September 15, 2013... Our 12th Anniversary!

 I met Tory in February of 2001.  He had just finished school and got hired on by Micron the previous September.

We met through the institute on Valentine's Day, and found out that we were living in the same apartment complex!

Our friendship grew and we started to date!

Looking back now, I see that so much of our courtship was centered around the temple... at that time in my life I was preparing to go through the temple for my own personal ordinances and went there every week. When we first met Tory helped me move into my apartment and was imminently impressed that I was decorating my walls with temple pictures.  We saw in each other the qualities we were looking for in an eternal companion.  We went to the temple together often.

In May, 2001 He proposed to me.  We had just finished a late temple session together, and before we headed home He wanted to walk around the temple grounds.  Since the gates were closed and locked...  I saw no harm in squeezing through them to look at the fountain... (we weren't gonna hurt anything...)...We fit!  He sat with me on a bench then got down on one knee and presented me with a ring and asked if I would marry him!

I said yes! To my surprise He had already asked my dad's permission, so when we went to share the news with them they already knew!

 It has been a wonderful 12 years. I couldn't have imagined someone could love me so much! Tory is an amazing, dedicated, and loving man who gives everything he has to his family and his Heavenly Father.

 We have 4 beautiful children... They love their dad!  He's such a good dad!

Tory and I each had a members of our families on missions at the time of our engagement. Jeremy was due home in August, and my sister Anna was due home in October (I think), and My brother Derek had another year to go.  Tory hadn't seen Jeremy since before his own mission, (being almost 2 years apart, they missed each other by a few weeks between Him coming home and Jeremy leaving!) so we decided to wait for Jeremy.  Anna got permission to come home a little early, so we waited for her to, but Derek was going to have to miss it!

 We were married on September 15, 2001.  It was only four days after 9-11 attack. because all the flights in the United States were grounded my florist had to pull some strings to get me the flowers I wanted at my wedding... I didn't even notice! They were perfect.

 Flights grounded also meant a delay in our honeymoon... Tory had planned to take me to Hawaii.  Lots of family members were concerned about us "Leaving the Main Land" at a time like this and wanted us to change our plans!  Tory wouldn't have it... I'm glad.  We were married on Saturday and flights were grounded until Monday. We were supposed to be in Hawaii on Sunday but one day less was better than nothing.

We basically had the island to ourselves. Tourists had cleared out and Oahu seemed almost deserted compared to its normal state.  Just us and the locals!

Ten years went by, we celebrated our anniversary and then a month later Tory got sick. I almost lost him. The two years that followed were some of the hardest times we had face yet. It took twice as long for him to heal from his Paracarditis than what the Dr's predicted.

I thank my Heavenly Father everyday that Tory is still here with me!  I can't imagine what life would be like on this earth without my eternal companion by my side!

I'm grateful for these last 12 years, and I'm excited for the many year to come!  We are so blessed.  I love my Tory.

Thanks for being you!

8-28-13 Splash Park!

 Two days after the first day of School, I met my sister Anna at a splash park in Meridian.

 We took a lunch for our kids and hung out for a little bit.

Settler's Park is one of my favorite parks in our area!

 It's usually very busy in the summer but since school started, it wasn't crowded at all!

 I was just snapping pictures of my kids as fast a my camera would take them, hoping to get some fun shots, and I got this one of Zack. The water turned on just as he walked over that spot.
I didn't even realized I got that shot until I looked back through my pictures.

Just enjoying the last hot days of Summer!

First Day of School

August 27,2013

My Boys just started a new year of school!

After a summer of fun: camping, water skiing, and lots of time swimming at Roaring Springs water park, it's time to get back to life in school. 

I'm grateful they heave each other at school. It will be hard when Chase gets to middle school and won't have his big brother to look out for him. But I guess He'll have to step up and watch out for his little sister when she is old enough to get there!                                                                                                     

                                                                                                                                         Chase is 9 years old and in the 4th grade.

Chase is excited to be in the same class as one of his

Best friends: Trumen! They were in the same class in 

kindergarten but haven't been together since. So He is

Looking forward to that. The playground is split because of the building design, so now Chase is on the "other side" of the playground. He seemed disappointing that he wouldn't be with his brother during recess!

Tyler is 7 a
nd starting 2nd grade! He never ceases to surprise me.
I usually expect changes in his routine to upset him, but he was excited to go back to school. He has a lot of support at school and gets to be in the same classroom that he was in last year. There is also a teachers aid that looks after him and helps him get where he need to be throughout his day and I'm grateful for her.


