Another Great Day

When I get to be home during the day. I try to take advantage of the outside. Especially now that summer is starting to say goodbye. The boys and I live outside if we can. And to fill our time, because sometimes the fun dirt just doesn't cut it. We take pictures!

And then we take pictures of the people that are still entertained by the dirt. Which is very cute!

And if you're cool like me, you let your son take your camera and let him take some pictures.

I'm holding the camera with him here.

I was the subject of his photography for a bit. Then our car was, and the tree, and the grass. I'll spare you those photos though.

I have to share a moment of insanity with you. I was cleaning my room earlier this year- like deep cleaning- and found a piece of candy that I didn't want to eat. So I pawned it off on our son E. He was glad to take it away for me and eat it. I told him to eat it in the kitchen so he didn't make a mess. For some reason, he felt that my instructions meant, Go hide in the kitchen under the table so no one can see you and eat as fast as you can. Daddy M found him and told me to come downstairs to see what I'd created. As soon as I saw my little boy slowly turning into a leprechaun, I ran and grabbed the camera and stuck him on the counter. His fingers were green for about 4 days. 

I found the cutest leprechaun in the world! (This could be a good idea for Halloween one day. He has the hair for it)

Boys and Bugs

On one of the beautiful summer days that I had off this year, my little boys and I sat outside for hours. What did we do? We played with a bug. Not just any bug. A leaf bug. We loved this leaf bug so much that we were thinking about making it our pet. But.... we decided it might live longer in the wild. It probably got eaten by a bird the minute we went inside though. I just know it!

Here is leaf bug. He hung out with us for a good few hours. He climbed on the boys.

He found spots to just sit and chill. And for some strange reason, never flew away from us. 

We were very nice to leaf bug. I made sure of that. There were some close calls in the tiny hands of E, but he made it out alright.

The silliest thing leaf bug did was crawl up E's head. Every time he found his shoulder, he climbed and climbed until he found E's fantastic red hair. And then he did not let go. E would shake his head back and forth as fast as he could and the bug just hung on. We had great fun with this! A got to have the bug on his head too. As soon as the creature got to his neck, A would laugh and laugh and laugh from being tickled by its little legs. I don't know if they'll remember this moment, but it was a good one for me.

Where'd he go? Where'd he go? *THERE he IS!*

Soccer

I need to make a new goal. Here it is: Post a new blog at least... every two weeks. That might be possible. I am so busy now, that I do not get the chance to get on here. But I still feel it's important to write about my kids' lives and what we are doing.

This fall A started playing soccer. He is one of the youngest on his team, so he does struggle a bit more, but I think now that he's almost done with his season, the coach has found out where he belongs. A is all DEFENDER! He does such a great job at staying back and protecting the goal. Although this year, he has scored a few goals. Some in the wrong net, but he was still absolutely thrilled. :) His favorite part of the games could arguably be the treats he got after the game. There were moments when we caught him doing somersaults on the grass. Picking the flowers. Running behind his team, smiling at us and not paying attention at all to what was going on. He is very fun to watch.

First day of practice

Go A!!

We did have a moment where he had a little melt down. A is very serious about rules. We told him that he had to run --> this way for the goal and when the other team went <--- this way... he kind of lost it and started yelling at the kids on the field. So he got to have a nice little Daddy talk. Apparently, he was very sad as well because he wanted to score a goal so bad.

He finally cheered up, played with his team. AND scored a goal! In the wrong one.... but he was still SOOO happy. :) He's #2 below.

The fan club

Talking strategy

The coach was so nice. A was having a tough time this game and the coach let him do the kick off a few times so he could actually touch the ball. Remember, he's one of the youngest kids out there. The oldest are six. He hung in there with them though and next year he'll be more prepared!

Appendectomy Time

It was a cool summer evening when I went off to work and left hubby to fend for himself and take care of our kids. I was confident all would be well. And for a time, it was.

But of course, Daddy M likes attention. So around midnight, he called me to tell me he was puking and sleeping on the bathroom floor. I brushed this news off since he does get sick often. A few hours later he calls again and tells me his stomach is on fire. Still not surprised, I gave no real sympathy.

I finished my quiet shift at 6am and came home to sleep. I found Daddy M in our bed sprawled out. Perterbed, I made him move. A few hours later he was moaning in pain again. Still sleepy after working 16 hours, I told him to knock it off. Being the wonderful man that he his, he got up to do his moaning downstairs.

Around 10am, I woke up, came downstairs to get ready to see another client. He sat in our recliner, complaining of his stomach feeling like fire. I still was not concerned. He has liver disease and I attributed it to that or maybe kidney stones. Told him to call the doctor if he reall felt like it.

I came home around 11am. He was going to the instacare to see what was wrong. A few hours later I get a call. "The doctors are 90% positive that I have an appendicitis. We're driving to Am... Hospital now."

