July 24th and Paige's Birthday

We celebrated our 24th of July with our little Paige. Her 3rd b-day is that very day so we went to Kaysville to eat and have fun at Pond's Park. We also got our very own "Firework Spectacular" in the parking lot there. I love my little Paigey! She's such a sweetheart, even when she's grumpy. She was so funny when she was opening presents. I had to take a picture of the wedgie though. LOL! Babies' butts are the cutest!! I just have to say that little Haddie makes me want another baby. She was so cute and wanted Brook to share her doll. I played peek-a-boo with her and she was so adorable1!

Happy Birthday Mommy!

I'm trying to be better at posting all the goings on in my life. So what's a better thing to do at 4am than sleep, blog about Mom's bday. LOL. We went to Mom and Dad's for Penrod Family Tacos on July 13th. We were celebrating Mom's birthday. Yes, folks. She's old. Naw! Kidding. She's a youngin. I have a picture of the original Larry Penrod Family Cast, without the "extras" on my desk at work. (Yes, spouses and grandbabies, I have called you extras. But not as in excess. You can't make a movie without extras!) Anyway, four people have commented that they thought my parents were the oldest siblings. I have the best family in the world. We're all a little crazy and we have so much fun together. I am who I am because of my parents. There are some who would criticize the way I acted as a teenager, and blame my parents, but I'm so strong-willed, and frankly, I wanted to know things for myself. I wanted to see for myself why people said certain things were bad or good. I've learned to listen to "old" people. For those people (of course not extended family, who are the only ones reading my ramblings, but others throughout life) you can also blame my parents for me believing in the gospel and trying my hardest to be the best wife, mom, and member of society that I possibly can. I had good relationships with my parents and they always taught me what was right. Always. There was never a shortage of hugs and "I Love You's" at our house and we were, and still are, so open with each other. When leaving the house each morning, we'd hear "I love you and remember who you are." For Mother's Day one year, I made a card about the many hats that mom's wear. From cabbie to nurse, my Mom wears them all. My mom never brags or even talks about the caring things she's done over the years. One thing that stands out in my mind is when a ward member of hers developed cancer. My Mom went to their house twice a day for months to administer medicine, check on her, and be a friend. She never wanted any recognition and always made it seem like it wasn't a big deal. I saw her push her schedule around without a second thought, just to make things work out. She gave so much to that family, even after the woman died, but never let it affect how much she gave to her family. That's my Mom. There are so many things I learned from her and I hope that I can someday be as good of a person as my Mom is. Mom, thanks for giving 150% in everything you do, and for never giving up on me. I love you so much, and the best part is, I know you love me more. I hope my babies will one day look up to me the same way that I do to you.

The grass is greener where?

K so I need to give ya'll some background. My yard isn't very big, but it's costing us a fortune to finish it. First, we paid this idiot (Mike Poulsen of Mr Sprinkler... did I mention names) over $3,000 to do our yard. He did pretty much nothing and then we never heard from him again. I will admit that I paid him in full before the job was done and that was my fault. My husband kindly reminds me of that when I whine about it. Anyway, I got a court judgement and never got anything from the . He apparently served some jail time for something or other and that makes me feel like .09% better. So then we had to pay for our yard again. Now it cost at least double what it should have. We had beautiful grass from this place in Idaho. I mean it was really green healthy grass. So we have a lawn company spray for bugs and weeds and crap and I started seeing these dying spots. They were weird cuz there would be dead grass and then, BAM, totally green grass. I'm thinking, hmmm can't be a water problem. So I call my lawn company and the really young technician tells me that, you guessed it, it's water damage. So we go along and these spots keep getting bigger and bigger to where you could grab the grass and it just came right up. It was totally dying in these big chunks. My neighbor put a mini flag in it and said it was a putting brown (he he get it, brown, not green, get it... if you don't, there's no help for you). So a manager from the lawn company came out and said we had sod web worm. Great!! They did say they're replace it. It took them forever to come and then finally, they were tearing out my lawn when I came home from work. I didn't expect it at all. We had wanted to order sod from Idaho again, but they already ordered some. I came home a few days later and they were "done." Problem is that the sod they put in was like flat and they put it right next to our beautiful grass so there's a big friggen ledge between the two. I couldn't believe it. I'm thinking, not again! Then to top it off, they had broken 3 sprinklers and said they'd replace them. Well, they did...BACKWARDS!!! They sprayed the road for 4-5 days before we noticed. And they didn't tighten them so they were leaking way down in the ground. We had to have a company come and fix them. The lawn kept getting more yellow. My hubby has had it by this point so he rips the whole thing out yesterday. Now I have no lawn. My yard has regressed. Robert has decided to bring in topsoil to raise the backyard up level on the side and build a stone wall so we can put up the rest of our fence in the spring. The only thing I can say for my yard now is that I have a really nice new driveway and rv pad. That's about it. now we are going to send a bill for half the sod to the lawn company. We still pay them to spray our yard... for now. When they pay us for the rest, I'm gonna switch companies. So there's my long yard story. I do have pictures, but I'm too lazy too grab the camera cuz I was out spraying weeds with Roundup for an hour and it was crazy hot. I'll post them soon.

Take me out to the ball game!!

Braden is an awesome baseball player. He played t-ball last year and did coach pitch this year. I marvel at how athletic the kid is. He really picks up on any sport pretty quick. This year and last, the whole team went to a Raptor's game. They're a team in Ogden, and because I don't know much about baseball, I have no clue what league they're in. All the boys get to run out to a position on the field with a player, have their name announced over the loudspeaker, and sign the national anthem, then run back. It's the cutest thing to watch. The boys feel so big and special. Braden got to run to the pitcher's mound this year. Of course we had to buy Raptor heads to keep us busy, and because all the boys had one. Brook put a flower on her raptor's head. Always the girl! She thought Daddy would look good in one too.
Above is Logan, Lucas, Carson, Easton, and Braden. It's a whole pack of Raptor's. That can only mean trouble!

Pretty as a Princess

Brookie and I ate lunch with the Princesses at Ariel's Grotto. She was in heaven!! Two of the princesses said that Brook looked like "Aurora when she was a little girl." Then when Aurora came over to us, she told Brook that she looked like her when she was little. It was so cute. Brook will always be my little princess. She's beautiful and I just can't get enough of her. We got pictures and autographs of all the princesses.
We saw 4 of the princesses at lunch and I stood in line for an hour to get pictures of the other princesses. My legs were gonna fall off from standing in that line, but a moms gotta do what a moms gotta do, and that was what Brook wanted to do.

Disneyland

My babies loved Disneyland!! We had alot of fun. Braden went on some pretty "scary" rides for a 7-yr-old. He was a brave boy.

We rode Buzz blasters twice. It was pretty darned fun for a kids ride. You got to shoot evil bad guys and Emporer Zurg. We all loved it!
California Adventure had a great kids area called A Bug's Land. It was great for Brooklyn and Paige. They could go on every ride in Bugs Land. They're (usually) the best of friends.