flashback friday.

when you were young.

 october 2002

a photo taken back when trevan was smitten by yours truly.

 i have lots of pictures of me that trevan took of me while we were dating, its fun to look back and see me through his eyes back in the beginning. we were smitten. this picture was taken at the very beginning, we had been dating about 2 weeks and decided to take a trip to california together (with cam and ryan too). this trip sealed the deal for us, we knew WE were the real deal. i was GOOGOOGAGA over senor, he was the handsomest thing i had ever seen. not too much has changed in the past 10 years, just 3 kids, a house and everything in between. 

i loved trevan then, i love trevan now.... funny how things like our love don't change over time.

  

 // can we climb this mountain
i don't know
higher now than ever before
i know we can make it if we take it slow
let's take it easy easy now, watch it go

we're burning down the highway skyline
on the back of a hurricane that started turning
when you were young
when you were young

and sometimes you close your eyes
and see the place where you used to live 
when you were young //


-brandon flowers
  THE killers.

 { what i wouldn't give to back to the beginning, just for a day. }

proof of winter.

 there was barely any sort of winter here in the salt lake valley this season. one day at the end of february we received enough snow to merit the kids getting all dressed in snow clothes to play outside. it lasted for 20 minutes, then they were done and ready for hot cocoa.

we had grand plans of tubing with the kids, building ezra's first snowman, and jude skiing for the first time, that all were shelved for next winter. it seems it will be here again before i know it.... yuck.

in other news...

WELCOME SPRING.

flashback friday.

is it friday again?

 me, my aunt holley, and robyn

summer of 1986 in my grandparents backyard

 holley's thighs?!?!?

 i did NOT inherit that gene.

i can still smell that day, my grandparents house, my grandma's food, and summer in the trees.

hearts day & st. george

okay, okay... valentines was over a month ago, but my life MUST be documented. right?

sure.

valentines day, like all holidays at the gregory household was a big deal. let it be written that my son, Jude Malcolm Gregory, is the biggest holiday obsessed person in the world. 

jude's valentines day monster box.

some homemade valentines that i saw on the ol' internet.

a v-day stouffers lasagna dinner... this sweetheart wasn't cooking nothin' on her valentines day.

greta's love for Dora is growing on the daily. this is not good news.... i hate dora. is that blasphemous? she's so loud.

jude.

and this little cupid was ready for bed but we always make him do the dishes after a family meal. obviously, child labor is the only way to go these days. i mean ez can just reach all those hard to reach places with those wee little hands.

{ trevan's pantalones... this guy loves himself a flannel pj bottom. we will be going somewhere 10 minutes after we walks in the door from work and he still has to put them on. it used to upset me, like when he proposed to me in them (true story), but now its sort of endearing. }

. . . . . . . . . .

the following week we loaded up the VAN and headed south to my big sister robyn's house, also known as GIL's house to jude and of course tuckerabe's house to greta. greta is in love with tucker, and i can't say i blame her.

let's talk about the van for a second... 5 passengers, 3 car seats, 2 bikes, 6 suitcases, 1 scooter, and lots of junk and we still had room to spare. i love my van. sad.

i love going to st. george, in fact i think i want to live there permanently. then i think about it some more, and decide really i just kind of want to be there because i want robyn's life. i love her friends (you know who you are... wink wink), i love her house, i love her family traditions, i love her kids, i love her neighborhood, i love how her and bob work together, and i love her weather. trevan jokes that every time i come home from st. george i have some new recipe, product, or lifestyle we are going implement into our daily lives (further proof). freak, it's true... i want to be robyn, she's got this whole mothering/wife thing all figured out.

this trip we went to the sand dunes for the first time. umm, how have we never done this before? so fun.

bob brought some shovels and first things first, we buried our kids alive. 

duh.

ezzie didn't love the sand so much, and his feet hated it even more.

we all were/are in need of a spray tan, snooki style.

