Family Dinner

The other night we celebrated Eric's last day of college classes. Here are some pics:





Love, Tamber

Animal Farm

Last week on Thursday we went to the animal farm at Thanksgiving Point. I love it because it is so inexpensive and the kids love it. Here are some pictures:








Love, Tamber

GNO.

I have to say thank you to my wonderful friends for being so amazing. We had a much needed GNO on Friday night and it was a blast. Thanks Ladies!




Love, Tamber

Alice and Wonderland Cake

Here are some pictures of my latest cake. It was for one of my good friends daughters. It was Alice and Wonderland Themed.








Love, Tamber

Flashback Friday

I figured that I have done a lot of pictures of me lately and that I should do one of Eric. I need to get more of his pictures scanned into the computer. This picture was taken of Cort and Eric when they were camping. I guess they use to do that a lot when they were kids.


Love, Tamber

Emma's long lost friend

Since Emma was little, Emma and Braden were very good friends. They got into mischief together many times, but most of all they just love playing together. Braden now lives in Connecticut. This week his family has been back in town, and we had the chance to hang out most of Monday. They played very well together. Ever since they left of Monday Emma has been wondering when she gets to play with Braden again. Ya for friends visiting.

Love, Tamber

Spring time fun

The weather has finally been nice this week (mid 70's). The kids have been in heaven playing outside all of the time. They love it. We have gone for a couple bike rides, gone to the park, had picnic's, feed the ducks, and played with friends outside. Here are some pictures of our adventures.

Emma and Marcus in the bike trailer.

Me taking the kids for a ride.

Marcus has averted his attention to climbing outside instead of inside. He still does climb on things at home, but he doesnt do it nearly as much now that I let him go free at the park.

Marcus in the swing. Not his favorite...like I said, he would rather be climbing.

Emma on the slide.

Love, Tamber

Hope.

I have been thinking a lot about hope lately.

The last couple of month have been interesting for my family. As many of you know, Eric graduates in 2 weeks from Utah Valley University. We have anticipated his graduation for the past five and a half years that we have been married. Eric and I knew when we first got married that we didn’t want to wait until we were done with school to have kids. We knew it would be a tough road, but that it would be well worth it in the end.

The last month has been a bit of a struggle for me. I felt betrayed. I felt that after all the hard work that we had gone through, we were back at the beginning wondering how we were going to support our family. I guess you could explain it as emptiness.

I hope that I am not making you feel bad for me, because that was not my intention in writing this today. I have had a very amazing ‘personal growth’ month, and I cannot go another second without taking a chance to publicly share my thoughts, feelings and testimony.

About a month ago on a Friday night I was feeling sorry for myself. I was watching the news and they were mentioning how in this economy it is hard to have Hope. Hope. hOpe. hoPe. hopE. I couldn’t stop thinking about what it meant to me to have HOPE at this time in my life. Many questions went through my mind. Can I have Hope without Faith? How do I create Hope? Can I be happy without the hope that everything will be okay? And that was only the beginning of the thought process.

So, my first step was to figure out what Hope was. I mean, I know what hope is, but what was it really, so here are a couple of things that I discovered:

· Hope is a belief in a positive outcome related to events and circumstances in one's life. Hope is the feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best.

· Hope is the companion to Faith and Charity.

· Hope has a power to fill our lives with happiness.

· The absence of hope can make us ‘heart sick’.

· Hope is a gift of the spirit.

· We have the responsibility (commandment) to make hope an active part of our lives and overcome the temptation to lose hope.

· Hope bring us Peace.

· Hope is the foundation of Faith, without it we cannot have Faith.

And probably my favorite thing about Hope:

· Hope is not knowledge, but rather the abiding trust that the Lord will fulfill His promise to us.

And ultimately I do believe that the Lord will fulfill his promise to me. Something that I read from President Uchdorf really touched me… ‘ There may be times when we must make a courageous decision to hope even when everything around us contradicts this hope.’ And that is the truth. This week, I had to make the decision to hope even though sometimes the world looks grim. The job market may look bleak, money may be disappearing from the bank account, I may not be able to get the car I want, the dreams of getting a home may be on the waiting list, but in eternal perspective, I know that the Lord will fulfill his promise to me. The promise that if I follow his commandments and live righteously, then I will be able to live with him again. I know that the Lord will help provide earthly needs when we live the way we should. I am so grateful that I am experiencing these trials at this time in my life, because I know that I will be a stronger person because of them.

