Old Fashioned

Call me old fashioned but there are some things about new technology that I'm not a fan of.  They are all great, smart phones, ipads/tablets etc that offer many conveniences today but I think way too many adult and children are addicted to them.  I personally don't own a smart phone.  I almost got one but decided against it because I didn't want to be that mom that sits on her phone wasting time while ignoring my kids, or that wife and husband that communicate on facebook while sitting next to each other, trust me I've seen it.  I can survive without one just like I have all my life.  My phone is functional for what I need it to do.  Call, text, take pics.  I do have a tablet, but my kids can only play educational games on it.  In a kind of lucky way, the screen got cracked and I haven't gotten it fixed yet.  It's sad to notice that I don't really need it even though it was nice to have, and fun, I'm thinking it wasn't a necessary buy in the first place to have at home.  I'm not a fan of tablets instead of real scriptures at church, and kids playing games on tablets during sacrament meeting drives me nuts.  I may be completely alone in this idea but that's ok!  I don't want my kids to be addicted to gaming/watching movies, or to not use their imagination or getting up and moving or not try to learn to be quiet and listen to the speakers in church.  But I also don't want them to be technologically behind either.  Most kids are pretty smart when it comes to tech things these days, and who knows what they'll be using by the time my boys are older so I want them to be familiar with technology moving forward.  We have an xbox at home and that gives them plenty of entertainment.  We have the kinect, and any of those games where they are up and moving, they are allowed to play pretty much whenever without a time limit (within reason).  Since those games are basically exercising, while having fun, they can have at it all they want.  When it comes to playing just regular games with the controller, those I have time limits on.  Tatton is usually the only one that plays those games anyway.  Depending on what's going on that day, he usually has to have all of his chores done before he can play.  And then he has a time limit of 30 minutes.  He can play one time before school, and one time after school but we try to keep it pretty limited.  On Sundays we don't watch tv, the boys can watch Living Scriptures movies, and after church we allow football this time of year, of course, family movies if we're watching them together, and playing kinect games as a family or a family game where there are multiple players.  But we try to have Sundays centered around things other than the tv.  I'm just curious if any of you have some rules that you have come up with in your homes and what has worked for you?

Mom!

I've been thinking a lot about my role as a Mom lately.  A good book on this subject is Covenant Motherhood, just fyi.  I've always felt it's been important and glad that I can be home with them, but in the last week something finally clicked.  Ever since Tatton started Kindergarten I have been giving it a lot more thought.  His school schedule has positively brought more structure to our day and I finally feel a really good sense of assurance of why I'm doing what I do everyday.  It was SO hard to send Tatton to school.  He's gone to preschool the past 2 years so you'd think this was no big deal for me, but no!  For some reason knowing he's at that big school with big kids, seeing his little head sitting on the huge bus seat just ripped my heart to pieces and brought many tears to my eyes.  All I can do is trust that the Lord will be watching over my little guy when as a Mom I physically cannot.  I remember as a kid my mom worked and I always was sad when my friends talked about their mom being home when they got off the bus.  When I was really little my mom was the secretary at the seminary so a lot of times I'd just walk there after school, and thinking back about it, it was pretty fun.  As I got older she worked at a condo/resort so sometimes I'd go there after school and was able to watch movies, play pool, play tennis or go swimming thanks to the access to the clubhouse and swimming pool.  I really can't complain because those were some fun days too.  Don't get the wrong idea, my mom was the best and I wasn't scarred for life or anything.  And now that I'm older I completely understand that I'm sure she had to work with having 8 kids, especially feeding the appetite of 6 boys!  But it still made an impact on me and I have made it a goal, and always wanted to be a mom that was home to send my kids off to school, and be there when they got home with a cute little after school snack waiting for them and being able to talk to them about their day and what they learned and help them with homework right away.  I feel really blessed and so grateful to Aaron that I'm able to do that and I feel overwhelmed with a new found responsibility to my boys' education and nurturing.  That's what clicked with me the other day as I watched little Tatton get off the bus with his backpack on that's almost bigger than him!  It was honestly like someone shouted in my ear: This is why I'm here! I'm home to be there for them and try and be the best mom I can be for my little guys.  We've taken on a whole new schedule and routine here at our house and I'm loving it.  We have our share of days when I feel like I accomplished absolutely nothing and the house is a mess and I swear all I hear during the day is mom, mom, mom, mom, but I'm glad I at least feel at the end of the day a new sense of purpose of being a Mom to these 4 little gentlemen.  It's good to be uplifted every once in awhile amidst the chaos and feel like you're doing an ok job because I know for myself, most the time I feel the opposite.  The emotions I think are going to start all over tomorrow though because Lincoln starts preschool... this whole mom thing keeps getting tougher and tougher!

