Hoby Get Your Gun Ready!

This summer Rylie spent almost a month in Arizona. While she was there she got her hair cut. (by Cara's friend Brittney) I love it but it made her look so much older than she is. Now there are all sorts of boys hanging around her. Including some of Tyler's friends who have started noticing her. And as you can tell by this picture she is starting to learn how to "work it".
Here she is "kickin it" in our front yard. She is growing up way too fast for me. It is hard to believe that she will be 14 less than 2 months.

Family Reunion

We had a Family Reunion for my Mom's family this past weekend. There weren't a whole lot of the family that was able to make it but those of us who went had a nice time visiting. My Dad and Mom were in charge so one of the activities that they planned was finding prizes in the saw dust. Here is Rylie with some of the nephews, nieces and cousins searching for candy and money in the saw dust.
Hoby wasn't too thrilled about having to go but he was a good sport and went anyway. This is his "ok I'll try to look like I want to be here" look.

These are my youngest nephew, Gavin, and youngest niece, Malia (Mia for short) showing some of their haul from the saw dust. It was pretty fun to watch the differences in ages. The really young ones, like these two, went for all the candy they could find. The older ones were all about finding the money.

Even though Family Reunions aren't the highest ranking activity on my list of favorite things to do, I appreciate that my Mom and her sisters still have them. It gives us a chance to spend time visiting with family and getting to know the histories of our ancestors. I have learned a lot about my Mom's ancestors by going to these throughout the years.

Happy Birthday Tyler

Tyler turned 16 on August 24. It is hard to believe that he is that old. He had a party and so I decided to make him a cake. Lately he has really been excited about playing the bass guitar so I chose to make him a guitar cake. Here he is with the finished cake. Other than the strings (and a few wooden dowels) the entire cake is edible. It was fun making it for him. He was so excited and all of his friends were amazed. They were all telling me when their birthdays are and wanting me to make them a cake.

Here is the cake next to his real guitar. The party seemed to be a success too. There were approximately 15 to 20 kids here. They played Guitar Hero and Rock Band. They had a fire in our fire pit outside and played cards and games. They had pizza and tons of munchies as well as cake. They topped the evening off watching a video downstairs in our movie room. I didn't get any pictures of the actual party. By the time I was done making the cake I was tired so I left the party supervision up to Hoby and went in our room and shut the door.

Happy Birthday Tyler. We are so happy for you. You are growing into such a wonderful young man. We love you!

Treasure Chest Cake

Here is my first attempt at a 3-D cake. A friend of ours was doing a pirate birthday party for her son and asked me to make the cake. So here is the final product. I had a lot of fun making it and was really excited with how it turned out. I am looking forward to having the chance to make more in the future.

San Antonio

I brought my camera but I am really bad at remembering to use it so I have a limited number of pictures. Here we all are with Mckenna after her blessing. I love her dress. Cassi's Grandma-in-law made it for her.
Here we are outside the Alamo. I don't think anyone can come to San Antonio without having a similar picture taken. We really enjoyed visiting the Alamo. It is much smaller than we had thought that it would be. Rylie and I have some interesting hair going on. It rained all morning the day we went and then it was very very hot and humid that afternoon. We both have just enough natural curl that came out that day to make our hair look very funky.
Here is Rylie, Cara, Mckenna and Tyler at a rocky nature preserve near Cara and Jeff's home. It was fun to go climb on the rocks and trees. It was really hot and humid so we didn't stay long. When we were getting ready to leave we heard a noise in the bushes just a 100 feet or so away and looked up just in time to see some deer walking nearby.

THE BEST TWO WEEKS!!

We have had a wonderful two weeks of being Grandma and Grandpa. Cassi, Jacob and their 3 beautiful girls came to Utah and stayed for almost a week. We had so much fun spending time with them. This is Hoby and Kamryn. Kamryn is 6 and just started 1st grade. She is so fun to be with and it is exciting to see her learning to read and write.

Here I am with Hadley. She is such a bundle of energy. There is never a dull moment with "Hadders" around. She is 4 and is getting ready to start her second year of preschool. She is very curious and loves to ask a lot of questions.

Anndi is growing up so fast. She is almost 10 months old. She is such a happy baby. She always seems to have a grin on her face. She has such a sweet personality as well. She is learning to crawl and feed herself right now. It was so much fun having her around.

