Hubby Tag

Ive been tagged to answer some questions about my hubby. So now I tag all of the Jen's and whoever else wants to do it too - go for it!

what's his name? Burke McCabe Simmons

how long did you date? Who knows?!? We met when we were juniors and started dating since the Homecoming dance and then on and off from there. Then served missions - do you count that? I'll just say we knew eachother for 7 years before we got married. There.

who eats more? I think we eat about the same - except for treats, then it's all me. He's more diciplined than me in that area.

who said 'I love you' first? Ok, so I didn't remember! I asked Burke and he told me that he did. We were in my mom's living room our junior year and he said "don't you know that I love you? Cute.

who is taller? I would say we're exactally the same, but Burke says he's like 1 1/4 inches taller than I am. I don't think it's that much, but we'll let him win.

who sings better? Well, well, well- Burke can actually read music and I look at it like it's a different language - so I'd say he's better that way, but I really enjoy singing with other people like my sisters - then I'm alright.

who is smarter? It depends on what subject your talking about. We both have our smarts in different areas.

who does the laundry? Both

who does the dishes? Both

who sleeps on the right side of the bed? I do.

who pays the bills? I do, we tried to have it be either of us, but that gets confusing, so I won the job.

who mows the lawn? Our landlords. It's great!

who cooks dinner? I do mostly. But he does when he can. I really enjoy it when he does too, cause he's a great cook.

who drives when you are together? We take turns, especially on long drives. Unless me eyes are bothering me, like on our trip to Colorado Springs and back - he drove it all! Thanks Burke! Although I think it's more of a break to drive, cause I'm helping kids with stuff most of the time when I'm in the passenger seat and I don't call that relaxing!

who is more stubborn? I was going to say me, but Burke's got a stubborn side to him too - so I'll say both

who kissed who first? Hmmm, I'm pretty sure it was him, I don't think I would be so gutsy.

who asked who out first? He did. He asked me to the Homecoming dance with a plant that was wrapped up in a diaper - the note said - I'd wet my "plants" if you'd go to Homecoming with me-cute huh?

who proposed? He did, at my mom's house. No one was there so we didn't have an audience, that was nice. He sang me a song with his guitar and then got down on his knee and asked. sweetie.

who is more sensitive? Me, me, ME!

who has more friends? Uh, I don't know. We've collected a few over the years, since we've moved a few times, but they become both of ours. But I do keep in touch with more of mine than he does, so then I guess you could say me.

who has more siblings? I beat him by one.

who wears the pants in the family? I would say both, because we go along with one another's ideas or suggestions for our family.

Christmas FUN, FUN, FUN

We're back! We went to Colorado Springs to spend Christmas with Burke's brother Blake and his family. Burke's sister Chanelle and her family and his parents and sister Chalei all came too. It was really fun. Here are some of the highlights of our Christmas trip.

Here is Eliza, Kaiya, Braedon, Kaleb, Larissa, Kyle and Paul. My sister-in-law, Sharise, had a great idea to play the Primary Nativity song and have the kids come out when it talked about their part. It was so sweet and they loved it too - then it was short and sweet.
We played a game where we had to get the ball to the container on the spoon without it dropping. We did quit a few different variations like holding the spoon in our hand or in our mouth as you see Burke's mom Cyndy doing in this photo. We played girls against guys. It was great.
There were also many starring contests between the kids and Grandpa. Kaiya thinks whoever blinks first wins so her contests always end quickly with her blinking right away and then yelling "I WIN!" She's great.
Here's the p.j. tradition on Christmas Eve. They loved their new pj's. Kaleb told us his were baby pajamas because they were so soft. I had to disagree since they have pirate stuff and skulls all over them. Katelin and Kyle are a couple of months apart. Kyle is the older one so he likes to crawl all over and take off Katlin's bows and play with whatever she's playing with. They're so cute. Katelin likes her toys we got her but still would rather play and eat any paper she can get her hands on. It's just makes such cool sounds and melts so ealily in her mouth - can't blame her?

