My secret wish

So today as I was thumbing through my high school year book, I decided on a secret wish. In my current state of sophisticated, glamorous maturity (yeah, right) I wish I could go back to my freshmen self and teach that raggamuffin girl how to fix her dang hair and makeup. I would post a picture for you so you could agree with me about my secret wish being a good one, but it's simply too shameful.
Any one out there want to confess to a secret wish of their own?

Our Crazy Life

All of you out there dying to know what's going on in our crazy life, here's a brief update. 1. We bought a house in Oklahoma (or, if you want to get technical, my parents' bought us a house in Oklahoma. Something about how we couldn't get approved for a loan with zero income. It sounded a lot more adult to say we bought a house, but my conscience wouldn't let me get away with it. Don't worry though...we'll be making highly-responsible monthly payments). 2. Sam's job in Texas ended. 3. Since we knew it would be a few more weeks before we could close on our house, we figured, ...hmmmm...why not pay billions of dollars per gallon to visit Utah and go to Lake Powell? Logical, aren't we? 4. Now that we're in Utah, Sam is losing brain cells daily staining my mom and dad's house. I am working for the hometown paper covering highly-exciting subjects like who the Grand Champion steer was at the county fair. 5. Our closing date on the house has been changed from June 26th to July 8th to July 18th and back to June 26th again. Something about how the guy conned his senile mother out of the house title or something like that (No one told us that's what happened, I'm just venturing a highly possible guess.) Needless to say, we still aren't sure when we are going to become full-time Okies. It's not soon enough if you ask Sam, who can't wait to finally dump his Texas residency. :) As soon as we know anything, we'll let you guys know.
Meanwhile, enjoy some Lake Powell pics.




You're witnessing the near-death of another camera, thanks to my brilliant suggestion to my mom that she kneel in the water to take the shot so she could take a nice action photo. Luckily, we managed to save the camera.
Driving the houseboat/eating chips

My mom bought a blow up pool for all the babies, who needless to say, after discovering that they did not have to swim in freezing cold water, chose to omit swimming in anything that represented an actual Lake from their daily schedule.

Riley and Lawrence, his second cousin/friend/worst nemesis when it came to sharing toys.
Reading with great-grandma.
Mmmmmm....licorice and boating. What a winning combination.

All about Riley

So, I realize it's been awhile since I've posted about Riley. I thought I would update everyone on the fun things he's been doing. He's finally, finally starting to catch on to the talking thing and is learning new words every day now. Some of his favorites--hot, all done, bubble, ball, apple, where's daddy?, and NO!.... I'm not so excited about him learning the last one, as he firmly lets his opinion known now every time we try to make him do something he doesn't want to do. Riley started saying DaDa (daddy) when he was about 12 months old, but waited to learn to say momma until a couple of months ago. How's that for gratitude? But, he decided to make up for the length of time it took him to learn mama' by saying it approximately 350 times EVERY SINGLE DAY. I only wish I was exaggerrating. Mama now means not only me, but pretty much anything that Riley wants but doesn't know how to say.
He's turned into a champion sleeper and is still (thankfully taking naps). We solved his sleep problems by securing his door from the outside with a bungee strap. That may sound really mean, and I know it's not a long-term solution, but it's really worked for us (for now). He usually gets out of bed, comes to the door and tries to open it, realizes he can't get out, then climbs back in bed and goes to sleep.
I can already tell that Riley is going to be asking for a motorcycle or four wheeler before he's in kindergarten. He had too many rides on fun toys at a young age and is absolutely obsessed with cars, trains, planes and anything else that moves. He has this little scooter he rides all the time. If wish that thing had an odomoter, because I bet it easily has 150 miles on it. He drives soo soo fast and loves going down hills (scary). Already, he knows which direction to turn the wheel when he's backing up. Pathetically, I didn't catch onto that concept until I had been driving for a year or so.

This is the wear and tear on Riley's shoes that comes from hundreds of hours of riding his scooter on cement sidewalks.

A couple of Riley videos for your enjoyment...in case you didn't believe me about him going fast.

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