{HEAT}

It is HOT here people. It's over 100 degrees just about every day. Plus, with the humidity it makes it even more miserable. Dry heat is easier to deal with, but when you mess with humid heat, ugggghhh! You don't even want to walk outside. I had forgotten how HOT it gets down in these parts. And when you do go outside, you feel sooo sticky and start sweating instantly. If you go outside you better be going out to get to the pool otherwise what are you doing outside?!?! So, today i am taking the boys to the pool after we go to a lunch with daddy and his other fellow Captains and his Commander. I can't wait. I can't remember the last time i WANTED to get to a pool like i do now. haha! :)
I mean, get this...We have an attic above our garage. I went up there one day and instantly realized, "who needs a sauna?! we have one right here!" But i would bet it was hotter than any sauna i had ever been in. Now, you can guarantee that if we end up staying in Texas(or somewhere that's hot like this place) the three years after this one year, we will definitely be renting a home with a pool. No questions asked. You have to have a pool here.

{Outdoor & Indoor FuN}

My friend inspired me to pick up my camera. And so i did....

This is a classic face Jaydon makes about 50 times a day....

Loves cuddling with pillows, beds and blankets...

Tanner tickling Gavin...

All my boys in the pool.... haha!

Shane trying to get me wet!...

{The THINGS my BOYS say...}

Tanner's first. We needed to have a blessing on the food at dinner, and asked Tanner to say the PrAyEr. This is what he said, "Heavenly Father, thank you for this DAY. Please bless the FooD to keep us hEaLtHy and strong. Please bless Daddy and Gavin to choose the RiGhT. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen." (I thought it was HiLaRiOuS. He could pick out the 2 partner's in crime and thought they could use a little extra help. :) Hahaha!)

Gavin's next. So, i am amazed how Gavin remembers words to songs. He takes after me. Anyway, we were EaTiNg lunch the other day and he suddenly starts busting out singing, "What's LoVe got to do, got to do with it!" I said, "How do you know that song?" I asked him that because i don't remember the last time i heard that song! He said, "i REMEMBER it from when we lived in Ohio." Wow, i was impressed. Then we were in the car 2 days ago and he starts singing words to this christian RoCk song that i had never really heard before! How in the world did he know the words?! I thought i LIsTeN to and know everything he listens to. I am BoGgLeD by it. It is so cute though.

Jaydon. He LoVeS giving mommy HuGs. I got DoWn on my HaNdS and KneEs during a WoRkOut and he came WaLkInG to me with this BIG ole GrIn on his FaCe and WrApS his ArMs around my HeAd and gives me a BIG ole HUG! I LOVED it. Those sWeEt moMeNtS completely MeLt me.

On another note...my blog is finally coming together. I still have more i want to do to make it cute, but it's going to take time. I am just excited i have had the time lately to do it. :)

{More from our trip to Tulsa}

I have one other post below this one about our trip to Tulsa if you would like to check it out.

Here are some pictures i took from our trip...
These boys are FINALLY starting to get the hang of swimming with floaties on. They will go out in the middle of the pool by themselves and swim all around. I think it's time for swim lessons. Tanner has been pretty scared of water, but i have been trying to warm him up to it and i think it's working. :)

Here's Jaydon trying to put on his BIG brothers HaT. He doesn't like HaTs on his HeAd, but he likes to try to PuT them On.

Gavin was resting on the pillow for a minute and i caught this picture. They LOVE staying at hotels. They were jumping from one bed to the next, wrestling each other, tickling each other, and just having a BLAsT!

{My roots...ME}

We decided to make a last minute quick trip to Tulsa, where i did most of my growing years! I was so excited to see the place again and especially so that Shane gets a chance to see where i grew up. Here we go on the journey...
When you go across the river you enter into JENKS, OK, which is where i attended highschool! Funny that my last name is Jenks, huh?! It was amazing to see how much Jenks, OK has grown. Holy cow. It is awesome. Here is our Football stadium where magic happened. That big building right there is their new fitness center. That is my first time seeing it! It is awesome. Our class 6A football team was the Best of the BEST. Seriously. I was there at the best time when we had the Legion of Doom. Their defense was the best of them. They whooped(and i mean whooped!) anyone that came their way. They were ranked No. 5 Nationally! They were awesome and they were so much fun to watch. Their rivalry is Union and i think they played them every single year in the championship game.They would hold the games at Stadiums like OSU...where about 40,000 would attend or more. It was a HUGE deal. There's is a storied highschool rivalry. It's a legacy. WOW...okay, can you tell i am proud? I love Oklahoma football, not only b/c of my highschool but b/c we have OU football. Quite a few guys from my highschool played for OU....its a big thing for me! :) So, it was so fun to go back and see the stadium. Go Jenks Trojans! :) (i know, i am a dork)This is where highschool graduation was held. They held it at Oral Roberts University in ONE of their many buildings.

