prayers and patience

For the longest time I have been praying for more patience in dealing with Rebecca's 2 year old behavior/tantrums/talking back/ attitude. But it hit me. If I pray for patience - I'll be given situations to develop that patience. So now, I'm changing my prayers. I'm just praying that she'll stop behaving badly. There we go. I'm fine without learning patience:)

Cinderella Stories

So, Rebecca is going through a MAJOR princess stage, namely Cinderella. I LOVE it! It has made it so much easier to wash and do her hair, because she wants to have pretty hair like Cinderella. And she HAS to wear a dress every day. (Yesterday it was 2 dresses, one on top of the other) After she gets dressed in her dress she says, "Mom, Cinderella goes like this," and she does a huge spin to fluff the dress. She has also noticed that Cinderella stands on her tippy toes. (I hadn't even noticed that, but it's true, she even runs on her tippy toes.) So Rebecca tries to do that.
Well, on Hayden's first day of Preschool we went in and met the teachers. The teacher's assistant asked Rebecca her name and she said, "My name is Cinderella." (Accompanied by a spin.) It was cute. I have since found out that she's told at least 4 other people that her name is Cinderella. I love my little Cinderella.

Preschool

Hayden started preschool this week with Mrs. York. He has been looking forward to this day for so long. It is so fun seeing my little baby grow up and to see how smart he is. He loves learning new things, and I know he's going to have a great year there.

I didn't know if he'd be nervous and cling to me when I dropped him off, because he can be shy in new situations. No, he was perfectly fine and just seemed so grown up. Yesterday was his first day with homework. It's silly how excited we both were that he had homework.

Rebecca is taking a little class called Rhyme 'N Time there as well. She was so jealous that Hayden was going to school, but was so excited that she'd be able to go to "school." (even if it is just a little class.) Her first day was today and she loved it. So fun.

Blind Melon Anyone?

Just some fun little movies

Here are just a few fun movies of my funny kids. (This is probably one of those posts that is more fun for me than anyone viewing my blog, but it's my blog and you are FORCED to look at what I think is cute, so Enjoy!)


The first movie is of Sydney showing of her crawling.
In this second one we put the tv in the kids' room over the weekend and haven't gotten around to taking it out yet. Hayden loves watching ANY movie in his room, just because it's exciting when it's in his room. He decided to do my "Biggest Loser" workout video. He's actually pretty good. He took it so seriously, even took a couple breaks because he was "working so hard" as he put it.
Then the third movie is just a little clip of my kids playing in their messy room. They're just cute so I wanted to put it on.

The Perfect Plan

We had such a fun Labor Day weekend together as a family. It's always nice having Jerry home, and Hayden was so excited that we got him for an extra day last weekend. He was bummed that Jerry had to go back to work on Tuesday. So after thinking a little bit he devised the best plan of how to lure Jerry home.

Hayden: Mom, I know how we can get dad to stay home all week and not go to work.
Me: Oh really, how?
Hayden (in his most enticing voice) PIE!

I had to have him call Jerry to try to tempt him. Jerry did say it almost worked, he almost came home for a piece of this yummy pie that he and Hayden had picked out together while shopping on Saturday. (Of course I didn't make it) Honestly though, wouldn't it be pretty tempting for you too, especially if it's a choice between this and work?!

7 Months Already?!

Can you believe my little baby is already 7 months??!! That has really flown, and she is growing up so fast. She thinks that she is just as big as the other kids. She started crawling a couple weeks ago and she loves the freedom it gives her. Now she's discovered the stairs. Yesterday I actually let her do the whole flight of stairs. Probably a mistake because now she won't stay away from the stairs. Here is her first big trip on the stairs documented for all time.

Starting her journey

"I'm still going mom, you can't stop me"

Made it half way!

Here's Rebecca to cheer her on.

Made it to the top!!
Way to go my big girl!

Lagoon!! AKA Utah part 2

So I have no idea why it has actually taken me a week to get around to finishing my post about my trip to Utah, but here I am, so enjoy. Jerry flew in on Wednesday evening, just in time for my cold to kick in on Thursday. It was actually nice to just relax after being so busy for a week. That evening my dad took some family pictures for us. He is such a great photographer and we appreciate him doing that for us.
Friday we went to Lagoon. A summer trip to Utah isn't quite complete without a day at Lagoon. The kids had a blast. Even though we pretty much stayed in kiddie land all day we had a great time.


In the heat of the afternoon it is great to cool down in the water area. After playing in the water we went back to Joseph and Angela's house to take a little break. (Yes, we've gotten old and like to rest a little bit from walking all day.) Then they came back to Lagoon with us that evening.

Hayden loves his cousin Ethan and was so excited that he came to Lagoon with us.

