Random Pictures

Nothing too exciting! Leftover Valentine pictures & bowling pictures. WHERE IS SUMMER!!!!! My bulbs are starting to sprout which is a huge shocker cuz I dug them up from my old house and planted them in okay dirt just to see what they would do and out of the 100 it looks like 30 of them made it!

Valentine Photo Shoot

DISCOVERY GATEWAY CHILDRENS MUSEUM

We took the kids to Discovery Gateway Friday night
and they LOVED it. Their was so much for them to do.
I spent my night chasing Austin to every exibit. He was
so hyper! All 3 of them were asleep before we even got
out of the parking lot.

This is Austin's new thing if he's too lazy to actually
hold his blanket. This way he doesn't have to hold it,
but its still very close by. Sometimes he'll walk around
like this and it will drop in his face and then you will hear
a huge THUNK! when he runs into the wall.













All guzzied up for preschool!

Happy Valentines Day!

So David comes home from work yesterday(Feb. 5) and says, "Happy Valentines Day honey!"

Poor guy.

ADVICE FROM A 7 YEAR OLD

As I'm giving Aubree my latest Gymboree splurge:
AUBREE: Mom! Quit buying me new clothes! I have too much! You need to start saving money.
ME: I promise I won't buy any more clothes until summer
AUBREE: Promise?
ME: I promise


The kids were playing downstairs so I thought I had a few minutes to read my latest novel. I sat down for maybe 2 minutes when they came running in the livingroom.

ME: ARGH!!! Why can't I ever have time to read?!
AUBREE: Because you had kids!

So true so true!

Thought This Was Cute

This morning I went in to wake the girls for school and found that Addie (who will be 4 end of April) had wet the bed. She put a towel over the spot (made Aubree sleep there of course), changed her clothes and put a pull up on all by herself!

OUR TRIP TO ARIZONA

9 REASONS NEVER TO TRAVEL WITH 3 KIDS: (in no particular order)

* 12 hours of : Don't touch me! and Austin's pulling my hair (Austin thought this was hilarious so it was hard to punish him), lots of screaming,whining, and of course..Aubree every 30 minutes: ARE WE THERE YET?

* I left my wallet on top of the car while I was getting gas and forgot about it. So now some homeless guy in Vegas is enjoying a great meal with my cash and photos of my kids I can't replace!

* At our hotel in Vegas the "door" that was covering up the air conditioner fell on Austin & smashed his toe! Hotel management came up and took a report and took pictures of his foot. We got a free room but Austin was miserable the rest of the day and his nail will probably fall off.

* 12 hours of news talk radio on the presidential campaign (McCain & Romney are neck and neck in case anyone wanted to know!)

* "I have to go potty" as I look outside my window at the never ending desert of dirt and bushes

* We took the wrong freeway when we were almost to my parents so that delayed us another 30 minutes. (When you have been in a car for 12 hours 30 minutes is a VERY long time!)

* Aubree & Austin got pink eye

* Austin's quart of milk was spilling all over the foot of the front seat & I didn't realize it until we got there. It drenched my brand new NON WATERPROOF purse!

* As we are driving back home into a snowstorm I hear David say "We need to move."

That was the worst of it. We actually had a really great time. The weather was gorgeous at a sunny 65! I was loving it and wanted to be outside all of the time. We went to the Phoenix Zoo which was great and probably one of the best zoo's I have been to (besides San Diego of course!) their was a merry go round and a huge play area for the kids that was a treehouse. Aubree & Addie had a ball climbing through everything & Austin explored dragging his blanket everywhere in the dirt. It was a great escape from being cooped up in the house. Then my family watched the kids so Dave and I could escape ourselves. We stayed at The Point Hilton Resort in Phoenix. David complained the whole time that it wasn't a Marriot. On the way back we stayed in Vegas at the Planet Hollywood Hotel (where Austin smashed his toe) we took the kids to the Fao Schwartz toy store which was 3 stories! We had dinner at Cheesecake Factory and walked around the mall. It was great spending time with family I haven't seen in awhile and getting away from the cold.

Check out my Slide Show!

Random Pictures

Austin loves to suck on a toothbrush & eat toothpaste.
He knows he's not supposed to do it so this time I caught
him hiding in between the desk.
Addie enjoying her kitchen

Addie waiting for the next Gymboree shipment
The kids in their bath towels
Austin's train set

Happy Birthday to Me!

