We're still alive...just overloaded!

Being that I haven't posted anything for over 2 months now, you can definitely tell that we are in up to our eyeballs on this house building thing! I have, however, done okay with keeping our home progress blog relatively current. Here's the link in case you haven't seen it: http://www.barnesbuilt.com/

But I definitely want to get back to posting on this more...we'll see how it goes! Here are a few pics from our trip out to Missouri to visit David's side of the family...

Holding a big snake at the reptile world/zoo we went to with the cousins

Petting and feeding the kangaroos and llamas

Group picture with all Grandma Barnes, Uncle Owen, cousins, and our German relatives who were visiting

Kalyssa, Karson, & Karter went wakeboarding with the Allphin cousins...here's the before shot at the beginning of the boat ride...

Wheeee! Here's the "after" shot of them once the boat got moving! Talk about sheer delight!

Playing "Rock Band" with the cousins at the 4th of July party (Kaden's on drums, Kalyssa's sitting by Grandpa Barnes)

Everyone had matching Old Navy flag shirts at the party, and we all took family pictures in them (Koleman is always making some silly face!)Grandma & Grandpa Barnes took the whole group to the Dixie Stampede horse and dinner show one night, and here we all are beforehand.It was a great trip full of family, food, and fun!!!

SOLD!!!

It seems like things always seem to happen to us this way...everything all at once, and in the most chaotic manner possible!
So, we have the house a month or so into being built, and we decide to put our current house on the market so that we have plenty of time for it to sell. Sounds like a reasonable plan, right? Now, ideally in my mind, I was hoping that a month before we needed to move in to the new house, this house would sell, and then we could just conveniently make one move from here to the new one. Yeah, right! We put it up for sale by owner, and the master plan was that we would keep it that way for one month, and then list it with a realtor. Well, after two weeks, even with four good showings, David got a little impatient and we listed it. After six days of being on the multi-list, we got an offer. We negotiated back and forth a couple of times, and then officially went under contract. However, here's the kicker...they want us to be out in two and a half weeks!!! Now it's not like I'm not grateful for selling it - it's not that at all! I really am; I feel very blessed. But like I said, these things always happen to us! Case in point: our last house (the one we built in South Jordan) sat on the market for six or eight months, and then finally sold a month before I was due to have Koleman. In fact, we moved out of that house when he was four days old! And, while I was in the hospital recuperating, David was frantically trying to get the basement finished of the West Jordan home, so that it would be ready to move into right after I got out of the hospital. Many thanks to David's mom who came out from Missouri, and almost single-handedly coordinated that move, while making me sit back and rest!
I'm telling you, this is how we do things around here, people!☺
This time around, I'm also calling in recruits. Not only are my darling children working their fingers to the bone (character-building, right?), but I also am relying on our industrious friends, the Hernandez family, who have been coming every day to help us pack. We pay them by the hour, and they work and work and work! It's great for us, and great for them! (It's also fun to get to practice my Spanish with them! I even gave them a Book of Mormon...old mission habits die hard!)
So now, we have to finish packing, do a deep clean on the house, find a rental house, close on this house, rent a truck, load everything up, unload quite a bit at the storage unit, and then move everything else into the rental...all while simultaneously continuing to manage the construction schedule of the new house! Whew!
Are we having fun yet?! ☺

A Weekend at Primary's

Well, our weekend didn't exactly go as planned...

Kaden came home early from school on Friday because he wasn't feeling well and had thrown up. Then he came home and laid around the rest of the day, except to get up to run to the bathroom occasionally. I was hoping that by Saturday morning he would be feeling better - that maybe it was just a 24 hour thing, or even that he had just accidentally eaten some gluten (he has celiac disease, so it can make him sick if he eats things containing wheat). However, things just seemed to get worse and worse. He managed to get down some water, but that was the only thing he would even try, and even that didn't last long (if you know what I mean!) Poor guy! Also, his blood sugars just started skyrocketing, and we had to keep giving him shots to try to get it down to normal levels. At this point, he was just looking gaunt and his eyes were sunken and had dark circles around them. It was scary! So I took him over to the Instacare by our house to have him checked out. They took one look at him at him and said that it was diabetic ketoacidosis, and told me to get him up to the Primary Children's Hospital emergency room right away. They even wanted to call an ambulance for him, but I told them I would take him directly there. We were there in the ER till about 2:00 am while they were running a bunch of tests, and then they decided to admit him.