This is for my friends from Tulsa. Jenks is in the process of building two new buildings on the highschool campus. One is an aquatic center...

The other is a math and science center...

The YMCA! This is where i worked out and it is also where i had my first job at the age of 15. I was a lifeguard and i also taught swim lessons. I was also on a swim team here too. Oh the memories! :)

Here is the house i grew up in...

haha...just kidding. Actually, there are TONS of new houses that have gone in all around where i lived. This is one of them. They are b.e. a. utiful. We decided that we want to build our future home like this so we took a picture and it will come in handy in 4 years. :) haha!....i wish.

Now, for real. This is the home i grew up in....

The window on the FAR right sort of hiding behind the trees is where Stephen's bedroom was at. The window closest to his room to the left of it is where our formal living room was. Then the window to the left of that is just the foyer, but if you look into the window you will see the stairs that lead you up to my room, and holly's room, which are both on the right side of the house. Her window overlooked the backyard and mine overlooked the neighbors yard. My room was slightly above stephen's room. the gameroom and office are upstairs to the left.. The window that is to the left of the front door is where our formal dining room was. And the window on the far left is the garage. And the window above the garage is the office. The kitchen is back behind the formal dining room. The TV room is behind the formal living area and the stairs. My parents room you get to by going out of my brother stephen's room, walking down the hall, walking straight towards the back of the house and there is their room. Oh, actually, the office is where Brion's room was. It turned into the office(which is what it is supposed to be b/c its small) when stephen moved out b/c then brion moved into stephens room. There is a door that is in the TV room that leads out to the wood deck,pool, and hot tub.. OH i miss it.
Aaaahhhh, i mowed that lawn so many times. So many memories here! We lived on one acre of land. I LOVE this house and miss it terribly. What you don't see is that we had a pool and hot tub in the backyard. Oh i miss that. No words can describe how i miss it. Shane knows that coming up soon we are going to have to buy a home with a pool in the backyard, or when we build our home we will have to put one in. That is one thing that is WONDERFUL to have. Also, my dad would always mow a baseball diamond in the grass so we could play ball. We also had a basketball hoop in the driveway that i would use all the time. After living in our home in cleveland for so long and just living in tiny compact space....going back to tulsa i forgot how nice it is and beautiful. I didn't realize how good i had it as a teenager. But i guess most teenagers don't ever realize anything good....well, i didn't. :) That area is beautiful and full of trees. I want to move back so bad. Well, sort of. I would just like to take my old neighborhood and surrounding neighborhoods with me to wherever we move to.

Tulsa is so pretty. They have lots of trees and its pretty hilly. It sure isn't flat like texas. It's funny b/c the drive home we realized how quickly it went from hilly and lots of trees to flat and not many trees when we got closer to texas. I like texas though. It's great. I just love the people. We have made some wonderful friends here and i just love em! :)

