HELP!

Okay, I finally posted...but it didn't turn out like it looked when I previewed it while I was putting it together. I need a lesson in blogging...anyone willing to help so my text isn't all over the place and the photos aren't so spread out all over? HELP!!!

Christmas Photos

Maggie and Maguire were so fun this year since they really "got" the opening presents part. They would have been happy with one toy - we had a hard time keeping them in the living room to open any more after the first one! Mason loves loves loves basketball! My mom sent me some fabulous lotions from Elizabeth Arden. All the boys opening our new Wii. Hard to believe our oldest, Mitchell, has outgrown getting toys for Christmas. His favorite gifts were a stereo and mp3 player. What a handsome guy! Christmas eve we open one present - always jammies from mom. I didn't make them for the twins this year but I made a total of five pairs of pants in 2 1/2 hours on the eve of Christmas eve. Mike offered moral support by playing playstation while I was sewing : ) Mason's jammies match his "bear blanket" that goes everywhere with him. Mitchell with Maggie, Matthew, Mason, Maguire. What cute kids! We had a great Christmas at our home in Illinois. (Hopefully we'll be celebrating Christmas in Georgia by next year!) We had a great day celebrating the birth of our Savior. The boys spent the day playing with presents with minimal fighting amongst siblings. Mike spent almost the entire day just helping the kids put their toys together or make room for them in their rooms. After presents we ate a yummy breakfast cake then I worked in the kitchen until dinner at 5:00. We had two other families join us for dinner so we could have a big feast without having to make it all ourselves--plus the fun of having the company of good friends since all of our family is so far away. We miss everyone who lives away from us...it was especially nice to start Christmas Day with a phone call from Koryn Knudsen--her family got up much earlier than we did but it was great to catch up and share our excitement with our new treasures. Love you Koryn! Here's some photos...Mike's best gift to me was a new memory card for our camera so I can take more than 50 photos before having to download them! I have some more fun photos of the kids so I'll post again when I get a few spare minutes! We hope you all had a memorable day. Love you!

Time sure flies!

I know, I know...I need a new post. I put together this huge post of my New York trip back in October and it got corrupted and won't post so I lost my enthusiasm about blogging...help me get it back! What can I do to make it easier and faster to post? HELP!

Crusin' to Cozumel

My awesome husband took me on a cruise earlier this month....we were only able to go because my wonderful mother-in-law, Janice, came from California to care for our kids. Mike's brother, Pete, and his wife, Lisa, also came in from Atlanta to help out and see Chicago before we head down to their part of the country. (as soon as our house sells)

We had such a great time on our second cruise that we hope to go on another one next summer!

I had Lasik on my eyes just a few days before we left and I couldn't get my eyes wet for a WEEK! So we didn't spend any time on deck by the pool until Wednesday afternoon. When we got to Cozumel on Thursday we rented a car and drove to a ranch where we had arranged to go horseback riding. Our guide, Carlos, took us through the jungle and to a small village where there were Mayan ruins. In this photo we are in a cave where the Mayan people used to live - they were only 3-4 feet tall! So I haven't really figured out how to put the photos in the order I want on this blog thing. When I add more photos it puts them above the previous ones so I apologize for jumping all around. On Tuesday night was the first midnight buffet. We didn't stay up to eat but they opened the dining room for photography at 11:30. It was absolutely amazing what they could do with food! It truly looked "too good to eat" but I'm sure it was demolished quickly when the doors opened at the stroke of midnight! Can you believe these are all desserts! True artistry in calories! We sailed on Carnival's M/S Fantasy. It's one of their older ships but we had a great time. This photo is when we were docked at Cozumel. The water there is amazingly clear. It's a breathtaking shade of blue-green but so clean and clear we could see all the way down to the bottom just by the dock. Our new friends whom we met at our assigned dining room table took this photo of us outside the showroom while we were waiting to go in. If we didn't get there a bit early, there weren't any good seats left. More of the midnight buffet--a dragon ice sculpture. We actually watched the artisan carve this eagle out of a 300 pound block of ice right on the stage by the pool earlier in the afternoon. He's an award winning sculptor - it only took him 25 minutes to finish this one! This photo was taken in front of a huge new mural in downtown New Orleans where we stayed on Sunday night to be sure we wouldn't miss our boat on Monday morning. We arrived in New Orleans at 10:30 on Sunday morning and walked all over the city--sometimes in the pouring down rain--but we had a great time! The streets were very uneven and dirty--I can't tell you how many times I tripped. They use tons of different materials on the sidewalks - stone and bricks of all sizes, shapes and colors. This is Jon and Joan from Lafayette, LA who were at our table in the Celebration Dining Room each night. They were great fun! We enjoyed visiting and getting to know them and LAUGHING with them throughout the cruise. Thanks to you guys for helping make it a great week! Since it was only a 5 night cruise there was only one "formal" night. It was fun to have a "grown up" night and get all dressed up but due to the Lasik procedure I had on my eyes the Thursday before we left, I couldn't wear eye make-up for at least a week. I feel like I dressed up but forgot to "put my face on" as I tell my kids when they ask what I'm doing when I'm getting ready to go somewhere.

