The last time I was home I got some really pretty shots of the scenery. The first two are from my parent's yard, and the last one is from some friend's house in Moab. I'm so lucky to have grown up in such a beautiful place.

Sledding

I have mentioned here before that my dad made the BEST sledding hill for the kids this year. They got a ton of snow at my parent's house this year. They also have an area in thier back yard that is perfect as a sledding hill. It is already a pretty steep hill, and if you open the gate into the pasture it is a straight shot clear across the field to the barn. That alone would have been a really fun hill, but my dad couldn't just leave it at that could he? Nope. He took his backhoe and pushed a huge mound of snow at the top of the hill - to make a monster of a hill. Then he back dragged from the mound clear down through the field. It gave us a pretty long run, and I didn't think we would ever make it to the end of the track. But we gave it our best shot. With each pass the track got slicker and slicker, and we started going farther and farther. Then we learned how to steer and there was no stopping us then. It was AMAZING! By the time we had to head inside we had reached the end of the track and might have gone farther if there had been anywhere else to go! It was so much fun! We laughed and laughed, and screamed(it was a pretty steep drop right at the top) and crashed, and made memories. Here are a few of my favorite pictures of the adventure.

Looks fun, right?:)

This isn't that great of a picture, but it shows the mound of snow my dad pushed up, and where they are now is the regular hill.

When one of us would ride down with one of the kids we would pull them back to the top of the hill on the sled. Poor Ethan had to ride down with Troy and Troy decided it was his turn to get pulled up the hill.

Adia getting pulled up the hill.

The end of the line for Adia

Headed for a WIPE OUT!

When it was all over Ethan and I couldn't help having a little snow ball fight. In this picture you can see part of the barn in the back ground. We made it to the end of the track which was just about to the barn. We are standing at about the half way point in the track, so that gives you some idea of how far it was.

Really?... Snow?

Play Date

Adia has a *friend* named Wyatt at her preschool. He is a cutie, he lets her have all the pink crayons, and he shares his carpet square at circle time. I like him, and his mom (Very important, you know) Last week he invited her to come over for a play date on Wednesday. She had been excited ever since. On Wednesday morning she woke up early and took a bath, did her hair, and picked out an outfit. Then she re-did her hair and picked out a different outfit. Then she decided on yet another outfit, a beautiful necklace, new earrings, put on some "lipstick"(an old chapstick I gave her forever ago) and I pushed her out the door before she could change her hair again. She couldn't help herself, she was "freakin' out" because she was so excited. When we got to the school I was inside talking to the teacher for a minute when Wyatt came bursting in saying "I can't believe the day is finally here. It's Date Day!" Wyatt's mom picked the kids up after school and took them home for lunch and some play time. I picked Adia up a few hours later. When I got there I heard the kids playing in the back yard. Then I heard Wyatt's older sister teasing them "Wyatt and Adie sitting in a tree. K.I.S.S.I.N.G"

Then Wyatt "So HA! We don't even know what that spells!"

Sister "It spells Kiiiiiisssssiiiing!"

Wyatt "OKAY! Come here Adia!"

Mom yelling out the back door "WYATT, DON'T YOU DARE!!!"

I ring the bell and Wyatt's mom comes to the door. We gather up Adia and all of her stuff and I visit for a minute. Then Wyatt comes up to me and says "I love Adia, and she loves me. We are going to get married in the Brigham City temple, and we are going to be together forever." (Then he looks at his mom) "But NO KISSING!"

Well, I guess it's good to have a plan. And she certainly could do worse as far as boys go, but I do hope they wait about 18-20 years...

I'm not ready for this. If she's this bad already what are the teenage years going to be like? It's settled, I'm going to ship her off to my mom's house and she can come back when she graduates from high school!