It was great to visit my hometown. We also went to my old ward. I am surprised how many families are still there. And we met a family in that ward that wasn't there when i lived there whose daughter is here at sheppard air force base. Her husband is a dentist. What a small world. So, i am going to look them up and find them. i also surprised myself with the feelings that came over me. When i saw all those people in that ward it suddenly felt like i was seeing FAMILY that i hadn't seen in ten years. They felt like family to me. I cried when we left tulsa b/c i had so many feelings coming back, so many memories, so many bad memories, and most of all, visiting was a good experience. I have grown up a ton since i was last back there so my eyes were opened to the place in a different way than they were before. I mean, it has been about 8 years since i had been there. BUT those were only visits. It's been since i graduated in 1999 that i have really lived there. Anyway, i didn't want to leave. I felt like i was home. I have never had a place that has felt like a home where i belong b/c we have moved so much. I mean, i make memories at places, but we have never lived somewhere long enough to feel like it is my home. Tulsa in the one place i have lived the longest, for sure. 6 years. Plus visits for holidays after leaving home for college. I mean, listen...i was born in Oklahoma. After living there awhile we moved to Ohio, then to Michigan, then to south carolina, then back to oklahoma...then i moved to idaho then to utah, then moved back home to oklahoma but that was very temporary b/c then we moved to minnesota. Then i moved back to idaho and then we moved to ohio and now we are in texas. So, you see why no place has ever felt like it's my HOME HOME. Well, going to tulsa made me realize....this IS YOUR HOME. This is where you can feel you belong. And i miss it. I wanted so bad to be able to go up to my home in tulsa and walk in and see my family there. It cries making me think about it. I want that for my kids. As much as i am now liking moving around and seeing new places all the time, i want a place ,y boys can call home...where all their memories are made. A place they can feel the same way i feel about tulsa.

I have more pictures to post...mainly of the boys from our trip to tulsa.

{Basketball...his new favorite thing}

Jaydon LOVES playing with his daddy's BASKETBALL. He has been carrying this BALL all around the HOUSE lately. He likes to pass the ball, he tries to throw it, and he tries to DRIBBLE. He says, "ball". It is the cutest thing. And it's hilarious watching him carry this HUGE ball around. I was playing ball with him while taking PICTURES of him. I said, "Go get the ball." Instead, he spotted a little piece of an ORANGE bell pepper on the ground, picked it up, and ATE it. I guess he is still more interested in FOOD! haha!

By the way, i am frustrated with blogger. I am trying to change things around on my blog and they changed things around and i just don't feel like taking hours trying to figure this darn thing out. Anyone know a quick fix? Otherwise it might look like this forever. Is there somewhere i can go so that i can just pay someone to design and fix my blog?!

{STOP}

Please EXCUSE the MESS while my BLOG is under MAJOR CoNsTrUcTiOn!

{A new Journal, and a calling}

Well, when i was released from my calling in Cleveland the girls in my Presidency gave me a really cute new journal. I decided to use that journal as my spiritual journal. I want to record any spiritual experiences, any moments where i may feel i am receiving an answer to my questions/prayers, any new insight about the BOM, or anything having to do with any of that. For example, i just gave a talk in church and i would like to put that in my journal. I feel it can be of great use to fill that thing up with awesome experiences. Not only for my kids, but for generations to come. :) I just wish i would have started it sooner. If you haven't started a journal like this, you should try to start now. I think it's a great thing to have.

Did i tell you my new calling? I am the Acitivity Days Advisor for the 8-11 year olds. I am really excited. I am excited to be with the girls, but i am also excited to be in relief society on Sundays. The Relief Society has already put me to work though...i have a lesson i have to teach on scripture study in 2 weeks for enrichment night. I could use some of your advice or opinions on this. The women in this ward have expressed that they would like to learn new and good ways to study their scriptures. What do you do that helps you? How do you study your scriptures?
Any good websites that you know of that i can get information from? Any advice any of you can give?

{Baby Jaydon}

Our little Jaydon has got a lot of personality. He makes sooooo many faces. He has spunk, attitude, he's firey, he's crazy, he's trying to be independent, he loves to wrestle with his brothers, he LOVES his blanky, he's LOUD, he loves to run around with just his diaper on and he is doing a lot of that b/c its hot here. He is getting around VERY well. He is just cruising around the house. He walks around like a monkey a lot too. I will have to take a picture of it. He puts his arms up in the air and he looks like a monkey when he walks. We all love this boy a ton and have so much fun with him. The boys laugh at him all the time. But Gavin and Tanner can't stand when he starts yelling. They say "STOP YELLING JAYDON!!" Because he does yell LOUD and its usually only over food. He has thinned down a bit since he started walking. I can tell. He tried skyping with his Auntie Holly but it scared him to death. He didn't understand why his Auntie Holly was on the screen. It was scary to him. It was so funny. He didn't want to get close to the screen. He liked to keep his distance and just stare and watch her and if i tried to get him close he wasn't happy. He LOVES LOVES playing in the water...i just wish we could go swim every single day. Maybe we can, but we have to wait til life allows us to. :)

He is doing a lot of babbling lately. He is trying to sound like he can talk. He just blabbers with all kinds of sounds...R's, b's, g's, l's...it's so cute and funny. He understands a lot of what we say too.

