The Princess Celebrates Two Years of Life!!

I know, I can't believe it either! Miss Maveri Jean is TWO YEARS OLD! Where has the time gone? She is getting too dang smart, I can tell you that much. She talks constantly, and usually it's "talking back"! She's hit the "two's" in every way imaginable, but mostly in her absolute adorable-ness! She makes me smile every day with her silly "shake-a-booty" dance, her "i talk nana on phone" insistance, her hugs and kisses (LOVE those kisses), and her love of all things girly! She finally has just enough hair to do "piggies" which she loves. She also loves having her nails painted to be "futiful", and will ask Aunt Erynn to paint them every time she goes over there!

She had a great birthday party at Nana & Bompa's house. We had dinner, opened presents, went swimming and ate pink cake! Good times. I will have to say that her favorite present was the bubble mower - HUGE hit, but she also loved everything else. She's very much into purses, and dolls, and stuffed animals etc. So different from the three boys, it's been an adjustment!

Here are some highlight pics from her birthday party!























And now here's a few pictures I found from the past two years that we've celebrated with this beautiful girl. I always said "girls are scary" and I stand by that - they are....but I wouldn't trade it for anything. I love my baby girl.

Independence Day Fun!

We had a great 4th of July weekend. Matt and I both had Friday off so we took the kids to the Splash Pad. The boys LOVED it, Maveri hated the water part, but loved the playground part.

That night we went out to Plain City with Bryce & Sally. Only, their dinner turned out to be super expensive for a sandwhich and beans, so we went to the store and decided to play "what can we get for what we would've paid there". We went back to Bryce & Sally's with Steak, Pork, Corn, Cherries, Salad, and Root Beer Floats! Way Yummy.

Saturday we woke up uber early and met out in Plain City again for breakfast. This time it was a much more reasonable price, and a very good breakfast. From there we watched the small parade, and then we hung out there for a little bit looking at booths, the kids played on the bouncy things, and Blaine even got into the fish pond and caught himself a real live trout with his bare hands! (and yes, I cleaned and cooked it for him on Sunday - bleh)

That afternoon we went to my parents house for a little Holiday Swimming, and then we ended up staying there and having burgers and dogs, corn, salad & pie with my parents. My poor mom is still sick with kidney stones (it's been a week now), but she did manage to eat some corn and pie.

And for fireworks that night we went out to Mike & Liz Staten's house. We haven't seen or hung out with them in so long, so it was a lot of fun to see them again. The fireworks were good this year (you never know with Riverdale, sometimes it's not so great ;) ). Only Mr. Quinten could fall alseep in the middle of a fireworks show, but that just goes to show how hard he played all day long!

The kids and I had painted matching shirts for the day on Thursday. They were so excited to get to wear them, and I think they turned out pretty darn cute!

Here's a few pics to highlight the weekend!

Memorial Day Weekend 2009

For Memorial Day this year we went up to my parents cabin in Island Park, Idaho. We've been doing this for about ten years now. This year we had The Shoells, and Matt's two younger brothers and their families with us. It was so much fun. We went into Yellowstone, saw old faithful, went on some really muddy 4-wheeler rides, went for some boat rides, played card games, ate good food and just had a blast.

Here's picture proof of our trip.

I love being a mom!

Mother's day was just a couple days ago, and I loved it. I love being a mom, and I have the best kids in the world. Kids and daddy were all so sweet all day long, and they REALLY spoiled me! Blaine brought home tons of stuff from school - a grass caterpillar, a mirror, a framed picture of him, and a letter to me. Quinten made me a cute flower thing at his school. Our mother's day tradition is that when Blaine was a baby Matt got me a charm bracelet, and every year each kid gets to pick out a new charm for me to add to my bracelet. Blaine got me a basketball because that's his favorite sport, Quinten got an elephant because they're his favorite at the zoo, Corlin got me a tiger because I call him "my tiger", and Maveri got me a princess crown because she is our little princess. Also, Matt surprised and spoiled me with a GC for a hot stone massage, which I'm so excited about. Also, on saturday, we were at the mall and I fell in LOVE with a ring that I wanted for a mother's ring. I am so excited to get it sometime this week! Yay.

We had brunch at the country club with my family. It was a huge spread, with tons of yummy food. That was fun. Then we spent a little time at Matt's mom playing football with the fam. After that we came home and watched the season finale of Amazing Race, and Matt made popcorn with real butter for me! Yum.

It was a great day to be a mom!

And, of course, PICTURES!!

Take me out to the Ball Game!

Blaine and Quinten had their first baseball game of the season last night. Blaine played coach-pitch last year, but this was Quinten's first coach-pitch game. They both did GREAT. They both had two hits. Q played 3rd base and B played short stop! It was a lot of fun, and here's the pics to prove it!

The fun never DOES end!

Okay, reading back over my "one big blog post" I realized I had forgotten something. About 10 days after my surgery Maveri konked her noggin' on the counter in the kitchen and split open right below her eyebrow. I took her to instacare, and they dermabonded it and put on sterri (whatever that word is) strips with the instructions to leave 'em on a week. The next day she had them all off! But, it seems to be healing okay - I just hope it doesn't scar too badly.

AND - onto the next round of ER / Head Injury fun. Saturday Matt and I were watching a movie while the kids were playing outside. Suddenly Blaine comes running upstairs screaming "I'm bleeding. I'm bleeding down my back!!" Sure enough, he was. He had fallen at just the right time and place on the tramp to miss the mats and hit the springs and get a gash in the back of his head. I couldn't tell with all the bleeding how bad it was so off to the ER we went. They got us right in, got him all cleaned off and we realized it wasn't really big, but it was kinda deep, so he got one staple in his head.

