Things I have learned in 2009

Here are a few things that I have learned this year:
1. Staying Home with the family is better than you think.
2. Keeping your house clean 24/7 is not fun.
3. Having a clean home feels good.
4. Scrambling to make your house look clean in 30 minutes is near to impossible with
3 kids!
5. A house that has 3 kids will never look like a model home!
6. Being sick is simply NO FUN AT ALL!
7. H1N1 is aweful; especially when your whole family has it!
8. Getting your passport and losing weight to go to Can Cun only to find out that you can't go because of the Swine Flu makes me mad!
9. Having Regan come home for lunch since his office was 5 minutes away was wonderful
10. Having a Kindergartner at school for a half a day is a good thing.
11. Selling your house is stressful!
12. Redbox is a wonderful invention!
13. Clearplay could be a wonderful invention if it just would not break down all
of the time.
14. Having splash pads and a "community beach" is a great thing for kids in the
summer!
15. I decided that I did NOT miss the day after Thanksgiving shopping madness!
{Black Friday no more!}
16. I need to find more time to scrapbook!
17. It is not fun to take your kindergartner to the bus stop when it is 7 degrees!
18. I am excited to move!
19. Hard times make you stronger!
20. Forgivness is ESSENTIAL!
21. You can't trust everyone-sometimes even your friends!
22. Vacations are pretty much a must!
23. Vacations with out your kids are sometimes a must as well!
24. Teaching 15 violin students with 3 kids at home is hard!
25. My $75 Kodak Camera is such a let down!
26. Regan scored MAJOR points by getting me a new Canon camera!
27. I need to play more with my kids!
28. I love jamming to my ipod!
29. Cleaning your house when jamming to your favorite tunes isn't that bad!
30. Your family will always be there for you!
31. It is important to have good girl friends to talk to!
32. It is wonderful to have a great baby!
33. I really need a toy room in our next house!!
34. Keeping carpets clean with 3 kids is hard!
35. The magic eraser is my new best friend!
36. Playing in an orchestra is therapeutic.
37. Playing in an orchestra with your sister is so much fun!
38. Enjoying the last year of my 20's wasn't as great as I thought!
39. Practicing the hymns before playing the organ in church is essential!
40. Even when you are a mom of 3, you still get embarrased!
41. Even when you are a mom of 3, you still can get hives!
42. Facebook is interesting.
43. Having your kids have good friends is a huge blessing!
44. Teaching violin lessons for 10 years was a good thing for me!
45. Retiring temporarily from violin teaching will be a good thing for me!
46. I missed boating with my friends this year!
47. Scratches on your wood floors and dings in your walls are inevitable with 3 kids!
48. Going to Walmart without kids can be quite an enjoyable experience!
49. I am going to miss my Friday Night Babysitting Co-op more than I know!!
50. Freezer Meals are pretty much a must for me!
51. I miss my Grandpa Anderson & Papa a lot!
52. I need to read my scriptures MORE!
53. I need to take some quiet time for myself everyday-even if it is 5 minutes!
54. I LOVE to decorate!
55. I am so excited that 2009 is over-time to start off 2010 the right way!
56. I am going to miss having friends that I trust watching my kids!
57. I love doing bulletin boards at Riley's school!
58. I realized after volunteering in Riley's classroom that I really miss teaching!
59. I love having a free day when dieting!
60. Good Exercise Music is essential to a good workout!
61. The Biggest Loser is my FAVORITE Show-so inspiring!
62. I want to work out with Jillian Michaels one day!
63. I miss my friend Britta who moved to California!
64. I love girls trips-revitalizing!
65. I LOVE family vacations!
66. I want to become a wedding coordinator!
67. I love playing with my quartet at weddings!
68. I love that my kids like playing the violin!
69. I want to complete my children's book and get it published in 2010!
70. I have learned a lot more than 70 things, but this is a start!
2009 was a hard year for me, but I am ready for 2010 to come so I can work on being a better mom, wife and person! Don't get me wrong, I have plenty of things to be grateful for, but let's just say that I am ready to move on to a new adventure and am excited for the start of a new year-a new beginning!

