Conference Road Trip

For General Conference, we took a two hour road trip to Ephraim, Utah. We listened for the two hour drive down, had lunch at Fat Jack's Pizza (from my college days) and then ice cream at McDonald's, and then listened to the next session on the two hour drive back to Sandy. We were actually able to listen to Conference! I think this might be a good tradition.

Abi enjoying her ice cream!

Awake, Arise, and Come Unto Christ

This is a great talk by Sheri Dew that a friend forwarded to me. Hope it lifts your spirits, too, Colleen! Sorry to single you out, but I think you're the only person who reads my blog! ;)

Mount Olympus

Grant, Stephanie (Grant's girlfriend), Josh (Steph's little bro), Joe , Neil, and Me

Saturday I hiked Mount Olympus with my brothers Neil and Grant. For my brothers, this was the 8th annual trip to the tip of Mount Olympus. I went with them in 2005 (and was sore for a week), missed last year (pregnant) and the years in between we were living out of state, but I've hiked it 3 other times. I invited Joe to come along, a little worried how hard it would be for him, but he was a trooper and didn't complain once, although Neil and I did piggy-back him a few times when we could see the exhaustion on his face. But Joe's game for next year, and I plan on being there too! Here's a picture that my dad took from their deck with his telescope. Cool!


Can you see those 6 tiny figures on the Mountain top? We're waving hello

8 Before 8

You can start your day off right if you get up and get going as soon as you wake up. I have picked 8 things (make them simple!) I do as a routine every morning before 8:00, I call it "8 Before 8"
Here's my 8AM routine:
1. Wake up at 6:00
2. Pray
3. Use the bathroom
4. Weigh-in
5. Drink 12 oz. water
6. Skin Brush and Get Dressed
7. Drink my cleansing water
8. Exercise (I'm doing P90X right now - love it)

Did you finish by 8:00? Way to go! Keep going, do 8 more things before 8:00 p.m.

My 8PM list:
1. Shower
2. Get Dressed
3. Make up and Hair
4. Study the Scriptures
5. Do a load of Laundry
6. Shine Sink
7. Play and read with my kids
8. Scrapbook for 30 minutes

Most people probably have shower and make-up in their 8 AM routine and exercise in the evening. That's great - just find what works for you.

Future Photographer

I enjoy taking pictures, but I think Hyrum enjoys it even more... Here is some of his work.
Of course there are many self portraits...

...and then there are the other things of importance to his little 5 year old self: His toy dog "Matthew" and his kindergarten backpack.

Scrapbooking Brazil

3 miles of beach with the city looking on and a rainforest preservation at each end of the bay.

How you travel with kids in Brazil! Hop in the back!


I still only do hands on scrapbooking, although today I did peek at Scrapblog to see some of the possibilities for digital scrapbooking - pretty cool. But I was at my table this last week catching up as always with preserving family memories of BYU, Virginia, and Brazil, and remembered how we didn't get many pictures of our week vacation in Brazil to Balneario Cambouriu cause my camera was out of film, and that was quite tragic cause Cambouriu was the absolute highlite of our 4 months in Brazil. Two friends of ours, Jeff and Casey, stopped by in Cambouriu on their tour of South America, and many thanks to them for catching a few pictures of us and the city and sharing them with me:















Enjoying some pao bread at a boardwalk cafe.

Happy Birthday to Abigail

Abigail turned 1 year old last week - Happy Birthday Abi!

We all celebrated and Grandma and Grandpa's house with cake and ice cream...














...presents (a new drum!)...



















....and with the adults watching Sarah Palin speak at the Republican National Convention. Party!

Mount Timpanogos

A picture of Mt. Timpanogos from the Alpine Basin to the east of it.

On Saturday August 30th I woke up at 4:30 and got ready to head to Utah County with a group of church friends. Ready to go on a hike? How about 7 miles up and 7 miles back down? Yes, this is going to be an all day event. We started the trail at 6:45 a.m and it was beautiful, I can't even begin to describe it, so here's a few pictures. It was beautiful. We reached the peak at 11:45. It was amazing to be up so high (11,441 feet) and to see all of Utah County and Utah Lake to the west, the Bingham Copper mine up North, and to the East I could see Jordanelle, Deer Creek Reservoir, Heber, what an amazing panoramic view. It's also amazing to hike that and see how much depth there is to that mountain that looks relatively two dimensional. It looks like a tent from the valley, wide coming up to the tip then going down, but there's so much depth to it, so many different peaks, there's a huge basin behind it that we climbed through, it was amazing. Shannon hikes it every year and I hope to join her in that annual tradition if we stay in Utah. Laura came, she did awesome, but her shoes weren't that good, so she slipped a few times and her ankles gave way on the way down her knee got pretty scratched and looks bad to me, but she said it doesn't hurt. She's a trooper. On the way down, wanting to try and make it a little bit of a pleasant experience for her, I decided to run the rest of the trail down and go get the car - we had to park a mile up the Alpine loop road cause the parking lot was full. The attendants at the gate for access to the canyon seemed a little too eager to tell us when we pulled up at 6:00 that the parking lot had been full since 4:30. Show offs. They were trying to make us feel bad - here we had tried to get a head start on the day and everyone else beat us to it. So we had a mile walk back to the car after we finished hiking down the trail. We were all ready to be done. I reached the bottom at 3:45, so it was 4 hours down. Pretty good time - 14 miles in 9 hours.

So that was my first time up Mount Timpanogos, loved it.

A picture of our Group in the Saddle.

Looking West down at Utah County

My first time ever seeing mountain Goats!

