My little girl

Natalie

For Natalie's birthday, I decided to do a blog post about her.  Natalie is not only my little girl but one of my best friends.  I love hanging out with her...talking, laughing and helping her chase her little ones around.  If you ever hear me talking on the phone to someone, laughing hysterically, there's a good chance I'm talking to her. I love her sense of humor and I love how we just "get" one another.

Natalie was a sweet, little 5 pound 15 oz baby at full term.  She was born with a lot of brown hair that got blonder and blonder with time. Her hair grew really fast...it was all the way down to her waist by the time she was three years old. 

As a little girl she loved anything that had to do with being outdoors or animals.  She loved hiking, skiing, snowboarding, boogie boarding, water skiing and hanging out at the lake or beach.  She was obsessed with horses and wanted to own horses when she grew up.  She was such a girly girl in appearance, but she played hard and never let getting dirt or grass stains stop her from having fun!

Natalie always had a lot of friends and liked her birthday parties to be done on a large scale.  She'd say, "Mom, can I invite my whole class to the park for my birthday...we can have a slip-n-slide, a water balloon fight and a BBQ!"...and we did!

When she was 14 she decided she wanted money for her birthday so she could go shopping and pick out her own gifts.  I thought it was way too boring to just give her money, so I taped $100 bill to the inside of a large box, filled it up with styrofoam peanuts and wrapped it.  She dumped out the peanuts in the middle of the living room and 10, or so, 14 year old girls proceeded to scatter and sift through the peanuts looking for her gift. OMG, worst idea ever...I was still cleaning up styrofoam peanuts by her 15th birthday!

When Natalie was little she had many interests and talents. She played the violin and she loved to dance.  She was in Super Steppers Jr. drill team as a little girl and she was also on the drill team in high school. She was also a great soccer player. I thought she was a good student in high school until she confessed (as adults love to do to their parents) to skipping school and going to the lake A LOT her senior year.  Luckily, she still pulled off good grades.  :)


Natalie has always loved being massaged and tickled. I had a bedtime routine (for years) of tickling the kids backs, faces and arms before they went to sleep. We had so many precious talks during that nightly one-on-one time and it really kept us close. 


She and I loved singing "Love Can Build a Bridge" together when she was little. We even sang it over the phone a few times, when we were sad and missing each other, when she got married and moved to Omaha.


Natalie and Tyler had such a close relationship growing up. She was always a good big sister. Although, according to Tyler, she beat him up a lot and by the time he got big enough to beat her up she had Spencer around to protect her. 

She met her sweet hubby, Spencer, when she was 16 and they got married when she was 19.  They moved to Omaha for him to go to pharmacy school, to SLC for his first pharmacy job and then to St. George to "come home". We are so happy to have them back in St. George! Natalie and Spencer are the proud parents of 2 1/2 year old Cameron and 1 year old Alivia.  Enjoy those babies...they grow up!

Happy Birthday!


Love,

Mom

Kailey's Grad party

KAILEY'S GRAD PARTY

Kailey's graduation party was amazing! Her sisters really outdid themselves on this one. We all pitched in and did our little parts, but the official (soon to be professional) party planner's were Kimmie and Melissa. Fun times! Kailey will be moving into student housing and attending Dixie State College in the Fall...CONGRATS KK!

Kailey through the years pictures

Melissa, Chris, Davien and Lydia

Princess Lucy

Allison and Penny

Quinn playing the "pin the diploma on Kailey" game

Kimmie and Kailey

Spencer, Natalie and Aliva

Teresa and Mike

Tyler and Cameron

Tyler



Lisa and Rex

Melissa and Kailey

Rex toasting to Kailey-nice speech Babe!

Christie reading questions in the "are you smarter than a HS graduate?" game

Chocolate milk pong

Natalie's first attempt at CMP

Melissa defending her cups with kung fu like moves

Fun times!