Two days after Cassi and the girls left we flew to San Antonio to take part in Mckenna's blessing. It was Hoby, Tyler and Rylie's first opportunity to see Mckenna in person. She is such a wonderful baby. We got to spend a week in Texas with Cara, Jeff and the baby. It has been such a great two weeks spending time with our daughters, sons-in-law and granddaughters. Not living near all of them has been very hard on us. So we enjoy every opportunity to spend time with them.

Plentiful Harvest

So we made our rookie attempt at having a garden. Here is the bountiful harvest that we have gotten so far. We actually have quite a few more tomatoes that haven't ripened yet and two cucumbers as well. We got 22 beans...not even enough to feed us for one meal let alone freeze or bottle. Oh well...I guess we have a lot to learn still. We did master growing a fine crop of weeds though.

Latest Hobby

Since I have been unemployed I have decided to expand my horizons. I signed up for a cake decorating class. I am loving it even though it is only my second class and we are still learning very basic things. Here are my little practice creations that I learned to make today. In case you can't tell what they are there is a green and yellow turtle, yellow chicks (or ducks if you prefer), a brown bear, a purple elephant, a green alligator and a pink pig. After looking at the photos maybe I need to expand my horizons more and take a photo class.
This is a frog and another alligator. The frog is my own creation. At least my own in the respect that we didn't learn to make it in class.

Watch out World

It's official...Tyler now has a drivers permit. Here he is outside the driver license office proudly displaying it for all to see. He is so excited to start driving. I'm not so sure I'm as excited as he is though.

Spring in Utah

Since the weather has been nicer and since I am currently unemployed I decided to plant some flowers in our front yard. Don't they look nice?

Unfortunately it froze the day after I planted and quite a few of them aren't going to survive. What made it worse is that the sprinklers came on during the night when it froze so they became "daisy popsicles". Oh well, welcome to spring in Utah.

HAPPY HUMP DAY

Today marks the one year "hump day" mark for Rob on his mission. He isn't nearly as excited as I am. In fact he calls it his Hump Day Mourning. He is doing great and was just made Zone Leader. We are proud of him and his service to the Savior. He has such a strong love for the people he is working with and all of the people of Australia. It is amazing to read his letters and see how much he has grown and matured over the past year. In some ways it is hard to believe that it has been a year, but in others it seems like it has been forever.

Rylie Softball

Rylie has decided to play softball again this year. This is Rylie and one of her team mates going to watch the BYU Womens Softball team play UNLV. They have gone to a couple of games to see how the game should really be played.

This is Rylie's first softball game. It was April 30th with an 8:30 start time. It is hard to tell but that is Rylie playing 2nd base (maroon jacket and gray pants) in the snow storm. I only had my cell phone to take pictures with so they aren't the best. It was pretty wild that it started to snow during the game. I kept waiting for them to call the game but they never did. The out come wasn't the best. Rylie's Red Sox team got run ruled in the 4th inning. Oh well, better luck next game.

Not the greatest photo. I was using my cell phone and trying to hurry before the snow all melted off of Hoby's shirt. He was helping coach Rylie's first game. You can see the snow coming down in the background.

On President's Day I got a call from Hoby saying that he had taken Rylie and two of my nieces sledding down this amazing hill. Unfortunately he decided to try and drive farther off the road than he should have and he got stuck.

Another angle. You can see just how buried he was. Our 4 x 4 has a lift kit on it so when you see the snow up to the bottom of the truck you can tell it is deep.

Trying to give some perspective on how far off the road Hoby was when he got stuck. The small SUV between me and the tractor is one of the two would be rescuers who also got their vehicles stuck. It amazed me that if the full size 4 x 4 is stuck, wouldn't it only make sense that the two smaller SUV/trucks would get stuck too?! MEN LOL

Heavy machinery to the rescue. He is headed to our truck now. This is after this front end loader got stuck himself and already pulled out one of Hoby's would be rescuers.

The front end loader is almost to our truck. It was pretty cool watching this guy work. There was a ton of snow to be moved. It is hard to see just how deep it really is from these pictures.

Almost out. This whole process took over an hour from the time the front end loader got there. I don't think we would have gotten the truck out until spring if it weren't for the heavy equipment.

