Wednesday, April 14, 2010

August 2009

August brought us to the close of our fun filled family vacation in Pinetop.....




We had fun celebrating Aunt Martha's Birthday...

"Living" in a condo (as the boys say it). to this day every time we drive by the place they say "hey there's the condo we used to live in with Grandma and Grandpa!" =)
Nathan took a spill and got a nice goose egg on his forhead that his cousin Brookie was glad to take care of. She's so sweet and was preparing for her new baby brother due to arrive soon =)
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Which he did, shortly there after...........
Brody Tai Kriens
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August also brought a new experience for Tyler.......
Playing soccer!!!!
He wasn't sure he wanted to do it at first, but then he LOVED it!

The Pirates

Tyler would get so excited that he would hop. It cracked us up!
Nathan was too young to be on a team this year but he was able to practice
with the team and had a blast!
Grandma and Grandpa Whitfield drove up to a couple of the games and we had so much fun laughing as we'd watch these cute little kids playing their hardest and yet having so much fun being funny kids! Loved it! Dad said it brought back so many fun memories of when he used to coach my brothers at that age. Good times!
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The front of our house

We also decide to explore our surroundings and went on short hikes.....






We visited the Snowflake Temple grounds with the kids........







Saw some oddly placed statue........
Tyler thought it was great...........

Nathan wouldn't go near it! =) LOL
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The boys loved exploring our yard, while I watched from our balcony
They are really enjoying being in Nature.
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August 30th we found out that we are pregnant!!!!
We are very excited!!!!

July 2009 happenings

I figured I better keep updating so I don't have a huge gap in the year on my blog...
On the last day of June came a long awaited job offer..... a true miracle. The Lord blessed us so much!
So of course July brought us planning and house hunting in Lakeside AZ. Beleive it or not we found our rental home on Craigs list! Fell in love with it! We would be moving in at the end of July.
I continued working at the Casino doing Banquets and being a hostess at the Buffet. I never did get any pictures wearing my "cool" uniforms =) LOL kinda wish I had =)

July also brought swim lessons, Soccer for Daddy (no pictures though), playing in the sprinklers, vacations, ect.


Nathan loving his cool soccer clothes
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Our last hurrah in the wonderful backyard sprinkler
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Swim lessons- Tyler jumping on in!

And Nathan.... who's not so sure =)
Tyler swimming like a pro at Grandma & Grandpa Van Vleets house
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The move............
We actually had the house all packed up and moved for us and it was paid for us too! Now THAT is THE only way to move!!!! =)
The unpacking was our thing, but the boys had fun helping



It was great how the family reunion we had planned for a year just happened to be less then 10 minutes from Josh's new job and our new house. So even though Josh was just starting a new job, we were still able to be at our fun filled Whitfield reunion (with my parents, siblings and all their little families). It was a lot of fun!

Male bonding- family vacation in Pinetop AZ



Girl bonding- family vacation Pinetop AZ



The boys had their first fishing trip at a nearby lake with all the cousins, Aunts, Uncles and grandparents. They had a blast and looked like pros!



They had fun playing with cousins for almost a whole week!

Monday, December 21, 2009

June 2009

June happenings...


Our grapes ripened! We harvested at least 5 big mixing bowls of grapes and they were delicious! When we just couldn't eat or even give away enough to get rid of them all we juiced them in our juicer and got a big piture full of yummy juice. It was awesome! We were so happy!

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Swim Lessons started! We even got the same swim teacher that Tyler had last year and both boys loved, Brayden.


Tyler LOVED swim lessons!


But Nathan cried. He hated them at first!
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One night after coming home from work (serving at a banquet), Josh informed me that Nathan broke his tooth. I freaked out a little bit because I am always so worried about my kids teeth (it's what I get for working in the dental field for 9 years... teeth vanity) :) LOL. Anyways, of course I'm picturing his front tooth broken in half (which was partially true). Luckily it was his bottom tooth although it was broken in half vertically. I knew right off the bat that it could not be fixed (or put back together) and was pretty sure it would need to be pulled because the nerve was exposed. Thankfully he was not in horrible pain, which actually surprised me. I think the Lord was blessing him by sparing him the pain, because if that had been you or I, we would be in tears and unable to eat or drink (I would guarentee it). Thankfully I know some amazing pediatric Dentists who kept in touch over the weekend to make sure he was okay until Monday morning for an x-ray. We came back 2 days later to get it pulled.

The story behind the break....
Nathan was goofing off, jumping up onto the couch by first jumping and lifting himself onto the arm of it. Well the arm of the couch is not that padded and when his arm slipped of, he hit his mouth on the wood frame under the lack of padding. Busted his tooth right in half vertically to the root and exposed the inside of his tooth. Yikes! I'm almost glad I wasn't there to see it right after it happened. Although it is not much fun coming home to that news either.
Poor thing :( It just looks painful

Nathan all doped up on medicine!

I felt so blessed at this point to have known the dentists so well and completely trust them with my child. I have comforted so many parents as they cry seeing their child being put under medication that I was a bit worried how I would handle it (even though I knew about the process). It's just different when it's your own child. It actually turned out to be no problem at all. Nathan didn't get sick at all and was actually hilarious! He made me laugh so hard! He was sleepy and dopy, laughing at everything, reaching for things he saw that looked weird. It was too funny. At one point he just sat there on my lap and as I giggled at his funny expression he started belly laughing which made me laugh harder, which then made him laugh even harder. I laughed so hard it made me cry. Then the assistant and Dentist (who are friends of mine) came and joined the entertainment too. It was too funny.

