Funny sayings by Dillon

Dillon has always pronounced some words with his own unique spin. Some examples are smarshmellows, Chocky Milk, smushrooms, oh the list could go on! However, yesterday, I about died of laughter when I heard him say this to his Daddy

"Dad your neck is all SunburMed. You should have put on some SunscreeM."

He continues to entertain us!

So long...farewell!

Well, this week we had to say goodbye to Brandon's brother Bryce, his wife Leigh and little Abigail Ruth. They left Friday for Minnesota to go to Dental School for the next 4 years. We got together on Thursday night for a delicious dinner of ribs, seafood salad, baked beans, veggies and yummy strawberry dessert. We put the young ones to bed and then played Settlers. I recently found out that I LOVE that game! It is so much fun.

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Brandon and Jordan (his youngest brother) and Grandma watched O Brother, Where are thou? That is such a great movie. We overheard Brandon say about 50 times "This is my favorite part!" Which was followed by roars of laughter.

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We went to Grandma's house on Friday to say our final goodbyes. I thought it wasn't going to be hard, but it was! We all hugged and shed some tears. I know that we will see them at Christmas, but it just won't be the same here without them. So, to Bryce, Leigh and Abigail...good luck! We are so proud of you and can't wait to hear how the move went.

Preschool Graduation

Last Thursday, Dillon graduated from Preschool. This has been such a great year for him. We went from crying because he couldn't cut with scissors the first week of school to being able to read! His teacher, Ms. McIntyre is one of the most patient, kind, wonderful teachers I have ever met. He absolutely loved going to Preschool and I am sure that most of that was because of how special he was treated and how much fun learning was in her class. We are sad to see it end, but excited for Kindergarten.

They had a water party earlier in the day and ate pizza. We took our waterslide and set it up for the kids. They also had squirt guns, sponge water relay races and sprinklers on the trampoline! It was an exciting day.

Here are some highlights from their graduation ceremony. It was so cute.

The proud graduate! I couldn't help but think when I first saw him in his cap and gown that I would be sitting at his High School graduation before I knew it. It made my weepy to think about how fast these last 5 years have gone and how fast the next 13 are going to go!

Bright Beginnings Preschool Class of 2008!

She taught them so many cute songs. This was one of them.

(Dillon REALLY likes to do the ocean action!)

Ms. McIntyre and Dillon.

Congrats to all the 2008 graduates -Dillon (Preschool), my nephew Todd (High School), my niece Breckyn (High School), Brandon's brother Bryce (UNLV - headed to Dental school), David (ASU, married to my niece Malia - he is headed back to ASU for his masters and then to Law School) and everyone else. Great work!

It's Official!!

I guess it is about time to announce to the bloggy universe that my friend Molly and I are opening our own business. It has been in the works for about a month and we are super excited to get going. The name of our business is...

We are going to jump into the world of vinyl lettering. We got our cutter a couple of weeks back and this past Monday, Molly's sister-in-law Brittany (who I knew about 15 years ago - small world) came to train us on the software. It was an awesome day and so far we have designed a couple of ideas. It is seriously the greatest job I have ever had. It is so much fun to design things for people.

We are also going to have an Open House on July 17th at my home to celebrate Christmas in July. We are hoping to be able to offer neighbor gifts, teacher gifts, gifts for anyone for Christmas. We will hopefully also have Halloween and Thanksgiving thrown in there as well.

It is going to be a roller coaster ride, but I am so excited. I seriously think about it all day and sometimes can't sleep at night because my brain won't shut off.

The first thing I made was a treat bucket for Dillon's preschool teacher. It was so much fun to design it and see it cut out and then put on a plastic container. I was so excited to give it to her last night at their graduation.

So, we are just getting started and getting our ducks in a row. But, if you need anything or have any ideas, please let us know. We would be happy to help!

May the Force be with you....

Yesterday as Dillon and I were walking into church, I went to grab the door and Dillon yelled "MOM STOP!" I turned around expecting to see that he had fallen or something and instead saw this:

I said "What are you doing?" With this huge grin and determined look on his face he simply said "I will use THE FORCE to open the door." He put his hand up to the door, squinted his eyes and stood there. I couldn't believe that he really expected the door to open. I let him sit there for about 30 seconds (I was afraid people were going to drive by and wonder what on earth these Mormons were teaching their children now!) So, I grabbed the door and opened it and he joyfully said "See Mom, it worked! I AM a real Jedi."

