Just Dance

I decided that there needed to be an entire post to the amazingness of this game and to the picture and video footage we have from playing it over the break! My dad definitely wins the award for best dance moves. . . too funny!!

My dad and brother shakin it with my 

extremely coordinated husband ;)

The video quality is terrible, but my dad was 

crackin us all up with his facial expressions

and killer moves!

The girls. . . we all look like fools but oh well!

Haha Drake definitely didn't want anything 

to do with the dance party

Thanksgiving. . . STG Style

This year we spent Thanksgiving with my family down in STG. It was a much needed break and we had a blast down there! It was Jared's birthday on Thanksgiving so he opened presents in the morning. He got a pretty sweet watch that was a group gift from me, his parents and my parents, as well as a few different shirts and sweaters so he made out pretty well! After stuffing ourselves later that afternoon, most of the crew went out shooting guns while my mom and I stayed home with the nephew while he took a nap. All of us girls did some door-busting late Thursday night and early Friday morning and later on Friday we had cake for Jared's b-day. Luckily Jared's sister Mikell was in STG with her roommate's family so she came over that night too. His parents had gotten him that "Just Dance" game for the Wii so we played it for a while, probably the most hilarious thing I've seen in a long time! On Saturday, I was able to catch up with some of my best friends from high school which was awesome because we haven't gotten together in a long time! Now we are back to the grind, sadly. . . oh well at least there are only two more weeks till the end of the semester. We put up our Christmas tree tonight so we are officially in Christmas mode around here, I love it!

The cool watch he wanted. It looks like the kind of 

watch that a graphic designer would want

Trying to be a gangster. . . and failing. . . haha

Always making a weird face!

My family is the epitome of white trash!!

(Don't worry, the guns weren't loaded for this pic)

A fairly successful family pic, I'm impressed!

This crazy family in our neighborhood always

goes all out with their Christmas lights

I like this blue sweater, a good find huh?!

Adopted Nephews

Some of our best friends here in Provo, Chase and Dana, just had twin baby boys about six weeks ago. I've spent the past couple of days hanging out over at their apartment helping Dana with the boys and it's been so awesome! Their names are Tate and Porter, and they are the cutest little babies in the world! Dana amazes me, I would definitely not be able to handle having twins, but she is a rockstar mom and every time I go over there I leave even more impressed by her mom skills! I've loved spending time with these boys and appreciate Dana letting me come and help her, it makes me excited for when Jared and I have our own babies. Chase and Dana are moving up to SLC soon, and luckily we will be moving up there eventually too, so we're happy that we will all get to live by each other for now. Can't wait to see Tate and Porter grow up in the next few years, they are going to be little studs!!

Tate (left) and Porter (right)

Seriously, how cute are these boys?!? 

I can't tell them apart in this pic, 

it looks like Porter on the left and Tate on the right

You might have to correct me Dana! :)

STG Adventures

Last week I spent a few days down in STG to help watch my nephew. My sister is in the nursing program at Dixie State and her clinicals were a little funky that week so since I only teach my class on Mon. and Wed. I headed down after my class on Wed. and spent the rest of the week there helping out! It was really fun to be able to hang with the little dude, he's a pretty funny kid! On Thursday we went out shopping for Jared's (Bah) birthday. I wanted to try and find him a couple of new shirts. Since Drake doesn't like shopping, I convinced him to go with me by telling him that we were trying to find a "cool guy shirt" for Bah . . . we lasted all of 2 stores haha! We ended up going home and played on his swing set in the backyard, had some intense sword fights with his foam swords and hid from the "bad guys" in the backyard. See, I'm kind of a genius because in order to get away from the bad guys, we had to hide on his bed, so when it was time for a nap, I coerced him into bed by saying we had to hide from the bad guys. . . smart I know, I'll be the best manipulating mom someday haha!

