100 things about ME.

(I LOVED reading my friend, Marilee's list of 100 things but I didn't think I could do it myself. Then over the next couple of days all I could think of were random things I could add to my list... so here you have it... 100 things about me!)

1. I was born in Edmonton, Alberta Canada.

2. I'm a dual citizen... my mom was born in Las Vegas and my dad was born in Calgary, Alberta.

3. I am the oldest of six kids.

4. My favorite childhood vacations were going to Grandma Polley's house in Las Vegas and going to Grandpa Walton's cabin at Shuswap Lake.

5. My best friend in Kindergarten was my best friend all the way through high school.

6. I felt jipped because my brothers got to go on ton of 'father sons campouts' with my dad... so he organized a ward father-daughter campout just for me!

7. I did four years of early morning seminary with perfect attendance.

8. I loved Erasure and Pet Shop Boys in High School.

9. The posters I had in my teenage bedroom were of: Kirt Cameron, Michael J. Fox, Mickey Mouse, and one of four shirtless beach volleyball players who I named (Amy reminded me of this one. -- too funny)

10. I loved going to Stake Dances and then coming home to tell Amy every detail of the night.

11. My dad was my bishop during my teenage years... I liked having him at all of my activities.

12. I loved watching Little House on the Prairie with my mom after school. I watched the entire series over again with Ryan and Katie when they were little.

13. I learned to drive on a standard yellow diesel Rabbit. All my friends knew when I was coming or going and I loved driving a stick.

14. 1I was a 'Residental Assistant' in the Dorms at Ricks College (when it was called Ricks College) and loved it.

5. I was an EFY counselor for two summers and loved it.

16. I majored in Elementary Education and taught 2nd grade for two years... and loved it! Every September I get a little sad when I see the kids classrooms ready to go for another year.

17. Chris moved into my apartment complex at BYU right after he got home from his mission. My roommates and I had exhausted all possibilities and were glad to see some new guys move in.

18. Chris let me drive his brand new white neon a couple months after we started dating and was impressed I could drive stick. (We just sold the neon one year ago!)

19. I got married a month after I turned twenty-one.

20. My husband spoils me with presents but my favorite gift is a good love letter that makes me cry. (But I like presents too!)

21. I love willow Tree Statues.

22. I am the mother of five.

23. I've lived in Alberta, British Columbia, Idaho, Utah, Maryland, Washington and now Georgia.

24. If I'm ordering a hamburger I can't resist one with avocado. The best one I ever had was at a burger place in Hawaii where they put a half of an avocado in my hamburger. I couldn't even get my mouth around it. I must go back!

25. I've spent most of my married life in the Young Womens program.

26. I crave Olive Garden soup and breadsticks when I'm pregnant.

27. We can't say no to a good vacation with friends or family.

28. I love watching a funny movie with Chris because he laughs really loud and it makes me happy.

29. I love it when my kids belt out my Celine Dion songs when we're driving around... also ColdPlay.

30. I drive a 'paid-off' Chevy Venture that we got two days after Emily was born.

31. I love to shop for my kids... but I wish I had more 'alone time' to shop for myself.

32. I love going on cruises... Chris and I have been on four now.

33. I love the Pottery Barn outlet store.

34. I love getting cards in the mail and reading personalized emails from friends and family.

35. I hate dressing up in costumes.

36. I've had fun buying jewelry lately. It's something I never bought because I felt like I couldn't afford it.

37. I love getting a babysitter and going out on a Saturday afternoon date with Chris. One of our favorite dates is to Carrabba's for dinner and creme brulee and then going to a movie.

38. I love having a little baby... and I love watching my older kids love having a new baby.

39. I love tulips.

40. Chris and I eat a Skinny cow ice cream sandwich almost every night.

41. I LOVE Family Home Evening.

42. I got hooked on massages when Marilee took me to a spa in Colorado. Thank you Marilee.

43. I wish I read more. I just started reading THE HOST by Stephanie Meyer and it is going to take me a long time to read it -- I've got to hurry and finish it before Breaking Dawn comes out.