    

To Be Honest

To be honest, life since I last posted hasn't been the easiest. My Dad passed away 2 weeks after having Ethan. I was able to spend a little time here and there down visiting in that time but I was still recovering, bleeding, feeling like a dairy cow, and adjusting to 4 boys, ah! Then the next few days before the funeral were a blur and rush, and more emotional blur. A few days after that, most of my family while Ryan was still here went to the temple with my Mom. I'm so glad we were able to do that, and have those thoughts and feelings that were so needed for me and I'm sure my family at the time. Then, finally after all the events were over and life had to go back to normal, I just wanted to rest and be at home and selfishly still have my "lazy just had a baby time." And I did. Aaron started his busy season at work which means he leaves early, comes home late and the boys don't usually see him during the week. It's my single parent mode time of year. Needless to say my boys were honestly in bed with the sun still out before 8 o'clock. It was my only sanity. And then I would sit and cry and hold Ethan and watch movies until Aaron got home. I watched a lot of movies and shows from Netflix because watching movies was an escape. I wasn't thinking about reality, it would almost numb me to just thinking about the movie. I didn't really want to go anywhere or talk to people because I knew what they would ask and I knew I would cry. Texting worked great. A couple weeks later somehow amidst my pitty party that I was quite enjoying, we got really low on groceries. I finally had to get back into my routine and actually get some groceries and cook real dinners. I called Aaron one morning to let him know that we were on our way down to Ogden to go shopping. He sighed and said oh thank heavens. I didn't think it was that bad, but apparently he was waiting for the day for me to get back to my usual self. So with my four boys we made our usual trip to Costco and usually WalMart or Target with lunch at Wendy's. It's our usual shopping routine and my boys actually do really well in the stores. Usually, not always. But on this particular day, they did indeed do well. Life felt normal again. A few days later I was still staying home with Ethan while Aaron took the other boys to church because somehow Ethan got a cough and cold. I really wanted to go to church though and just feel that spirit there and listen to a lesson. But since I was stuck at home instead I decided to get out my manual and start preparing for my next Relief Society lesson that I had to teach. Chapter 9: Sacred Family Relationships. I don't know if there could have been a more fitting lesson for me to have looked at at the time. It helped me to refocus on the eternal persective of our family relationships, and obviously I thought about my Dad a lot and my own little family. I have no doubt about where my Dad is or what he's doing. It's still just hard when unexpected things trigger memories and I get teared up or choked up missing him. I honestly don't know how my Mom does it, all I can say is that she is amazing in so many ways. Life now has gotten much better. There are definitely unexpected experiences where I realize it's a first without my Dad being there or Grandpa not being there for my boys and those are still hard. But life does go on and in many ways I know my Dad is here close by. It's getting easier to talk about old times with "Papa Roy" with my boys so that they will remember things about him. Happy is where I'm trying to be now, and for the most part I think I am. Who wouldn't be with knowing what we know, I'll see him again!

Roy's Disease of Love

 

"Cancer is a disease of love because you get to have time to say goodbye." - Leland Roy. 

