My birthday...

Wednesday was my 32nd birthday. It was a great day filled with visits from friends, calls from my family and friends that that night Shon had planned a little pary. Thank you all for making my day great.

Shon got me this sweater and the dress that is underneath it. He did so good picking them out. I love them. My MIL made a yummy cake.
I got an awesome gift from my parents, but I didn't take a picture of it. If you have never tried or heard of a mixing bowl and measuring spoon set called "Pourfect" you totally should check them out!! Mom has some and I used them over Christmas when we were there and fell in love with them, so they got me a set for my birthday. I love them!!!!!! My good friends the Barnes gave me a cute vest and slippers. Thank you.

So my SIL Mary and my brother Bryan made me this book. It is a copy of our Hamblin Family Cookbook. Now if you have seen my original HFC, you would know that this is so great. My copy is totally hammered.
Sorry the pics are sideways. This is the cover. The plastic that was there to protect it was torn off years ago by one of my little helpers, and they added beautiful art as you can see.
This is what most of my pages look like. I am a messy cook, I guess. I just use this book so often.

SO Mary copied all the recipes and put every page in a sheet protector and labeled all the catergories.
She covered the outside with this beautiful cover she made. It is amazing.

Shon is taking me on a date tonight, which I told him is all I really wanted for my birthday. The boys are going to stay at Grandma and Grandpa Shuldberg's, even for the whole night, even Cameron. Hopefully he will do okay. What a great birthday!!

Things I have been thinking about...

Well, I am not very good at writing or expressing my thoughts or feelings, but I have had a few as of late. Sorry I am not near as good of a writer as my sisters or my mother, so just bare with me.

So I have never been good at resolutions. It is almost like I unofficially set some, and it almost makes me worse at whatever I am trying to improve. I am not sure why. It may be that I try to do too many things at once and not take them just one at a time. Then it seems like I get nothing accomplished, but I am tired from doing a bunch of nothing. How do you obtain focus, does anyone know? Maybe that should be my first thing I try to improve and other things will just all into line.

My birthday is this week and I don't really feel a lot different, which I guess is good. I don't really mind at all getting another year older, I just want to be a little wiser. Don't know if I really am, but that is okay. I do feel different only because my kids are seeming so big to me, which is another one of my thoughts.

Tonight we went to a baptism preview. I have been to a few of these because of my calling so I know what they are about. I was pretty preoccupied with all the preparation for this one and setting up and all that I really didn't give it much thought of how important this is for Ty. I didn't even get to sit with my family tonight because I was up on the stand. I did look at Tyler every once in a while, and I think he was really listening to what was being said. I think he realized that they were talking to him. It was after I got everything cleaned up and got home that I really thought of what tonight meant for me. My oldest son is choosing to be baptized this year. You know, sometimes I think we take it for granted that it is a pretty easy decision. Being here where there are a lot of members makes it really easy to want to do it and know that it is what to do at eight. I hope I have taught him what he needs to know so that it will be his choice and something he takes seriously. He is a good kid.

Sorry I don't have any pictures to post. I haven't been very good about taking any. I have plenty more thoughts but won't bore you with them. See ya!

p.S. Tyler's baptism will be on June 26th at 10:00 am here at our church. I told some of you that it would be in August, but we made some changes as a presidency.

Christmas...

Our day started at 5:00 am with boys giggling very excited. Cam was still asleep so we let him for about 20 minutes while these two took it all in. They soon realized that Santa had visited our house and Zack was so excited that he ate the cookies and even drank the milk we had left out for him. Santa left this fun race track for the boys. Their faces tell it all. Now that excitement is what Christmas is all about, I think.

Santa brought Cam a little 4-wheeler. Man he loves that thing. He only wanted to ride that all morning. He had no interest in the rest of his gifts. Poor Zack kept trying to persuade him to open his others and could hardly stand it that he wouldn't. I thinks Zack ended up opening about four or five of them for him.
So Shon got a very fun gift a few weeks before Christmas. This 4-wheeler has been a hit. He has wanted one for so long and so I had been looking for a good used one for quite a while to get him for Christmas. But I found that the kind he wanted and that was in good shape, the used ones were almost as much as buying a new one. So he actually found this one one day and it was such a good buy that I convinced him to get it. So it wasn't a surprise but he sure loves it. On Christmas day, we took it out to his mom and dad's to pull the kids behind. They had a great time, but there just wasn't quite enough snow.

