Started a new blog!!

So, I started a new blog!! It's Krista's Korner 2 @ kristakaymillett.blogspot.com Hopefully, I will blog more now!! It's back to the old style that I had on this one before I "updated" it or whatever I did:) Hope to see you over there!!

Krista's Korner 2??? :)

So, I have officially met my picture quota! It won't let me post anymore!! Dang it!! There is also something wrong with my set up anyway. Most of the stuff at the top when I'm trying to write is covered up and I have no idea why! I think it's time to start a new blog....;)

Makenna's Beach and Disneyland Birthday!!

So, I always wait until I have time to post pictures and do everything and then I realize it's been like two weeks since I blogged so I'm just going to write! Our little surprise for Makenna's birthday turned out soooo well!! Thursday morning, the 15th, we just got ready like normal. I had everything packed in the car except my toiletries so Makenna didn't really suspect anything. She didn't understand why her Dad was still home when she was up and ready for school though. Usually he leaves so early that she doesn't get to see him or only for a minute and then he is gone. I just kept telling her that she woke up way too early!! I even snuck their pillows and bears into the van when she wasn't looking. She finally started suspecting when we were loading up in the van and they saw their pillows and blankets and activities ready for them to do. Makenna started to get really excited and asked if we were going to the mountains. We decided that since the mountains aren't that far and in the opposite direction of where we were going, we instead told her that we were going to the beach!! She has been wanting to go to the beach for awhile since her cousins moved to Cali so she was beyond excited about that!! Her and Jordyn both screamed! Little did they know that it was only half of what we had planned:) We got all loaded in the car and headed towards Cali. They asked many times....are we there yet??? We didn't have any directions really. We just put Huntington Beach in the GPS and went. We ended up asking the toll booth guy for a map and looked for a spot ourselves!! We just drove down Pacific Coast Highway until we found a sign that said Parking and followed it. We really have no idea where this "parking" was but as soon as we turned in, the beach was right there and just to the right (across from some houses), there was a perfect parking spot right at the end. We literally parked right off of the beach. I couldn't believe it! And it was kinda semi private! Later on, as we were driving to our hotel, we saw the "BIG" parking area where everyone parks:) I guess it was either Newport Beach or Hungtington or somewhere in between. Anyway, this was nice because all these houses lined the beach and it was so pretty!! The girls were beyond excited! I had either stretchy pants or shorts on the kids so they could walk through the waves breaking on the beach! Even Aiden got his feet wet!! That is until a HUGE wave came in and wiped them all out!! Yup...they all got soaked (well except Jor...she didn't get too wet:) and then they were freezing!! I stripped Aiden down to his diaper and then put his sweatshirt on and wrapped a towel around his legs. I had a change of clothes for them all but was going to put it on them after we were all done! We had just gotten there!! So I took Kenna's shirt off and put her jacket on her to try to keep her a bit warmer. That seemed to do it but her teeth still chattered. It wasn't too cool but it sure is once you are wet! That water was freezing!! Anyway, the girls had a blast running through the water and Aiden loved exploring and playing in the sand! I made a cute castle for him! They complained about the sand and salt in their pants once we were all done though and I tried to get as much off of them as we could when I changed them into warm clothes for our trip to the hotel. It still wasn't pleasant because Kenna kept asking every five seconds how much longer we had to drive;) Thankfully, we ended up being only 11 miles away from our hotel!! How's that for not really planning:) We got to our hotel and all showered to get ready for the real surprise the next day which was her actual birthday!! I think I was more excited! She just thought we were staying the night and going back to the beach for a bit with Grandma and Papa the next day and then going home! Little did she know.....;)

Eeek.......about to pull off a BIG surprise!!

It is Makenna's birthday on Friday and I had the crazy idea to take her to Disneyland for her birthday. How amazing would that be for a 7 year old! It's a total surprise and it's been hard not talking about it around her but I think we have been successful! She said she wanted to go to the dinosaur park on her birthday and Travis whispered that we were going to a park that started with a "D" all right! :) I'm going to pack after they go to bed tonight and get the van all packed so they don't see. Then we are going to say we are keeping her home from school to go to the mountains! She has been begging to go to the mountains to see the snow. It's just going to be a very long trip to the mountains which will then turn into the beach! She has been begging to go to the beach ever since her cousins moved by the beach. We are going to act like that was for her birthday and then surprise her the next morning for Disney!! I'm soooo excited!! I can't wait to see her face!! I just have to do laundry and pack!! Eeek!!! And to just keep our family healthy long enough to enjoy it!! We have been exposed to lots of people that have yucky, yucky sickies and my younger two have been congested with a little cough (which I kinda think is allergies with all the wind and clear snot:) but I can deal with runny noses. What can't be dealt with is a stomach flu which has also been going around!! I'm praying that it passes us by and we can enjoy this trip!! I'm praying hard!! Disneyland....here we come!! :)