So let this be a warning to all of you that take your children to Disneyland - if you let them do the Jedi training, some of them might think they are a real Jedi! Now I just need to get him to figure out how to use The Force to do all the housework and clean up the toys! What a funny kid.

The Cookie Monster

I didn't realize until today that we have the Cookie Monster living right under our roof. Whenever there are cookies around, his best manners come out and he begs for one right out of the oven. He even says please and cookie in sign language to make sure that you understand what he wants. I am trying to get him to talk more so I am a mean mom and make him say the word before he can have one. This is complete torture for the Cookie Monster when he can see them and smell them! I made some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies for Brandon to take to work tomorrow and wouldn't you know it, the Cookie Monster was underneath my feet during the entire process and waited at the oven until they came out!
Take a look.... (p.s. you have to pause the music at the bottom of my blog).



As you can see, he finally said Cookie and please (he rubbed his chest which is sign language for please). What a cute Cookie Monster we have at our house!

Parade of Homes

This is definitely one of our favorite things to do every year. There is a Parade of Homes in St. George, Utah every February (right around President's Day). We have been going for the past 8 years and it is seriously something we look forward to like Christmas morning! My Mom started coming with us last year and now she schedules her trips up here around the Parade of Homes. This year, we even got my brother and his wife to fly up from Phoenix for 2 days to go with us. Here are a few pictures of some of our favorites in the past. We get so many ideas from going and we also get to take a peak into a life we will never know. This year they even had a house that was 20,000 square feet! (No, that is not a typo!)

This house was from 2005. It is gorgeous on the outside and the inside.
It also has amazing views. It sits on top of a huge hill.

This tree was in one of the kids' room in this house. It was such a cute idea.

This is one of our all-time favorite houses. It is from 2006. It has everything you would ever want in a house and the decorating was gorgeous. It is our dream home!

Check out the view from the family room! The entire back wall opens up to the back yard and view of the red rocks.

This is the backyard of our dream home. It also has a covered patio over by the family room that opens up. It has a sitting are with a TV and a bathroom for changing and showering after swimming. It has a fire pit with benches. It was the best backyard I have ever seen!

And last, but not least, it had an outdoor shower in the master bathroom. You could go outside and take a shower right from the shower in the bathroom. My husband has wanted one of these for a long time, so when he saw this, he spent about 40 minutes in the shower alone. We seriously have about 20 pictures of this one shower. I had to beg him to come and see the rest of the house!

This is from 2008. I thought this was such a cute room in the 20,000 sf house. I would love to have a theater where you could put on plays and have a talent show!

This is also from the 20,000 sf house. Inside this room is a bowling alley with 2 lanes and about 100 pinball machines with disco lights and a stereo system. It was so fun.

I thought this was so cute on the top of a little boys' room. I would love to do this in a toy room some day. My kids would love it.

You also get really cute ideas for craft rooms. I thought this was such a great idea and it wouldn't be a hard thing to do! The ribbon sat in a little basket attached to the door of the cabinet.

This was one of the most interesting ideas I have seen at the Parade of Homes. It was a grotto that you could enter from a secret passage way through the master bedroom. A bookcase opened up and had a little sitting room in a cave and then you walked through a tunnel to get to the hot tub inside this grotto. It was crazy. The guy that built it told us that part alone cost $100,000!!!

I love this chandelier. It flickered and looked like real candles.

This was a children's playroom. It was 2 stories and looked like a little village that they could go play in. I loved it.

This might look like a nice house right? Well, it was the POOL HOUSE! It had a bar, kitchen, couches, work out area and also beds for guests. Wouldn't that be great to have this?

We love the rock on this wall. We want to do something similar in our house, so we took a picture for future reference.

Well, as you can see, it is so much fun. So, if you ever need something to do right around President's Day, go check out these houses. It will take you an entire day and even then you won't be able to see all of them. If you have time, stay the night and spend 2 days looking. Gotta love it!