It warms my heart to see Chase being such a protective big brother! I dropped them off this morning and watched as Chase put his arm around Ty and lovingly took him to his class room!


I love my boys and hope they have a wonderful year!

Summer of 2013!

 We started what feels like summer in April....
Chase had his 3rd year of soccer.
Practices twice a week, and Games every weekend
for about 6 weeks.

 Then we had 2 Birthdays in May. Zackery turned 2 on May 10th. The loves cars and trucks of all shapes and sizes.

He always plays with hot wheels, so for this birthday we focused on big trucks...


I found a really big fire truck and he loved it.
I think is is actually bigger than he is. And of course what would a 2 year old party be without a first tricycle!

Tyler turned 7 two days after Zackery's birthday!
And true to his personality he still loves Mario!

So I made Mario cupcakes for his class at school
and then we went to play at planet kid.

When He got home I had a Mario Kart cake ready for him!

Mostly he got plush Mario characters! You might be thinking that is a little over kill on "Mario" but he loves them. But I had to plan months in advance and order all of them off of ebay from China. They are hard to find for a reasonable price in the Sates.


If I had to do it all over again I would do the same thing.

 Then on June 7th Tory's niece Aspen graduated from High School.  So naturally we took a trip to Elko, Nevada to support her, but this trip we decided to leave the kids!

 I was a nice break. There wouldn't be much for them to do in Elko and sitting through a graduation ceremony outside in 90 degree weather wouldn't work well either.

Tory took me around to some hiking areas he liked when he lived there.

 It was nice to be with the Hebdon family again. We don't get to see them as much since we are all about 3-4 hours away from each other.

One are still had snow!

 I am only into the first month and a half of summer and have already spent over an hour on this blog post and Camrey and Zack are crying at me! No wonder I haven't blogged in a year.


This was our Vacation to Willawa Lake in Oregon.

 I have over a hundred pictures but this will have to do for a preview since my kids have run out of patients!

We had a lot of fun but the details will have to wait for another post. To all those who have missed my updates over the last year, it is my goal to keep up my blog this year so keep watching!

Given's Hot Springs (June 1)

We wanted to go camping with our little family this weekend and decided to go camp out at Given's Hot springs. You can camp and swim at the pool, and it was only about an hour away!

We got there; set up our camp on the grass, had a swing set and a picnic table, and bathrooms very close by. Then we went swiming. It was quite a bit warmer than we expected that day. If I remember right, the temperature never got below 70 all night! So swiming at the HOT SPRINGS was almost too warm. but the kids still had fun, and we got some popcicles when we were done.

That night turned out to be one of the hardest camping nights we have ever had... First of all it is never easy with a 1 yr old who just wants the comfort of their own bed, and an almost three year old who sings and tosses herself to bed for hours every night, but doing it in a tent with all of us was horiable.  Chase and Tyler were so good and just layed quiet.

 

Tyler is so good at falling asleep. He can dround out anything, and was the first one to fall asleep and slept all night.  We finally got Zack to sleep, but he woke up around 2, and finally at 3:00 in the morning I took him for a drive because nothing else was working.

 The wind blew all night; it rained, and if the weather and the kids didn't keep us up, the semitrucks driving by did! Then to top it all off we happened to place our tent in direct light of the the super tall lamp post that stayed on ALL NIGHT!!! It wasn't even dark, which is partly why Zack had such a hard night. But in the end we survived. I think we had fun, and we camped again a couple weeks later!



May Birthdays

Zack's 1st birthday...

 Ball...

 Keys... he loves to slime my car keys so I got him a set of his own!

 And of course a truck! Something to push and ride while he learns to walk.

 Then we had Tyler's birthday right after Zack's! Zackery's was born May 10th, Tyler was born on May 12th. So we just decided to have two parties back to back.

 Where are all my pictures?... I was having a hard time taking pictures and video taping at the same time so I gave the camera to someone else and this is all I can find! 

I even made him a cute Pacman cake... where is it? It wasn't easy finding pacman toys. I found a plug-n-play joystick pacman game on eBay that I ordered for Tyler... he loves it, but the only other pacman item I could find was two little ghost tins that had little candies in them at Toys R Us. Finally a few days before the party I was looking around Deseret Industries for fun and stumbled across this Pacman plush toy $.50!! Lucky find!!