Ahhhhhh

You know I feel so much better now. I think sometimes you have these really really bad days and you almost just have to wade through the crap to see the light on at the other side of the tunnel. We took another lovely trip up to the library for some "free fun" and the kids ran straight to the computer games. I took my book I've been working on now for almost a month and sat down and read a HUGE chunk of it. I can't remember if I've said this before so at the risk of repeating myself I highly recommend the sword of truth series. I'm on book 2 now and it is AMAZING AWESOMENESS!! *echo..echo......echo* I'm completely entranced by it.

My family every year due to a HUGE family now draws names so we only buy a Christmas gift for one person each. Well this year my Mom did something quite fun that I'm really excited for. She wants to switch up the rules a bit. This year our gift must be home-made and supplies costing less than $15. I drew my sister Charice's name and I've thought up some pretty fun idea's that I've started working out the kinks on as of late. I don't want Christmas to come and me not be prepared. I mean I'm a procrastinator by nature but last minute Christmas shopping isnt a issue but last minute Christmas MAKING is. KC already has some fun idea's for Levi too. I have NO CLUE about what Cort and Tatumn would be interested in making though...

Well I've run out of things to talk about...I guess that means I'm done. lol

~Ciao

Deep thoughts...by Karen Coon

Now that I'm at home with the kids I have all this time to think. Thinking can be dangerous I've decided. Ignorance is bliss right? Its true. Ignorance IS bliss. I think sometimes not knowing something is happening makes it less painful even if you have a pretty good idea that it is. I haven't been myself lately. I don't know if I know who I am anymore.

It reminds me of a quote...I can't remember who said it though. "When things are bad, we take comfort in the thought that they could always be worse. And when they are, we find hope in the thought that things are so bad they have to get better."

I took the kids out for a walk today to take my mind off of things. I like to take random pictures of things I find uplifting and pretty. Check out these beautiful flowers.
They were so beautiful. Every shade of my favorite color at once. Like a rainbow of purpleness =)

They still make me smile. They remind me of my wedding flowers. I had the most beautiful flowers....they were a very special hybrid of rose made to be a light shade at the bottom and dark dark purple at the tips.

My kids are so amazing. They love spending time with me. It makes me feel so good about who I am. They are just happy sitting here with me on the couch watching our favorite cartoon "Avatar: The last airbender" just because they love me for who I am.

Sometimes its nice just knowing that everything you do isn't just I dunno...Wrong. Cort and Tatumn are so amazing. So full of fun and life and energy. They can find the simplest joys out of something like a walk to the park. We walk down to this favorite park of theirs and lay on the grass under a huge tree and I'll read a book while they show me everything. They have become very excited about Halloween as of late and are telling me all about their costumes and what they want to be. Cort wants to be Avatar Ang and Tatumn wants to be the warrior Suki. We keep talking about how were going to make it obvious who they are. Tatumn wants her fans and makeup to be just perfect and Cort refuses to shave his head lol



Here is avatar Ang as Cort wants to portray him. I tried to convince him his hair would grow fast but he wants nothing to do with shaving his head lol



And here is Suki as Tatumn wants to portray her. She used fans to fight with so I think its a fun excuse for Tatumn to get some hand fans lol

Well I think I've spent enough time thinking. I'm going to go and do something mindless like folding laundry.

I'll leave you with one more quote from an unknown author.

"Depression is nourished by a lifetime of ungrieved and unforgiven hurts"

~Ciao

Girls weekend!

OK...for those of you who have not actually been to one of my Mom's yearly girls weekends, you will never understand how amazingly fun they are! But, I'm willing to try and show you on my blog how much fun they are.

I can't remember how many years ago my Mom started these but it's technically a birthday party for all of the girls in the family age 12 and up. We used to drive south to see a play or two at Tuachon each year but this year Mom decided to try something a little different.

