Christmas.....at last!!

The children were nestled all snug in their beds.....Oh yeah? Not my child!!! Our little family has developed a few traditions in our short years together. It works out very well that Brad's extended family has their big dinner, program and gift exchange on Christmas Eve, and my family does the big stuff Christmas day. This year was no exception. We had a wonderful celebration with Brad's family, then at about 8:30 we hit the road for Logan to sleep over at my parent's. Well, last year when the whole family was at Mike and Lindsay's there seemed to be plenty of places to sleep. My parents house is a little smaller, plus there are a few new members of the family this year, including Aunt Cheri who came up from Vegas to spend Christmas with us. Because of this, Adam and Katie, and Brad, Chasey and I decided to sleep at a hotel, and go over to my parents early Christmas morning. Well, Chasey slept the whole two hour car ride up to Logan, which was great, but gave him a second wind once we got there. So when we got the hotel, he was so wired that no one else could sleep, so I ended up taking him into the lobby of the hotel until 1:30 in the morning. I guess it makes for a good story. Even with the lack of sleep we had a wonderful Christmas day as well, sharing presents and memories as a family and having a delicious meal. It made me very grateful for this time of year when we celelbrate the birth of our Savior. And the Santa side of Christmas was fun too, I'm sure not as exciting as years to come, but it was a real pleasure to finally have a child to share that with, and Chasey loved the wrapping paper!!
Here's Chasey and Grandma Bowen at our Christmas Eve celebration.
Chasey and Daddy with Chasey's "Nemo" he got from Santa.
This is Chasey with Papa Christensen on Christmas morning.
And here is Chasey and Mama, what a cute pair. And what a great Christmas!!

Santa must be missing Dasher, Blitzen and Rudolph!!

We might have gotten a little carried away with our Christmas Spirit the other night at Wal-Mart. We are such a silly family!!



Pretty cute Reindeer, huh?!?!?!?

Bex and Steven get Married!!!

Today, Saturday, December 20, 2008 my fantastic sister-in-law, Rebecca and my equally fantastic new brother-in-law got sealed for time and all eternity in the Salt Lake Temple. It was a beautiful wonderful day, and we are so excited to have Steven as the newest member of the Bowen family. Here are a few highlights.
Here we are with the beautiful bride outside the Temple.
Here is a cute shot of the happy couple. I swear they could both be models!
This, of course, is Brad and Chasey with Brad's older brother Matt, and his adorable son, Zach.
And a great way to end this post is with a fabulous picture of my two men. I have a feeling that all too soon, Chasey will be in this same position saying, "Look mom, no hands!" He is so talented!!

Congrats Becca and Steven!!

Adventures in Salt Lake

Well, this last Saturday our family decided to take a field trip to Salt Lake for some fun adventures! We met my sister, Samantha, up there Saturday afternoon and the fun began!! Brad went to the Delta Center to watch the BYU basket ball game against Utah State. Close game, but thank goodness, BYU won!! While he was in the game, Sam, Chasey and I ventured up to the LDS Church History Museum and Temple Square to check out the Christmas lights. It was fun and very beautiful. That is a fun Utah tradition. After the game was over, we all met up at the Gateway mall, and walked around, then had dinner at Skybox, a sports themed restaurant that we enjoy, and don't go to very often. It was really a great little adventure. That is one of my favorite parts of Christmas, doing things like that you can only do this time of the year. Here is Chasey and I in front of the lovely trees on Temple Square. Here we are again with Samantha. And here is Brad and Chasey at the Gateway. A great time was had by all!!

What a joke

Even as I was thinking about doing it, I should have know better!!

Yesterday was a wonderful Thanksgiving for the Bowen family. We went up to Taylorsville to my sister Lindsay's house. My whole family was there. Lindsay, Mike and their four adorable kids. Adam and his wifey Katie, my parents, and Samantha and her good friend Trevor Peterson. We had a fun day playing, talking, watching movies, and getting food ready. A bunch of us even went on a walk to the school playground.

