Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge

The states of Nevada & Arizona have been working on a bypass bridge for the Hoover Dam since 2003. The bridge was supposed to be completed in 2007, but is far from it. Here's a few pictures I snapped from my phone, while creeping across the dam at 5 mph. When finished, the bridge will be apx. 850 feet above the Colorado river. It is a little unnerving to look at from the ground. I can't imagine being the one working on it!!!

Bryce Canyon

We spent last weekend in Tropic, UT at a family reunion. The girls had a great time. We slept in a Tipi, which the girls LOVED! Brynn spent the first 20 minutes while we were setting up camp running through the trees whooping & shooting an imaginary bow (to kill the deers for dinner). The tipi was a traditional Sioux lodge, and could sleep up to 8 adults, so with just the 5 of us, there was plenty of room. We spent Saturday at the family reunion, where the girls were able to play on a playground with cousins, and go for a "pony ride". We had a couple of great summer showers, which soaked us completely!The first shower got us just as the pony rides were starting, so the kids were moved to cover, and the horses were trailered. Brynn was so upset, she was worried she wouldn't be able to have a turn on the horses. She made up for it later. :) After the cloud burst passed, the horses came out again. There were 3 of my relatives trying to lead 4 horses, so I offered to help out. After about an hour or so, (and another downpour)the kids were ponied out. Brynn had at least 10 rides, Brooke had 3 or 4, and Aubree sat on a horse with me long enough to pose for a picture.
Bryce Canyon was beautiful, albeit a little hot & windy. It was a fun camping trip, and made me itchy for more time in the mountains. We're planning a trip to the mountains again in mid-August for the bow hunt. I'm looking forward to spending more time outdoors!

Out of the mouth of babes

Teaching children to pray is a unique challenge. Here are some snipits of the heartfelt prayers offered recently by my girls:

Brynn:"Thank you for our bed, and our blankets, Thank you for our food (not so unusual, except this was her bed time prayer), Thank you for our friends and our toys.
We've been working on the gratitude piece. :)

Brooke:
Bless Zoe (yes, our Zoe dog), Bless Daddy to be safe at work, Bless Mommy to be happy at home (do I need the help???).

Most importantly the prayers are heartfelt, even when we get to thankfully review every piece of furniture in our home. :) The thought is there, and someday I'm sure it will be eloquent enough for a conference prayer. Until then, I'll be grateful for my blessings to be happy, and for Daddy to come home safe.

Sweet Dreams

Bed time at our house is typically anything but calm & serene. Brynn is content if she has a stuffed animal to lay with & some music, Aubree of course nurses to sleep, and then there is Brooke.....
My Brooke is full of mischief. It is usually only a few minutes after tucking her in that I see the flash of blond hair running down the darkend hallway. To complicate things more, Brooke is convinced if there is even a smidgen of daylight left, it is still day time, and therefore she cannot sleep. A challenge in these sunny summer months.
I usually resort to making her "stuck" (a phrase she uses to describe my torturous tactic of holding her hands still). Not one for going quietly, Brooke begins sobbing her displeasure. Through the sobs of an almost 3 year old tantrum, she shares her views of the world. Here are my favorites:

My Daddy is at work, and will be gone forever! I like my Daddy!
Mommy I like you, but you are gwumpy!
Brynnie is my best fwend ever! I like Brynnie!
I wove my baby Aubree. I want to nuggle her.

In her sweet 3 year old mind, I like you rates better than I love you. It's good to know she still likes her mommy even when I'm gwumpy. :) Maybe someday we'll get to all go to bed peacefully. Until then I plan many more nights of being "stuck", snuggling my baby Brooke.

Most of my blesings have names

Our Aubree Cheyenne was blessed last weekend in church. She was given a beautiful blessing by her Daddy. Mom of course cried. It was such a beautiful opportunity to have our family all together. I'm grateful for the opportunity to be so close to family. Despite all the craziness which is bound to accompany a crowd of 30+ people (mostly under the age of 12)in my house for lunch on a cold and rainy day, it was a beautiful day! (Thanks to Mom,Kellie & Donovan for making lunch while I fed Aubree)!

A visiting Grandpa of another child, who was also blessed bore a beautiful testimony, stating at one point, most of his blessing have names. How true it is.

I am grateful to be blessed with three beautiful and healthy daughters, with such wonderfully diverse personalities to keep me on my toes. I am also grateful to be blessed with such a wonderful husband, who despite all my flaws, is willing to keep me. I'm grateful for our families, biological and "adopted" who support us in so many different ways. I too can say, most of my blessings have names.



