Starwars and Rockstars...

This year Jacob had it in his head that he wanted the whole family to go as a Star Wars group. I told him that I couldn't because I'm not a geek so we comprimised and the boys went Starwars and Lizzy and I went as Rock Stars (much cooler). Here we are proudly showing our "Fists of Rock". I went a litte 80's retro by sporting some neon orange fishnet gloves and stockings to match to wig. Jake was Han Solo ( I made his vest and hand-sewed a red ribbon stripe onto the sides of his pants) , Ryan was a Storm Trooper (and wears his costume every day!) and I made Trevor's costume in like, 30 min with as little sewing as I could get away with so he was a generic Jedi. :) Hope everyone had a great Halloween!

The Mamma Test...

This is one of those stupid e-mail forwards that I never read but I thought it was so dang funny (and short enough) that I had to post it so you could have a good laugh.

THE MAMA TEST
I was out walking with my 4-year-old daughter. She picked up something off of the ground and started to put it in her mouth. I took the item away from her and I asked her not to do that. 'Why?' my daughter asked.'Because it's been on the ground; you don't know where it's been, it's dirty, and probably has germs,' I replied. At this point, my daughter looked at me with total admiration and asked, 'Mama, how do you know all this stuff? You are so smart.' I was thinking quickly. 'All moms know this stuff. It's on the Mama Test. You have to know it, or they don'tlet you be a Mama.' We walked along in silence for 2 or 3 minutes, but she was evidently pondering this new information. 'Oh.....I get it!' she beamed, 'So if you don't pass the test you have to be the dad.''Exactly,' I replied with a big smile on my face.

All Natural!!

Yup...No more spending a ton of money on bleach jobs anymore! My amazing friend, Dena did my hair on Friday. I'm going back to my roots...get it?!..roots! Ha ha (wipe tear).

CALI TRIP...finally!

So we hopped in the car and headed back home to good 'ol California for a little sunshine. The drive went well and we had a blast visiting with old friends and family. Then we spent our last 4 days there camping in Mission Bay, San Diego with Jacob's family. It was such a wonderful vacation!

While traveling down to Cali with my sister, Melissa and her gang in tow, we ran into my step-sista, Jenafer and her hubby, Dave at In 'n Out! How Random!

Water Park in Corona with Violet & Melonie after meeting up with Dottie at Violet's house.

Visiting Jacob's Grandparents. :)

Got to see Memory too!

Girl's night at my sister, Crystal's house! I even got to see my beloved Aunt Edith and Uncle James. I love listening to her stories.

We even got to meet up with Dave and Wendy for dinner!

Me and my bros. I didn't get to see John :( I should have made him come to girl's night with his wifey. Mission Bay, San Diego. Tomseth Family Reunion. :)

MY NEW POT RACK!!

My amazing husband made me the best gift EVER for our upcoming anniversary on the 25th of this month. He made me a beautiful, modern POT RACK!!!! It looks SO amazing in my kitchen. The wood and the black metal match the kitchen perfectly. He even put lights in it to make it just over the top! I am so glad that he got that welder earlier this year! And he did all of this in less than 3 days! I'm telling you, when he gets started on a project, there is no stopping him. Now all I need is a new set of pretty pots! :) Here are some pics of it along with all the other amazing projects that Jacob has done to make our house a home. The Concrete Floors!

This is the truest to color that I'm gonna get with my camera...

The Beams that Jacob put in the basement...

The awesome faux Granite table that Jacob made for me ...

4th of July Fun 2009!

The day consisted of:

*The Provo Parade (which my brother, Quinn was in with his bag-pipe band represenin' our Scottish herritage!)

*Picnic Lunch (with the BEST chicken salad, thank you very much!)

*Rafting down the Provo River (FREEZING!)

*Fun with Cousins

*BBQ and Fireworks at my brother, Scott's house. (Thanks sis for the AWESOME dinner!)

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I LOVE good FOOD.

I LOVE my FAMILY.

I LOVE my FREEDOM.

I LOVE this COUNRTY.

Jacob hit the BIG 3-0!!!!