Get this....we have tile floors throughout the whole house except the bedrooms. Shane put on his rollerblades and his chasing the boys around the house. I need to go get pics of this! :)

{My Baby Sister}

About 2 weeks after we arrived here in Texas i got a phone call in the middle of the night and it said on my I.D. that it was my mom calling. Calling at 1 a.m. I instantly knew something was wrong.
A few hours earlier i had talked to my sister and she told me she had a bad migraine.
Well, when i answered the phone my mom says to me that they are in the ER with Holly. My heart started racing. I was just thinking, "please no. don't let anything bad happen to her." She told me that they did a cat scan and found that she has bleeding in her brain. No way, i thought. No way. How could that be? So, she tells me that she is being flighted up to Mayo Clinic in Rochester, which is 45 minutes from the Austin hospital she was at. I thought, holy cow, this has got to be serious. But they still didn't know why she had bleeding in her brain and that she would call me later as soon as they know more. We didn't have the internet yet. My instant thing to do would be get on the internet and look up reasons why her brain would be bleeding, but i couldn't. I couldn't sleep that night b/c i was so WORRIED.
Well, the next day the bleeding was still happening and they had to try and stop it so they tried something called coiling. That didn't work. They did an angiogram too. Turns out that she had an cerebral aneurysm. I found out that 2% of the population under the age of 35 get an aneurysm. CrAzY! What are the chances she would get it?!
Then i get a phone call from them saying that she has a 50% chance of survival. Alot of people who get these either come out of it with a neurological impairment or die. I was terrified, naturally. I wanted so bad to be there. Then they call me and tell me that she is going in for brain sugery. That's when i started looking into plane tickets. I left the next morning and arrived right after they finished the surgery. She looked great. It went really well. They cut open her head from the top center all the way down behind her ear and also in front of it. They didn't have to shave her head. They only shaved a little right where they made the first initial incision i guess. She was doped up a lot of the time i was there, but the last day i was there she was talking pretty well to us. And they all kept telling her how LUCKY she is. Most people don't come out of it so well like she has and a lot of people don't survive.
Eight days later she was able to go home. Get this....She had just moved home to Minnesota about 5 days before all this happened. She was in cleveland where we lived, but decided it was no longer fun there! :) haha. So, she moved home. She is so lucky that this happened while with my parents. She said that if she had been in Ohio she wouldn't have gone into the ER and would have just dealt with it and b/c of that she probably would have been dead. But b/c she was in Minnesota, my parents took her into the ER AND she had the #1 neurosurgical department in the world working on her! No joke. What are the chances. I think someone was watching over her, if you ask me. :)
I am soooooo glad she is doing better and recovering so incredibly well. She scared all of us. I love her so much and cannot wait to hang out with her again b/c i miss her terribly!

