What a fun Holiday weekend!

I pretty much downloaded all of these pictures backwards! So, you might want to read the post first and then look at the pictures it might make more sense. :0)


Decorating the tree. Ashley does not look thrilled. :)

Our tree is ugly to be perfectly honest. But we cut it down ourselves and that's all that matters. :0)

Karly opening her birthday presents.

One of the ten cars in the parade.

My Dad and Haley at the parade.

So cute. Can you tell they are happy?

Jake is in love. She is his little baby.

Every little girl pup should have a hot pink heart collar, don't ya think?

Making our advent chains with Jake's family. Good times..

I love my brothers. :)

Abbey is wearing my Dad's glasses from the 80's. Aren't they sexy?

My brother-in-law Shaun, and my niece Parker.

My Mom and Dad. Apparently my Dad is really excited. :)

Aw, I love my family.

Sistery love... can you feel it?

This past weekend was so much fun. We were pretty busy, but it was all so much fun that I didn't mind. On Thanksgiving we went to my family's house this year. We had a great dinner and had lots of fun laughing and visiting. I love spending time with my siblings and my parents. It's funny how you grow up together and you bug the crap out of each other, but when you are older you want to see them more and spend more time with them. At least that's how I feel.... Thanksgiving night we went over to Jake's Aunt Sharol's house and made our countdown chains for Christmas. We do this every year and the kids love it. I was lucky enough to hold my nephew Payton and rock him to sleep for awhile. He is so sweet and cuddly. Oh man, I love newborn babies. No, no, I'm not having one. We did get a newborn, but it isn't a human. We got a puppy!!

On Thanksgiving night Jake was looking through the KSL ads at puppies because he has literally been bugging me to get another dog for quite awhile. I held strong for a long time. I was not going for it. After he stated his case (Bear would love a friend, the girls will help take care of it, think of how much you love dogs!, etc. etc.) I said that I would look through the ads with him. Well what do you know, a little half boxer half black lab puppy was for sale for twenty bucks!! We called the guy and he said to come on over. Within half an hour we were back home with our two month old puppy Sadie. All I have to say is that she is SO adorable. She is so cuddly and sweet. She is a puppy though... Let's just say that early this morning I headed to the store to get her lots of bones and chew toys. Thankfully she is laying off of the household items and chewing on her bone. She's had a few accidents which is to be expected. Hopefully she will be fully house trained soon. For my sanity I hope it's very soon. She is actually doing pretty good. She is eating like a little pig though. She is pretty tiny so I'm sure she'll fatten up fast.

The day after we got Sadie we went down to Manti with my parents to stay overnight. We were heading down there because we were going to go and cut Christmas trees in Spring City Canyon early the next morning. We had such a great time! We drove down there with the kids and Sadie, (Bear got to spend the night with Abbey) and we had dinner, checked into the motel, and watched a cute little Christmas parade in Manti that night. I think there was a total of ten cars in it! It was really cute. I love the small town life. I wish I could live there.

Afterwards my Mom's friend Cathy who owns the motel gave us free ice cream cones from her ice cream shop and we rented some movies. We spent the night watching movies and relaxing. It was nice. We got up early the next morning and waited in line to cut our tree. Let me rephrase that, Jake waited in line while I sat in the car with the girls and Sadie. It was freezing!! We ended up getting a tree pretty quickly and we headed down to Fat Jacks pizza before we headed home. Oh man, it was good. I love Fat Jacks. I refuse to call it Roy's pizza and pasta. It is still Fat Jacks to me. I don't care if it has a new owner. Anyways, I love it. It reminds me of my college days at Snow.
On Sunday we celebrated Karly's 6th birthday. I can't believe my little Honey is six already! Where does the time go? She is getting so big and is such a help to us. Karly has such a tender heart and she is so loving. We are so thankful she is a part of our family.

