Birk Adventures

Hooray! The bar is over! We love having our husband and daddy back! Adam said it was hard (like any law school exam but times 100) but that he would be surprised if he didn't pass. I am impressed at Adam's diligence in studying. He's been at it since early November. Friday morning his alarm went off at 6 and he jumped out of bed, excited to exercise, study Chinese, and NOT study for the bar. Since he took it in Salt Lake, we made a mini vacation out of it and stayed with my parents from Sunday night to Thursday morning. On Monday Mini and I hiked into the cabin with the family. We had a great time and the experience was complete with Christmas M&M's Mom saved for the occasion and a tantrum because Mini's hands were cold. I love this picture because it typifies Dad and Mom--Mom is hysterical because she just threw a snowball in Dad's face (you can see the snow on his sunglasses). The girls and I also enjoyed my parents' new jacuzzi bath tub. The bubbles a...

I've been a slacker blogger but decided to sneak a post in and not miss January. I'm better at checking blogs than updating my own. Anyway... Christmas was wonderful. I had a little Christmas miracle in being able to trade my overnight shift on Christmas Eve for the 22nd (which I was cancelled for anyway). I was really grateful to have that time to be with family. So we spent Christmas and the couple days after with my family in Salt Lake. The girls were so fun. Mini's Christmas was all Barbie. Emmy was excited about it all--she played with everything for about thirty seconds whether it was the princess kitchen or wrapping paper. This is after she walked in dog poop in her new jammies and tracked it through the house. She got a ring pop in her stocking (bad idea on Mrs. Claus's part) and went to town on it! So speaking of dog poop, my youngest sister Jennie got an adorable chocolate lab on Christmas Eve. Despite pooping in the living room on Christmas morning and whinin...

Hooray for December and Christmas season! But where did November go? Time goes so fast--I can't believe we are almost to the end of 2010. November was a fun month. Between my birthday (#29!) and Thanksgiving break, the month just flew by. Adam took me on a fun birthday date: dinner at Texas Roadhouse and laser tag at Trafalga. (We are trying to get our money's worth out of the Pass of All Passes, so we've frequented Trafalga more in the last 3 months than the rest of my ten years in Provo combined.) Celebrating with Ammon, Kate, and Anne-Marie: The next weekend we got to go to a BYU football game--our first one in the last 2 seasons. It was so fun! The girls did great. Mini thinks that the football stadium is BYU, so she kept saying things like, "It's cold at BYU!" and "I love the hot chocolate at BYU." For Thanksgiving we went to the condo in St. George for some warm weather. We packed ten adults and three kids into the condo, so it got a little coz...

I'm glad that I have kids for a lot of reasons. One of those reasons is because they have really revived Halloween for me. Since about 6th grade, Halloween has been my least favorite holiday. Pretty bah humbug, I know. I guess that was when I hit the stage of being too old to trick or treat but not having anything else very fun to do on Halloween. But having kids has made it fun again. I have fun doing things as a mom: finding them costumes, going to the pumpkin patch and picking our own pumpkins, Halloween parties, etc. This year we went to our first ever Trunk or Treat and had a great time. Here we are in our costumes. Mini was a fairy princess or just a princess, depending on whether or not she was in the mood for her wings. Emmy was a unicorn. I wore my 9th grade cheer outfit and Adam wore my 9th grade cheer sweater and warm-ups. (We actually had some people ask if we were cheerleaders together!) This is not a great picture, but look at that amazing sunset! We had a Music Maker...

Thank you, Adam, for doing a September post for me. I'm struggling at even getting in a post once a month. Oh well. Time for some catch up. Of course I love summer, but I also love when fall comes around and we get back into a regular schedule. It feels so efficient and predictable. I try to have something structured most days of the week to help us do things and see people. So I started a little music playgroup on Monday mornings. It is really mellow but has been a lot of fun. We have singing songs, marching songs, a story and a treat. Then we moms usually chat while the kids destroy the house. If you're in the area I'd love to have you come! On Tuesdays, Mini is in a little gymnastics class, which she LOVES! She is definitely my little girl--I was always upside down or climbing up the door-frame. This is how she has me put on her lotion at night (she has eczema on the back of her knees). And she does cartwheels all day. It's actually amazing how good her cartwheels ar...

Dear All, I know it is completely out of the ordinary for me to blog more than once in a year, but I just heard a story that I must share with you all. You know when you hear something that is so disturbing that you have to share it with other people so you can share the burden? Otherwise it just starts eating at you. This story is also about eating. WARNING!! IF YOU ARE EASILY DISGUSTED AND BECOME NAUSEATED/QUEASY don't stop reading - just get something to throw up in - you have to hear this. Martha heard this story at a Relief Society activity - from the person that saw it - I think I need to start attending Relief Society. Here goes: A female student was observed just before taking a test in a class room. She was picking vigorously at something in her arm-pit. It turns out she had a cyst or a large zit of some sort which, I guess, needed to be taken care of before the exam, despite the fact that she was in a public place. (To me it seems that a zit under your arm would be the id...

For my entire childhood (and the forty years before I was born), my dad's family summer vacationed at Balboa Island (Newport Beach). I love that place--I've probably spent close to a year of my life there. But a couple years ago, we (my parents and their kids--not the whole extended Boyer family) decided that as much as we love Balboa, it was time to try seeing something new. So now we alternate Balboa and a new place every other year. This year it was Breckenridge, Colorado. It's a charming resort town (think Park City) that sits at 9600 feet in a gorgeous valley surrounded by 14,000 foot peaks. We absolutely fell in love! We stayed in a house that was big enough for this many people to sleep comfortably. We had a great week there with plenty of great adventures, including fishing (five minutes worth was plenty for me), roller-blading (we did it extreme style: in the rain pushing two kids in the jogging stroller), river rafting, hiking (Adam hiked Quandary--a 14,000+ peak)...