9 Lunts

2009-11-08T21:45:00.012-07:00

Ok, bear with me, I am posting some old things and trying to catch up. I did a trip to the Grand Canyon back in June and it really was an amazing thing. The scenery was gorgeous and the company was perfect! We hiked the Bright Angel Trail...we meaning, me, my sister Natalie, my daughter Jessica, my sister Becky's sister-in-law Jenny, and my friend Michelle. It was an incredible "Girl's" trip!

Here's Michelle and I we finished the trail together!! Natalie, Jessica and Jenny finished a "little" ahead of us but Michelle and I stuck out the end together, Thank you Michelle! We still made fairly good time though. Altogether it was a 9 mile hike (and in no way an easy one ) It took us about 3hrs going down, we had to move aside alot for the donkey riders. Then we rested down at Indian Springs for a couple hours cause we didn't want to be hiking out in full sun. But I think we still made it back up in about 4 hours, Most important...WE DID IT!

Here is just some of the beautiful scenery. It was amazing to look across the canyon, it almost seemed unreal!!

Here's a couple pics of our group The 1st one is at the beginning(Michelle is taking the picture) then the second one is all of us at the end of the trail!

Here is one of the mad attack chipmunks there. Those things went after anything that they thought had food in it! Then we also saw deer on the way out of the canyon!

Another group picture and then one of me hiking on the way out. I believe Jessica took this picture becaue I remember her shouting at me "C'mon Mom you can do it, faster, faster, faster!!!"

One pic of me, yes I'm still smiling :) Then here are our aching feet getting a break in the water at Indian Springs.

More beautiful Scenery!

It was a lot of fun being able to do this with my daughter! I want to challenge my other kids to do this trail with me now!

Here's Natalie being a Smart Alec!! Yes the sign really said no diving and there was maybe barely a foot of water! :)

What an Awesome Experience this was!! Thanks girls!

2009-11-08T21:32:00.004-07:00

Here is Geoffrey's Senior Picture (I don't think I
ever posted it, nice hair, right?)
Well if you remember his graduation pictures
His hair got quite long, in fact we teased him that
his hair got longer than his mom's!

See the nice long wet rained on hair!

Now watch Aunt Elaine get a hold of Geoff... Hair is cut and it didn't even hurt!!

Florida

2009-07-07T17:48:00.007-07:00

Ok I am finally posting my wonderful trip to Orlando Florida. For our 21st Anniversary Ted flew me out to Orlando where he is working and I was able to go First class(free cause we used some of his flight fund miles!), and no Kids!!! This was the first time I had ever flown first class and it was really nice. But I can tell you I almost felt guilty every time they would come by and ask me if I needed a drink or a snack or a pillow (they even brought me a warm wash rag to clean my hands after I had eaten...The flight attendant was handing them to everyone with tongs and so I thought it was some kind of fish or something like that so I politely declined, hee hee). I kept thinking of all the poor non first class people sitting in the rest of the plane, did they not deserve some of these amenities...?
All in all though It was a beautiful stress free vacation!

We were able to go to Disney World free thanks to a woman that Ted works with in Orlando (her husband works at Disney world full time) We did the hopper pass for one day. Between Epcot, Magic Kingdom, Animal Kingdom and Hollywood studios... all in one day! Never try this with kids!? We were only able to hit 2-3 things in each kingdom.

The lady Ted works with also works in Disney World part time and she works in Epcot where they do "meet the characters" We got to hop right up in line with all the little kids to see Mickey, Minnie, Goofy and Donald! Goofy was actually kind of a flirt... I didn't quite know what to think of him :)

And of course we had to see the Orlando Temple, I think it was prettiest lit up at night.

One of my favorite things at Disney World was at the Animal kingdom.. It is the Tree of Life. (You know... Lion King?) It was huge and had all these animals carved into the trunk and everything! Pretty cool :)

Here we were able to visit a wildlife preserve on Merrit Island
That is where NASA is. We weren't able to watch a shuttle launch but we did see the launch pads and it looked like they had one with a tank set up with it like they were getting it ready to launch. We wanted to go on a wild life trail to see gators but there had been too much water so the trail was closed because the gators were able to get a little too close to the road! Scary!

