Christmas Weekend!

So we started our weekend with my big hair cut. I hate it! I am starting to get use to it, but it was way to drastic for me. When I came home, Zac looked at me and went, Hmm, So what do YOU think? She did really good on the color of my hair, but the cut did not turn out like I thought. I had brought in a picture of what I wanted my hair to look like, and she refused to do it. She thought that it would be even more drastic. Oh well. Zac keeps on telling me that in 2 weeks it will look great. His saying is a good hair cut is a great hair cut in 2 weeks. I forgot to take pictures of my haircut, so these pics of me are taken by myself at work during my blog entry. :)

Christmas Eve we went up to Zac's Aunt Diana's house for the usual Christmas Eve party. Barb brought up Garit to meet the family for the first time, and he fit right in. Wayne came only for Santa and left immediately after. Eric was so much fun this year for Christmas. When Santa called his name, he ran up to Santa, sat on his lap and told him everything he wanted for Christmas. Aubrey still isn't too sure about Santa.

Christmas morning Eric and Aubrey woke up to see that Santa came. When I went into Eric's room, he was really sad, he told me that Santa didn't come to his room last night. Then he ran into my room, and told me that Santa forgot my room too. I guess I didn't make it clear that Santa puts presents under the tree, not in everybodies rooms. He was so excited to get a train set. We had to set them up as soon as we got home from Idaho, and he tried to talk us into letting him go to sleep with the trains. After we put him to bed last night, I heard this noise, which I thought was the cats....turns out, Eric was downstairs playing with the trains after we had put him to bed. I didn't even hear his bedroom door open. After we opened the presents we immediately got in the car and drove up to Idaho. We were able to get into Idaho Falls and see Grandma and Grandpa Parry and visit for a little bit before we headed up to the cabin. Devin rode up with us and Dad was coming up on Tuesday morning. As soon as we got to the cabin, Nathan and Devin started the snowmobiles up, then I joined them and Devin and I started sledding. Zac just goes, "There go the Powell's" That's right. We know exactly what to do when we get to the cabin. We throw on our snow clothes as fast as possible and immediately start playing in the snow. The Millburn's were right behind us, and we started to head to the Springs. On the way up, the snowmobile that Nathan was driving started to overheat. So we were down by one snowmobile. Luckily, it overheated close to Steve's cabin, so Nathan went and got Steve, and the guys loaded the snowmobile into Steve's truck and unloaded it at Steve's cabin. Terry and Debbie were wonderful and came up that night with their trailor and took the snowmobile down to Idaho Falls to find out what was wrong with it. So we ended up walking up the hill instead of using the other snowmobile. It started to sound the same way as the one that broke, so we weren't taking our chances.

As usual we had our usual races down the hill, and this time around, we were trying to perfect our "Chain sledding". We would go down the hill forward on our backs, forward on our knees, forward on our stomachs, then backwards head first, etc., standing up, pyramid, diamond, and "V" formation. And we did this as night when we couldn't see where we were going. Zac thinks he broke his tailbone during one of the chain sleddings. He went off a bump and landed on another bump the wrong way. He has been sitting on pillows everywhere he sits. I wonder how the backhoe is going to go today?! Zac actually played a football game with my cousins. It was the first time I had seen actually participate in a sport (besides foozball). Speaking of foozball we had a tournament, and I lost EVERY GAME...but I did make it close on my game against John, he won 10-7. That's right John, it made the blog!

Eric's Christmas Program

On Wednesday Eric had his Christmas program with his daycare/sch
ool. His class sang 2 songs and recited one poem. I put Zac in charge of taking pictures. Instead of taking pictures he took video. I don't know how to put a video on the blog.
Maybe Christen can clue me in on this. I tried to upload it, it came back as "Page experiencing difficulties". Eric did great on Santas lap, he told him everything that he wanted for Christmas, etc. Aubrey, as you can see, was not too fond of Santa.

Cutting my hair

So, I am going to cut my hair really short tomorrow. I am donating my hair to Locks of Love. I will probably dye it darker tomorrow also....we'll see how it goes. Any suggestions on the style?