Incredible

One day my dad was getting ready to put some new touches on our sledding hill with his backhoe. He stepped out of the backhoe and heard a bit bang, like a gunshot, only louder. He looked up into the sky and something he couldn't quite make out. At first he thought it was a bird, but as it flew toward him, and got closer to the ground he realized that it was too big to be a bird. It got closer and closer, and just before it slammed down onto the trampoline right next to him recognition dawned. It was his compressor. My dad runs heavy equipment for a living, so his compressor isn't like those little ones you might have in your garage in case your kid's bike tire goes flat. No, this was a heavy duty tank. It turns out that it exploded, sending the tank flying into the air and crashing into the trampoline which was about 100 yards away. It did major destruction. It blew a hole in the side of his shop, it blew a hole in the roof of his shop, it sliced a hole through a big chest deep freezer. It sent debris flying all over the place, broke all of the windows in his shop, and in one of his dozers that was parked in the shop. And as you will see, the poor trampoline is a gonner. The good news is, his snowmobiles, which were sitting just feet away escaped unharmed:) No, the real miracle was that my dad wasn't in the shop. He usually is this time of year, and if he had been they probably wouldn't have been able to find all the pieces of him. So I am grateful to have my daddy still intact, and want to show you a few pictures of the aftermath. I didn't get there until several days afterwords, and by then most of the mess was cleaned up, but the pictures will give you some idea of what it must have been like.

My poor trampoline. I got it for Christmas, so it is one of those old school heavy duty ones, not like the cheapies you get now. The tank smashed that sucker like it was made of play dough. (Though while I was being a bad mom, and letting my kids play unattended they managed to climb on and start jumping on the part that wasn't damaged. "this part is fine mom, plus it's way easier to climb on now." Leave it to my kids.)


It blew all the lights, so they were just dangling there all over the shop.
This whole corner was blown out, but by the time I got there they had enclosed it again.

Thank you to the angels that kept my dad safe. I can't even imagine life without him.

Who sneezed on my apple jacks?

So last night Mom totally dropped the ball on Family Home Evening treats. I didn't have any good ideas, and I waited way too long to even start looking. Ethan voted to rice crispy treats so we went to the cupboard to see what we had. We didn't have any rice crispies but we did have apple jacks, and figured that was good enough. But then I didn't have a recipe. It's normally on the box of cereal... But I never follow recipes anyway, and who needs a recipe for rice crispy treats? Well, I do, actually. I put too much butter in it and it turned into a kind of goopy syrup. It did make the cereal stick together and it tasted fine, so we decided it was good enough and put it in a pan to cool. But while it cooled all of the sticky syrup pooled at the bottom of the pan and formed a rubbery feeling layer of goo, kind of the consistency of a booger, a little less runny. Still tasted good if you could get over the feeling of the goo in your mouth. The kids loved it, but they decided on a different name for it. They now call it "who sneezed on my Apple Jacks treats" Yum! Who wants to come over for a snack?

Lucky Girl!

When we were home last time my friend Stacy gave me this beautiful platter. She etched it herself and I totally love it. You can't see it very well in the picture, but it says "Faith, friends, family, simply the best gifts in life." She totally knows that this is perfect for us, and the fact that it was made by one of my favorite "gifts" with her own hands makes it that much more special. Thanks Stacy!

Then a couple of days later I got a beautiful necklace from my friend Kristene. She had a contest on her blog to raise awareness about Congenital Heart Defects, and I won! I LOVE IT! I think it is beautiful, I love how unique it is, and I love the message. What a great reminder. And I won double time because I learned a lot during the CHD Awareness Week, so now I am educated and I look good! If you want to learn more about CHDAW click HERE and also check on her side bar for posts about CHD. There are a lot of great facts and answers, and also a really beautiful letter written by fabulous Abby, Kristene's 10 yr old niece, who you totally need to know. Go check it out. Thanks Kris, I love it!

And then as if all of that wasn't enough, a few days later I got a little visitor on my doorstep who brought me something else very special. My friend Melissa had a "Craft it forward" on her blog a while back, and I signed up. She delivered be this little gem...

A scrapbook that's already made! All I have to do is add the pictures and I'm set! If you know me you know what a great gift this is. I have pictures out the whoo-haaa, but I am totally not gifted in the scrapping area. This book is so beautifully done with 20 pages all ready for my photos. It's super cute even without any pictures in it! I love it so much Melissa, thanks!

Now it's my turn. Part of the craft it forward was that by signing up I agreed to do the contest on my blog too, so if you want a homemade goodie from me here are the rules:

1) Be one of the first THREE bloggers to comment on this post.

2) You then agree to share your snail mail address with ME (leave me your e-mail in the comment and I'll contact you) so I can send you a small gift handmade by ME!
3) When you receive your gift, you then blog about this game & link back to my blog in that post. (don't do it before!)
4) And most importantly, you ALSO AGREE to "craft it forward" (or just pay it forward if you'd rather) and send a small gift to the 3 people who comment on your blog post...
Remember do not post about this until you receive something from me in the mail.

