Some call it seepage, we call it flooding...

So here is what we have been up to these past 2 weeks...

We came down to the basement two weeks ago today to find 1-2 inches of water in our food storage room, half the hallway, holiday decoration area under the stairs, Colby's spare computer parts closet and 1/3 of his office. I guess with all of the rain/snow and melt off, it was too much for our soil to hold, and therefore decided that our home needed to take some responsibility for it. It seeped up through the concrete. We cleared out all the wet areas, borrowed a wet vac and got to work with that and about a million towels. A friend came over when it was dry and sealed the concrete for us, and we are slowly working on getting everything organized and back into place.

(This was all in between our couch and TV downstairs. We made it a priority to clear an area to watch Biggest Loser and Heroes.)

Luckily, none of our food storage was ruined, and nothing in Colby's office was affected by the incident. I did finally get the food rotation system that I have been asking for out of this, so...wahoo!

It's that time of Year again...

Hey girls! (You know who you are.) You better go and eat some Mongolian BBQ at Wok 'n' South and have a slice of Dulce de Leche Cheesecake at the Cheesecake Factory for me tomorrow. I miss all of you that would celebrate this day of the year with me. For those of you who know me, you've heard that Colby is not that into Birthdays. And I whine and complain each year about it, so I started celebrating it with the ladies who put up with me whining. Thanks to all of you, and thanks to those who are going out with me this year. Tomorrow it's the big "29", watch out "30" here I come. Sorry, I'm not usually one to be quiet about my birthday, the day should be celebrated and not hidden from others.

A Visit to Chuck E. Cheese.

So, I think that we can finally say that IT IS DONE! Gabe is potty trained! And only 1 month shy of a year in the making. He has kept his pants dry 2-3 nights/naps now. And during the day has been accident free for a couple of months. We are very excited about this. I thought Braxton was hard, but Gabe was much harder. I don't blame it all on his stubbornness, some of it was both of his parents not keeping on top of asking him to go on time. Well, we have been telling him that we will renew our Dinosaur Park pass when he kept his pants dry while sleeping. So, sometime this week we will do that. But I had been wanting to take the boys to the new Layton Chuck E. Cheese for some time now. However it's never much fun for me to struggle with my three boys alone in an overly crowded area. So, I excused Braxton from school today and we went down and played. Now, I am usually one who doesn't like to take my kids out of school for anything: no vacations, and they have to be really sick for me to keep them home, no faking! But, lately Colby has been trying to convince me to relax and enjoy the time with my boys while they are young. When they are teenagers they might now want to do things with me/us. Also, Braxton has been getting burnt out on homework, and routines and schedules, complaining he doesn't have enough time to play what he wants to play and get enough sleep. Seriously, he told me I kept waking him up too early for school(7:30am), so I told him to go to bed earlier the next night(bedtime is at 8pm). Also, my parents just arrived home last night from a 17 day Book of Mormon Tour in Guatemala and Mexico. So, we wanted to meet up with her and visit with Aunt Heidi (my younger sister). So, again here's the rundown: Gabe needed a reward, Braxton needed a break from school and routine, we needed a visit with Aunt Heidi and Grandma Miller, and Tristan had a great time as well as I. I don't know why I feel that I have to explain myself to you all, but I was trained that the kids don't stay home from school unless they are sick with something worse than a cold. So there you are, we had a lot of fun. I had a ton of different coupons to use there, so we got drinks, pizza, salad bar, dessert pizza, and a bazillion tokens. We came home with prizes, full tummies, 2 sleeping boys and smiles on Braxton and my faces. It was a pretty clean place, but about 1/3 of the games were already broken. That was frustrating since that place hasn't been open too long. All in all, our tokens all got spent, and we had a lot of fun together.

Gabe and I trying to pop all of the bubbles on the screen.


Tristan playing a broken Whack-a-mole.

Tristan, Aunt Heidi and Braxton riding his favorite ride/game there.

Mmm... lunch!

I think Gabe spent his entire load of tokens on this bowling game. People were still playing it when we left, because it has about 39 games in it.

They rode this for about 2 seconds, enough for a picture. Neither liked the way it rode.

All out of tokens, but he can pretend it's moving.


We earned 500 tickets as a family. Wahoo!

Hello 2009!

Happy New Year! Colby and I took the boys to the mall for some lunch and playtime. We were going to attend the "Countdown to Noon" at the Treehouse Museum. But it seems that everyone else in Weber County had the same plan. So we opted out of that idea. They still got some well needed jumping and running around time in the mall.

We actually did something this year in the evening. Usually all of our friends are busy with other people's parties, and we would rather stay home than bother looking for a babysitter. But this year, people came to us. I'll tell you something, it's so much easier celebrating holidays with kids when you can do it in your own home. You just put them to bed like normal and keep partying. I don't know how long we will be able to pull that off. Our friends through Colby are now getting to the point in life of starting families, soon they will be in the same place we have been for years. It was nice because Braxton slept over at his cousin Xavier's house, so as late as Gabe and Tristan stayed up, there was very minimal arguing. We munched on many goodies, and even had a game and movie set aside to entertain us, but we all just ended up visiting from 7pm to 3:30 am.

We had the opportunity to have our friends baby girl join us. Hopefully, I got my fill of cuddles in with her, and it will keep the yearning for a daughter at bay. Colby wanted to hold her so bad, but he is getting over a cold. Because she was such an early preemie, she is too prone to RSV and other illnesses. We enjoyed her latest antics, then setup the port-a-crib downstairs for her.

We hope you all spent New Year's doing something fun. And wish the best for you in 2009. Happy January!