Semiannual blog post!

It has been forever (again) since updating the blog! Here is just an overview of some of the things that we’ve been up to since November. We had a great Christmas and spent it out in Roosevelt, this was the first year that Cayman has really looked forward to Christmas so it was so fun watch her open her presents and be soooo excited about them. January was a long and slow month at least for me, we are expecting baby #2 and I was sick from the middle of November until the about the middle of February, it was definitely a very long winter for me! Larry and I decided that to give me something sunny to look forward to we did the Disney’s give a day get a day program and made blankets for kids in need and for doing that Disney gives you a 1 day ticket to Disneyland. We did one for larry’s little brother Patrick as well and so the last weekend in February Larry, Cayman, Patrick and I all jumped in the car and went to California. It was so great to spend a day in Disneyland in the sunshine! It was just what I needed! Luckily I was feeling better by then and was really able to enjoy it. It was also really fun to have Patrick there with us, he had his mission call to Chihuahua Mexico so to be able to get to spend a long period of time with him was so fun, Cayman still talks about going to Disneyland with Uncle Pat! Also this trip to Disneyland would be our new babies 1st trip, and at this point we had just found out that we were having another little girl! Hooray! We were trying to think of names for her and didn’t know if we were going to do what we did with Cayman by naming her after a place that we loved, well we got all sorts of input on what we should name her…Minnie…Daisy…Disney…Cinderella…and so on…even Cayman wanted to name her Alice in Wonderland! Larry and I kept talking about what to name her and actually came up with Cali. It keeps up the destination name thing but yet not so different. In fact only people who really know us make the connection . In march we spent a couple weekends in Roosevelt before Patrick left on his mission and then on the Wednesday that he went to the MTC we had a little family farewell party here at our house. It was hard to say goodbye to him but we are so proud of him for choosing the go and serve the lord for the next 2 years. He will do great!









A big event that happened in February is that Larry got a new job, he is now working at Novell as a sales support analyst. He loves it there, it is a great job and he enjoys the fact that the people there are actually positive and are happy to be at work and not complaining all the time like where he used to work. It is great to see him happy at work! I am very proud of him for finishing his degree and earning his bachelors! HOORAY HOORAY HOORAY!!!!

Another event that has happened in our life is that Larry got in a car accident which thankfully he was fine but it was enough to total out our car. It was our white Honda civic so we were down to one car. At the time it was frustrating because we didn’t want a car payment again but as we were trying to decide what kind of car to get we went to a dealership that is owned by a guy who was in our old ward and was our home teacher, he had 2 cars on his lot that would have worked for us a Toyota camry and a Honda Accord. The Camry was loaded way beyond what I wanted, it was leather with a touch screen radio and GPS screen and all sorts of toys in it, it was cool but way more than what we needed. We drove the Accord and we really liked it. He was really good to us and sold it to us for a terrific price. I didn’t get to pick the cars color, features or anything but it is everything that if I could have picked I would have! It’s a beautiful car! Looking back now I see that we were totally blessed through the whole thing, Larry didn’t get hurt in the wreck and now we have a car that will allow for 2 car seats and for an adult to sit in the back seat. We were truly blessed!

In April for spring break my sister Christy wanted to take her kids to St. George for a couple days but didn’t want to go alone as her hubby had to go to India for work so she invited us to go with them. Larry and I talked about it and we knew that Caymans new room had to be painted and the new cupboard in the kitchen had to be painted and I couldn’t be in the house while the painting was being done so we decided that just Cayman and I would go and Larry would stay home for the weekend and do the painting that had to be done. It was a fun trip but we missed Larry. Here are some pics from the trip.





The 1st weekend in May we went to St. George again this time to cheer on my other sister Summer’s husband Joel. He was competing in the St George Ironman. It was a great weekend down there, Joel did awesome, for the ironman he swam 2.1 miles, biked 112 miles and then ran 26.2 miles. He finished in 15 hours and 48 minutes. He started the race at 7am and came across the finish at 10:48pm. I don’t know how he did it because just cheering him on along the race course was enough for me! We even lucked out entirely because the course went down a street called diagonal where the runners would pass by 4 times which conveniently the condo we stayed in (thanks so to the friends who let us stay there!) was located so that when the kids were done watching one of us adults could go with them into the condo and they could go in and watch a movie and everyone else could stay out and watch for Joel.