Kaleb was so excited to get some new superhero guys. That's really all he wanted. He actually really is enjoying his other gifts too - I'm so glad.

Kaiya's been having a lot of fun in her new dress up clothes she got from Grandma and Grandpa Simmons and her dance clothes and princess dance video we gave her. She decided to sit and watch it through first before she started dancing along. But sure enough, after she watched it over once there was no stopping her. She loves this princess dance DVD - it came with the cute little mat she's sitting on and the wand. What fun to be a little girl.

It snowed quit a bit while we were in Colorado and so Kaleb took advantage of it and played with his super hero toys in it. The weather was great there and back for the drive. It just snowed in between when we were there. Perfect.

It was really a nice Christmas. I did miss my side of the family though. We're going there tomorrow to spend New Years with them, I'm excited to see them also. Yea!

Snowball fight

My brother-in-law Steve sent us one of these snowball fights with their little family and we were just crackin' up over it! So we had to do one of our own. Burke put it together while I was out visiting teaching and when I got back the kids were playing it over and over and over again laughing like crazy. Enjoy!

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Say MOM

Katelin says mom in this video. SO cute! It's towards the middle-end - I've told her to say it ever since she was born, boy did it pay off. They always say dad first! Now I'll work on dad. haha

Wrappin' presents 101

I decided to let Kaleb and Kaiya wrap Katelin and Burkes gifts since they probably can do just about as good a job as I could. I really do a not so good job, probably because I'm just being realistic - I know it's just going to be torn to shreds so why make it super nice! Anyway, they had a blast. Kaiya was the tape girl and used WAY to much, I need to buy lots more. And Kaleb started out with a great technique of just puting the present on the paper and then wrapping it all up in a jumbled mess and then putting tape all over it. I did give him the tip of folding it over so it meets in the middle and then taping, but other than that it's all him and her.

He's so proud of their wrapping creation.

It snowed in Green River!!!!!

And they said it didn't snow here. Well, ok they said it does, but not much and it usually melts by the afternoon. It started a bit last night while we were picking up the kids from a friends home. She watched them so Burke and I could go out to eat for his b-day yesterday, it was nice. Burke told the kids it was snowing because it was his birthday. So this morning Kaleb reminded me that's why it snowed. Cute. So I found the kids boots, hats and gloves so they would be ready to go out in it. Kaiya does have a coat, it was in the van, but it actually didn't feel to cold. Kaleb was late to school this morning because I had to find all of the stuff and I had to take a picture because I'm afraid it will all be gone by the time school is out. Priorities right? At least he made it there. When I took him into the school there were a few ladies talking by the office and as we passed they said "Wow, boots Kaleb?!?" They were impressed that he had boots. One of the ladies said "Oh well they came from Logan." So I'm guessing I'll find out Kaleb is the only child in his class who will have on a pair of boots today. Then the ladies went on to tell me how their kids never owned any boots and only went sledding like twice in their childhood! Crazy.

Happy Birthday #31 mein Schatz

First of all, Schatz means sweetheart in German. I learned this word my junior year in my German class and we have used it ever since. Good thing I took that class, just for that huh?! Burke took this picture of us yesterday. Does he look like he caught up to me in age? Well he did. Happy Birthday to my Burke. He's such a fun husband and friend and a wonderful daddy to our kids. We sure love him. He really makes life fun because he's so creative and likes to experience fun things in life. He loves to do things outdoors and loves to cook (and believe me I love it when he has time to do so! He makes everything SO good - he even makes left overs taste better. Amazing, I know.) He is so patient and fun to be around. Happy day cutie! We love you!!!

