Hit the Ball

It's TENNIS SEASON!

Ashlin is on the tennis team for her high school. She is only a sophomore, and she made Varsity #2 spot. They don't have seniors yet at her school... so she's playing Varsity a little early... it's good practice. There were over 20 girls that tried out, and she was #2!!

Way to go Ashlin.

A few years ago I MADE Ashlin take tennis lessons, I LOVED playing tennis in high school and even played on a city league in Colorado and in Gilbert a while back (so fun)...

she ended up LOVING it, and tells me all the time thank you for making me do tennis. (finally, after making your kids do many things they hate, something pays off!!) She has a FUN team, lots of good friends. They love it. It's fun to go watch her play. You should see her out there, she is way too nice. She's constantly smiling and telling her opponent "nice shot" even when she's losing. I think she gets the prize for the worlds most polite tennis player.

Murder in the Dark again

Twas a partay.

I asked Dallin's buddy DJ what he was doing for his birthday. He told me they weren't having a party... I was like WHAT, you need a party, we'll throw you one. Since I don't have enough kiddos to have parties for I have to borrow other peoples. ha ha.

It was 2 days notice, I mostly threw a party for him as an excuse to let Dallin have a group of friends over to hang out on a friday night. They are cute kids. They played of course, Murder in the Dark, standard Vernon game.

I picked out the cake, oh ha, Red Velvet from Costco. I had them write "Party on DJ, #13" on it... she told me they don't normally decorate the Red Velvet ones... I was like, thats okay, we will today! YUM.

And early this month our up and coming development was causing all kinds of traffic stops and havoc up Settlers Point Rd. Woo-hoo. That guy below held the SLOW sign all day, I know because I drove by like 4 times.

Drivers Beware

Look out world!

Ashlin has her permit.

She actually got it the end of December. Today she was excited to drive Bruce's car for the first time.

Today was the first time Logan was in the car when Ashlin drove... he was really nervous. He got in and said, "Oh No". He wasn't sure about putting his life in the hands of his older sister.

As Ashlin pulled in to the driveway safely after our errands (errands were: help clean church building then get Dunkin Donuts) Logan said, "Phew, looks like crossing your fingers really does work". ha ha... he had been crossing his fingers hoping to live through the car ride.

PS- Sophie folded her arms spontaneously during breakfast prayer this morning for the first time. Isn't she such a righteous 1 year old... it was so cute to see her fold her arms like we do. :)

Groundbreaking

So I am finally posting pictures from our EXCITING event this month...

you know its exciting when Bruce is out moving around construction equipment.

And here I am passing out custom engraved shovels to the arrivals...

After 2 years of work... we finally broke ground on our development, HOORAY!!!

A LOOONG saga shortened in a few sentences:

There WAS an empty piece of land in our neighborhood that was suppose to become a school but never did... I say to Bruce a few years ago, "Lets get some couples together, buy that land and develop it in to a residential street of custom home sites". I had never done anything like that in my life. I looked in to it... found some awesome families... we purchased the land from Gilbert Public Schools... Eric and I did a LOT of entitlement/platting work with the town... and finally broke ground. It's really still crazy to me that we actually did it.

All 8 couples met down there for a picture, you can see the guys shoveling up some dirt.

Below you will see Tim and Alisa. Truly I went to them very first a few years back when I had the initial idea and said, "How crazy is this, would you be interested?" Their interest in the project made me think we could maybe really do this.

We love them.
This is Eric and Cara below. I have known them for years and went to them to see if they wanted to do this with us because I LOVED Cara and thought it would be fun to be neighbors. I didn't even realize that her husband managed construction projects for a living (currently a Project Manager in building the Gilbert Temple) and was exactly what we needed to really make this happen. They've been great.

Above is Eric and I. Luckily this is what he does for a living. We've done all the work, and it's been a lot. Being the Managing Partner of the Vernon Land LLC group we formed along with having baby #6 (and serving as Primary President) made the last few years more demanding then anything I've experienced thus far in my life. However, what a cool life experience to be a part of.

We got to choose the name for our neighborhood. Man that was hard. Every name sounded cheezy to me. We wanted a name with a meaning. We finally decided on ROCKWELL. We thought it was a strong name that lent to a cool entry feature, but mostly we thought the association to NORMAN ROCKWELL, the famous American painter, was really neat. Since we are a group of couples who plan to build and raise our families here I loved the connotation the artist Norman Rockwell has for family/community and all the many paintings he's done representing the great meaning that can be found in peoples every day lives.

