A Goal I Want To Stick With

Even though it is February now, I have been thinking about goals that I not only want to accomplish this year, but goals that I want to make a part of me. I want them to become habits for me. The most important one to me can be summed up in the following words to this song:

"Have I done any good in the world today? Have I helped anyone in need? Have I cheered up the sad and made someone feel glad? If not, I have failed indeed. Has anyone's burden been lighter today because I was willing to share? Have the sick and the weary been helped on their way? When they needed my help was I there?"

I would really like to be able to say "YES!" to all of the questions in this song. And that is my goal for the year. I have heard of people that pray every day to know one person that they can help that day, and then they do it. I really want to try this, and I am hoping that it will make me a better person, and improve the relationships that I have in my life with friends and family.

The New Year

I tend to not make New Years resolutions, but this year I decided that I wanted to. One of the goals that I set for myself was to be more organized and to not procrastinate things. Well, we are half-way through January and I still haven't blogged about Christmas. I'm off to a GREAT start!!! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday!!

P.S. If you want to see our pictures of Christmas, I put them on Facebook. It is just so much easier and faster then putting them on here :)

I Want To Be A Whale

Recently, in a large city, a poster featuring a young, thin and tan woman appeared in the window of a gym. It said, "This summer, do you want to be a mermaid or a whale?"

A middle-aged woman, whose physical characteristics did not match those of the woman on the poster, responded publicly to the question posed by the gym.

To Whom It May Concern,

Whales are always surrounded by friends (dolphins, sea lions, curious humans). They have an active sex life, get pregnant and have adorable baby whales. They have a wonderful time with dolphins and stuff themselves with shrimp. They play and swim in the seas, seeing wonderful places like Patagonia, the Bering Sea and the coral reefs of Polynesia. Whales are wonderful singers and have even recorded CDs. They are incredible creatures and virtually have no predators other than humans. They are loved, protected and admired by almost everyone in the world.

Mermaids don't exist. If they did exist, they would be lining up outside the offices of Argentinean psychoanalysts due to identity crisis. Fish or human? They don't have a sex life because they kill men who get close to them, not to mention how could they have sex? Just look at them ...where is IT? Therefore, they don't have kids either. Not to mention, who wants to get close to a girl who smells like a fish store? The choice is perfectly clear to me; I want to be a whale.

P.S. We are in an age when media puts into our heads the idea that
Only skinny people are beautiful, but I prefer to enjoy an ice cream with my kids, a good dinner with a man who makes me shiver and a piece of chocolate with my friends…

Living Life

Life is not a race-but indeed a journey.  Be honest.  Work hard.  Be choosy.  Say "thank you", "I love you", and "great job" to someone each day.  Go to church, take time for prayer.  The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh.  Let your handshake mean more than a pen and paper.  Love your life and what you've been given; it is not accidental-search for your purpose and do it as best you can.  Dreaming does matter.  It allows you to become that which you aspire to be.  Laugh often.  Appreciate the little things in life and enjoy them.  Some of the best things really are free.  Do not worry, less wrinkles are more becoming.  Forgive, it frees the soul.  Take time for yourself-plan for longevity.  Recognize the special people you've been blessed to know.  Live for today, enjoy the moment.

-Bonnie Mohr

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

POOP-TASTROPHY

A couple of nights ago one of my girls, we will call her Sally, came into our room and climbed in bed with us.  This was at about 2:00 am, but not unusual.  The unusual thing was the smell that came with her.  It smelled like poop, gross!  I said:

Me: "Sally?  Did you just go potty?

Sally: "Ya"

Me: "Did you wash your hands?"

Sally: "Oops, I forgot, *giggle, giggle*"

Me:  "Gross Sally, go and wash your hands!"

Sally: "Ok"

So, Sally goes and washes her hands, but she is out there puttering around for quite a while.  When she comes back, she still smells bad.  At this point, the smell must be bad enough because it woke up Chad.  So, he decides to go and investigate the smell.  It is quiet for about 5 seconds and then I hear "YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!"  I am thinking, maybe she just got some poop on the toilet seat or something.  So, I go to help with the investigation.  WARNING: This next part is gross....

