Cailen's 1st Driving Lesson

Hilarious. Just hope none of you are officers of the law...

This was in the parking lot of our favorite movie rental store, Top Hat. It was like 11:00 at night on a Saturday. I think he did pretty well :)

Silly Me

I went to get on the computer to upload pictures for the last posts I put up. And I have no idea where my camera went! I had it right by the laptop we've "borrowed" recently and then Cailen wanted to listen to his songs as he laid in his bed. As I confiscated the computer amid cries of "I don't want to go to sleep!" and was secretly excited to get some pictures finally put up, I realized, I have no idea where I put the camera! I looked everywhere! So alas, no pics. How sad!!

Stupid Sickness

I have been sick since before my birthday. How unfair. Luckily, the day before my birthday, when Mark and I went out to celebrate my birthday, I didn't feel too bad. Sadly, on my birthday, I felt horrible!! I had a horrible headache, lots of sinus pain, and just wanted to sleep. How blah. Instead, I went to my parents house for dinner and over to my aunts house to have dessert to celebrate my birthday, my cousin Riley's birthday, and sort of my mom's. Since then, the sinus pain has gone away so I am hoping it is not a sinus infection. But I have still felt icky and then ALLLLLL of yesterday was spend laying around. My stomach was killing me. I think I had a 24 hour bug. Unfun. I went up to my mom's house to help her decorate her house. We were going to go shopping, spend time together, it was going to be fun. Instead, I spent 6 hours at her house just laying around, sleeping, and going "uuuuuggghh...". Not fun. Luckily my brother and dad helped watch Cailen so I could get some rest. I headed home and slept it off last night and feel a ton better today, but still. Not a cool time for me. I have been sick for over a week. GO AWAY SICKNESS! I am hoping I am getting better, but only time will tell. Luckily, blogging can be easily done while laying around missing church. At least something good came from today!

January

More updating, but at least I'm doing it in the same month!! January. Granted....it is the very last day of the month. But at least it is January!!

New Year's Eve - New Year's Eve is always crazy. We try to spend time with both families and it's a late night and lots of games. We hung out at my parents' house for a few hours, played games, ate some food etc. Then we headed to Mark's sister Wendy's house for more games and midnight. Cailen was going strong!! We played Psychiatrist, which is always fun. If you have never played that game, you're missing out! Midnight game and we got our hats on and noise makers. Cailen did NOT enjoy the noise that everyone made and started to cry. He made me take him back inside and laid down on my shoulder. I think he was a bit tired and the noise was too much for him. It was kinda weird though because he is usually just fine. He loves fireworks. Hmm.. Oh well. Anyway, now it's 2010!!!!

New Year's Day - We always go sledding on New Year's Day with Mark's family and we invited my family to join us. Last year Cailen did not want to go sledding but we made him go down anyway with Mark and he was not a happy camper about that. This year, he didn't want to either but both Mark and I took him down once. So we at least improved by one ride this year. I found out that he didn't like it because he got snow in his eyes. At least it's not the flying down a hill of ice part that he doesn't like :) It was a lot of fun and my dad brought hot chocolate which was awesome. It's a fun tradition and I'm glad we do it.

My sister Heather - Heather interviewed for a job in Houston in December and just before Christmas found out that she got it! It was awesome for her to get a job but very sad that it is all the way in Houston! Darn SLC not having a job for her so that she could stay close. But we got a few weeks with her after Christmas and were able to have lots of fun. She moved right before my mom's and my birthday, which was kind of a bummer, but what can you do. So now Heather is in Houston working at MD Anderson. She started on the 25th of January. Yay Heather and good luck with the new job!

My birthday - My mom's birthday is the 23rd of January and mine is the 24th. Since they are only a day away, we tend to celebrate a lot together. Sadly, my dad was still out of town helping my sister move to Houston, so my mom didn't do a whole lot on her birthday. On Saturday, my mom's bday, we met at Olive Garden for a birthday lunch, which is always yummy. The only one's missing were my dad and Heather. They sang to us and we got like three desserts. All in all, a good bday lunch! That night Mark and I went out bowling and I beat him in both games! That wasn't much of an accomplishment really though because we both played horribly! Guess we had better stick with Wii bowling. We get much better scores on that. After bowling, we went out for frozen yogurt at this place called Spoon Me. Funny name. But it was delicious!!! You get a choice of all sorts of toppings, including fresh fruit, lots of cereal and poptarts! I chose almonds, kiwi, raspberries and blackberries. Mark chose cheesecake bits, almonds, raspberries and pomegranate seeds. It was very good and I highly recommend it! That was a good way to spend my birthday, I have to say! My most exciting present for my birthday was an external hard drive! YAY! Now I can feel better about having my pictures safe because they are backed up. I was very excited to get it hooked up to my computer.

That about covers January. Hopefully I will get some pictures up because those are really the fun parts about posts :)

December - Holidays!

