Service auction!!! (A lot of writing...sorry!)

Today was a really busy day! This morning, we had Jocelyn's last ballet class before her recital! AHHH! I was getting VERY nervous b/c three of the girls in her class, including her, had not received their costumes and they are having class pictures done on Saturday! The studio called this afternoon and said they came in. I am so excited for their recital! Jocelyn and I have been practicing her dance pretty much every day and she does great! I don't have to remind her the steps at all anymore! Today Ms. Christy asked all the parents to come in and watch the girls do their dance for the last time. For some reason, Jocelyn has told me not to smile at her while she's in class!!!! WHAT?!?! So sad! I don't know where that came from, but when we went in to watch them, I FORGOT and smiled at her! Little Miss Sassy put her finger up and said, "stop Mom!" right in the middle of the dance! I was so embarressed! I am hoping that all the other moms were watching their own child and didn't see what my little stinker said! HA HA! After class, I nicely asked her why she did that and she said, "mommy you can smile at me"...I think she felt bad!

After ballet, we came home and I had to finish making sixty auction paddles for our enrichment meeting tonight. (For some reason, they decided to make me enrichment leader AND primary teacher! FUN!) Thankfully my Mom had stayed at my house late last night and helped me out! Thanks Mom! We had a service auction and an ice cream sundae bar for enrichment! It was so fun!! I had never been to one, so I wasn't sure what to expect. A lot of people brought things that they had made like food, quilts, a painting,spa items, etc. Other ladies wrote a service on a piece of paper like babysitting, rides to the temple, free haircuts, interior design help, birthday party planning, homemade specialty cakes and all kinds of fun stuff! I was impressed with the variety! Anyway, we had a questionare sheet that we passed out and that's how you earned points to bid. Some questions were did you read your scriptures, have family home evening, make your bed, bear your testimony, do your visiting teaching, etc. and each question was worth a certain amount of points. You would think since I helped make the questionare, I would have had made sure I did everything...nope! :) Oh well. We had one of the husbands lead the auction and he was SO FUNNY! I think that is definitely what made it so fun! He had us all cracking up the whole night! What was my service, you ask?!? Well, I decided to make something instead! Around three oclock I decided I should probably run to Micheal's and get something to make! I ended up getting a scrapbook shadow box frame and found some cute family theme things and left room for the person to add their own picture. I was a little worried how it was going to turn out since it was SO last minute, but I was happy with it. As the night went on, my frame just sat up there and sat up there....I was beginning to wonder if anyone would have points left when it came time to bid on mine! He literally left mine until the very last thing! Usually he would start the bidding at ten points. The most you could have from your sheet was 110 points. I was sooo surprised when he picked up my frame and he didn't even have time to say "do I hear ten?" when people started yelling out 60, 80 and finally 110! We had set everything out on a table at the beginning of the night so everyone could see what was up there, so I guess some people had saved all their points for my frame! Crazy! I seriously don't write this to brag, I was just shocked! It was such a fun night and I walked away with a card redeemable for BABYSITTING! WOHOOOO!



Surpringly enough, this is my HAPPY girl at 9:30 tonight when we finally got home! She went to the children's class during enrichment and loved it. One of the mom's came out and said, "are you Jocelyn's mom?" I was thinking...OH NO! :) She said, "I have to tell you how much I just love your daughter. She was cracking me up the whole time! She acts so grown up and is just hilarious with her stories!" One of the things she told me was that one of the toys was driving this lady crazy and Jocelyn heard her and said, "Yeah! That toy is just driving me insane!" HA HA. Can't imagine where she got that. Anyway, it was pretty funny.

America's funniest home videos....Here we come!!

I watched our friends little girl, Brianna, the other night. Jocelyn was trying to teach Bri her ballet dance all night. It was so funny. "Bri, you do flip, flop, flip. CLAP CLAP! Do you understand, Bri?!? Follow me." When Mike and Michelle came to pick her up, Mike turned on some music from his phone and the girls started dancing. This video cracks me up...you have to watch Brianna's facial expressions. She is hilarious!! Love that girl.