Joy Riding

Last Sunday the Young Men/Young Women had to sing in sacrament. Because I am always the only person who knows how to play the piano, I played for them in sacrament. I sat on the front row so that I wouldn't have to walk down the long aisle. Zac stayed home with the kids. Everything ran smoothly...I went to Sunday School, then I had to teach the lesson in Young Women's. When I got there, one of my Laurels, Cassie, came up to me and gave me my car keys. She had told me that I had left them on the bench in sacrament. Later I found out that she had taken them out of my coat pocket as we were walking up to the stand. At the time, I was very grateful, thinking that maybe they had fallen out of my pocket, etc. I was teaching the lesson about "truth" and she stood up and left right at the beginning and didn't come back. When church was finished, I walked out to my car, and it was parked in a different spot....hmm.

So now the question becomes, How far did she drive my car? Did she just put it in a different parking spot, or go joy riding? She is 16 yrs old, BUT has not gotten her license yet. I was going over every different scenario to confront her...do I go to her parents first? Do I treat her like an adult and go to her first? Do I tell the YW president? I still want her to feel like she can come to me if she needs to, but she needs to know that what she did was WRONG.

Tuesday was mutual, and I decided that I was going to talk to her just to find out what really happened. Like I said, I don't know the whole story...maybe even one of the young men that she likes drove it, and she was just a passenger, etc. I talked to the YW President ahead of time, I just felt like she needed to know. BIG MISTAKE. I told her several times that I wanted this to remain confidential, I didn't want anybody else to know about it, it was between me and Cassie, but she can be there when I talk to her, etc. She went ahead and talked to Cassie without me even being there, AND she told everybody and their dog about this! I was so frustrated! Our YW President is only 19 yrs old, which explains a lot of the immaturity. So Better or worse? It was Cassie's DAD who drove my car! When Cassie got the keys out of my coat, HE thought it would be funny to move my car! I can't fault Cassie for her Dad being an idiot! I have never even met the guy! Apparently this is his personality, he thinks everybody is his best friend, yadda yadda. The only thing that I am grateful about having her Dad being the one to drive the car is that at least he is an experienced driver, and most likely wouldn't have crashed our new car. But how do I tell a 50 yr old man the diffence between right and wrong? I'm just going to drop it, but I let Cassie know that she needs to respect her leaders, etc.

We got a good foot of snow yesterday. We couldn't get out of our driveway because it is slanted so steep. Zac started to shovel our driveway, so that we could get out, and across the street is a mom with 3 little kids, and her husband only comes home one weekend a month from work, so Zac started shoveling her driveway instead, and our other neighbor came out. Then they decided that they would work together and shoveling each other's driveways, when out neighbor who has kidney failure came out and said "Hi" to them and went back inside. Zac thought that it was a hint to shovel their driveway, then across the street our other neighbor starts shoveling with a regular shovel, so Zac went over there and shoveled their driveway, etc. By the time he was done, he had shoveled 6 other peoples driveways, and didn't even finish ours. After we were able to get the car free from the driveway, I had to go visiting teaching. When I was leaving, my car got stuck in their driveway too. I had four guys come and push me out. I guess that's what we get for moving to a mountain.

More pictures

For some reason, Blogger would let me add the pictures, but then they didn't show up on my posting, so I am trying to post those pictures again.

Family Pictures

We got our family pictures back about a month ago, so I am finally getting around to posting some of them. The girl that took the pictures took ~300 pictures, and she gave us the c.d. with the pictures on it, along with preparing a DVD with the pictures set to music.

Finally!

I forgot my password about 3 weeks ago. I have been e-mailing the blogger requesting my e-mail. They FINALLY responded today. My office is currently being re-painted and carpeted, so I moved into a temporary office. But, on my computer it would automatically sign me into my blog, so I never typed my password, but by moving to a new computer, I needed to type it in, and I still have no idea what it was. They finally let me change it. I apologize for lack of blogging.

We have had a very busy month! I didn't know that the blogger would e-mail me back today, so I didn't bring my camera to work to post pictures, but I will on my next entry. I went to South Carolina for a week for work, and Zac got to stay home with the kids. I left on Monday, and returned home early Saturday morning. Zac went to a party on Friday, and our friends commented on Aubrey's wild hair. Zac told them that I did her hair, and they said, didn't she leave on Monday? It's FRIDAY. And, haven't you given the kids baths? Zac apparently doesn't do baths. Nice to know.