I love this picture. Cam doesn't really love to ride in the sled behind, but he sure loves this position. He gets really made if Shon goes out without him.
The day after Christmas we headed out on the long drive to Ekelaka, MT to see my family. My two brothers were there and my sister, Whitney. A few days later, Natali and Bryce got there so everyone was there but Emily and her family. We sure missed her but had a great time. The house got a little crazy with 8 loud grandboys, but they loved being together. After chuch, the boys played connect four for quite a while.
There was so much snow in Ekalaka when we got there. We actually got stuck driving there. (We were only about a mile and a half out so it wasn't too bad). My dad and my brothers were behind us in my dad's truck and they got stuck also. Shon unloaded his 4-wheeler from the back and dad headed to get his heavy duty pickup, while the big boys started shoveling. It was about 6:30 pm so it was pretty darn cold. The little boys were a little rattled at first, but they were patient playing DS and watching a movie. Dad come back and after a while, we were back on the road headed into town. Shon had a great time, because his 4- wheeler really saved the day.

We went sledding on Monday on some really good hills. Shon took his toy out and hauled people up the hills. The snow was so deep down at the bottom. In most places it was up to my waste. ut we sure had fun.
Shon was loving it!!
Bryan tried to get a long run at one hill so he could get down and blaze a trail. But the snow was so deep at the top that he just got stuck.
The brave sledders minus mom and Ben's three youngest, who lost interest after about 10 minutes. (The boys that is. Mom took them back to the house because they were way upset.)
These three had a blast.

The boys all lined up to play darts with Ben. I think they did this for about an hour. Ben was done long before the boys wanted to be.
Cute little Austin with Cam's Hulk Hands. These things are almost as big as him. Zack got a pair of these for his birthday last year and the kids love them so much that we got a pair for Cam for Christmas so they could box. There was a lot of that with all the cousins. And there were a few tears also from some rough punches.
So after our fun few days in Montana, we came back to see Shon's brother Brian and his fam. They live in Texas so we don't see them too often. It was so great to hang out with them. Shon's sister Janae and here fam came the day after we got back, so it was a great time with everyone. We have gotten quite a lot of snow these last few days, so we took the 4-wheeler up to Rexburg and did a lot of this. All the kids just loved it. Grandpa has a 4-wheeler too, so both were going. Some of the cousins have never done this before so it was a new fun experience for them. We even got Grandma to get on the sled.

We sure had a great Christmas this year. Being with our families was so wonderful. Now I guess we have to get back to real life. Hope all of you had a very merry christmas!!!

Christmas Eve...

Since we were going to see my family after Christmas, and see Shon's folks on Christmas day, we decided to have a little party with some of our friends for Christmas Eve. We went to the church and ate some yummy food and let the kids play in the gym. Our new church has a stage so we had a little nativity performance with the kids. I think it turned ot so cute. We had a good time just hanging out.

We all opened our Christmas Eve jammies before we went to the church. I didn't get a picture though. I haven't been too good at taking pictures lately.

December

Well just like everyone else, we had a very busy December. It was filled with fun family events and getting ready for Christmas. We enjoyed some fun traditions that we have done for the last few years and added a few. I really didn't get a lot of pictures this month. I forgot my camera for most events. But hear are a few pictures of some things we did. The first is of course our beautiful tree. I did something this year that I usually don't do. I let the boys put almost all the ornaments on themselves and didn't even change them. Usually I am pretty controlling with how it goes up, but decided to let the boys do it. They loved it and it turned out great.

Tyler had his first piano recital on December 4. He so loved it. His teacher is my friend Jessica. She teaches piano to a few more students than me. She had a son the same age as Zack, so I teach him and she teaches Tyler. It works out good for both of us. He is really thriving with his lessons and so loves to play.
I had my piano recital the next week. It was Zack very first recital also. He was so darn excited it about made him crazy. He did so well. Hopefully I will be able to upload my videos soon so I can post them.
This is me playing my recital song. My first recital, I didn't play anything but I was asked by some of my students to play one, so I practiced really hard and played one. It was a little scary. I haven't done that for a really long time. It is different then just playing in church. But it was fun and I was very proud of all my students.