Grandma is freaking out.

I stay up with the kids. And scramble like heck to find someone to cover my shift that night so I can be with my husband. The people I work with aren't as nice as I thought they were. No offense, it's just fact, I really feel like if someone asked me to cover their shift because their husband was having an emergency appy. I would do it if I was not working at my other job. I had to scrounge and scrounge for someone to cover only 3 hours of my 8 hour shift. . . joy. It worked out in the end anyway.

I dropped off my kids with Grammie. Went to work. Finished. And drove right to the hospital. He was coming out of surgery as I was arriving.

See-- Things work themselves out very nicely. I didn't need to be there for the time I couldn't get covered.

I visited a while. Brought him his electronic toys. Laughed at his drugged stupor- he's actually very VERY nice when he's snowed. Not in a bad way. He was calling all the nurses and PCTs angels. I left, slept for what seemed like forever. Probably because I had about 3 hours of sleep in the last.... what? 48 hours?

All in all, things worked out. The boys got a weekend vacation with Grammie and Papa. Daddy M got to rest. I got to work and care for him and now we'll never have this issue again.

At least not with him.

Oh, no pictures for you! His belly looks like a yellow creature died on it from the bruises. That's all the visual-ness you're getting. :)

Belated News

It's been a little crazy around here. I've been working more than I ever thought I would in my life. For a while there it was like work was where I lived and home was just a place to sleep. But, I've finally managed to find some time to post a few things!

As birthday-
He turned 4 this year! It was such an exciting  birthday. We just had a BBQ outside with friends and family. And it was perfect! Here's just a few photos from the event. It was Cars themed this year.

 A has the perfect reactions to receiving gifts! If you want to borrow him for a party, it'll be $20/hour.

 E celebrated his big brothers' birthday party by stealing one of his presents- a cool talking sucker- and ate it. He looks like he had a tough fight with it aaaaand eventually won. . . barely.

 This was our little man's last gift from Mommy and Daddy. He was pretty excited about it, until he realized he had to ride on it. He's a bit scared of the bike, but we'll change that one of these days. His little brother.... absolutely loves it. We actually caught E later that day sitting on the seat leaning against the wall eating food.

 After the party, A tried his new bike. He was very excited until it started moving too fast for him.... a slow adult walk.

After the party, both boys crashed on our bed. There's just nothing like walking into a sheet ravaged bed to find the cutest little bed bugs on the planet!

Our first Hogle Zoo Trip-
We've never felt the need to drive 45 minutes to a Zoo, but we had our friend from France visiting us and figured that we could make that a little event with him.

 "Enough pictures Mommy." Is what this little face says to me. :)

 I'm not sure who really belongs in the zoo. The animals we saw or the little animals I'm raising! They might actually like living in the zoo though. I'd better not give them the idea that they can stay.

 This elephant sprayed water out it's trunk. There were too many excited people by it's head to actually get a picture up there, but I don't think my kids minded. A in the picture above, is actually happy. . . I think. I don't remember him being mad. I just think he's trying to copy a dinosaur we saw earlier. Yes, it was real dinosaur, they still exist at the Hogle Zoo!

 Daddy looked at this picture and asked us why we had to take a photo next to the creepy gorilla. Looking at the photo now, I'm not really sure why we thought this would be a good place for a photo. I just can't stop staring at that monkey's nipples.

 See! I told you they still existed. This one was domestic enough to let us ride on it's back. E and him got along very well actually. :P

 We thought this Camel's humps looked sooo strange. It looks to me like he used to have one big hump and then it got split in half. By this time, we were about ready to leave. So Mr. Camel was our last photo of the day.

Moving day!-
We also moved in July. I found some cute photos I took while we were packing the truck.

Here's my little helper boys.

One of my helper boys eventually crashed from exhaustion right on our lawn. It's tough being 2 1/2 and moving boxes.

Emotional Stump

I have very few things in my life that are emotionally stirring for me. I just don't find myself responding to some situations correctly. My husband will be irritated at me for something stupid I've done and instead of feeling remorse the desire to talk it out with him, I'll close down. My mind goes blank and I stop feeling. I can sense myself going cold. He'll ask me to share what I am feeling over the issue we're discussing and nothing comes to my mind.

Interestingly enough I have found that watching movies, watching others feel so freely and willingly makes me feel safe. I can share my emotions with them without them making me feel inferior for wanting to cry, laugh, shout or giggle. In a strange way, I can trust the characters on the TV, because they allow me to be me, no strings attached. Is it a ridiculous notion to think that I am safer to truly feel during a stirring movie, than to feel while I am with my husband? We actually joked that while we watched the last Harry Potter movie, I had gotten my emotional quota for the entire month.