Cayman got a new bedroom in prep for baby Cali’s arrival. I wanted to get it finished early so that Cayman would have a good month in her new room before Cali came so that she didn’t feel like she was just getting the boot for the baby. She wanted a princess room, so that is what she got. I remember when I was little my sister and I loved unicorns and my mom painted a unicorn on the wall with a big rainbow behind it, we LOVED it! (Sad that if you had that on your wall now people would wonder about you) but anyway I wanted Cayman to have something memorable like that so I asked my mom if she would paint a castle on Caymans wall. She came over and we got to work, I even learned a few things and helped her paint it, also Summer came over and helped on the castle too, it took 4 nights of working on it but it looks so AWESOME!!!! Thanks mom and summer for working so long and hard for my little girl! Cayman loves it so much, anytime someone comes over she hurry’s and takes them upstairs to show them her room!







Now we are just getting some other little things done around the house in preparation for Cali’s arrival which will be here in less than 6 weeks! I got almost all the flowers planted out front yesterday, I will have to finish on Monday. We got a lot done yesterday so at night we decided to have a little fun and invite some friends over to break in the new fire pit that Larry got for Christmas. It was fun to have people over and have Smores all while staying in the back yard!
Wow that was a really long post, but I guess a lot happens in a 6 month time frame! We are counting down the time until Cali comes and can’t wait for her arrival!

Holy Cow

Where has time gone. I know it has been about 4 months since our last post so here are some of the highlights. Cayman is now 3 and keeps us busy!!! Andy just finished a season (8 games) of co-ed indoor soccer which was fun because she got to play with her cousin Bryant. I finished school... but not really because I tried to CLEP out of a class and the way the test results is so stupid and confusing, so I missed it by 1 stinking point! Man were we a bit miffed about that. So I am taking my last class now and trying to get it done before Christmas. That is a real quick update with what is going on with us. Hopefully it won't be another 4 months for us to update our blog.

A Sad Day

Well its offically over, the annual passes to Disneyland are expired! :( We got one last trip in two weeks ago, it was so much fun! Cayman loves it there, I am not sure how I am going to explain to her that we are not going to be going back for a while. We will just have to keep watching the home videos to get our disneyland fill.
The week that we went they were starting their new fireworks show and there is something that is so awesome, I wont say because if you are going I dont want to ruin it for you but a little hint is that someone flies and it is not Tinkerbell. It is so magical!! It made me cry, not that it takes alot in disneyland, I cried the whole way out on the last night because I knew that it would be a while until we would be back. Well here are some pictures from the trip, I guess all good things come to an end......until next time!!!

Long Time No Post

Well its been a long time since I have posted anything here so I thought I would do a over veiw of the last month or so. After the week we spent in st george/disneyland for spring break we spent the next week going up to the hospital in murray to spend time with larrys dad while he was in the hospital. We are very greatful that everything turned out so amazingly well. He had his surgery to remove his tumor and though it was a tough recovery for him he is getting better. They ended up sending the tumor to harvard to have them test it and the results came back that the tumor was not malignant! HOORAY!! He did have a bit of a rough week last week, he was having kidney issues and the flu. We cant wait for him to really get back on his feet so that he can do the things that he wants to do! We love you Papa! Here is a picture of his tumor, the ruler is a 6" ruler

The next 12 days we spent living in springville babysitting for my brother and sister in law while they went on a vacation to hawaii. It was alot of fun to get to spend an extended amount time with my neice and nephews (tyler, witney, spencer, and ethan) and to be able to get to know them even better. One funny thing that happened while there is that my brother just bought a house that has a pool in the backyard and the people who owned it before didnt close down the pool for the winter and so there was a process to get it up and going for spring, well just before Kelly(my bro) left for his trip found out that springville would double their water prices for the summer while they were on their trip so he scheduled appts for people to come fix things, well they weren't showing up and then when they finally did the city was supposed to fill the pool from the fire hydrant and when I called to tell them what time to come they told me that they actually dont do that. Funny how they can tell two different stories..anyways, so I put the hose into the pool on wednesday at about 2pm to fill it hoping it would be filled before friday when the price doubled. Well on thursday morning it was about 1/4 of the way filled, there was no way! I did some thinking and here is what I came up with



Yep call it redneck but it worked, I put two hoses in the tub out the back, down to the pool and siphoned them, now we were getting somewhere!!! Well as the night went on it still wasnt looking like it was going to make it so in an all out effort we all spent about an hour working together and filling soup pots and bowls in the tub and then out the back window and larry and I would carry them to the pool and pour them in...




