Little Brother Getting Married :0

My brother Joel sent out a mass text message yesterday to announce that he was getting married this coming June. The only members of the family that have met her are my grandparents and my aunt and uncle that live close to my grandparents in Utah. None of us even knew her name until yesterday. He just met her on New Years Eve and has spent a great deal of time with her since then but I guess when you know you know. Now we know that her name is Teresa, she is 27 and from Logan, UT. She graduates with a degree in education this coming May and will probably end up putting Joel through school. She sounds really great for him. He has finally got someone to make him settle down and figure out what is going to do with his life. She is a little older than him so hopefully wiser too. I made him send me a picture so I at least knew what she looked like. She's cute and I think that they probably look very cute together.
The timing of it all couldn't have been crazier for us. The announcment made me go through our family calendar and I realized that we will now be traveling somewhere every month from now until September and our time and schedule are jam packed.
Spring break in San Diego March 29th- April 3rd, Jason's training in Milwaukee April 19th-25th, Charly's 4th birthday April 26th, My 25th birthday May 4th, Mother's Day and Stevens graduation in Muscatine in May, the birth of baby Caelyn sometime at the end of May, Joel getting married in Salt Lake City June 23rd, Northwestern Mutual Annual Meeting in Milwaukee July 18th-22nd, Thrap family reunion during the first full week in August, AND FINALLY a Carribean cruise for Jason and I September 20th-26th. Somewhere in there will be a guy fishing trip and a girl horseback riding weekend too. Can someone just slow my year down a little bit? I just know that my coworkers at the Y are going to hate me. By the time I get back our new YMCA will be ready to open and I will have been gone half the time.
(Sorry, Joel, I promise I'm not complaining.) It is really just a crazy, mad year. I am left to wonder how we are going to do it all, and pay for it all without losing our minds. I'll let you know when I am able to take a breath.

Go Uncle Steed!!!

Jason's younger brother Steven is a senior at Muscatine High School this year and is really busy in all kinds of activities. He just recently finished up his last show choir competition and we got to go and watch him perform. It was a lot of fun. Jason and I really enjoy getting to watch the choirs and hope that maybe one day one of our kids will want to do something with show choir since we both did it a little in high school too. In this competition they got second place by only one point! They were awesome!!! Jenny made Charly a shirt that says #1 fan for her to wear while we were there. It is her new favorite shirt.

You had snow where?

This happened a couple of weeks ago after our last and hopefully final snow storm. We really didn't get that much snow but it was really windy. When we woke up in the morning this is what we found in our kitchen. This is along the wall were the wall and the kitchen cabinets meet. I think this is the place in the wall where the air conditioning unit comes in from the outside. But this is totally wrong!! This means that our heating bill could have been a lot lower this winter.

BOXES :)

Jason is out helping the missionaries tonight and the kids are already in bed so I thought I would do some catching up with the blog.

A few days ago I was going through the closets and trying to consolidate all of our storage stuff. Carter has gotten an awesome wardrobe that will last him well in to next year from a couple of ladies that I work with. So I have been going through them and deciding where to keep it all since we need to make room for the little sister and all of her stuff soon. Of course I had all of these boxes out and as every mother knows, children can not resist the urge to jump right in. I like many other parents decided that we shouldn't own any toys at all. I should just get them boxes. Carter was loving every minute of it whether Charly was pushing him around in it or sticking it over his head. They were entertained for quite a while.

Jason's Bday Week?

Because everyone will be so busy with Spring Break and everything it appears that Jason will be getting more of a birthday week than a birthday day. He will be hitting the ripe old age of 28 this Friday but his brother Josh with his family and his sister Jenny were over last night to have dinner and cake to celebrate. Josh thankfully smoked an awesome pork butt and we ate pork nachos and pulled pork sandwiches. It was great and made my life easier! It was also another reminder that warmer days are here and we will be getting to barbque together again. Jenny helped me with the cake. She's taking cake decorating classes and she made the decorating frosting and brought over all of the fun frosting stuff. So thanks to you both for helping out. Josh also provided great entertainment by bringing over his Playstation so we could play Sing Star. Charly sang the ABBA song "Money, Money, Money" several times.

On a side note....You may notice that the cake is slightly flawed near the word "Bday." Wouldn't you know that Carter got his hand in the cake before I even got to take a picture. Surprise, surprise! Such is life with a toddler.

Next, we will get to celebrate again with Jason's parents tomorrow. They will be driving through on their way back to Muscatine from the Omaha airport and figured they would make a stop. Then, on Jason's actual birthday I think he has plans to take a short day at work and possibly hit the golf course. He also thinks that this whole birthday week thing exempts him from having to change any diapers ALL WEEK! Someone else (besides me) needs to tell him he is so full of it that his eyes are brown.