Anyways, we let her open her presents before church and then we had dinner and cake and ice cream later that night. We also decorated our Christmas tree and watched the Elf last night. It was some good family bonding time. All in all it was a really fun birthday weekend. I feel like the Christmas season is going to be busy, but a great one. I love this time of year. I got all of my decorations up this morning and the tree is all decorated and I love it. Hopefully Sadie won't undecorate my tree anytime soon. We'll see about that.... :)

Hmmm, what have we been up to lately?

The past week or so has been pretty crazy in the Youngdell home. Between Halloween, sick kids, church activities, and fun stuff it's been pretty wild. First off Halloween was good! We took the kids trick or treating before Jake went to work and they had such a great time. Ashley really loved it! Whenever someone answered the door she would say, "I'm a ballerina!" and then she would invite herself into their home. It was pretty hilarious! After trick or treating for about an hour we came home and Jake went to work. (He's still working TONS of overtime and I miss him.. sniff, sniff...) Anyways, Haley and Karly had a ton of fun passing out candy to the trick or treaters and I did my new favorite thing. Crocheting!! My mother-in-law taught me how and I love it. I am making a blanket for Jake for Christmas. I have no idea if it will be done in time, so it might end up being a birthday present. Pictures to come later on. I bet you can hardly contain your excitement....:)

Here's some cute Halloween pictures of us and the kiddies. Halloween was so much fun with them.

I love this picture. Karly is Sleeping Beauty, Ashley is a ballerina and Haley is Hannah Montana.

I love my girls.

What a cute little ballerina. Since it was kind of cool outside all we did for her costume was put on a tutu. Can it get any easier than that? I think not....

This past week Ashley has been sick with the stomach flu and it was not fun. Today Karly has been complaining of a stomach ache and I think she is going to have it too. Oh the joys of motherhood. Looks like I'm on puke patrol again. I swear it seems like everyone I know has someone sick in their family! I'm really not liking this.
On to better news.... Guess what I did last night? I went with some girlfriends to dinner and then to So You Think You Can Dance concert! It was such a great night. We talked and laughed a ton at dinner and then we headed to the concert and it was awesome. I really enjoyed seeing the dancers live. They are amazing! We are going to make this a tradition and go again next year.

Dinner at Chili's was tons of fun. Lots of visiting and laughing!

Suzie and Rachel.

I got some pretty awesome pictures. Believe me, I wasn't this close. We had pretty good seats but I think it would be totally worth it to splurge and get a really close seat so you can actually see their faces. All in all it was such a fun night and I am already looking forward to next year!

Picture of the week.

I told Haley that she is far too young to be making fun of me already. Who knew that balloons could provide such great entertainment and fun for the whole family?

P.S. Her shirt is totally filthy in this. I promise I do laundry. Just look at my couch in the background that is loaded with it.

Home is where the heart is.

Two years ago today we moved into this house. When I think back on that day I think of how nervous I was. I remember Jake and I cleaning out the last few things in our old house and how sad I was. I literally walked through every room and cried and cried. I loved that house. Jake and I started our life there. We literally got married and I moved in that day. That house was really small but it holds so many wonderful memories. I remember thinking right after we were married that we had a three bedroom house all to ourselves! How exciting! Within five years we had three kids and that house was full!
We brought all three of our girls home to that house. Some of my fondest memories are of my girls learning to roll over, crawl and walk in that house. We put a lot of work into our home and we made it ours. I loved my decorations, the colors of the paint in all of the rooms, etc. My yard had lots of flowerbeds and the maple tree that we planted the very first year that we were married. It was comfortable and we loved it, but we knew it wasn't where we should stay.
It's hard when you've been somewhere for six years and all of the sudden you leave it all behind.

When we found this house it was pretty much a mess. The front and backyard were completely dead, the inside of the house was so old and outdated. I wrote a marathon blog about the first couple of weeks in our house and it was a nightmare. Anything that could go wrong, did go wrong. ( I think it is one of my October posts in '07.) The trials didn't just last two weeks. It seemed like life was really hard for about six months. I remember crying numerous times to Jake and wondering why we moved. I missed our old house so badly. I told my friend that I felt like I broke up with my house. I had that dull ache inside when I thought about it and I found myself driving by it all of the time. I never did doubt our decision to move into this house. I felt complete peace when we found it and looked through it. Jake and I knew this house was meant for our family.