December Happenings

WOW! Life is totally crazy with trying to sell our house, violin recitals, and LIFE! Here are a few pics of some of the things we have been doing this month so far!
{Jazz Game with Riley, Festival of Trees & This is the Place monument Christmas Concerts for Riley, Cookie Exchange party!}

We are having an open house this Saturday from 11-2:00 so hopefully someone will fall in love with our house! In the meantime, I am always cleaning the house and decluttering closets to make it look awesome!

Sunny, Riley & Elle's & laundrey

Here are pictures of the girls room, and Riley's room!
{I wish these rooms would always stay this nice and clean
"take a picture it will last longer!"}

This scrapbook room/laundrey room is pretty much my favorite room in the house! Even though it is the smallest room in the house, I love going in there to do my scrapbooking & crafting!

Our Home {for sale}

Here are some pictures of our home! We got the pictures taken last night and now they are up on the MLS! I always knew our home was totally beautiful, but after seeing these pictures, I am in love with our house. When I saw this house on utahrealestate.com 5 years ago, I fell in love with it and thought that I could live here for the rest of my life. Since that isn't going to happen, it still makes it hard to part with this home. It has been a huge part of our lives. Riley was 1 when we moved in, Sunny & Elle came home to this house after being born.

This is a great home and I am happy we could live in it for these past 5 years!

Family Room & Violin Room

Here are pictures of our family room & violin room {office}

Sneak Peak

My very talented friend Danielle took our family pictures last week and so here is a sneak peak of what they look like! I am not going to show what all of them look like, so look for them in your upcoming Christmas Card! I know this next statement is totally slanted, but I just have to say...I have the cutest kids!!! Now I have to choose out of more than 100 pictures which one to use for Christmas!!
Choices Choices!

Cute Kids

These kids of mine may not be on the best behavior all of the time, but they sure are cute. Yesterday in tithing settlement I was so embarrased by the way the kids were running all around the Bishop's office & misbehaving, but when I came home to look at these adorable pictures, I think I forgot about that since they are beautiful children!

Ry Guy

Riley wasn't as enthusiastic as his sister were with pictures! We got a ton of individual pictures of Sunny & Elle, but only a couple of Riley. I am still trying to train my kids to enjoy pictures and to cooperate-it's called bribery! We drove right to the grocery store and had the kids pick out any treat they wanted! Hey, it works!

Sunny Bunny

Here is our photogenic Sunny Bunny! She loved posing any chance she could get during the pictures! She is even wearing her favorite polka dot boots because I couldn't find any other shoes as we were out the door for pictures!

Elle

Cute little Elle with her 2 teeth!

Leaves & Time Out

Last week after Riley's violin lesson, there were a ton of beautiful yellow leaves on the ground so Riley & Sunny made a huge pile of leaves and threw them everywhere! Since we live in a newer development of Herriman, we don't have such huge trees and leaves so this was such a fun thing for the kids to do! I remember doing this every Fall in the backyard of my Grandparents house in Sandy! Fun memories!

This past weekend, I was able to go to TIME OUT FOR WOMEN in Salt Lake with my mom, sister, cousins and Aunt! We saw Jenny Oaks Baker perform her violin, Sheri Dew and Wendy Nelson {Elder NElson's wife} speak on Friday night! WOW-just what I needed to hear! We stayed in the Marriot hotel downtown which was fabulous! I got the best nights sleep since I didn't hear little voices in the other room! The next day we heard from more wonderful speakers and Hillary Week perform her amazing songs! It was SO much fun to be with my family all day and to feel rejuvinated and spiritually fed!

The thing that impressed me the most while being gone to Time out for women didn't even have to do with Time out. It had to do with my amazing husband! I still can't even believe he did this! He had all of the kids dressed up in their BYU outfits, took them to eat dinner at the chinese buffet in Draper {Regan's Favorite!} and then to the BYU Basketball game in Provo! WOW-that is a huge undertaking for me, let alone for the dad! Most dad's I know wouldn't even dream of doing something that potentially could be a huge mistake. But for Regan, he pulled it off and even managed to get all of the kids in bed right when they got home since they were so exhausted from their big outing! Way to go Regan! You earn the father of the year award in my book!

