we are again! I think since the last time I blogged we have had Christmas, New Year's, two birthdays, a handful of soccer games, several swim classes, lots of colds, the flu (twice!), moved Brock to a "big boy" bed, Miri started walking and Ella (with some major help from Chad) sold over 200 boxes of girl scout cookies!

I'm happy to report that everyone is doing well and thankfully we are all much healthier than we were this time last month. Ella is keeping busy with school where we were delighted to hear that she is doing amazingly well. She scored above her grade level in several areas during their testing last month. She also goes to girl scouts once a week and sold 232 boxes of girl scout cookies! Now, more than half of those orders came from Chad's work, but 75 of them were phone calls she made or doors that she knocked on. She worked really hard and is really excited about it. I'm sure we will be slightly less thrilled about a week from now when those cookies invade our house and we begin the process of delivering and collecting money! (Do Chad and I get prizes for all of our hard work?) Ella is also playing indoor soccer right now and having a lot of fun with that. The hardest thing for the kids to remember is not to steal the ball from their own teammate!

Brock has officially moved to a "big boy" bed, which he has learned to love. He definitely loves the part where he can get out of bed on his own and has even begun to be sucessful at opening his own door (yeah, I've totally tried to child-proof knobs...he just pulls them off). He and I go to a mommy and me swim class twice a week and he loves it. Last class unfortunately, we had to leave because I forgot to pack my suit in our bag (strange, they have this rule that says you HAVE to wear one in the pool) and he threw an absolute fit! He was so angry he did not get to swim. The food issues continue pretty normally but every couple of weeks he decides to randomly try something new...which is usually followed by a funny face and a dramatic show of fake gagging. Whatever, we will take what we can get I guess!

If you haven't heard, Miri (or Meer-cat as well all call her) started walking! She took her first steps officially on her birthday and is attempting to pick up the pace so she can run everywhere. I guess walking just takes too long when you have bookshelves to clear, cabinents to re-organize, laundry to unfold, and carpets to color on! She loves to explore the halls during church (whoever heard of class anyway?) and follow her brother and sister around wherever they go. She might be full of trouble, but I don't know what I would do without that adorable little smile and musical laugh of hers!

Our plans for the next few months are hopefully going to be exciting! We should be getting to WA pretty soon and then we'll be taking a trip with our Brock side of the family to Van Couver this summer. We look forward to both!

All right, hair or no hair, is she not just the prettiest baby girl in the world?

My little angels decided to raid the m&m jar when I wasn't looking!