New Additions

and NO I am not talking about the kind that just eat, sleep, poop, and cry for the first several months of their life. I am not, and may never be ready for THAT sort of addition again. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE my two boys deeply, but when I hear a crying baby I can't help but think, gee I'm glad that's not me.

This week has been a very eventful one. As you can see from the pictures below, we had a fence and a 12x12 patio installed by Big T Roofing, which is a general contracting company owned by our good friend Terry Simpson. To say that Mason and Cooper were glued to the windows watching "the guys" (as Mason called them) work, would be an understatement. I don't think either of them picked up a single toy the whole time "the guys" were here.

one side of the fence...

and then the other side.

one side of the fence in the back yard...

and then the other side.Thursday was when the really exciting part came in (well, at least for Mason). The concrete for the patio was poured. Mason was SO excited to see the cement truck pull up to the house.
Getting ready to pour the cement into wheel barrels to be taken to be dumped in the mold for the patio.
And here is the finished product. Well almost, the cement still needs to dry all the way, and as it does, it will lighten up.

Mason and Cooper got to put their hand prints in one corner of the patio.

The last addition, but certainly, not least, we ordered this blind from Lowes to match our cabinets and it arrived this week. I am probably excited about this blind most because the evening sun beats in the kitchen window while I am making dinner and most nights I end up with a headache.

Daddy Cooper

Cooper brought this Baby Tad home with him from his Papa and Grandma Borders's house. He loves it so much and plays with it all the time! Yesterday he took my dish towel and used it as Baby Tad's blanket. Thanks Papa and Grandma Borders for letting me take Tad home with me!

Scrapbooking

Friday night I went with my sister-in-law Tricia to a Close to my Heart party. We were able to make this four page layout.

Also, every month I go to another Close to my Heart party where we do two page layouts. Here are the layouts I have made.

Cooper the Comedian

We were eating lunch and Cooper thought it would be fun to make everyone laugh by making farting noises on his arm. This of course did make all the boys laugh, but what made me laugh was listening to Mason laugh. That kid has the best laugh!

Jump N' Party

Jeff's brother's daughter Megan turned 5 yesterday so we all celebrated her birthday at Jump N' Party today. Jeff was suppose to have his Volunteer Recruit Academy with the fire department all day, but as luck would have it, his instructor was sick, so Jeff was able to join us for the fun! I think the favorite jumping castle was the huge slide.

Mason and me going down the slide

Cooper after just sliding down. "Let's go again"

Jeff's brother Steve with Cooper

After a few times of being held onto, Cooper decided he was old enough to go down on his own. As soon as we would get to the top, I would set Cooper down, sit down myself, and then put Cooper on my lap, and down we would go. This time he turned himself onto his tummy and pushed off. I thought oh no, I'm going to have one scared little boy at the bottom. I was wrong he was full of smiles and ready for more! (I think he went down the slide 50 times)

See ya!

Mason and Jeff one of the other obstacle course/slides

Coming out of the obstacle course.

All of Megan's party guests.

Cooper and his cousin Hannah.

Megan opening her presents (Megan is two to Mason's left).

Speed Racers

Mason got this race track for Christmas. Usually Jeff or I get sucked into playing with him, but yesterday I thought I'd give Cooper a try. Cooper absolutely LOVED it. And as you can see from the video below, Cooper did a really good job of keeping his car going at a pretty even pace.

Mason had the red car and Cooper had the yellow car.

Vacuumin' Man

Any time I try to vacuum now, I have to FIGHT off Mason and Cooper. I used to just have Mason who wanted to help me. Mason would let me help him guide the vacuum, but Cooper is much more stubborn (like his Mom) and won't let me come near the vacuum.

I love it when he reaches the vinyl floor, he just pushes the vacuum back and forth, back and forth. Now if I could just get the two of them to do the rest of the cleaning, I'd be set!

6th of 6th

Well, here is my tag. The 6th picture file and the 6th picture in it. This is Cooper earlier this year reading a book with his shirt drenched in drool. I really think he wouldn't drool as much if he would just keep his tongue in his mouth. I tag Tricia, DeAnne, and Heather.

Fishin' Show

This past weekend the "Great Western Sportfishing Show" was in town. Normally I would not be the first one in line to buy tickets for this event, but Jeff's Dad won tickets and gave them to us. So we went down on Saturday and walked around for about an hour. We looked at some boats, and thought to ourselves, Why would someone who lives in the Northwest buy a boat that costs anywhere from $18,000-$40,000 (and I'm sure higher)? Really, you can only use it three or four months out of the year, and then you have to pay to store it the other eight or nine months. Doesn't make any sense to me. Anyways, enough with my rantings, Mason did have fun sitting in the drivers seat of the boats, Cooper of course was happy as long as he has food that he could shove in his mouth, Jeff was just happy to get out of the house, and I was just happy there weren't any real fish there, just the smell of those nasty things repulses me.

The only thing they had for kids was this virtual fishing game that really wasn't all that great because you could barley see the projection screen.