On Friday we went to Costco to eat lunch. The kid can legitimately pound an entire Costco hotdog, it is amazing! He's the pickiest eater on the planet, but for whatever reason he will scarf down the whole hotdog. As we were walking into Costco we had to pass the TV section which happened to have Cars 2 playing on them, so of course we had to stop and watch for a few minutes. . . talk about manipulation, I bet they make a killing off of parents whose kids refuse to take another step unless the parents agree to buy the dang movie! Well I contemplated it, got manipulated and decided to be the cool aunt so I told him that B and Bah had a surprise for him and I got the movie for him. He was pretty excited about it and proceeded to watch it 3 times that day, 4 times the next day and has probably watched it another 12 times since we left on Sunday afternoon!

Here's a couple of videos from our car ride to and from Costco (sorry they are kind of long but my grandma and aunt hardly ever get to see Drake because they live across the country so they like to see pics and videos of the kid!), the things he says are pretty hilarious, he picks up on everything you say now and will repeat everything that comes out of your mouth. One thing he likes to ask all the time is "why??" seriously every other word is "why" so Whit started telling him "Because those are the rules" which he isn't a huge fan of hearing :)

The surprise from B and Bah

 This is what you get when you ask for a smile :)

So excited for Cars 2

Drake has a swing set in the back of my parents backyard and later that night they brought home some soft playground chip thingys that you put on the ground to make it softer. Anyway, we all pitched in to help spread them across the swing set area back there. It's seriously a child's fantasy, my parents are saints. . . they'd do anything for that little guy! While we were breaking our backs spreading those things out, Jared was on his way down from Provo on the shuttle so I went and picked him up later that night.

Pops doin his thing. . . You should see

this man when he gets working on a project,

it's a bit intense! ha :)

Classy attire there Whitter Poots

although I'm not one to talk either! haha

On Saturday, I went running errands with my mom while Jared and my Dad took Drake "Bammin" over at Lowes. I guess Lowes and Home Depot do this craft thing for kids every other week where they can get a project and put it together. That's right up Jared's ally so they went and picked up a monster car set and Bah helped Big put it together at home, pretty stinkin cute. Later that night Jared and I took Drake to see Puss in Boots, it was a really good movie! It was kind of fun to play parents for the evening, happy to report there were no major melt downs or potty accidents (he's only been potty trained for about a month now, so I was a little nervous considering some random kid peed on my sister and her husband in a movie theater a couple years ago, true story!!)

Bammin with Bah

Watch your fingers there babe, can't

imagine that a 2 year old has very great aim!

On Sunday we went to church, had family dinner, watched the Patriots play some freakin crappy football, and then drove home. We should have left earlier than we did because we ended up driving through a dang blizzard! The most annoying part was that the roads were totally clear, but it was snowing so hard that we literally couldn't see more than 5 feet in front of our car. Supposedly we need to get fog lights for the Subi, yet another upgrade that Jared wants for the car. . . Let's just add another $400 dollars onto the $900 dollars it will cost us to put a bike rack on the top of the car, no thanks baby!

We tried to get some pics before 

church but the kid wasn't havin it!

This is the best face we got

We had slightly more success when it

was just him with Bah and his sword haha

All in all it was a great weekend and it was fun to get away from Provo for a little while! And now we're back to the grind this week. Scary story from today, I almost died this morning as I was driving up to school. Some idiot ran a red light while I was turning left and was about 1 second away from t-boning me. He didn't even slow down, he was probably texting the fool! Seriously scared the daylights out of me! It only strengthens Jared's argument that Provo drivers are the worst drivers out there, and I now I have to agree with him! 

