We're Back in Business!

Well, Tyler, the kids and I pulled into our house around 10pm Sunday night! What a drive, but what a time we had in Utah. Finally we are back in business with our AWESOME computer (seriously for those of you who don't have Mac's you've got to invest!). Ty and I walked in and went right for the computer. Sad huh? Well, now we can actually post pictures, so I thought that it was about time that I write about what's been going on in the last few weeks. I do have to say-I wrote the cutest post a few days back at my sister's house, and yes, it was lost because her computer froze! AHHHHH...I didn't have the patience or energy to retype, so sorry it was left unsaid!

So...first let me say that about two minutes ago I almost wet my pants laughing. Why? Well, Tyler just headed out to the gym, but we were both back in our bedroom. He was charging and updating the iPod and I was laying on the bed talking to him about his day at work. So, imagine this...Claire was strapped into her high chair and Porter was watching "Shrek Christmas!" and all of a sudden we heard screaming. It was Claire-no big surprise right? Well...the screaming went on and on for over five minutes and really sadly enough we didn't think anything of it because of her lovely screaming habit. Until....Porter comes running into our room and stops all of a sudden and with both hands on his hips he says...."Guys, guys...wait a minute, wait a minute. We had a problem....(pause for seriously a long time, then he gets this sheepish grin on his face) Claire's hand in stuck in her yogurt container and she can't get it out!" I felt so bad-we left her in there for quite some time as she must have been growing more claustraphobic since her hand was indeed stuck in the yoplait yogurt container. She had been shaking it to try and pry it off, which was the reason that there was yogurt all over the walls and all in her hair and on her face. Squirts of yogurt. When I got it off, she just looked up at me and said, "Thank you" in her own special language! Then it was followed by, "I Stinky!". Double Whammy folks!

So, we had a blast in Utah-although it was FREEZING cold and yes, I only brought one sweatshirt and the rest of my clothes were short sleeves! I can't find our winter clothes. We had a great time though. We mostly just hung out at my mom's house and at my sister Stef's house. We babysat for my sister while they went out of town-four kids? Wow...but I have to say it was SUPER bad-but we didn't leave the house much. We went to the park, went on walks around the block while Porter rode a big bike! He was AWESOME at it! He would speed down the sidewalk and he was just having the time of his life. Santa...bring him a bike! Ty and I got away for a day or so up in Park City which was a blast. We shopped, went to eat and watched endless movies in our sweet room. We spent a lot of nights up at my sister's watching shows and movies...many sleepovers up that way. We had a great time at Thanksgiving and especially playing dart tag that night at Mom and Dad's house. Dad-you seriously have to find a new place to hide! The kitchen corner isn't working for you anymore, and for the record...I did shoot you in the den-there is NO way I could have missed. The best though was me hiding under Joni's bed and I went to shoot Tyler and the gun went off, so I got shot in the head! Darn! For those of you who missed the game...there will be plenty more at Christmas.

One of the greatest things that we did was go up to Gardner's Village with my sisters and mom and yes, all the kids. Wherever we go it is one big goat rodeo with all five kids under the age of four. Wow! It was a blast. I guess that is just the stage of life that we are at right now, so live it up...right? The kids had a great time up there. They had decorated for Christmas with these little elves-I thought they were cute, Tyler on the other hand thought they were creepy-really creepy, so you'll have to judge for yourselves. We dressed all of the kids in red and white to attempt to take a Christmas picture-you can probably imagine how well that worked. Porter was about the only one that was sitting still, looking at the camera with a constant smile. The others (Brooke is three and the others are between 12-18 months!). Yes...it was quite the experience. But we did get some cute pictures. I just think my kids are the cutest things in the world-I know some of you may say that I am biased, but how can you not love their little faces? Seriously? Well, the moment for me was when we came to this one display. There were two elves there making lists-can you guess? Naughty and nice lists. Porter was so excited and wouldn't let us move on until he found his name. Okay...no one is named Porter, we are realizing...and so you guessed his name wasn't on either list. He first checked the naughty list-does he have a conscience? He got through it and turned around and smiled (photo) saying with a grin..."I'm not on that list!" Although it did disturb him that pretty much all of the rest of us were on that list-Tyler, Erica, Stefanie, Elizabeth, Brooke, Jenn, Carolyn, Wayne...yeah, funny huh? He got very defensive when he found out that his dad was on the naughty list. He could have been a star attorney to save Tyler's name from being on that list! "My daddy is NOT naughty!" Well, then the concerning part came when he looked through all the names on the nice list and did not find his name. "What about me?" He seemed to say....my sister Stef chimmed in..."I guess they haven't decided yet on you this year, so you better be on your best behavior." Wow...a little motivation and the kid was a saint for the rest of the day. His sweet little smile-I just love him and Claire so much. They are such joys. It was a great afternoon-the last day of nice weather in Utah! So, enjoy these few pictures.