We go into the girls room, and for those of you that don't know, all 5 of our girls sleep in the same room.  Needless to say, there is a VERY small pathway that goes between the beds.  But between  2 of the beds there is no space, they are right next to each other.  Unfortunately, our  "pooper" was in the bed closest to the wall.  

Back to the gross part......Sally had diarrea all over her bed, then she got up and climbed over her sisters bed, spreading the surprise, then she stopped in front of her dresser, took her poop covered panties off and left them on the floor, then she grabbed the two closest blankets and tried to wipe herself off, then put them on the floor.  Then she opened her dresser to get new panties, but at this point she has poop on her hands, so now there is poop on the dresser.  She then walks out into the front room (all the way making a poop trail) and decides to SIT on the couch to put her panties on!  So, now there is poop all over the couch.  And I am not kidding you, there was SOOOO much poop.  After she gets her panties on she goes into the bathroom and takes off her pajamas (covered in poop) and puts them on the floor.  Then she comes and climbs in bed with us getting poop on all of our blankets, on the wall, and on my pillow.  Needless to say, I could literally say that there was poop EVERYWHERE!  Its one of those situations where you see all of this mess everywhere, and your kid is standing there covered in this mess too (Sally had it smeared all over her), and you have no idea where to start.  

While I bathed Sally, Chad got all of the poopy clothes together and put them in the laundry room.  After I had bathed Sally, I had the wonderful job of following her every footstep cleaning, disinfecting, and carpet cleaning everything.  Not to mention wiping down the dressers, doors, bed posts and everything else that had been tainted by this poo expedition that she had.  It took me 2 and a half hours to clean it all up! I think that it was one of the most disgusting things that I have had to do as a mom.  It definitely is in the top 5.  

After finally finishing cleaning up and getting back to bed, I had to wake up about 3 hours later.  Only to discover that in the dark I had missed some poop spots, so I was once again cleaning up poop.  Then to top off that day  I had to change 8 poopy diapers!  I only have 2 kids in diapers, and they pooped that much!  I am so sick of poop that it is not even funny, AND I think that the smell is permanently in my nose!!!

I love all of my girls to death!  And I really felt bad for Sally because she felt SO bad.  I just hope that if this ever happens again (crossing fingers that it won't), that she will yell for us to come and help her instead of trying to be so independent.

Oh My.....

Since it has been FOREVER since I last updated my blog, I have decided that I am not really going to catch you up with pictures and stuff.  I will just try to be a little better about actually updating more often.  What is going on with us right now?

-I am going to school Monday-Friday at nights

-McKinzley started First Grade

-Taylin started Kindergarten

-Oaklee is starting Pre-School next week

-Brexlyn has an attitude

-Pemberlynn is crawing and walking along the edges of things.  Oh, and likes to eat leaves.

-Chad is working really hard and then watching the girls while I am at school.  He is such an AMAZING husband!

-The girls start dance lessons on Tuesday

Well, that is about all that is going on right now.  I will try to be better at updating, but I can't guarantee anything :)

Till next time..........

How would it be?

How would it be to be able to fall asleep whenever, wherever?  Just ask Brexlyn.  Lately, when she decides she is tired, it doesn't matter where she is, she just goes to sleep.  The other day I noticed that she was being awfully quiet so I went to investigate.  This is what I found.....

Can you believe it!!!????  She is just hanging over the edge of the walker, which by the way is Pemberlynn's.  I had to make sure she was breathing because it was just such an odd sight.  I do know that when Chad was little that he once fell asleep standing up in their car leaning against the window.  So Brexlyn must have inherited his sleeping gene.

Over the past couple of weeks she has just been laying down in random places and taking a nap.

Here she is sleeping on the bathroom floor. (Before you say "GROSS", don't worry, I clean my bathroom floor often.)

Maybe some of you guys remember these.  But, this is a playpen for Cabbage Patch Dolls.  I guess she just thought that it looked comfy.  I don't know why.  She obviously is squished :)
And this is just a cute one of her curled up in the middle of the floor.
If only we could take a nap whenever we wanted..........