So we all met at my Mom's house on Thursday and I was greeted in the driveway by my Mother...I have no words to describe her so I will just use a picture lol

HAHAHAHA!!! I nearly pee'd my pants at the sight...no folks for those of you who don't know her my Mom doesnt usually walk around in a hot pink moo moo, a lai and flamingo sunglasses. I knew from this very moment I was not going to be too dissapointed at missing a play in St. George.

When I pulled in the driveway I was followed in by my sister-in-law Heather and my other sister-in-law Tanya. Let me first just say this. I am one of the luckiest people in the world when it comes to family. First off I have the funnest and coolest parents but they are still parents not "I want to be your friend" parents but "I want to have fun with you but still teach you right from wrong and I WILL tell you when your being stupid" parents...this is important to me as many of my friends have moms who want to be a friend not a mom. Then as if that wasnt cool enough God saw fit to send me here with 3 awesome brothers. Chancy, David and Levi. I don't get to spend as much time with them as I would like to but I do know they love and care for me and would back me up no matter what. If I had a problem or was in a fix I didn't know how to get out of they would help me out if it was in their power to do so. Then my sister Charice who has got the be the FUNNEST sister in the world! She has always got something exciting going on at her house. I think she must never have any time to just "sit" but I think its because she wouldnt want to lol. She's also got my back even when I don't deserve it haha. OK OK I know what your thinking...Wow, Karen really lucked out on the family side of things...how did she do this? BUT it gets better!!! Each and every one of my brothers married some amazing women. I consider all of them to be just like a best friend to me. They are so much fun to hang around with. Oh but theres more! What do we have behind door number 3? OMG a Neice who is just like her Mom!!! (Carissa this means you) and of course Alicia too! I really look forward to these weekends just to have some time with "the girls" and be completly myself with no worries or thoughts of day to day stress's. Once again I have to thank KC for watching the kids for me and taking friday off of work so I could go and do this.

OK so back to day number one. We walk inside the house and go in the basement to find that she has completely done up the basement kitchen and living area to look like we were living in Hawaii!





So of course on night number one we were reminded of our youthfullness with a birthday cake with our combined ages....ouch lol



Yes folks...that says 252!! it says "Happy Birthday From sweet 16 to one foot in the grave" and no...I wont say who they meant. But I'm like right in the middle so I don't think it was me Muah ha ha ha!!

OK so then we had this really fun luau in the backyard and the citronella candles said that bugs weren't invited but check out the WTF bug of the day we found



I have no way to describe it except to say there were a lot of people there and none of us has ever seen it before. It had wings like a queen ant does where they go the length of their body and it had a stinger like a wasp but it was black. Creepy to be sure. I think Carissa threw it lol


Here we all are blowing out our birthday cake with our cool new glasses and flowers...cuz were cool like that.

MMmmmmm dinner was soooo yummy. But then again dinner at moms house is always yummy.











So at one point were all in the basement having fun just talking and hanging out and out of nowhere there is a loud bang and I turn just in time to see Tanya hit the ground. Me being the sweet, gentle soul that I am didn't run to see if she was ok...I got the camera out. Sorry Tanya! hahaha



Here I am enjoying our "Midnight Margarita's"

Carissa brought along her supply of glitter stuff to do glitter toes for all of us! It was so much fun. I got a lovely color of Lime green on my glittery toes.











Here is a picture of all of our toes done. Carissa did a fabulous job.














You just never know what might happen when your having the girls weekend. So at one point my Dad comes home and says "Hey Sue, I need some help moving the cows" LOL!!! My Dad has cows now...and we got to herd the cattle from one field to another...YAHOO COWBOY!


Then we went to go for a motorcycle ride. All the girls have one but me so my Daddy let me take his 4 wheeler for a spin. It was a lot of fun cuz the girls let me try their bikes out too. Ahh I do so miss my motorcycle racing days. But then half way through our ride the clouds started rolling in and it rained and not just rained but it rained so hard it felt like hail and it HURT! I had Alicia on behind me so I took her back to the house and then went back just in case anybody needed help. We were soooo soaked. We got in the garage and then we all took a picture for laughs at how soaked we were.

