She loves to read

This is what I saw last night about 40 minutes after we put Claire to bed. Every (and I mean every) book from her bookshelf was on her bed and she was laying on top of them reading. She loves to pull her books off the shelf and I have to pick them up on a daily basis but they are usually just on the floor next to the shelf. When I cleaned up the books I found both of her purses, her new lipstick, 3 watches and 3 of her princess wands under the books.

We are trying to potty train her again and got her the potty watch so yesterday the music went off so I had her go sit on the potty then I got distracted and forgot she was back there (mom of the year) I walked back there after about 15 minutes and she was sitting on the potty reading books happy as could be...and of course didn't go.

OK one more book story....this morning after breakfast she went back to her room (usually she goes back to play with her vanity) but when I walked by her room she was laying in bed reading a book. A girl after my own heart. I would have loved to crawl back in bed today to read.

P.S. She obviously can't really read...she just looks at the pictures :)

Flashback Friday

Todd and Tayson - 2002

Here is what I LOVE about this picture:

• Todd is on the exercise ball - the only way to keep Tayson happy
• Tayson looks like he actually knows what's going on
• Those two are so alike it cracks me up
  
• Check out that sweet monitor - talk about old school
• There is a table cloth on the card table his computer is on (why? I don't know)
• Look at the rows of CD's against the wall...all those times ten now fit on Todd's thumb drive
  

Luke's Prayers

I just tucked in the boys and I wanted to write down Luke's typical nightly prayer because it cracks me up.

Dear HF
thankyouforthisday (yep all one word)
please bless Mark on his mission
please bless Mark to be safe on his mission
please bless the food tomorrow morning that it will make us healthy and strong
bless me to sleep good and have good dreams
bless that no bad guys, monsters, snakes, crabs or goats....ghotsts....GHOSTS from any planet will come (until about a week ago it was only the ghosts from Jupiter)
nameofjesuschrist (one word again)
amen

Today I slept in

It was a long night last night. Sophie got me up twice, Claire once and Luke twice so when the alarm went off at 5:40 this morning I decided to sleep in. I am really bad about working out later in the day if I miss my morning workout. There is just never time and I don't like working out during lunch because then my hair looks bad and I worry that I smell the rest of the day at work. But tonight when I got home from work I hurried and got dinner ready and had a half hour until it would be done cooking so I went running. It was a great chance to use the shuffle Todd gave me for Christmas and I loaded it up with a bunch of great running music today.

I hate running alone. I missed my girls. I was bored to tears with nothing to do but run and listen to my iPod. I'll admit I ran faster today than normal just so I could be done sooner. It was not worth the extra hour of sleep. Next time I think I'm just too tired to workout I'll remember how much I hated running by myself today!

The Shoes

Last week Tayson came home with these shoes. Notice anything funny?
(hint...they are both the left foot)

Two days later he found the match to his shoe at school

A few days after that he brought home the other match...

If these are yours let me know. We have no idea how he ended up with 2 pair of the exact same shoes and what poor kid kept going home from school missing 1 shoe at a time!

Flashback Friday - Grandma Jo

With all that has gone on with sweet baby Josephine I have been thinking a lot about my grandma Jo who she is named after. So this is the perfect week to post some pictures of Grandma Jo.

Grandma is on the right.
I have no idea where she is in this picture or who she is with - but I love this picture

Check out that fish. Go Grandma!

Great-Grandpa George and Grandma
I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE that she has her hair in curlers in this picture. Classic


Grandma and my dad.
I think grandma looks so fancy in this picture and my dad looks so young!

This picture is hilarious to me.
She doesn't look happy at all and she isn't dressed for tropical weather.
Oh how I love and miss you grandma.

This is my dad's "motorcycle".
I found a sweet picture of my mom and dad on it....coming later.

Happy Valentines Day

Oh how I love this man!

Thank you for making

me a better person and

for loving me

in spite of all my flaws.

This was the only smooching picture I could find

Flashback Friday

This is so classic Tayson

Oh my

Today was a day full of surprises.....

Sophie woke up covered in spots. We don't know what they are or how long she'll be our little cheetah girl. The doctor said it's just part of the infection she's had for the last week. Weird to me...we've had a LOT of colds in this house over the last 6 1/2 years and none of them have looked like this.

Then, while fixing Claire's hair tonight Timmy twirled it in the comb to enhance her natural curls and this happened. Oops!!!

I Wonder...

In the last few months I've really gotten into facebook. It's been so much fun finding friends from long ago who I lost touch with. Friends from elementary school, high school, BYU, Nu Skin, old wards, etc. I love it.

But it makes me wonder......

I keep thinking back to relationships I've had and lost and now found over the years. Was I nice to them? Was I a good friend? Was I a good example? I know there were times when I could have done more and now that I know more I wish I would have. I wish I would have been a better friend. I wish I would have stayed in contact better. I hope people who have come in and out of my life have felt the love I have for Christ and for my family and for them.

As my good friend Rafiki says....you can't change the past so instead I will try harder to be a better friend, a better example of what matters most and to truly love and serve those in my life.

long time listner, first time caller

So kathy gets on my back once in a while to show some support and post on her blog so here I go. I try to stay away from those "do this and send it to all your friends" scams, but I saw Kathy doing this mosaic thing and thought it would be fun to try out.  For the rules of the mosiac see kathy's post below this one.  I did learn a couple of things in the process.  Flickr has way too many pictures of cats.  You can search for ANYTHING, and you'll get a picture of a cat.  Don't believe me? try flickring for "toilet paper".  Along with some appropriately placed Hillary Clinton toilet paper, is a picture of a cat.  I wouldn't complain if there were lots of pictures of cool animals like anteaters, or weasels ... but cats?  I also learned that no one in all of the flickrverse has a picture with my nickname tagged to it.  I think in some technometaphysical way that means I don't really exist.  