However we still found this little bay area that had manatee watching and we actually saw quite a few manatees. We even saw a mama and baby manatee swimming together, of course that was right about the time we had put away the camera!

It was also really wonderful to just walk the beach with Ted in the evening! This beach was out in Tampa (less than an hour from Orlando). The scenery was beautiful and there was a warm breeze and the water in the ocean was warm, it was perfect!

I have really done a lot of reflecting since Ted has taken on this project in Florida. (So I'm warning you I'm going to get a little sentimental for a moment.) Spending time without him makes me appreciate my family more and it also helps me have a better perspective on what's important. Just recently a good friend of mine from high school was in an accident with her husband and 5 children. Unfortunately their 13 year old daughter did not survive the accident. My heart goes out to her and her family, no one should have to lose a child it's a pain I don't know if I could bear. But it's always amazing what you can survive. I do feel like I have learned a few lessons in life and recently I came across a quote by Pres. Howard W. Hunter that I think sums up what I have learned in my life over the past 6-8 months and it inspires me too. I have printed it out and hung it up in my kitchen to help me remember, he says...

"If our lives and our faith are centered on Jesus Christ and his restored gospel, nothing can ever go permanently wrong. On the other hand, if our lives are not centered on the Savior and his teachings, no other success can ever be permanently right."

This is a great gage of what's really important... I have decided that there is a lot in the world that isn't permanent, life is ever changing. Our job situation changes, economy changes, housing market changes, our interests change... but the important things really are permanent like our families, and our faith. Anyway, I will leave you with that thought and hope it inspires you too.

2009-07-07T17:45:00.001-07:00

This is just fun and random. Geoffrey created this pyramid out of smarties...?! Is there some kind of job out there that he can use his skills for?

2009-06-17T16:20:00.000-07:00

Here are the pics of Jacob w/Mom & Dad at his baptism.

Okay I'm back in the blogging world again! May was a very busy month for us. We started out with Jacob's baptism the second saturday of May. It was a really nice program. Thank you to the friends and family who made it there.
If you weren't there you missed out
on Jacob singing a solo! During the baptism
our family sang the song "The Family is of God"
and Jacob sang one of the verses by himself. It was
very sweet and I was so proud of him!

Graduation

2009-06-17T16:12:00.002-07:00

Yeah Geoff graduated!! The stinker kept us on the edge of our seats until the week of graduation! He had flunked English the semester before and was making it up with an online class.
But then the second semester of school he was once again flunking English!!
We kept in touch with his teacher via email and
received the final word from her on Monday the 18th
that he had made up enough work and done extra credit
to ensure that he would actually pass! Graduation was Thursday, the 21st!

After all that he managed to even graduate with honors!

Grandpa Phillips made it to see the miracle of Geoff
graduating!

Such a fun night! It rained pretty much the whole time. We had fun sitting with Ted's cousin Kristi and her husband David. And Kathy Lopez from our ward joined us too. Thanks to Kristi and David we had towels and blankets to sit on during graduation, cause those bleachers were soaked! This is the second year in a row that Westwood has graduated in the rain. Jessica's graduation last year got rained out. But I think they were better prepare for it this year. Who would have thought that we would have to consider rain in the equation for planning graduation here in Mesa AZ!!! Where it's usually so Dry!