It was actually really fun and everyone worked together! You can see how close we were, we didnt completely finish before friday but we didnt have to do too much that day.
On Friday the kids came home from school ready to get into the pool however when the pool guy came to set it up they told me that the heater needed some repairs so it wouldnt be heated, everything else was ready just no heat...thus creating the 1st annual penquin plunge!!! Yep the water was a chilly 58 degrees! I will add a picture later it is on the other computer. That was a blast all the kids (even the biggest one larry) went down the slide and jumped off the diving board, it didnt last more that 15 minutes but it was hilarious watching their faces come up out of the water!
That saturday ty had a soccer game and witney had gymnastics and wit's was up in SLC so we picked up ty, then went to wit's meet and they had finished early so we didnt even get to see her perform. While we were in downtown we went over to capitol theater where Wicked was playing and since we had the kids we got an additional 3 entrys into the lottery for tickets. (we had tried to win the whole week larrys dad was in the hospital so that larry could take his mom to it and we had no luck) Well they only draw 10 names and if you get drawn to can buy 2 tickets for $25 each, 8 had already been drawn when number 9 was drawn they yelled out "witney" and of course stumbled over the last name, but I looked at her jumped up and down and scream and we ran up to the front to get the tickets. I couldnt believe it!! I called my mom and she came up switched us cars and took all five kids home for us and babysat so that larry and I could see wicked(larry had not seen it yet) It was the best, our seats were on the 4th row! It was amazing to be so close to the actors. I could see that play over and over again and never get tired of it. I cant wait until october for the arko girls trip to denver, we are going to go see wicked there!
When we finished babysitting we came home and it was like going to a place that you love that you havent been to forever! I felt like we had been gone for years not weeks. It was so nice to be home! Thanks to our great neighbors who mowed our lawn, got our mail, took care of primary stuff for us etc, etc, etc. We missed our great neighborhood so much!!!
We got home on thursday and on friday it was on the road again, this time out to roosevelt for a going away party for larry sister and her family who were moving to St. Louis for school. We are sad that they had to leave and we will miss them so much but its only for a couple years. Thank goodness for Skype!
The next 2 weeks were just filled with the catch up process of being gone so long, working and doing hair appts and then two more quick trips to roosevelt, one for larry's little brothers seminary graduation and being ordained an elder, and the other for his high school graduation

Congratulations Pat!!! We are so proud of you!!!
Well that brings us up to this week, again filled with just working and doing hair appts and getting some projects done around the house. Cayman has had a big change in her life today

Cayman has moved up to the big girl bed! She loves it! I just hope that she doesnt fall out or get out in the middle of the night. She is such a sweet little girl, in all the craziness of the past month she has been so flexible just to do whatever we need her to. A couple of funny things that she has done this month.
She got two butter knives out of the silverware drawer, brought one to me and said "I'm captain hook, lets fight!" I said "ok well then I am peter pan" and we would hit the knives together and after a minute or two cayman says to me "you old codfish!" All I could do was stop and hug her, it was sooo cute!
I found two crayon tips up her nose, she obviously didnt learn her lesson with the rocks, poured her own sippy cup of milk then says "mom I'm a big girl!", loves to sing and knows every word to the loathing song from wicked, apparently we have been listening to that alot around here, and requesting ketchup on her waffles, cayman has been Kenzified! I love it!! Well sorry that was a very long update, hopefully I can do a better job at keeping this up!

Sweet!

I love when people put cute or funny sayings that come from their kids, so here is Caymans latest! We were in disneyland and we had just bought her a princess crown. When she saw herself in the mirror with it she was so proud and thought she looked so cute. Right after that we went to get in line for the carousel. While waiting I was holding her and she was watching the horses trying to decide which one she wanted to ride when she stopped looked me right in the eyes and said "Mom, I am so happy!!" It was the sweetest thing. It made me want to cry that this little 2 year old girl realized and verbally acknowledged how she was feeling. She is truly growing up so fast.