Yup, Jacob is finally 30! He said that he actually really felt this birthday. He had a hard time wrapping his head around the fact that he is no longer in his 20's. :) I got him a GPS system, made him a cake and threw him a suprise B-Day party with a ton of our closest friends. The party was a TON of fun. We had a Luau theme. I made pulled pork sandwiches, roasted potatoes, corn on the cob, watermellon, pineapple, ect. Of course, no Luau is complete without a proper "Roast"...comedy central style, that is! A bunch of our friends prepared "Roast" speeches to give to the old geezer. We were dying laughing. Then we had a special preformance from one of Jacob's closest friends, Rich. I asked him to sing "Brett, you've got it going on" from Fight of the Concohrds (You Tube it!!)...you know, to make him feel better about turning 30. :) Except, of course he changed the name from Brett to Jacob. It was hillarious! He's from Australia so his accent made it even better! (Flight of the Concohrds are from New Zeland) Rich even went the extra mile and sang a second 'Flight of the Conchords' song about how "Jacob and I met". The song was called "The most beautiful girl". SO funny! Then we had an "Explination of the Cake" and all dug into it. (Explination can be found on http://www.whitmansugarmammas.blogspot.com/) I had even made a poster listing random facts, headlines and cost of living from WAY back in 1979 and posted it on the fence. :) Jacob loves random trivia. :) After that, we all headed down to the basement to watch the hillarious video that my friend, Phil helped me put together. It was basically a "Dateline Special Report" of Jacob's life...with some fiction added in. :) What a fun night. Thank you to everyone who came and a HUGE thank you to everyone that helped out! Happy Birthday honey! I love you more than anything!

Relay for Life...

My beautiful sister-in-law was part of a huge "Relay for Life" Cure for Cancer event down in Payson, UT this past weekend. It was a 12 hour run/walk from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. We stayed up all night running, walking, resting, eating and talking. They had live entertainment and we even performed a little skit. Speaking of the entertainment...David Fritch performed and he was amazing! He sang some Josh Grobin (sp?) , Andrea Bochelli and some other pop and theatre songs. Here's a link to his website. www.davidjamesfritch.com. He's very new but mark my words: He's gonna be big.

Thanks sis, for the opportunity! (This is me and my bro, Scott right before the "race". )

(This is me at about 5 in the morning!)

Kindergarten Birthday Bash

Lizzy graduated Kindergarten...and they had and end of the year party and birthday bash to celebrate everyone's b-day...

So I made a little CAKE...and all the children cheered...and we had fun...

GARDENING...

CONDUCTING SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS...

and then EATING the CAKE.

Yeah, it was a fun day.

My Brother, The Inventor

I am so proud of my family. They are my best friends. They are all amazingly talented. Here is just one example that I want to brag about:

My brother, Doug was named Top Inventor of the year 2008 in a company called Luminex, which he works for. This is actually the second time that he has received this very prestigious award. He also won it in 2006. He works with genetic testing and this is what he did:

"I invented a new method that allows DNA to be snapped closed so
that it will pop open ONLY when viruses are present in the patient sample – allowing for detection of the specific diseases.This invention brings us closer to the goal of providing tests to doctors that can indicate (within an hour) what disease their patients have.
It seems silly at times to claim these ideas as our own when they are only given to us to benefit mankind. I can personally attest the influence from the source of all knowledge above." -Doug

So Ryan graduated Pre-school.

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It was pretty adorable...

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and kind of a big deal. ;)

Myself and 4 other mothers in my neighborhood/ward got together and did a "Joy school". We rotated weeks (2 days a week) and that way we only had to teach one week out of the month! It was awesome. I highly recommend it but you MUST pick women that are very reliable so you don't end up picking up slack. My friends are awesome, of course, so it wasn't a problem. :) We used the curriculum that my lovely BFF gave me and learned so much. :)

What??

What?? You mean I'm NOT supposed to sit in the sink with my shoes and socks on, let the faucet run free and smear soap everywhere? I don't get it...

Gosh! It's a good thing this kid is cute!

Roller Derby!

So I have this tiny, gorgeous, adorable friend/neighbor...

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She is a Roller Derby Chick...And she KICKS BUTT at it too!

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She is the "Jammer" and the star of the show.

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The 'bout' was SOOO fun to watch. I highly recomend going to one.

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Rock ON, Carrie!

Namma...

Namma came to visit...hence the ice cream from Baskin Robins

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She likes to help us plant our garden...