We love you all and can't wait for Christmas and for a rematch of the dart game! Get your guns ready folks. Keep posting-we are all falling a little behind it seems! We love reading how you are doing...so keep it up!

Until next time....Love Erica

Here's a LITTLE motivation for you.........

Um yeah, so if anyone ever questioned if Tim could actually fit into our family, I think this pretty much clears it up. Heaven knows that even Grandpa Condie would be flipping out about now. So Tim pretty much had the best day of his life so far on Saturday, when he and 3 other guys heading up to Lake Erie for a day of fishing. They had a blast and landed I don't even know how many. All I know is the allotment of 4 landed in my kitchen sink that night. They walked in with this garbage bag FULL and I was thinking, "Holy, they must have kept everything in the river", but no, it was ONLY 4 fish. They were unbelievably huge!! So just in case you don't know much about this fabulous region of the Northeast, we have what is known as a GREAT LAKE, which is very descriptive of what you can pull out of it.....actually, I guess it is the rivers off of the lake where you actually fish. In the fall, the Steelhead move from the lake upstream into the rivers to spawn. You can see the massive amounts of fish that occupy these rivers and you can basically sight fish them if the weather is right. Just one more reason to come visit and especially a little more motivation to the male gender in the family. Fall/November is apparently the best month of fishing, so I propose Thanksgiving next year in the grand state of Pennsylvania. Just a little something to think about......maybe it will HOOK you.

Lame I know, but I couldn't help myself from bringing in a Tammy joke. Anyway, Tim really had a blast and is addicted to fishing. I was way excited for them since they were the biggest fish I had ever seen except for Uncle Ken's monster at FishLake. Needless to say, we cooked up an enormous mass of fish yesterday and had a feast fit for kings!! No really, it was pretty good. I did the whole BBQ thing and everyone really liked it. It took me back to the good old days of when we would have fish every weekend. I love a good trout.

Anyway, in other news, we just keep plugging along. Hudson is finally starting to get back to normal after all his shots and the enormous growth in his mouth. We still don't what in the world was going on, if it was some type of infection or just him biting on it. I looked in his mouth last saturday and noticed there was a little white dot that looked like a canker, but then he stuck out his tongue on Sunday and I could not believe it. So that is when we took a picture of it and Tim took it took school to get a diagnosis from his Oral Diagnosis teacher. All thought it looked like he was just chewing on his tongue, so we kind of watched it for awhile and I think it is pretty much gone now.....but weird. I swear, it is one thing after another.

So we head out for DC on Wednesday. In honor of Thanksgiving we decided that we would do things completely untraditional. I just figured, if I can't do things completely right by being at home with family, we may as well not even try to mimic it!! So vacation it is!! We are way excited and it should be a lot of fun. We have two other families going with us and will be going to the Zoo, memorials, museums the white house and Thanksgiving dinner in some random restaurant. I am not sure if it will be as great as Thanksgiving in MOTOWN with the Jackson V, but it should be good.

Well, that is it for now. Know that we will miss you terribly this weekend!! There is nothing like Thanksgiving dinner in the church????? Oh well, it is not about the location as much as it is about the family. Tell everyone we love them and miss them so much. Think of me mom, when you are hanging the garland on the banister of the stairs....and get pumped for CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!! Only three more weeks. I can hardly wait. Love you all.

PS. Marci, I will look for the orange and blue spandex....Or I guess I should ask if it will be you or TYLER wearing it........CAPTAIN SASSY!!

Thanksgiving is Coming!!!!

Hello Everyone!!!!

Well this week was a little bit CRAZY!!! I had performance this weekend and I am sure Marci understands the way I feel. Performance week basically runs you over. On Saturday, I was at the theatre from 10 a.m. til 10 p.m. It was so so fun. Actually the performance was really fun.

Thank you to all who came. I am pretty sure we have the best parents anyone could ask for. Thank you so much mom and dad for always supporting me. I really do appreciate it so much. Also Tammy, Amber, Carleen and her kids, and Kris, Mitchell, and Sydney came. It was really fun to see all of them. I hope they had a good time. I know I had tons of fun performing and it was alot more fun cause I knew all of you were in the audience. You are awesome. Thanks Marce for the text :). It was great, I wish you could have been there too. Hopefully I will get to see you perform soon. Please, Please, video tape your piece. I am so sad I can't see it.