So, basically what had happened is that he got some kind of virus, and then he got so dehydrated and such elevated blood sugars that it threw him over into ketoacidosis. He had to be on an IV and insulin drip for a couple of days until they could get him rehydrated and his pH and bicarb levels back to normal. We spent all of Sunday and Monday there, and he was finally released Monday night to come back home.

We are so very grateful for his full recovery...this can be a life-threatening complication! I am also very grateful for the priesthood and for David being able to give Kaden a blessing. Thanks for the thoughts and prayers from everyone! We are sorry that we didn't let everyone know who we should have...it just was so sudden and crazy that we weren't really thinking that clearly, so please forgive the lack of communication.

Thankfully, we are back in the swing of things, and he is totally recovered and feeling well. The bad news for him....now he has to go back to school! ☺

The Wise Man Built His House Upon the Rock...

Well, it looks like we're going to be building a house... As crazy as that may seem in this economy, it's actually a fantastic time to build. Land prices, interest rates, and materials are all way down, so we can save quite a bit of money. Also, most subcontractors are not very busy, so their bids are quite low, and there is not a lot of lead time needed in scheduling them. We have done this before, so we definitely know what we are getting into...lots of phone calls, running to pick up supplies, making choices, budgeting, scheduling, checking on people, and being at the job site quite a bit. But, we have figured that we can get it exactly the way we want it for a fraction of what you would usually think something like that would cost. We don't use a general contractor, and that saves a lot right there, but also we can take the time to scour for the best prices on everything, and that helps tons also.

Another thing that we really want to do is have the kids very involved in this as well. When we built our last house, the older ones were still little and don't remember much. But we're hoping for this to be a family project, where they also take some ownership in it all. Some of the things we hope to have them do are site cleanup, seeing how it all comes together, realizing how a construction budget works, and hopefully also learning some useful skills, like measuring, nailing, painting, etc. (at least the older ones).

Right now we are waiting on the city to issue the permit - it's already been a week and a half and there's not been a lot of progress. But we hope to break ground in the next week or two. I'll post some pics here occasionally, but for a more detailed look at our project, we have a construction blog and plans on http://www.barnesbuilt.com/ where you can see a little more. Here's a photo of the lot as it is now:

It will definitely be a lot of work, but we're up to the challenge, and it will be cool to see it go up. The only thing we are sad about it leaving our current neighborhood and ward - they are fantastic, and it will be a big adjustment to start over. But, we will only be 6 minutes down the road, so we will definitely keep in touch with them. A new chapter of our lives begins... ☺

Been There, Done That!

Yup, I've now done it...I got onto Facebook.

I have wanted to see what everyone has been raving about, but I just was afraid that I would enjoy it so much that I would spend too much time on it.

And I was right...

My brother and a few of my friends have been telling me that I've got to do it, so I caved and decided to go for it. And yes, it has been so interesting to see who's on there, and so fun to reunite with long lost friends. I have found friends from my high school, neighbors from my old neighborhood where I grew up, and even former missionaries from my mission. I have accepted some friend invites, ignored other ones, had instant message chats, uploaded photos, requested friends, checked out people's pages... and just generally had a grand old time.

I have definitely spent a little more time than I should...oops!