So there you have it. I'm one lucky girl, and I want to share a little with you. Hurry and sign up, I only choose the first three.

Life lessons -I do it so you don't have to...

When you burn yourself if it is helpful to rub a little peppermint oil on the burn. It cools the burn, and then follow it with lavender oil and the burn heals super fast!

When you are cooking bacon for a yummy spinach salad and the bacon grease pops up and hits you right in the eyelid and it burns you do not let the searing pain cloud your judgement. It is NOT helpful to rub a little peppermint oil on the burn! It does cool the burn, but the burn it causes in your actual eye is much worse than the original burn! Neither will blister though.

I know, you thought that people as dumb as me were just a myth made up to make you feel better about yourself. Nope, we really are out there- wandering around like normal people. Makes you a little nervous doesn't it? (And holy cow, I need to pluck my eyebrows! I'll get right on that as soon as I get vision back in my right eye...)
So sad. You can see the redness of the burn in the middle of my upper lid. That's because I didn't follow up with the lavender.:) One thing that does make me happy is that thanks to Mary Kay my eye makeup made it through with little damage at all. And I am so happy because I was rocking a fabulous daytime-smokey eye that day and it would have been a shame to mess that up! The secret is to dab, not wipe. See, this post is just packed full of useful information. Lucky you!:)

When treadmills attack.

While we were home last month we spent the night with Grandma and Grandpa Eberling. They have a treadmill down stairs and Adia was running on it. Ethan went over and turned it on full blast and Adia fell off. But the treadmill is against a wall, so she got stuck in-between the turning belt and the wall, and it gave her a little "road rash". She got a little on the bottom of her chin, her elbow her wrist, her shoulder, and a huge one right on her chest. It was terrible and looked so painful. These pictures don't even do it justice. They were taken after about a week of me putting lavender oil on it and the sores were healing really well. Ouch, those treadmills are dangerous things, I better stay away from them:)

The truth about Dad-According to Adia, NOT MOM!

Our friends recently had a baby die, so there has been a lot of talk about death and what happens after death. Our family believes that after death we have the opportunity to be together with friends and family who have already passed on as well as be with our Heavenly Father and Jesus. Adia and I were having a conversation about that the other day, and it went something like this:

Adia: So where is Nikki's sister now?

Mom: She went to live with Heavenly Father.

Adia: What would happen if I die?

Mom: You would go to live with Heavenly Father too.

Adia: So what would you do then?

Mom: I would try to be really good so I could be with you after I die.

Adia: What if you are kind of good, but kind of bad?

Mom: I would go to a different place where I couldn't live with you or Heavenly Father, I could only see you If you wanted to come visit me.

Adia: What if you are REALLY REALLY SUPER BAD?

Mom: Then I would go somewhere sad and I wouldn't see you anymore.

Adia: Who would you live with?

Mom: I don't know, maybe Satan.

Adia: Yeah, probably Satan... and Daddy too.

Well, I guess we all know what that says about Troy - Yikes!:)

Ethan can ride his bike!

Ethan is not graceful! There is no other way to put it, he just isn't. Really, he can't even walk across a flat floor without tripping. Remember the flip-flop incident? So I really didn't think he would ever ride his bike without training wheels. We have tried a few times, but after ripping countless pairs of pants, skinning every inch of his poor little body, and walking hundreds of miles bent over his bike trying to keep him upright we always end up putting the training wheels back on. I really thought he would be the only 45 year old man riding around with training wheels. I just never thought I would see the day. Well, this weekend Adia decided that she didn't want training wheels anymore. We are totally competitive, so you know that if she didn't have them he couldn't either. We worked on it for about an hour on Saturday, and then for a little while Monday morning and he had it down. I'm a total nerd I know, but it almost had me in tears. I was so proud of him!

You can see Adia in the back ground on this one. She says she can ride without training wheels too. See her. Dad walks along behind her and holds her up and she just rides wherever she wants to go. "It's totally easier than I even thought" You might also notice from the pictures that Ethan can't ride without his tongue sticking out. That made for some painful moments when he was first learning and crashing a lot, but now it just helps him keep his balance.

The moment has arrived...