Dress up

Last night after dinner Kaleb and Kaiya were having so much fun together playing and laughing. Then a while later I realized it was really quiet and I hadn't seen them in a while. So I walked down the hall and saw that my closet light was on. When I walked in Kaleb was dressed up in Burke's church shirt and was looking for his pants and Kaiya had my shirt and was trying to get my brown skirt down off of the hanger. So I helped them finish and sinched things up so they could walk without them falling off. Kaleb wanted pictures by the tree so here ya go. I love Kaiya's wink with her mouth open and one eye shut. She does that to us a lot; it's so funny. I think Kaleb is going to be a photographer when he grows up. He told Kaiya how to sit and then positioned himself by her in cute little poses. Then Kaleb decided that they needed a stand up fighting pose. They sure keep life exciting that's for sure!

Nikolous Day

Here is a picture of the kids yesterday morning on Nikolous Day. (Sorry if I spelled it wrong mom. I copied the spelling off of Tiff's blog - so if it's wrong it's her fault. hehe. :) What happens is, the kids put their shoe out on the 5th and the morning of the 6th there is candy and a gift or something. They were so excited, Kaleb wanted to put two shoes out so he'd get more. They have such small feet I had to just lay the stuff on top of their shoes anyway! They got some candy and Kaleb got a little magnetic fishing game and some more magnetic alphabet letters. We have some on our fridge, but we're missing some and he's learning how to spell new words at school. So when he tries to spell something and we don't have the letter he says "I'll just use this v for the a instead." So I decided I'd better get him some more letters to work with so he can use the correct ones and not get confused later on. And Kaiya got some magnetic numbers and some beads to make jewlery with. She loves to play with her beads. And the store I went to here didn't have any baby toys, so Katelin got nothing. But I let her suck on an apple slice and she was happy. :) Oh and if our tree looks like it's leaning onto the window - it is. I busted the tree stand so we'll have get a new one of those. oops

look alike meter

And Katelin's the winner looking equally like both of us! Until she gets a little older and has more features other than baby ones. We'll try again at another date. But for now that's just cute - we're triplets! hehehe.

Shopping trip weekend

We needed to go shopping badly so we made the trip to Grand Junction Colorado over the weekend to get things we needed. We have the choice of going an hour to Price for Wal-Mart or an hour and 20 minutes in the other direction to Grand Junction which has two Wal-Marts, Target, a Mall and just about every store you ever wanted! So we chose Grand Junction. And we decided to make it a little mini trip and stay over Friday night at a hotel there. It was so much fun. Burke booked the room over Priceline.com and did it quickly so we didn't know we signed up for a room with only one bed! Hahaha on us! It was a King size bed though so we actually all fit on it just great. It was a fun sleep over. And we knew they had a pool, but did't know it was an outdoor one. But of course my three oldest children wanted to go swimming still. I have to include Burke with the children because he's just a cute kid. He loves to do crazy things and the kids absolutely love it! They went swimming three times in our short stay. And it was the weekend where it snowed everywhere else except here, but it was COLD. They said it was nice in the heated pool and jaccuzi though. Katelin and I hung out together inside the warm hotel hallway and took pictures of them through the window. Smart girls huh? Anyway, we had a blast and got all of our shopping done too! Perfect weekend.

Book Cliff Elementary Program

We went to Kaleb's Elementary today for their school program - Kids Against Violence. It was so neat. Each grade had a song to perform and then sang some together. They were all songs about uplifting others, liking yourself, not being a bully, making good habits etc. It was so adorable. I actually got a bit emotional through it, especially Kaleb's because they're all just so small compared to all of the other kids and they did sign language with their song and sang "I like being me". So sweet. I uploaded this video of his class singing part of the song and you can hear Katelin squeeling in the background - she loved it too.