this was the most precious/hilarious/sad part of the entire weekend. if you can look closely, you will notice sully feeding sand to a very buried, very helpless tucker. this happened about 3x and then tucker started panicking and started crying. robyn, in one of her less enlightened parenting moments, decided it best to poor water over tucker's head (repeatedly) so he could breathe better. in theory it maybe seemed like a helpful idea, but to us bystanders it looked a little more like waterboarding. tucker was having a panic attack and was literally buried up to his neck, standing up. sully just kept sneaking a sand ball into his mouth every time tucker would scream out. my poor tuck had sand in his eyes, ears, mouth, and nose. after about 5 minutes we finally dug tucker out and I being the more enlightened sister of the day, pulled some baby wipes out and wiped his face as we dug him out. tucker was so exhausted from this experience he came home, got in the shower, put on pajamas and slept the rest of the day.

kind of hilarious to watch though.

bob, robyn, and their 5th child sullivan

we also had our first taste of the michael jackson experience on the wii this trip.

tears.

no one has ever taken it more seiously than abe. he made a sign up sheet for it, with song title and room for 3 dancers... don't worry miss gwyn made sure her name was on every.single.one.

in an ideal life for jude there would be some sore of holiday everyday, mornings would be spent watching arthur, days spent with his sidekick gil by his side, and the nights would be spent at yaya's. 

note: i am not included in any of those

ez spent the better part of the weekend in the back of this here dump truck. if you needed to find him you could rest assure he was here. it was his seat and all the kids took turns pushing him around.

even robyn got into it for a bit. now, if i had no sense of self worth i would put the video up of me dancing to beat it.... but since i need a little self confidence i will keep that to myself. its far too embarrassing, even for me.

one of our best weekends yet, and i want to go back.

thanks again, LAMOREAUX's! 

flashback friday.

flashback friday... its all the blogging strength i can muster at this point. are you sick of it? oh, well. stay tuned for updates about a vacation to st. george, winter weather, greta's health nightmare scare, and ezra's RSV. 

F-U-N.com

until then...

the highland bears circa 1995
kennan, jana, marie, jenny, taylor, ashlee, rebecca, nicole (not pictured)

fun facts: 

- 3 of my (still) best friends were on this squad. 

- i was often mistaken for a boy at this stage in my life.

- i could (and can still! holla.) hit the splits, it was just bad picture.

- those are tanks in the background.

- homemade uniforms were the way to go.

- i was the bossiest, bitchiest, cheerleader you ever did see. this is me acknowledging the fact, and apologizing to anyone who knew me then.

flashback friday.

 the 2nd family.

i come from a family of 6 kids... 2 boys 4 girls. all of my siblings are around 18-24 months apart, with the exception of me. robyn is 4 years older than me and brooke is 4 years younger than me (this makes me think of 2 senarios: 1. i needed my space or 2. i was a lot to handle) . having 6 kids makes a middle child seem impossible but with those spaces between kids a middle child becomes possible, me. with that age difference between kids there became 2 families within 1 family. i was in the 2nd family. i always danced to the beat of my own drum but i think it was because i was too young to be one of the older kids and too old to be one of the babies (brooke and paige are only 16 months apart... both unplanned pregnancies FYI) making me kind of a loner growing up when it came to siblings but you can be sure by the time brooke was old enough to know better, i taught her that i was her best friend.

there were perks to being in both families. the first family got the fresh parenting, they rode my dad's gravy train through the 90's, they had the dad who coached sports, and really nice cars. the second family got the relaxed parenting,  breakfast in bed, a mom who had more time on her hands (more so with brooke and paige), and most importantly our own christmas cards.

you'd have to ask the rest of my siblings but as far as i am concerned either family i was in, i was born into the right one. i LOVE having 5 siblings and 15 niece and nephews.

p.s. i do have some real life stuff to blog about... some fun, some not so fun. i just don't have the energy today.

flashback friday.

family tub 1984...

i think bryce was 10, which may be a little awkward for us all.

and a special  shout out to my sweetest brother brad today...
happy birthday brother!