There's nothing better than a broken pipe on the day you take the Christmas Decorations down.

Wouldn't you know it -- Murphy's Law strikes again. On the day we take down all the Christmas decorations, we end up getting to deal with a broken pipe (a "frost free" pipe, of course, that froze in our recent cold spell) that flooded our entire front room.

So, just in case we didn't have enough mess on our hands, we got the chance to put all our furniture out into the foyer and leave the Christmas mess in limbo.

And of course, it was ALSO all in the middle of dealing with trying to process several hundred new items of inventory for my online store. The fun and explosion is uncontainable at this point.
It's taken over the ENTIRE house.

We are terrible parents.

First of all, I finally cleaned out Spencer's backpack from LAST school year the night before school started THIS year. Strike one.

Strike two? In the enormous pile of papers inside the backpack, I found this lovely note he'd written to Scott and I. (It was probably one of those assignments where the teacher gives them a beautiful piece of stationary to write a letter to someone they love.)

Here's what it said:

In case you can't read it, it says:

"Dear mom and dad I love you but you wouldn't give me a birthday party.

from Spencer."

As my boys would say, we've been duly "moted."

Karly's Wedding

The boys' latest craze ... Slack-Lining!

Alex bought this himself some slack-lining gear a few weeks ago, and the boys are actually getting pretty good at it! Here they are giving it a try over at the Stake Center parking lot.

It's nuts... it's essentially learning to walk a tight rope!

Sienna's Baptism!

Here's the cute Mud family after sweet Sienna's baptism.

Just for you, Chelsea!

As you can see, I have essentially given up on the blog for the past two years. Ahem.

But, I am posting today JUST FOR YOU Chelsea! I figure I'd better find a way to post some photos you'll want to see, so this is probably my best option!


First, some shots of our trip to San Francisco, and Alcatraz:

The view back into San Francisco.

Here's Dad, waiting to check in to his luxury cell.

And we even got to drive down the "crooked-est" street in the world, Lombard Street!

And we stopped by "Postcard Row" with all the fantastic Victorian painted houses behind us, and a great view of San Francisco.

It's time to get with the program

So, it's only been about 4 and a half months since I last posted anything on here, and as a result, I've been told it's time to get with the program (by Chelsea). So I'm going to launch back in!

When we last chatted, it was early summer and Chelsea was singing the National Anthem at the Roadrunners game. Oh my. How things have changed! Because I am a stickler for continuity, I feel the ridiculous need to go back in time and try and catch up a bit. Especially since I thought this would be the closest thing I could come to a journal when I started it.

So, I'm going to now "pretend" to go back in time and post a few fun things from the past few months that I should have put on here. Kind of like Marty McFly, only not so cool.