I made these cute gifts for my neighbors. They were so fun to make. I just dipped marshmallows in chocolate and packaged them with graham crackers for Christmas Smores. I thought they turned out so cute.

We had a great Christmas season, getting ready for Christmas and enjoying the season. I went and did a party for Tyler's class, made graham cracker houses, bought gifts for eachother at the dollar store and a few more traditions. December was a good month.

Zack's birthday

So Zack turned six today. This was the first year that his birthday was on Thanksgiving. He was born the day before Thanksgiving six years ago. I got to come home for the holiday though so was very glad. Zack was pretty lucky this year because he got two parties and two birthday cakes. Today I made a dinosaur cake, big surprise, right. I think it turned out really cute. Shon did most of the decorating. He loved it.
Spike JR, which he has wanted for a long time. We have a lot of dinos around our house.
Shark Park car track. All the kids loved this one.
Dino cake. Pretty cute if I do say so myself.
So on Monday, we had a little friends party. For this one he really wanted a lego cake. It was the easiest theme cake I have done.



Buzz wings. The boy loves to dress up.
Oh the anticipation.

Birthday/Thanksgiving Bingo. It was fun for a while, but the kids just wanted to eat the M-n-M's . We had a great time. I think he had a good birthday.

Life for the last few months...

I know it has been a long time since I have posted anything. I have been a little anti blog lately, just one more thing I have to do. But I know that my sisters and mom and my in-laws love to see updates, so I am going to get back into it and start enjoying it again. Because there really was a time that I really liked blogging, but lately I have not really done things that I like and I have found life to be a little harder. So I am going to count my blessings everyday and make life a little less monotoneous. (I really don't know how to spell that word.)


So this first picture has a pretty funny story. I had gone shopping on Saturday morning and left Shon to get the boys ready for Football and Soccer games. I kind of lost track of time and knew that I was cutting it a little close when I left the store. When I got home, Shon was really grouchy and we both left in a big hurry, Shon taking Ty to his football game and Cam and I taking Zack to his soccer game (the last few games they had happened to land at the exact same time). I thought Shon was just mad because I had not come home earlier. Well, after the games and lunch, he told me what our little menace had done. Cam had climbed up onto the counter and had dumped the whole canister of cinnamon sugar all over the counter. Then he added left over hot chocolate from breakfast. So when Shon came upstairs to get everyone ready, this mess is what he found. He was less that thrilled, to say the least. We were still finding sugar for days.

One of my favorite things of fall, fresh apple pie. Shon's folks had picked all the apples from their tree and I got the fruit to preserve and use. Yummy!! I make a whole bunch of apple pie filling so I can enjoy it more many months!
One thing that we make very often in our house is smoothies. My kids love them and they are getting fruit in them. Much better for them then milkshakes, right? This is when Emily and her kids stayed with us for a week. So much fun.
Cam really enjoys smoothies too. It just isn't too fun to get them out of his shirts. Dang kid won't wear a bib.
A highlight we had was having my family here for a day or so. Everyone of my siblings were here, which hasn't happened for a really long time. Two brother in laws were missing, Bryce who belongs to Nat, and Jake, Emily's husband. It was great, just a very full house.
Shon's sister, Janae and her family came and visited a while ago. We did some hair, had pizza and make sugar cookies. Ty and Zack love it when Kelsey is here. No one can make them laugh like she can for some reason.
Another day of enjoying a bountiful harvest. Mary and I put up about 45 quarts of tomatoes that day.
Zack played soccer again this fall and loved it. I must admit that it isn't too fun for the parents with kids this age. The kids don't get it and they are mostly concerned with the treat that comes at the end of the game. But they have fun and that is what matters.
Ty played flag football this fall for the first time. He didn't really love soccer when he played in the spring so we decided to try football, which he loved!! He played wide receiver and we had a pretty good coach that taught him a lot. I think he wants to stick with it. It was fun. Shon actually took some video of some games, so when I figure out how to upload with that camera, I will post those.

I found this yummy recipe for zucchini muffins that was soooo good. My kids and husband will eat zucchini if it is disguised with chocolate. I frosted these with cream cheese frosting. Very yummy!! (Cam really loved the cupcakes, and he had that bib on for about 5 more seconds after I took the picture and then it was on the floor).