Father's Day 2012

Justin is an amazing dad!  Before we got married, that was one important quality I was looking for in a husband.  Watching him interact with my nieces and nephews gave me a really good idea that he would make a great dad one day.  Mya and Parker just adore Justin.  He is definitely their favorite (if they had a favorite that is)!  Mya used to tell me all of the time that Justin is her "favorite person in the whole wide world ever!"  He plays with them and knows just how to make them happy when they're sad or grumpy.  Justin is a great provider for our family and I love that he honors his priesthood.

Parker's 2nd Birthday & Justin's Birthday

Super behind on the blog...so I was thinking where to start?  The first pictures I found were of Parker's 2nd birthday so I'll start there!

We decorated his room after he fell asleep the night before so when he woke up it was balloons everywhere!

We opened presents before Justin went to work.  He loved his scooter!

I took the day off of work and took the kids to Arctic Circle for lunch.

That night we had family and friends over for ice cream sundaes and cupcakes!

It was such a fun day.  I love this kid!  He has so much energy but is so sweet!  He LOVES milk!  He always has his sippy cup with him full of milk.  He is so tall for how old he is!  On his 2 year appointment he was 50% on his weight and 85% on his height. 

We didn't go to dinner that night because we had just gone to dinner a few nights before for Justin's birthday.  We went to Ruby River that night.  The kids love going to dinner with us...such a special treat and it definitely makes for fun memories.

Justin's 28!

Justin's birthday was on a Saturday this year so he only had to work until 1. So what did we do to celebrate? After he got home from work he opened his presents (clothes, air tools for work, bow stabilizer). We had Jimmy John's for lunch. Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting...of course. This year Justin requested mint ice cream without the chocolate chips so we made homemade mint ice cream. We went to the Pizza Factory for dinner then finished it off with the arcades at Fat Cats.
The kids were getting a little restless at dinner since they "lost" our pizza so we had to find ways to entertain the kids. Parker loved the lemons and they both loved playing with the sticks the breadsticks came on. I'll just say it got a little noisy by us.
What are they shooting??? Elk, of course...are you surprised?
I love this guy! He amazes me all of the time! He is so considerate of others and he has a way of making everyone like him. He's so sarcastic and has a comment for everything...I'm not even sure how he comes up with them sometimes, he's pretty witty. He's an amazing dad. There's a reason he's Mya's favorite person in the whole world! He has a very strong testimony and he's such a great example to me and the kids. One of my favorite things about him is how he can always make me smile or laugh...even if I don't want to. He's always looking for ways to help others and if someone asks him for help, he won't hesitate. He's very handy. If he doesn't know how to do something, he'll figure it out and it always turns out great. He seems to always be busy with projects...last year was re-doing our fence, this year he's re-done the outside of our trailer, he's made our mailbox, swingset, and rabbit cage. He's fixed our car and saved us $600 and he's usually busy with projects his grandpa has lined up for him :). He helped his brother fix the front of his car and painted flames on it. A common phrase from my mouth to him is "That turned out better than I thought!" He's great with picturing things and creating it and I have a hard time picturing them so I'm always pleasantly surprised when they turn out at least 10 times better than I imagined. It's never a dull moment with Justin and I wouldn't trade it for anything! I love you dear!

Me & My Guy!

With two kids, I feel like the one-on-one time with Justin gets lost amongst everything else going on. A lot of times lately, our time together is putting a movie on late at night while we're in bed and falling asleep to it. So any chance I get for a time with just me and Justin, I jump all over it. Last week groupon had a deal for tickets to the Real Salt Lake game. It was $55 for 2 tickets, Parking, 2 beanies and hot chocolate. I had $25 in groupon bucks so the deal ended up costing me $30. I was so excited and last night was the game! It was way fun and they ended up dominating the game and won 4 to 1.

About a month ago, Justin's work needed more trailers delivered to LA and asked Justin to deliver them. Right away I started working things out with the kids and work so I could go with him. Our plan was to go to the Los Angeles Temple while we were there, but since we weren't staying in LA and we had been driving all night, we just felt gross and opted to make a date soon to go to the local Ogden Temple. Since this was our time together, I sort of wanted to make a little vacation out of it so I talked Justin to driving to the ocean after dropping the trailers off. The closest beach from where we were? Malibu. I had never been in Malibu before and it was like another world driving through it. A permanent vactation lifestyle for very wealthy people. It was really fun seeing the houses and beaches and beach houses. At one point I told Justin I would love to have a tour guide sitting right next to me because I was sure we were driving by interesting stuff...well, I did my homework when I got home and mapped out where we drove and these are the houses we drove by:
Jennifer Aniston's beach house, Demi Moore & Ashton Kutcher's, Janet Jackson's beach house, David Spade's, Cortney Cox and David Arquette's former house and Paris Hilton's house she rented. Then there were some names I didn't know:
Lloyd Bridge, Kristin Cavalleri's beach house from the Hills, Jerry Bruckheimer, Terry Semel, and Jeffery Katzenberg.