Yo Yos are dangerous

2009-05-01T15:59:00.003-07:00

Jacob learned a fun lesson a few weeks ago. I am now finally posting it, sorry. Trying to catch up! During our April break the 3rd week in April Jacob had a new yo yo he was playing with and I was trying to teach him how to work it. So I sent him outside to try it (I didn't want him hitting anybody with it! Isn't that ironic!) Well about that time a little neighbor boy came over wanting to play with Jacob and so I sent him outside too. Half an hour later I hear someone screaming their head off and I realize it's Jacob. He was holding his hand up to his face and just screaming and the little neighbor friend,Isaaac is telling me "I'm sorry, he told me to hit it with the bat and I didn't know it was going to hit him..." So I'm thinking Jacob got hit in the head or nose with a baseball bat? Then they explained to me a little better that he got hit with the yo yo!? In the meantime Jacob is still screaming and burying his head in my chest, but I finally get the story out of the both of them. Jacob was swinging the yo yo out and he told Isaac "I'm going to swing the yo yo out like this and you hit it with the bat..." And you can put the pieces together! You know the saying what goes up must come down, well we also learned that what goes out must come back (especially when it is a yo yo!!!) Well I finally am trying to assess how bad the injuries are and so I get Jacob to look up at me and I realize there is blood all over me and his face, so I use my Mom skills to keep him calm and clean him off and right away I realize that he has a nice deep gash above his eye and it's not going to be good enough to just apply pressure of use a band aid. So we made a trip to Urgent Care. They were actually very fast and efficient. They ended up using a skin glue, not stitches. But they also said we needed to treat it like a head injury and watch him, make sure he didn't throw up or get dizzy, etc. The picture above is one I took that evening before he went to bed. The next day his eye was swollen shut. I felt bad for him because he was asking me why he couldn't see out of that eye.

He was a great trooper about it. We survived and he went back to school on Monday. At school he has to do a writers workshop every day, so that day he wrote about how yo yos are dangerous, funny enough his teacher told him that when yo yos were invented they were originally invented as a weapn! Jacob can attest to that! Anyway here are also pictures of our easter festivities, mainly dieing easter eggs. Lilly's favorite color to die hers was purple!

zoo

2009-04-15T22:32:00.003-07:00

Yes I know it has been awhile since I last blogged! In the words of my sister-in-law Angela "Christmas pictures are getting a little old!" I love you Angela!!! Here in this picture is my Rachael posing with a cutout Lion in front of one of the snack shacks there.

Anyway, we did something really fun recently, We bought a Phoenix Zoo membership just about a week or two ago. Lilly would live at the zoo if I would let her! She is sitting on this tree stump with her friend Lydia. Lydia's mom Michelle is my friend and we have been enjoying the zoo together. Jacob is in this picture but is sitting in back of Lydia so you can't see him. That is one of the things we did during Spring Break. We caught the zoo at a great time. We saw the tigers awake and the Boy and Girl Lions both awake and the Giraffe's were feeding so we were able to see them up close too. It was an absolute thrill for Lilly!

However,this is what Lilly thinks we really come to the zoo for is to ride the Carousel. And she always makes sure she gets on the Zebra! We haven't missed it yet, I am a little concerned for the day to come that we don't get the zebra. There could be quite a few tears a screams to come. She is so much fun to take there. She now has a new love for Monkey Village too. She laughs and giggles at those spider monkeys swinging and flipping all over the place. I've always said she was my little monkey!

Blushing Buttercream Pettiskirt GIVEAWAY!!!!

2009-03-04T01:03:00.000-07:00

Blushing Buttercream Pettiskirt GIVEAWAY!!!! I think my princess Lilly would love to dance in this one!!!

2009-01-09T09:12:00.006-07:00

One of my new favorite sayings, I got when we went to the Fudge Shop in Nauvoo on our Summer Vacation is "Families are like Fudge, mostly sweet with a few Nuts!" I do wonder if we aren't mostly Nuts with a few sweets.

Whenever you take family pictures I think you should always have a couple of silly shots. Relieves some of the tension!

These were the fastest family pictures we have ever taken in out lives!!! Our ward meets for church at 1:00 and so I figured everyone would be in their Sunday clothes at least by 12:30. I had my good friend Wendy Lesueur come to our house at 12:20. We shot the girls, then the boys and then the whole family. Lilly was not real cooperative in several of our shots, either her or Ben or Jacob would end up with weird faces on, but what can you expect with 7 kids...Perfection?! Anyway, we ended up with a few pretty good ones, and did all that in less than 15 minutes!