A few weeks ago I blogged about something exciting we were doing in our family. I told you so that you would understand that I was very busy and wouldn't be blogging much for a while. I didn't want to tell you exactly what it was in case something went wrong during the process, or plans changed or something. WRONG THING TO DO! I was called names, chewed out, and even threatened with the "Blog Police" for posting that there was news and then not posting any actual news:) And then then the phone calls and emails started coming in. You people and your guesses... and your theories... and your outright gossip! And what, are you four? It seemed like no one could just sit back and wait for the story to unfold! No, really, I am flattered that so many people care about the craziness of our little life to think about it hard enough to come up with some of the guesses you had. So finally after literally months of hard work, and weeks of your guesses and bribes I am ready to reveal the news. I thought a fun thing to do give you some pictures of clues along the way and see if you can guess it before the end. Fun right? I Know, I can hardly wait! I tried to make the pictures unique, and possibly you won't even know what they are. Let me know if you can't figure one out. If you guess it before the end write me a comment and tell me what picture clued you in. If you skipped the clues and went right for the big reveal at the bottom write me a comment about that too, I won't judge:) (Oh, and I am also going to be answering some of the guesses you had along the way, but the picture and the guess don't have anything to do with each other, so don't let that confuse you. Too late? Confused already? Sorry:) So here goes:

No, I am not pregnant!

(That was the number one most asked question, and it seems that there was even quite a story rolling around among my friends about that one:)

No we are not adopting again (right now anyway) nor are we sending back the kids we already have:)

No, we are not doing foster care, taking in an ill grandpa, a troubled youth, or a stray animal. Basically, no one new will be added to the family.

No we are not moving anywhere (especially back home, LEVI, it doesn't matter how many times you ask that, it isn't going to happen! *But you know, Brigham City is a nice place to live, they are hiring city cops right now, and we got far less snow than you did this year, hint hint*)

No, we aren't renting out our basement, nor are we putting our things in storage, closing up our house, and touring the United States in an all family country and western band. (See, after a while the guessing got a little out of hand.)

No, we are not getting a divorce. No one could ever be more perfect for me than Troy. He understands what I'm talking about even when I don't make sense, he lets me argue with him even when I agree with him just because I enjoy a good debate, and he lets me warm my feet up against his warm legs when we are in bed at night. Nope, I'm hangin' on to this guy for EVER! (Really, I have a certificate signed by both of us stating that I get to keep him for all ETERNITY- that's proof baby!)

Finally, no Troy did not get angry and decide to tear out a wall causing our house to fall down or any other major structural disaster.

So there you have it, good try, but no one guessed quite right. So do you know what it is now? Were my pictures helpful. (I tried to make them as unhelpful as possible:) Are you ready for me to make the announcement. Well, how about one more picture to help you guess...

That's right, Adie B. Photography is open for business! I am so excited! I have loved photography since high school when I developed my first roll of film in the dark room, and my love for it has only grown. I love capturing a feeling, a memory, a moment in time. I love the joy that it brings to others to see a beautiful work of art, and the joy it brings to me to be able to create one. I have been working on this for a long time now, and I am finally ready to take the plunge. We have built a studio in our house, complete with lights, backdrops, props, everything. I really appreciate Troy for having the faith in me to invest so much time, hard work, and $$$ to make my dream a reality. So what does this mean for you? Well, possibly nothing. But possibly something. First of all, if you have been getting your pictures done for free for the last few years, it means that time of our lives has come to an end. (Hey, I have to pay for all of my new equipment, right:) But the good new is that I am still building my portfolio and therefore will be offering AMAZING deals. I really need models for maternity, infants and bridals, but I would welcome more experience in everything. If you live in Utah or Southern Idaho and need some photos done let me know. I would be honored to work with you. My website is still having some issues, so for right now if you are interested in prices, packages, or seeing my work, email me at eberling2@msn.com.

More Cake

While we were home for the kid's birthday we went to Grandma and Grandpa Eberling's house for cake and presents. Here are a few of my favorite pictures from that party.

This one is my favorite photo story! It cracks me up.

Lighting the candles...

Gearing up for a monster blow...

Dad blows out the candles just before Ethan gets a chance. Ethan is not amused! I die every time I think about it. Look at that face!

Dad was thoroughly threatened to "Keep your blows off my cake!" before Adia even had her candles lit.

But she did get a little too close while making sure that every candle was completely out. (You can't risk that stuff when birthday wishes are on the line!)