My Dad said that we all knew what we were going to face in this life and we still happily awaited to come to earth.  He knew that he must have signed up for this, although slightly regretting it now he said as he chuckled.  But now I'm so glad that he doesn't have to suffer anymore.  My Dad went back to his Heavenly Father yesterday.  He was able to be surrounded by his family, all his sons and daughters home, and given a blessing by his sons.  He's had countless blessings throughout his fight, but my brother Ryan was able to come home from England on Friday and so for the first time in 3 years, all of us kids were together with him.  He led a great life, married the most wonderful women in the world, raised 8 great kids and has loved and enjoyed the life of 24 grandkids. 

I sure miss this guy:

 

 

He loved holding his grandbabies and always did so much with them, and my boys.

 

 

Papa Roy with Tatton

 

 

 

Papa Roy with Lincoln

 

 

Papa Roy with Harrison

 

 

 

 

 

And Papa Roy with Ethan. 

He was a wonderful Dad and a true Grandpa at heart and I hope my boys will be able to remember him like I will.

 



Ethan Roy

 

Introducing our newest young man to the family!  

 This little guy is already over two weeks!  We've been been so busy with our family of 4 boys that I haven't had time to post about him!  Tatton has been a big helper, especially for Mommy, Lincoln is protective of him and likes to hold Ethan and Harrison loves him almost too much. He is kissing and holding "baby" as much as we'll let him.  The boys couldn't come and see him in the hospital because it was still flu season by hospital policies, I was probably bummed the most.  So when we hot home we had 3 pretty excited boys...

 

 

Unfortunately they all were still a little sickly so we got to do the whole mask thing for the first few days, but they looked cute and were troopers about it!  

Ethan's been a good baby, eating, pooping and sleeping, and we've been enjoying having such a precious little guy in our home again!

Winter Reading

I'm finding myself in a reading kick lately.  I haven't always been a book worm, far from it.  Growing up I don't think I ever read for pleasure.  And as sad as this is, the first book that I ever read in my adult life was the Twilight series.  I was not a reader at all, and was so determined to not get hung up in all this hype about vampire books.  But on a fateful Thanksgiving day my sister-in-laws Racquel and Challise and I went to the movie.  I had to know what happened next and so I read the first book to get all the real details, and then all of the rest quite quickly.  That was the first time I had read books for sheer enjoyment and all on my own doing.  I was so surprised that I liked reading.  What I also came to realize though was that comparing books to Twilight, I usually found interest only in page turners and/or love stories.  I'm a sucker for staying up til 3 in the morning because I can't put it down, or getting completely enveloped in a romance and find myself shedding tears of happiness when they finally kiss or end up together... (that could just be the hormones lately, jury is still out on that one!)  With my lovely friend Jen Johnson starting a book club, I've ventured out and read more books and of different genres than I would have imagined.  It's been a lot of fun.  A book she chose to read for this month is called Edenbrooke by Julianne Donaldson.  I loved this book, and highly recommend anyone to read it as well.  Unfortunately I believe it's her first book, I was hoping she had others.  I started to read it at 10 one night thinking I'd read a little bit before bed, but ended up not being able to put it down until I finished it at 3:30 am.  As I was going thru the next day, I kept thinking about that book.  I put in movies for the kids and settled down myself and read it again during the day.  Don't ask what my kids did the rest of the day because I don't know either!  It's set back in the 1800's in England, a proper romance as it says on the book.  It reminded me of Pride and Prejudice, some of the same locations and names were the same.  I had an urge to watch that movie but I have yet to get to that.  But I realized I've never read Pride and Prejudice.  So I borrowed the book and am really enjoying reading it because like always, books are always better than the movies and have so much more detail!  With the weather just starting to get cold, I just want to stay in my pajamas, snuggle up and read all day.  But my kids don't always allow that, plus it's not even winter yet and I don't think I can start my hibernation this early.  Until then, I wondered what some of your favorite books are?  I'm definitely new to the reading world and need to get a stack ready for when I can finally hibernate and read all winter long!

And this is why I've been a slacker at blogging lately.  We take days pretty leisurely around here!



I'm not sure what 4 boys is going to be like, but we do know how to do loud, dirty, wild and super heros so I'm sure it will just be more of that!