Can you believe this snow?!?

This is right after we packed up our tent and were driving down from our campsite. We couldn't believe how much snow was sticking on the road! It's almost JUNE!

30% chance of rain = 100% chance of SNOW!!!!!

We LOVE camping! This time was definitely an adventure! We left 93 degree weather in Albuquerque and drove an hour and a half to Fenton Lake in the Jemez Mountains. Graham's family used to have a cabin up there, so he's been there a lot growing up. I checked the weather before we left and there was only a thirty percent chance of rain. No big deal.....so I thought!!!

We got to our camp site, set up our tent (which was so easy!) and then headed down to the lake. After hanging out at the lake for awhile, we came back to our site, cooked hot dogs and then made smores. So yummy! After that, we hung out in the tent and watched a movie.
Here's a funny story....Jocelyn decided to be a little grump right before we ate dinner. We were trying to explain how the park rangers want people to be quiet and not yell. She watches the disney channel and they have a little show "Safety Patrol" which has these two little kids who go around writing tickets for anything unsafe. Anyway, we told her the park rangers are like the safety patrol. "IS THE SAFETY TROLL COMING?!?! WHERE'S THE SAFETY TROLL??" It was so funny! The rest of the night she talked about the safety troll.

The fun started around 10 p.m. It started raining really hard. Normally in New Mexico it rains for about fifteen minutes and it's done. Not in the mountains, I came to find out! It rained until about 4 a.m, stopped long enough for us to go to the bathroom and then started right back up again! It stopped around six for about thirty minutes and we all fell asleep again. We took a short nap and decided we needed to either cook breakfast or pack up. We were hoping to wait until the rain stopped, so we attempted breakfast. We had brought pancake mix for breakfast, which we didn't feel like messing with inside the tent. So Graham ended up heating up the sausage we brought. Jocelyn ate goldfish. We are good parents! :) It's at that point that it started hailing and we decided it wasn't going to get any better outside. By the time we had cleared the tent out, it was SNOWING! I was actually thankful that it wasn't raining b/c we had to take down our tent and you get a lot less wet in snow! Except for the fact that I had flip flops and that's it! :) I know, Graham lectures me all the time to "wear real shoes!" Anyway, we packed up and by the time we headed down the mountain, there was at least an inch of snow! I have some video of the drive I'll post! It was definitely a NEW adventure for us!!!!! Jocelyn said, "If it's snowing then it means it's winter time?!?!" Yeah, confusing for a three year old who was wearing shorts the day before!

We opted for the luxury of air mattresses this time! So comfy! Jocelyn was very excited to try out her new princess mattress and sleeping bag! Too bad she didn't stay in it all night! :)

Jocelyn had a blast throwing rocks into the lake! Next time, we'll try fishing.

We love our tent! It survived ten hours of rain, hail and eventually SNOW! We stayed completely dry! If anyone is looking for a good tent, the Kelty Green River 6 is great and there's tons of room! :)

One LONG week!!

It has been a very long week for us! Two days after Graham's fight with the swamp cooler and his injury, we found out that his 23 year old cousin, Alan, had died. He was in the mountains with two of his friends and they had cut down a tree. The tree fell into another tree which was dead from a fire and a twenty foot section of that tree fell on Alan. His parents found out on Mother's Day that their son had died. Being a mom myself, I cannot even imagine how devastating this news would be. I never want to find out. My heart just broke for his parents and for his siblings.



The funeral was on Thursday. It really was a beautiful and touching service. His mom sang "How Great Thou Art" and she was amazing! I don't know how she held it together, but she did. Alan's dad, Dan, gave the eulogy. He talked a lot about all the things Alan loved to do. Ever since he was little, he loved to catch any sort of bug or reptile he could! He even caught rattle snakes and would give them or sell them (?) to rattle snake farmers to be milked for anti-venom! Alan was also the comedian in the family and found a lot of joy in making people laugh! Most of all, he loved spending time with his family.