Our Monkey's at it again

Cooper has several nick names, Monkey has not been one of them, but I think it is one he will be called from now on. Every time I come into our dinning area he has managed to pull a chair out from around the table and has climbed onto the table and is usually playing with the chandelier. This morning I was sick of pulling him down off the table (which I had done probably six or eight times in less than an hour). I remembered something a family in my old ward had to do with their chairs because their son would do the same thing Cooper does. So I took all the chairs away from the table. Cooper was not pleased with this at all.

As I was taking the previous two pictures I turned around and this is what I found. In that few seconds he got the computer chair pulled out and climbed to where he wanted to be (where he could reach the pens).

Cooper's Allergies (Part Two)

If you can remember back to August, Cooper had a reaction to peanut butter. Well, I have been dragging my feet with taking him to an allergist. I finally made him an appointment and today was the day. He saw Dr. Drain, I REALLY like her, she was great with Cooper and a very personable. For instance, she thought it was really cool that our last name is Borders and wanted to know if we have every asked for a discount at Borders Bookstore.

Cooper was tested to see if he is allergic to peanuts. The test was positive. Dr. Drain suggested that we steer clear of ALL nuts, just to be on the safe side. She also said that as long as he does not have any more exposure to peanuts, it is very likely that he will grow out of his allergy. I for one hope he does, no one should be deprived of the fabulous chocolate/peanut butter combination.

The Holy Temple

I am usually not much for sharing my feelings on my blog. I don't know why, but I keep thinking about the great impact the book "The Holy Temple" by Boyd K Packer had on me. I have been done with the book for about a week now and there were several things this book made me more grateful for and some things the book made me want to.

First, Jeff and I were able to go to the Temple last Friday night, as we were getting out of our car I looked up at the Temple and felt a new sense of reverence and respect for the early members of the church who sacrificed so much in order to build Temples. Each town the early saints would settle in, their first priority was to build a Temple, sometimes building a Temple came before the building of their own homes. They were not always able to build a Temple, but when they were successful in building (twice before their treck west to the Salt Lake Valley), some were blessed to be able to do their own ordinance work before the mobs would drive them out of town. Shortly after they were driven out of town the Temple was either burned or defiled greatly. No mater how many towns the mobs would drive the early saints from, no matter how many times they tried to build a Temple, their faith never wavered. How many of us can say that as trials come our way, our faith never wavers?

Second, the book makes me want to search out my ancestors, to do their ordinance work and to learn about their lives. I am very grateful to my brother-in-law, Steve for doing a lot of the genealogy work for his and Jeff's side of our family. I know he has spent a lot of his time, effort, and energy searching out their ancestors, that is a wonderful gift he has given to not only Jeff and I, and to the rest of his family (deceased, living, and yet to live).

Third, the book made me want to put together our own Books of Remembrance. So a few days after finishing the book, Jeff and I bought two scrapbooks and one day during nap I sorted through Jeff's and my belongings and found things we would want to include in our own Books of Remembrance. I found things like our birth certificates, awards from school, diplomas, marriage certificate, child birth certificates, etc. Sunday night we put all our things in chronological order and put them in our books. I did not "permanently" put our various certificates in the books yet, I want to wait a few weeks to make sure we have gathered everything we need.

If you have not read this book, I highly recommend it, and if you have not put together your own Book of Remembrance, you should.

Physical Agility Test!

Jeff's physical agility test for the Fire District 9 was on Feb 21st. I have not posted anything about the test because I was waiting until I got pictures of all the torture Jeff had to endure.

When Jeff first arrived, Lieutenant Michelle (something) showed all the candidates the course.

After the tour of the course, Jeff's first event was the "Black out maze" event where he put on his SCBA (mask) and put his hood over the top to simulate being blind. He then had to crawl around on his hands and knees following a wall to get out of the maze.

Chad, a volunteer firefighter hooking all the candidates up to the safety rope for the aerial ladder climb which was Jeff's second event.
My stud of a husband doing the aerial ladder climb which was 65 feet.

Standing around at the beginning of the combat course. First he had to do a stair climb with a high rise hose pack (40lbs), 5 flights up and 5 flights down. Then he did a unrack/rack roof ladder.

The "Simulated extension ladder raise" event was next. The weight of the bag was 60lbs and Jeff had to use a hand-over-hand motion to raise the bag 35 feet.

The "Forcible entry" event came after the ladder extension. Here he had to use an 8lb. sledge hammer to drive the I-Beam five feet to his rear (He said no matter how hard you hit it, it would only move a couple inches at the max).
After the I-beam he had to weave through a set of cones to a charged hose line and drag it out 75' and spray the water.
The last event was the "Victim rescue" event and he had to drag a 165lb dummy a distance of 100ft.


At the end of the combat course exhausted and felling like he wanted to puke. Just for reference his turnouts weigh around 10lbs, the air pack weighs about 30-40lbs. So at the max when he was doing the dummy drag he was having to carry 215lbs, basically his own body weight.


On the following Monday (Feb 23) he received his acceptance letter for the Fire District 9 Volunteer Recruit Academy. Great job bubba! I am so proud of you for making it one more step toward your goal. (The only thing I am not excited for is that starting in a week Jeff will be gone Monday nights, Wednesday nights, and Saturday all day for the next six weeks at the Volunteer Recruit Academy, so I will once again feel like a single Mom, but I know it will all be worth the sacrifice in the end.)