Princess Show

A bunch of my friends and I decided to take our daughters to the Disney on Ice Princess Show last week. I dressed Sunny up as Cinderella, curled her hair and topped her off with her tiara. I then dressed Elle up as Tinkerbell. They looked so cute and I am so glad that I am able to do fun girly things like this with my 2 adorable girls. We had dinner at Kneaders, then drove downtown for the show. Elle & Sunny were so good the whole time-I was a little worried beforehand! Elle ate popcorn all night and Sunny ate cotton candy! At the end, we all wanted to get pictures of the cute group and this next experience is SO SUNNY!

As we were all getting situated for the picture, Sunny really did not want to get a picture taken, so she took her crown off, threw it to the ground and shouted, "I DON'T WANT A PICTURE"! Talk about embarrasing! Here she is looking like a gorgeous princess, then the next second is throwing her crown and yelling! You think you are doing these great fun things for your kids, and this is how it ends! I keep telling myself that patience is a virtue-I am still trying so hard to obtain it!

New Job!

Well, many of you know about this, but I thought I would blog about it for journaling purposes! Regan applied for the District Manager Position in Northern Utah a month ago, and interviewed for it a week ago. He and another candidate were the final 2 in the interview so Regan went back for interview #3. We found out that the other candidate is a family friend of the State Director who was interviewing and that this guys dad is a vice president in American Family. We were thinking chances were pretty slim, but worth a chance because if Regan didn't get this position, he was going to apply for another District Manager position in another State and do that for 5 years, and then hopefully come back to Utah for a DM position.

Regan was so prepared for the interviews and made a big impression to the Utah/Idaho State Director. He openly admitted that he wanted to hire the other guy, but Regan gave him so many reasons why he needed to hire Regan! Regan was very passionate about how he can help the agents in this district and motivate them which is what Regan is all about-evergy, passion & motivation so I think he is going to be perfect for this job!

He starts as the new District Manager on December 1st, so we need to put our house up for sale and hopefully sell it soon so he doesn't have to commute very far for very long. We then need to start looking in Northern Utah for a house. His office is located in Roy and his district goes from North Salt Lake to Cache Valley.

I am so excited for this new opportunity because Regan and I have been wanting to start over & fresh for a while now. A few things have gone on in our lives in the last year that we feel we need to get away from and this is just the solution for us! I have so many great friends in my ward that I am going to be sad to leave, but I know that if you are a good friend with someone, it doesn't matter if you don't live by them if you keep up your friendship.

When we told Riley & Sunny last night, Riley started to cry for an hour and was very upset about leaving his friends, his teacher and his class. I explained to him that we are not moving RIGHT now, just whenever we can sell our house. He said that he would be okay with moving if we had a swimming pool in our new house! Don't think we can swing that, but hopefully a bball hoop instead! He is such a friendly kid and I am positive that he will make new friends the second we move. Hopefully we can sell our house soon and get on with our lives in Northern Utah instead of having Regan commute to see all of his new agents all over the State!

Anyway, we are very blessed and this is actually an answer to a prayer and we are very excited to start a new adventure in our lives!!

The Ultimate Date!

Regan and I were the lucky recipients of the BEST JAZZ TICKETS and were able to go on the ultimate date night last night! It started out with an unbelievable dinner at the top of the Delta Center {Energy Solutions arena I mean} full of kiwi mango drinks, crab legs & jumbo shrimp and the best desserts ever! Then we went to our 1st row seats and were able to watch the Jazz play against the Houston Rockets up close & personal! WOW-I think I felt like a celebrity! It was the coolest date night ever! Thanks so much for this awesome opportunity Dad! My brother & his date went as well and were sitting on the other side of the court {he is the one with the Jazz Jersey & his date is wearing a green jazz shirt by Paul Millsap}

Friends & Family Halloween!

We had a fun time visiting Grandma Anderson, Nana & Grandpa Bob! Riley & Sunny went trick or treating with Regan {aka the Ghostbuster} and a bunch of neighborhood friends while Elle and I manned the door! I was so glad that it was a nice day and night for Halloween!!

Halloween Fun

We had a FUN weekend even though Regan and I were still sick! We had a ton of fun at my parents house at the annual Halloween Party! It is sideways, but in the picture, you can see that our family dressed up as Super Heros!! We played a lot of fun games, walked through a scary haunted house, ate a great dinner & laughed at each other's costumes! On Halloween, our family finally got to carving our pumpkins! It has been a rough October since we have been sick for half of it--but we still managed to have some fun!