44. I wish I scrapbooked more.

45. I wish I had more time to devote to cooking.

46. I try really hard to enjoy every moment. I don't want to be too anxious for the future. I love where I am right now.

47. Crazy enough, I still think of myself as a 'young mom'.

48. I have a passion for writing in my journal, taking pictures and recording memories.

49. I have a drawer in my filing cabinet for my kids special papers, report cards, art work etc. organized with folders for each child and each year. I love filing things away in perfect organization.

50. I love 'Enrichment' because I love socializing with girlfriends.

51. I've always loved playing Pictionary.

52. I love a good long nap.

53. I love a nice hot bath before bed.

54. I've had four good epidurals... and with Emily I didn't have enough time to have one and I was so mad!

55. I don't like the snow... although it's pretty on Christmas Eve.

56. I am happiest when my house is clean.

57. I am not a morning person. I repeat... NOT a morning person. I like to stay up really late... it is when my house is quiet and I can actually get stuff done.

58. I've seen Wicked twice and am going again this summer in London!

59. I loved watching the ALIAS seasons with Chris... it reminds me of being pregnant with Megan, watching it on the projector in our bedroom and eating ice cream in bed!

60. I love a Sam's Club hot dog and pretzel.

61. I love taking pictures with characters at Disneyland.

62. I think I'm the only one in the church that would prefer 1:00 church to 9:00 church. I've had 9:00 church for three years now!

63. I love taking pictures with my Nikon D40.

64. I love making charts, lists, and schedules... and now my kids do too.

65. I love Ann Taylor and Ann Taylor LOFT.

66. At IHOP I always order a stuffed french toast with blueberry topping. So good!

67. I love hot chocolate and drink it most of the year.

68. I love lazy Saturday mornings!

69. I love chocolate ice cream, marshmellows, red swedish fish, York peppermint patties, Reeses Peanut Butter cups, ...

70. I love Cafe Rio.

71. I love Bazzill and Chatterbox scrapbook paper.

72. I love cleaning closets, buying matching bins, labeling, throwing stuff out and reorganizing everything.

73. I love baked tortilla chips and fresh salsa and guacamole.

74. I love my house!!!

75. Chris got me hooked on diet mountain dew but my true love is Welch's grape pop.

76. I feel like being in the army has been a real blessing to us. It allowed me to stay home and raise my kids and not have any debt. And it has taken us to places we've loved and introduced us to forever friends.

77. My living room has beige couches... which I love because I can switch out my pillows whenever I want a new look. Right now I have navy blue and light green pillows.

78. I love going to church with my family on vacation. Just sitting with my sister and mom in Relief Society makes us all cry.

79. I love vacuuming.... definitely my favorite household chore. I don't mind dusting either.

80. My love language is words of affirmation and then quality time.

81. I do not make cookies from scratch and I'm ok with that.

82. I have Disney characters on my checks.

83. I have five fabulous sister-in-laws!

84. I can't seem to keep my room clean and it drives me crazy.

85. My grandpa Walton gave me my patriarchal blessing and also sealed Chris and I in the temple.

86. I keep lists of funny things my kids say.

87. I love preparing lessons for young womens.

88. I've been married for twelve and a half years... to the man of my dreams.

89. I always knew my first daughter would be named Katie. I've loved the name since I was a little girl.

90. I can fall asleep amazingly fast. If we are talking late in bed Chris says I say something, and then he responds and I tell him he just woke me up... and then I go on to tell him about the weird dream I just had. He always laughs and says, "you couldn't have just had a dream -- you were asleep for 6 seconds!"

91. I have wonderful parents and in-laws -- they are the best grandparents!

92. I LOVE being a mom. It's the best.

93. I get really emotional giving talks or bearing my testimony but I don't mind -- because I feel like it strengthens my testimony.