I must say that when we moved in we were welcomed so nicely. We had tons of people bring over treats, bread, apples, etc. We had many people stop by and introduce themselves and welcome us to the neighborhood. I felt one hundred percent comfortable in this house since the day we moved in. With time this house has developed into something that we really love. Obviously we have fixed it up and it feels like home now, but it's more than that. I love the layout of the house, the neighborhood, the view of the valley from my kitchen window. Most of all I love the peace and happiness that I feel here. I am so glad that my sweet husband Jake was inspired to come and look at this house. I know that we were meant to move here and raise our family here. I love this house and I hope that we will stay here forever.

I love my girls.

This past week has been rough. You know how my last post was all cheery and happy because Jake was working less hours? Um yeah, that lasted all of one week. Last week two Foreman's went on the deer hunt so Jake and the other foreman Simon had to cover for them. Guess how many hours Jake worked last week? Not forty, not fifty, not sixty,.... Did you guess seventy two? Ding, ding, ding! You are correct. Yes my friends, seventy two hours in one week! It's been painful and hard but we are almost at the end of it! Ok, I can't complain and cry because 1. He has a job. 2. Our overtime check was AWESOME. 3. I am blessed that I can stay at home so if he has to work tons and tons of hours at least I can be at home with our cute kiddies.

Speaking of our cute kiddies I wanted to share some funny stuff that they have been saying. Last week Haley was complaining that she didn't want to go to school and Karly pipes up and said, "Yeah, me neither!" Then she paused for a second and she goes, "Oh wait, I love school. Never mind." That gave me a good laugh. Funny how Haley was complaining about school but the other morning I woke up to her nudging me and asking me if it was time to go to school. My first indication was that it wasn't because it was still dark outside.. I said, "No Haley, it's still nighttime. Go back to bed. " She then said, "Oh man, we are having PE today and I am soooo excited!" How cute is that? Who knew PE could bring such joy to a 2nd grader?

Ashley has been sick all weekend but surprisingly she has been in good spirits. This little girl melts my heart. She is so lovable and sweet. She came up to me yesterday and gave me a hug and she goes, "Mommy, you're my sweethawt." (She has followed in Karly's footsteps and can't say her 'r''s yet and I love it. I have to add it to her quotes so you can get the full effect. )

Anyways, it made my day. I loved it. Then the other day we were sitting in the recliner just rocking and watching a show and she gives me a big hug and she goes, "Mommy, you are my big girl!" Ha ha! She's dang lucky she is two and not older or I might have my feelings hurt a bit. :)

All I have to say, is that no matter how hard life gets or how picked on I feel at times my kids always make me smile. What would I do without these hilarious little girls?

Happy Days are here again..

Ok, so the title seems misleading. We have always been happy, but now I am exceptionally happy! Jake is now working 5 days a week, 8 hr shifts, with weekends off!!!! People, this is huge. My husband has had the craziest schedule for years. When we first were married he worked eight hour shifts and that lasted for maybe two months. Then he got put on twelve hour shifts. Can I tell you how long a twelve hour day seemed when it was just me with no kids? It was insanely long. He has worked twelve hour shifts for the past 8 years so I am totally use to it. In fact sometimes I feel like the twelve hours just flew by...
Here are the following reasons for my happiness. a) Jake has weekends off now. He use to work two weekends out of the month and I hated the fact that he missed church. b) He does a three week rotation. One week days, one week swings, one week graves. Not bad in my opinion! c) We get to see him a lot more now! This week he is on days and yesterday I picked him up at 3:30 and he had the entire evening with us.
I don't want to get my hopes up because I know they can change their schedule back at anytime, but for now I am going to enjoy having my husband home more! Ü

Oh boy.

This is what happens when Haley and Karly are suppose to be watching Ashley in the backyard.