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Take Lizzy to the bus stop... and things like that.

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We kind of love her.

Meet Paco...

So I finally gave in to Jacob's pleadings to get a puppy... (sigh). Jacob loves dogs so ever since we FINALLY put in a fence (hallelujah!) Jacob's been on the prowl for a dog. We found this little guy on KSL.com for FREE! and just couldn't pass him up. His previous owners paid quite a bit for him so he was quite the deal. He's the perfect size! We've had large dogs before and they were just SO much work-hence the reason that I have not wanted another dog. I didn't realize that small dogs were SO different! And now that we took up all of our carpet and put in concrete floors, I don't stress as much about having a dog in the house. We are currently training him to not step foot on any piece of carpet (in the bedrooms) or rug in the house. :)This little thing is a 15 month old Chihuahua mix (we think mixed with terrier so he's quite a bit bigger and longer than a Chihuahua) and he is so sweet and animated and playful. He's just about fully housebroken and kennel trained. He is very submissive. Anytime he thinks he's in trouble he immediately shows his belly to show that he knows you are the boss. The previous owner's took him through puppy preschool so he comes when you call him and sits when you tell him. He's great with the kids and they just LOVE having a puppy. I'm just excited that now I have a running partner! I forced Jacob to get him some "Bling". He said that boy dogs don't need bling but I insisted and since I have such a wonderful husband, you will notice his pretty sparkly collar. :)

Easter...

...was SO much fun this year! My mamma came up with my brother the night before and spent the night. That night we colored all of our Easter eggs and hid our easter baskets filled with a carrot for the Easter Bunny. The next morning, Grandma got to see the kids wake up, find their Easter baskets and find all of the eggs out in the yard. At our house, the Easter Bunny always hides the eggs that we color plus plastic eggs filled with candy. The funniest part of the Easter egg hunt was that Trevor would ONLY pick up the plastic eggs because those were the ones with candy in them. Every time he picked one up, he would shake it to make sure it had candy, then put it in his basket. If he didn't hear it rattle, he would throw it back on the ground then move on. After all the fun, we had a super yummy breakfast of bacon, eggs and cinnamon rolls (drool). This year was special because I discovered a new talent of mine. My mom bought the kids a package of baloons with instructions in them on how to make balloon animals. I rocked at this! I made a hat with a bunny on top for lizzy, dogs, dinosaurs, swords, flowers and much more. It was SO stinkin fun.

After that, we got all spruced up in our Easter best (I got the boys THE CUTEST matching shirts - Thanks Papa and Grandma Lingy!) and then we all took a walk to church (it's just across the street). After church it was a mad rush to get Easter dinner done. On the menu was herb-crusted lamb, roasted asparagus, fresh rolls, candied yams, and jello salad. We stuffed ourselves full then bid farewell to my Mom and brotha...and Jacob. He had to drive to WY that night for a business trip. It was a great Easter...until everyone left me. :)

Twilight DVD Release

So my girlfriend and I are the ULTIMATE dorks! We thought it would be fun to head over to Wal-mart for the midnight release of Twilight. When we pulled up, it was about 11:30. There was already a huge line! We were just about to turn around and leave when we spotted our friend sitting right in the front of the line. We asked her how she got there and she said that there was a Blood-Donation Van (get it, blood...vampires?! We thought it was pretty hillarious) out in the parking lot and if you gave blood, then you got to go to the front of the line! Well, my friend is prego but we bolted out there anyway. I gave blood and we convinced them to give her a ticket anyway for being my "moral support". We ran straight to the front of the line with 3 seconds to spare and about 1 minute after we got our 2-disc DVD, they announced over the intercom that they would be selling out of the 2-disc DVD's in about 1 min! We totally scored. I felt like the HUGEST dork because after we got our copies, we went to the back of the store to get some grub (the line was wrapped around the store) and then...get this...people started CHEERING at us when they saw that we had our copies! Wow...I've never felt that dorky in my life. We were feeling pretty good about ourselves until we saw a poor little 12 year old crying and her mom consoling her. We almost gave her our copy...almost. Anyway, it was a fun night.

We're so glad when Daddy Comes Home...

We tend to MISS Daddy a whole bunch when he has to go away on business... We love him for working SO hard for our family!

