Mommies helper

Meet Briahna!

I think we are going to be great business friends...I got her name from my neighbor and friend. Bri is her 19 year old, struggling college student, niece. And of course when I hear she was going to the U of U I already knew we were meant to be. Her job is to help mom's by doing ANYTHING that they need done.

Her schedule worked out perfect with mine. She isn't a morning person and neither am I, she likes people to be honest and truthful and that works for me too. I am always afraid I am asking too much of her but so far she seems to be doing a fantastic job. Her services are very reasonably priced and with a minimum of 2 hours that works really nice. I have a long list of thing I need done around the house. So I can keep her busy for quite a while.

Today she went and rented a Rug Doctor from the local grocery store.

After she moved all the stuff out of the way and vacuuming it was business time! I am a follower of a blog that says cleaning with vinegar is a great way to do your carpets so I had her give it a try. Granted my room smells like Easter eggs being dyed but I am willing to try anything to get these stains out. Here she is mixing the vinegar and steaming hot water.

Pretty sure it's going to need a second or third hit but it is already looking better.

You be the judge!

The "JOY" a 2 year old can bring into a home

Kennedy was brought into this world to bring joy and love into all the people she meets. Her expression will make you smile and her smile will melt your heart. She is so special to me. I can see the love in her eyes every time I look at her. When she sees me her eyes light up and she runs to me with open arms. (that is as long as she doesn't see HER Kayla first.) I wanted to share the day with just her and her gamma (that's what she calls me). These are some precious expressions that I caught while she was here playing with me. For some reason she loves to have her mouth opened wide when she is happy. I think it is so cute.



And when she drinks from her "cuppy" she loves to twist her fingers in her hair. Another thing I think is cute. (But it makes it hard to keep her hair done up cute though)



I love her tiny toes and she must too. Cause she always is taking her shoes and socks off.




She brought her favorite horsey with her when she came. So of course she rode it too.



Kayla has saved a lot of her babies so Kennedy has a couple she really likes when she is here. She is so gentle with them. She loves to play mommy. But she insist on having REAL milk in the toy baby bottles. She tells me "empty gamma" and I try to conceive her there is milk in it but she's not believing me. Smart little girl. No matter what she is doing she loves to include her baby in the fun too.



But I think the highlight of my day was her and the slide. After she decided the slide was not as big as the stairs to slide down, then it became the STAIRS that she wanted gamma to do with her. She would go down the slide or the stairs on her belly, her bum and even on gamma's lap. (yes I even went down the stairs on my bum with her on my lap).




This one was her calling me to yet again climb the stairs and go down with her.

My favorite thing was to see her slide down the wall that my stairs are on. This was so cute. She loved it and wanted to do it over and over. The only way gamma would let her go was if I held her bum and made sure she didn't fall. She made sure I held on to her tight too. She laughed so hard. I loved just hearing how happy she was.



At the end of the day I don't know who was more tired me or her. But I think she got the better deal. A LONG DESERVED NAP!!!

Good night Sweet Angel! We will do this again real soon gamma promises! I love you!!!!

Living in my Livingroom

Let me start by saying "I LOVE the new look" in my livingroom.

13+ years ago we moved into this house, it had a brick entryway with an archway that lead in the livingroom. The room had white carpet, and lots of wallpaper that had to go. Since then Clay has remodeled the home to fit our lifestyle living in a wheelchair. He opened up the room and put in wood flooring.

Man Kayla was little back then...where has the time gone?

I thought he did a great job but I still was missing something. We had our BIG 65" TV upstairs for many years and I repainted the room to give it a country western feel. We bought all new brown leather furniture and the room was beautiful. But I was still missing something.


After I got more mobile and was able to climb the stairs to appreciate the familyroom, I noticed we had way more room downstairs than upstairs, which brought me to our next project. I wanted to move the TV downstairs but the design of the room was such that the sectional and the TV would not fit. So again I asked Clay if he would please move all our furniture around. He agreed that it would be nice to have the TV downstairs and so that's what brought us to the current design.

After the sectional was moved upstairs, once again. There was a very big empty spot where the TV sat. We went shopping looking for a hall bench with the old fashion hat racks on it, but after going to 3 stores we were not able to find one. That's when Clay told me to think about another option to buy. Not knowing what that would be I said "ok,but what?"

That's when my eyes saw this absolutely breath taking fireplace! I said NO WAY the colors were prefect and the style matched the theme I was looking for. So we now have a fireplace in my frontroom. And that SOMETHING that I was missing is no longer missing...I found it!

I have changed a few things around on the mantel but it still looks pretty.

The job of finding the perfect rug was another task! I guess I am too picky cause I looked at a lot of rugs til I found this one. It had a matching runner that fit very well in front of the fireplace too. Plus its always good when you like something that is on clearance ...


Here are the views of the room. The top view is from the front door and the bottom is from the dining room entrance.

I picked up this wooden bench to place in front of the windows. I had fun shopping to find this as well.

This cowboy was a must. He brings so much character to our room.

