Happy New Year! 2012: The Year of Restoration

I know I have been a total slacker with the blog. I can honestly say I do miss posting our story up here. Although, I cannot promise that I will keep up with posting pictures (as Blogger is really slow and ridiculous to get them posted on in my opinion), I will try to at least keep up with my thoughts and the text version of our life and events!

Generally at new years everyone tries to come up with goals to create a "new" self. I am not making goals to create a NEW me.... I am making goals to RESTORE the OLD me. For some reason this year I have allowed myself to lose some of my best traits. I slacked. Alot. The biggest thing that I slacked on was taking care of my health and my body. I worked SO hard to develop the skills and might I say "talent" of staying healthy and keeping my body in shape. For those of you that know me from my younger days, you will know how hard that was and what a huge change that was in my life. This year, I allowed myself somewhat of a break because I felt like I was over-stressed or something... but in the end, taking that break just ADDED to my stress level. It added to my mental, emotional and physical stress levels. So this year... I choose to RESTORE OLD LINDSEY.

Back to healthy and light eating I go. I know it will take some adjusting and hard work, but I am ready for it. The time has come to get the old me back and take hold of the reins and stop these unhealthy habits I have been developing.

Besides my health, I will be focusing on getting back to smarter parenting. Jared and I have slowly been developing some of the "Love and Logic" skills and then we kind of just went lax over the holidays. We are going to be getting back to that this year. That is our MAIN GOAL as a couple and as a FAMILY. We want to bring back peace into our home.

The other thing I want to get back into is reading uplifting, educational, historical, and spiritual books. In 2010 I read SO SO many books and I felt like I grew tremendously as a person. This past year I did read quite a few books, but not nearly as many and not nearly as many books that I felt helped me progress as an individual.

So today begins the Year of Restoration. Hopefully I will remember to keep you guys updated on my journey!!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Summer Family Fun!

Aden and I at Cabella's
Teaching our two year old to shoot... lol

and our much more mature five year old... haha

AHHHH!

Baby Isaac Caldwell.... Karie's newest addition!

Schishter Karie and no name... (well they eventually did name him hehehe)

Owen's first four wheeler ride!

He had QUITE a bit of fun, I must say!! :)

This summer was a little different than most. We worked a ton at my mom's and were just flat out busy. We didn't get much done in our yard this year, until the past month or so, which is really odd for summertime. We generally spend our entire summer working on the yard, but we tried not to spend any money and it usually takes a bit of money to pretty up the yard!

It's a sad thing when summer comes to an end, but we did have some fun together this summer and these were just a few of the highlights.

10 Year Anniversary of 9/11

I know I still have alot more to catch up on, but today is a really important day in not only the history of this great country, but in my own life. I cannot believe it has been 10 years since that day I woke up and was getting ready to go to my second or third week of 10th grade and I turned on the news in my room as I always did and saw a report of a plane hitting into the World Trade Center. I didn't really get the full realization of how BIG this really was and how HORRIBLE this event would truly turn out to be. I was in a hurry to leave so I didn't get to watch much of the report and the story soon left my mind in the early morning rush. We went to pick up my cousin Julie and my friend Amanda for the daily carpool. When we were arriving at school, our morning music went to commercial and announced that a second plane had hit the second building of the World Trade Center. Nobody else in the car had heard the report of the first event so they were pretty shocked. Because I really didn't seem to take in how extreme this actually was because it had just seemed like some crazy event, I just thought "oh yeah you didn't hear about that?" My mom was pretty shocked by it and I just kind of played it down, being my self consumed 15 year old self. We went inside and it left all three of our minds almost immediately and we just sort of went on with our day. As we went to our first period (mine being Student Government) we heard the principal come on the intercom and announce the events of the morning and we were asked to join in the nation for a moment of silence for the people who were suffering back east. While we took that minute of silence I remember saying a prayer and asking to help those in need and to help me to be able to remember the events of this day because I knew that one day my children would ask "where were you on 9/11?" I remember the morning clearly up until the principal finished up the moment of silence, the rest of the day is pretty blurry in my memory, but I remember that morning as vividly as if it had happened yesterday! (Probably more than I remember yesterday morning actually lol). It was an amazing experience being able to sit in silence with my fellow students and know that they, too, were all likely praying or at least feeling some spiritual feelings. It's probably how people used to feel back in the day when prayer was allowed at school. It's a shame that that right has been taken away from us. It was an amazing experience and I will never forget it.