Alan spent two years in California serving the Lord. He was very passionate about service and loved the gospel. His branch president spoke at his funeral and said that Alan gave many hours each week in service. He also told us that when the police officers showed up at his parent's house the morning after he died, the police officer handed Alan's wallet to his family. He asked them to open it and they found a paper with these words.....Think of the Savior and remember that He sustains you. "Wherefore, be of good cheer, and do not fear, for I the Lord am with you, and will stand by you; and ye shall bear record of me, even Jesus Christ, that I am the Son of the living God, that I was, that I am, and that I am to come." That really touched me. What a good example he was and still is to all of us. The church was full of people who loved him and people who he had touched in so many different ways.



Graham and I went home feeling so grateful for our family, especially for Jocelyn. When something like this happens to someone who is so young, it really makes you step back and remember to not take your loved ones for granted. You truly don't know when the last time you will see them could be. We also came home feeling very grateful for the gospel. I am so glad that I know Heavenly Father's plan for us. I am grateful to know that we can be with our families for eternity and that even when we are seperated from our loved ones here on earth, we will see them again.

His battle wound!!!!!

THIS IS THE CULPRIT!!!!

My poor hubby! We had a less than fun trip to the emergency room today! In albuquerque, we have these lovely things called swamp coolers. Biggest pain! Every spring you have to change the pads and do some other stuff to it just so you can turn on the cooling. Last year, we had a guy come out to turn it on and he did a horrible job. He used really cheap pads AND when I turned it on for the first time, we had a waterfall coming from the ceiling in our garage!!!! Horrible. So this year Graham decided to do it himself.....I wasn't going to argue with him.

Anyway, Graham was almost done with it and he comes in the house yelling for me to come downstairs. I could tell something was wrong. I came running and saw blood ALL over his head, face, neck and clothes. He was putting the last panel back on the side of the swamp cooler and it was stuck, so he climbed down the ladder and the stupid thing decided to become unstuck just at that moment!! It hit his head and he had a big gash, so we rushed to the hospital that is just down the road. Usually blood doesn't affect me but this time I thought I was going to lose it. I think it was just too much and on someone I care so much about. Thank goodness I was able to get over it b/c we didn't have time for me to run to the bathroom! :)

Once we got to the hospital, I dropped Graham off at the emergency door and Jocelyn and I parked the car. They attended to him very quickly....probably b/c he had blood all over his head! The nurses were SO sweet to Jocelyn. She was extremely worried about her daddy and I'm sure the knew that, but she acted like a big girl and was very calm! Two minutes after we got in our room, they had brought her a coloring book, crayons, juice and popsicles! It was so cute. It helped her feel at ease and everyone that came in our room was very nice to her! I was really impressed!

Graham ended up getting staples in his head. The nurse practioner came in and said, "You have two options. I can numb it before I put the staples in or I can just put the staples in!" Well, Graham stepped on a big nail a few years ago and they numbed it and he said it was extremely painful, so he opted to skip that part this time! Even after she was done, he said the numbing medicine is a lot worse than the pain of the staples. Then they did a cat scan and everything was fine. So now we are home and relaxing! I'm so glad he is okay! I can't stand seeing my loved ones hurt!!!!

Cousin time!!!

John, Myrica and Aiden drove through yesterday on the way to Arkansas! We were so excited to have them stay at our house for a night! Jocelyn was HYPER the whole day waiting for them!

Aiden has changed so much in the last month! He is using his hands a lot now and it's so cute to see him holding little toys. Jocelyn and I went through some old toys and she set everything aside that was a good baby toy for Aiden. She was SO excited for Aiden to see everything she had for him!

