Welcome, Sir Charles of Paysonshire

Or, Charlie for short (Chuck, when he's being naughty)


Oh my gosh, I've turned into one of those people who take pictures of their pets, and put them on their blog!

You have to admit, he's super cute!

It's just your imagination, he's not petrified of Madison :)

We had two names picked out for a dog if we ever got one, "Nacho" for a boy, and "Tula" (Raul's hometown name) for a girl. But when we found out we were getting a boy cocker spaniel, Nacho just didn't fit! I was reading a Jane Austen book at the time, so we flipped through it to find a "fancier" name, and Madison chose "Sir Charles" it fits him perfectly. He's our little Charlie, and we just love him!

Taking a break under my chair, this means, "keep the crazy kids away from me" in dog language.

Surprise! Breakfast!

Well, you know Ethan is my early riser. He also loves to surprise me with good deeds. We made a new years resolution this year of "No more cold cereal" And we've been eating a good, hardy, nutritious breakfast ever since. We've tried all kinds of new things, but Ethan's favorite is waffles! I however hate to cook them because our old waffle maker cooks 1 waffle per 5 min. I can have 10 pancakes, and the dishes they took to make them in done in 5 min! So this particular morning, he thought he'd take matters into his own hands. He woke me up with the sad, sad words "Mom, I failed". I was like what??? He said "come and see" And this is what I saw.

Bless his heart for trying. How could I get mad at that face. I showed him the next day how to use a bit less batter for each waffle, and since then he's done great!

New House

Our house is officially under construction! I thought it would be fun to keep adding updates to this post, so you can see the progress!
These pics go in reverse. (obviously) So start at the bottom if you're just seeing this for the first time!

Why do I only have pics of the Dog in the new house??? Who know, I was just parusing our pictures, and that's all I had...anyway here's a lovely picture of our new floor!

Charlie OWNS these blinds!!

Pics of the Kitchen when we were moving in... Still looks about the same:-)

It's officially done! 6/13/2009

Getting started on the roof, and sheetrock delivered! 05-29-09

Windows!! 5-28-2009, and finally a window cut for the front of the garage. We were getting really worried they were just going to leave it without a window!

Staircase going up.

We have an awesome view of the sky from our living roon! (for a few days at least)

5/26/2009 farther on the second story!

Wow! a second story!!

More finishing inside, stairs walls etc

5/23/09

5/22/09

You've never seen anyone so excited to have walls!!

I would move in now if they let me, I'm so excited! 5/21/09

Getting walls! 5/21/19

And this will someday be filled with junk and christmas decorations! 5-20-09

This will someday be the walkway to our front door!!
5-20-09

5/19/09 How firm our foundation!! Who knew it would get more exciting than a hole!!

You've never seen a family so excited to see a hole in the ground! 5/08/09

Moab!

So, I've lived in Utah all my life and never visited Moab! I have no idea why, I guess I thought it would be a bigger deal, that you had to be a serious camping/fishing/outdoorsy kind of person. But spring break hit this week, and spring fever set in, and we had to get away! It was so fun, Ethan said he liked it better than Disneyland! He was a little mountain lion on the hikes, he just shot to the top while the girls complained and moaned. It is just so very beautiful photos simply don't do it justice. But here are some of my favorite shots.

2009 Thus Far

I know I don't post as much as I should, so I thought I'd give you a top 10 list of things we've been up to since the turn of the Year 2009. So in no particular order, here are some of the things we've been up to this year.

Ethan is totally hooked on Lego's. He creates so many awesome things. It has been one phase in his life that hasn't ended as soon as it began. We figured out it's because whatever he's interested in, his Lego's become that thing. If he likes pirates that week, you'll find lego ships all over. If it's cops and robbers, Indiana Jones, Sponge Bob, whatever it is he can create it, he can play for hours! We're glad he's stuck with them for so long, and the cheap-o- in me thinks they've definitely paid for themselves by now with all the things we haven't had to buy because he can just create them! This picture is from one of his Lego Club meetings. His buddies and he are putting a creation together to submit to Lego Magazine.

Watching American Idol. We love watching American Idol as a family, it just gives us something to look forward to on these cold-dark-humdrum winter nights. We have a good time laughing at the "criers", You know what they say, "The family that makes fun of people together, stay's together J This pictures from the first episode when all the cousins came over to watch!