94. I love watching BYU football games with Chris in our 'fully invested' t-shirts.

95. I don't love watching the news.

96. I love Christmas traditions.

97. I love eating outside on our patio, taking a walk around the block, and playing with the kids in the backyard.

98. I love that my girls are in ballet.

99. I like a flat pillow. Chris likes a fluffy one.

100. I LOVE my kidos. They are really good kids and I am so proud of them.

Saturday morning at Callaway Gardens

When we read that the annual worldwide waterski and wakeboard competitions were held at our very own Robin Lake every Memorial Day weekend, we planned to attend. We got up early, packed a cooler full of food and drinks and drove to the Lake just as the 8:00am junior ladies and mens competitions were starting. They were incredible. We sat in our beach chairs a few feet from the water and watched in awe as skiers and wakeboarders flew past us twirling in the air, going off jumps, doing 960's?!, holding the rope with their feet, balancing with one foot and doing a pretty speedy slalom course. Everything was impressive. (Double click on the photos to see them up close and personal!)
The kids ooohed and aaahed for awhile but were more excited about sand and water. We brought the beach toys and they had fun digging and building for quite awhile. We thought being there from 8am to 10am wouldn't warrant bathing suits but we were completely wrong. We even brought sweatshirts just in case... what were we thinking? At 8:30 it was a beautiful and completely warm enough for bathing suits. ...bathing suits or not the kids happily splashed in the water (or sat right down in it) and had a great time.

"What time is it?

... Sum-mer Time!"
We have been singing this High School Musical 2 song a lot the past twenty-four hours. Yep, school's out and I'm not sure who's happier... me or the kids.

This week has been busy with end of the year class parties and award ceremonies. Katie got two awards. One for mastering all of her addition facts (answering each question in less than 2 seconds) and the other, the PRINCIPALS AWARD, for all A’s the entire year. Go Katie.

Ryan got HONOR ROLL… all A’s and two B’s for the entire year. His second award was for AR (accelerated reader). They have a reading program in the school that has the kids reading books and taking comprehension tests. Points are given based on the percent of questions they got right and the reading level of each book. Each fourth grade teacher gave an award to the student with the highest AR points in their class. Ryan’s teacher, Mrs. Ward, said “And I bet it’s no surprise that the winner of the highest AR points is… and then in unison the entire class said, “RYAN J” It was so funny. He said some of them were pushing him to go up before she even said his name. He had over 230 AR points. The next highest in his class had 130 AR points. Thank you Harry Potter books.

Both Ryan and Katie had a great year and fabulous teachers. Yeah for being done with fourth and second grade!!

Now it's Summer, summer, summer, summer....

little stars

Emily has been so excited the last couple days. She says 'Mom I'm so excited and so shy about the dance.' Tuesday night was the Columbus Ballet Conservatory Spring Performance... the girls first ballet recital. They have been taking the 'pre-ballet' class since January and have loved being able to dance together. It was so fun to go watch the performance. Their dance was called 'little stars'. They loved the sparkly stars around their tight buns, wearing makeup, and their cute white costumes...(one great thing about the Columbus Ballet is that all the costumes belong to the Conservatory and so we don't pay any costume fees.) They both did so well! Adorable.

castaway cay

Our ship, the Disney Wonder, with the Flying Dutchman, ghost ship from the Pirates of the Carribean

We got Luke set up in the shade with his bumbo.. but boy was he ever interested in the sand. He kept reaching over to grab some. Chris caught him before he ate any of it... but it did get all over his face!

Castaway cay, Disney's private island, was our last stop. What a great day. As we took our first glance of the island I thought, "Disney really has thought of everything". Beach towels were handed to us as we disembarked the ship. On the beach there were chairs and beach umbrellas for everyone. The bathrooms and 'wash-off showers' were close. There was a big BBQ with hot dogs, corn on the cob, chicken, fish sandwiches, salads, cookies... drinks and ice cream. All of it included in the price of our cruise. They had a kids club on the island too. McKenna, Tori, Sophie and Katie checked in for beach games and treasure hunts but mostly the kids just wanted to splash in the water, swim out to the big playground, play in the sand, float around on inner tubes and soak up the sun. Too much sun actually... as much as we tried not to, we all got burned pretty bad.