So for the ground breaking Bruce and I bought everyone a book of Norman Rockwell paintings.

And here are my 2 cousins... how cool is that to be neighbors with cousins you've known and loved all your life. These 2 ladies are such amazing women and mothers. The thought of living by such amazing family members really helped us get excited about the project.

We are so going to have the party Cul-de-Sac.

This is Emily below, her and Mckane have been so helpful during this process. I went to their house that night years ago straight after I left Tim and Alisa to see if they wanted to do this with us too... their enthusiasm for it furthered my thought that we could really maybe do this.

I love this picture of Cara:

And we did it. The development will be complete the end of May. 4 of us plan to start building our homes right away after that. Yippee.

Check out the neighborhood rendering below and let me know if you would be interested in a lot.... you could be our neighbors!! :) There are 14 lots, 8 are taken, so 6 will be for sale!

Juicin

If you live in Arizona and have an abundance of grapefruit on your trees right now...

just making sure you know about GRAPEFRUIT PUNCH! YUM.

We juice all our grapefruits, add water and sugar for like the grapefruits equivalent of lemonade... but we think its way yummier then lemonade!!

{Recipe Below}

To go with sunday dinner, Sophie helped me juice for the punch...

she LOVED the noise the juicer made when she pushed her grapefruit down.

Note: Sophie is wearing pajamas that were mine when I was a baby, that my Grandma from Mexico (Grandma Hola, but really Amalia) made for me, who has since passed away.

Then you know how kids are...

as soon as they see someone having a good time... they had to all come over requesting part of the fun.

The red barstools don't normally reside on the counter, but Ashlin was sweeping as we were juicin.

And in the background Bruce was whippin the potatoes. He is king of Mashed Potatoes, he always makes them. {There's another yummy sunday... BBQ chicken in crockpot, mashed potatoes, cooked carrots, homemade rolls and grapefruit punch}

Grapefruit Punch:

1 quart grapefruit juice (can be less)

3 quarts water (or after juice add water until 1 gallon)

2 cups sugar

You can half the recipe for 2 quarts, but in our family we cannot.

Gruesome

You probably don't care this much about my life. Maybe I will regret making a blog post out of this. Last week I had my first ever medical procedure.

(Besides giving birth to 6 children, with no complications, all regular deliveries... wait, and 5 miscarriages, all which bled naturally and never required a DNC...

oh yes, I have taken 11 positive pregnancy tests.)

This is me in the bathroom right before my laser treatment to remove my massive varicose vein on the back of my leg. I took a picture for posterity, just in case I died during the procedure, but I lived to tell about it.

You ready to see my vein that has been with me for somewhere around 8 years.

It is pretty much the shape and size of your small intestines.

mmm, glamorous.

Here is the sterile table all ready for me.

And the chair they will lay down for me, and then zap my leg with a 1000 degree laser.

They are doing an ultrasound of my leg. Its like I am pregnant with a huge vein, ha ha, a life of its own it's so big... I think I almost heard its heart beat. Thats gross, I am joking.

It hurt. They had to feed some wire all up through my vein, poke me with a bunch of needles to deliver the local anesthesia.

Right before they pulled the switch to laser away... the doctor and I really had this conversation:

Doctor: Okay, this is a 1000 degree laser, tell us if you feel anything

Me: (in a new state of panic) What do you mean IF I feel anything, is there a chance I will feel lots of pain?

Doctor: (very calmly) USUALLY patients don't feel anything

Me: (higher state of panic) What do you mean USUALLY, what are the chances I am going to feel this???

Doctor: (a little annoyed at my wimp level) We do our best guess at the local anesthesia, and usually patients don't feel anything

I seriously almost passed out, I got light headed and he really freaked me out. What doctor says "Best Guess" and "usually" right before a procedure??? It made me light headed I was so scared.

Then he flipped his switch, and I didn't feel anything.

I thought it was over at that point, but there was some foam chemical injection they put in my vein afterwards to burn it out or something. That hurt too. They immediately wrapped my leg and put a lovely compression hose on... so I didn't get to see the final result yet. I have to wear it for a week.

But I can just imagine that when I unwrap it...

my legs are going to look like this:

I am going to be sportin the daisy dukes any day now. Ha ha.