So yesterday was my birthday and my sister came over and brought me flowers. When David got home our conversation went a little something like this:
DAVE: Who's flowers are those?
ME: Mine
DAVE: From who?
ME: Charity
DAVE:(completely confused & puzzled look) Why?!
ME: Today is my birthday
DAVE: face goes white and I get the deer in headlights look

Yes folks you have heard it right! For the past 10 birthdays David has forgotten 8 out of the 10 birthdays (I'll give him the benefit of the doubt!) Birthdays were never big in his family so he doesn't get the whole birthday thing. Last year I got so fed up that I totally freaked out on him. So this year he took me out for my birthday the day after Christmas. He knew it was coming up so he figured he'd better do it now before he forgot. Still, on the actual day, he forgot. I feel a shopping trip coming on...

Tagged

I've been tagged 3 times and have never done it (because I think I am boring and nobody cares)

* I don't want to be 28 because I feel I haven't done anything with my life except being a mom and yes I feel I am "just a mom", but yet I sit and do nothing about it. So pray its January 3rd FOREVER!!!!

* I love to shop. I don't like to stick to a budget. If Dave gives me a shopping budget I will always go over. If I want it I will buy it no matter what the cost. I love Gymboree ( I am waiting for my recent splurge as we speak. So is Addie. She keeps on looking out the window asking "Is it here yet?) That doesn't help the Gymboree obsession when my 3 year old loves clothes. I have always had an obsession with baby clothes. Even in high school I would go into Baby Gap and look at the baby clothes...maybe I shouldn't have said that out loud! ( Another quirk is I HATE it when the things I want at Gymboree are sold out. So on the day a sale starts I have butterfly's in my stomach, my hands are shaking as I"m typing in what I want, and I get up at 3am to make sure I get it before it sells out. I have also been known to call every Gymboree store to find a certain dress, put it on hold, and driven an hour to get it!)...maybe I shouldn't have said that one out loud either!

* I love to make lists. I have a list for everything. I only buy things that are on my lists (that way if I spent too much I tell Dave "But it was on my list!" Somehow that makes me feel better.

* I love to decorate my house. I love Tai Pan, Z Gallery, and Ikea. Dave walked in the bedroom the other day and saw me sitting on the bed staring at the wall. At least to him I was staring at the wall, but to me I was thinking about how I should decorate the wall.

*I love Pottery Barn. I have a binder thats filled with ripped out pages of Pottery Barn ideas whether its something I want to buy or a decorating idea.

* I love to organize my house and want all of my closets organized with baskets and bins. (I didn't always used to be this way. In high school you couldn't see my bedroom floor but I knew where everything was!)

* I love to cook. I am always watching food network and trying a new recipe at least once a week. So now my new favorite store is Sur La Table at the Gateway. (Did I mention I love to shop?) This is also a new one. Growing up I would always get teased that I was going to kill my husband. This was something that my dad actually warned David about before we got married. So I taught myself how to cook by watching cooking shows and I think it has paid off: David is still alive! And Aubree always says that I'm a great chef. Maybe I'm watching Food Network a little too much!

* I have to be on time. I have to have a routine ( I love FlyLady!) I will be a frantic crazy lady in the morning trying to hurry everyone to get ready screaming "Hurry we are going to be late!!!" Then we sit at church for about 15 minutes waiting for it to start. This is Daves pet peeve about me. If he notices in the car what time it really is he will drive around the neighborhood until its actually time for church to start (which of course makes me want to ring his neck!)

* I try to save money on groceries so I have more money to shop. (who doesn't do that?) I love Costco and I love buying in bulk. I love to get a good bargain. I have gone 6 weeks without going to the grocery store.

* I HATE football season

* I love taking a hot bath and eat ice cream. (Its the only way I can eat ice cream because I get cold!) If we go out for ice cream the heaters have to be on full blast.

* I love anything romantic: Pride & Prejudice, Walk to Remember, Phantom ( Except I can't watch them with David cuz during the mushy parts he starts dancing around the living room saying "Lets make love like sea otters"(hence the reason why I like romance movies! Gotta get it somewhere!)

* I USED to play the violin and piano. I was actually 1st chair violin in Junior High and High school for some of the concerts. I was always getting asked to play at events and would get signed up for talent shows whether I wanted to or not! I miss playing. Sadly its been so long I will never be able to play the way I used to. 14 years of practicing, private lessons, competitions, down the tubes!!!

WoW! Enough about me! I am now tagging Paula, Charity, and Shellee

Merry Christmas!!