When I got back on Saturday morning, Zac's brother Matt came into town that night. He is in the Air Force and was able to take some leave for Thanksgiving. He stayed with us for 1 1/2 weeks. We put him in Eric's room, and made Eric and Aubrey share a bedroom. I never realized how possessive Eric is of his room until he wasn't able to be in it. When Matt left, Eric went upstairs and looked in his room and started screaming "Mom! Come look! Matt's stuff is gone! My bed is back! I want to go to bed!" He was so excited. We had Thanksgiving dinner at my Dad's in the morning, and at Zac's uncles in the afternoon. Zac's Uncle Wayne just got a new pool table, and Zac came upstairs and asked if we could get a pool table. I said that's fine, not thinking that this was a realistic possibility. The next day, I was Christmas shopping with my Dad, and Zac rented a truck/trailer to haul his Mustang from my Dad's house to ours. When I got back home, Zac also went up to his Aunt's house and picked up a pool table. His Grandpa Nielson had a pool table, and apparently his Uncle Randy just got it re-felted and new pockets put it, and they gave it to Zac for $1, so now we have a pool table.

Matt left 2 Wednesday's ago, and on Thursday, Justin and his family came out to Utah. Eric had so much fun playing with Andrew and Madison. We ended up doing Christmas on Friday, exchanging cousin presents, and Dad gave us all our presents, so they had a lot of toys to play with this past week.

On Saturday night, our friends has a hot chocolate open house for the neighborhood. We grabbed some of our friends and went and had a good time. As we were leaving, we needed to stop by our friends house that was across the street. Eric was walking with his hands in his pockets and started to go up the stairs. Just then he fell and smacked his face into the cement. He immediately started bleeding from his nose. There was so much blood. Our friend ran some paper towels to us, and they were just turning red. Luckily Eric didn't hit his teeth. But he has a big scrape on his cheek, and two big scrapes on his forehead. As soon as we got the bleeding to stop, he fell asleep immediatley. So now we were worried about a concussion. So we tried to keep him awake for as long as possible. He seems to be okay now, but the side of his face that he hit the cement was the opposite side of the dog bite scars, so now his whole face looks red and scratched up.

On Monday, Justin, Lisa, Devin, Dad, Andrew, Madison and I went skiing at Brighton. It was such a great day. There were hardly anybody at the resort. We never had to wait in line to go on the ski lifts, and it was rare that we would even see anybody as we were going down the slopes. Dad hadn't been skiing for ~32 years but we talked him into coming. On his second time down the hill, he had a horrible wipe out. I was behind him and just saw skiis going off, his glasses shoot off along with his lenses popping out, and he was doing somersaults in the snow. I stopped by him, and he was bleeding on his face from his glasses cutting him. His frames were completely bent. As soon as Justin got down to Dad, I started chasing after his prescription lenses that were going down the hill. He is fine, but is really sore. His knee swelled up really big that night. I couldn't believe how fast Andrew and Madison learned how to ski though. Andrew was going down the slope faster than me and Lisa.

Justin left yesterday back to New York, so I'm trying to get the kids back on their regular schedule. Eric started crying last night though because he wanted to play with them, and he thought that they had moved into Grandpa's house. Anna was adorable this trip too. I can't believe how much she had grown.

Nightmares

Eric has been having nightmares for the past 2 nights now. It is the same dream over and over, and he is hysterical when he wakes up. It takes me at least 1/2 hour every time he wakes up to calm him down. Monday night, he woke up 6 times with this nightmare:

Superman, Spiderman, and Batman are all riding Thomas the Train and they fall off a cliff.

I try to explain to him that Superman is strong and can fly, so if they fell off a cliff, he would save them all. Eric will calm down, but wake up an hour later with the same dream. WEIRD.