Cute Kids

This was such a cute wrestling match I wished my camcorder were working right! Maggie is one tough cookie - she was pinning Maguire down. He didn't seem to mind! I've never heard them laugh so hard. This was a really cute "twin" moment. He's definitely a Forsyth! Matthew put both twins on this red blanket and pulled them around on the wood floor. They were having a ball but were moving so fast that we couldn't get a really good photo.

Mike's 34th birthday. Mitchell made him a carrot cake, his favorite. : )

Harvest Time in Chicago

Mason had a field trip to a pumpkin patch in West Chicago with his preschool. Since it was almost an hour away we invited my friend Amy Allred and her daughter, Gracie, to ride with us. Aren't they cute???!!!

Maguire had some kid of leg cramp or charlie horse and screamed for almost an hour on the drive there and didn't stop once we got our of the van so a big "thank you" to Amy and anyone else who helped with Mason and Maggie while I tried to help Maguire calm down in the van.

Shooting Practice

Mike took us shooting before Pete and Lisa went home. It was my first time but Mike and Mitchell have been a few times. Mike even took his guns to California this summer and went out in his parent's back 10 acres for some target practice with his brothers and nephews 11 and over. Pete's a lefty! I took photos of Lisa with her camera but I guess I forgot to with mine! We hope to see them next month for Thanksgiving so I should get some photos then. Mike put two shells in Mitchell's 20 guage to show me and Lisa how to shoot - he shattered the second shot - way to go Mitchell!

It was a great birthday!

Thank you to those who remembered my birthday and helped me celebrate this year. I got to start celebrating on Thursday when 6 girlfriends took me out for brunch. It's a crazy busy month so thank you to those who were able to come and I am sorry we missed those of you who were home with kids or at work--and thank you for my boots!

I started my actual birthday in the wee hours of the morning talking to Koryn for over two hours on the phone (when I should have been cleaning my house). Then I woke up in the morning to the phone ringing and was surprised to her from Koryn again! We usually play phone tag for a few days before we connect. She never checks her email so I had to tell her to go read my blog about her birthday and she needed the blog address again! Since our birthdays are two days apart we can celebrate both on the 14th and call it good! I spent most of the day cleaning and preparing for open house. Good thing church isn't until 1:00 because I still have a lot to do AND keep it all clean until we leave--wish me luck!

Mike took me out to dinner tonight and gave me a present. I don't know about you but we usually have something we've been thinking about and we'd like to buy so we just get it and say it's our present for whatever occasion is coming up. Well, this year Mike really surprised me!!! He got me an ipod!!! Now Mike is usually very frugal but every now and then he just decides to do something extra special. I am very excited to be able to use it on walks and at the gym and....where do you use your ipod? It's the kind that I can watch movies on and can have 20,000 songs or something crazy like that. I'm not THAT much into music but I am thankful to Mike, I love him very much and I am thankful to be happy and healthy for another birthday.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KORYN

While living in Nebraska I had the priveledge of getting to know the Knudsen Family, especially the amazingly talented and beautiful "Miss Koryn" as she was known to all the neighborhood kids. Koryn and I became the best of friends (so did our kids) and very few days went by that we didn't get together, watch each others kids, take turns cooking since our husbands were gone so much or close Target on a Saturday night. We laughed till we hurt and cried and it was okay. We supported each other through 9 months of Weight Watchers and even went to 7:00 am meetings on Saturday mornings (I am NOT a morning person). She's the closest friend I've ever had. She and her husband, Jeremy, who also became great friends with Mike, moved to Omaha about a year after we did. We had the same realtor, Renae Cohn, who called me just minutes after helping the Knudsen's find a home- that just happened to be the next block over from ours- to tell me that she just sold a house to my new best friend. Oh, if she only knew now how right she had been! Well, a year after we left Omaha for a new job, the Knudsen Family was transferred by Jeremy's job. The city of Corpus Christi, Texas is blessed to have them as residents for now. In July I was able to meet up with Koryn in Ogden, Utah where she was visiting her family for the summer. We had a great visit and a fun day shopping at Gateway Mall in Salt Lake. We tried to go to the Salt Lake temple but it was closed for cleaning. Thank you, Koryn, for all the memories. Here's hoping we find a way to visit again someday! : )"Miss Mercy" & "Miss Koryn"We have very similar taste in lots of things, we chose the same shirts at BUCKLE, the same signs at DESERET BOOK and the same headbands at J CREW.