(Cold cereal again for dinner, anyone?) ☺

Dinner: Mexican Style

A couple of weeks ago, right after we got home from Mexico, we had a special family dinner to celebrate being back home. The kids were so excited, because made some Mexican food, decorated up the table, and donned our cool new sombreros. We brought them back as souvenirs for everyone, and they loved them. We had to do some hard bargaining with the guy that was selling them in order to get them for as cheap as we did, AND we had to figure out how to pack them to get them home, but it was definitely worth it to see how much their eyes lit up when we all put them on! David ended up getting a big one for himself (begrudgingly, I might add), since they only had 7 of the smaller size! ☺ Then, after dinner, we put our photos up on the big screen and had a slide show of our adventure. The kids especially liked the movie of us swimming with the dolphins. We even had some treats - Mexican candy that we bought for them and brought home!

OLE !!!

Yes, I'm still alive...

I know, I know, it's like I dropped off the face of the earth or something! I have severely neglected my poor little blog for the last while - hey, I've been busy, okay? ☺ Sometimes it seems like the merry-go-round of life just keeps going faster and faster, and everything that is not survival-related just gets chucked by the wayside! But, hey, I was out of town for 10 days, so that accounts for some of it, right?

We had a fabulous time in Cancun, Mexico! It was our fifteenth wedding anniversary, so we had to go big on this one. We stayed in a really great hotel that was very modern and Asian inspired, and we had a balcony off of our room that looked out over the ocean.
We loved being able to go out on the balcony and read a book, listening to the ocean and feeling the breezes coming in. It was so relaxing! We even saw a couple of weddings out at that little white pavilion on the peninsula - it was very windy for both of them, however...it looked like they were having a hard time making everything stay put!

We did a lot of sleeping in, relaxing, reading, eating great food, watching TV, talking, taking long walks, and sightseeing. One of our excursions was to the Mayan pyramid ruins, Chichen-Itza. (Or, as they said that the Americans call it, "Chicken Pizza") We learned all about their calendars, traditions, and customs, and saw all the ruins (although you can't climb up them anymore because there has been so much vandalism). The pyramid has 91 steps on each of 4 sides and then there is a big step on the top so that it adds up to 365 - one for each day of the year. They also showed us a special sports court where they would all gather and watch two teams play a game that was kind of similar to basketball. The only difference was that they could only use their elbows, shoulders, head, hips, and knees; and they had to get the ball through a hoop that was sideways up on the wall. The winning team got the "privilege" of being offered as human sacrifices - only the best and brightest for the gods. Yikes! I think if it were me out there playing, I would be doing everything I could to throw the game!

We also saw, on our way to Chichen-Itza, a "cenote", which is a large underground cavern with water in it, and stalactites hanging from the ceiling, and a hole in the top that you can see daylight. We descended down into it on some stairs that they had carved out of the stone (I got a little vertigo), but it sure was amazing to see! Some of the people in our group actually got into the water and swam around.
See the sunlight coming from the hole in the top? And the water splashing that you can see is a little fountain that they added for effect.
Another cool thing we saw that day was a whole field of agave plants, and Mexico is one of the few places that grows it. We have some agave nectar that I use occasionally - they take it from the root of the plant and it is an all natural sugar replacement (great for diabetics, and tastes great too!) It's actually becoming quite a big thing lately.


It was very fun to go to this Mexican buffet restaurant and watch the dancers!

One day we took a ferry over to Isla Mujeres and took a taxi downtown where we did a little shopping on the streets, and also had lunch.

Also while we were on the island, we went swimming with the dolphins, which was super fun. I took this photo afterward when one swam right up to me at the pier.

On the actual night of our anniversary, we went on a dinner cruise around the lagoon and had a steak and lobster dinner on board. They also had all the drinks you wanted (yes, I know the pina coladas have gotten me in trouble before, but this time we made sure they were non-alcoholic!) ☺ The boat was almost like a pirate ship - my kids would have loved it!

We loved watching the sun set over the water, and listening to Luis Miguel music from a live saxophone player. Great anniversary - love you, hon!