After years of being closed off and emotionally unfeeling, I've finally discovered perhaps a little piece of why I do this. Why I shut off. I've been hurt before, everyone has, and this was my way of coping. I showed someone my emotions, I was vulnerable and weak and my feelings were hurt. Trampled on. I learned my lesson and stopped trusting people with my emotions. I learned that emotions are weakness; I learned the being strong, to be better, that I could not let others see how I feel. But I learned the wrong lesson. I really didn't learn anything, I didn't grow from my experience, I hid from it. I hid behind a wall of nothingness and made myself the weak one.

I look at my wonderful, amazing, smart, genuine husband and I envy his ability to feel. He loves to love! He loves to express his feelings, to work through them and grow from them. I am so grateful for his patience with my inability to share with him what I am feeling. He helps draw out my emotions. Hopefully one day I can trust myself to feel confident with my feelings. For now, I'll just have to keep working on it and try to channel my emotions toward my husband and not toward a movie.

Lots of New Happenings!

You know those people that are addicted to cigarettes and if they don't get their fix they go a little crazy. I am having that with blogging right now. Maybe that's why my eyeball keeps twitching and I can't stop frothing at the mouth. (I hope you're not taking me seriously now, because that would be gross!) Luckily, I have finally found some time to sit down and catch up on what is happening in the Kunz house! 

First off! We moved!!! Again.... I know. I've just been telling everyone that we're the local nomads. I have some pictures of the boys helping us pack, BUT I have yet to find where our camera is hiding. I'll post their packing cuteness later.

While we were moving we had a friend of ours come visit us from France. He actually arrived about a week before we moved, so the lucky man traveled from clear across the world to slave away on both our houses. But seriously.... we took him around so he could see some really cool things here in Utah.

Bridal Veil Falls

Timpanogos Caves

lucky E

 I love this picture. I'm sad it's blurry. :(

 After a grueling hike, it was nice to get inside the 45 degree cave.

 E had a nice easy ride up the mountain on Daddy Ms back, walked a bit inside the cave and then decided he wanted to be carried the rest of the way. Lazy lazy little man!

 This part of the cave was very pretty. You can kind of see in the background what I was REALLY trying to get a picture of, but A just adds so much more dimension to this photo. I love it!

These photos just cannot do justice to how amazingly beautiful this cave was. The colors were fantastic, the designs and patterns that centuries of drips of water have created are just not appropriated displayed through these photos. If you ever come to Utah, this is a place you need to see!

Salt Lake City

 It was actually pretty fun to tour our own State. I've never been to the conference center, or ever had the desire to have a tour of it, but it was pretty amazing!

 This jar has the Tree of Life Story carved into it. Cool story behind it if you ever go the Conference Center and get a tour. 

 This is the Hall of the Prophets and I thought it was cool picture with little E man walking there.

 View from the top of the Conference Center.

Las Vegas

This one the boys and I did not go to. This was just for Daddy M and friend T. They went and saw Blue Man Group, Criss Angel, and some jousting tournament. Of course they also managed to find their way to a casino to play for a bit, sadly enough, the statement "The house always wins" rang true for these guys. No big bag of money came back with them.

 There you can see the giant M&M factory.

 Ocean's 11 anyone??

By the way.... while they were out playing, guess who was unpacking? That right, this girl. I'm not bitter or anything. Mostly because McKay came home with a designer purse for me. REAL one, not a knock off, in case anyone was wondering. I'm honestly not sure why he buys me purses, I'm not really into having a lot of them, but he has a good eye and they're all super pretty! So I still love them!

 T was the only one drinking while in Vegas and they all made him order this monster of a drink. The other guys you see in the photo are a few more people Daddy M knows. Each time T messed up on his English, they made him take a drink. Naturally the more he drank the more he messed up. Apparently it was good fun to torture the French guy. :)

 Supposedly, when Daddy M and I go to Vegas, this is the hotel we'll be staying. Pretty, no?

Vegas at night. Kind of reminds me of Times Square on a very small scale.

Zion's Park

 Such a pretty place to see! I'm sad that we didn't get to go. This was part of their trip after Vegas.

 Here's they're hiking the Narrows. Very fun trail to take if you ever want to go to Zions

 You can see how soaked they got from how dark his pants are now. Haha. I guess at one point the water was up to their chests. Hopefully it was a warm day!

All in all I think he had a pretty good vacation. He'll have to come back again, because there's just SO much to see in Utah.... AND the West Coast for that matter! We are thinking that in 2013 or 2014, that we just might have to go to France to visit him! We're saving starting now! 

Oh and if any of you live in Utah and want to try some cheese from France give us a holler. He brought some pretty crazy cheeses! They have a different cheese for every day of the year I guess. I can't even think of enough cheeses in America to count on one hand! We're sad he's gone, but it's always nice to get back in our routine. I'm sure the same goes for him.