Playing Guitar Hero! Those of you living in nice temperate weather cannot judge! We freezing people have to find ways of entertaining ourselves, and guest when the weather is horrible. We love to play as a family, especially when we get a lot of people together! This is my Sister-in-law Yazmin, her husband Jon and their two kids rockin' out. James (holding the guitar) is our favorite to watch he gets so into it dancing and jammin' he's so cute! And if you ever want to have a good laugh you should hear Yazmin and I sing "One way or another" We ROCK!!!!

Just incase you were in need of an update: Madison is still constantly taking weird pictures of herself…

Making Cupcakes! Madison asked for cupcake supplies for Christmas, and we've been putting them to good use! Yummy!

Shoveling, Shoveling, Shoveling…. And drinking lots of Hot Chocolate!!! You know you've been in snow a little too long when the most beautiful sight in the world is a cleanly shoveled driveway. I think I may have to cave-in and buy a snow-blower, but of course, I'll wait till off-season-clearance, possibly used J Keep up the good work until then Raul!



Ok, this was way back in December 2008, but I have show my awesome cell-phone pics of Madison's piano recital. Good Job Maddy!

Things not pictured:
Lots of visits with Grandma! Going to lots of Movies. Eating lots of comfort-food
Going to school, work, doing homework! Taking lots of non-digital photos for my photography class! (how did we ever live with only 24 shots at a time???) Teaching Primary, Being Sick, sick and sicker!

Broken Camera

So it's really hard to have a blog when your camera is broken. All my recent pics are from my cell phone camera. You have to stand as still as a rock, or they're blurry, so most of them are of things, not people. Hence the picture of our tree with nothing else.

We want to wish everybody a Merry Christmas! Love you ALL!

Halloween

Well, everyone else is posting Halloween pictures, so I guess I better too. We had a great Halloween Season. The crisp colorful leaves, perfect weather-seems like forever ago as I look out my window today and see snow everywhere. One of our favorite traditions is going to my cousin Alison's for her annual Halloween Party. You people who open your homes up to a bunch of people, with a bunch of kids (AND then provide messy, sticky things for them to do) just simply amaze me!! I didn't have my camera with me that night, but maybe if she reads this she'll feel inspired to send me some cute pics!!

So Madison wanted to be Sharpay this year. And we found a cute costume, and accessories to match, cute right?.. well apparently High School Musical aficionados city-wide could not handle the fact that she was Sharpay, and not Gabriella??? The poor girl wanted to go as someone ELSE, not basically herself in a Gabriella costume (Cute, sweet, giggly) At school, and everywhere we went people of all ages asked..."Oh, but why didn't you go as Gabriella, you would look just like her?" I know, I know not putting a wig on her was my mistake, but if you'd have been there for the "Little -Mermaid-Wig-Disaster of 2006" then you wouldn't even have to question that decision! Moral of the story- You don't have to be blond to be FABULOUS!!!!!

Well, Ethan is another story altogether. He, as you know, will not dress up for Halloween. But this year when we were in Vegas, he saw this funny hat at the Disney store and just had to have it! He begged and pleaded and promised he would wear it for Halloween.

He has always had this thing on Halloween, that he's afraid no one else will dress up, so he won't where a costume--Yet he's afraid everyone will be in a costume, and then he'll feel dumb for not having one. And then there's the whole "I hate people looking at me" thing that he has. So the hat seemed like a good compromise. He could take it off and put it on.

Well it didn't exactly turn out, we got to school and he wouldn't get out, so I drove home. "Fine, miss a party day at school!" and other kind, motherly cliches flew from my lips. Then he decided he'd go back, but he wanted to change into a football-like shirt, that could either be a costume, or say "hey, I'm too cool to wear a costume, this is my regular shirt." So Whatever, it all worked out okay--except I told him he owes me ten bucks for the hat he didn't wear.

He's never boring, I'll give him that.







Before school....




ignoring me at the costume parade...


Before trick-or-treating. With Lexi, Sadie, and Bella.




We had a great time trick-or-treating. But Dad gave out handfuls of candy too early, so when we got home we were out of candy! I told the kids to just not answer the door, but Ethan kept answering, and just giving out his own candy, then Madison would feel guilty and give Ethan some of hers. It went on like that for another hour. So for Halloween my kids didn't get sick on too much candy, and they got to learn sacrifice, and service to others. Wow, there really is a Relief Society lesson in everything!