Track Meet

Yesterday Emma participated in her first ever track meet. It was between the two elementary schools here and they competed in their grade level. For the 5th grade girls, there were 47 runners! They had to run 3/4 of a mile. Emma finished 9th place overall! She finished 5th place for her school! We are very proud of her, that is a long way to run! She is already talking about how she can do better next year, she absolutely loves to run.
(She must get that from Michael)

My Little Helper

Jacob has been helping me paint the bathroom. He loves to help. We have a little 3 inch roller and he has been using that to paint with.

This is Jacob's paint job. He was done at this point. He didn't want me to paint over his work, he wanted to leave it like this! He said it was cool!

Allie's New Hair

Gracie has a wig for her Halloween costume. It is wavy and messy in the pictures. We had fun trying it on Allie. Jacob didn't know what to think! I have since calmed it down and trimmed it to go with Gracies costume better. Doesn't Allie look cute though!?! Can you imagine a 2 year old with that much hair? Emma had a lot of hair at 2, but not that much!


Allie in Emma's wig, it is way too big for her though!
It is cuter on Emma, it fits better.

Story of My Life

Do you ever feel like this!?!

Monster Cupcakes

We had some friends over to decorate cupcakes for Halloween.

Allie made a cute monster cupcake that she couldn't wait to eat!

Nikki had fun making her monster,
there might have been more candy than cake!

Shawn could decorate professionally! He made a really cool monster!

Emma and Gracie may have been having a contest to see
who could stick more candy to their cupcake!

Here are the final monsters that didn't get eaten before the photo

Bathroom Woes

This is my kids bathroom. Tan walls, ugly shower curtain.
It is definitely time to decorate.




I bought a shower curtain that has several colors. I decided to paint the walls green to match. I bought paint and started with a lighter color for the ceiling.

This is the green ceiling. Are you thinking what I thought? UGLY!?!
I know that it doesn't look the same on the computer, but it does look as ugly as you think the picture looks! Seriously pukey!

I decided to at least try the wall color to see if it was as bad and here is the result. We are talking pea soup ugly!!!

So, it's back to the drawing board for my bathroom paint job. I have another idea, let's hope it looks better!!!

Students of the Month

Emma and Gracie both got student of the month in September. We are so proud of them both for the hard work they do in school! They are both great students! We are happy that Grandma and Grandpa Stevulak could be here for the awards ceremony and donughts!

Way to go Emma and Gracie!

Twin Hairdo's

Michael's brother Chris came to visit when his parents were here. Michaels dad decided to try his hair out like Chris's, what do you think? We are always glad when Uncle Chris can visit!

The Shed

We bought a shed for our backyard to have some extra storage space. Before we could put it up we had to clear the spot for it. I spent a couple of days with Jacob and Allie pulling weeds and moving rocks.

This is after the rocks and weeds were gone!


This is the finished shed. Now we just need to empty our garage out!


We need to finish around the bottom to keep out critters and it will be complete! This is one of many steps to finish our backyard. One down, 500 more things on the list!

Thank you to Michael's parents for all the help building the shed! We are grateful for your love and support! We love it when you visit!

Labor Day

For Labor Day this year we went to visit Michael's aunt and uncle in Apple Valley. We went swimming and had a BBQ. We don't get to see them very often, so it was a nice visit.


Allie has been jumping off the diving board since she could walk!


Jacob is practicing for skydiving!


Where are you looking!?!


I wish this was a video, because it is hilarious to watch her jump!


Jacob has also been jumping since he could walk! I know it is October and I am just now posting about Labor Day. I don't know how the time slips away from me the way it does! I am continually playing catch-up with our blog! I will try to be more up-to-date! I guess a late post is better than no post, RIGHT!?!

Happy Birthday Emma!

October 8, 2009






Michael took Emma to Disneyland for her birthday. They had a great time! Michael took more than 300 pictures, so I just picked out a few of my favorites!

Happy Birthday Gracie!

September 5, 2009

Can you tell where Gracie is? That's right, she got to go to Disneyland on her birthday! We found out that you can go for free on your birthday, so that is what she wanted to do. Of course I still had to pay, but it was so much fun it was worth every penny!


It's a small world! They have added lots of new characters like; The Little Mermaid, Tinkerbell and Peter Pan, Woody and Jessie, and Lilo and Stitch! It looks amazing!

The Dumbo ride is always a favorite!


Did you know there is a canoe ride that you paddle yourself? Well, there is and we did it!

We had so much fun together! It was a great birthday for Gracie and a great mother daughter day for both of us!

Crazy Hair Day

We don't have to plan crazy hair day for Gracie, she just wakes up with crazy hair! This is how Gracie's hair looked when she woke up on her birthday! I know I haven't posted about her special day yet, but it's coming!

Allie, Allie, Allie

Jacob found Allie like this, trying to get applesauce out of the cupboard!

A Fish Story

I am not up to date on my posting, so this happened last week sometime, but I had to share it. Emma and Gracie both won a couple of goldfish at a Relief Society mother/daughter activity back in May. Gracies' died months ago. One of Emmas' died about a month ago. One morning when the girls were getting ready for school, Michael called everyone to come and look at her fish, and this is what we saw:

Yes, that is her fish on the left side of the picture, and its bowl on the right! I put a ruler in between to see how far away the fish was. Nothing was moved by us. That is how Michael found it.