Wow! All that waiting and now its all over! We had a great Christmas this year with know major illness! Last year we all had the flu. We would open a present, run to the bathroom, open another present, run to the bathroom. Aubree woke up Christmas Eve morning with a huge grin on her face. I had the whole day planned so it would keep them busy. We made a Gingerbread House, made & decorated cookies, and then they made their Christmas presents for each other. We had a yummy dinner and then it was time to open Christmas Eve Pj's from Grandma Jensen. We then watched The Polar Express which I think is the ultimate Christmas Eve movie. I won't let my kids watch it until Christmas Eve. Finally it was time for bed. We put them to bed right at 8pm but they were so worked up they didn't fall asleep until 10pm! Dave and I laid presents out (put that darn kitchen together!) and went to bed around midnight. Then the girls squealed into our room at 12:50am. They didn't fall asleep until 2:30 and then were up again at 7:15 which was much better. We called G/Grandpa Cheney and they rushed over to tape the event. The girls got a jewelry box, a puppy in a purse (they're favorite), a kitchen set, a cooking set, a tea set, barbie clothes, each got a Barbie, a Lil pet Shop set, and a dress up trunk. Austin got a Rocking Horse, a race car set , and a train set. (He doesn't have any toys of his own otherwise this would be a lot for a 20 month old who has no clue what is going on!) I got Dave a signed John Beck & Ty Detmer football card and I told him to count our yard plan for mine (which was probably a huge relief to him!) I made Cinnamon rolls and peppermint hot chocolate for breakfast and its now 4pm and I am still in my pj's! I've been playing with toys! Also it snowed on Christmas Eve! I hope everyone enjoyed their Christmas as much as we did! Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve & Christmas Day

Summary of Pictures

The slide show blocked out my captions so I'll do a quick recap: The pictures are from Aubree's 1st grade Christmas Party, Addie's preschool party, treats for the neighbors, the kids before church, and the Nutcracker Ballet at Capital Theatre (everytime a new dancer would come out on the stage, you would hear a big gasp from Addie,"I want that dress!"

Merry Christmas!

CHRISTMAS CARD 2007

~ Cheney 2007 Newsletter ~

I didn't send out a newsletter with my Christmas cards this year so I'll just post one.

Nothing to exciting with us this year other than the move. Since David worked an hour & 15 minutes away the commute was driving him nuts so in February we put some money down to reserve a lot. In April we sold our house (in 3 days!) thats really the only thing I can brag about because David had it listed for the lowest price possible because he didn't want to risk paying 2 house payments so we broke even. But the new owners let us rent it back and stay in our house until our new one was done which was HUGE for me. On April 29 they started digging the hole and on July 30th we closed. Someone broke into our house the night we closed and damaged some walls, but our builder had it fixed within days. We were the 2nd ones to move into the neighborhood and now we're surrounded by neighbors with lots of kids.

Dave has been at American Express for 18 months and is doing very well there. He says he will never leave the company. His old boss from Disney also works there and his wife reports to David. Also in the last couple of days one of Davids good friends from BYU was just hired on and will be working right next to Dave. David & 2 of his friends have started their own accounting firm. I've kept quiet about this one cuz I thought it was all talk for awhile and you never know when you go into business on your own, but now they have an ad in the yellow pages and have 2 clients already. He's also very busy with school and has class once a week at Westminister College.

Aubree loves her friends at school but hates to do schoolwork. She actually does very well in school considering its so hard to get her to do her homework. This past year she has enjoyed soccer and dance. Sadly she doesn't want to sign up for soccer anymore because she wants the ball the whole entire time and wants to score all of the goals. So we're still looking for her sport.

Addie is in preschool and LOVES it and adores her teacher. Addie is my challenge right now. She is so different from Aubree. She is extremely shy and likes things done her way. The other night she woke up screaming at 3am (this is her usual routine. Theirs always something bugging her) she didn't want to sleep in her bed because she said it was "poo-poo" but I couldn't get her to sleep in the trundle because it didn't have pink sheets. Or she gets upset if Aubree doesn't sleep on her pillow. Or she has to have 3 bowls of cereal in 3 separate bowls and she assigns certain cereals to certain bowls and heaven help me if I put the cereal in the wrong bowl she assigned it to!!!!

Austin is your typical 20 month old: into everything and throws everything-mostly food. He loves playing with Aubree and adores his blanket. All 3 of my kids have been attached to their blankies but nothing like Austin's. He's probably been one of my best babies and is more like Addison socially. He is definitely a mama's boy and will sit on my lap for a very long time (for his age) and watch TV clutching his blanket and sucking his index finger (also a new one with my kids!) His favorite thing to do is to shoot hoops with his BYU hoop in his room.