Our Current Project

My Aunt and Uncle are building a home next to my Grandma's cabin up in Provo Canyon.  Right now they are up in Jackson Hole for the summer so they asked Chad to general the outside of the home.  So, basically the "shell" of the house.  That way, when they get back at the end of the summer they can spend the winter finishing the inside.  It has been really fun for us to do this!  Here are a few pictures of the progress.  We started at the first of the month, and the framing should be starting next week.......

These are before pictures...(I went a little crazy with the orange spray paint :)  )

This is after the excavator came........

These are after the footings were poured and they are getting ready to pour the foundation..

What's been going on with the Hoyt's?

It seems like life has gotten so busy the last little while.  I don't know where the time has gone!!  Here are a few things that have happened in that last little while..............

A couple of days ago I was able to go out to dinner with some of my friends from High School.  We had such a blast!!  Our poor waitress, we were talking for like 4 HOURS!  Thanks ladies!  I had so much fun!!

For Memorial Day we spent the first part of the day up at my Grandma's cabin in Provo Canyon, and then in the evening, we had a BBQ at Chad's Dads house.  It was a really fun day!!  And it was really nice to be able to see all of our family.


This is at my Grandma's cabin, and I love this picture because it has me, my mom, my grandma, and all of my girls in it, 4 generations!!
In the middle of May Taylin graduated from Pre-School.  She went to the same pre-school that I did when I was her age, which I thought was really neat.  It is an AMAZING school!!  She learned so much and had a great time every time she went.  At her graduation they asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up and she said "a diver".  I guess we better get her in some swim lessons!!!
A couple of weeks ago McKinzley lost her first tooth!!  It really doesn't seem like it was 6 years ago that I had her, but now her teeth are falling out!!!  She was so excited to put her tooth under her pillow so that the Tooth Fairy could come and visit her.  I told Chad that I wished that one of our kids lost a tooth every day because they went to bed so quiet and fast :)
And last, but not least, one day that Chad didn't have to work we headed up to the zoo.  Even though it was raining on and off  it was perfect!  There weren't any people there and the animals were really active.  It was really nice to spend time togethter.

Glad to be a Burnette again :)Blonde

Blonde just wasn't me, so I am glad to be a burnette again :)

Happy Easter

As you can tell by these pictures, getting a bunch of little kids to all look at you at the same time is nearly impossible.  Hope you had a great Easter!

An Update and Word to the Wise

At the end of March I went down to Texas to visit my brother and sister-in law, Jen and Andre, and attend their new baby, Brighton's, blessing.  I had a really good time, once I finally made it to Texas.....

Here is me and Chad before we left to go to the airport.  Little did I know that once I got to the airport I would be sitting in it the entire day because my flight had been cancelled.  I was supposed to arrive in Houston at 6:30pm, and I didn't get in until about 12:30am!  It was a reallllly long day!

These are a couple of pics while I was down there:

I had a really good time!  Thanks Andre and Jen for letting me come and visit!

More recently......

I am so glad that I was able to get this picture.  It makes me laugh so hard when I look at it :)

As most of you know, my wallet was stolen a couple of days ago, and in it was my ID, SS card, 2 credit cards, some cash, and some gift cards.  Well, the people that stole it went on a MAJOR shopping spree and spent over $3000.  I reported it to the police and they said that it was pretty common and that they would do what they could, but that they couldn't guarantee that they would ever find anything.   A little frustrating.  So, I decided to take matters into my own hands.  I am tracking down every place that these scoundrels spent my money to see if they have video camera security so that maybe we can find out who they are.  Anyways, my girls aren't as enthusiastic as I am about going around to the different stores......


and last, but not least....A WORD TO THE WISE.....BLINDS ARE DANGEROUS!!!!

I have heard of kids getting hurt with blinds, but it was always kind of at the back of my mind until the other day.  Oaklee climbed up in the window (which she has never done before) and got the cord wrapped around her neck.  I had just gone upstairs to make a bottle for Pemberlynn, and I was on my way back down.  I was maybe gone for 2 minutes tops.  It happened that fast!  We are sooooo thankful that she is ok, and that things didn't go a different way!  Scared the crap out of me! Here is her poor little neck....

And that is most of our life for the past couple of weeks......