All of Us

Our ward is putting out a new photo phone list so we had to get them a picture with all of us. As you can see we are all doing well. If we look a little frazzled it is because this was right after our monthly extended family dinner. It was our turn to host it so we had a house full. We love having these get togethers with my parents, siblings, nieces and nephews. The only thing that would make it better is if our older children, our grandchildren and my two siblings (and their families) that live outside of Utah were there to join us.

Welcome to Utah Mr. Arizona

Welcome to Utah Mr. Arizona. This was a Sunday morning a couple of months ago. When we went to bed on Saturday night there was no snow on the ground and it wasn't snowing. When we woke up it was coming down like crazy and we had over a foot on the ground. This was the 2nd time that Hoby shoveled that morning before we went to church at 11:00 am.

It's good exercise. Of course the first winter that Hoby lives in Utah has to be one with record amounts of snow that fell. It helps the drought situation a lot but it sure wasn't fun shoveling it all. We got about 18 inches at our house and 3 or 4 feet in the mountains out of this storm alone.

Yes that pile of snow really is as tall as it appears. It wasn't all from this storm, but a big majority was. It was somewhere between 4 and 5 feet high before all was said and done.

I love how the snow is sticking to Hoby almost as fast as it is sticking to the ground. Now we all know what he will look like with a full head of white hair.

These are the steps leading to our walk-out basement door. They are partially covered by our deck yet look how much snow they got. Rylie was wishing they were a little bit longer so she could try sledding down them. (she and her friends sledded down the neighbors steps from their deck when they were snow packed from an earlier storm)

After watching this Hoby decided we need to get a quad. The kids were all for it too. Although I'm not sure if it is just an alterior motive on all of their parts.

Tyler out helping shovel the walks for one of our neighbors. He joined with numerous other young men to help others that morning.

One of the Priests from our ward out shoveling the neighbors walks. We have such a great group of young men in our ward. They just went out and started doing this without even having a leader call them and ask them too.

Tyler and Rylie

These are our two youngest kids, Tyler and Rylie. Tyler is 15, he'll be 16 in August. He is a sophomore in high school. Tyler loves music and anything that has a video screen. He is planning on using this passion to become a video game designer in the future. He just started taking guitar lessons and is excited about that. He and his friends love to play Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Rylie is 13, she'll be 14 in October. She is in 7th grade. She loves music and dancing. She is also playing fast-pitch softball. She is our little spit-fire. She isn't happy unless she has friends around or is texting her friends on her cell phone. She loves to babysit and does a great job. Even though it was hard to leave Arizona they are both enjoying making new friends and living closer to their cousins.

Elder Robert Charlesworth

This is our oldest son, Rob (Robert, Robby he answers to all). He is currently serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Adelaide Australia. He will have been on his mission a year on May 2nd 2008 and will have one more year to go. We are extremely proud of him and the dedication he has to serving the Lord. He is growing and maturing and developing his leadership abilities. We miss having him around to make us laugh at his quirky jokes or goofy things he says and does but we know that this next year will fly by.

Cara and Jeff

This is our 2nd daughter Cara and her husband Jeff. They live in San Antonio TX and this photo was taken outside the Alamo. They have been married for just over 2 years and they are expecting their first baby ( granddaughter #4 for us) in July. Cara is so excited that she "finally looks pregnant". They both graduated from ASU and then moved to San Antonio for Jeff to attend law school. Cara got her degree in Elementary Education and is currently substitute teaching. We love them so much and are very proud of them and their many accomplishments. They are going to make great parents and we are very excited for them to have their new addition to their family.

This is our oldest daughter, Cassi, with her husband Jake and their 3 beautiful daughters. Kamryn 6, Hadley 4 and Anndi 5 months. This was Easter 2008 in Mesa Arizona. We love them so much and are so proud of them and all their accomplishments. Jake graduated from ASU and is currently going through the Phoenix Police Academy. Cassi is going to school and will soon be entering Nursing School. Kamryn is in kindergarten. She is learing to read very well and just learned how to ride her two wheel bike without the training wheels. Hadley is in preschool and is a very active 4 year old. She is a very curious which can sometimes lead to trouble so she keeps her parents on their toes. Anndi is a very cute baby with a smile that lights up the room and her face. She loves watching her older sisters and the family dog.

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