Good times!! I know it took me a week to post everything but there were just so many fun things we want to have recorded. Thanks for a fabulous week, Crawfords!

nassau

Our first port day was Nassau. We got off the ship, walked through some tacky tourist shops and found ourselves the perfect targets for some crazy hat and drum pictures. The kids were all encouraged to come and play and try on hats for a picture... all for a tip of course.

We walked outside and Chris shouted 'we need a taxi for thirteen!' Ten or more men came running. "I can take you!" Chris bargained a flat rate and we piled in the van and took off driving through the streets of Nassau... on the left side of the road too. Crazy traffic, interesting pastel colored condos and over a bridge with a great view of the Harbor and our Disney cruise ship sitting right in the middle. We headed over to Atlantis, a nice resort, and walked around inside and enjoyed the aquarium for awhile.

The Beach
After exploring Atlantis we walked over to the public beach. The cruise ship people told us that if we were heading over to the beach we would be haggled the whole time... and they were right. I don't know how many times we heard "Hey ladies, do you want braids for your hair?" or "braids for your pretty girls, Momma" or "all day cocnut drinks" or "hey kids, do you want this toy turtle?" Pretty soon saying NO THANKS every minute and a half was just part of the experience!

The waves were incredible. They really had a pretty good pull so Megan and Emily spent all their time playing on the sand. Chris and Jim would throw the big kids on top of the wave and it would carry them all the way to the beach... sometimes painfully, and they collected sand everywhere. The kids loved it though.

on board the disney wonder

Bon Voyage! We were so excited about our 3 day Disney cruise. It was the perfect end to a busy Disney week. Not too much time for relaxing though... so many things to take advantage of on the ship... lots of food, great entertainment, three pools, a movie theater, characters to meet, and kids clubs with non-stop activities and places to hang out.

Pool fun. The Disney Wonder was the nicest ship we've been on. The amenities on board were amazing and so kid friendly. The kids enjoyed the mickey shaped pool and water slide, seeing characters, and walking over to get fresh fruit and ice cream whenever they wanted. The pool side food was great. Panini's, great sandwiches, fresh fruit, salads, big cookies... Yum.

I love Mickey! Can you believe it? Mickey and Minnie came cruising with us... along with all their pals. Mickey and Minnie were cute together. They kept hugging, blowing kisses and looking shy. Adorable. Everyday Mickey and Minnie had on different outfits... cruise attire, pirate clothes, beach gear.

ARrrrrr! I'm a pirate! One night we had a 'Pirates IN the Caribbean' party. The kids wore pirate bandannas while we ate. Jim and Marisa ordered escargot and almost all the kids tried it! (No, I did not.) Megan eagerly tasted it... and then that's her face when she was told it was a snail. Later she said, "I ate a snail and it was squiggly in my mouth but it was kind of good and it was a snail."

The food and service on board was amazing. We rotated through three different restaurants, Animator's Palate, Parrot Cay and Triton's and since we had such a large party had the biggest and best table location in each restaurant. Our servers followed us to each assigned restaurant. Jim, Marisa, Chris and I sat in the middle of the large table and had all the kids on each end so we could manage the chaos... but pretty soon we realized there was no chaos. The servers catered to our children's every need. They bent down to review the menu with them, got them countless chocolate milk refills, cut up their meat, gave them mickey shaped ketchup on a separate plate for their fries, showed them where the bathroom was... When Chris or I was holding Luke they were quick to come over and cut up our meat too. It was nothing short of perfect. Our drink server was pretty shocked when we said no wine, no coffee, no tea. What do you drink? he asked. We kept him busy enough with our tricky diet coke/lemonade and sprite orange juice combos and of course chocolate milk and more chocolate milk for the kids.