Yes, we will move...eventually!

For those of you who haven't yet heard - yes, our house is for sale and we have plans to move to the country south of Atlanta, Georgia--where it does not snow. The cost of homes is significantly less than where we are in Illinois and we can cut our property tax bill by about 75% -- and not have to shovel snow!!! We both grew up in the country outside Sacramento, CA, but it has taken me 12+ years to realize I would like to have that life for my own children. I just don't want to live in the sticks--or anywhere it snows-- so we are going someplace where that is possible. Mike has a brother, Peter, who lives in the Atlanta area with his wife, Lisa, and we really enjoyed the area when we were there for their wedding in June. The housing market is VERY slow right now - pretty much all over the country but especially in Kendall County, Illinois--where it does snow. Our realtor is having an open house here on Sunday. Maybe that will bring some buyers through - as yet we have only had 1 showing in 6 weeks. We would really like to build our own home on 5-10 acres of wooded, lush, green land - which we can buy for $50-60k (for the land) in Pike County, Georgia, south of the Atlanta airport by 30-40 miles. The home in the photo above has 4 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths and is on the market for $215,000 in Fayetteville, GA. Our home is listed for $419,900. We have enjoyed our time here in Oswego and have made some truly awesome friends but we need to do what is best for our family (and my sanity). We will keep you posted as to any progress in this new adventure.

A sample of land for sale in Pike County, GA

June trip to Georgia

We drove down to Georgia in June for Mike's brother Pete's wedding at the Atlanta LDS Temple. Mike's mom rented a house for us to all stay together in Stone Mountain. Here are some photos from that week. I didn't attend their reception in California the following weekend but Mike did so I included some of those photos anyway. Mason and Addie fell asleep on the way home from the aquarium in Atlanta.

L-R: Lisa's brother Jonathan, Pete, Lisa's Dad Larry, Mike and his other brothers John, James, Ray & Mike's dad Steve

Mike's brother Pete with his new bride, Lisa at their reception in California.

Mitchell and his cousin Addie. Mitchell and Addie became buddies. Here he is giving her a piggy back ride as we left the aquarium. Uncle Pete w/ all the cousins! I need to get better photos of him with Lisa. They are coming to visit for Thanksgiving so stay tuned! I couldn't resist posting this photo of Maguire asleep in the backpack! The cousins: Mason, Matthew, Addie, Taylor, Mitchell I carried Maggie up the mountain in the backpack but James was nice enough to carry her on the way down. James, John w/ Addie, Mason, Gaylynn, Mike w/ Maguire at the top of Stone Mountain. It was really beautiful! From there we could see all of Atlanta - which really means we saw the tops of lots of trees!

FINALLY!!!

So Mike is home sick today - of course moms never get a sick day!!! So I have his computer and all of our family photos at my fingertips. Yesterday my friend Jill told me she is going to take my blog off of her list if I don't post something new so this is for you, Jill! When I took the photo above way back on June 5th I thought it would make a great blog entry. My little precious only daughter dumped an brand new HUGE box of Honey Nut Cheerios over the back of her head and then sat down to enjoy her new found feast. I was at the sink washing Maguire's hands after breakfast.

The twins are now 17 months old and very cute but into EVERYTHING so nothing is safe, no matter where you put it - they can even climb up on the kitchen table and dance for us. The photo of both twins is at the zoo the first week of June.

What has been the "cutest" mess your kids have given you the opportunity to clean up?

Have patience everyone, I've visiting my awesome friend Koryn in Ogden, Utah and will have to go home tomorrow but I have a great photo for my first "real" post so I'll get it together next week, okay!

Here I am!

Okay, for all of you who have suggested this, here I am!