When we got to Malibu, we went to the beach. Right away I noticed this mansion on the hill overlooking the ocean.
My immediate thought was someone famous must live there. I did a little reasearch and it's actually a $35 million home.Here's a link with some info about the house and the person who owns it: African Greed

We hung out for a little while on the beach watching the surfers and waves. Very relaxing. On the way home we stayed in Mesquite. I seriously love those long drives with Justin. We get so much talking in and no interruptions from kids. Our next date??? I think we'll go see a movie...

Seven-Eighths Of An Inch

5 years ago (you've probably all heard the story) Justin shot an arrow into his wrist. If you don't know the story, you'll have to ask him about it. But ever since he has a constant numbness and tingling up through his thumb from it and every once in a while, it will go through spurts where it will just hurt so bad. A couple of weeks ago, he twisted his wrist at work and ever since then, it's been hurting worse than it ever has. I talked him into (well, threatened really) calling his doctor that had looked it over before and to schedule an appointment with her. Yesterday we went and saw her and ended up scheduling surgery for June 18th. There was something loose in there he noticed since he twisted it, that actually he had tried cutting it out, but nothing came out. So in this surgery, they would remove whatever was loose in there, remove a scar ball on the end of a nerve and bury the nerve, and she thought there would be some sort of cyst in there that they would remove as well...The surgery needs to be done...Justin's been in constant pain since he twisted his wrist and it's just been so off and on for the last 5 years that it will be good to get this done. The timing-not the best right after we just had a baby and we have all of those bills coming in. But I told Justin that he needed to just see the doctor and get this taken care of and something would work out.

So today I got a text from Justin saying he didn't think he needed surgery anymore. I immediately called him thinking he tried cutting his wrist open again. He didn't, though. This morning he said he woke up and his wrist was all bruised. During work he looked down at it, and it looked like something was on his wrist - a flake of something. But when he looked closer, he could tell something was sticking in his wrist, kind of like a sliver or something, but it couldn't be flicked off, so he started to pull on it. This is what he got out of it:
It's part of his arrow! It's 7/8" long and came straight out of his wrist - not at an angle. No wonder it's been killing! I told Justin we should wait a couple of days to see how it feels and to call the doctor after and to get her opinion, but maybe this is one of the Lord's tender mercies. Maybe this is what is causing all of the problems and he won't need surgery now. Or that it can even be delayed and instead of it costing hundreds (or more) right now, it will just cost the $35.00 we paid the doctor yesterday. I am just amazed at our Heavenly Father's awareness of our individual circumstances and love for us. Because even if he still needs the surgery, this will make the next 3 weeks more bearable for him.

Fun With Dad

Since Parker's been here, Mya's gotten a lot of one on one time with Justin. Here are a few things they do:
This is Mya shooting the birds in our back yard. When she sees one in our yard, she'll say "Oh, it's on my grass...let's go shoot it!" - Such her daddy's girl!
They washed the car! Mya scrubbed the entire time and helped dry! She's so big!
Petting a toad! On the way home the other night, they saw a frog and had to go pet it! She LOVES her Dad!

27!

Friday was Justin's birthday. I am so glad I did not go into labor that day! Here are some of the fun things we did for it:Wednesday night, we went to the temple then dinner with Justin's parents. Justin chose Red Robin for his birthday. It was fun and the food was really good!
Thursday night we made the cake. Mya's loves to help lick the bowl whenever we make some sort of treat!
If it's your birthday in our house, we sing and do presents as soon as we wake up. So while Justin was in bed, Mya helped me put the candles in the cake and she was so excited for us to sing to him and help Justin open presents. This year he's playing on a softball team so he wanted a mitt and stuff for that. So he got his registration money, mitt, balls, and Avatar.
That day was so good. After my doctor appointment, we went out to lunch at Warren's. That night we went to Justin's basketball game then we all went out to dinner at Applebees. It was a lot of fun and the entire day was just hanging out with the family. Happy Birthday Love! I love you!!!