Happy Valentine's Day!

We have had a great Valentine's Day today! Usually our tradition on Valentine's morning is that we make heart shaped waffles in our special waffle iron, and put strawberries and whipped cream on it. However, this morning was our turn to help clean the church (along with another family in our ward). Our turn comes around about every six months or so, and the tradition we have had with that is that we go get donuts and milk, and take them over to eat at the church before we clean. So we compromised and got Valentine's sprinkled donuts. Kalyssa was not very pleased that we were having to skip the waffles - she's all about the keeping the traditions! We also love to make heart shaped sugar cookies and frost/decorate them. Another thing that we do is that we go get a heart shaped pizza for dinner, and decorate up the table with red, white, and pink. The kids had a little plastic heart full of M&M's at each of their places at the table, and they loved that! Then we went around the table and took turns telling why we loved each person. Some of the responses were pretty cute - "I love him because he pours juice for me so I won't spill", "Because he shares his toys with me", "Because his hair sticks straight up"... ☺

I thought I would take a minute and talk about each of my seven special Valentines. Of course, first and foremost, is my sweetheart and hubby extraordinaire - David. He is such a great guy, and I feel so lucky that he is mine! He is an extremely hard worker, and that has been something that I have always admired about him. He inspires me to always do better, and has always been so encouraging and supportive of me in my goals and the things that I want to do. He can make me laugh so hard sometimes, and we get giggling (sometimes it's hard to stop - I get a little punchy!) ☺ He is my very best friend, but I also still have such a big crush on him, even after almost 15 years of being married! I definitely feel blessed to have found him. Of course, everything doesn't just always come easy all the time... we, like everyone else, put a lot of time and effort into keeping each other as our first priority, making sure we have our date nights every week, etc. But, I'm so glad that he's my Valentine!!!

Kaden is such a great kid - I still can hardly believe I'm old enough to have a teenager! He does such a great job - works hard on his schoolwork, watches the kids for us, enjoys Scouts (he's working on his Eagle), and is such a kindhearted guy! I'm so glad to have him as my son! I love you, Kade!


Kalyssa is my sweet girl, and I love her so much also. She is an awesome sister to her brothers, and does so much for them, especially the little ones. She loves to have "girls' time" with me (no boys allowed!) ☺ She loves to cook, organize, and decorate - a girl after my own heart!




Karson is a sweet, tenderhearted guy that is very smart! He loves Cub Scouts, basketball, video games, Legos, and lots of other stuff! He loves to learn, and is always telling us some obscure facts that he has learned at school, whether its Greek mythology, the different types of clouds in the sky, or even how cavities are formed on teeth! He is very kind to his little brothers, and is pretty patient when they always want to be with him, and get into his stuff. I am so glad that I have him - he's awesome!


Karter is my busy, loving, and smart 5 year old! He never wants to be outdone by the older kids - he thinks he is right up there with them! He loves to color, do his preschool work, play with friends, and be on the computer. He is very friendly, and has no problem talking to anybody - he makes friends wherever we go! He loves anything "cowboy", and talks big about riding horses & cows - that is, until he is right by them, then he hightails it to the car! ☺ I love him so much!

Koleman is such a cutie! He can be a little "high-maintenance", if you know what I mean, but he has a little heart of gold! He idolizes Karter, and follows him around all day, but he also loves all the rest of his siblings fiercely too! He has several little make-believe friends that he talks a lot about, the main one being a guy named "Hot Cocoa". We hear about him so frequently that Daddy now has a make-believe friend of his own that he tells Koley about called "Tweedledinker". ☺ (The kids all think that it's hilarious!) We sure are glad to have Koleman in our family, and love him so much!