I felt a little bad for John and Myrica when it came time for Aiden's bath! Jocelyn LOVES to help and doesn't always listen when you tell her what to do! She wants to do it all! Good thing John and Myrica are very patient!!! :)

Another thing that was adorable...I was walking around the house with Aiden when he was a little fussy. Jocelyn went and got one of her baby dolls and was walking around with me, patting her baby. Everything I did with Aiden, she would do with her baby. It was so sweet!

Here's Aiden in Jocelyn's little chair! After Jocelyn went to bed, we stayed up playing Guitar Hero. John went and got the chair and put Aiden in it! So funny! I think Aiden thought he was hot stuff sitting up like a big boy! I LOVE my nephew's big smiles... Oh and his wild hair right after a bath!!!

Zoo Day!

Jessica and Jocelyn watching the tigers

The girls thought the flamingos necks looked like snakes!!

We had such a fun day at the zoo with our friends! Jocelyn was very excited to see Jessica, ride in the wagon and have a pinic! She was happy to see the animals too, I think! It was a very chilly day, so the girls stayed warm with a blanket. When we were watching the chimpanzees, Jocelyn said, "Mommy, his bum looks gross!" Yeah, I have to agree with that. From then on, she had to talk about animal bums and things that come out of them. It was embarrassing, but what can you do?!? When she told Grandpa and Uncle John about the zoo, she talked about how big the rhino poop is. I think she was truly amazed by it. Ha ha. Anyway, enough about that! We had a great day today!

Big girl bike and ABQ wind!

The other day we went for a walk around the neighborhood. Jocelyn wanted to ride her tricycle, which she hadn't been on for probably five months or so! Well, she definitely grew in the past five months b/c she is way too tall for it now! So we thought we'd check out bikes for her and we ended up getting her a little pink one! We picked it up today and of course, she wanted to try it out! We knew it was windy, but thought we'd give it a shot. Not a good day to learn how to ride a bike! I couldn't see anything because my hair was blowing everywhere, had sand in my mouth (yuck!) and the wind kept taking Jocelyn and her bike speeding off...which she did NOT like! So hopefully we can give it a shot another day...preferably a calm day!

Sticker tattoo??

Jocelyn was in her playroom being all quiet, which means she is up to something! She came into the living room and had lined these stickers all the way from her finger up her arm!! Pretty creative, but we're worried that means she'll want a tattoo or something when she gets older! Hopefully we are just being paranoid!

Little Gym

Here is Jocelyn at her Little Gym class. I'm sitting in the lobby filming through the window! Sorry this is so long. We don't have the tools on my laptop to cut it down! Grandpa, this is for you! :)

Our daily dose of entertainment....

Jocelyn got a small scratch on her cheek so we put some neosporin on it. A couple hours later, she comes up to me and says...

Joc: "Mommy, is my scratch all better? Is it gone?"
Me: "Yes, it looks all better"
Joc: "Well, then we have a small problem, Mommy! You have GOT to get this cream off of me!"
I wish I could have videotaped her saying that. It was SO dramatic!! :)


I have been meaning to write about this too. We have a GPS in our car and it talks and tells us where to turn, etc. Well, after spending a few days in Utah and being very worn out, Jocelyn got a little sick of the GPS lady! She started having arguments with her every time we got in the car...

GPS: "In .3 miles, turn right."
Jocelyn: "We are NOT turning right LADY!! Nope! Not today, Lady!"
GPS: "Exit left in .2 miles"
Jocelyn: "NO! We are not going to exit left, Lady! Mommy, tell her we aren't going to exit left!!"

Every time, she would put up her hand to tell her to stop. It was very entertaining! Never heard of someone arguing with a GPS!