I am going to try to shortly, sweetly, and succinctly update this blog so I can move on to the more current things. I haven't even posted about Christmas and I can't exactly skip Christmas, so updating it is!

Thanksgiving - I don't know if I even have pictures for Thanksgiving! Holidays always tend to be a blur, and it's frustrating to not get pictures of such big events! Anywho, we spent a little time with Mark's family in the morning and got sucked into a tournament of Yahtzee :) Mark was successful at getting into the second and third round so we were a little late getting over to my grandma's house to spend Thanksgiving with my family there. Yummy food all around and then PIE! Yum. I love pumkpin pie. I think it is marvelous. I am also a huge fan of banana cream I have decided. I reeeaaally like it. The strange thing is, as much as I love pumpkin pie, I pretty much hate everything else pumpkin-y. Pumpkin cookies, pumpkin bread...all nasty. Pumpkin pie and my lovely ol' roommate Emily's pumpkin bars are my only loves of pumpkin. And I could pretty much each my weight in either one.

The Christmas holiday - Well without looking at my pictures (I'm posting using a different computer because as I described here, my desktop likes to freak out when I try to open blogspot, grr) I am kind of having a hard time remembering what I did during December. Isn't that sad? My memory relies too much on my camera. I can't find my keys which have my flash drive (that I got for Christmas!! It was very exciting, believe me) so I can't get my pictures to describe my month of December! Ugh. Hmm...let's see...I know that we went with Mark's family to see the lights at Temple Square. We took Trax down, which Cailen looooved! He was so excited about riding on a train! Granted, it was pitch dark outside when we rode, so he couldn't see a darn thing, but he loved it anyway. We'll have to ride it when it's light outside so that he can see everything flying by. We walked around temple square and looked at all the lights and had a fun time. Cailen loved it and behaved pretty great. Bummer is that we had to carry him the whole time. We hadn't wanted to bring a stroller on Trax and I guess the crowds were a little much for Cailen to deal with just holding Mom or Dad's hand. That boy is getting heavy!!! So all in all, a great night. The only bummer was that my camera broke!! It just went kaput. Wouldn't even turn on. When I finally got it to turn on, it wouldn't zoom. It was toast. So I added a new camera to my Christmas wish list and took to borrowing my parents' camera whenever I felt the need. And the need was definitely there during Christmas!! We had a few Christmas parties, which are always fun.

Christmas Party #1 - Davis Family - We hung out at my parents house for our annual Davis Family Christmas party. It was a lot of people, a lot of food, and a lot of fun. My aunt Kim and uncle Grant are storing their wards costumes for the nativity scene so they lent them to a few of my cousins (and Cailen!) to put on our family nativity scene. Cailen was a sheep. He was a little shy. I'll post those pics later. My cousin Clarrissa's little girl Emily was a cow. Those two were way cute!!
Christmas Party #2 - Aunt Scotti and Uncle Kirk's Family Party - We were invited to join in with my cousin Zak's family to eat yummy food and play games. They have some crazy games. I don't even know what they are called! There is this one that went a little nuts this year: there is a present that is wrapped a billion times and covered in tape. We sit in a circle and someone starts to try to open the present but they have to be wearing the huge gloves (my uncle uses them for his dutch oven cooking) and this winter hat. As they are trying to open it, the rest of us are rolling a dice and whoever rolls doubles (or a six, we changed it around), gets to knock the hat off the person opening the present and take their turn to try to open the present. This year, there were two presents inside. One was a candy bar and the other was some Ferrero Rocher chocolates. They were all pretty destroyed by the end! Mark tried to run upstairs once on his turn so that it would be harder for the next person to stop him. I was the lucky one that rolled to magic number and had to chase him upstairs! He had spent all his time running to hide that he hadn't even been able to try to open the present! My cousin-in-law...???.... Santina and I seemed to be going back and forth, it was funny.
Christmas Party #3 - Barber Family Party - Mark's family got together the Sunday before Christmas to hang out celebrate. The highlight of this party was the visit by SANTA! Cailen was so excited. He talked about it for weeks afterwards. Since he was the youngest, he got to sit on Santa's lap first and tell him what he wanted for Christmas (we practiced this before hand...he told him he wanted toys, but very quietly). He got a present from Santa that night - a coloring book! It was perfect. We also had stockings to open from Mark's mom and we played a White Elephant gift game. This year it had a theme, sort of. Every family had to bring presents that represented a movie. Mark and I brought a small dagger and a toy crocodile. I'm going to let you guys guess what movie that is! :) The kids had a gift exchange this year since last year they were involved in the white elephant game and didn't handle well having their presents stolen. Cailen got some cars. Fun stuff!!