Me on top of the world

La Familia Montes

So I haven't posted for a while - but I have a good reason. We are hosting a family of 5 from Argentina. They've been here for about a month, and things are starting to settle into a routine enough for me to actually document some of it. I'll be posting some pics now and then of our house guests who are Pablo and Laura and their three boys, Lucas, Tomas, and Julian. With our family of 4 boys, Melodie is feeling a little outnumbered here. Abi doesn't notice or care yet. But so far so good. Laura and I are applying some FlyLady strategies and have started alternating dinner days following this menu:

Sunday - Crockpot/frozen dinner
Monday - Beef
Tuesday - Pasta/Cassarole
Wednesday - Fish/Seafood
Thursday - Chicken/Pork
Friday - New Recipe/Ethnic dish
Saturday - Pizza

Today was my turn - I love Pizza night! Easy dinner for 13 taken care of with two pizzas in the oven, yes!

5 Dangerous Things - # 4

A few weeks ago I watched this video that talks about 5 dangerous things you should let your children do. In case you don't have 10 minutes to watch it, here's a summary:

1) Play with fire
2) Own a Pocketknife
3) Throw a spear
4) Deconstruct an appliances
5) Drive a car

Here are some pics of my kids enjoying doing #4 - using cd player/radio that they broke, (although everyone has denied responsibility for it.)

Melodie did the initial unscrewing and wire clipping

Then the boys moved in for the complete destruction,
and I must say they did an excellent and thorough job.

As a side note, Corey as a computer programmer is always telling me how programming and computers are such proof to him that evolution is false. He talked to the kids about it by asking "Which do you think is more complicated? This radio, or your body?" "Body" is right. Well if people think our bodies just evolved, let's say this radio just evolved - is that possible? If lightning struck some metal or a rock and it was given enough time over millions of years, it could make something like this, right?
I highly doubt it. There needs to be a creator, a plan, and execution of that plan by the creator. That is how we were made to. There is a God, he is the Creator, he made this world and all the miraculous things in it, including each of us.

Learning to Ride a Bike

It's been about two years since my kids had their first bikes, which we gave away when we moved across country. At that time they all had training wheels. A month ago, a neighbor gave us a bike that they were no longer using, and much to Joseph and Melodie's surprise, Ethan who is 6 was able to just take of riding. How was this possible that I have a kid who can ride a bike with absolutely no effort on my part? Teaching a kid to ride a bike was on my list of parent burdens, falling into the same column as potty training. Ethan had learned his balance from riding a little razor scooter. So I went out and bought bikes for all the kids at garage sales that weekend. Joe and Mel couldn't ride and were a little jealous of Ethan and embarrassed with themselves. I told Joe to learn the scooter and then he'd be able to ride the bike. Sure enough, he got the scooter down after a few hours and then was able to take off on his bike too. Melodie also recently decided to put the effort into learning balance on the scooter, and after one hour, had the scooter down, and the next morning she was able to ride a bike. It has been the easiest for me and the best way for them to learn to ride a bike - have them practice on a scooter for balance. It's a lot easier for kids to catch themselves from falling off a scooter that's 3 inches off the ground than to stop falling off a bike.

Wesley is too little to go without training wheels, but he is starting to use the scooter!

Abi - too young for a 2 wheeler too. Cute little girl

Hyrum - Four and Feisty

Hyrum. Sweet little Hyrum. He seems like a harmless little boy, right? Smiling, happy, cute, just a timid little guy who's afraid of dogs. But looks can be deceiving. The picture above was taken probably 2 minutes before the following sequence of events. Hyrum was playing with Abi and rolled over on his face somehow and totally tweeked the right side of his glasses. I had a hard time unscrewing it to put the lense back in, but got it unscrewed, got pliers to bend the frame to have it hold the lense and was able to line it up for the screw to fit in. I was feeling rather anxious here because this was a brand spankin' new pair. His other pair just broke the nose pad off 3 weeks ago, a week for the new pair to come, so like 2 weeks new. Breathe Tiffanie. I was able to get it screwed back together, and while I was trying to do all that I heard Abi freaking out cause someone was bugging her. I went in, told Hyrum to knock it off in a firm tone, then told him his glasses were fixed and to come get them. I should have known better that to scold him right before I gave him his glasses, cause he was offended and didn't want to listen to me, thus he replied "NO! I'M NEVER WEARING MY GLASSES AGAIN!" Ok, whatever. I kinda laughed inside at what a feisty 4 year old he is, then went to continue folding the laundry. He started playing nicely with Abi, he was laughing, she was content, I figured things were cool again. After about ten minutes, he came over to the laundry room door, and turning his happy face into a scowl as he told me with defiance "I BEND MY GLASSES INTO A "W"!!!" I went to go see, sure enough, there they were bent in half into a W on the counter, to which I totally freaked out. I spanked him as I yelled "NO NO NO!" as I sent him into his room. What's another hundred bucks down the toilet? (Did I tell you Melodie accidentally flushed her glasses down the toilet a few months ago? I shall have to post that story too...) I might be able to bend them back, seeing as the pliers and tiny screw driver I had just used to repair them were still on the counter. I haven't tried yet. Ethan did this to his glasses once when he was a feisty 4 year old. So Corey says we should let Hyrum just go without glasses for a while, and hopefully he will not like not being able to see and will learn some respect. Breathe.

Update - 1 hour after this journaling therapy to calm myself down, Hyrum came in with his glasses on. They looked a little crooked, but pretty good, and he sweetly said "Mom, my glasses are not in a W now!" He had bent them back himself.

Apology accepted.