Where would we be without laughter from kids!

This week has been an interesting one, to say the least. Cayman has been a little clown this week making us happy when we needed it and she doesnt even realize it (or maybe she does? hmmmmm) Larry's dad had Cancer in 2006 and he did chemo and he beat it, which we are all so greatful for but the bad part is that the cancer is back. He has been getting tested every six months since he first had it and at this last checkup it showed a tumor that has grown to the size of a tennis ball. It has been hard to know how to feel because we didnt know how/if they could treat it, he couldnt do chemo again and they said they might not be able to do radiation because it is so close to his heart, we didnt know what they could do for him. We found out tonight that he is going to have surgery to try to remove it. We are optimistic (we have to be!!!!) We are praying that everything goes ok, We know that what ever is supposed to happen will, but we really want him to stay with us for a lot longer!!! We love you Dad!

4 little rocks

So this is where the part about Cayman making us laugh comes in. We were at work having dinner and cayman sneezed and a little rock landed on my leg. I thought, that little girl should not have rocks in her mouth!!! We got home and were getting ready for bed and I looked at her and it looked like she had a big booger so I wiped and it was stuck (sorry more detail than some may want to know) so I dug it out and it was a rock. I was so surprised, wondering how this rock got there, I looked at her nose again and right behind it, there was another rock! I got that one out and again there was another rock! She was a rock spewing pez machine! Larry and I just sat trying not to laugh to show her that we did not approved of her shoving rocks or anything else for that matter, up her nose. I felt her nose to see if there were possibly anymore in this secret hiding spot that she had found, and it seemed ok. We put her to bed and Larry and I both laid in bed laughing for a good long while about it. Just what we needed, so thanks Caym! Oh yes and in the morning I got her out of bed and guess what was in her nose, yep another rock!

Easter with the Erk's

Last Sunday we had our easter celebration with the my side of the family. We get together and have a big dinner and the kids get to hunt for eggs. Cayman thought it was the coolest thing that there were a ton of "eggies" laid out for her to pick up, and she was even more excited to see there was candy in them.


My food assignment was dessert. I made these cute cupcakes that look like easter bunnies going into their bunny hole, it was a hit at the party. Thanks to Misti/Kristi for the idea and thanks to Amy for the butter and shortening sunday morning(I couldnt have done it without you!!)

Happiness from a hat!

At Disneyland when larry got his birthday gift card, I knew what he was going to buy. To preface this a little for about 8 years everytime we would go to Disneyland, Larry wanted to buy an Indiana Jones hat. This isn’t a baseball hat type it looks just like Indy's hat in the movies and it was alot of money for a hat. Everytime we would go he would go try on the hat and look in the mirror, well this time he had money that he had to spend on souvenirs so on his birthday we go to the shop and he tries on the hats to get the right size and then gets the biggest smile you have seen just knowing that he is finally getting this hat. He goes and pays for it, the lady wishes him happy birthday and while there the lady hands him the phone from behind the desk and it is goofy, wishing him a happy birthday (so cute, the details that Disney puts in! Amazing!) Then he proudly walks out of the shop and this time he doesn’t have to take it off! Who would have thought that a hat could make someone so happy! Well he wears the hat proudly for 2 days and our last day in the park Larry and I go on splash mountain. Larry wanted to have his hat on for the picture that they take when you go down the big hill. (I think you can see where I am going with this) Anyway he wears it with his hand on top of it to keep it on but as we get down to the bottom he thought that we had slowed down enough to lift his hand and the second he did POOF the hat was gone. We got off the ride and told the castmembers that he had lost it and they told us to come back in 30 minutes because when something gets lost they usually will float through and they will catch it. 30 minutes had passed, Larry walked back to splash and no luck, an hour later he tried again, no luck, 3 more times that day he tried and still no luck. At this point we had to go fill out a form at the lost and found so that if it got turned in they would know it was his. When we got there they said that they drain the ride every night and walk through it and pick up any lost items so its likely that it would be there in the morning. We told them this was our last day in the park and they said that if it got turned in they could ship it to us. Larry was really sad, then mad at himself that he lost it and then sad again but was still hopeful that they would find it that night. The next day on our way to Costa Mesa we stopped in at Disneyland and Larry went to check and still, no luck. You could tell he was so sad because he really just wanted it to be there because this was our last chance in the Disneyland area. Well we traveled home and on Monday when he went back to work I decided to just call down there to see if by chance they had found it and guess what, they had!!! I was so excited that I could barely talk. Larry hadn’t opened his birthday gift yet so I put a card with it that that said happy birthday and that Disneyland had found his hat and they were shipping it that day. When he read that part his face was classic he looked at me and said "are you serious?" I jumped up and said YES!!! then he jumped up and down saying hooray they found my hat!! Well on Friday we got a knock on the door, Larry went to answer and no one was there, then he saw the UPS truck and then saw the box, he grabbed it ran in the house and said "my hat is here, my hat is here" He opened the box and put the hat on ran in the living room and jumped in the air and clicked his heels together several times, it was priceless! My sweet hubby finally had his hat, he was like a little kid! It was so great to see him so excited about it.