My new hair-do

BEFORE

AFTER

We are PARTY CENTRAL!!!

Oaklee and McKinzley's birthdays are exactly one week apart.  So we have been having birthday parties left and right at our house.  Saturday, March 7th was McKinzley's 6th birthday!  I still can't believe that I have a 6 year old.  As corny as it sounds, it doesn't seem like it was that long ago that we were bringing her home from the hospital.  We had a super fun day with McKinzley choosing what we did all day long.  For breakfast we had Fruit Loops, and then McKinzley opened her presents, after getting ready for the day we headed out to Jungle Jim's Playland to spend the afternoon.  The girls had sooooo much fun going from ride to ride.  I wasn't able to get pictures of them while the rides were moving because they ended up blurry. Well, I take that back, the rides that Chad went on with Brexlyn were slow enough to get good pictures of.  After Jungle Jim's we came home and had a dinner of pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage and orange juice.  It was very tasty!  And I want to say thank you to Grandpa Hoyt and Nana Paige for calling McKinzley on her birthday and singing to her.  She absolutely loved it!  Here are a few pics:

Opening presents:

                                             Ahhhhh......cute little Tinker Bell!
As soon as McKinzley took the Tinker Bell outfit off, Brexlyn grabbed it and wanted it on.  
At Jungle Jim's Playland:
                                                  Isn't he a HUNK!!!!   
This just makes me laugh!  Brexlyn wouldn't ride alone so Chad had to squeeze in this little jeep, and the worker was on her phone texting, so it was just going around and around for like 8 minutes!  I think he thought he was going to die,lol!
                                         Taylin's face cracks me up!
                                             Blowing out her candles.......
 HAPPY BIRTHDAY MCKINZLEY!!!!!  WE LOVE YOU!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY OAKLEE!!!

     Today was Oaklee's 3rd birthday.  I can't believe that she is already 3!  My kids are growing up so fast.  I asked Oaklee the other day what she wanted to do for her birthday, and she told me that she would like to go to "her barn".  Not knowing exactly where that was, Chad and I decided to take her to Wheeler Farm, and they had so much fun.  Here are some pictures of Oaklee's day.

These are just a few pictures of her opening her presents.  The most exciting present for her was a bag of skittles.  I don't think she would have cared if she got anything else, but I didn't get any pictures of that, so you have to look at these ones :)

                  She was excited with her Little Einstein's Rocket Ship.
Ok, this is a GIGANTIC, hairy horse at Wheeler Farm.  It was really nice though.
Chad didn't like it much because it tried to take a bite out of his sweatshirt. ha ha
                                    Here are the girls on a tracter.
                             Here is Oaklee looking at the roosters..............
......and here is Brexlyn after she stuck her fingers through the chicken wire to pet the rooster. (It bit her finger.  So sad)
This is kindof a weird picture, but the girls are throwing bread to the ducks.  I don't know who that lady and little boy are that are behind them.
                                 One, Two, Three, BLOW...............
                                She thought her cake was really good :)
                                 HAPPY BIRTHDAY OAKLEE!!!

Something I forgot to blog about

This was a really long time ago, but on Christmas we went down to Chad's mom's house for lunch and his brother Drew brought one of the presents that he had gotten that morning.  This was no "normal" present though.  It was a game that two people play at a time.  One person holds onto a handle and the first person to let go loses.  Now, this might not sound like a very hard game, but the catch to it is that the handles shock you over and over again.  And each time that they shock you the shock is bigger.  Watching Chad and Drew play this game against each other was one of the funniest things in the world!  I laughed so hard!  Here are a few pictures to show you what it is kindof like.

                      Here they are, just kindof starting out before it gets really intense.

LOL!!  Here is Chad when it was shocking them really bad.  I laugh just looking at the pic!
                               Here is Drew when it was shocking him really bad.

Maybe you had to be there, but it was so much fun, and so funny!  And being Hoyt boys they didn't stop once they had played with just their hands.  They started putting it in there elbow, behind their knees, on their stomachs!  I wish I would have gotten pictures of those.  It was really entertaining.  I even tried to play it once, but I didn't make it very far.  Now notice in the pictures how you can see on their faces how much it is hurting them.  Well, Madison, Chad's little sister (13 yrs old) sat down to play this game with her brothers, and they were all thinking that she wouldn't last very long.  She sat down and held the handle through the ENTIRE thing without even flinching!!  It was amazing!  She is one tough cookie!  Anyways, that's that.