Trying something new

Today, we decided to do something new for church. NO food!! No fishies. No pretzels. No fruit snacks. Nada!! I was worried because of Aiden. I figured you always have to have something for babies and then in turn the older kids have to have something because you have it. Well, for a couple of weeks, our kids have been crazy and fighting over all the snacks! They would be loud and ask for it the second we sat down. I had the girls in the habit of not having any snacks until after Sacrament (which honestly was just a punishment for me since Trav was up on the stand leading the music until then) but now that Aiden is older, he was looking for the snacks right away and freaking out when he didn't get any. So, I would give in and give him something which would then make Jor want something right away and when I didn't give it to her, a huge whine fest would happen. So Trav finally said No more food!! I was very wary of this proclamation!! I just thought....whatever! :) But I really was tired of them fighting so I figured it was worth a try. Today was trial run. I had coloring books and letter practice sheets, books and a few small toys but no food. Aiden immediately started looking for snacks and was starting to freak out but once he figured out that there wasn't any, he was totally fine and looked for something else. The girls didn't even use a whole lot of the stuff out of my bag. They colored for a bit and that was it! They were very calm so I could concentrate on keeping little man happy which can be a full time job sometimes;) I was very happy with how they acted and rewarded them with one little package of smarties at the end of Sacrament meeting!! I will definitely be doing that again and pray that it wasn't just a fluke and all will go crazy next week. I guess we shall see. The only problem I forsee is that we have church from 11-2 so it's right through lunch. I had to make sure they had a sandwich and apples before we left so they wouldn't be starving so I just have to make sure we make the time to feed them before we leave. :)

Sleeping Beauties AND an update!

I always check on my little ones before I go to bed and there is nothing like sleeping babies:) I had to take pictures!

Miss Jordyn has been sleeping with her bear practically on her face lately. She must like it because she does it all the time!

Miss Kenna just sleeps HARD!! We still have a hard time with her having accidents at night because once she falls asleep, she is OUT!! We go up a couple of times to take her potty and she doesn't even wake up. We have to stifle the giggles sometimes when she starts talking:)

Mr. Aiden is a great sleeper but also a very LIGHT sleeper! He usually perks his head up as soon as I open the door. I got lucky this night! He must have been in dream land:)

*And an update on Trav's dad! He finished his chemo and his numbers were good enough that he was finally able to come home on Thursday, the 23rd. He hadn't been home since January 23rd so he was very excited. And so was Trav's mom. He's happy to be in his own bed and they will find out at their doctor's appointment tomorrow what he has to do next!

Halloween 2011.....Yup, Finally getting it done! :)

Halloween 2011 was the year of the cheap costumes! I really didn't want to spend a ton of money for one night of dressing up! I'm all about saving money so this is what we came up with!

Jordyn loves Strawberry Shortcake so we dressed her up in a dress that she already had and put green stripes (green duct tape $4), strawberry shortcake pretties and freckles. I think she looked adorable and I only spent $4!

Makenna kept changing her mind. She wanted to be Hermoine and then she wanted to be Snow White (which we already have a dress up dress for that one too:) but she ended up decided on being the White Queen from Alice in Wonderland. She already had a beautiful white dress and I just got her a long blond wig ($6) and put some makeup on her!

Personally, I think Makenna looks better with darker hair. It's gradually getting darker and darker. This is a little too blond for her:)

My Aiden was a hard one for me. I really didn't want to spend any money on him because he's not old enough to care but I still wanted a fun costume for him. I found a cool costume idea on Pinterest. Mr. Aiden is a bum which cost me a total of......$0!! He already had jeans with holes in them. I just put a flannel shirt on him and a goofy beanie that we already had. I also put makeup on his face for his beard! I think it turned out so adorable and funny! Trav wrote, "will work for candy" on his sign and called him the "99%" :)

You are going to put candy in my bucket??? Alright!!!

The green stripes!!!

This was at our trunk or treat!! We also did a little trick or treating around our neighborhood and then over at Grandma's for chili and doughnuts!! I will post some of those pics hopefully soon:)

Old Draft, never published....Summer fun....Pine Valley

So, I was looking through my drafts and for some reason this post was never published!! It's too cute since it's almost two years ago!!
Miss Kenna was 5 years old and about to enter Kindergarten that fall!

Miss Jordyn was about to turn 3! What's funny is that we still have that play snake:)

Horrible pic of me but adorable of Mr. Aiden who was about 3 months here!!

Going for a hike!!

I remember this campsite too!! It was awesome and it was also the last year before they changed them all. Now they are all too close together:(
Hubs and baby boy!!

The girls slept in late!! They were zonked:)

But little man was up bright and early!! I remember his Mama didn't sleep very well that night because he wouldn't sleep unless I was holding him!!