Everything else is going fine. I am just so excited for tuesday because I get to go to Holden. YAY!!!!!!! I am so excited. Well that is about all that is happening here in Provo. I love you all and am excited to see you soon. Love all of you so much.

Jones

Still Goods Feel

Not to long ago Joni came to stay with me and we were getting into the car and I had just burned the new rascal flats cd and wrote the title on it. Joni picks it up and starts busting up. I don't know what she is laughing about and then she says "Still Goods Feels, uh Marc" It's suppose to be "Still Feels Good". Kind of catchy the other way if you ask me but I wanted to dedicate this title to Jonified.

I love "My boyfriends back song"! We did one of our big prop routines in high school to that song. I am glad to here that Tyler is home and I wish with all my heart that I was babysitting instead of Richard and Shelane (I don't know how to spell your name yet, but I still love you :)) I am sure Rich will teach Porter all kinds of new tricks. Please share the highlights of their stay.

As for Thanksgiving, I am actually not coming home. Out of the blue I forked over a lot of hard cash for a plane ticket to New York to stay with Linsey and her husband. 4 of my other friends are all meeting up there and so I am going on Tuesday and staying until Sunday. Then two weeks after that I get to come home for 3 weeks. I figured this might be the only time that I get to do this and so I am going in just two days. I think we are going to go to the Macy's Parade so Mom if you could send me that blue/orange/yellow costume that I once wore for the Parade that would be great. I think I will bust out the old moves and make my way down the parade route. Just kidding. Remember when we went to NYC that guy in china town that kept trying to sale that monkey to us. He kept saying: Jumping and Climbing like )*&^%%$#^%^&^ (really bad words). Funny. I'm excited but also a little sad that I will miss the football game and Thanksgiving at the Church (actually, I hate that it's at the church) but I will miss the family the most and Mom's stuffing.

Other than that I got to do baptisms for the dead yesterday and that was really awesome. I also painted and assembled little toy cars at a service project yesterday. It was an multi-faith service project at our church and it was really cool. I love watching the scouts paint. They had all kinds of puffy paints there and I think most of the cars that the scouts painted are probably still drying because the paint was about a inch thick. Classic. My finger is really sore though from putting on the wheels but all around it was a really good day yesterday.

I am making Cherry cookies today for my visiting teachers. Mom wins best cook ever!! I think I will go start. Love you all and I can't wait to see you soon.

Marci

He's Back...and We're Outta Here!

Well, Richard just pulled out of my parent's driveway with both children strapped in! Wow...it is quiet in here. A little too quiet! Tyler is back-"my boyfriend's back!" (you know that 80's song, well it just came to mind), and we are off for a relaxing weekend at the Stein Erikson's Lodge in Park City! Yeah for us! Another weekend away-we are getting pretty accostomed to this lifestyle! We've had a great week, but the best part for us is that Tyler is finally back and done traveling...well for now. We are excited and anxious for Thanksgiving to see everyone! Marci-we are so excited that you are coming home! Not to mention there is 7 days and counting until the Millard Alum are beating each other down on the HS field! Tyler has been training for two months now, so everyone better be ready to witness a pro in action! Well, I wanted to write a quick note to tell you all that we love you and Joni we will miss your sweet ballet! If Ty wouldn't have planned this weekend I would have been front row! We are grateful for such a great family and hope that Richard and Shelane survive the weekend. In Tyler's words..."I hope they make it through without killing each other..." I was puzzled...my kids killing each other or Richard and Shelane? heheheh! Thanks guys you are the best! We love you all...more to come in a few days!

I miss you all so much :(

Hi my family,

Ok so Erica I love this blog so much. Thank you for setting it up. You are awesome. It is so fun to here how everything is going in the family. Well as far as my life goes it pretty much is the same. I told mom today that I am seriously burned out, but luckily its THANKSGIVING soon!!!!!! I am so excited to be home in holden. Sleeping in my own bed, and oh how excited I am for the all day activities of putting up the Christmas Decorations (if we are still doing that :( sad if we don't ). So basically, I can't wait for the break.