We did the bounce back to go to Lagoon again on Saturday. It was really busy there, but Im' still glad we did. We took Ethan with us since he has a season pass anyway and the kids love being there with Ethan. They were so good.
Elizabeth's family came and met up with us at Lagoon too. That way Jerry was able to go on some of the big rides. That night we went out to my parents for dinner and to say our good byes. We were also able to see my sister Ruth Ann and her family too. It was a great summer trip to Utah and we are looking forward to going back in a couple months.

Parties, parties, and more parties! AKA Utah part 1

I drove up to Utah at the beginning of August to visit family. Jerry was only able to take a few days off work so he flew up the next week and spent a couple days there and we drove home together. The timing of my trip worked out so well. I was able to see all my siblings except my oldest brother, Dave that was in Germany picking up his son from his mission. (But two of his children were there with the family) It is so great to get together with family, especially when we can't all get together often. My family is spread out all over the US, so siblings from Kansas, New Jersey, Seattle, Texas, me from Las Vegas, and those in Utah, and my niece and nephew from Denver were there. And of course, being a Roylance any excuse for a party is good. So we had a week full of get togethers and parties.

I drove in on Thursday, the 6th, and on Friday we all met up at a park in Hyrum to visit and ... party.
Rebecca loves pizza - wait, let me correct that. She loves pepperoni's off of the pizza, so she gets pizza fingers.

Hayden had a blast rolling down the hill at grandma and grandpa's house with his cousin Jayden.


Here is Sydney with her cousin, Spencer that is only 6 weeks younger than her.

Playing so much makes you really tired. The kids didn't want to admit that they were tired, but had a great time watching/ sleeping during a movie in g'ma's basement on Sunday.


Monday was a very busy, fun day. We try to have a girls' party every year with the sisters, and we bring a "favorite thing" to share. Yes, it's a rip off of Oprah's favorite things, much less money spent, but way more fun. Here are all the sisters, with the exception of Jana that was in Germany. So fun. One of my favorite things is date night with Jerry, so I took $25 gift cards for restaurants. Before you start thinking I'm miss money bags, let me tell you that another one of my favorite things is a good deal. So I got the gift cards off restaurant.com - they frequently have 80 % off sales, where you can get $25 gift cards for restaurants in your city for only ... ready for this... $2.00. (You do have to spend $35 but that's including the $25. not a bad deal!) So that's what I shared. Plus, I shared some of our family traditions.



Monday night after the "Girls' party" I headed into Ogden to my friend, Sunni's house for our friend party. The 5 of us have been friends since middle school and believe it or not, we're all still good friends. We had a bar-b-que and there was a bounce house set up for the kids. It was a great time. We also built a fire for smores once it got dark. Hayden and Rebecca were excited to play with more friends.

All the girls with all the kids.

Holli, Jaime, Sunni, Me, and Nicole

Rebecca playing in the bounce house.

Getting ready for the smores.

Tuesday was the BIG family party day. We reserved a campsite in Mantua campground and had a get together. It was SO much fun. We brought our own dinners and were entertained by family skits. I didn't get pictures of all the skits, but here are a few.

Esther's family doing the cheerleading skit.

We did a "Sarah, the Explorer" skit. We had to follow the map to find "Daddy". Jerry didn't get to town till Wed. night so unfortunately he had to miss the big family party. I'm sure he isn't too sad about missing being in a skit. It was very fun, and the kids had a good time hamming it up.

Joseph's family did a musical skit. Everything made them break out into song. Doesn't everyone have a soundtrack for their life??

Mark's family did a "You might be a Roylance If..." skit. Very funny. Here's mom and dad. Hillarious as always.

We reserved the campsite for the whole night, so we were able to stay overnight. Joseph's and my family were the only ones brave enough to stay the night. It was very fun. Rebecca is a magnet for dirt. This is how dirty her face was after only a couple hours. You can only imagine how dirty she was by the morning. Yes, I'll remind you that I stayed overnight before Jerry came to Utah. Yes, me and 3 children. I AM wonderwoman, if you were wondering. I'm so glad we did though. The funniest thing happened the morning after sleeping over. Rebecca was wearing her sleeper jammies and was walking all around the dirt. She wanted to clean them off so she went to the water spiggot and washed off her jammies. But, then they were soaking wet. So she came crying to me over by the picnic tables, took off her shoes and jammies, and noticed that her feet were still dirty. So she went back to the fresh water spiggot to wash her feet. Washed them, then walked over to me to put her shoes on. By the time she got there she saw that her feet were dirty again, so back over to the water again. It continued for about 10 minutes. It was too funny.
Jerry flew in Wed. night and we were so excited to see him. So more on the rest of our vacation in the next post.