I had the opportunity to show Aden some of the footage and interviews (we watched some of Dateline on Friday which was dedicated to 9/11) and share my memory of that day and let him know how much I truly love this country. He had some questions and one that he asked was so cute was "do they know where Roy is?" At first I didn't really understand what he asked but I realized he was thinking that maybe they were going to come fly planes into our buildings. I explained to him that there are bad, sick people everywhere and that is why we must always be careful, but that we always have our family and friends around to be there and help us; but, most of all, we have God there to watch over and guide us. He seemed to understand this and went on to watch his TV show upstairs. It was a great experience to be able to share some of my memories and feelings about that day and I hope to be able to do that more and more in the future as he is able to understand more and more.

It was a very memorable day for me today. This morning I woke up and realized that I hadn't picked out any songs for Relief Society and all of the sudden I got this great idea (or prompting, Im not sure which) to pick some patriotic songs and then it came to me that it was such a special occassion that I needed to pull out my violin and play something to bring the spirit there. I was really scared to think about playing, especially a song I was just going to pick out and practice for about ten minutes! I decided on I Stand All Amazed (mainly because I wanted to have a religious song too) and The Star Spangled Banner. So I went to church with my violin in hand and decided that I would play the song one time through with just the violin and then we would sing it together. I played the song okay I guess, not up to my own standards especially because I was shaky and it made me sound kind of scratchy; but the ladies in the room said I did a great job. They SAID it brought a good spirit into the room, but I didn't feel it that's for sure! I was too shaky! LOL... but I did it and it worked out great. It turned out that I Stand All Amazed was the perfect song for the lesson, too (which was about temple work and eternal bonds etc). I'm glad that I did it at least for myself because it made me feel as if I did some small part to help brighten the day and make the day a little bit more special to everyone.

Anyway... it was a great day listening to peaceful songs and looking at pictures of 9/11 and what not. Hopefully we can continue the tradition of teaching our children of the important events that happened that day and let them see how truly lucky we are to have the country that we do.

God Bless America and Never Forget!

Owen's 2nd Birthday!

RARRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Aden climbing trees.......:)

Owen decided to take us on a nice run around the church.... he is a nut

Opening his gifts.... such a cooty booty!

My buddy!

Happy Birthday to you!

Howdy, howdy, howdy!

Mischievious!!

My cupcakes and cute decorations!

Enjoy! :)

The final product.... not exactly as I had hoped but I was still proud.

ALMOST DONE!!! This cake took much longer and much more work than I had planned on.... it was definitely a process. I used fondant for the first time and I barely got the cake done on time!!

I kind of procrastinated with the party this year. June was so nuts like I mentioned earlier, that time just kind of crept up on me!! I wanted the cake to be perfect and so awesome, but it just didn't happen the way I had planned. It's lucky we don't have lots of money, or I would go insane with these parties. I have so many ideas floating in my head about how to make things fun and cute that it is hard to know when to stop. We didn't reserve a bowery at a park because we thought we would end up being fine just going early and setting one up. I didn't want to "waste" 20$ on that... but next time I think we will!! lol..... About a half hour before the party we realized we didn't have a park bowery to do the party! All of them in the whole city were reserved or in use... luckily the one at our church wasn't being used so we just went there. There wasn't any toys or playgrounds to have the kids play on, but they still had fun with the balls and what not just playing outside on the grass. It was a rush to get it all up and ready to go but we finally did and everything went well. We had cake, cupcakes, strawberries, raspberries, and root beer floats! It was definitely tasty. Owen didn't really know how to blow out the candles yet but it was still cute. Everything he got was basically Toy Story 3 toys since he is completely obsessed. He was so cute opening the gifts and making the sounds of the characters and stuff. It was about the cutest thing I have ever seen. We had a great time! HAPPY 2ND BIRTHDAY, OWEN!!!

