Home Sweet Home

Has it really been that long? 10 Years ago today Justin and I became husband and wife.  The next post will chronicle our 10 years together. We have had a LONG road together and gone through a lot of fun and laughter as well as sorrow and tears. I couldn't imagine not being married to Justin, but there was a time when "we" almost didn't exist anymore. Because of the bitter times, what we have now is SO sweet and I thank Heavenly Father for his help in getting us to where we are today. Now that I've grabbed your attention, you'll just have to wait for the post... because I'm not done with it...and it's hard to fit 10 years into one post and choose which pictures to include...and I don't have any time...and we are leaving town tomorrow to go on a cruise for our anniversary... Justin sent me on a scavenger hunt around the house to find a letter he had written to me for today. He is always so thoughtful...cuz where's my letter? That...

 House-guests, Thanksgiving & Day Trips It's been pretty busy 'round here at the Owens' home, and two of the big projects aren't even going to be covered in this post! It all started about 2 months ago when we offered to hold Thanksgiving at our house. We decided if we were going to have so many people over that we aught to go ahead and bite the bullet and do some landscaping (curbing & pavers) out front so it looked more presentable. We organized that project and got it started and Justin also started a retaining wall in back around the playground (both of these to be blogged about later). No pictures of those, but they were very time consuming projects and aren't quite done yet! The weekend before Thanksgiving we had my Uncle JP staying with us for a few days because both of my parents were out of town, one on business and the other up at the cabin doing some maintenance. JP is 88years old and doesn't have any family. He also suffers from pretty seve...

Aren't kids the greatest? Ha ha, okay if you really know me you would know I definitely have a hard time feeling that way all the time, but there are a few things I do LOVE! Like how about how sweet and happy Dale is when I get him out of the crib in the morning and after his nap? That is really the best experience to have daily, and one I'm positive I will miss when my kids are older.  He's happy probably 99% of the time when we wakes in the morning or after his morning nap. Sometimes the afternoon nap leaves him groggy if it happens too late in the day. Me with no makeup...blegh...so just concentrate on Dale's sweet sweet smile! How about the finicky way that Adaira chooses her clothes? I buy her these cute little outfits, but Miss Girly Girl will wear a stained, faded dress with holes in it over her new, NON-DRESS outfits. As seen below, we have some nice new shorts and T-shirts (which I think are totally cute). She has NEVER worn the brown shorts, and only wo...

Randomness in the Owens' household Nothing much to post about this week, so here is a peak into our lives on a typical afternoon/evening at our house. With the weather cooling down, we've spent more time outside after dinner. It's not exactly exciting footage, it just shows the typical dynamic. Dale being sneaky and eventually getting hurt, Adaira being cute, loud and of course rude to Dale, Brighton not eating his dinner so he has to stuff it all in his mouth at once so he can come outside with us, etc... All of the following pictures/videos are from the same afternoon and evening. Later when it's getting closer to bedtime, the kids OF COURSE have a second wind and insist that we do any one (or all) of the following: pillow fight, dance, or play games. Lately we've been listening to an old mix CD full of old cowboy songs by Marty Robbins . He was actually from the Phoenix area, and his songs make me feel nostalgic because I have memories of being a little girl ...

Beside every great man stands a greater woman. Be side me stands Superwoman! We had an unfortunate flooding 2 weeks ago into our neighbors driveway. We had some berms to fix and build up. While I was moving things around with the tractor, Audra had the much harder job of using the shovel to smooth things out. She was at it for over an hour. She did such a good job that the neighbor told her to thank me for fixing the berm! Well she deserves the thanks and the credit on this one. Once the berm was finished she dug a trench to convey the water from our concrete driveway into our yard. She even got the kids to help gather rocks offering them 5 cents per rock. Of course Brighton quickly finds over 100 rocks. I guess we should have had size limit to keep him looking for large rocks and not pebbles. Audra has also been working at another part of our yard digging it out in preparation for a retaining wall. Among guys it is not uncommon to find a hard worker that stays at a difficult task unti...

Family Home Evening Justin and I are pretty hit and miss for our weekly FHE activities, but we do manage to get it done about twice a month. This last Monday night consisted of a discussion about prayer (and how Brighton had a lot of faith praying so much for Adaira when she was getting her earrings taken out the night before) and then we had dance time. The kids love to dance and they love to have us dance with them. We turn on the music from this blog, throw in the Johnny Cash at San Quentin CD or (more recently) and old CD I found in my collection that has a bunch of old cowboy songs (Marty Robins and a few other oldies from the 50s & 60s etc.). We had a fun time dancing together and hopefully our kids will look back with fond memories of nights like this when they are too old and cool to dance with us anymore. We had to teach Brighton how to ask a lady (aka Mom & Adaira) to dance, he was really itching to get in there! Dale gets up every so often and turns himself arou...