Kyler is a little doll, and we all adore him! He is saying lots of things now, and its very cute! He bows his head and folds his arms for the prayers, and then even finishes with an amen! He loves all kinds of animals, and making all of their sounds! He enjoys being read little books, watching cartoon shows about animals, being outside, playing with toys, getting into everyone else's stuff, making messes, and giving big kisses and hugs! He also loves going to the nursery at church (where Daddy is one of his teachers now), and plays with the toys. We love him!

I am so lucky and blessed to have all of my special Valentines - aren't they great?

I'm not above a little bribery sometimes...

Sometimes you just have to change things up a little when it comes to getting some chores done around here, know what I mean? For the most part, my kids are pretty good workers - probably like most kids, they don't absolutely love to do chores, but with a bit of persuasion will get them done. We've tried a few different things over the years, but it seems like the ones that worked the best have been the ones where there has been a little incentive involved. So, we're trying a new program where the kids get to earn enough points from doing their personal jobs to get to spin the wheel (an old Twister game spinner that I have modified), and they will get to earn coupons for special privileges. I found this cool free download for the coupons on the Organize It Mom website - here's the link if you want it too! It was so easy to just cut them out and get them laminated, and I think the kids will really enjoy them a lot. In fact, the lady at the place where I went to laminate them told me I was such a good mom, and wanted to know where I had found them! (Hey, you take the kudos where you can get them, right?) ☺

Today, we actually had pretty good success with everybody pitching in for an overall straighten-up. David manned the vacuum, and I kept the troops busy with their next assignments as they would report back when each thing was finished. Karter especially did great, coming back each time saying, "Now what do you need me to do, Mom?" (I tell ya, that never gets old hearing that - it's parent nirvana!) ☺ Kalyssa is also quite the little self-starter - she loves cleaning out and organizing things - so today I sicked her on the pantry, and she did an awesome job! Now, Koley on the other hand, not so much! He definitely has not quite caught the vision yet. He's more work to keep on task than doing it myself! {SIGH}

Out of the mouths of babes...

The other day, my five-year-old, Karter, was wanting to play the Xbox very badly and was pleading with me to be able to play. However, he had already had plenty of "screen time" that day, and I told him that he should pick something else to do instead. He was obviously very frustrated with me, and so he turned to me and said, "Mom, when I was four, you treated me like a nice little boy. But now you treat me like a BIG...FAT...OGRE!!!

Yikes - what am I supposed to say to something like that? :)

I Love to See the Temple, I'm Going There Someday!

Today, we got the opportunity to go to the Draper temple open house as a family. We got online and signed up for our reservation last month, so we lucked out that everyone was finally feeling better, and able to go. This was the first time of ever going through a temple open house for my kids, so it was such a great opportunity! They were excited about going (minus having to dress in their Church clothes!), and we talked as we were driving there about what to expect. They were surprised that there were cafeterias and laundry rooms in temples, and we explained why those things were needed. It takes me back in time to 1981, when as a ten-year-old, I went with my family to the Jordan River temple open house. I distinctly remember being shocked at seeing a drinking fountain there - it almost seemed sacrilegious to my young mind that there would be anything so mundane as that in a place as special as the temple! :)
When we got to the assigned meetinghouse that we were starting from, they had us go in and watch a short movie about the importance of temples. It was very interesting, and enjoyed by all (except Koleman, who kept asking why we couldn't have popcorn for this movie...). Then they loaded us on a bus, and were driven five minutes up to the temple, where we then went through some canopies to guide you up to the entrance to the temple. They gave us a pamphlet that explained a lot about temples, and asked that we only whisper once we were inside. Surprisingly, the kids did okay with that, although when we saw the baptismal font on the backs of the oxen, Kyler starting mooing loudly and pointing! (He loves cows!) :)
Everything was amazing, and so beautiful - we especially loved the celestial room and sealing rooms! Kalyssa was impressed with the brides' dressing room, and asked me about it later - I agreed that it was very cool, and that I hoped it was still a ways off for her! Trust my little girly girl to notice something like that!
We almost made it through without incident...
However, when they led us into the sealing room and had us sit down for a minute to talk to us, David set Kyler on his lap, and only then noticed that he had a wet diaper that had seeped through onto David's nice slacks! We were trying hard to listen as they talked about the mirrors that you could look into and see eternity, but we were mostly casting furtive, agonizing glances at each other as we tried to keep Kyler standing by us (but not too close to anybody). Aaaaargh!!! It's rather ironic that, here we are coming up on our 15th wedding anniversary in March, and what a contrast the situation in this sealing room, as opposed to the one as we were there to be married. We sure didn't envision this as we knelt across the altar from each other back then, and looked into the mirrors - how could we have known then all the fun we were in for?!! :)
Luckily, we had planned ahead and brought a diaper. And luckily, we were right at the end of the tour, and headed into the meetinghouse right next to the temple where they had a bathroom. Thank goodness for that!
They had set up the cultural hall in the church with rugs, furniture, lamps, etc. and had made it very nice. There were also displays to look at, missionaries greeting people, comment cards you could fill out, and refreshments (what's a Mormon function without those, right?). Then we walked out to get on the buses back to the church where we were parked. Overall, it took us about two hours total, and was an amazing opportunity! I'm pretty excited to also be able to go see the Oquirrh Mountain temple in South Jordan coming up soon - how lucky are we?!!