He looks so drunk!

This was right after his tooth was pulled.

Now he proudly shows off his gap! :)



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June was full of swimming!

Nathan would only swim with his vest on, but was comfortable going anywhere in the pool on his own with it on. At one point he forgot we had taken his vest off so he could eat and got right down in the water by himself. Even though Josh and I were right there we did not see him right away. I tell you, panic is the only word for it. My heart raced as Josh and I grabbed him out. Drowning is truly a silent killer. He made absolutely no noise. Had we not looked over in the pool things would have been so much worse. I did not want him to be afraid of the water so I made him immediately get back in with me. He was terrified and it broke my heart to force him, but I knew that if I didn't he would be even more afraid of the water. After many tears, he calmed down and we had a nice swim together (I held him close as you could imagine). I think it worked well, because he stopped crying at swim lessons the following week and cooperated with his teacher. I think he realized he had to learn to swim if he didn't want that to happen again.

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June also brought a very special experience for us.

Josh and I were still facing extremely difficult times. Our savings was almost gone, we had not been able to pay our mortgage and was barely making enough with my income to pay the other bills. We were given a foreclosure date and were absolutely heart broken at the thought of loosing our home. Our home was very special to us because it was our first and we had put so much work into it by the sweat of our own brow. I loved my home and prayed that we would not loose it. We started thinking that we would end up living with family because we just didn't know what else to do. We decided to council with our Bishop and ask for a blessing of comfort and guidance. It was an amazing spiritual experience and we got the exact comfort that we needed. We were amazed at the promise from our Heavenly Father that Josh would receive full time employment by the end of the month. We were all surprised at the promise because that was less then 2 weeks away and Josh did not even have an interview lined up. We went home quite surprised but thought maybe it meant within 30 days, because that seemed more feasible. We knew that whatever the Lord had in store for us, he knew best. The very last day of June came and in my occasional innocent faith I thought "wouldn't that be cool if Josh got a job offer today!" but then I pushed the thought away and told myself "be patient Kayla, Heavenly Father is aware and he knows what he's doing." A couple hours later Josh called me and said "Kayla, guess what..... I was just offered a job with the Indian Health Services in Lakeside AZ". I was speechless. We both were amazed at how precise the Lord is and the fact that he has a sense of humor by wanting to shock us by having it happen on the very last day of June. Our faith in the power of the Priesthood grew that much more after that wonderful experience. All along we knew things would work out, but still worried about HOW they would work out. We are grateful that Heavenly Father watched out for us so much and blessed us with such a wonderful experience to strengthen our faith in his plan for us.
With that extremely exciting news we had 3 weeks to find a place to rent near his work and start the process of selling our house. We had much to do.

May 2009

Here are a few things that happened in May ..... I know there is much more, but this is what I remember most thanks to the pictures I took =)
Nathan holding his brand new cousin Barron. He was so excited to have a new cousin!
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Our cousins Levi and Daniel were born to Kent and Belle. We were very excited to have these cute little twins added to the family.
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Our grape plant (the only one to survive out of three) started looking beautiful and started producing! We could not wait to start eating the grapes!
Tyler Graduated Preschool!
I love how he is the giant of the group even though he is not the oldest =)
His graduation cap.... I like that he had to have a train on it =)
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Here are a few things from May that we really miss.........
Tyler's Preschool teachers Miss Sherrie and Miss Heidi. Tyler always says how much he misses them and loves them. They were so wonderful for him.
Heidi's cute little son Kai whom I got to babysit 3 days a week while Tyler was in class. He was such a love and so much fun. Nathan enjoyed having him over to play so often.
Splash pads! We miss the warm weather and playing at the splash pads!

My grape vine and the beautiful trellace Josh burned our initials into =)
what a romantic =) We built that thing together with our own hands.


Nathan's Sports class! He LOVED his sports class and missed it when it ended.

Our garden! and all the yummy stuff we got from it!


The boys loved the gigantic cucumbers we got from it and ate them regularly.

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We celebrated our eighth anniversary on May 30th. We can honestly say that with each year our love grows stronger and stronger. It is wonderful to know you are with the person you get to spend eternity with and have a forever family with. I love it! Of course neither one of us is perfect and we get annoyed with eachother quite often. But we each know that we are trying, we look past the silly annoying things, try to make eachother happy the best we can, and make a strong effort to make sure the other one knows we love them.
During May I also worked inside the home doing phone work and outside the home serving at banquets (both on an as need basis). We kept very busy searching for jobs. We were stressed not knowing where life would take us, but we also knew everything would work out the way it was supposed to. We knew despite our struggles, the Lord was blessing us tremendously and he was watching out for us always.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Wow

Wow..... I have SO much to catch up on!!! I have been putting this off for so long because the thought of catching up on all that has happened was so overwhelming. I knew it would take forever for me to put pictures and updates all the way from April on here. But I have been given strength because I wrote a Christmas letter (another task I thought was daunting) and if I can do that, I can update my blog =).

So, this is my first babystep towards updating the blog..... letting you all know I have been thinking about it..... and that I'm still alive =) LOL

Now I need to start sorting through the photos...... =)