Holy Crap it's almost Christmas!

I can't believe that Christmas is just around the corner. Where did this year go? Our year was full of fun times as well as some big changes. First big change came when we sold our house and where "homeless" for about 7 months until we could finally get into our new one. We love our new house and neighbors but still miss the olds ones.! The second big change just happened about a month ago when I got a job and went back to work. Yeah for me! Still happy with the decision and all is going well.
This year we managed to get down to Lake Powell with the family twice and Nathan went 4 times in total (i believe, i couldn have been more). We got baby chick in the spring and let Austin and Paityn raise them so we now have 6 grown and matured chickens in our back yard who produce 5 eggs a day on average so if you ever find yourself in need of an egg, please stop by and get one or two!
Nathan and I celebrated our milestone birthday this year as we both turned 30 earlier this spring. It was good, I don't recall being all that upset on that day so all is well there! I really don't mind getting older because it's proof that I'm still here! Speaking of Birthdays, Austin had is 4th and with that came the youth soccer sign-ups and the "real" pre-school. He loves both and can't wait for spring soccer to start. Paityn turned 2 and that about says it all. If you know her at all you know that she needs constant supervision and is a joy to be around when she yells at you, kicks you and then follows it up with an "I hate you". I'm still wondering if she will see her third birthday but it's more likely that she won't see her 4th cause to my understanding the 3's are worse than the 2's!
Nathan built in our basement giving me a: cold storage room complete with custom shelving, a bathroom, mechanical room and (pause for dramatic effect) my SALON!!! complete with walk-in closet and custom shelving! YEAH!!! I have the best husband EVER! I can't wait to get it fully functional and start doing all my crafts and hair down there instead of my kitchen!
We've been fishing, boating, building, crafting, bike-riding and many more things all this year so there are no complaints here! I hope you all had as much fun this year as we have and that your Christmas is as Merry as you are hoping for! I love you all!
Merry Christmas!!!

new job

I have finally gone back to work, it's only been about 4 1/2 years since I had a paying job. I never went back to work after Austin was born so this is a bit of a change for me. Yes I have always done hair at the house and that's been great but I have come to the realization that there's a certain amount of seperation between mother and child that is healthy. I work for Jordan School District (i know, i'm not the biggest fan either) at Sunset Ridge Middle School. I traded 17 hours a week with my kids at no pay for 17 hours a week with other people's kids for little pay. It's good for all of us involved, I get a break from my kiddos and get paid for it...in turn my kiddos get to spend more time with their cousins and Aunt Mandy and she gets paid for it...it's really a win win situation (or atleast i think so!). Sorry but there's really no pictures to go along with this post but I thought I would let ya all know what I was up to because I've had a few people question me about this lately. And not to worry, i'm still doing hair. In fact my salon is almost finished (YEAH) so I won't have to use my kitchen anymore (double YEAH).

My newest project

This is my newest project. It was super fun and easy to make. My kids loved helping unwrap all the candy and Paityn loved sneeking as many as she could. They were a bit more expensive to do than I thought they would be but I'll still enjoy them! They are going to be my new Christmas table centerpiece!!!

My vote for the best pic.

My cute little kiddos. Oh how I love fall.

Here are some of the pictures we took of all the Quincy grandkids yesterday! They are such cute kids!

This year I decided to carve the kids' names again since we live in a new neighborhood. I let them choose a picture to carve on them as well, something that made it "their own". Paityn chose a princess crown and Austin chose the Autobot symbol from Transformers. They turned out pretty good except I will not be doing the same handwritting on Paityn's again, it was hard and doesn't show through as well. The kids loved carving their own pumpkins as well.

Lions...Tigers...and Bears OH MY!

Ok so none of the kids are dressed up as lions, tigers and bears but they are cute as wizards, skeletons and pirates among other things!

all together we have Minnie Mouse, Bumblee (transformer) Creepy Skeleton, Princess Jasmine, Harry Potter, Warrior (Helaman), two Dancers, a Butterfly and a Pirate! Aren't they cute!!!

pumpkin cake and soccer

I have been really busy lately with all my "projects" that I give myself to do. I like to keep busy to keep myself out of trouble so here's a bit of what i've been working on this summer and fall.

I bottled: 11 quarts of peaches

14 quarts of Apple Pie Filling

48 pints of Salsa

36 pints of stewed tomatoes

14 pints of Spaghetti sauce

110 1/2 pints of blackberry jam

14 quarts of Fresh Salsa

1 Fall/ Halloween dress with purse and matching headband

2 Aprons (so far)

2 Seashell picture frames

and loads of crafts with my kiddos! It's been busy but my pantry is really filling up!

I also attempted to make a pumpkin cake, or a cake in the shape of a pumpkin since it was just a white cake and not made out of pumpkin! It turned out really cute except the face cause the writting frosting that I used kept melting and running down the cake. i ended up putting it in the fridge to get cold and hard so it would stop running.