After we looked at it and wondered for 10 minutes or so what had happened and how the fish got so far away from the bowl, we decided it was time for disposal. The fish was dry, there wasn't any water on the counter from possible flopping and under the fish was dry as well. It had to have been there for a long time. Emma got a napkin, scooped up the fish and dropped it in the toilet. They were watching it before the flush and noticed that it was moving!

They came back to tell me and I told them that it will die for sure now because of the bleach tablet in the water tank. Michael grabbed a spoon and scooped the fish out of the toilet and rushed it back to its bowl, where it starts to swim around!

The fish was still alive and swimming around 7 hours later when the girls got back from school. He looked so much better it was amazing! The water was really dirty so Emma decided to change it. The fish died within 20 minutes of having clean water! Floating on its side totally dead!

So, landing on the counter after an 18 inch jump from the bowl won't kill a fish. Laying on the counter for who knows how many hours without water won't kill a fish. Swimming in a toilet with bleach water won't kill a fish, but cleaning its bowl is deadly!!!

Did You Know!

Gracie has a small white line on her nose. You can see it in the picture. I have asked several people - including two doctors - what it is. No one knew - including the two doctors. They both told me not to worry about it. I had to take her to the doctor for a possible ear infection. This is a new doctor that we hadn't seen before. I don't have the best luck with doctors at Kaiser, so I was dreading this appointment. He checked her over and told me that yes, she did in fact have an ear infection and it was probably due to her allergies, which is what was also causing the white line on her nose! It is called an allergic salute. Apparently it has to do with the way she always rubs her nose. I was very impressed with this doctor, he answered questions about my other kids even though they weren't there for an appointment, and he even asked me questions about them! Hopefully he continues to be a good doctor, but if nothing else he solved one mystery for us!

Smoky Sunsets

The smoke is obnoxious, but it sure makes for some cool sunsets!

Jacob's First Crush

3 going on 16!

Jacob had to use the bathroom during sacrament metting and when he got back a young woman was speaking. He looked at her and said "Wow, she is beautiful!" He asked Michael if he could go talk to her. Michael told him he could talk to her after the meeting (he tried to go up while she was still talking). She got up off the stand and left during the postlude hymn and Jacob started freaking out. "Dad, she's leaving! I want to talk to her!" We were on the front row and I'm sure tons of people heard him. Michael calmed him down and said that they would go find her before nursery. They found her in the primary room and at first Jacob wouldn't talk to her, he was being shy. Then he asked Michael, "Dad, will you go over there so I can talk to her by myself for a minute?" Michael did as he was asked and left Jacob with this very nice, very beautiful, very much older, married woman. A minute or so later Jacob came out of the primary room where we were waiting for him and said that she was his girlfriend and they went on a date last night!

I was very curious so after church I asked her what Jacob had said to her. She told me that Jacob asked her if she would be his girlfriend. She tried to explain to him that she was married, but he was clueless. He asked her if she would come to his house and play with him. I tried to explain to him that she is married and she couldn't be his girlfriend for many reasons, but he was undeterred. Finally he said okay, she couldn't be his girlfriend, but could she still come and play with him.

Someday, he is going to laugh about this, maybe when he understands better. Maybe I should get a picture of her so that he will always remember the first girl he ever asked out!

Just Don't Wash Your Car

Yesterday I decided it was time to wash my van. It has been months since it was washed and was seriously dirty. So I spent three hours yesterday cleaning the inside and out. Jacob and Allie were my helpers, which is why it took so long! It looked fantastic and shiny and the carpets were vacuumed. I always crack the windows a little in the summer to try to reduce the oven effect. I went outside today to a very orange sky. My nice shiny van is covered in ASHES! And since I had the windows cracked, it needs to be vacuumed again! Even if you think it won't rain, something will come along the day after you wash your car and destroy your hard work!!! Okay, so the good news is that it was not my house that burned to create the ashes on my car, there is an upside to everything, right!?!






Apparantly there are several fires currently buring in Southern California, and thanks to the always consistent wind here, today the smoke and ash have come for a visit. Hopefully they don't stay long, however, they have already worn out their welcome (okay, so they were never welcome but you get what I mean)

Ventura Beach

Jacob fell asleep on the drive to the beach, wearing his sunglasses in a very unusual way! How funny is that!?!



One of the best things about this beach trip were the dolpins! There must have been a dozen or so, just beyond the waves! It was so cool to watch them jump out of the water!



We discovered that our snow sleds DON'T make good boogie boards! It would probably be a good idea to invest in one or two real boogie boards!



My beautiful girls!



The waves at this beach were perfect, not to close, not too strong!



Emma loves being a big sister, (most of the time) and Allie sure loves her!

Where are Allie's legs??????



Gracie is such a cute girl!



We had a lot of fun at this beach, there were a ton of gorgeous rocks that came in with the waves. We collected a large bucket full of them. The only thing that could have made it better was if the Petersen's were with us again! Maybe next year!?!