Kakaw monthly news!

Yes I think that I need to change the title of our blog,The new title is kakaw monthly news. It just seems that the time flys by and I am lucky if I get an update in! Well in the last month we have been able to do some great things. We got to go to the Draper Temple open house, it always amazes me at how beautiful that they are! It was neat to take cayman with us, even though she is still too small to remember, but as we walked though she noticed the chandeliers and she would say "Mom look, sparkly lights!! they are beautiful!!" It was adorable.
Also a few weekends ago all of larry's family was in town for his cousin, jeff's farewell. It was alot of fun to be able to spend a lot of time with them, (but poor cayman got thrown completely off because for 4 nights in a row we didnt get home before 12:30am.) Jeff is going to the stockholm sweden mission, he is very excited to be able to go and serve, I think that he is the most excited missionary that I have seen in a long time. He told us that there needs to be a trip to sweden to pick him up, if there is you can count us in! Good Luck Jeff!!!
Our big event was that on march 11th, larry turned 30!!! In the words of Jane Hatch he is now 20 10!!! I wanted to do something special for larry, I thought what would he want to do and of course he would say go to disneyland. We were going to go in april for spring break but alot of people from utah would be there, it is part of orange county's spring breaks and it is the week after easter (which is known to be busy at disneyland) so I thought I will take him to disneyland, we'll take one last trip on the annual passes before they expire and when you go to disneyland on your birthday they give you free entrance to the park, well larry already has a ticket so they give you a gift card for the cost of a ticket. That would be a nice bonus for him some spending money to buy whatever he wanted (I had a pretty good idea of what he was going to buy, this will be explained more later!) My parents, and two sisters families came on the trip with us. On the way down we spent the night in the booming metropolis of Primm Nevada at a place called buffalo bills, I was a little nervous because of a review from someone I know saying that their room was a crime scene but for $6 a night and you get in late and leave early I figured we would risk it, surprisingly it wasn't that bad (luckily!)
Disneyland is always so fun! they have it all decorated for a celebration, there are cute mickey balloons on the lights poles that are wrapped in ribbon and the mickey in front has on a birthday hat with balloons on each side so it was like they had decorated disneyland just for larry's birthday. He even got a button to wear that says happy birthday larry, so every castmember who saw it would wish larry a happy birthday. So to you my sweet hubby, I hope that you had a great 30th birthday!
The rest of the trip was great 3 days in disney and then on saturday we went to H&M and then to the costa mesa swap meet which was pretty good, we both got some great sunglasses for really cheap. Cayman got this little toy dog that barks and walks and as we walked out she sang "I got a puppy, I got a puppy" over and over to a little song that she had made up. I wish I would have had my camcorder there it was so funny!
This trip was one of the best, but I am so sad knowing that the passes will expire soon but the memories that we got from the 7 times we went we are grateful for and would not trade for anything! Watching cayman discover the magic of disneyland and enjoy the rides, sounds and smells will always be with me, another memory I will never forget was the chance for Kenzie to come with us, and for me to be an 11 year old again with Kenzie and Haley. Thanks girls for letting me be silly! We are sad that our trips to disney will be far far more spread apart. I guess all good things must come to an end. Maybe in a few more years we will do the annual pass thing again, I can't wait!


Cayman at the start of gadgets go coaster

And Cayman while on gadget's go coaster
When it was over she loved it!


Cayman and her puppy she named "ruff ruff"