Papa reading his book!! :)

I was trying to lean back so I wasn't in the pic. Guess it didn't work:)

We got some great shots of the deer this trip!!

......and squirrels!!

Are you looking at me??/

Beautiful!!

Apparently I don't know how to blog anymore.....;)

I am having a very hard time keeping up with this blog. I wanted to update all the way back to Halloween but blogger is just giving me the hardest time with uploading pictures and I get so frustrated that I give up. And then I look at it and it's been weeks since my last post!!! I might just try to start a new blog and see if that helps.
Anyway, since I can't upload photos, I'm at least going to write SOMETHING!!! So, I decided to talk about the books I've been reading. I decided to keep track of all the books I have read and will read all year. I think it will be fun to see how many books I've read at the end of the year. It also seems to be the year of books that I didn't think I would ever read. I'm breaking out. It's not just Twilight and Harry Potter (which will probably make an appearance again this year). It's nice to broaden my horizons:) I started off the year with the Hunger Games and they were AMAZING!!! I couldn't put them down. I actually read them all at the END of last year but loved them so much that I read them ALL again at the start of this year:) They are hard to explain to someone who hasn't read them. How can you explain about some games that randomly pick a boy and girl from each district and those that were picked fight each other until the death. See? It's hard to imagine why they are so good but they are!!! The next set of books I started reading was The Girl with a Dragon Tattoo. Travis bought this book for me for Christmas and I thought he was crazy. He said people at his work were raving about it so he thought I might like it. So, I started reading it and thought he and the people at his work were definitely crazy. The first 100 pages or so were not very good at all. It was a lot of background info. And I mean A LOT!!  I could only read a little at a time. I felt like I was trying to study for a test and that there was info in this book that I was going to need to remember at a later time but not sure exactly which information. Eventually it got really interesting. I think what interested me was figuring out the who done it. I like shows that solve crimes and whatnot so it shouldn't suprise me that I like to read it in a book as well:) The only other problem was that it was definitely rated R. The 'F' word makes a semi frequent appearance and there are just things in it that aren't pretty. Now having said that, I don't know if I would recommend it because of those reasons but at the same time, I do because it ended up being a good book. I wasn't sure if I wanted to read the next book but I'm always a sucker with wanting to know what happends to the characters and I heard that the next two were a lot better because they were translated a lot better than the first (the author was swedish). I happen to concur with that because I haven't been able to put this second book down. Trav bought me the second one for Valentine's Day after a brief period of not reading anything and finally relenting to wanting to read the second book. I'm glad I did because it's really good so far!! :) Anyway, I'm going to keep a running tally on my side bar of what I'm reading and maybe I will keep writing reviews on them. I can't wait to see how many I read.

Feeling like the rug just got pulled out from under our feet

I was second guessing myself about writing about this on my blog but since I use this as my journal and no one reads this anymore anyway....:)

Our world was turned upside down last week. Travis' dad was not feeling well and getting tired a lot. He went to his family doctor and got some tests taken but I guess they took forever because they still didn't know anything a week later. We had actually gone out to dinner with the whole family last Saturday, the 21st and he looked awfully pale. I suggested they go to a specialist if they weren't getting any answers from their regular doctor because he just didn't look right. That Monday, Gordon went to his regular doctor and he sent him right to the ER. I was actually very thankful for this because at least they could get answers a lot quicker. They found that all of his blood levels (red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets) were all low. They gave him blood transfusions and then went about to figure out what was causing that. He was admitting and a couple days later (Wednesday), they found out that he had acute lymphoblastic leukemia. He started chemo Friday and also did Saturday and Sunday. They expect him to be in the hospital for about a month because they have to give him blood each time after he as chemo. He can't come home until after he can keep those levels up on his own. They don't have stages for this type of cancer but if they did, it would be a stage 4 so he has a long battle ahead of him. But he is very healthy and strong and we believe he will get through this. Our sweet girls have been worried about him and they were able to go visit Grandpa in the hospital on Thursday (the day before he started chemo). I had to stay home with little man because I was sick. Absolutely no sick people can visit him and even the healthy ones have to wear masks. Makenna even brought him a football card that she got at school and wrote him a little note. She is such a sweetheart. It's going to be a long haul but everything will be fine!!

And to add salt to the wounds, Travis' parents house was broken into on Friday night (the first night of his chemo). It was very upsetting. They stole money, her Nikon camera and a bunch of her jewelry including a watch that Gordon had just bought Nancy for Christmas. There were a lot of blessings though. She had their wedding rings sitting on their dresser and they weren't touched. Gift cards weren't touched and Gordon's wallet wasn't touched. They also didn't go past the bedroom! They shut the door we assume because Lady was coming back there barking! That's our Lady girl!! She kept them from going through the rest of the house and getting other things. I'm so thankful that Nancy has her! She will be a great comfort to her and keep her company when she is home and Gordon is at the hospital.