Without further ado, here is my mosaic:

For the mosaic to make sense Here are the questions and my answers

1)What is your first name?  Todd - Loved the movie Sweeney Todd

2)What is your favorite food? Cereal - Don't even have to think twice about that one

3)What School did you go to? "Westminster High School"  We had a lot of Asians at my school and apparently this lady sang there at some time.

4)What is your favorite color? I guess this snake's tongue is baby blue.  Call me a homo, but baby blue is my favorite color. ... On second thought, don't call me a homo

5)Who is your celebrity crush? Princess Leia - rules didn't say they had to be a real person

6)Favorite Drink? Guarana - Brazilian soda I learned to love on my mission.

7)Dream Vacation? Tahiti - Kathy and I went there 7 years ago and ruined all future vacations.  Nothing will ever live up to it.

8)Favorite Desert? Blondie from Applebee's minus the nuts.  Not a big fan of nuts.

9)What do you want to be when you grow up? I typed in Business Executive, but I couldn't resist the picture of Billy Gates gettin' all cozy with his 1985 PC

10)What do you love most in life? I thought of the generic cheesy answers, Kathy, family, etc .. then decided to put in "computer".

11) One word to describe you? I figured "AWESOME" wouldn't really give me the pictures I was looking for so I went with "funny"

12) Your nickname? I cheated on this one ... no, Mr Mullet is not on flickr, but I couldn't resist.

Todd ... Hey! Who you calling a homo?

My Life in Mosaic

I got this from Kori's blog and thought it looked like fun.

Here are my answers:
1. What is your first name? Katharine
2. What is your favorite food? Mexican Food
3. What school did you go to? BYU
4. What is your favorite color? Red
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Michael Jordan
6. Favorite drink? Coke
7. Dream vacation? Bora Bora
8. Favorite dessert? Ice Cream
9. What you want to be when you grow up? Happy
10. What do you love most in life? Family
11. One word to describe you? Meticulous (from Todd)
12. Your nickname. Gil

My boy Tayson

Today was the UVU No Snow 5K. It was the only 5K I could find in the valley this month. I had no idea what to expect and no-one to run with and it was inside. I wasn't expecting any serious running to happen. So I changed my game plan and asked Tayson if he wanted to run it with me. He loves to run but has never run that far. It was so cute how excited he was to go run with me.

Tayson ran his little legs off and we had so much fun. We ran our first mile just over an 11 min/mile pace. Not bad for a 6 year old. The second part of the race was a little slower and he took a few more walking breaks and drink breaks, but still ran the majority of the time. The best part was how competitive he was - if he saw someone coming up behind us when he was walking he would start running again and at full speed. There were 2 other kids that ran and he just kept saying how he was beating them and they were older (the little girl beat him but don't tell him that). I hope he keeps running - I think he has potential.


I LOVE how sweaty he gets!!!

New haircuts

Tayson and I both got our hair cut last week so we took a picture of ourselves to post. This is the shortest we've ever buzzed Tayson's hair but he wanted it all gone. He actually asked to have it bald but this was close enough. Wednesday's are his day for show-n-tell and he was so excited to show off his new haircut. He wore his hat to school to keep warm and he said when he took his hat off lots of the kids in his class laughed at him. When he told us he was so sad so I took the chance to talk to him about how being different isn't bad and all that jazz - until Todd told me I had talked long enough :) Then he was telling us how if someone else got their haircut that short he wouldn't laugh at them and he told us that only girls can't cut their hair that short. Then he said "but if I saw a girl with hair this short instead of laughing I'd tell her she was cool". I thought it was so sweet....man I love that kid!

Flashback Friday

My Grandma turns 95 next week so I thought I'd do a flashback of her. My grandma is an amazing woman. Here are a few of my very favorite things about her:


The story lady -they would record her reading stories and then kids in Spokane could call the number and listen to her - she was the best story teller!


Swimming - for years and years and years my grandma would go to the pool and swim a mile everyday. I even got to go with her a few times when I was a kid. She was in great shape - it's no wonder she's still hanging in there at 95.


My Fair Lady - every time we would go to grandma's house when I was little I would go down in the "blue room" and watch this movie. The first time I saw it was with grandma and it's one of my all time favorite movies.


Oldies - down in the blue room there was an old 8 track player and we would listen to all the oldies. I know every word to the song "Chantilly Lace".

1972

Sherry, Grandma and I

1993Grandma and Grandpa Giboney in Seattle

2002

Grandma, My mom, Tayson and I

I love you Grandma! Happy Birthday!!!

The Circus

Tonight for FHE I took the kids to the circus. The show was at 4:00 so Todd couldn't come because he had to work. So off I went with the 4 kiddos to the circus. We met my parents, Heidi, Steve and Jeannie there. We had a blast and somehow Sophie even managed to get in a 20 minute nap (I don't know how with all the noise).

So here are some things I wonder about the circus...

1. Is it a job requirement that you must be under 5' 1 to work in the circus?
2. How do you become circus talent? Is it something that you just learn? Is it a family skill passed down from generation to generation? Do you just stop and think one day....it would be fun to do the trapeze or ride on an elephant or hula hoop.
3. Why is it necessary to wear as few clothes as possible when flying high in the air at a circus which is targeted to children? I mean I know they have on a full flesh colored body suit, but why?
4. Did you know that the "Amazing Sasha" is a contortionist, hula hooper, face painter elephant rider and amazing assistant all in the same 2 hour circus?
5. Why do you need to put a half dressed lady with a huge set of feather wings on the elephant? Isn't an elephant cool enough on it's own?
6. Why does the circus bring out the craziest people in the entire city of Provo?