One more thing... I have been watching Jocelyn's friend, Bryson, lately and usually Brianna is over here playing too. Jocelyn has been enjoying the role of the little protective mommy when she has her friends over, so Bryson gets an ear full most days! I guess Bryson and Brianna had a little tiff over a toy or something and Jocelyn took it upon herself to fix it! This is what she said,
"Bryson Paul!! (she got his middle name from his mom, not me!) You need to be nice to my friend, Bri!"
Then she looks at me and says, "Mommy, I will handle this!! Just let me deal with it!!"
OH goodness! That girl! :)

My little teenager...so she thinks!

This is how Jocelyn talks on the phone!! Obviously she has seen me trying to multi-task and talk, so she is copying me. It is pretty funny! She also uses her hands to talk and emphasize her stories! :)

More Easter pics...

She's not too sure about the marshmallow sucker!


She fell asleep with her head in the Easter basket!


Okay! I am ready to hunt for eggs!

Easter dress

Jocelyn was hilarious when we were shopping for an Easter dress this year. I had the hardest time finding a dress I liked and it was literally last minute shopping when we finally had to just pick something! Jocelyn was as picky as I was, which is scary! We were at Gymboree and she went around the store saying, "Mommy, it has to be fancy. That's not fancy enough!" Finally she decided on the green one! I love her little sandals! :)

More of Jocelyn and Aiden

Jocelyn is making sure baby Aiden's present is safe!!

Looks like he likes it!!

She really adores her baby cousin!

"Baby Aiden is MY cousin!"

I think I heard that statement about a hundred times this weekend! Jocelyn is VERY proud of her new baby cousin and lets everyone know! It is so cute! We went to Utah for Aiden's blessing this weekend. We had a great time and it was sooo nice to finally see Aiden! The first time Jocelyn held Aiden, he started crying and she said, "Um, I think he is scared of me!" Later while I was holding him, he started crying and she told Myrica, "I don't think my mom is very good with baby Aiden!" It was so funny! Anyway, here are a few pictures. I have to run some errands, but wanted to get some up here! I'll write more about the weekend later!

SIDE NOTE: UNFORTUNATELY I HAVE BEEN FORCED TO REMOVE THE PIC OF JOHN AND JOCELYN. I WAS THREATENED BY MY BROTHER! UHHHH! I DIDN'T THINK IT WAS BAD, BUT OBVIOUSLY HE HAD A DIFFERENT OPINION!!! LOVE YOU, JOHN!

Hoots

There is a new place in town called Hoots. It is a 7000 sq. foot building that has a bunch of the inflatable slides, rock walls, etc. for the kids to play on! It also has a HUGE jungle gym that is so much fun! Parents can climb on all the equipment too! This is definitely Jocelyn's new favorite place! Beats Chuck E Cheese hands down! Although she does love seeing Chuck E. and giving him hugs! :)

Ash, you need to come back and visit now that this place is open! The kids would have a blast! :)

I need to get rid of that book!!!!

I have been informed I need to marry Santa Claus!! Jocelyn LOVES "Twas the Night Before Christmas" and we are still reading it at bedtime...in March!! I keep forgetting to hide it!

Tonight, we were reading that book before bed and Jocelyn said, "Mommy, I think you need to marry Santa!" I told her that I married Daddy, so I can't marry Santa. She turns to Graham and says, "Daddy, maybe you should marry someone else!"

She really does ADORE her daddy, but maybe the thought of all those toys is a little too tempting! She's hilarious!

SURPRISE!!

Jocelyn has been so entertaining lately! The other day, she was riding her motorcycle..yes, she's three and she has a motorcycle and it is motorized! Anyway, she was riding it around the house and she drove up to me and this was our conversation...

Jocelyn: "Mommy, I'm going to the store. What would you like?"

Me: "some pink lemonade, please."

Jocelyn: "Okay! What would you like to eat?"

Me: "uhh, surprise me!"

So she drives into her playroom and comes back with a drink. She hands me the drink, walks over by the couch, curls up in a ball, JUMPS up and says "SURPRISE!!" It was SOOO funny! I guess I didn't think about telling a three year old to surprise me with something to eat! :)