I'm a Bunco girl

Yesterday my friend Annie called me and asked if I would be a sub for their Bunco game. I really needed to get out and have a break so of course I said yes right away. I'd never played it before, only heard of it being played everywhere. I decided I didn't want to look like a fool, so I looked up the rules on the internet and read up on how to play. I have to say it is such a simple game made so much fun by who you are hanging out with. We had so much fun talking and laughing and eating. I have to practice rolling dice and talking at the same time though, that's rough. They decided to add a couple more people to the group and so now I'm officially a member of their group. I'm excited to have a girls night planned each month. I'll let you know if I ever win. They give prizes to everyone. Last night my prize was some gift bows just in time for Christmas present wrapping. Perfect. :)

Hanging out with family

Katelin and Robyn making eachother smile. :)

Kaiya and Quinten before church on Sunday.
Cute Kaiya and her cute Aunt Chalei.

Sophie, Afton and Kaiya coloring.

Jordan, Kaleb and Porter running around and playing like little boys do.

Ok, excuse my silly son. I was trying to take a cute picture with Grandpa Ottley and the kiddies and I didn't know Kaleb had a crayon up his nose! Oh, well. Granny GO and erin my sis-in-law.
Two of my three sisters Robyn and Juli

We all got together on Saturday for b-day fun. And it was! :)

It's fun being 31

I had a happy birthday on Friday. I've been wanting to go to a movie so bad, so we did. It was lots of fun. We took the kids and saw Enchanted. It was such a cute movie. I loved it! And the kids did too, Kaiya especially. Her eyes were glued to the screen the whole time. This is the first movie in the theatre she's really watched and not been a wiggly girl in. It was really nice. Then that night my sisters and mom and I all went out for a girls night out to McGrath's to eat and then to this awesome decoration place called the Garden Lodge. We had so much fun just being together.

Do we look older? Burke will be turning 31 in a couple of weeks too! We were having a hard time keeping both of our eyes open while my brother took pictures of us, it was pretty funny. We finally got one!

Happy Thanksgiving

Some things I enjoyed on Thanksgiving day:

-Sleeping in a little bit. We decided against going out to be a crazy early bird shopper. I was thankful for a little more rest then I would have had. (my brother Ryan and his wife Erin let us sleep at their house for our Salt Lake stay - thanks guys!)

- Yummy smells of cooking turkey. I thought of lighting this nice yummy smelling candle my sister-in-law Erin had, but I couldn't bring myself to do it because the turkey just gives off it's own thanksgiving yummy smell - it was great!

-Decorating the tables was my favorite. I'm thankful for pretty things. I love to make things look pretty even more than cooking the dinner. That was so much fun. Erin had lots of cute things to decorate with.

-Visiting with family members as they arrived at Ryan and Erin's for the feast. And peeking at the yummy food they brought to share. Mmmmmmmmmmmmm!

-Listening to the house get louder and louder as the little cousins gather together to play and laugh. They are such fun friends.

-Enjoying the delicious meal with family. I love that this is the only time a year we have certain things like rot kohl (my moms special german dish - red cabbage- so good), yams with marshmallows, lots of yummy turkey that lasts for days, pies and many other sides. It makes it a special treat since we don't have it often.

-The thing I love the most is not needing major entertainment afterwards. Just each other. I Love my family!!!!

Primary Program

OK, so we had our primary program on Sunday and it was adorable. My mom and her husband Dave came to be proud grandparents/supporters of Kaleb. He is such a cutie. He went up and sat down with his teacher just fine, but then he started looking down through all of the songs. He said his part great though. Later that night I asked him why he wouldn't look up and sing since he knew all of the words. He told me it was because Burke and I kept looking at him and smiling and he didn't like it! So much for being a happy parent. I assured him we wouldn't do that next time so he could enjoy himself.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY #26 TIFFANY!!!

My youngest baby sister turns 26 today! We love our little Tiffany. I put this picture up of her cause I think it's adorable. She's actually showing us a "silly" face her litte baby Reagan does in the mirror and we all laughed after I took the picture. Then we looked at it and she looks so cute, not even silly! She looks cute even after running a race. It's just how she is, cute. :) Tiff loves running, making people pretty (she's a hair lady and has a salon in her basement), being a mom and a wife. And she's stinkin' good at all she puts her heart into. I love you tiffany! Have a happy day.