Zac's Birthday

Zac's birthday was on Saturday....he turned 29. Zac had to go to school in the morning, so while he was at school, Eric helped me make Zac a birthday cake. Eric picked out some Scooby Doo decorations for the cake, and he put the candles on it. When Zac came home, we lit the birthday cake, but there were so many candles on it, that Scooby Doo caught on fire. Then Zac asked Eric what present he should open up first. Eric says "The movie Daddy, open up the movie!" That is the last time I am taking Eric shopping with me for presents.....I didn't think he would remember what we got Zac. Zac had all of his neck ties in a box when we first got the kittens. The kittens thought that it was a secondary litter box, so all of his ties got ruined. Eric helped me pick out some ties at Mr. Mac. I couldn't believe how expensive ties are! We also got Zac the newest season of Scrubs that came out on DVD.

On Friday we had a movie night at our house with our friends. Zac hooked up a DVD player in Eric's room for the kids to watch, and we brought down our couch from the front room and put it in our family room so that we had plenty of seating available. We had 2 families come over and eat dinner, then we watched Nacho Libre. It was a really good choice of movie because I could go upstairs and check on the kids, and not have missed anything in the movie. The next time we do this, we definitely need an adult present upstairs with the kids. We had 6 kids upstairs, and when you would go upstairs, they would sit and watch the movie. The second you sit down in your chair downstairs, one of them would be screaming/crying.

Saturday morning after we made Zac's birthday cake, Eric, Aubrey and I went to the Stake Young Women's service project. I was the only leader that showed up, and I only had one girl show up. They decided that they wanted to pick up garbage for the next two hours. Eric actually had a really good time trying to find garbage. He found a piece of rebarr (spelling?) that was bent in half and Eric thought he would use it as a hammer to find more garbage...at least that is his reason for taking the rebarr with us everywhere. It was cold and wet though, it rained almost the entire time. Aubrey fell asleep on me 1/2 way through. That night Zac's sister Barb and her boyfriend came over and watched the kids so we could go to dinner and a movie. We ended up going to Porter's Steakhouse in Lehi. It was named after Porter Rockwell. Then we went to the movie theater. It has been so long since Zac and I had actually gone to the theater, that when we walked in, we did not recognize one movie name. We actually left the theater and thought about going home because Zac didn't want to waste $15 on a movie that we didn't know anything about. We finally went to a different theater, in hopes that we would see a different movie that we would know about, and ended up watching "The Prestige". It was a good movie, but pretty dark. Eric was so funny that night when we came home. Barb had put the kids to bed, and Eric was asking for me. Barb told him that if he closed his eyes and went to sleep, that when he opened them, Mommy would be home. When we got home, Zac and I went in to the kids bedrooms to check on them before we went to bed. Eric had the covers off, so as I was covering him back up, he opened his eyes and smiled and said, "it WORKED!" All day Sunday, he kept on telling me how Barb told him to close his eyes, and then Mommy came.

Zac's made a little bit of progress on the sprinkler system. He's hardly home to work on it, but he told me that he's almost put all the sprinklers in today, he just needs to fill in the trenches now. I will be so glad when that is finished.

Halloween!

Zac and I wanted the kids to carve their pumpkins on Sunday night....they were both asleep by 5:00 pm for the night, so that didn't work out. So on Monday night, I attempted to carve the pumpkins with the kids for Family Home Evening without Zac. (Zac is in school until 10:00) They actually did pretty well. I made them clean out their pumpkins, and I let Eric carve his pumpkin with my help. Aubrey's arms by the end of the night were orange. Eric was really excited to see the pumpkins lit up. When I put them to bed, Eric had to run outside, and blow out the candles, to put the pumpkins "nite nite".