Grandma & Grandpa White, Great Grandma White, Mom & Aubree


Great Grandma White


Great Grandma & Grandpa Jones


Grandma & Grandpa Jones

A BIG THANK YOU!!

On Aubree's 5 week birthday we we're able to visit Fire Station #121 to thank the Paramedics who delivered Aubree & take a few pictures. A BIG THANK YOU to Paramedic's Matt Black & Jeff Smith, and of course Grandpa for taking such good care of us!

Happy Easter!!!

For Easter this year instead of treats the girls got swimming attire, complete with "gobbles" (otherwise known as goggles).





Since our girls have been blessed with VERY fair skin, we opted for the swim shirts & shorts, to cover their swim suits.




The grandparents took care of the goodies with an Easter Egg Hunt at my parents on Saturday, and at Donovan's parents on Sunday.


Brooke & Daddy



Brynn & Auntie Emelie


Egg Hunt at Grandma & Grandpa Jones















All the cousins with Grandma & Grandpa White

Welcome Aubree Cheyenne!!

Aubree Cheyenne joined our family at 2:40 AM on Thursday, March 12. She was a little impatient, making her grand entrance in the back of an Unified Fire Authority Ambulance. It's quite a story, so we'll start at the beginning...

We had our 39 week check up Wednesday morning, all looked great. Donovan and I had discussed setting an induction appointment with our Doctor. We had an appointment scheduled for Sunday morning, and jokingly the Doctor commented that nothing seems to encourage natural labor, like scheduling an induction. How right she was. :) I had random and sporadic contractions all day long, but nothing to write home about. Late in the afternoon I had contractions about every 7 minutes for about an hour, but nothing good, and they tapered off during the drive home.

Dinner, bed time, and an otherwise normal evening. I woke up at 1:00 AM having some good contractions. I timed a few contractions, and woke Donovan up. Nothing too exciting yet, we got dressed, got the girls in the car, and headed to Grandma & Grandpa Jones house. My contractions increased in strength as we drove, but still nothing to be too excited about, and then "the shakes" started. This for me is what fills the 1-2 minutes between contractions, where my whole body shakes uncontrollably, which also indicates delivery is isn't too far away.

I called Labor & Delivery at the hospital, so they could notify our Doctor of our arrival. Almost immediately after hanging up the phone, my water broke. Now for most people this is no big news, but in my family, this means you have approximately 20 minutes before the baby is born. Since we were still about 10 minutes away from the hospital, and only about 2 minutes away from my parents house, we called my Dad. (White family trivia - Dad used to keep an OB kit as part of the family first aid kit, "'cause you never know when you might need one.") As Dad had previously delivered 12 babies, Donovan and I felt like we could use his experience, as we were running short on time. After hanging up with Dad, I immediately called 911, to have paramedics dispatched to my parents home.

Dad thought he could get us to the hospital quickly, so we loaded into his car, and began backing out of the driveway. We didn't hit the curb, before I had another contraction, and knew we weren't getting very far. We unloaded, and headed back into the house, where we were joined very shortly by the United Fire Authority paramedics.

We were loaded into the ambulance, and headed for the hospital. The two attending paramedics were both fairly inexperienced (one had delivered 2 babies, the other had never delivered a baby)so my Dad jumped into the back of the ambulance with them, to provide some coaching, and guidance to the young paramedics. Aubree was born as we pulled into the parking lot of the hospital. Donovan cut the umbilical cord with a surgical scalpel in the back of the ambulance.

After only an hour and 40 minutes of labor, and no drugs, Aubree joined our family. Aside from Aubree spending a few hours in the nursery under the warming lights, to help her get her body temperature up, she was perfectly healthy, and beautiful as can be!

We are very grateful to have her officially here. She is a beautiful addition to our family!

I love to see the Temple!

Our Family had the opportunity to spend Valentine's night at the Draper Temple open house. We've had the opportunity to watch the temple as it was under construction, and it is very exciting to see it completed.
Brynn really enjoyed looking through all the rooms, and finding them on our "map" that was given to us as the open house guide (really a pamphlet about several of the rooms). Brooke did well, all things considered, although I'm sure she didn't realize exactly the significance of what was going on.
The temple is of course beautiful. There is definitely a very serene and comforting spirit in the temple.
Brynn's favorite rooms were the Ordinance Rooms, which have beautiful murals painted on the walls of Mountain scenes and animals. She also liked the Celestial room, because "it had a really cool light!" Brooke also liked the animals in the Ordinance Rooms, and the mirrors in the Sealing Room.
Brynn was also fascinated by the stained glass windows, which she could see from outside the of the Temple as well.
My favorite part was spending time with my family, in a place that binds families for eternity.