Do You Want A Prize?

This is a simple and fun chain to join.  The rules are:  Be one of the first 4 people to respond to my post and you will receive a gift from me, but in order to receive your gift you have to post this on your own blog and in a sense "pay it forward".  So hop on board!

2nd First Day of School

We recently moved up to West Jordan and McKinzley and Taylin both started at new schools today.  The fun thing about it, is that they both go to the same schools that I did when I was growing up.  Both of them did great and had a lot of fun making new friends and learning new things.  Here are a few pictures that I took right before they went to school.

P.S.  Right before we moved we cut about 10 inches off of Taylin's hair.  She loves it, and I love not having to deal with combing out the long hair every day!

                                                                     TAYLIN

                                                              MCKINZLEY

Strangled Piggies

Let me give you a little history.  At Pemberlynn's 2 month appointment I was sitting in the room listening to the doctor give me the rundown while I tried to get a pesky hair that I had found on Pemberlynn's toe unraveled.  Feeling I was being rude I told the doctor that I was sorry, but that I was having a hard time getting the hair off of her toe.  Immediately the doctor pushed her chair over to us saying, "We need to get that hair off of her toe right now!"  I was thinking "What is the big deal?  Its just a hair."  After we successfully got the hair off she told me that it can be very dangerous to get a hair wrapped around little kids toes, but she also told me that it wasn't too common.  Fast forward to today.........It is about 4:00pm and Pemberlynn has just woken up from about a 2 hour nap.  She is fussing pretty bad, and really stinky.  So I lay her down to start changing her diaper and when I pull her foot out of her pajama's I realize that something is wrong.  The middle toe on her foot is HUGE, swollen and starting to turn slightly purple!!!!  I start freaking out.  I look closely and realize that there is something (a hair) wrapped around her toe a million times and that it is cutting off circulation to her toe.  I try to pull some off, but her toe had swollen so much that it had started cutting into the top of her toe and on the bottom of her toe it had cut so deep that you could no longer see the hair and it was starting to bleed.  Luckily my mom was home so I was able to pack up Pemberlynn and leave the rest of the girls with her.  I drove as fast as I could to the insta-care.  

