Well, Saturday did not go as planned, lets just say that. On Thursday afternoon I printed a movie schedule and wrote a little poem inviting Jason on a date with me. I stategically laid the papers on our bed knowing that when he got home he would see it all when he went in our room to change his clothes. Well, instaed of going upstairs he came home and excitedly told me about how a friend had invited him to go night skiing on Saturday and how happy he will be to finally break in his new boots. I simply went upstairs, changed to go to the gym, handed him the paperwork I had been working on and left to go work out. After running three and a half miles, anger is a great motivator, and doing a ton of situps I returned home to make dinner. When I got there he had already begun the dinner preparation, thank goodness for him. We sat down and I told him I was disappointed after all of my planning but understood why he wanted to go boarding so bad, hoping all the while that he would see things my way and decide to go with me anyway. Needless to say, the kids and I had a very uneventful evening on Saturday while Jason went night skiing. MEN! Arg! The weekend didn't get much better. I spent Saturday morning scrubbing my house so I could get the last of the germs from all of the illnesses out of my house. Well, Jason spent all of Sunday working on the basement, mudding and taping and sanding, and my house now looks like a large package of cocaine burst and left a white residue on everything. It is lovely, I am so glad I spent Saturday cleaning.
This Wednesday and Thursday are parent/teacher conferences, my least favorite part of being a teacher. I have tried to reorganize the schedule that the secretary gave me so that I am not here until 8:00 both evenings and can make it to Cassidy's conference as well but it has just been a nightmare. I have breaks everywhere in my schedule and parents that haven't confirmed yet. It is crazy. I can't wait until it is all over.
Not much else to talk about, man I am whiny today! Sorry if I brought you down with all of my negativity. I promise I will take a moment and breathe.

It has been awhile for me but I do have an excuse. My computer at work is where I like to post my blogs because it has a faster connection than my home computer. Well, my computer at work is broken and they have to order a part to fix it, it is so upsetting. So here I sit in my freezing cold basement trying to get a blog up at snail speed. Sniff, sniff.
Not much new to report here anyways. We are all recovering from a nasty flu that started through the family about this time last week. Cassidy got sick in the night Wednesday night-early Thursday morning. She was awesome and made it to the bathroom everytime. I would just hear the toilet seat fly up and go running to help her. She was so sick at one point she laid on the bathroom floor and cried, "Why me? Why am I so sick?". It was one of the saddest things ever. Well, Thursday night-early Friday Zack caught the same flu, only he wasn't as good about making it to the toilet. About 3:00 in the morning he comes running into my room very excited. "Mommy, come here, I need to show you something." He goes running back into his room with me dragging behind to show me the throw-up in his bed. He was so proud. Needless to say I spent the next thrity minutes changing sheets and pj's, starting a load of laundry and getting Zack back to bed (Jason slept through the entire thing, or course). I took a sick day and stayed home with Cassidy and then Jason stayed home with Zack on Friday. I scrubbed the house good trying to get every little germ and Lysoled every surface I could think of but the inevitable happened. Sunday evening, after devouring a delicious Coke roast, thanks for the recipe Ronna, I caught it too. I was up most of Sunday night as sick as I ever remember being. Jason was a saint! He went to the gym at his normal 5:30 but came home and got the kids ready, on the bus and to the sitter's house. This gave me 4 hours of quiet time to relax and sleep. Then, he picked Zack up at the sitter's, came home to make sure I was OK, then went back to work for the afternoon. He was home by a little before 4:00 so I could rest some more. I was awestruck. I think that is the first time as a mom I have been allowed to be "sick" with out having to take care of the kids at the same time. Jason didn't catch the flu, per say, but he has had a nasty headache and felt a bit queasy the last few days. Not that you wanted to know all of the ins and outs of our illness, but now you are all up to date.
As for last weekend goes, Jason had two friends over to help him get the mud and tape started in the rest of the basement. All we have left to finish is the laundry room and the room we have decided to designate the kids playroom. They worked at it for about 5 hours then Jason spent most of Sunday doing the same. He had to go and buy some more mud but hopes to be done with this step soon. I hope so because I need to get my washer and drier hooked back up in the near future because the laundry is starting to pile up.
This weekend I thought it would be fun to surprise Jason with a date night between all of his mudding and taping. Don't tell him but I have a babysitter all lined up for about 4 hours on Saturday so we can get away and go to a movie and get dinner. I thought it would be fun to think of a creative way to ask him out but I don't know if I am going to go that far or not. Other than that there is nothing new and exciting to tell. I will try to take pictures of something to include in my next blog. Til' then.

