Big Lip

Kevin biffed it the other day. I wasn't exactly watching so I didn't see what happened, but he fell on our tile and must have split his upper lip open. I picked him up and he cried for a good 20 minutes. I looked down at him after about 5 minutes and my WHOLE shoulder was full of blood.
I have to admit, it was really scary because I have never seen him bleed like that. Then his lip swelled up so quickly that it scared me something else was wrong.
He had a fat lip for a couple of days, but he is fine now.

5 Year Mark

So lately I have felt quite prompted to get to the Temple more often so that I can feel God's hand in my life as I give of myself to Temple service. So today when my husband asked what I wanted to do, I decided it would be wonderfully nice to make a trip down and visit the good ol' Temple.
On our way out of town we stopped at the bank and as I wrote out the date on my deposit slip it hit me that 5 years ago today I went through the Temple for the first time.
I was so thrilled to have the opportunity to re-visit the Temple on this anniversary. I still can't believe that it has been that long, but I can say this... I am so grateful for all that I have learned these past years. What a blessing. Those of you who have been to the Temple KNOW what I mean. I am even more excited to learn more in many many years to come.

Tough Times call for Tough Knees

Life gets kinda crazy sometimes. There are times when you have no idea why some things come your way and why you have to go through such hard stuff, I am reminded of a song from an EFY CD, which says something like... when life throws things at you and you don't understand, stick to the things you know. If you stick to the things you know the Lord will fill in the rest and he will make it better. We don't always get what we want, but one thing I KNOW is that the Lord will give us what we NEED, if we let Him.
I don't understand it all, but I do understand that His love is unending. His love can comfort us. He knows each and every one of us and he certainly prepares us for things to come if we look out for the signs and let them come.
Some of you who read this will know what I am talking about and how "LIFE" is affecting us right now and some of you, actually most of you will have your own story to relate to these principles.
The only thought that comforts me is the scripture... "IF ye are prepared, ye shall NOT fear". I feel the Lord has prepared us, I will try my hardest to learn what He would have me learn, hard as it may be, I will put my faith in Him and His plan.
Thank you all for your support in this hard time.

Our New Hyundai Sonata... with WOOD TRIM

WE BOUGHT A CAR... now before you all get to excited... it is not, by any means our DREAM car. But we definitely willed and dealed to get ourselves this BEAUTY.

We never EVER thought we would say this but we bought our car from STEPHEN WADE AUTO. Originally priced at $8995 we kinda stole it for $5500.


This is the car Adam will be driving around once we get the SUV that we want. It has been a pain in the butt living two weeks without a car of our own. Also the more and more we drive this car the more and more we like it. It is reliable and has quite a bit of power to it with it's V-6 engine. We really couldn't have asked for much more, besides maybe wanting something that was a little more appealing on the outside, but who buys a car just because it looks good on the outside... Speaking of things that look good... did I mention that the car has "NICE WOOD TRIM" inside. Okay this has become a HUGE inside joke now so I will have to see if I can explain good enough to do it justice.

Our car salesman was James, from Arkansas who acts as if he has never sold a car before in his life. Even though we told him we didn't want an American made car he just kept showing them to us. So we finally find this Sonata and we test drive it and he keeps talking the car up like it is the nicest car he has ever laid eyes on and how he can't believe that it is only 7 grand especially with the NICE wood trim inside. Then at least two or three other times that night when he would be walking by or something "casually" slip in that the wood trim is just so nice. So by the end of the night when we told them that we weren't going to sign anything that night unless is was knocked down to like 5500, he acted COMPLETELY BAFFLED I'm sure he was thinking "but it's got such nice wood trim". So as we are walking away (because we were told that $6995 was the best they could do and we said NO) he walks us out to our car and says on the way "Well jeez you better get back in here soon and grab this deal cuz it's not going to last especially over the weekend, I mean it's a steal at that price " Well what he was really saying was "I am trying to pressure you into buying this car right now because you don't currently have one and this is a prime opportunity to swindle you into an okay deal, because I WANT THE COMMISSION, and I am pretty sure if you don't buy it at this price then no one else will either and that sucks for me."
So we walked away feeling pretty good about not buying it, I mean it wasn't the right deal for us and we personally don't even like the fancy wood trim, in fact if anything that should have marked the price down even more.

They called us the next morning to offer it to us for $5500, so in the end it worked out very well for us even though James about peed his pants with intimidation when Kris my brother in law (who is a car dealer) showed up to test drive it.

I just hope he was able to guess by then that we were NOT buying the car just for the "FANCY wood trim".

New Years Eve... wait wasn't that like a week ago??

We spent New Years with our game night friends. It was a blast. This is how we dressed Kevin on that night, because he was basically going straight to bed as soon as we got to the Thompsons. Aunt Mandy bought him those tigger shoes, Aunt Erin gave him the jacket (which is a little big but it's warm), and Grandma Endsley gave him the PJ's. He looked so funny cute.

Adam and I with my fresh blonde highlights... what do you think??
The whole gang!!
We're a silly bunch

Andi got us started on a challenging game of "Who can stay on the exercise ball the longest"... Ironically I don't have a picture of Andi balancing, but I do of everyone else... Enjoy!!


Jessica, about to biff it.
I'm about to meet the same fate as Jessi.
Megan was doing pretty good until...
she tried she tried to balance on her tummy... it didn't end well.
She got a pretty good rug burn... how sad.Josh
Curtis giving it a try.
Greg was the master of all, he stayed on forever
Megan decided to end his streak by giving a swift little PUSH... I thought this was a pretty cool shot.

Adam stayed on the longest not counting Greg, then later he tried it on his belly, he didn't get a carpet burn like Meggi.

Ode to the Car... again

I'm pretty sure I already did an "Ode to the Car" post but since we no longer have our Subaru, I will of course have to post about "Big Rosa" (so named by my wonderful husband). Here's the story:

Saturday night we were driving home from St. George after just attending a most wonderful Temple session. We were about 15 miles from home when Big Rosa started to make a Horrible noise. We pulled over and could see nothing wrong with the tires, so of course there was something wrong "internally".
We ended up driving 30-40 mph on the shoulder of the road with our flashers on in order to get home. We did arrive safely and we made a plan to get it into the shop Monday morning to have it looked at.
Mandy... Adam's wonderful wonderful sister accepted the call to be our chauffeur for the next couple of days. Monday morning she picked Adam up to take him to work and then she came back to our house to get her hair done (might as well get something out of getting up early... right!!) Then Adam called and said... "um I have some bad news".
Apparently something came loose in the car and got in the transmission and ruined it so we basically need a new one. But since our car is not worth the $2000 it would cost to fix it we cannot justify dropping that much just to have a new tranny put into it.
So to sum it up... Big Rosa is gone from us forever... and we are left AUTOLESS. Interesting how things work isn't it. All I could do when I first heard the news is LAUGH. I laughed so much that Adam thought I was crying. I think I was laughing in order to keep from doing just that.
Honestly though I know that the Lord knows our situation and if this car was meant to die, then... it was meant to die and I am so grateful it didn't happen when we were first married with NO money or when Adam was still in school. We have been so blessed just to even have had a car let alone the means in which to buy something new.
So we are now driving my mom's car around for the next couple of weeks until we find another car that will suit our family. Thanks again Mom.