I had never been to this insta care before, and there are a couple of different medical groups all in one spot.  So I went inside and asked the receptionist if this was the urgent care.  This is how the conversation went.  Her: "Do you need to be seen?  I think I can get you in in a couple of minutes." Me: "My baby needs to be seen right away."  Her: "Well, then you need to go to the hospital because I have a bunch of paperwork that I still need to enter and then I need you to have fill out a whole bunch of paperwork."  Me: "Well, my baby's toe looks like it is going to fall off, so I would really appreciate it if someone could come and look at it now!"  Her: "Hold on."  Then she turns around to the nurse that is sitting behind her and says "____ can you come and look at this baby's toe?  Her mom thinks that it is going to fall off. "(all said while rolling her eyes).  Nurse:  "Sure."  Nurse walks over and looks at Pemberlynn's toe.  Nurse:  "She needs to be seen right away!  I am going to go and get the doctor to look at this.  You might need to take her to the ER."  Me: "Sigh".  Doctor comes over.  Doctor:  "I think that we can take care of her here, bring her back right away."  So I follow the nurse to the back and I get Pemberlynn out of her carseat so that she can be weighed.  While I am doing this the doctor comes and puts a numbing cream on her toe "so that it won't hurt when I take the hair off".  After the weighing (which by the way, she ways 13lbs now!)  we went into the room where I would be the prisoner of a screaming baby for the next hour.  The doctor cleans around the toe and then pulls out this needle.  He then holds Pemberlynn's foot and goes to poke the hair off?  I'm not sure.  But I am sure that he definitely poked Pemberlynn.  Well, poked is not the right word.  He made a huge laceration across the top of her toe.  The laceration came from Pemberlynn jerking her foot when he poked her.  To this he said "Don't move your foot."  Ok, now this is a man who has gone to who knows how much school to become a doctor and he is telling a 3 month old not to move her foot her he is stabbing it with a needle?!  So the cut is pretty deep and it is bleeding pretty bad.  In fact, it isn't stopping.  The doctor continued to put pressure on it again and again for at least 5 minutes and then I guess he decided that he didn't want to wait any longer so he just started poking again at her toe with the needle.  All of this time Pemberlynn is screaming bloody murder.  After another 10 minutes of poking, the doctor decides that he is going to get some Novicane to numb her toe.  So he comes back with this syringe full of Novicane.  He goes to stick it in her foot and what happens?  Of course she jerks her foot away and it bends the needle sideways making a tear at the base of her toe.  And again, a little more agitated this time, he tells Pemberlynn to not move.  So now we have blood coming from everywhere off of the toe, and still no hair removed.  Finally after another 5 minutes of unbearable screaming we have a breakthrough, a piece of hair is removed.  The doctor sighs a sigh of relief.  Doctor:  "I'm going to let you sit for minute and then come back and see if the creases in her toe are smoothing out any, but I am positive that I got the hair." While he is gone I am looking at her toe thinking, "there is no way that he got all of the hair.  Her toe still looks like a huge red and purple Michelin Tire man."  At this point I am pretty positive that there is still more hair around her toe.  When the doctor came back in he said, "What do you think?  I think it looks like we got all of the hair off."  Me: "Ummmm, I think that there is still some hair wrapped around her toe."  Doctor:  "Sigh.  Ok, let me check again, but I am pretty sure that I got it all."  So he takes out his trusty little light and shines it on her toe again.  Doctor: "Oh, there is another hair wrapped around there."  Well, there wasn't just one hair, there was a big tangle of hair that came off this time and that was what was causing the most damage.  I wanted to say "I told you so"  to the doctor, but I figured that wasn't very polite.  After he got the hair off he caked the entire top of her foot in antibiotic cream and wrapped it up.  It was so sad.  The bottom of her toe was cut really deep and the top of the toe was also cut really deep.  These were the cuts from the hair, there were also the cuts from the doctor.  I was given the instructions to watch for more swelling, just in case there was another hair, but the doctor was confident this time that he had gotten all of it :)  He told me to check it periodically to make sure that it wasn't turning purple and dying.  Very reassuring.  Well, it is 5 hours later and I just looked at her toe, and it looks tons better!  I have to put antibiotics on it 2-3 times a day for a while, but things should be fine.

Now I just have to say, this is my 5th child and I had NEVER heard of a toe being strangled by a hair until I was at Pemberlynn's 2 month appointment, and I was told that it was pretty uncommon.  Ok, this happened twice within a month!  And the second time was almost fatal for her poor little piggy.  The doctor at the insta care told me that Pemberlynn's toe was the worse case that he had ever seen.  It's crazy!  Who looks inside all of their kids socks and PJ's to make sure that a stray hair isn't waiting in the depths to take its next victim?  So I warn all of you now, check you little piggies often!

I didn't take a picture of her toe when it looked like it was about to fall off, it was the last thing on my mind, but at the top is a picture of when it was all wrapped up.

UPDATING

I am just updating.  Things are a bit better than before.

                                                                                              -CHAD

A Quote By A Great Man

You know how sometimes you go to a church meeting and you feel like a certain lesson was directed right at you?  Well, a couple of Sundays ago I had one of these moments.  Life has been tough lately and this quote by President Hinckley made me stop and realize what an amazing life I really do have, and that I should be grateful for it.  Here is the quote:

Anyone who imagines that bliss in normal

Is going to waste a lot of time

running around shouting

that he's been robbed.

The fact is that most putts don't drop,

most beef is tough,

most children grow up to be just people,

most successful marriages require

a high degree of mutual toleration,

most jobs are more often dull than

otherwise.

Life is like an old-time rail journey...

Delays...sidetracks...smoke...

dust...cinders and jolts,

interspersed only occasionally

by beautiful vistas

and thrilling bursts of speed.

The trick is

to thank the Lord

for letting you have the ride."