QUARANTINED!!!

Just a short post this time, as I am playing Florence Nightingale to a bunch of invalids. David has the flu really bad, and my three littlest ones have sinus infections with croupy coughs and fever.



Fun, huh? :)



When we took David in to the doctor, we were told that David was the first official diagnosis of flu this season for their office (what an honor, right?), and that he should just go ahead and plan on being home from work for at least this whole next week. It's too bad that with all that time off, he can't enjoy it a little more - poor guy, he has been in so much pain, and been right down in bed! He's miserable! Luckily, the kids and I got our flu shots a few months ago, so hopefully we won't all have to go through it too.



So anyway, in between dosing medicine, cleaning up all kinds of fluids, and wiping everything down with antibacterial wipes... I'm pretty worn out! It's going to be a long week. {Sigh}



Calgon, take me away!

Get Your hEaD in the Game!

Okay, is it just my kids...



Or do all youngsters have a fixation with putting things on their heads?



The other day, I was going back over our pictures on the computer for the last few years, and scrolling through the overviews, and I started noticing a disturbing trend. Why do I have photo after photo of my kids with strange things that they have put on their noGGiNs?



This is definitely not something that I planned... But when I see a cute candid moment, I pull out the camera! And it just so happens that over and over, that seems to have been these cRanIALLy comedic moments such as these. ENJOY!

Koleman is a tHinKeR - he has come up with a new, unconventional way to wear the hAtbaND!

Karter's got some kind of sKuLL cap going on here...

For Koleman & Kyler, no plate will do for their pATe...

only bowls for their nOOdLes!

hAtS to cover their grAy maTTeR for Kyler & Kaden

Karter's bRaIn cushion

Karter's noGGiN goggles







Daddy's feet + Kyler's hEad = sCaLp sandwich

Kyler's Christmas cRoWn

Koleman's got blankets on the bRaIn

Kalyssa's using a cushion for her cRaNiUM!

Koleman's bowl on the bElfRY

"Not-so-Chrome" DoMes on Karter & Koleman

Nope, not even going there... :)

Koleman's light in the aTtic

Do we notice a theme going on here with the kitchenware?

Our tOP sToRy: Karson's fashion sense

A soda box for Kaden's uPpER sToRy...

And now, Kalyssa tries it on uPsTaiRs!

I know, I know, by now you're thinking we all need our hEaDs examined, don't you? I'm not sure what the big allure is, but this anomale sure seems to be happening a lot around here! I guess we're raising a bunch of tHiNK tAnKs!

The only thing I can't exactly figure out is...

Who could they have inherited this strange quirk from?!

Bingo!!! :)