Well, as we were heading up there, I grabbed our paper so Brad and I could look through it and decide if there were any early morning Black Friday sales we wanted to check out. The only one that really looked worth it was Walmart. SO NOT WORTH IT!!!! In case any of you haven't learned this the hard way yet, Black Friday sales suck!! It doesn't matter how fantastic of a sale it is, your sanity is not worth the sacrifice!

The sale at Walmart started at 5 this morning, so I set my alarm for 4. But at 3:54 my even more trusty alarm named Chasey went off. So I got up, fed Chasey, put him back to sleep, and left for Walmart at 4:45. Even though I knew I was "late" considering I'm sure people were there at like 3, I figured it couldn't be too bad. Refer now to my title of this post. "WHAT A JOKE"

Even though it took me 10 minutes just to find a parking spot, I thought I would still give it a try, but as soon as I got inside I realized just what I was in for. It was 5 after, and people were already in line all the way across the front of the store, going all the way down to the pet section. When I got to the electronics section, and saw at least 200 people pawing their way through the big sale items, and tons of sale DVD's, I called Brad and started complaining. All he could do was laugh, because he was the smart one, who didn't venture out. As I continued my way around the perimeter of the store, I kept realizing how stupid I was to even be there.

Finally I left, and I swear I was on the verge of a panic attack. By the time I got home and back in my warm bed at 5:45, it felt like the longest, most wasted hour of my life. I commend all of you who are brave enough to fight your way through Black Friday sales, but I will NEVER do it again!!!

This crawling thing is fun.....

Well, we are at the next big baby milestone. Chasey is crawling!!! And boy can he move. He has also mastered getting into a sitting position from laying down. So talented. The funniest part is now he can get himself into funny situations. He is so inquisitive, he likes to explore and be a part of things. We've always thought he was a little adult trapped in a baby's body. So now he is seeing what he is able to do. At the doctors office this last week, he grabbed his bottle and took off!! Managed to find a nice comfy spot in the sun.....underneath a waiting room chair!! This one is even cuter!! I don't know if he thought there was some treasure under his walker worth crawling in there for or what! But he literally pulled himself into this spot. Under the walker. Silly baby!

Better late than never (Halloween with the Bowen's)

Sorry to take so long to get these pictures up. I'm sure you all have been waiting holding your breath, so excited to see our first family Halloween! Well, here you go....... This is when we were getting started around our neighborhood, trick or treating. Chasey looked so cute in his pumpkin costume! We went with our good friends, Ryan and Becki Jones, and their son Klous, and Ryan's sister Shauna, and her son Zach.
Isn't he just fantastic!!! It was so fun to start new family traditions.
About a week before Halloween we had our ward Halloween party. Brad and I got a lot of use out of the shirts I tie-dyed. It was a fun little project.
Here is a cute picture of Chasey playing in the fall leaves. But believe me, it didn't last very long. We were lucky to get this picture before he started crying and not wanting to play in the leaves anymore!

Tag You're It!!

Well, thanks to my friend, Julie, I have been tagged! That means I answer a few questions about myself, tag some more people, then they do it, and it goes on and on until all the Blogger world has been tagged! Clearly it will be a never ending circle. But I don't mind because I have been writing so much about the Bowen men, it won't hurt anybody to see a little more about me! What I have to write, and therefore, what those of you I tag will have to write, are 6 things that I value, 6 things I do not value, and then 6 people I want to tag. Here goes....
I value
1. The Gospel- so many times in my life I have said I don't know what I would do without it, and that is just as true today. Everyday I thank my Heavenly Father that he saw fit to allow me to have such truth in my life on Earth.
2. My husband- Brad is such a fantastic man and there is no one anywhere that would be a better match for me for Eternity.
3. My son Chasey- Talk about thanking Heavenly Father. Chasey is my little miracle, and it is the greatest blessing I have to be his mother.
4. My extended family- I have the greatest parents, siblings and in-laws anyone coud hope for. The love and support they show me and my family cannot be equaled.
5. My health- after everything I have personally gone through as far as health is concerned just in the past year, I am so grateful to be healthy, and that all my medical trials have taught me valuable lessons.
6. My friends- I am surrounded by a family of a different sort in the friends I have chosen. Thank you all for everything you do for me and my family.