I've been tagged! Ahhh!

Here are 7 interesting things you may not know about me!

(I say Ahhh! because I have a horrible memory, so we'll see if I remember 7 interesting things - I guess you won't know if I'm making them up though so that's good.)

1- I don't like the expression "cool beans" - it was used way too much on my mission by others and got old really fast!

2- When I was little I was a baton twirler and was in a parade.

3- I broke my collar bone when I was little (again - don't know the age - mom?). I was climbing down the ladder from the top bunk bed in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and missed a step - BAM.

4- I jumped in my aunt Ingrid's pool when I was young and realized under the water that I was in the deep end and can't swim. My wonderful cousin Tenny saved my life. No wonder I don't like to swim eh?

5- I'm not a big reader, but my family got me hooked on the Stephanie Meyer books - Twilight and so forth and I'm hooked. I read the second one in two days! I didn't get much done at home though, so I can't do that again. Must find balance!

6- Burke and I have known eachother for almost half of our lifetimes! We met when we were 16 and are now almost 31.

7- And last of all. I am a big scaredy cat when it comes to being alone at night. My mission messed me up. I was used to always having someone else with me sharing the same room. So when I got home I made my sister Tiffany sleep in the room with me every once in a while- she was so kind and did that for her weird sister. So now I still can't stand Burke to have to be away for even a night.

Whew! I did it. That wasn't so hard. - OK, I tag: Seantae, Kristen, Abby, Jen Powell & Sharise

Kaiya's dance video

I thought I'd try out uploading a video. So this is Kaiya today doing her ballet video she earned for finally letting us leave her in her class alone on Sunday. She was so excited to do it so she could get this dance video even though it was hard for her. She does this everyday now. I figured out while I was taking the video that I better not put it vertical so it wasn't sideways. So sorry about the crazy views. But it's so cute to hear her talk to me on it about ballarina's and how they have to drink lots of water. I told her that yesterday so she'd drink more. :)

Kaleb's latest creation

This is Kaleb's latest toy creation. He's taken his stretchy shark and some of his super heroes and somehow tied them all up with the shark. And then after he finished playing with it he took it apart and got some scissors and cut up the stretchy shark into little pieces. He also often changes the heads and arms around on his super heroes. And this is why we do not buy Kaleb expensive toys. It's easier for us to let his imagination run wild with cheap ones! hehe.

Girls night out

Burke just finished this week helping with the musical they were putting on at the school - Fiddler on the Roof. He already saw it all put together when they performed for the school, so last night he got tickets for Kaiya and I to go see it while he stayed home with Kaleb and Katelin. We had so much fun on our little girls night out together. She was so excited to go. We had shown Kaleb and Kaiya the movie and so she was very familiar with the songs and loves them! She sat next to me on the front row in her movie style chair. Her legs aren't heavy enough to keep the seat down, so she just sat happily watching as she sat folded in half. When they began to sing Sunrise, sunset I heard this little voice next to me singing along. I didn't know how much of the words she knew. It was so sweet, she should have been up there. When we left she was so tired so when we got home I got her out of the car and carried her to the door. When I opened it Burke was standing there and Kaiya popped her head up and said "That was sooooooooo good"! We just laughed because we thought she was almost asleep.

Smile!

You can't help but smile when you see that face can you?!? We were on our way outside to play and I had to take a picture of her in this cute little warm hat and cute little face. We sure love our Katelin.

Mikey Likes It!

This is Burke speaking. We cooked a Turkey at the neighbor's house last Sunday (our oven was being fixed by our neighbors, our landlords)! The turkey neck and giblets have been sitting in our fridge waiting to be used. Today I finally made a soup out of them with Danish squash, carrots and celery.