On Halloween, the kids went to daycare during the day...when I went to pick them up, Aubrey had her hands full of candy, along with a sticky face, and Eric's class were hitting a ghost pinata. Wow, 2 pinatas in one weekend! Eric's class had made the pinata in the morning, and now the kids were all hitting it. The ghost wouldn't break. So the teachers stepped in and started hitting it. It still wouldn't break, so they started having the parents hit it....still it's not breaking. Then they told me it was my turn to hit it. With one swing, the whole thing broke open and candy went everywhere. Eric started squealing and shouted "Wow! That's my Mom!" It was so funny, he was so proud of me. :) As soon as we got home we all got into our costumes and headed for Nathan and Bobby's church. They were doing a big chili cookoff dinner, and then the trunk or treat indoors. Eric absolutely refused to eat. He told me that his tummy hurt. Then they had all of the kids sit on the gym floor while they were presenting awards. Eric was laying down on the floor. Then they had all of the kids line up while the parents arranged the chairs in a circle to pass out the candy. Eric wouldn't lift up his bucket and he walked with his eyes closed. At one point, the line stopped, and Eric fell forward onto Thad and laid his head down on Thad. Aubrey on the other hand was having a great time. Zac would make her lift the bucket as high as she could. He wouldn't let them put candy in it unless she lifted it. He kept on telling her "You have to work for it!" We were out of there by 7:30. Eric was sound asleep before we even made it to the car. When we got home we took his temperature, and he was 103. I stayed home with the kids yesterday. Eric's fever was down to 102. He pretty much just watched cartoons all day. Around 3:00 his fever finally broke and the havoc on the house begins. Aubrey and Eric were upstairs while I was cleaning up downstairs. After about 20 minutes, I realized they were being too quiet. So I went upstairs to check on them. They were in my bathroom, and had taken a whole role of toliet paper, and got it soppy wet with toliet water, and had wet toliet paper on the walls, bath tub, shampoo, toilet, sink, floor, etc. It was EVERYWHERE, including their hair and clothes. I took them downstairs and made them dinner. I got the toliet cleaned up when I started to hear the kids laughing downstairs. I ran downstairs, and Eric and Aubrey got a hold of the mustard bottle, and there was mustard everywhere. Zac came home for lunch, and left out a 2-liter bottle of soda also, and the kids had poured that everywhere as well. So I cleaned up both kids, and cleaned up the mustard and soda mess, then it was time to go to Enrichment. When we got back from Enrichment, the kids went right to bed, and I forgot about the mess in the bathroom. Zac actually got home early last night, he came in right when I was putting the kids to bed, and walked straight into the bathroom. I hear him go "What happened in here!" Kids are so much fun. At least Eric is feeling better. Although, this morning when I was getting the kids ready for the day, Eric asked me where we were going. I told him that I was taking him to school, immediately he says "Oh mommy, I'm sick." He is already pretending to be sick.

Sunday

I forgot to write about Sunday. The kids did two really cute things. The first: We got to sacrament a little late, and the spot that we sat was by our friends that hosted the Halloween party. They have two kids, Zack and Katelyn. Eric and Zac sat next to each other playing quietly. Just then, Zack's grandparents showed up. Eric turned to me and said, Mommy, I will be right back. Then he quietly walked out of our row, and went to where Zack's grandparents were sitting. Eric walked up to Zack's grandpa and gave him this HUGE hug. Then he sat next to him the entire sacrament. When he came back to me, he said, "I love Zack's grandpa. I love my grandpa too, but I really love Zack's grandpa."

Later that night, I was playing the piano. Aubrey usually likes to sit next to me on the bench and pound the keys while I play. But last night, she sat by me and just SANG the entire time. It was so adorable. She probably sang for a half hour before she got off of the piano bench. I really wish my Mom could have seen that. I would sit next to her on the piano bench almost every night and sing with her.

A Halloween Weekend!

Hopefully this blog publishes this time. I loaded on all the pics and wrote everything, then it did a "time out" and wouldn't let me publish. So here is my second attempt at loading the pictures and re-writing everything. So on Friday Zac started the sprinkler system. He rented a trencher to dig the lines, and was able to get that finished in the morning. But, who knew that we had so much garbage in our dirt? Apparently the builders just threw their garbage on our property, and then would bury it instead of picking it up. I could not believe the stuff that Zac was pulling out. Eric was really excited to help daddy in the yard. When he saw Zac with a shovel, Eric had to run inside and grab his toy shovel. Aubrey just enjoyed seeing how dirty she could get. She would sit in the trenches and watch everybody work.