Happy Birthday Brynn!!

I can't believe how fast time flies!!! It seems like we just brought Brynn home from the hospital in an icy Wyoming snow storm. I can hardly believe that she is already 5! She has brought so much laughter, and so many blessings into our home. I can't imagine life without her.
She is my creative child, who is always looking for imaginary things to do. Making huts to play in, and creating works of art. I'm still convinced that one day she will be a writer. She is so descriptive in her conversations. I hope I can foster the creativity to help her capture any dream she has.

We had a Bindi the Jungle Girl birthday party this year. Sans hanging vines, and ropes which were requested to have a "real Bindi hut". Even without the vines we seemed to have a great party. The Crocodile cake was an adventure for me (and a last minute choice by Brynn). All in all, I don't think it turned out too bad. I'm definately NOT as good as Auntie Laurie is at making cakes. (One of the many things I miss about her!!) At least the cake tasted good!

We played a few animal games with the cousins that were fun to watch. Animal freeze dancing (when the music stops, and animal was called out, and all kids had to act like the animal), was fun to watch. For some reason, the animals all seemed very similar. We also had several rounds of Kangaroo racing (hopping across the room with a pair of socks between the knees), which was a great hit. Finally we played musical chairs, with Donovan's creative animal artwork as the "chair".

Brynn's favorite part of her birthday was sharing it with her cousins. I am very grateful that we now live close enough to share birthday's and holidays with our family in Utah, but I still miss our "family" in Wyoming. I guess no one gets to have their cake and eat it too.

I know am so blessed to have such a beautiful ray of sunshine in my life!

Countdown to Baby Girl!

We are officially only 7 weeks from baby girl #3's anticipated arrival date! WHAHOO!!
Baby is growing well, and we've started the oh so fun process of bi-weekly check ups. I'm such a boring pregnant person (which is a good thing). So far the greatest complications of our pregnancy have been my never ending heartburn, and the ever so slight anemia I have developed.
The wives tale is that mom's with heartburn issues tend to deliver babies with more hair. We'll see if this is true.

The girls are getting very excited to FINALLY see their baby sister (so are mom & dad!) I am very grateful that all has gone well through our pregnancy. Pregnancy truly is one of the greatest miracles.

Just for laughs, here is a fun shot of me at the Coca-Cola Christmas party, showing off the belly.

A few of my favorite things

In the classic musical, The Sound of Music, governess Maria tells the Von Trapp children when she is having a bad day, she thinks of her favorite things. So here are a few of my favorite things, in no specific order:

Dark Chocolate
My Husband
Brooke's giggle
Brynn singing (even when it is Christmas songs all year long)
Looking out my bedroom window at the snow covered hill behind my house (I love sagebrush!)
Singing!!!!
Working for a great company, which isn't laying off half its workforce
Sunsets on the ocean
Being a mom
The gospel

Not so poetic as Roger's and Hamerstein, but it is good to remind myself how blessed I really am. I know I'm biased, but I have a pretty incredible husband, and three of the most beautiful girls ever (the third is an assumption based on the oldest 2, but the evidence speaks for itself).

Maria is right, thinking of my favorite things does make me feel better!

Happy New Year!!!

Happy New Year!!! 2008 seemed to fly by us. I'm sure the fact that we moved twice, and adding another beautiful girl to our family (well not quite yet) have both been contributed to the zoom factor. Since moving to Utah, the girls have been able to experience a new wonder of winter, playing in snow.

While it did snow regularly in Wyoming (our snowiest months were March and April), the snow seldom fell from the sky, rather it blew in sideways, like icy shards of glass. Growing up in Utah we always heard it won't snow when it gets too cold. Well again in Wyoming, it usually didn't begin snowing until temperatures dipped into the teens, or well below. Add in the wind chill, and snow storms weren't much fun. To add to the adventure, when it stopped snowing, the wind always seemed to pick up, and the temperatures continued to fall. All these conditions combined made it less than pleasant to play in the snow.

This year the girls have been able to play in the snow several times, including adventures with cousins to go sledding. Which they both loved. Brooke is a bit more of a dare devil than Brynn, who has to be coaxed into trying new things.

Brooke spends the first few minutes of her snow adventure falling flat on her face in the snow. She reminds me of the boy in A Christmas Story who can't move. After a few good face plants, she gets her snow legs and is off and running.
Brynn is always the princess, and is more concerned about being cute in the snow, to ever let herself really fall down.
Mostly it is fun for Mom and Dad to watch.