Years ago I took a lot of my Country Jam tee-shirts and made a throw out of them along with some old jeans and cowboy boot material. With the extra material I had a neighbor make me a couple of pillows. When I was shopping for the bench I found this extra pillows that matched my carpet and I had to have them.

They look nice on the sectional now.

The room needed some more color so I got my old flower pots out of storage (who knew they would be a prefect match) and again I was off to the store to get some flowers. I think my good friend April did a GREAT job arranging the flowers too. I have 2 pots and 2 boots that now have flowers in them.


Well now you've seen my new livingroom, maybe you can understand why I LOVE my new room!!! Thank you Clay for putting up with me and my compulsive personality and letting me have my way.

New Years Eve birthday/slumber party

Our special guest:

Top left to bottom right:
Mikayla, Becky, Tori, Natalie, Alyson and Lili.
Each of the girls got a set of New Years glasses, a hat, a box of candy to eat while they watched the movie called My Sister's Keeper, and their own can of Silly String, and a party horn to bring in the new year. We had pizza and chip with dip along with donuts and peanuts. And of course soda pop. It wouldn't be a party if there wasn't a few spills...lol

The top 3 girls were watching the movie
when I took this picture

I think Kayla was very excited to have a few of her special friends over to not only celebrate her birthday but to spend New Years with her. Usually we make her go to bed right after the BIG ball falls. This year she stayed up all night. Well maybe not ALL night but almost the whole night. Some of her friends had other plans and could not make it to the party but the ones who did come were very cute and for the most part they all got along too. She wanted to keep the ages close to her own, which I think helped. Even though they were from different schools they still had the same interest...BOYS!!!!
All the girls got together and plotted to get Clay when it was time to spray the silly string....Poor Guy! The only thing that saved me was that I had the camera...Ha Ha!

Happy Birthday Kayla

She is 11 now, wow where has the time gone?

Playing the Wii

Girls being girls
I was spying on them to catch a picture of true girl talk...
Becky was BUSTED!!!!

The wake-up breakfast call:

I was not able to get any sleep because of the girls wanting to stay up and talk and do whatever they did...So when it was time for them to get up I thought of banging pots and pans in their ear but the cow bells that we have for the football games worked even louder and better. So I grabbed one and down the stairs I went to be the MEANIE!!!!

This picture was taken right after I told them to GET UP and come eat! It was like 10:00 and their parents were coming at 12:00; so they needed to eat. There were a lot of sleepy eyes and not many smiles....lol

Happy New Year Girls!!!!!

A snapshot of our Christmas.

I hope you all had as nice of a Christmas as we did. I will be getting Photoshop this week so I will be able to make my blog look better. HURRAY FOR ME!!! This year we had our traditional Christmas Eve day celebration at my moms. (Which I forgot to take my camera to) After we spent some time there we went on to my younger brother's home and had a fabulous dinner and the company was outstanding. Christmas morning started out late due to Kayla not waking up til 8, which was nice. Brandon and Kayla opened their gifts and then we went to Clay's parents for Christmas breakfast and more gift opening. Nicole and her family came 2 days later to celebrate their Christmas (Klint had a work scheduling issue) As you can see it was very busy and extremely enjoyable for us. I will put a few of my special pictures on my blog from Christmas this year.

A few of Kayla's highlights were the Nintendo DSi game system, Heelys, In-line roller blades, and all the Wii games and accessories.

Having my grand children open their gifts at my house was very special. Kennedy loved her kitchen and
Kolten just loved being held and fed.

Christmas at Marva and Rogers. As always Marva put out a big spread of food. And she had a pile of gifts for all of us too. Kayla enjoyed showing off her DSi to her grandpa.

This year Clay and I bought our gift together and put a cash spending limit on our gifts to each other.
The TV was our combined gift.
The bedspread was from my dear friend, April.
I can't wait to re-do my bedroom now.
Christmas was awesome for us,
we did it all without going in debt!

Christmas with Brandon was very special this year. His behavior was outstanding and he was a big help as well.

Nicole and Klint came over and opened their gifts a few days after Christmas. Jeremy had this cool jewelery box made for Nicole. Kayla and I got 1 too. Klint is a BIG Dallas Cowboy fan so it was very fitting to get him this gift.

A game of Twister

We went to my brothers home for a Christmas Eve party/get together with family. There was a lot of food and great company. I have been very blessed to have such a successful and sweet brother. Having a career as a Corporate lawyer has been very good to him and his family. Living in a home as big as he does, allows him to have people over and there isn't even an issue of having enough space.

They had a gift there for Kayla and the rest of the kids. She wanted a Twister game; so I put a bug in his ear. She was very excited to see she got it! After losing the battle of getting the grown-ups to play; she started with the kids. It didn't take much to get her cousin Lili to jump on board. Even her BIG brother joined in. It was so priceless to see them play. Only wish she could have convinced the adults to play just 1 game. Now that would have been FUNNY!

3rd day of the 12 days of Christmas

Not wanting to put a real french hen in the bag, Clay remembered a very yummy jam that his mom had bought. So he went and got some for our bag. I circled the label where it said it was a "Product from France" and made this cute label to put on the top of the jar.

Sorry no French hens...This
makes us think of French!!
This jam was made in France...