Home Sweet Home: Part 2

So as many of you probably know from facebook, we just took a little family trip to Yellowstone.  And most importantly we took our little old trailer for it's maiden voyage camping.  I would have to say that it was heavenly.  It is our home away from home.  Here's a little background story as to why I'm so in love with our trailer. 
I love to camp, we grew up camping all the time.  Some people are not a big fan, but I think it's the people you're with that make it so fun.  I have always loved our big family camping trips, (sigh) so many memories.  I want to keep that love for camping and pass it down to my boys.  It is so their element.  They love dirt, water, being outside, campfires, smores, roasting hot dogs, peeing outside, and fishing  = camping is perfect.  I love our tent, we invested in a ginormous tent when we were pregnant with Tatton knowing that we'd want something that we could a) stand up in and b) fit kids, our queen air mattress and a pack n' play in.  I felt pretty spoiled.  But as the years went by, we just kept thinking it would be so nice to just pull into camp and be ready, no setting up the tent, have a sink, an oven, a stove, a fridge, real beds, a bathroom... so many luxuries.  So we started hunting ksl.com.  I know there are some darn nice trailers out there that cost more than homes so I do not compare ours to those. at all.  We knew our route was paying cash for something old and small enough that we could pull with our expedition.  And in walked our 1970's trailer that was perfect for us!  We got to take a road trip to Cedar City to pick it up, and I started shopping immediately for material with my sister-in-law Toni.  It was a blast, and I couldn't believe that I found something so perfect to go with our trailer.  It has been such a fun little project to fix up, and the boys love just playing in it, and having little sleepovers in it just at home.  Everything worked when we bought it, and for it's age it was in really good condition.  We just wanted to spruce it up for fun, and the outside was in need of a facelift!  We got it all mostly ready by Memorial Day.  We had big plans to go to Bryce Canyon with my family over the weekend and that was originally our maiden voyage with the trailer.  We got to about Lehi and Aaron noticed one of the little doors on the trailer was flapping in the wind.  So he pulled over to go shut it and also noticed a huge puddle under our car.  He pulled the car forward and the red trail followed us.  Our transmission was gushing fluid.  We had pulled off right by an exit, so we made our way to a Jiffy Lube.  They informed us that our transmission had blown and we'd be lucky to be able to make it back home to Morgan.  And that's when I started crying.  I was so devastated that we were having to turn around and go home, that we weren't going to Bryce, that we wouldn't be camping with the family for the weekend, all the food we just bought, and that we had a big car problem.  In a matter of 10 minutes, everything had changed.  I was really bummed and Tatton was too.  He cried with me.  We were so blessed to have seen the door and pulled over when we did.  If we would have been driving when the transmission finally went out, we could have been in a lot more trouble, so for that I am really grateful we were being watched over.  The stress kicked in though about our car situation.  To make a long story somewhat short, we were pretty set on just selling the expedition as it was and buying... a suburban.  Yes, a suburban.  I was so excited.  So we started looking and looking for a long time, nothing seemed to be what we wanted or in our price range.  We both finally got the feeling that that was not the right route for us to go in, and we really didn't want to have a car payment- those stink!  So we finally got it all lined up, bit the bullet and had a new transmission put into our expedition.  Unfortunately, not in time for our Yellowstone trip, which we had booked months and months ago.  We were totally lame and borrowed my mom and dad's truck for the trip.  It worked out great though, we got home and had the car done just a few days later.  It all worked out in the end and now we have our car back in commision to go on many more camping adventures!  Being in the trailer with babies that can't walk yet, you moms know what I'm talking about, was so nice to not be in dirt constantly!  And feeling a little bit more protected from a bear compared to a tent was also a plus!  Really, I felt like I was in our home away from home in Yellowstone.  We can't wait to take it out again and be able to create more family memories.