Yes...we hung out the bra's to dry. Wanna fight about it? :P

So all in all it was a really really good time for all. I already miss them all and I can't WAIT until next year!

Scottish Festival Fun

Wow...what a fun day! So we got to go to the Scottish Festival again this year. I think this makes year number 6 that we have attended thanks to our friends the Sanderson's who invited us all that time ago. Well 2 years ago my mom, my sister and I made some costumes up for the festival and we have had so many comments on them so we keep wearing them. I'll post some of them here. Tatumn lost her cape during the move and was oh so disappointed she didn't get to wear it but she found a substitute.

We had so much fun! It all started off with the traditional firing of the cannon. They actually fire a cannon...scares me every freaking time. (sounds like thunder...shut up Charice lol)

Then they had the marching of the clans. Each clan who chooses to represent themselves comes with their family crest or banner and marches out onto the field and if they choose to they can walk up to give out a battle cry or their family motto. I will post some pictures of some of the clans as well but there were far too many to post them all.


















Yes...that is a dog wearing a kilt. Some people REALLY get into this...












Now THIS is the funnest Scottish band EVAH! The Wicked Tinkers. Very fun to watch. Forgive me if the movie moves...I was dancing lol


Well we had so much fun but right after I took these movies of the kids dancing it started to POUR so very very hard! It was coming down in sheets of rain. I felt like Forest Gump going "itty bitty stingy rain, then big ole fat rain, then rain that came at us sideways" It was bad. I had a cape so I was out of most of the rain but our poor kids were drenched! We had to take a vote and poor KC got outvoted about going home. He was so sad. And to make it all worse it cleared up after we got out too. Oh well...there is always next year!

The Bee's game

We are so lucky KC has the job he does. We get to do all kinds of fun things for free! So on Monday KC was able to get us all in the the Bee's game for free again. This time was even a little bit more special as it is Air Force week. As we walked in there was a really fun band playing "Hot, Hot, Hot" and people were dancing on the sidewalk. I wanted to join in but I didn't want to embarrass KC. They had all kinds of military stuff going on including this guy walking around in a blow up military suit that was cracking me up. All the kids were poking at him.


And wow...check out this bike!! They started it up too and it sounded soooo loud! We walked around for quite a while just checking out the fun things that they had there to see.

I'm just going to post a ton of fun pictures I took while I was there.























This was really neat. They actually swore these guys into the Air Force right there on the baseball field.

Then the coolest thing of all was when they actually flew a plane overhead and dropped 4 guys out of the air to parachute right into the field and then one last one came down with an American flag attached to his feet and when he came down the other guys who already landed actually caught the flag and then they displayed it and some F16's flew right over our head! It was amazing!

Guess I took a break...

Sorry folks. I had a bit of a blogger break there. Well we had a very exciting visit with some dear friends of ours. We went to Matt and Lisa Sanderson's home on Sunday for a lovely dinner (we can always count an something fun and exciting or new when we eat at the Sanderson's.) It had been such a long time since we had all seen each other it was really nice to just catch up on what was new with both of our families. After dinner we all went out for a nice walk to the nearby park to let all 4 kids play while we caught up some more. KC has a Lagoon day coming up for work and they are offering discounted Lagoon tickets for friends and family to come along and I'm really hoping for a big turn out.

We had another family run in at the library and got me a new book that I actually have really enjoyed. Its a young adult fantasy novel called "Dragon Slippers" its definitely for young readers but I think that the reason I like it so much is I don't have to think too hard...lol

Tatumn got a whole bunch of "My little pony" books and Cort got some more books from the "Avatar: That last Airbender" series. We have all finished our books by now and I can't wait to take them in again so I can read the sequel and see if they have the other book I really want to read. I want to start the The Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. I've heard so much about them and every time I have been in to the library the librarian tells me that his books go really fast.