Weird Dreams

I would characterize my blogging as sporadic and little crazy. I try to keep it light because I like remembering the funny things that happen and I like to keep family posted on what's going on in our lives (the other day my mom told me that our blog is like our family history haha). This post is for me though. I guess it's what you would call a "journal" post, which I figure everyone who blogs is entitled to do whenever they want. I don't really care if you read it, and I don't really care if you think it's too much personal stuff to share because I just need to get it out and be done with it. And if this really is my family history, I want my future kids/grandkids to know me, a real part of me. So now you've been warned  :)

I have some seriously weird dreams. I've always had really vivid dreams and for the most part they are just random, like the other night I dreamt that I was trying to find the supplies I needed to take to my class the next morning but I couldn't find them, so I had to run around the math building looking for them. Other nights they are more crazy, like me running away from bad guys or other dangerous things. Last night was a depressing one. I dreamt that I was in a doctors office and they told me I had cancer, it was a crappy dream. Sometimes I don't like having such vivid dreams because the emotions and everything seem so real. In the dream last night I felt like I'd gotten punched in the stomach and round-house kicked in the face, Chuck Norris style. Too bad it's a feeling that I'm somewhat familiar with concerning this particular six letter word. I hate cancer, I hate it more than anything else in this world, I freaking hate it so bad. It's something my family has dealt with for the past 10 years and it sucks.

Extremely long story short, we found out my sister had cancer (Desmoid tumors to be exact, if you really care to look it up) when she was 16 or something like that. Even after several surgeries the stupid thing the doctors said was benign kept growing back and spreading. The summer after I graduated high school (2005) we found out she needed to do chemo and all of that nasty stuff. It was a really hard 6 months and even after it was all said and done the cancer is still in there, but luckily it's not growing anymore. It was difficult for everyone in my family, and it messed me up pretty bad. There were times when I straight up thought my sister was going to die, and it was just hard for an 18 year old kid to handle. It honestly took me several years after all the chemo and everything to get to a spot where I was able to deal with all of the emotional baggage. Even now, I can't get the images out of my mind, they are burned in my memory and pop up whenever I hear that stupid word or see movies based on it. There were so many times when it was happening that I wished it was me and not her who was sick. I would have done anything to switch places with her because I didn't want her to hurt. Which is ironic given my dream last night. In it, I remember telling her first before anyone else, but I can't remember what she said.

But what could anybody say to something like this or any other trial you have no control over?? Trials suck, they all suck really bad. I feel like some people almost try to glamorize trials and build them up like it's a privilege to go through crap. Yes, I am grateful for some of the things I learned from that trial, things that took me years to learn. . . but would I ever want my family to do it again?? Hell no. I understand the fact that we grow through our experiences, that we become better and more refined, because of the hard things we go through. I understand that, and I believe it, but I also think it's okay if we struggle through things, if sometimes we get upset about those crappy things we can't control in life, if we have an emotional breakdown every once in a while (which used to happen weekly for me back in the day), or even if we aren't grateful for our dang trials.

We all have unique challenges we have to face; we are tougher than we think and we can get through hard things. But please don't beat yourself up if you feel like you aren't "dealing" with stuff well enough. I spent alot of years hurting because I felt like I needed to "deal" with cancer better and that I should have just been able to get over it. Well guess what. . . it happened to take me years to "get over" cancer and considering this post and some of the feelings I still have towards everything, I may never "get over it" in this lifetime. But just because I may still struggle with it at times does not make me a weak person. Gaining perspective about what's really important in life has helped make me strong. Learning to develop my faith and trusting that God is aware of the hard things I go through has helped make me strong. Continuing to rely on the perspective and faith I have developed while facing other challenges, even if they aren't as huge, has helped make me strong.

I have a favorite scripture that has always helped me through hard things it's Doctrine & Covenants 121:7-8  ". . . peace be unto thy soul; thine adversity and thine afflictions shall be but a small moment. And then, if thou endure it well, God shall exalt thee on high. . ."  Endure means to persevere, to do the best that you can. I've been doing the best I can with this trial and that is enough.


I love you Whit, you are the best person I know, and I will always look up to you.

Some professional photographers wanted to take pics of Whit, my mom, and I when she was doing chemo. Whit wore a wig in most of the pictures.

 They told us to think about everything

we were going through before they took this pic,

I call it our "screw the world" photo