Now, Blaine is my child who, a year ago, it took four of us to pin him down so we could get a sliver out of his finger....so I was a bit nervous about how he would react to all of this. I was pleasantly surprised! He did great. He rated his pain at a "one", said "i'm fine". He did cry at the numbing drops part, but those even make the best of us cry. They generally hurt worse than the owie itself, so we'll give him a break there!

So, that makes three ER/instacare visits in as many weeks for our little family. I would think we've met our deductibles for the year, wouldn't you?

One Big Giant Blog Post!

Okay, so I am a slacker. SOOOOOO much has happened in the past month, and I just haven't gotten around to "blogging" it. So, here ya go!

Spring break was the week before Easter for Blaine & Quinten. So, we packed up the fam and headed south to St. George with my family. It was a blast. The kids had fun having a five day long sleepover with Brigham and Porter - not to mention the hot tub and swimming pool. We did some hiking, arts festival-ing, and outlet shopping as well. I really love St. George, and can see this as a place we spend a lot of time. We also spent Easter there, and had an Easter Egg hunt for the kids too! Here's some pics from that adventure!

Two days after we got back from St. George Matt got a call that his father had suffered a heart attack while riding his bike, and died on the scene. We immediately made plans and headed down to Texas for the funeral two days later. We went with Bryce, Sally, Bentley, Brad, Savs, Reese & Lauren met us there from Portland. We flew into Dallas and drove to Austin because it was a lot cheaper that way. We had some flight delays so we didn't end up getting into Austin until about 1 or 2 in the morning! Late night driving makes for some sillyness!

The funeral was on Saturday, and it was....different, but nice. Vern and Donna attend a small-town bible belt church. I can't remember if it's Lutheran or Methodist, but either way it was very different from anything I've experienced. The part that struck me as most different was that they called the family into another room for family prayer and then said "okay, we are going to go close the casket so you don't have to see". All the other funerals I've been to they take the casket IN to the family and let them say their last goodbyes and close the casket there with them. Just different, not bad, just different. The service was a good tribute to Vern. It was hard for Matt, as he was the closest of the four kids to his dad. That night we went to Aunt B.J's house - which used to be Vern's parents house. It's in a small texan town called Buda. I always say that if Matt's parents hadn't divorced he would have lived a VERY different life! They had a brisket cookin' on the home-made grill. It was a lot of fun to spend time with Matt's family. This is only the second time I've met most of them.

Sunday we made a 1 1/2 hour trek to the middle of nowhere. It's a town called Round Top. It is the smallest incorporated city in Texas - population 77. Bryce and Matt had both spent time living there when they had lived with Vern. Bryce knew the owner of this little restaurant called Royers Round Top Cafe. DUUUUDE - it was AMAZING. Seriously some of the best food I've had in a long time (and not just cause it was free either!!). We spent a couple hours just roaming the streets and playing football in the park before we headed back to Austin. That night we went out to dinner at Hula Hut with J.P. and his wife Jamie Lynn (JP being the Royers guy!).

Monday morning we went to breakfast with Donna, Anne, Bennie and the boys. We missed Heather, but understand why she couldn't make it. These people are the sweetest, most genuine people I have ever met. Donna is so strong in the face of all this. I really admire her and her faith, and it rubs off on her children as well. I sincerely hope that we do not lose contact with them.

So - now here's some pics from THAT adventure.

BUT, the fun doesn't end there - of course not! We got home monday at about 4:00pm. I went back to work Tuesday, and at about 3:15 started having a strange pain in my stomach. A half-hour later I was on the floor barely able to move. It hurt SO bad. I called matt (from the floor of the bathroom with my cell phone that was in my pocket). It was about 10 minutes before Blaine got home from school so he told me he'd get blaine home and then come get me. I decided to wait it out in the "comfy chairs" in my uncle's office since he wasn't there. My little brother walked by and saw me and said "uh, no - i'm taking you in right now". So he took me to the ER.

Some pain meds, a REALLY painful ultrasound and about two hours later I was wisked into emergency surgery to remove my appendix. Owch. While in there the doctor discovered a hernia (probably left over from my last pregnancy), so he fixed that for me too. I now have three little laproscopic scars on my belly - one of which is in my belly button. Weird. They kept me overnight to monitor blood clots and that sort of thing, and I came home Wednesday morning. But, I seem to be healing well and feeling much better now (two weeks later).

And in other "Cantwell Family" news - Matt got a job! A day or so after my surgery he got a call from our neighbor who works at overstock.com. He had a position open up that he wanted Matt to come interview for. Matt went down the next day and they offered him the job that night. He is the Logistics Manager or soemthing along those lines....I just know it's in Logistics. Yay for that stress reliever!

So, last weekend I had Thursday and Friday off, and Matt hadn't started at his job yet, so we decided that with all the hoopla that had gone on lately, and all the upheaval the kids have had that we'd make it a "fun weekend". We went to the Aquarium, The Planetarium, Ikea, Bowling, Mini Golfing. We even spent Saturday night in a Hotel in Salt Lake that had an indoor pool so the kids could go swimming. They loved it all. When I got Blaine up Monday morning for school he said "what are we going to do fun today?" LOL. But, I didn't take many pics, and I haven't uploaded the ones I do have yet - so you'll have to wait to see those!

***ADDING PICTURES NOW*** I told you there wasn't very many, but still fun!

We've had a few other random "surprises" happening, like the dishwasher leaking all over, and cars acting wonky - but nothing too "post worthy".

Hopefully now things, and life, will settle down and fall back into some sort of normal for a little while. I'm a bit "surprised" out!