Our Adopted Grand parents

In our first two years of marriage, Cade and I were blessed to live with two different people who have blessed our lives. First was Mrs. Penrod (we call her Mrs. P). We lived in her basement apartment with a cabin feel, crazy kitchen layout and NO SHOWER. That's right. We took baths our first year of marriage :). We had some good memories there before starting our family with kids.

Then we moved to Grandpa Gene's basement where we lived and helped take care of him after a life-threatening surgery. We stayed there until Emma was 6 months old and we bought our first home.

In our first home, we were very blessed to live next door to another Elderly friend- Hope Pritchett. We loved Grandma Hope. She just passed away last month and we attended her funeral. She was such a great lady and Emma will remember Grandma Hope. Getting drinks of water and handfuls of M&Ms. Her front porch swinging bench. The 100's of framed grandchildren all over her house. Her stories of working at the post office, life with a military husband, and being summoned to too many family events in her old age. Her crooked hands and cooked walk. Her coo-coo clock. Man, we had some good times with her. We will forever love her and are excited for the day we can see her again in heaven.

We are blessed to know each of these dear people and be a small part of their lives. We continue to visit Gene and Mrs. P and want our girls to know them. We love them dearly.

My Beautiful Girls

I sure love being a Mom. Absolutely love it. Is it challenging? You betcha. I don't know if there is a better way to learn how to become Christ-like than being a parent. I am learning all the time how to be more patient, more loving, more self-less, more compassionate, and on and on and on. My girls teach me so much all the time. I admit, I have my bad days, my hard days just like everyone. I wish I didn't lose my patience as much as I do, but I am learning and trying to become better. I am well aware of my faults and weaknesses, however, I love them with all of my heart and am trying to give my all into loving these 3 beautiful girls of mine!

I am so grateful for each of their personalities. Each one is so different. Different personalities. Different strengths and talents they can add to the family. It's amazing how each one of us are born with certain characteristics and God-given talents and abilities. I am grateful for each one of their differences and all they add to our home and family. The bless me with opportunities every day to become more Christ-like and I am so blessed to be their Mom.

Here are some of their strengths:

Emma
A second mother. The motherly instincts just come so natural for her. Very responsible and a great help to me around the house. Always follows the rules and desires to please us. Friendly to everyone and very inclusive. Loves to be around people and makes friends easily. Loves life and learning new things. Loves singing and dancing. Loves being artistic and making things to give to others.

Reese
Very independent from day one. Loves doing things on her own and learning how to do things without help. Very determined and strong. Loud and energetic and full of personality. Confident in who she is. Loves to sing and dance around the house. A tease yet loves to follow her big sister around. A very good cuddler and loves to read books.

Nora
Only 8 months old but a very relaxed, chill baby. Easy going and content with life. Very smiley and happy all the time and loves being around other people. Excited to move and explore the world around her.

Anniversary Number 7!!! Spent in Gilbert!

Like every year, we like to attend a new temple for each anniversary and do a session as well as sealings. We have kept hearing how incredible the Gilbert Temple is and because my Dad was the main architect on the design of that temple I told Cade I really wanted to go to that one. We were already in AZ for the middle of July and Cade's mom was available to watch the girls, we decided to celebrate on July 11th instead of August 11th. It was amazing!

First of all, I'll just throw it out there...We got to see Sister Boose-Boose!!!!! Cade told her in an email beforehand that we were celebrating our anniversary in the mission land and that we were attending the temple that Friday morning. Lo and behold…she has district meetings in the same exact parking lot Friday mornings! NO WAY! When we pulled into the temple parking lot I saw some Elders going into the church building right there and told Cade I just wanted to check and see if by chance….

And she was there!!! We caught her at the exact right time because their meeting was starting in 5 minutes! So I got to hug her and talk for a whole 5 minutes! It was SO fun! Oh man, I love her so much. She is doing so well and is absolutely LOVING her mission and everything about it (okay, maybe not the 115 degree weather in the summer, but everything else :)). I love that girl. She is amazing and I am so grateful I got to see her!

We also got to see the Egan's while down there…at least some of the. Matt and Kelsie and Jared and CC.  We love them! We went to a gelato place called Frost and Cade recognized it from one of Boose's emails. Well, go figure I was sitting in the exact place Boose was in her email. Fun! And Yummy place!

While we were celebrating our anniversary, we actual stayed at a Resort for one night and it had a water park as part of it. We had fun playing at the water park! This was the only pic we got while there :). Nora wasn't quite sure about the water…

Oh, and our friends the Vizzard's watched Nora for us while we attended the temple. It was so nice of them! 

We got to do so many fun things in one trip!

Ten Year High School Reunion

WOW. Has it really been 10 years since I graduated? Crazy.

The end of June we had a reunion in Kristen Stewarts' parent's backyard. It was beautiful, food was great, decorations and planning of everything was just great. It was so fun to see some wonderful friends! Even though with Facebook and social media these days it's easy to keep up on what a lot of people are up to. But actually seeing and talking to them face to face was so great. I went to high school  with some pretty remarkable people. I was blessed with so many faith-filled, confident, kind, Christ-like people and I definitely am a better person because of many examples from my past. I am grateful I moved to Bountiful in the middle of high school because of these many friendships I made.


Jacque Torres, Laura Glover, Me, Christy Hellewell...

Danelle Turnblom, Me, Brighton Butler….

Me and Brook Barneck

Troy and Brooke (Bushman). Troy lived in the Riviera ward the same time as Cade and I (where we met).

Jor-Jor leaves on His Mission!

I should say Elder Bleak now, not Jor-Jor or Bud :). We are so happy for him though! Jordan has been in Argentina for a whole 4 weeks now and was in the MTC 6 weeks before that! Man, I sure love that guy. He is one of the most spiritual, good-hearted, kind people I know. He has such a desire to be the absolute best person he can possibly be and an amazing desire to help others around him in any way he can. He has already impacted many many people in his short 18 years of life so far and He is going to truly bless the lives of many in Mendoza!

Just some random pics from his Farewell.

Summer camping!

Backyard Camping!
The girls were SO excited to campout in the back yard with Daddy. We set up a tent, built a fire, ate smores, stayed up way too late and got no sleep. That's what camping is all about :). All about the memories!

Hobble Creek Camping. Bryan and Jennie invited us to go with them camping. I was definitely hesitant to stay over night with Nora, but we survived and actually had a great time while doing it! Emma and James' absolute favorite part was the dirt slide! They Spent most of the night playing in the dirt. Then they got freezing cold baths in the stream afterwards :). Reese just stared at them as they played in the dirt and couldn't figure out why that was fun. So funny. Grandma and Grandpa Bleak came for the evening and went home to sleep in their own beds. We had such really yummy dutch oven cooking that night. Camping with the family….good times! I have so many memories of camping when I was little. Some of my favorite family memories. I want to create that for my girls too.

Leaving the campsite "better than we found it"…..

And last, but certainly not least was Man Camp. Cade goes every year with the Egans, but this year his dad got to go too! They had a great time as always practicing their manlyhood :).