Blind Side

The first of this month UVU had the real life people of the "Blind Side" come and talk, there was the mother and daughter Leigh Anne and Collins Tuohy. Brett went with me and it was an amazing experience to listen to what they had to say. Yes they did talk about the Hollywood aspect of things and about the movie it's self, but they where really there to share a message and to give a challenge to everyone. The mom talked a lot about how society deals out judgement on a person based on their first impressions. This judgment can be right or it can be wrong. Most often it is wrong. She went on to talk about everyone has value and how if everyone would not judge and be a little kinder to people that there would not be so much negative in the world.
I have thought long and hard about what was said and how even in my life I am a person who will judge a person based on the superficial things that I think are important. I don't want to be a person who does that - so from here on out I am going to make an effort to get to know someone before I decide what their "value" is.
This year has brought a lot of changes into our lives in a short amount of time, we have had good times, and some rough times. We have had everything from happiness to loss. I have watched my kids grow and learn compassion in ways that I never thought that I would see.
We are truly blessed and there is no reason for us not to share with everyone.
So I guess what I am saying is remember that each of us have "value" lets make sure that we treat others kindly and always remember their value.
Erika

2010

Wow, it has been awhile since I updated this. I will try to be better, we had a great Christmas and New Years and have been busy just trying to get everything done that needs to be done. We started our New Year's out with a BANG! Colby, Brock and I decided that late New Year's day we would head up the canyon and go snowmobiling. We headed out around 5:30 and had not gotten too far up the canyon and I had decided that I dressed way to warm so I stopped and Brock and Colby decided while I took off a few layers that they would go off of some jumps......the first jump I watched them and thought wow Colby is getting ALOT of air. Once they landed I knew that Brock was hurt I ran over to him and took off his face mask and there was blood everywhere, I told Colby that we needed to head back down and get stitches, he said Oh it is fine. I had to put my foot down in order for both of them to decide that I was right :) so we headed back down the canyon and got the snowmobiles loaded up and headed home. Once we got there and got Brock cleaned up Colby told me that we could just use super glue- SO with a little bit of convincing between myself and a neighbor Colby told me that he needed to go to the hospital...... This is Brock while they were putting a topical solution that would help to numb the skin before they did the "shots" to numb the skin. I had to laugh, when Brock knew that we were going to the hospital he said "you need to call the family" I asked him for what his reply "that is what you do when you take someone to the hospital, you need to have the family for support" It was so cute that he wanted the grandparents there, I told him that he would be fine and that we could call them when we where done and he could tell them how many stitches he got. So about an hour in the ER and 16 stitches later he was all right and decided that stitches were not bad at all BUT he NEVER wants the shot to numb it again.
Hopefully medical bills are not the forecast for this year, we have had our share. Hope everyone had great holidays and is enjoying a New Year!
Erika

It's Birthday Time...

Happy Birthday! Today is my dad's birthday, he is such a great father and example to have in my life. I am very lucky to call him dad. I have some of the best memories growing up and doing things with him. My dad has always tired to teach me to do the right, sometimes it worked and sometimes I feel short.. :) But my dad was always right there to pick me up and dust me off and help me along the path. For that I will be forever grateful. My dad loves with all his heart and once your in his circle you will always be in it. He is such a loving husband, father, brother, uncle, and grandfather. We are all lucky to have you in our lives! Hope you have a great day and know that we all love you!
Love,
Colby, Erika, Kaid, Brett, & Brock

Flag Football ~ Redskins!

I know this is late but this is something that I want in my book so it is on here. Football was played during the end of September and October..

Brock got to play flag football this year ~ I think he would have rather it been tackle but hey it's okay with me. He was on the Redskins and played in Salem, Colby was his coach and they had a lot of fun and learned a lot! Brock was thrilled to get to play he LOVES football ( actually he loves sports) it was so fun to go and watch these kids come together as a team and win the games. Because of Colby's work schedule all of the games were either at 6:30 or 7:30 so the last few games have been FREEZING but that has not stopped the kids from doing great.

It was fun to watch the kids, some of them did not get the "flag" part of it and really tackled some of the other players hard- but still it was exciting.

Last night was the championships and they ended up taking 3rd place. Way to go Brock, he had 9 catches and scored 1 of the 2 point conversions for the win.

Brad Paisley Concert

Like I said I am going to go back a little to have a record of things that we have been doing. This concert is one that I want to remember. We had so much fun! Judi and Taysia went with Brett, Coltin, and I. We also meet up with Chelsey & Matt, and Lacee & Miles. We went to Texas Roadhouse to eat before we headed out to the concert. We decided to all pile into my truck to get out to the Usana, because Chelsey had never been there and just because it was going to be easier to get everyone out there and back. So we loaded 9 people into the truck- I know not safe~ but we all made it home in one piece.

This is Brett and Coltin, I had to laugh because they did not seem like they were having a lot of fun, but both of them said that it was one of the best concerts that they had been too. So who knows! :)

Brett and Kaid both love Taylor Swift so Brett was telling me to get pictures of her. So that is why it's here.

Here is Brett and I right before Brad Paisley came out, and right before the rain started.

These girls.....what can I say? We had extremely good seats and we were right at the isle, so poor Coltin and Brett would get all of the stray, drunk, friendly girls that would come and dance with them, no scratch that they would TRY to get them to dance with them. Well this girl had just had one too many to drink and while she was dancing she spilled her drink all down the front of Coltin and Brett. I felt so bad I offered to trade him spots but he said he was fine. I had to laugh because every time I looked over it appeared that she was offering Coltin a beer. I told Brett to not be surprised if he was grounded from our family next time he wanted to bring him along.