My New Fence

Halliejuia! Now I can send my kids outside with (relitively) NO worries. :)

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Look at these handsome boys working so hard for me...

Ryan absolutely ADORES his daddy and wants to be just like him some day.

Today is a good day...

I know that I still have so much catching up to do since December but I had to post this today:

Today is a good day...and it's only 9:45! Here are the reasons why:

1. I made some fantastic berry-oatmeal pancakes (so easy!)

2. Lizzy officially declared her Tomseth liniage by actually saying the words : "I have a better idea" out loud.

3. Trevor actually RAN to the potty all by himself!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have been taking his diaper off for the past 2 days (since we are finally putting in concrete flooring in soon!) and he is finally "Getting It". I had also been denying him access to the bathroom since he could open door for two reasons: 1. He destroys it. 2. The initial reason that he started wanting to go to the bathroom was because he would do anything just to be able to get into the bathroom like his brother and sister get to do. Turns out, once I took the child door handle off a couple of days ago, he was glad to run in there. It gave him a sence of independance and was actually much easier to just run in there himself instead of trying to find someone that would open the door for him or waiting for someone to tell him it was time to potty. I guess he doesn't like being told what to do...he totally gets that from me! :)

Anyway...today was a good day.

Ryan turns 5...and joins the Circus!!

My little boy is 5! I know this sounds cliche but time really does FLY and get away from you. This little guy is so sweet. For his birthday, he wanted a "Mario" cake so this is what I came up with. Ryan loved it. We started the day by having our traditional birthday breakfast of blueberry, bannana birthday pancakes (in the shape of the first letter of their name and the age they are turning) then, we had our traditional birthday lunch at McDonalds where the kids all get to get a happy meal. He was pretty excited about this. We brought along Ryan's best friend, Jason. That kid is hillarious and so sweet.

It just so happened that the CIRCUS was in town that weekend!!! How increadible is that?! We even got free tickets for the kids! They had Elephants that could dance, The ball of death where 3 motercycles spun around in at the same time! (this was Ryan's favorite part), dancing poodles, pony rides, Some guy that did a handstand on like, 10 stacked chairs, Airialists (this was my favorite part), Lions, Tigers and Bears!!!! OH MY! It was an amazing show and they did not dissapoint.

After the circus, we went home and had pizza (Ryan's favorite) and invited Jason's family over for some cake.

Phew!...what a super fun day!

Dear Ryan,

You really do bring such a sweet light into our lives. You love to help. You love to be "awesome" and "cool". You LOVE video games...thanks to your father! You are so smart. You love to figure out how things work. You LOVE to learn. You can retain anything that you are taught. You are so excited to be enrolled into the Chinese Immerssion program at your school. You love to be outside and be active. You are so social. You love to play with your friends. You are a sweet, sweet boy who loves to give mommy hugs and kisses. You love it when I sing you your bedtime song. I will be so sad when the day comes that you will get to "big" for that. You love to be big and help your little brother. Trevor really does want to be like you and do everything that you do. I love to call you "Captain Awesome" but you get embarrased when I do. You talk so much now. It's so funny to listen to you chat away at the dinner table. You idolize you daddy...as you should. He is such a good man. Your favorite thing in the world is to wrestle with daddy. You love when he comes home from work.

You already have a deep love for Jesus Christ and love to do things that will please him. You love to read the scriptures and learn about the characters and warriors in the book of Mormon.

I love you with everything that I have my little Ry-Guy.

Love,

Mom

I can ride my bike with no Training Wheels...No Training Wheels...

We finally took the training wheels off of Lizzy's bike and she took to it in a matter of minutes! She's a pro. She's been asking us to take them off for a while but we've been hesitant to do so due to her...how do I put it delicately?...lack of coordination? We were so wrong. She did so good. Jacob was so good and patient as he taught her how to do it. I was at work all morning and this is what I came home to!

18 and Oreos

My youngest brother is an adult! He turned 18. He loves Oreos so this is what my mom requested for him. I loved doing it. It was so fun. My only complaint was that it looked like a quadruple-stuffed oreo! I should have trimmed it down quite a bit.
You can't tell by his face but he really was happy with the cake, he just wasn't happy with the 10 pictures that I took of him with his cake. :)