Thanks for listening.

On a lighter note, here is a woman who had hope and made her talents show. Click here to watch this video. It is pretty shocking.

Love, Tamber

April Snow

Here are some pictures of our snow storm that happened over the past 2 days. I think this is the most snow I have seen in April in such a short amount of time. You can see in the back ground of the first picture that you couldnt even see through the chain link fence, the snow filled the crevices. And because the trees were blooming, the snow weighed down on the flowers and broke multiple branches around our complex. It is suppose to start warming up now, infact most of the snow has already melted.




Love, Tamber

Flashback Friday

Here is a picture of my with Gary Hall Jr. For those of you who dont know, he was an Olympian in the 50 meter free. You probably would remember him as the guy who came out at the 2000 olympics with boxing gloves on. I think he went to 1992, 1996 and 2000 Olympics. This picture was taken at the Santa Clara International Swim Meet that I swam at. I think this was in 1999.
Love, Tamber

Discovery Museum

On Friday, my dad and Misty took my family and Tevin and Shannon to the discovery museum in Salt Lake. It was a lot of fun. I even enjoyed it.

Eric and the kids inside the real sized helicopter

Eric and Emma built a pretty cool house out of Lego's

Here is Emma running the crane, Tevin loading the blocks and Shannon up high unloading the blocks.Here is Marcus playing peek-a-boo in the treehouse window.

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Here is Emma in the fireman coat.

Marcus and Grandpa Tim playing in the water pond.

Emma and her uncle Tevin playing in the water pond.

Marcus climbing on the rock wall. He got almost all the way to the top by himself. You can see how high up he is, my dad is 6'1" and his head level is at Marcus' legs. It was hilarious. Marcus wouldnt let go, he loved it.

Here is Marcus on the pretend horse...he didnt like that one.

Marcus having a blast putting balls through all the tubs.

Crazy Week

Last week was a crazy week. We were helping Tawni get ready for the wedding, running errands, etc. We were basically in Salt Lake or in the car all week. The kids were exhausted. Here is a picture of each of them on Tuesday after falling asleep in the car on the way home. I am glad we are back on a normal schedule with normal nap times. The kids are a lot more happy.

I love Marcus' arm up behind the head. It was a beautiful day and a little warm in the car.

Love, Tamber

Happy Easter...Traditions

Eric decided last night that he was going to start a new tradition. The tradition building an Easter Fort and 'camping out' with the kids on the night before Easter. We all helped build the fort and they slept in it all night. Emma had a blast. Of coarse Marcus isnt quite old enough yet for the fun, but probably next year he will be.

This is a picture of the fort from the outside.

Eric and Emma hanging out in the tent.

Emma giving the '#1' finger. You can see on the right hand side under the chairs that she loaded the place with toys and stuff in case they needed it when they slept. She even had an empty milk jug. She loved hanging out with dad.

Earlier in the night Emma and I dyed eggs and then glittered them.

Here is a picture of the Easter baskets after the Easter bunny came and before the kids got into them. I have told the Easter bunny not to go over board at our house. Last year we started a tradition of getting the kids a church or Easter book. I loved the idea and so we did it again this year. Besides that, they each got one small toy and some candy.

Happy Easter everyone!

Oh..one more story. Yesterday I was asking Emma if she remembered why we celebrate Easter. I told her about Christ being ressurected and that because he was resurected that we can be ressurected.
She replied 'I don't like resurrected'.
I said ' But if we are resurrected that means that we get to live with Heavenly Father and Jesus and our Families forever.'
She gasped and then said...'I love living with Jesus'.
I just about cried. I love teaching my children the lessons of life that truly are the most important. That makes all the hard times worth it.

More pictures

The cake that I made for the grooms cake and bridal cake (guitar and water polo ball)
Love, Tamber

Tawni's Wedding