As for me- my new hobby is a hot bath with a pint of Ben & Jerry's. I try to keep up with my scrapbooks (Aubree has 9, Addie has 3, Austin has 2 and the family has 10) I think I'm going to start doing a digital family album. The latest family album looks pretty boring cuz I"m kind of sick of scrapbooking by that point. I'm excited to start planting flowers and working on our yard plan and thats about it!

Merry Christmas to me! Thou shalt not covet Pottery Barn! I have been waiting months for this quilt to go on sale! So with some help from Ebay my bedroom is a little less boring. Aubree & Addie's room was clean so I took some pictures.

So we finally got the yard in. We had a landscape architect come out and draw us up a plan so we weren't throwing sod everywhere. So all the rest is going to be gardens, playground, and basketball court. It was fun walking around the yard with her, telling her all the things we wanted to do with our yard. I'm sure it will look great on paper! Actually being able to do it all is another story! Now if we can keep the grass alive until we get sprinklers in..........

My B/F from high school Dawn (Knudsen) dropped by with her family. They were visiting her brother in law who lives 10 minutes from my house. They stopped by last year but it was more of a drive for them. So it was great to see her again. I've known her since 5th grade and she was in my wedding. Boy have we've been through a lot! ( I changed the pic to b/w cuz I didn't like the way I looked!)

So I hope everyone had a great thanksgiving! We had it at the inlaws. I was supposed to bring a veg. dish so I made sweet potatoes and made 2 batches so I wouldn't look bad if we ran out. Come to find out my mother in law made sweet potatoes too! So thats what we have been eating for the last couple of days!

Look what I did all by myself!! David's sister had leftover sod so we bribed the sod guy to drop it off at my house! So we have been scrambling to get the yard ready. Yesterday we had some top soil dumped and found someone to spread it. Some family members are coming over tommorow but I got a little anxious. I laid 2 palets by myself and then crashed in the hot tub. Then my 2 neighbors came over (who are girls) and we laid 2 more palets! At the end of the day their were only 3 palets left and we started with 9! So tommorow I'm going to sit on the porch and cheer everyone on cuz I've done my part! We also decorated the house for Christmas. I let the girls decorate the tree that was in the den.

California on Fire

For those of you who came to visit us while we lived in California might remember where this picture was taken. This was our favorite place to take a walk and was walking distance from our apartment and look at it now! My friend who still lives there took this picture & had it on her blog.

Jazz Game

David & I had lower bowl seats to the Jazz game last night. David had fun. I made sure I clapped at the right times. A couple of weeks ago we went to a charity banquet that American Express had been invited to. We were 2 tables away from Pres. Monson's table and some other General Authoritys. It was pretty neat. And the food was fantastic. David kept on saying he was going to go shake Pres. Monson's hand but I told him we weren't worthy so to sit his rear end down!

Aubree's Birthday

HAPPY 7TH BIRTHDAY AUBREE!

We took Aubree to Build-A-Bear for her birthday. For those of you who don't know about it ,it's a "bear factory" where they pick their own bear, take it to the stuffing machine to get it stuffed, then give it a bath, and then pick out an outfit. They had tons of clothes and accesories. Aubree had a ton of fun and loved picking out an outfit for her bear and stuck to my rules. Addie on the other hand wanted everything and threw a huge fit because we were trying just to stick to one outfit. At first she couldn't decide on even one then narrowed it down to 2 and thats where the fit began. Finally David just threw up his hands and gave in (I'll blame it on him). This is defintely a once a year activity! I made Aubree a princess castle cake that took 2 hours to decorate and then I was up every couple of hours because I was worried it was going to fall apart! Tommorow I'm having a couple of her friends over to eat it.
We had Aubree's parent teacher conference a couple of days ago and the first thing her teacher said was "Aubree is a pill! I can't get her to stop talking!" That's our Aubree! She's doing really well in school even though she hates it. She loves playing with her neighbor friends who are also in her class. She loves pink and purple and loves to make crafts and hang them all over the playroom. She loves playing with Austin and going to the football games with her dad. We love our little girl and we can't believe that she's 7! Next year she will be baptized! Crazy!

BEWARE!..........Lots of Photos!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

After all the carnivals, trunk-or-treating, and school parties, I'm usually all Halloweened out by the time its actually Halloween day. Aubree & Addison had a blast at their school parties (me & my neighbor did Aubree's class) and on Halloween they were so hyper from all the candy I thought I was going to loose my mind! After we went trick-or-treating I let them pick out 5 pieces of candy and I threw the rest away & today we will take them to the toy store. As usual after every holiday when we are tucking Aubree in bed she always asks,"Mom whats the next holiday?" Let me breath for a minute......