{more updates on our time in TEXAS}

is hot. You just can't understand until you are here in it. The humidity has been really high so it makes it so sticky and darn HOT. I remember it being like this in Tulsa, but i had forgotten until we arrived here!
Some things going on lately...
1.Shane got his new uniforms that he has to wear on base.
2. We've been on base twice now and we love it there. It's like a little city. And its like watching an air show everyday. I mean, its not quite as good as a real air show, BUT we have fun watching the jets.
3. We have been busy constantly. I feel bad b/c Jaydon always takes two naps a day and he hasn't been able to for quite awhile b/c we have been gone a lot during the day.
4. We just registered Gavin for kindergarten! CRAZY! It's a great school though and its a uniform school, which i think is GREAT.
5. We just leased a new silver Toyota Prius for 3 years. We LOVE LOVE LOVE it. It may not be the "coolest" looking car BUT its the smartest car. 50 miles to a gallon. And the technology on the inside is completely amazing. That will be Shane's commute car everyday. AND if we get shipped overseas next year, Toyota has a deal with military that we can just turn our car in before we leave and thats that. We just have to show them our orders, and its done. So, we might only have it for one year, depending on where the air force sends us.
6. Ummmm...can i just say, we are actually going to be making MONEY in about a month. Yes, we are going to be bringing in pay checks. I can't believe it. It seems really weird to me. For almost seven years we have been poor and living off loans. Now we are going to be making money. It's been a long time of waiting.
7. Shane and i are both speaking in church this sunday. This ought to be interesting, since one of us will be out sitting with the kids. jaydon is an absolute nightmare, usually, during sacrament meeting. He loves to yell. His vocabulary is YELLING.
8. We keep our a.c. set at 79 degrees. I mean, when you come in from outside it is NICE, but after being in for a few minutes its not cool enough. BUT we have to keep it at that to have a tolerable electricity bill.
9.Here we have to mow our lawn twice a week and water it everyday. In Ohio we NEVER watered our lawn and we mowed probably once every two weeks.
10. The city gives us TWO garbage cans. The second one is for recycling. They come pick up our garbage TWICE week, where in ohio it was only once a week. So, you can be sure we will never be overloaded with garbage! thank goodness. :)
11. Locusts fill the air with their pretty sounds. Those are the sounds i loved to fall asleep to in Oklahoma, when it was nice enough to have our windows open. And the boys are finding all kinds of bugs that they have never seen before. They love it. They pick up the bugs and i can't be around when they do that. There are TONS of crickets. They are everywhere and in everything and are in any store we have gone into...dead on the floors.

{Jaydon..Our LOUD mouth}Lots of posts ahead

We have been finding lots of frogs in our yard. I don't mind frogs. We would get them in Tulsa and i would always pick them up. SO, i am the one that will pick up the frogs in the family when no one else will.....until i saw this HUGE frog. This picture doesn't show his size...he really was BIG and FAT. They start hoppin out all over the place when we mow the lawn. Here in Texas everything is bigger....BUGS are bigger...we have found HUGE spiders...biggest i have seen since i last lived in Oklahoma, which was a tarantula. The grasshoppers and crickets are HUGE. Instead of the big bumblebees that we got in our backyard in ohio, we now get BIG wasps. EVERYONE here owns an SUV or a truck. They are EVERYWHERE. Not kidding.

We went on base and it was awesome. The base is it's own little city. It's so cool. We drove by the housing and looked at it and it was REALLY nice and we were kind of wishing we would have lived on base after seeing it. Oh well. We still like our home. Here are the boys watching the fighter jets take off one after another and flying overhead. They loved it. They thought it was an air show.
We went to a fun pool/splash park the other day. It was 102 degrees out! Anyway, it was an awesome pool/park for kids. The boys and i will have to go a lot when shane starts working. Tanner burned his feet on the cement. He learned quickly that the ground gets too hot to walk around in bare feet. We like it here so far. The people are great. Texas is full of just genuinely NICE people. They are so nice and helpful. I couldn't believe it at first, considering where we came from. Workers in the stores actually WANTED to help me find something. They would come up to me and offer their help. I was caught off guard at first! haha! Not kidding. The ward here is fabulous. The spirit is felt very strongly and the people are just so genuine. I feel like i have known them a lot longer than we have been here. We have been there for two Sunday's and we already have callings and are already set to give talks in church this sunday. Shane was called to be the institute teacher and i am the Activity's Day Advisor for the 8-11 year olds. That will be fun. And i am excited about being able to still go to Relief Society. :) Tanner has to give a talk in primary this sunday too. They are really putting us to work right away! :) But they are all so wonderful.

Now, these next set up pictures are hilarious to me. Jaydon is by far the biggest loud mouth of the family. H doesn't know what it means to be quiet. When he wants ANYTHING he just YELLS SO DARN LOUD. Really, it is quite annoying. But it makes me laugh at the same time, laugh with shock that i have a kid who is so loud. Here is Jaydon fine in the first picture. I told the boys to go stand by him so i could get a pic of them.

Here he is in the second picture...NOT HAPPY. He wants the boys AWAY from him and doesn't want to be touched!!
Still absolutely ticked off!!!...

Still mad...

Still very mad...

He was acting this way b/c he wanted his milk. Because as soon as i pulled him out of his chair and gave him his milk he was totally fine. He has TONS OF spunk and personality. I am getting nervous about how his two's are going to be. Actually i have been nervous for awhile.