-President Gordon B.Hinckley

7 YEARS AGO

Seven years ago today, Chad proposed to me.  It was late at night and we had just gotten back from doing a little Christmas shopping.  We had just gotten to my friends Katey's house, where my car was, to get in and head to my house when Chad asked if I wanted to go for a walk.  This surprised me because one, Chad hates going for walks, and two, it was snowing and FREEZING cold!  These two things made me a little suspicious, but I love to go on walks and I figured that if he was offering I wouldn't pass it up.  We walked FOREVER just chit chatting and enjoying each others company when Chad stopped and asked where a certain park was.  The park that he was talking about was clear back by my friend Katey's house at least a half a mile away now.  I told him this, and he decided that we should head back that way anyways since it was getting late and a lot colder.  So, we finally got back to the street that my friend lived on and I started to turn to get my car, but Chad asked if we could keep walking.  Now I was extremely suspicious.  I went with him and we started walking through the middle of the park that he had asked about before.  When we were about half way through he sort of slowed down and was looking out over the grass like he wanted me to see something.  I didn't see anything at first (it had snowed a lot and put a thin layer over what he wanted me to see), but then he said "look" and pointed at the ground.  On the ground were huge letters 4' by 2' that were 2by4's nailed together to say "MARRY ME".  When I turned back to him he was on one knee and he asked me if I would spend the rest of my life with him.  Of course I said "yes"!  And here we are, 7 years later with 5 beautiful little girls and a love so deep for each other, I would have never thought a love like this existed.  I can't imagine my life without Chad (I know, I'm getting corny now:) ).  I love you Chad!    

A Rotten Night

It is so fun for me to see how my older girls love, and adore Pemberlynn.  Unfortunately, along with this love came the passing of germs.  I tried to be really careful but Pemberlynn ended up catching a cold that the other girls had.  It didn't seem to bad until Sunday night.  We had been home from a family dinner for about an hour and Pemberlynn started to cough so badly that she wasn't able to breath.  She started to go blue around her mouth and her eyes were watering really bad.  Needless to say, it scared the HOLY CRAP out of me!  So I took her to the pediatric after hours to be looked at.  After the doctor had looked at her, he told me that I needed to take her over to Utah Valley Regional Medical Center to be monitored over night.  Talk about anxiety!  So, I took her over there and they started taking all of her vitals, which in babies they take their blood pressure on both of there arms and both of their legs (she did not like that at all).  After they did their initial assessment, they set us up in a room to wait for some tests to be done.  Once we got to our room a respiratory therapist came in and stuck a tube up Pemberlynn's nose and down her throat and sucked a whole bunch of junk out.  It was really hard and sad to watch them hold her down while she cried and gagged :(  They took the junk to send off to be tested for all kinds of things.  After that they hooked her up to some different wires that monitored her oxygen levels and other things.  Then they did a chest x-ray to see if her lungs had fluid in them.  Finally they were done for awhile.  By this time it is about 1:00am, and Pemberlynn would not go to sleep if I laid her down in the crib, and since she was attached to a bunch of wires I had to sit in the chair next to the crib and hold her the entire night.  I didn't sleep at all.  But I am ok with this because all of her tests came back good and she is recovering well.  It was such a scary thing because they are so little, and things can happen so fast.  I 'm just glad that we have her and that she is healthy!  Here are a few pictures that I took while I was there. (they had the cutest little gowns for babies).

Just some fun pictures

Here are just a few pictures that have been taken in the past couple of weeks......

                                                                 Proud Daddy

                                                     Taylin and Pemberlynn
                                                  McKinzley and Pemberlynn
                                  Oaklee and Pemberlynn (Oaklee looks a little possessed) 
Here are the girls on Halloween.  We went to the trunk-or-treat at my parents house.  McKinzley is Belle, Taylin is Sper Girl, Oaklee is a Butterfly, and Brexlyn is a Skunk.

                                 I just love this picture of Brexlyn!  She is definitely a ham.
                                         This is how Brexlyn gives Pemberlynn loves.
                                                                 Pemberlynn   
Chad got this picture of Pemberlynn right when she was in the middle of sneezing.  So cute!