I don't value
1. Junk food- because as fantastic as it can be, it has made me the fatso that I am. (You can all laugh at that, I am poking fun, not trying to belittle myself.)
2. Debt- I have too much of it, and I wish it would go away.
3. Long lines- my dad constantly points out to me that patience seems to be a lesson I am constantly learning in my life. When I have to wait in long lines, I revert back to the beginning of that lesson.
4. Snow- it is pretty to look at, but terrible to live with.
5. Non-Christmas-Season-time-of-year- It should be Christmas Season all year if you ask me.
6. Sleeplessness- Which is something I am dealing with a lot lately. For his sake and mine, I wish Chasey would sleep through the night every night!

I tag
1. Becki Jones
2. Karla Hayes
3. Wendy Dorton
4. Andrea Baugh
5. Lindsay Jenkins
6. Tambi Alderin

Love you all, and I sure enjoy reading all of your blogs!!

House project day!!

Well, last Saturday my two favorite superheroes were in town, Stumpgrinderman and Superplumber!! And they saved the day! For any of you who have ever seen our house, you probably noticed the gigantic stump on the west side of the yard from the tree the previous owners chopped down. They just didn't finish the job, and for the time that we've lived here, we've had that awful eye sore, sucking all the water out of the grass and growing mushrooms all around it. So, my brother-in-law, and my fabulous sister and their family came down, and Mike and Brad got to work grinding the stump (and a few other small ones) with a grinder that we rented and moving the chips and tilling an area for us to plant a garden in the spring. It only took a few hours and minor messyness to complete the job and we are finally stumpless!!!

Here is the before picture, when we first bought the house. You can see not only the stump, but also a whole bunch of the tree that Brad and other family members moved on one of our first weekends here.

And here is the after shot!! Stumpless at last, and let me tell you, we will not miss that thing one bit! Then after the stumps were gone, and the grinder was returned, Mikey came in to the house, and climbed into the crawl space to unclog our bathtub, which had been clogged and disgusting for about a month. He is so amazing to crawl under the house, not to mention he saved us the $465 the plumbing company had told us they would do it for!! Thanks Superplumber! While the boys were busy with such fun projects, Linds and I decided to take the kids to Target and Costco, where might I add, they were having the best sample day I have ever seen, and don't even tell me that you guys don't partly go to Costco for the samples!!!

Costco carts are so fantastic, here is Claire and Chasey in the front, and Emma and Dallin were in the back, so only Audrey had to walk. And we still had room to fit in all the food we were buying!

And here is all the kids together playing after we were done. What a productive, fun day we had. And a big thanks to Mike and Brad for working so hard.

Rise and Shout the Cougars are out!!!

Well, last Saturday, the 11th of October, another first was to be had for Mister Chasey Bowen. As a family, we attended Chasey's first BYU Cougar Football game at Lavell Edwards Stadium in Provo Utah!!! Tons of fun was had by all, however freezing cold it was!! But that was fun too. We all got bundled up, and took plenty of extra clothes and blankets. We even smuggled in a thermos of hot chocolate in the diaper bag!! It's amazing what you can get away with in there, because when you tell people checking you in it is a diaper bag, they don't even look in it! But we really did have a great time, and we look forward to many more football games as Chasey gets older. Someday we hope he is even playing in them!!

Here we are arriving in the parking lot. Chasey could sense something exciting was happening and he got excited too!!

Obviously the Chasey Man decided to "take a break from the action." He fell asleep about halfway through the second quarter, slept through halftime, and rejoined us awake fans halfway through the third.

An excellent time was had by all! Chasey had fun with mommy and daddy, and all the people around us commented on what a good baby he was, BYU won the game, and we didn't quite freeze our tails off!! It will be another tradition in the Bowen house. Go Cougars!!!