T-ball Season

This is how Owen spent the T-ball season..... hahaha

He's a pretty dang cute kid if I say so myself.....
His coach JR Simmons helping him bat

Aden was actually quite good at throwing and at batting! The thing he needs to work on the most is catching!! He'll get it down, I'm sure... but I was amazed at how well he did without much prior experience whatsoever! :)

Drew mackin' on the girls lol..... caught in the action!

Mom and her big boy!

Aden's first time up to bat! (that kid on the right side was in my way of getting a shot of him and I accidentally slipped and let my mind turn my thoughts into words.... I said "MOOOOOVE!" lol he looked at me and said sorry and got away as fast as he could. hehehe I was just so desperate to get a somewhat decent shot of this moment!! I told him sorry, though. I didn't mean to be rude! I just needed to capture the moment!!!!)

Candid shots... I love them!

The boys in their "dugout" hehe

The season was pretty fun but thankfully short lived! It was sooooo hot during these games and they were twice a week and it was just hard to get there on time with picking up the kids from daycare and getting off of work. It was just kind of stressful! Aden got hot really fast during some of the games and would ask "how much longer do we have?" I would just chuckle and be like ... well Aden about another 45 minutes lol.... kinda funny. He has NO idea what true hot is. I remember playing comp soccer during the summer for an hour and a half at high noon at the end of July lol.... now THAT was hot. Good times. It was fun, though. Hot. It got pretty frustrating trying to keep Owen happy during the games, too. He kept wanting to run out onto the field and "play" and we would chase him everywhere. Most of the time he ended up throwing a fit so we would take him to the play area that was like half a mile across the park (nice planning whoever made this stupid park!! Don't they know that little kids are going to want to play while their older brother's play t-ball???? GRRRRR). So I had to miss pretty much the whole first game, which made me sad. I did get to play with Owen quite a bit, though, I guess. He would always make me go down the slides with him and stuff, too, which did NOT help the sweating/heat situation!!!! Anyway, the season was fun. We were very proud of Aden and Drew. They were pretty awesome and they had a great time! I think he will continue to want to play baseball for a couple years, but only time will tell if he will like it enough to really get into it. Until next year!

June: The Treehouse with Drew!

Word to the wise... don't leave Owen alone with your infants!!!
He will not be gentle......

Aden and Drew dressing up and being tough guys!

Who will be the true King Arthur? hehe

Owen was a little freaked out when the sheep started to move randomly! It was pretty funny to see his reaction... he was NOT liking it!!

Giddy-up!

Yee-haw, cowboy!

The month of June was a very crazy one, let me tell ya. Karie and Drew were in town staying with my mom until she had her baby on the 25th and so Aden wanted to be over there pretty much daily. It was nice having them get to play together so much, but it was difficult sometimes driving back and forth all the way to Ogden sometimes more than once a day lol.... it was kinda nuts. There were days that he was gone the entire day and we didnt' feel like we even had two kids! He was absent! We kinda started to miss the kid! Anyway, it was pretty great having them around to see and play with all the time, though. One of the activities we did with them was take them to the Treehouse with us. They had a great time, although it kinda sucked because Owen wanted to go to different places than the older boys, so we kind of had to split up most of the time! :( We had a great time, though.

June: Aden's First T-Ball Practice!

He was SOOOO cute sitting there waiting for his turn. I just thought it was so funny how he was himself and put his hat on backwards even though nobody else was! He is a silly kid!

His first team huddle.... they decided to be the Pit Bulls (from my suggestion of course, lol)

Being a poser for mom hehehe

Aden got to play on his first team sport this summer, which probably wouldn't have happened unless Karie had signed him and Drew up! I was just so crazy busy at the end of May, that it just kept slipping my mind. So it was a good thing that Karie took over and just did it! She was looking for something for the kids to be able to do together during June while they were staying down here until she had her baby. Aden was so excited to play, but I think that having Drew do it with him made it much better! We got him a cute little baseball mitt and on his first practice they gave them their sweet little uniforms and hats. I was surprised at how much of a "uniform" they really were and not just little t-shirts ya know? I guess for $45 you SHOULD get a nice uniform. :) More to come..........