Other than that everything is going good. We have La Coquette this week on saturday. If anyone wants to come call mom k. You should come to the 2:00 performance because that is when I get to be La Coquette, but honestly I think you all (Tyler, yes, even you) will like this ballet. It is Dad's favorite ballet. It is really cute and actually funny so all come. Just a little preview, it is about 4 sisters. The youngest is the flirt (La Coquette). The others are bossy, ditzy (who is Rachelle and she is hilarious), and the other one is shy. Anyways the just of the story is they all get to get married and I don't. So I get mad and flirt with all the boyfriends. Well anyways it is really fun and you should all come, if you can :).

Well I think that is it here in P-town. I love you all so much and miss you with all of my heart. Talk to you soon.

SOUTH DAKOTA!

Well I thought i would get on and give a little more detailed description for everyone of the most awesomest hunting trip of my lifetime! So here it goes... Tyler and i drove from utah up to idaho falls to meet dad and we got there around 6:00 pm. on the way we took a brief stop in tremonton to have a little arbys with mom who was on her way to utah and that began a long five days of the sick road gut we all experienced. we rolled into the shelley are with the gas light on so to prevent running out of gas i called dad to see if there was any gas out at his tanks off the shelley exit. dad immediately assumed we had run out of gas a was NOT happy about it thinking he was going to have to come rescue us, which made for a good laugh, but we made it to a gas station and all was well and dandy. after a quick stop at sportsmans warehouse, we were on the road headed for bozeman montana. from there we passed through good ol red lodge and billings. dad drove to bozeman and i took over til about 230 am where i began entering into what tyler and i refer to as the "hallucination stage" where you are so tired you begin to see things that arent really there. in my case i kept thinking the black skid marks on the road were huge pieces of tires to which i was swerving to avoid! tyler took over for a while followed by dad and then i went in for the final leg through the gauntlet. i call it the gauntlet because there are so many deer on that road. we finally arrived in gettysburg south dakota at 10:05 and bought our licenses and headed out to hunt. we hooked up with our local mormon friend frank, who is about 65 or something like that and has sooooo many cats! so we hunted alot of his property and on one push i had a big ol rooster come right over the top of me and i just rolled him over! i ran to pick him up and he started running from me so i swung i gun at him as i have done so many other times in my life, and my gun snapped in half! i broke the whole back end of my gun off and when i realized what had happened my heart just sunk and i really just wanted to cry. ive had that gun for ten+ years and has so much sentimental value to me. so now i have to get it fixed and i guess it just adds to the value. luckily for me i had told uncle steve earlier in the week to bring his old shotgun for a back up which paid off. so after that we split up and we went off on our own, dad, rob, tyler, and myself and started driving around. we ended up getting into them pretty good and shot our limit in no time. that night we ate at the firehouse cafe, food and board is never a luxury in gettysburg, and then crashed for the night. at dinner steve ordered an apetizer plate for everyone to share which consisted of anything they had deep fried and served on a big platter. curt ate a bunch of that stuff and then ordered fish and chips and ended up getting gut sick probably because everything he ate at dinner was deep fried. satuday we found what came to be known according to rob as the "field of dreams" which was a corn field out in the middle of nowhere just full of literally hundreds of birds. sunday we went to church at the branch, we more than doubled their attendance as they only had 7 members. after church they had a break the fast potluck dinner that they had us stay for and even with all of us they had enough food. monday we shot our limits and then some in less than 2 hours and headed back to montana. i had the late driving shift again and i really think i saw a wolf but i was approaching hallucination stage so i could be wrong. anyway dad told the buffalo story so i will pick up from after the killing of tatonka as mom calls it. we were low on fuel so we finally found this tiny town in montana that had a gas station. the gas station ended up being a bar with an old gas pump, you know like the ones down at sids y service, and we fueled up there. tyler and i went in to use the bathroom and it was just creepy with all the old locals in there smokin it up. so we went back outside to find dad chattin with some good ol boys about his buffalo. we loaded up and dad started pulling out and then BANG!!!! the truck came to a complete stop in no time, crushing my knee caps into the dash. we jumped out to see what we had hit and it was a huge cement post that put a big dent in the bumper to which dad responded, "this truck is on its last leg" so that was it we jumped in and were off. so that pretty much completes the trip. we missed you tim so get done with that school so you can come again. all is well here in springville. we both got callings in our ward, i am a teacher in the elders quorum and shelane is a teacher in the relief society. hope all is well with all of you. we love you!
Rich and Shelane
P.S. thanks for all the great compliments on my past christmas presents! Mom your hammock is almost done, i really can make hammocks marci!!!:)