We ended this gorgeous day with a gorgeous view

Rex and Lisa Forever

Rex & Lisa

Rex and I had the beautiful opportunity to be sealed in the St. George LDS Temple on Saturday, May 12, 2012. We had a few close friends and family members there and kept it sweet and simple. The sealing was performed by the father of a long time friend of Rex's (Serge Woodruff) and that added a very special touch to our day.

We had dessert at the house afterwards and enjoyed visiting and eating scrumptious treats (made by the world's best treat maker, Rex).

We really missed our family and friends who couldn't be there, but truly felt your love and support across the miles...thank you! We feel so blessed to have each other and to know our love and marriage will continue on beyond this life.

Xoxo

A good day...

Today was such a good day! I originally had the day off (well the next 10 days off) because I was going to be in Rome with my gorgeous husband. Well, multiple factors caused us to change our vacation plans (that's another story), but I decided to use today as a "get caught up at work" day. I woke up happy, enjoyed the morning with my husband and made it to the clinic by 9 a.m. I worked on my task list all morning and got a lot done. Rex and I met for lunch and we were able to relax and take our time eating. I even had time for a few errands before heading back to work. Ahhhh, a 2 hour lunch break...I highly recommend it! I left my office feeling great...desk cleaned off for the first time in weeks and I ended the day with less work than I had started with (not always the case). After work, Rex and I went to a church social. They had a local artist as a guest speaker and she was fabulous! We hit the hot tub and then intended to crashed for the night. Except, I couldn't sleep. I didn't run myself ragged today so I have all of this energy! I love my life and I feel especially grateful on a day like today when I've been able to slow down a little and appreciate it.

empty "in" box at work!

Leany Time!

We loved having Spencer, Natalie, Cameron, and Alivia here last week (Ok, it's been two weeks now...it was last week when I started the post)! We have missed them so much! Kailey was so cute with the babies and they just love her! Cameron is usually a snuggle bug, but this visit he was too busy playing, and exploring to snuggle. Alivia, on the other hand, loves to be held and snuggled! She got some good bonding time with Gramma and G-Dad this visit.

Cameron loves being outside! He loves jumping on the trampoline and had fun running through the sprinklers. We had a fun little outing to the park (until it started pouring rain)! We also got a babysitter one evening and went to a movie (Money Ball) with all the grown ups. Fun times!! We love you guys! We're going to come up and visit you soon!

Phoenix in the Summer...

Top THREE reasons for visiting Phoenix in the summer....

3. Cheap hotels ($50/night at Marriott)
2. Losing 10 pounds a day (in sweat) which balances out the 10 pounds a day gained eating treats...ha!
And number
1. Having an absolute blast with family and friends!! FUN TIMES!!

It was so precious meeting Lydia for the first time (for Gramma). She is a little angel! We had so much fun at Amazing Jake's, which truly lived up to it's name (indoor buffet, bowling, miniature golf, go carts, laser tag, rockwall, kids rides, arcade, sports lounge, etc, etc!!!). We enjoyed our private concert by Amber on Saturday evening. She is truly a super star! We loved meeting Tony and Stacia for lunch on Sunday. It was fun catching up and hearing about their wedding plans. We had fun BBQing with the family at Allison's on Sunday afternoon, and loved our visit with Janis, Barry, Adam and Zach on Sunday evening.

It was such a fun weekend! The only thing that could have made it any better is having the rest of our kids and grandkids there with us ( we missed you Kimmie, Kobe, Spencer, Natalie, Cameron, Alivia, Tyler, and Scottee!).

Let's ALL get together for Christmas (if not sooner)!!!




G-Dad and Lucy




G-Dad loves his Lucy

 

Gramma and Lydia finally meet!




Life is good when you get a visit from G-Dad, Gramma (and cookies)



Christie, Lucy (AKA proud big sister) and Lydia



 

Lucy showing us a thing or two about mini golf



The whole Gang (we adopted Amber)

 


Lucy size slide



Kailey, Melissa and Chris competing for the title...and the World Champion is...
Chris Hayes!

 


Lucy and Gramma on the carosel




Rex and Daniel playing air hockey

 


Kailey and Jake bowling




Amber Lynn in concert!



Tony and Stacia