This Fall Austin's also been playing soccer. It's been really fun to watch him figure out the whole thing. The first two games were pretty rough, he didn't score and pretty much stood there or cried cause the other kids would steal the ball from him. In the 3rd game he scored a goal and that changed everything! He really started to steal the ball and dribble it down field. his ball control has come a long way and with the last three games he scored atleast 2 goals a game! In one game he scored 4 goals and was mad that he didn't score more! he's the smallest on his team and one of the smallest in the league but he sure does love to play and had a great time. We can't wait for Spring season to start!!

Halloween dress

Here's a better picture of Paityn's new Halloween dress that my Mom and I made. I love it but now I gotta get her some little black church shoes to go with it.

projects and first day of school...

I'm finally getting to blog Austin's first day of school...it's only been 2 two weeks. It was really funny because he'd been so excited to start school then the morning of his first day he started crying and when I asked him what the problem was he told me "I'm feeling a little nervous about going to school". It was so cute. I told him not to worry because he got to go to school with his very best buddy Ryker and that they were gonna have so much fun together! Here is Austin and Ryker on their first day of school!

Ryker is such a great friend, he kept hugging Austin and telling him that it was gonna be ok and that he would take care of Austin...PRICELESS! I'm so glad that Austin has such a great "bestest buddy".

So every year I make Paityn a Halloween outfit and here's this years.

This year my Mom had the great idea to make a purse and headband to match so now she has the dress and accessories. When she puts it on for church on Sunday I'll get a better picture of it and the accessories on her and post it later. Thanks Mom for all your help, it turned out great!

Paityn loves sitting in the bucket that we use to wash the sand off our feet before going into the house boat when we are at Lake Powell. This last trip we took, the water wasn't as warm (only in the high 70's) so at night when she wanted to swim she would climb into the bucket. She started calling it her "hot tub". How can I not love this little girl, look at that face!

This is the Slip and Slide we made out of a roll of Visquene and a pump with at 50 foot hose. It was awesome!!!

We also got caught in a wicked storm the first night. It did rain during the day one time so we snapped a few pics cause it's beautiful down there when it rains. Plus the rainbow was so huge that I couldn't fit it all in my camera, and that was on the Panoramic setting! Can you see the double rainbow???

I'm a fish!

Between the swimming lessons and trips to the Aquiarium I'm beginning to wonder if Austin is part fishy. He certainly thinks he is. On his very first swim lesson (a monday) his teacher told him that on friday of that week they would be going off the diving board...Austin immediatly announced at the top of his lungs that he would never be going off of that and that they couldn't make him. Well once he got in the pool, everything changed. He loves to swim!!! He loves being in the water at Lake Powell but I wasn't sure about the pool because he really likes his life jacket but he really took to it. On Friday I asked him if he thought he'd do the diving board and was told very sharply "NO". So I decided not to take the camera...as usual. Well the minute he got in the pool he told his teacher he was excited to go off (i could kill this kid sometimes) so I once again had to use the trusty old cell phone camera!

We also had to visit the new penguins at the aquarium, Austin and Paityn have been begging to go so we finally went and had a blast! We decided to take my sister in law and her little girl who's Austin's age. They had a blast!!! Always a good time! Unfortunatly the pics from my phone don't come out as good in the aquarium cause it's so dark in there but you'll just have to trust me, they had fun and they all pet the sting rays and since it was shark week you could pet a baby shark! Very exciting.

Quincy Family Campout 2010

This year we went to Smith and Morehouse! It was absolutely BEAUTIFUL up there! This will be a repeat sight! We all had such a good time. My brothers thought that they would be super clever and took apart a dam to create their own "bridge" from one side of the creek to the other. By they way the water is FREEZING! You can stand in it for about 20 seconds before your feet burn and go numb! But it was super fun trying to stay in it for as long as you could!

Big thanks to my Sister's in law for having their cameras cause once again I forgot mine! I need to just attach it to me I swear!

Paityn's 2nd Birthday!

Two years ago (July 18, 2008) I happily found myself in labor 3 weeks early. Nathan and I took our time getting to the Hospital by having breakfast with Austin and my Mom before we left. Still not having a name picked out (Nathan wasn't sold on paityn yet) Nathan spent the whole 7 hours in the delivery room looking up names on the internet and telling me all the ones he liked while I shot them down. After 4 hours of epidural and pitocin things with my heart and Paityn's heart started to get a little funny, the nurses got a bit worried and unhooked the pitocin. About 30 minutes later I buzzed the nurse to tell her that the baby was coming. She looked at my like I was completely stupid and told me that it was impossible for me to know that since I was numb but that she would "check" anyway. Well I was right (funny how that happens) and she called for the Dr. Everything happend very quickly after that! 30 minutes later Our little precious baby girl was screaming as they jabbed needles in her thighs and drew blood from her feet. The Doctor and nurses all made bets on how big she was before she came out since I was 3 weeks early...they all lost and I won! I bet that she was over 8lbs and they all said between 6-7 lbs. Well this little bundle of joy wasn't so little at 8lbs 9oz and 22 1/2 inches long she was almost a toddler!!! She was a beautiful baby and has turned into a freakin cute little girl. I have loved everyday of the last two years with her and look forward to many many more. Paityn Quincy Wells...I loved you once, I love you still.... I Always have, I always will,

Love,

Mom