After our official photo shoot was over and Ted was running the older Priesthood boys to the church to help prepare the sacrament, I took advantage of having Lilly all dressed up and tried a few shots of my own with just her. She was still being kind of silly, it didn't help that our cat JoJo was running around up front and Lilly wanted to play with her. But finally in desperation to try to get her to stay posed in one place I told her to hug the tree and this is what she did. I think it was the perfect shot! But then again I am slightly prejudice in this situation.

Here are just "The Guys" and just "The Girls"

Yes, Here is our Happy Family!
Merry Christmas everyone
2008!

How am I spending my Holidays?

2009-01-09T08:46:00.003-07:00

This is my kidney stone, my kids all said it looks like the planet Mars?... What do you think?
Yeah, this was fun! As many of my friends and family know my body likes to make kidney stones!!! So just a few weeks before Christmas I found out that I had a 5 mm kidney stone in my right kidney (doctor says it was the size of a tic tac!) Anyway, they had me check into the hospital and they blasted it with a laser and then" joy to the world"(not really) I got to wear a stint for a week and a half after that. It made me feel like I had to go to the bathroom 24-7. Long story short I was very uncomfortable (to say the least) until they pulled that stint out of me. Good news that stone is gone, bad news, I still have 2 very small stones in my left kidney (around 1 or 2 mm) Doctor says we watch and wait. Yes you heard right, essentially we watch and wait for them to grow and see if they decide to drop out of the kidney before they turn into 5,6,0r 7 mm stones...OUCH! I've been doing tons of cranberry juice and lemon juice in my water hoping to flood those things out of there. We'll see how long I can keep it up!

HALLOWEEN

2008-11-02T16:03:00.003-07:00

Hi Everyone,
Hope you all had a fun and spooky Halloween. We were glad to have Jessica come home with us this weekend and to also have our Dad home for 3 whole days before he had to fly out to Florida again today. Just click "play" on the smile box to enjoy our Halloween pictures, and may they bring a smile to your face!

2008-11-02T15:46:00.001-07:00

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

2008-10-20T22:40:00.006-07:00

I just thought I would share some of our soccer season with you so far. Rachael and Jacob are both playing this year. Rachael is on a U10 league (meaning under 10yrs. old) Her team is the "Geckos" She has definitely improved this year. She has learned to pass the ball really well to her team mates and she is learning so much more about making plays and playing different positions. I think she likes playing defender because as defender she gets a little bit of a breather waiting for the ball to come down the field her way!

Rachael really hustles after the ball in her games !!!

Here's Rachael playing goal keeper in her game 2 weeks ago!

]

Jacob is on a U8 league (under 8 yrs. old). His team is the "Slimers"!! Jacob has had an interesting soccer season so far. His first soccer game was exciting. This year in soccer They changed rules for U8, they no longer have a goal keeper. Wanting to encourage more kids to score goals in a game. Well, none of our kids who have played soccer so far have actually scored a goal before so Ted has been bribing the kids for years that he will pay $10 for a soccer goal. Anyway during Jacob's game they had a kick off (the referee drops the ball and one player from each team tries to kick and gain control of the ball). Jacob was the player from his team to be in the kick off. As the ball dropped and Jacob and the other boy kicked the ball Jacob got kicked by the ball right in the face. I wish I had had a video camera...there was a fire that suddenly burst in that boy!!! I could tell he was mad and at first I thought he was going after this other boy but as the game kept going Jacob was going harder and faster at the ball. He was on Fire! Finally he got himself in just the right spot and kicked that ball good and hard and made a goal! Then the next game he scored 2 goals. Ted ended up coughing up $30 to Jacob before he decided that he needed to lower the offer for making a goal! Luckily for our pockets he hasn't scored a goal for the past 2 games!?

Kick it hard Jacob!!!

Jacob racing to see if he can get to the ball first!

WE are proud of our kiddos! It's great to have the opportunities to have our children participate in these kinds of activities. They are not the most athletically talented but they try hard and have a good time doing it.