Friday night we had our Halloween party at our friends house. Eric had so much fun. They played put the sticker on the pumpkin, and Eric came in second place. Zac thought that the first place kid cheated. hahaha Zac is so competitive. Then the kids tried to see how many baskets they could make in the hoop, and Eric won that game. Last but not least, they had a witch pinata. Eric had a blast to be able to hit something as hard as he could with a bat. He had no idea that candy was inside the witch. When the pinata finally broke and the candy spilled out everywhere, he squealed and started to fill his bag as full as he could get it with candy. He told me the next morning that he dreamed about picking up candy. I won the best adult costume, and I got.......candy. :) On Saturday night our ward had it's trunk or treat. Eric got the hang of things really quick. He was running from car to car trying to get as much candy as possible. He kept on going to these 3 people because he liked the candy that they were giving out. They finally had to tell him that they wouldn't give him anymore.



For an update on our HOA drama. We found out that our neighbor just got a promotion to be in charge of the HOA. This makes a lot of sense of why we are all getting hit with the fees now. He is trying to look good. I contacted the Title company, loan officer, city, builder, builder's agent, etc. and found out that we are not on the HOA according to all of their records. I had them all draft letters stating that we are not a part of the HOA. I pulled our Deed of Trust, and there is a spot on it to mark a "X" if we are part of a planned community, and it is not marked. We got our entire neighborhood fighting this, except for the neighbor that turned us in. I am having everybody else get their paperwork lined up, then we are turning over all of our claims at the same time to the HOA attorney. We have a really good case, and I really think that we will win this. I have enough evidence stating that we are NOT part of it, that I don't see how they CAN argue that we are part of it.

Our week

This week again was very crazy and busy! I have not had a moment to breathe at work this past week. We won the 3 volleyball games on Thursday, the tournament continues this Thursday to see if we are still in the running. At least we're undefeated so far. The new car is driving great, every day Zac and discover something new that it does. I guess we should just read the drivers manual instead of "discovering" new features. For Zac's class on Thursday I got a Special Agent with the DEA to speak to his class. Turns out that he is really good friends with Zac's teacher (who is a retired DEA agent). I surprised Zac by coming to his class to listen to Zac's little speech before the agent. When I got to UVSC, the other people in Zac's group were coming up to him. They were all girls, and they had NO IDEA that Zac was married. I then said, we have two kids too. ZACHARY! He never wears his wedding ring because he's not allowed to at work, so it's not a habit. But please, you can share a LITTLE bit of your personal life with people at school.

Friday night Zac had to serve dinner at the Presidential Ball at UVSC. They gave all the servers pizza for dinner, while they were serving lobster to the guests. He didn't get home until the wee hours of the night. Since Zac was going to be gone all night, I dropped Eric off with Nathan, and Bobby, Aubrey, and I went to a home decor show up in SLC.

Saturday we got a letter in the mail stating that we owed Home Owner Association fees, and that we needed to get our yard in now, or they will charge us $50 a week for every week that it's not in. WHAT? When we signed up for the house, both the builder and the real estate agent told us that we were NOT part of the HOA. When we closed on the house, I made sure that there was no mention of an HOA, and there wasn't. We never signed anything. So Zac had the builder fax over the paperwork to us showing us the agreement that we were NOT part of the HOA. Then yesterday, we get a letter from the HOA's attorney! So I brought everything in today to have one of the AUSA's look it over to see what needs to be done.

So, regardless, Zac has decided to put the yard in this week and next. He is renting a trencher to dig the lines for the sprinkler system on Friday. He has mapped out where we need all the sprinkler lines, etc. While we were doing this, Aubrey tripped and scraped her face up against one of the rocks on our rock wall. She was a trooper, and didn't even cry. It's not that bad, it is now scabbed over. We have to take the kittens in this week to get their stitches removed. They are so good with the kids. Aubrey will carry them around just holding on to their neck, and they don't fight her at all. This Friday we have a Halloween party. Zac was going to go as Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter. He bought a stingray and everything. He was going to sew the stingray onto the front of his shirt, etc. Anybody that he told thought that it would be too soon to poke fun at that. So Zac decided to can that idea. We will have pictures with us in our costumes. We are also hitting 3 wards trunk or treats. I don't know why Zac wants to get so much candy. He doesn't really even eat that much candy. Eric is so excited to carve pumpkins. He has picked out the design that he is going to do, and told me that this year HE gets to carve the pumpkin....we'll see.