I think this is the last of the pictures I wanted to catch up on my blog. These are from Casidy's dance recital on December 18th and Zack's preschool program on December 19th. They were both awesome little performers who seem to love the stage, I wonder where they get that from. The little girl with Cassidy is her friend Stacey who is the oldest child of one of my best friends, Dalyce. For those of you who don't remember she was my roommate at Dixie and her husband was Jason's mission companion in Pennslyvania (Yes, we set them up). They live in Roy but we don't see them nearly as often as we should. Isn't it scarey how much Cassidy looks like me, it is almost spooky!

Two blog posts in one day, am I insane or what. I have to catch up to my sister-in-law, Jill, and her lengthy blogs the past few days. I wanted to include some more random pictures of the holidays for everyone to see. One is of Cassidy jamming to her new personal CD player that Grandma Ronna gave her for Christmas. Another is of the kids hanging out with Uncle Dale on Christmas Day. We always get so excited when they invite us over because it always means yummy food and fabulous company. We love going over to their house and being able to see Kathy, Ty, and their kids as well. Another picture is of the kids with Grandpa Rudy and Grandma Barbara, Jason's dad's parents, while we visited around Christmas time on our way to Page. Rudy looked awesome and Barbara is still a spitfire, as always. We had a wonderful visit with them and look forward to seeing them again soon. The last picture is of my niece, Kaydence, my little sister's first child. She absolutely loves Elmo and everything that he is in or on. Well, she has a life-sized Elmo that she loves to wrestle so this is a picture of her doing just that. Trying to pin Elmo. It is hilarious. I hope you all enjoy the pictures.

I have had a problem the last few times I have tried to get pictures on my blog so I thought I would do a few at a time. These are a few pictures from our four-wheeling fun while we were in Page, Arizona for New Year's with my family. Cassidy is climbing on one of the jumps which she eventually fell off of but isn't that how it goes with kids. The other is of a fish that Jason caught while ice fishing with a friend on the 2nd of the month. He had the day off to mourn President Ford's passing but he sure had a weird way of paying his repects. He wanted to make sure that people knew that this was the smallest of the four fish that he brought home. We ate two for dinner a day later and it was delicious. I was surprised that the kids were willing to eat any after they saw daddy clean them. YUCK! That was the first time I remember seeing anyone do that either. Speaking of fish, Cassidy's fish died just before Christmas. We didn't tell her, just flushed him and went about the festivities. Well, while Jason was cleaning his fish she asked where Swimmy was. She cried when we broke the news but Jill, I can totally relate to the happiness in your head at the death of a fish. I hated cleaning the fishbowl so much! I tried to sympathize the best I could. No more pets at our house for a while. In fact, we figured out that we can probably never have a dog. Zack is always sick with a runny nose, cough, sneezing, and eventually ear infections when we go visit my parents. This time we took Zyrtec with us and gave him some everyday we were there, nothing. I guess it is an allergy to the dogs my parents have so no dogs for us, Jason is thrilled. Well, I think I will try to post one more blog of pictures today to get all caught up, so here goes.

I hope everyone had a very merry Christmas and was able to ring in the new year happily. We had a wonderful Christmas. It was the first time in the nine years that we have been married that we have had a Christmas at home. It was so great for the kids because they actually got to play with all of their toys and not have to put them in a box in the corner until we get home. It was nice for Jason and I because we didn't have to load everything up take it somewhere then bring it all home again. It was so great that I am going to have a hard time traveling for Christmas ever again, maybe we will just have to go family and friends for New Year's from now on. We did go over to Dale and Jill's Christmas day for some food and lots of fun. Kathy, Ty, and family were there as well as Dale's son Jeff. Jason got some new snowboarding boots to support his wounded achellies while he shreds on the slopes this winter and some gift cards and money, which he has already put to good use buying an IPOD shuffle while we were in Page. Cassidy got the Heelies that she has been begging for but needs a lot of practice on them before she will be able to wear them out and about. She also got some cute clothes, a Barbie house and a personal CD player that she spend lots of time jamming to. Zack got a huge pirate ship, the Black Pearl for those of you that are familiar the Pirates of the Carribean, pirate and knight dress up stuff, and Superman action figures. I got some beautiful silver earrings, gift cards and money and Jason got me a credit card sized digital camera to take pictures for my blog, which has been awesome already. I am always that person that says, "I wish I had a camera right now". Now if I can just remember to bring it with me. :)