Tennis/Phillip

2008-10-19T16:10:00.000-07:00

We also have to include Phillilp in our sports update. He has been playing Tennis at Carson Jr. High, 9th grade boys team. Their season just finished the end of October. Phillip played several doubles matches and only a few singles I don't know that we will ever see him at Wimbledon but it was definitely a fun season for him with all his friends on the team too.

Lilly's B-day & other stuff!

2008-10-06T11:43:00.007-07:00

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! And other fun stuff!!

Is there any question as to who is the Queen?!

Lilly celebrated her 3rd birthday on September 16th. We had 2 parties! She was able to have a party with all the playgroup kiddos (other 2 & 3 yr. olds w/ moms) on Wednesday and then later on Sunday we had a family party too. Of course Lisa's birthday was on Friday and Ted's was on Sunday so we threw a party all together. It was so nice to have Jessica home again for a little bit! It was also fun to watch Lilly opening presents with her little friends on Wednesday. She would open a present and then want someone else to open one, she actually wasn't quite getting the idea at first that this was all about HER! She caught on though. Her favorite gifts were of course all the ponies. Though she loves being the princess with her new Tiara and wand and she likes to do her pretty hair with all the accessories that she got!

Here are some of the mom's and kids at the party from our playgroup on Wednesday

Just a fun little thought. Lilly informed me the other day that our dog Sarah is her friend and then she pointed to our cat Jo Jo and said, "and he's my sister!"
Then yesterday Jacob very seriously wanted to know what Sarah's last name was???

This is Benjamin's bridge of Pennies, I was kind of impressed by it. It's all pennies, no glue or anything else to support it, guess what he wants to be when he grows up...
We've always thought he was some kind of engineer!! (He was building this bridge while he was supposed to be doing homework)

college

2008-10-05T18:53:00.006-07:00

We are off to a new adventure in Life...

Jessica setting up her new room

Sending a child to College!!

At the end of August Ted and I along

with Rachael and Lillian drove to Tuscon
to move Jessica into her new place. She
is attending U of A with a scholarship that
covers tuition and books. Jessica is majoring
in Creative Writing so someday everyone
can read her bestseller novel!!!
It was a good trip (of course Ted was
outnumbered by the girls!) And yes I cried,
but not until it was time to leave her and go
back to mesa. We do get to see her
every now and then, she just came back
home for mine and Ted's birthdays in September, and
she texts Ted and I both for all kinds of things, help
with job applications and english assignments, and to ask

"mom, where do you get paper cups and plates?"
Life is always an adventure isn't it?!
We look forward to many more from all our children!

Lilly and Rachael came to
help too (of course I don't

know how helpful Lilly was?)

Our Nauvoo Trip

2008-08-15T16:00:00.000-07:00

August 2008
Our long awaited family vacation this summer was spent in Nauvoo. We actually flew to St. Louis Missouri first and spent some time at the Westward Expansion Arch (or Jefferson Memorial Arch), in St. Louis. We learned that the Arch was 73 stories high and I was chatting with a man and his wife from New York and they were claiming that the empire state building was approximately 90 stories high. Rachael was not extremely thrilled about going up in the arch at first. 1st 2 pictures are of our family inside the Arch and the next is some of us coming down the steps at the base of the Arch. 3rd picture is Geoff and Lilly checking out the Mississippi River, it was flowing quite well. As you can see in the last picture the river was high enough to cover up most of this Statue!

Vacation Continued

2008-08-15T15:30:00.000-07:00

From St. Louis we went to Independence Missouri and visited the LDS Visitor's center there. They had some things set up like in pioneer days like a log cabin that they said 10 families could have lived in at one time and the printing press also. Lillian's favorite was a kids room that had a horse and wagon and a small log house and some pioneer children's toys. You can see from the picture that she LOVED the horsey!

The next day we went to Liberty Jail. It was great, our family had our own tour.

More in Illinois

2008-08-15T15:00:00.001-07:00

On our 3rd day we traveled to Far West and Adam Ondi Ahman.
These first pictures are from Adam Ondi Ahman. We just walked some of the paths and enjoyed the scenery. The second picture I believe is on Spring Hill there.
We also went a little photo crazy taking pictures of nature. The
kids had fun chasing the butterflies, they were all over the place!