I forgot that we also went to a Christmas whatever-you-want-to-call-it at the shopping center down the street. They had free hot chocolate, free Santa pictures (this was where we first practiced with Cailen what he was going to tell Santa he wanted for Christmas) and free carriage rides. Cailen had a blast riding the horse drawn carriage (called it a horse ride) and he was very excited about Santa too. He did very well! My mom and dad and brother Ryan had joined us. My brother Ryan sat on Santa's lap with Cailen and I think that helped with any fears he had. It was a lot of fun.

CHRISTMAS!
Christmas Eve was spent with my family. We drew names this year as to who gave to who since everyone was in a bit of a financial squeeze (ok, just us and my sister Heather). We drew Heather and gave her a way cute pink purse. Funny thing is, she drew us too (we were grouped as a family). I got a pair of jeans, Mark got a Real Salt Lake pennant and Cailen got some awesome Kids Songs cds. My mom and dad had given us new tires a few weeks before and that was our Christmas present. They were awesome enough to get us a kerosene heater too for emergencies! Awesome! We opened our family presents as well, saving just Santa for Christmas morning. Mark gave me some pearl earrings and a digital camera (YAY!) and I got him a few sweaters. Cailen gave Mark some shoes and a picture of the two of them. Cailen gave me an electric skillet. Cailen got some clothes and some Toy Story toddler bedding from his Mom and Dad. It looks so cute on his bed!! It was a ton of fun spending Christmas Eve with my family. We also saw the Chipmunks movie - The Squeakel or whatever. Cailen loved that movie! It was pretty cheesy :) But fun family time.

When it's time to spend Christmas with Mark's family, that includes a sleepover so that we all wake up together on Christmas morning. Crazy, I know! So we headed to Mark's sister Trisha's house to spend the night. Cailen got some awesome Buzz Lightyear pajamas from Gma Sharon and Gpa Jerry. He went running around for an hour or so with his cousin Becca in their "matching" pajamas (hers were Disney Princess pajamas but they seemed to think they matched). Finally all the kids laid down to watch a movie. Cailen took forever to fall asleep. Mark had to lay with him until he fell asleep. He is not used to going to sleep for the night watching a movie surrounded by his cousins! After that, the fun started for the adults. We got all the presents ready and finally were able to go to sleep ourselves. Christmas morning was crazy. Our nephew Landen came crashing around waking everyone up. Poor Cailen. He did not want to wake up at 7 and was not a happy camper. It took him awhile to get excited about opening presents. He was pretty clingy and grumpy at first. Then he realized he was getting toys! He opened his stocking and got some fun little toys and candy. From Santa he got a sit-n-spin, a medical kit, and a microwave. This kid looooves to "cook" food in a microwave. It was perfect. Santa gave Mark a new watch and a Real Salt Lake jersey and he gave me some sweaters and my flashdrive. Fun morning! We went over to Mark's mom's house after Cailen took a nap to give presents to and open presents from Mark's mom and Jerry and his grandma. His grandma gave everyone season passes to Lagoon which is AWESOME! She also gave Cailen a book titled "If you give a moose a muffin." Cailen loves it! Mark's mom made Snuggies for all the kids and it is way cute! It's a little big for Cailen but he can get lots of years of use out of it! She gave Mark a Real Salt Lake Champions tshirt because they won this year. It was awesome in case you didn't see the game. Very awesome. And he got a sticker for our car. She gave me these really cute boots, kinda ugg-like in how you just slip them on and they are furry. But sadly they didn't fit me and when I went to try to exchange them for my size I was told they were all sold out. SAD! So I just got some money for them instead and bought myself some skinny jeans (eek, talk about scary) so that I can tuck my jeans into my current boots a lot easier. They are great for that. I'm excited! Anywho, fuuuun holiday times!

Happy Birthday to Me!

GAH! I'm 26!!

Darn Technology

I wanted to give the reason for my lack of posts. It has been almost a month since the last time I posted!! There are a few things giving me issues lately. The biggest is that my computer HATES blogspot. Every time I open the website of anyones blog, let alone mine, it freaks out, freezes, shuts down, etc. It is getting really old and annoying. I have pretty much stopped attempting to blog using my computer. So until that is figured out, I have to use other people's computers, which, as you can imagine, is hard to do because then I have to plan it out as to when I blog. That's hard to do. I usually find myself with a few spare minutes and choose to blog. Sigh. So it's going to be hard. The other reason it is going to be hard and why I haven't been blogging lately is because my camera is broken. What is the point of blogging if I don't have pictures to go along with stories and especially pictures of Cailen!?!? There is no point, that's the answer. Ok, so there really is more to blogging than that and I just need to be more creative AND I just need to get more on top of this all, but I think I am going to focus on getting a new camera before I miss all sorts of events (aka my birthday in a few weeks and my sister moving away in a week). That being said, I hope to be back soon. But if someone would like to send a new computer my way........that could help speed things up and would be much appreciated, thanks! :)