When we sat down for dinner, I had taken the neck, heart and liver out of the soup and set them on a plate because Jenni didn't want to have anything to do with those parts of the turkey. Kaleb sat down and saw the soup and immediately started telling Kaiya how yummy this dinner was even though he hadn't yet tried it. I told him if he was daring like me he would try some turkey neck, heart and liver. He loved the neck and heart but wasn't a fan of the liver. Kaiya like the heart and the liver. This is our two cute vultures pecking at the heart and neck.

feeding time :)

So, Kaiya wanted to help feed Katelin. I had to give her a few tips. She's a good helper. Katelin didn't mind the food beard.

Check out my Slide Show!

A few more Halloween memories

Kaiya wanted so badly to go to the park after the little parade at Kaleb's school. So I took little Snow White and my little leopard and we had fun at the park on the warmest Halloween day I have ever experienced!

Kaleb just before we went to the carnival they do here every Halloween. He was pretty excited about all of the fun activities of the day and night.
Well it was a great first Halloween here in Green River for us. We went and walked around collecting candy, but didn't get to too many houses. We didn't think about the spacing of the houses. There's a few in a row and then a big space and then a few more and then a big space. So the kids got a lot less candy then normal, which was great! Kaiya kept dragging her plastic bag on the ground and we told her it would get a hole in it if she kept doing that. When we got home we found she had a lot less candy than Kaleb because there was a hole in the bottom. She was alright with it though. She got so tired at the end of trick-or-treating that Burke put her on his shoulders and by the time we got close to home she had fallen asleep on his shoulders. It was so sweet.

Halloween parade

Here's cute Kaleb in the Book Cliff Elementary Halloween parade. It was the shortest parade I've ever been to. They came out and walked around the school. It was fun watching all of the proud kids in their costumes. They had a party after that. He had a fun day at school.

Funny faces of Kaiya

I had to post these because I don't know if people ever really see Kaiya's funny personality very often. I on the other hand see it daily. We put these curlers in her hair on Halloween, but too late so they didn't work. Then I realized I left my curling iron in Salt Lake - so we threw her hair in a pony tail and that was that. I wanted some pictures with her cute curler head and she gave me these funny face smiles. She really is so funny. I love joking with her.

Discovery Gateway

We decided to go to the Discovery Gateway while we were in Salt Lake over the weekend. It was fun, but really busy because it was UEA and all of the moms decided to bring their kids there. This first one is Kaleb coloring a comic strip. Ryan, maybe he'll be joining you in the comic book artist career later on. :) I love how he sticks his tongue out as he draws. Burke says he did that when he was a little one too.

I caught Kaiya with her eyes closed - oops. But she is making a movie. There was a little camera and she would set up the toys and push a button that would record each toy placement. And then you could play it back and watch your movie. They had fun with this.

Kaleb and his good pal C3PO.

Kaiya loved playing with these cool magnetic shapes.

I was glad we could spend so much time together over the long weekend. We left on Thursday to go to UVSC to watch Burkes volleyball team at State. They didn't win either of their games, so we were out Thursday night. They were pretty sad. There's alway next year. It was really fun to go though. Then we spent the rest of the weekend visiting family and didn't make it to see everyone. We'll try again at Thanksgiving. It was a wonderful weekend.

Trunk or Treat

Kaleb is a Power Ranger. He likes showing off of his muscles and doing lots of different super hero moves.

Katelin is a cute little leopard. It was harder than I thought it would be to put on her cute little whiskers and nose. She's a wiggly little thing.

Kaiya was so excited to be Snow White, one of her favorites princesses. She and Kaleb posed for quite a few pictures for their Opa this weekend. He took about 50 pictures just of these three. They had so much fun.

My sister Robyn invited us to their ward halloween party this weekend since we were down for the weekend. The kids had so much fun dressing up with their cousins and playing games and getting lots of candy with them.