Home Sweet Home

Well I'm just as surprised to be on our blog as much as you are!  It's been far too long and apparently the craziness of having 3 kids has kicked in.  Actually, that's not entirely true.  I am busy, but I think you find time to do the things you have to and the things you love.  I guess blogging hasn't fallen in either of those categories lately.  I update facebook much more than I used to, it's quick and I stay in touch with more people there than I do on here.  Nonetheless, I have missed out keeping this updated because it is a way of journaling for my little family.  So instead of catching you up on months worths of activities and pictures... we're happy, we've celebrated birthdays and holidays, graduations, done some fun things and my boys look adorable in numerous pictures!  How about that?!  Now that we're up to date, I will get to the point of the title of this post.  Home Sweet Home.  Aaron and I have moved several times in our short 6 years of marriage.  Life has changed a lot for us.  We're just renting his Grandma's house, but I feel more at home than anywhere else we've lived.  It's on a lovely road that my parents live on and his parents.  It's up a long driveway on top of a hill and it is heaven.  The house itself is not necessarily a magnificent thing to behold, but it's the happiest place we've lived.  Aaron's Grandma is 85 I believe and in a nursing home and the house was vacant.  We were living at my parent's house to save $ while Aaron is at school and it was getting a little old (my parents are great fyi, just nothing compares to being by yourself).  So by divine intervention... someone needed to live at the empty house and take care of it!  And in came our little family moving in the winter a week before christmas into this home, and couldn't be happier.  We've done a lot of painting and fixing up and many projects that Aaron rolls his eyes at when I say "I saw this thing on pinterst...".   We don't know how long we'll be able to stay here.  But we're staying until circumstances force us to move i.e. family decides to sell the house.  Until then, I'm busily making it my own without putting too much into it since it's technically not ours.  My favorite things about this home, why I love calling it home, is that it is perfect for boys to be boys outside.  We're on a country road, but even better than that, we're off the road a long ways which means my boys can go outside and play to their hearts content and I don't have to worry about where they are, cars, strangers, really even what they're doing, it's pretty indestructable out there.  I also love (here's my brag list) the beautiful views, large shade trees all over, tons of cement for bike riding, room for Jack to roam, covered pavillion with lights to eat outside anytime, rv pad for our beloved trailer and a big swing on the front porch to sit and watch my boys play.  I need to pinch myself as I'm describing it!  It may not be everyone's dream stuff, but it certainly is mine.  I definitely like the country, the space, and the seclusion.  Of course we want to own our own house again but we're content to wait for the perfect time, perfect place and perfect home.  We owned a house once and we were young and naive.  We didn't think too much about the location, and certainly didn't really think about the layout of the house.  We bought a split-level home in Clearfield when we were first married and we consider ourselves so blessed to have sold that right before the market went down.  I started to dislike the home, ugh and our neighbor, I hated how close the houses were together and we were just barely pregnant with Tatton and realized we didn't want to be in the ghetto of Clearfield to raise our family.  That's how it started and fortunately it lead us to knowing we needed to sell and move away.  With that lesson under our belt, we've decided we would wait to buy or build a home when we were really ready, knew where we wanted to be settled and in the perfect spot for our family.  You can always change the outside and inside of a home, but you can't move it.  So someday, that'll be my dream home but for now, this place will do.  I just feel so much happier here and blessed to call it home for now.

Right Ror'...

If Lincoln would say "right Tatto", I believe he would be the spitting image of my brothers Rory and Ryan. My Mom has told me so many stories of Rory and Ryan when they were little, her first experiences of having two little boys running around. When Ryan first started talking and walking, he immediately took to following and doing everything his big brother did. And all he would say as he putted around was "right ror". He wanted to make sure he was doing everything Rory did, and if Rory approved of all his activities. Lincoln has taken on this same position. He does exactly what "Tatto" (Tatton) does! If Tatton tickles Harrison, Lincoln is right behind him doing it next, if Tatton wants a drink, Lincoln wants a drink, if Tatton puts a bowl on his head, Lincoln is doing it too. Tatton is catching on, I tell him he has a little copy-cat and that literally Lincoln will do what you do. So now Tatton will run upstairs just to see if Lincoln will follow him or not... and he usually does! They are a pretty fun bunch of boys to watch as they grow and I hope that Tatton will be a good example for Lincoln in the years to come!