The lake.....(not Bear Lake...obviously)

Well this weekend was a good weekend. Tom and I knew we had to do something to keep our minds off all the fun the Lillywhites, Smiths, and Goldthorpes, were having in "our" beautiful Bear Lake. Oh how we wish we could have been there. On Saturday morning Tom talked to one of the neighbors and found out there is a lake about 45 minutes from our house that has a beach and decent swimming. Tom and I being fly by the pants as we are decided to load the kiddies up and take off. We were there by 2:00pm and after a couple of detours and mini hikes we made it to the beach. It was...well not Bear Lake. That being said, there was sand and water and it was a lot of fun. The water was not the beautiful sapphire blue of Bear Lake, more of a dingy dish water brown but it did have one thing on Bear Lake. It was warm, like 84-88+ degrees warm. Yeah that was nice and the kids had a ball. We even attempted to make poop castles (gotta be a Lillywhite to get that one). After a couple of hours at the lake we packed up and headed home, we showered and then went over to the ward house to watch 7 brides for 7 brothers. Yeah, that's a whole lotta hot redheads. I'm still trying to convince Tom to grow his hair out like those boys. On Sunday it was nice to actually have a hubby sitting next to me, what a difference that makes. All in all it was a good weekend even without a raspberry shake. ;)

Smelly Elle Belly....

Well a week has almost past since it was my youngest babies 3rd birthday. Can you believe she is 3? I can't. She is growing up so fast. It is weird to have a 3 year old that is the baby, see with all the other times one of my children turned 3 we had a new baby, usually less than 2 months old. Just how the spacing happened. Not such much right now. I know we have more babies to be had, just not quite yet. Here's a little recap of Elle's first 3 years of life. Elle was born on July 16, 2007 within a week of her being born we were closing on our first house. A house that as I am sure many of you remember needed a lot of work. We spent the first 3 months of her life gutting the house and getting ready to move in to it. Finally right before her 3rd month we moved into the Roy house. I thought life was getting settled only to have Tom come home in early December asking me if I wanted to move to Denver. Sure why not, so we placed the house on the market, miraculously sold it and moved to Denver right before Elle's first birthday. We spent the next year and a half slowly adjusting to life outside of Utah and managed to move from one place to another. Once again just 2 months into a house in Denver (luckily we were renting) Tom came home and asked if I wanted to move to Texas. Why not? So now here we are 3 years and 3 states and 5 different homes later. We are happy but I must say a little tired. I have learned to not expect life to settle down but I am pretty content with us just "being" for a while. Elle is just about the funniest little girl you would ever be blessed to meet. She has her daddies sense of humor and has for a long time. What other 4 month old laughs at her own farts? Really? She is obsessed with babies especially Candi's newest addition baby Zack and keeps asking if someday we can get a new baby like that. She is already writing her own name and loves coloring. She has mad skills on her new bike that she got for her birthday. Seriously, she's crazy good. I remember buying Brookie a 3 wheeled scooter for her 3rd birthday and thinking that she was probably too little for it. Not Elle, she is always trying to keep up with Riley and Brookie and usually succeeds. We went to Rain forest Cafe for her birthday and she had a blast. I didn't even bake a cake since we were able to convince her that a "Brownie Ice cream Volcano" was way cooler than a homemade spongebob cake. We then opened presents with cousins (via web-cam) and on Saturday went to a concert in the park. It was a fun birthday, but we definitely missed having family and friends to share it with. I am so grateful to get to be this little girls mommy and hope that she knows how glad we are that we have gotten to spend the last 3 years, no matter how crazy, with her.

Hey, hey, hey...

Well we are surviving with Tom being gone. It is amazing how slow the days go when you don't have a daddy that is going to come home. Any noise that Elle hears she assumes is the garage door, to which she screams, "Daddy's home!!!". Yeah a lot of disappointment is going around my house. The kids played outside in the swimming pool today and it was so nice to just sit and read my book. The fun was short lived though because Brooke has a mosquito bite on her calf/ankle (cankle?). Now a mosquito bite is not really anything to shake a stick at in the usual sense but Brooke and I have seem to become allergic to them and so they turn into a very sore blister. Brookes are way worse than mine and she has a nice blister right now. She ended up in bed with me the past couple of nights because it hurt so bad. I don't know what to do with it, so we cover it with a band-aid and hope it will get better. Poor girl! We struggle to find things to do with ourselves to past the time, this includes trips to the library, the park were the kids feed ducks and actually have better luck feeding the fish, and the ever popular watching of movies. We stumbled across a gem that was lost in the Lillywhite vaults. Fat Albert, the movie....yep live action baby. I think I bought it out of a $3 used movie bin, we had actually never watched it before and I though it would be a good deal. So the kids found it Sunday and we have watched it, several times. This is high quality entertainment people. It is so funny the things your kids like. Now Elle is walking around saying, "Hey, hey, hey!". Yep that's how we roll around here!

I love a rainy day.....

I don't think we are going to the park.

The game of Life

Well here we are in Texas. We are getting more and more settled everyday and are slowly adjusting to the heat and humidity. We happened to move here during record breaking heat and I guess it was a good way to jump right in. The weather this past week has actually been really pleasant minus the humidity. The kids and I spend a lot of time inside as it is usually too hot to spend more than 15-20 minutes outside at a time. Bed times are all but lost around here as we usually go outside around 8:00pm when it has finally cooled down enough. Yep 2 posts in the past year and I am writing about the weather. It has been hard moving to a new area yet again, This was our 11th move in 10 years and it is almost getting harder with each time. Hopefully we will be here for a little longer than previous times. The kids are adjusting to the move good but miss their cousins. We have all had out bouts of homesickness. We especially wish we were going home for the Lillywhite reunion, and Candi's new baby Zacks baby blessing. A lot of tears have been shed and most of them have been mine. If I have learned anything through all these moves is how important family is and how you all should take advantage of living so close to one and other. The 4th of July just isn't the same with no extended friends and family to share it with. Wow, I sound whiny!!! Life really has been good and I have enjoyed getting to stay home with the babies all day. Riley is still just a good big brother who usually plays awesome with his sisters. I had been getting on him about waking up early and then sneaking into Brookes room to wake her up. Brooke is my girl that needs her sleep and if she doesn't get enough she is all drama all day. (In fact she is crying right now about Riley not wanting to play "puppy" with her, yeah drama) Well yesterday I found a note that said "Brooke, Come and play with me. Love, Riley". I asked Brooke what it was and she said Riley had put it in her room in the morning while she was sleeping but she didn't wake up. I just had to laugh, I guess there are worse things than a big brother wanting to play with his little sister. Elle is a character and a half. She makes me belly laugh at least once a day and makes me want to lock myself in the closet at least once a day. She is the funniest little girl, I need to post a video of her. Anyways hopefully I will be more current with my blog postings and post some stuff on our awesome vacation. Oh the creepy cruiser, super sunsoaker and all the other characters. Such a good time. Anyhow until then....