KC and I got a rebate in the mail for the phone that I got for my birthday so we took the opportunity to take the kids out for a movie and dinner. We went and saw "Monsters Vs. Aliens" in 3D. It was really really cute! We all enjoyed it very much. Although I admit I was rather disappointed to find out that they charge you an extra $2.50 for the stupid 3D glasses they give you. So KC realized why the tickets (for a matinee) were so expensive and looked at me and said "We are keeping these stupid glasses" haha So next time were bringing our own!!!! THAT'S RIGHT CINEMARK WE ARE BRINGING OUR OWN!!! lol

I'm also happy to report that I've been spending quite a bit outdoors lately so I'm getting a nice sun touched look that I needed desperately. (yeah Mom I know...white and delitesome.../sigh) =P

Hmmm What else? KC has been working so hard at work and doing a really great job there. I love when he comes home and tells me stories about work and how he saved the day. Every day when he comes home from work I ask him "So honey how was work?" and I almost always get the same response. "It was work." or slightly better "It was workalicious" that one made me smile. But every once in a while he tells me something fun that happened at work and I really look forward to hearing him tell me stories. I don't think his employer knows just how lucky they are to have him. He's an amazing worker. If you give him a job to do he will do it in record time and probably find a better and faster way to do it.

I'm trying to find some new and exciting music for my Ipod so if any of you have any idea's for me let me know. I think I have left myself a pretty limited list of bands I will listen to and recently at the behest of close friends I've been listening to a lot of different band and freaking loving it! I listen to all kinds but I love a song that I can sing along to. (People around me may not like it but TUFF! Its my music and I'LL DO WHAT I WANT! <---KC that was for you. lol)

Cort and Tatumn are in really big trouble today. This morning KC wakes up quite early for work and when he leaves he resets the alarm for me to wake up to so I have time to get the kids to school on time. Well the kids got up when KC did this morning and laid down in bed next to me while I was still sleeping and when the alarm went off Cort turned it off completely so when I woke up it was WAY too late. So Cort and Tatumn had a rather non-exciting day of cleaning the apartment with me and running in to Tooele to pick up some more stuff from our old house. I'm still hearing how mean and unfair I am. I also remember telling my Mom how unfair she was and I think this is what is called "the mothers curse" Where your kids are just like you were to your Mom. Sorry Mom...I think your amazing!

OH! OK one of my favorite memories. This is how awesome my Mom is. So the boys and Dad had gone hunting and would be gone for a week. I knew it would still be fun at home with just Me and Mom and I was looking forward to it. Well I get home from school on Friday and walk in to see my mom standing in the doorway holding a bag of my clothes and hers with a huge grin on her face. I can still imagine the look I must have had on my face, one eyebrow raised and my mouth wide open trying to figure out just what Mom had planned here. She giggled and said "Lets go!" I said "umm OK where are we going?" and she said "That's the best part!!! I have no idea!" I just laughed and said "no plans huh?" and she said..."well...I was thinking south?" We seriously just got in the car and drove. We would laugh, talk and share things with each other the whole car ride. If we got hungry we stopped at whatever local restaurant that sounded like fun and then just kept on driving. I'd try and throw her off with my taste in music. I remember saying "Hey Mom do you like "Megadeath"? and she would frown and say "No Karen I'm sure I don't like Megadeath". Then I'd ask her others and then I'd throw in a CD and not tell her what it was. I put in "Sweating Bullets" by Megadeath and she was laughing so hard. My Mom has fun taste in music so I knew she might like them. (We are both still HUGE Metallica fans) After the song was over I turned to her and said "what did you think? Did you like it?" and she said "I loved it! That was actually really good!" to which I had to respond with "THAT was Megadeath" and she hit me in the arm and just laughed with me for a while. Ahhhhh good times. I hope I'm as fun and exciting of a Mom as mine was to me.

I liked that. I think I'll have to do more fun memories in my blog from now on. Till next time...

~Ciao