Cousins Week

My sister, Jineena, and I have a cousins week every summer. Our kids beg for it and love to spend time with each other.  This year we decided to have all the kids at my house. We hiked at the red rocks. We jumped at Anti-Gravity. The boys caught frogs down by the river. The girls painted toenails. The boys wrestled nonstop. The girls danced to the Wii. Even the little girls. They were a hoot! We swam with Zach and Drew. We had an awesome Cousins Week!

Cousins

 My kids were in heaven when Garrett and Hailey came to visit for a whole week.  We did swimming lessons every morning.  Lindsey and I were done by Friday- sitting outside in 110 degrees for 1.5 hours.  But the older kids just loved it.  We did a lot of fun things while they were here.  We made homemade ice cream, homemade pudding pops and homemade puffy paint that was REALLY cool.

Computer games and the leapsters were a favorite.  My favorite was that Hailey loves to wash dishes and clean.  So she wiped down all my door jams and was asking for more!!  There is NO way she belongs to Jineena!  We loved having them here!

Aunt Sube

While my Mom was visiting we met up with my sister and her kids at Aunt Sube's cabin. Aunt Sube's cabin is the kind of cabin where

- the kids run free outside and you don't see them for hours

- you whistle real loud at the kids when it's time to eat and hope they all come back

- the kids play with treasures like sticks and shotgun shells

- you forget computers and TV even exist

- the kids never get bored

- you eat yummy food

- the kids play chase with the dogs

- you get to take a nap

- the kids ride in the "jeep"

- you all have an AWESOME weekend!

We love you Aunt Sube!

Families are Eternal

Words can not begin to express the heartache I feel for my sister right now. My whole family was in St. George over the weekend. Jineena's husband had pneumonia and it quickly turned for the worst. It all happened so fast, we are still all in shock. He is already greatly missed by his dear children and wife.

The viewing and funeral will be on Sat., March 27. It will be at Jineena's ward located at
3963 Peachwood Drive
West Valley City, UT 84119

The funeral home is
Serenicare12278
Lone Peak Parkway
Draper, UT 84020

Jineena's address is
3769 Bent Willow Place #D
West Valley City, UT 84119

In lieu of flowers, a Memorial fund has been set up at Wells Fargo for Garrett, Hailey and Allyssa. You can go to any Wells Fargo branch and it's under "David Hogge's Kids"

Family Visits

We love it when family comes to visit us. GG came in January so that means my sister and her family come down too. We always have a great time and the cousins love playing with each other. My kids are lucky to have such a fun GG who plays with them, reads to them and just loves to spend time with them. Here are a few of my favorite pictures. Thanks for coming GG- even if you get sick every time you come to Utah. We love you!

Congrats to my awesome sister!

Jineena Hogge- 2009 Mother of the Year!

Click Here

(who never reads my blog)

We LOVE Family

My sister, Jineena, and her 3 kids came down to visit over Easter weekend. We love it when family comes to visit. It was fun to have them here. The boys loved having their own "Sleepover" and the girls had their own as well. I need to have a girl just to keep the peace with this little gang and make everything even steven. They loved playing outside in the sandbox and with sidewalk chalk.
I'm not sure if they liked the water at the Art Festival or the Art Festival- I'm thinkin' water. Good thing Aunt Neena was there to let them be kids and play in the water. I was cringing at the sight of both kids being in real clothes and wet to the bone! Not to mention Lauren's bum- HELLO!! (top right)
Thanks for making the trek to come see us- we had so much fun with you guys!! Thanks to my hubby for being a HUGE help! 5 kids under 6 is not easy- it took all three of us going full tilt to keep them all fed, dressed and smiling!!
(Mom, click on the collages to make them bigger :) - check out the left bottom- we told them to stay with their buddies- the girls held hands most of the time!) Garrett, Jineena, Allyssa, Hailey

Best Friends

I Love that my sister and I are best friends. But even more, I love that our kids are best friends. They really do play together so well and have a great time! Taylor decided that would should live with our cousins and Daddy can just go to work from SLC and drive to St. George everyday. Lauren just loves Allyssa!

It's getting crazier when we get together. 5 kids under 6. So we just feed them a ton. They are happy, quiet and not making a mess!

Eating Snowmen and Pouting

While we were driving to SLC we were listening to Christmas music. Lauren was done. She wanted Little People music. So when she gets really mad a me, she grabs her "pretty" out of her hair and throws it on the floor. When that didn't work she decided to plug her ears. Greg and I couldn't quit laughing. She did this for about 20 min.

Lauren thought Aunt Neena was taking her snowman away when she was turning it around for the picture. Do you think we are going to be in for it with her looks in about 10 years?

It's a Blizzard

A few weeks before Christmas we headed up North for a few family parties and Greg's work party. We had a lot of fun! My kids got to play in the snow. I'm sure they would have had a much better time if it wasn't actually snowing on their faces. And their snow clothes weren't 3 sizes too big. But they loved it anyway!

The Baby Shower

My Family
Me and my cute Sister

Sube is a dear friend who came up from AZ


She couldn't believe all these people were there for her!


Total shock!

We had just a good time giving Jineena a surprise baby shower. She is THE easiest person to surprise. However, she 's not the most "on time" person in the world so we were afraid we would all be sitting around for 30 min. while she was making her way over to the church- 2 min away. Her friend was "taking her out to lunch" and was picking Jineena up at 11am. Well, Jineena called her to see if they could move it to Noon. UGH!! Her friend was quick and convinced Jineena that 11am would be fine.

The theme of the shower was "Cute as a Button" and everything was pink and white buttons. I wanted to make 2 button cakes and wasn't worried about them at all. How hard can it be, right? So I made 2 round cakes and had them on a cooling rack. I went to put Lauren down for a nap. When I came back into the kitchen I saw a little boy with 2 cheeks and 2 hands full of cake. ARH! Ok, I'll just make another one. No big deal. I had some frosting and frosted it and put it away. So I had my 2nd cake made and on colling racks. I went to get my hair cut. When I came back, Greg was in the kitchen eating the cake. I could not believe it. Like father, like son! He saw a small crack and thought I wouldn't use it. Nothing some frosting couldn't cover up. So I decided to call Albertson's in SLC and just have them make the cakes for me. I told the girl, I want the lightest pastel pink you can make. Very soft and light- it's for a GIRL baby shower. I about died when I picked it up. Before I actually saw the cake, I could see the neon pink lights reflecting off the cake. OH. MY. The cakes just weren't meant to be!

After the shower it was fun to just hang out with all the girls. We kidnapped Jineena and went to dinner. She had her heart set on Chilie's for lunch so we went there. Then we just hung out at my SIL's place and played games and laughed a TON! It was so nice to go out to dinner with no highchairs, no bibs, no shoveling in your food because the kids were done 10 minutes ago, no worrying about sleeping arrangements, port a cribs, baths, bedtimes- you get it! And my house survived all the men and kids here!