This tree was just cool
looking with the vine growing
on it.
At Far West We saw the corner stones of the dedicated Temple site and one of the kids highlights there was Phillip catching a little frog. Just about everyone wanted to hold him. Lillian just laughed at it!

Benjamin and Lillian check out one of the cornerstones.
These two places were just beautiful to see.

Nauvoo

2008-08-15T14:30:00.000-07:00

Finally we arrived in Nauvoo! Here's a picture of Lillian in the Visitor's Center standing by what she says is "her temple"! Then right outside of the Visitor's Center is the Garden of Statues. My favorite part about coming to Nauvoo was when we drove in we actually ended up on a road that followed the river and it came up a hill and around a curve and I saw the temple coming up the hill. It actually took my breath away for just a second. It was beautiful! Looking just like the pioneers had probably built the first one!

One of the kids favorite spots was the Blacksmith shop and we learned the difference between a Wheelright and a Wainright ( a wheelright made the wheels and wainright made the wagons) We also were able to take an Ox Cart ride (Jacob said they were too stinky!) Our family was also able to take a horse and wagon ride as well and Lillian loved that because she was right up front with the horse!

On our last day in Nauvoo we took a walk down Parley street where the saints walked as they left to cross the river and go west. About halfway down the walk you can turn around and see the temple poking up through the trees and I imagine it was quite a heartbreaking sight for them to leave that temple and city. At the end of Parley street before the river is a statue of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

Jessica is standing in front of the famous (or infamous!) Porter Rockwell. When Ted and I looked up our ancestors in Land and Records we found out that my ancestor John D. Lee owned property next to this property, to the south.

In the Heber C. Kimball home there was lots of fun stuff to see, and this room that Lilly is sitting in is a kids room and that is actually a pioneer kids potty seat. It was on our trip that spurred Lillian to potty train. Everywhere we went Jacob's announcement was always "I need to go potty!" so Lilly started saying the same thing and when we got home she ditched her diaper and has been going potty in the toilet ever since... it is a Wonderful Life at the Lunt home!!!

Here at the bottom of the page are pictures of Jessica and Geoffrey doing what they do best anywhere they go!!!

Sorry guys had to put it in! I love them anyway and they were wonderful on our family trip!

Vacation's almost over

2008-08-15T14:00:00.000-07:00

On Sunday while in Nauvoo, we took a trip to Carthage. We got into a tour of about 25-30 people and that really made you think about how miserable it might have been when they had us in the dungeon cell all cramped in there. The pictures I have above are Ben and Phillip in front of the statue of two other brothers, Joseph and Hyrum! I thought it was appropriate to put these two in this picture since Phillip and Ben are also very close and great friends as brothers! Next to it is the room where Joseph, Hyrum, John Taylor, and Willard Richards were when the mobs came and shot Joseph. That is the window that he fell from, and there is still a bullet hole in the door to this room.

Our last day in Nauvoo, Tuesday, we did the Nauvoo pageant. Before the pageant they had a bunch of activities for the kids to participate in.

Ben and Phillip are trying to saw a log

Rachael is participating in a sack race.

Ted and Lilly are trying their hand at a game where you toss a ring with two poles.

Jacob is getting good at rolling his hoop with a stick!

Wednesday on our trip back to St. Louis, we took a detour in Hannibal Missouri. We were able to take a Steamboat ride and learned that Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) actually did get his steamboat pilots license at age 19 and was a steamboat pilot for a few years. The kids figured out one of the best spots on the boat was up front, not just for the view, but there was a nice breeze blowing in that spot!

Our final stop before we got to the airport was at the St. Louis temple. It was very peaceful and pretty there. As always the temple grounds were beautiful. A great end to a great trip. This was a memorable trip for our family, and I hope my children will remember this one a long time. We wanted to do something like this before sending Jessica off to U of A (which is next weekend!) Hope everyone is happy and healthy and settled into their school routines!