The kids loved their kids menus with pizza, mickey shaped pasta, mickey chicken noodle soup... they had a lot of choices and were always happy. McKenna and Ryan checked out things from the adult menu too. Ryan liked ordering a Caesar salad, wanted to try Ratatouille, and tried out a couple more appetizers. Our meals were amazing. Soooo much fun to eat and eat and eat!

The other highlight of the cruise was the entertainment. Every night we had amazing performances. The Golden Mickeys - The Toy Story Musical - and Disney Dream. Fabulous sets, perfect costumes and of course what could be better than seeing all of our favorite disney characters singing and dancing. Megan took on the important role of announcing every new character that came out on stage... all with the perfect animated squeal. We all loved it.

Our review of the whole cruise...
Let's go again!!

favorite things about the animal kingdom

- Having Chris and Katie feeling better and no one else sick.

- Getting soaked on the River Rapids Ride... Megan got to ride it too and was so excited! She didn't love getting soaked but she was so happy to be big enough she eagerly volunteered to ride again.

- The Kilimanjaro Safari - a bumpy jeep ride through the animals

- Dino-land kids rides- the big kids did the 'mouse trap like' rollercoaster over and over. I took Emily, Sloan, Megan and Luke on the terradactyl ride and for some reason Megan is still talking about it. ...it's just like the Dumbo ride... a classic for three year olds.

- Festival of the Lion King - quite impressive. Especially liked the trapeze guys and the dancers on stilts. Ryan, Katie and Sloan got picked to play musical intruments in the parade during the finale.

- Expedition Everest. We hadn't been on this roller coaster before. It heads straight up to the top of the mountain... stops, switches tracks and then you go backwards in the dark through the mountain. It was great!

our not so magical day at epcot

You can't tell from the pictures but we had a rough day at Epcot center. We started the morning with an 'hour early pass' into the park. With almost no lines we headed straight for the speed racetrack and a spinning ride that gave the feeling of blasting off in a rocket and heading for Mars. Let's just say Chris wouldn't make the best astronaut. The kids and I went first... then when Chris went with the kids they came running out saying 'Dad threw up!!!' Sure enough he felt completely nauseous and filled one of those handy little white bags. Poor guy. Then walking out he had to stand against the wall for a minute so he wouldn't faint. What a great way to start the day.

A couple hours later Chris still wasn't feeling great and Katie was starting to feel weak. We hoped it was just late nights and crazy rides and kept going. We stopped at the fabulous Italian restaurant for lunch and when we were almost done Katie started throwing up at the table (amazingly contained and not noticeable because of Marisa's quick reaction getting me more napkins and taking them away... I've never seen someone react so fast to someone elses kid throwing up... thanks Marisa.)

Chris decided to take Katie and Megan back to the resort. Megan wasn't sick but all three of them would benefit from a couple hours of sleep. With slightly fewer numbers we continued around Epcot and really had a great time. We visited each of the countries and saw their movies, walked through exhibits, played games, took pictures, saw characters, and ate their native food... German cake, Italian pasta, french pastries...

...then while stopping in the United Kingdom for chips and vinegar Emily got her finger cut badly from a heavy telephone booth door. Blood everywhere, cut right through her nail. Not pretty. Disney cast members came from every direction with water, ice and napkins. Dr. Jim cleaned it up and checked it out. She cried for a long time. (It still looks bad, a little bruised but she never complains about it. It will be interesting to see if she loses her nail or anything. Still too soon to tell.)

At 5:00 we headed back to the resort to check on the sick ones. Still no good. Chris had barely made it back to the resort with the girls before he was sick again and spent the next 12 hours in his bed trying not to move, speak, or think about food. It was one of those bad 17 hour flu things. Katie still had a fever. She spent the evening watching the Disney cartoons channel. Our biggest worry was who was going to get sick next... but amazingly no one else did. What a blessing!

Tori's favorite thing to do between rides... hold Luke. Ryan walked around half the time not seeing where he was going. He loved being able to figure out where we were and what rides and shows he wanted to do and always had 'a plan'... (what a cute little mom and dad)

Visiting China...
Visiting France...Visiting the United Kingdom...