Just before Dierks came on we ventured back to the lawn seating to see some of the homies~ Chomp and Fly. We all had a great time and can't wait to do it again!

Erika

The Dove Hunt

Brock has always wanted to hunt, from the time he could walk and talk he would ask Colby when he could go hunting....Colby has always said once you can read and understand the hunters safety book you can take hunters safety and then you will be able to hunt. So this year Colby felt that Brock was ready, so Colby signed him up for his Hunter's Ed class and Brock did awesome! He passed both the written test and the shooting test. So the other day the older boys took him out dove hunting. They had not been out for too long and we got this picture text on our phones! Yep! Brock's first time and he gets a dove. He was so excited and so proud! I guess there is no turning back now, he has the hunting bug!

Good job Brock!

Erika

Corn Maze

Wow time sure flies by, I can't believe that it is October already. There has been so much that I have wanted to put on the blog but have not had the time. So I will have to back track in the next few posts. But I wanted to get up our fun night that we had. We go to the Corn Maze each year and this year Brock & Brett both brought friends. We had a lot of fun! This was the first thing we saw when we got to Hee Haw Farms..... One of the "friends" said that it looked a lot like his sister! (which was really mean.) This is Brett, Riley, and Brock on the hayride. I had to laugh because I told Brett and Riley that I was going to take a picture of them and Brock decided that he needed to get into the action.

After the hayride we walked around seeing all of the different things that they had to do, this was a duck race that you had to pump the water to see which duck would win. Riley was the only one that could actually make the water pump out so he obviously won!

After the duck races we walked over to the corn cannon and the kids loved this, all of them spent a lot of time at this, they could hit an old barn or other things that they had for the kids to hit. Brett seemed to get all of his over the barn. So who knows what he was hitting on the other side. On the way to the corn maze the kids found these big bikes that they could race, so needless to say they all took turns racing each other. Here Brett is "helping" Brock to the win.

I loved this next picture because you could see the determination on both the boys faces to WIN! I don't think Riley was wanting to be beat by a "little kid"!

This last picture was in the actual corn maze, it was a tricky one this year. Kaid "somehow" got separated from us and was done with the maze in record time. We found him out talking to a girl. Before we went in they gave us a list of rules and one of which was no picking corn, or cutting thru to find your way out. If we broke any of the rules the "corn cops" would ask us to leave. I told all of the boys that they needed to listen and make sure that we did not have the "cops" become an issue, sure enough we had been in the maze for about 5 minutes and here comes a "corn cop" just as Brock says we can cut thru right here.....The cop said no you can't and Brock just looked at me and turned and ran the other way. So we were following Brock and for a few minutes the "corn cop" was following us! All in all it was a fun time and I think that everyone enjoyed it!

Until Next Year!

Erika

Labor Day 2009

Labor day was quite eventful this year. We decided late Saturday night to head out camping- so we loaded up the trailer and headed out first thing Sunday morning. Once we got to where we were going to camp for the night we unhooked the trailer and the kids starting exploring and all of the sudden I hear Brock say " I want to go see the bear!" I came out of the trailer and said what are you talking about? Colby tells me that Kaid had found a bear that someone had killed and then tried to cover it up. Colby told the older two boys to drive down to where they could get cell service and call the fish and game. So they did and a few hours later her came the DWR to investigate the bear's death. It was really sad that someone would kill it and then try to cover it up. It was a yearly bear- (I guess that is what they call it) the fish cop said that it had been booted out by it's mom this year. So it really was not that big- I am sure that it was not hurting anyone- they should have left it alone. Oh and by the way it was just right up Payson canyon, less than a mile from girls camp.

The next day we knew that we would get up and eat breakfast and then go cut wood! Well as we were eating our breakfast in walked a bunch of cows....these two just kept staring us down. It was really funny because they did not want to move.

So once we were done eating we headed out to cut wood, this is something we have done for years. Colby use to sell so we were constantly cutting some where but now we just get for ourselves. But he had a goal of cutting 3 truck loads. I told him that he needed to remember that I am a "PRINCESS" and I don't do manual labor. (That is a total joke, I work right next to him when we cut wood, it's just not something that we did when I was growing up) He just laughed and said he would see me there, so Kaid and I drove the first load down to the house and unloaded it and grabbed drinks and went back to get the next load, once we got there Brett, Brock and Colby had more than the one truck load already cut. So the boys loaded the truck up and then Kaid took it down and me and the the two youngest stayed to help Colby get the rest of the wood. We worked hard...Brett and Colby touched each and every piece of wood that we got. Brett is really strong he could lift some of the pieces that where HUGE I told Colby that there was no way that I could have even moved them. Once we were done we had to wait a few minutes for Kaid to get back with the truck we looked over and we saw this: Brock was dead asleep on the ground. He had worked right along side both Colby and Brett all day long. He was wiped out. Once we loaded up the truck we decided it was time to head back home, along the ride Kaid stopped the truck in front of us and came running back to our truck and said did you see that badger? Colby hit reverse and sure enough there was a badger, they asked if they could kill it and Colby told them yes, so of course they got it and brought it home.You can see just how dirty you get from cutting wood, Brett had pine sap on his arm and I think a week later he still has it. All in all it was a nice relaxing time away. Now if I could just talk Colby out of going and getting more wood!?!?!

Erika