Oh Kelly

My poor sister was in a car accident yesterday, the second one in three months…same story each time.  She was the middle car, the car behind her slammed into her causing her to hit the car in front.  So she has a bad case of whiplash :( We just got back from the ER where she now gets to wear a beautiful neck brace.

Kelly After the Drugs, when she was slightly out of it and agreed to let me blog about her :-)  I have a feeling she’ll be angry when she comes to!

     

 

Maddie Playing Doctor, helping Kelly feel better!

 

 

 

 

It appears our family is pretty accident prone and/or sickly.  Kelly had a visit from the Costa Rican paramedics on our cruise.  I twisted my ankle badly when we were on vacation last summer while at  Seven Peaks Waterpark.  Emmalee took a trip to the ER last summer when turning purple.  Jaime spent time on the anti-partum floor with pre-term labor with Emmalee at 17 weeks.  My good friend Amy spent several days at Evergreen last summer when she had to have her gall bladder removed suddenly.

*sigh*

Oh, in case you were unaware…today is Father’s Day!  We (Alex & I, since Kelly was an invalid) made a big breakfast for the whole family.  We had waffles with strawberries, bacon and sausage…DELICIOUS!!  For dinner we’re having my favorite TACOS, yum I cannot wait!  Happy Father’s Day, Dad!  I love you!! Hope the rest of you had a fantastic day today!

Don’t forget to stop by my, Cori's Big Mouth Community to answer today’s QOTD on Fathers Day!!

Have a great evening friends!

Hard Boiled Eggs: A First

I just successfully made hard boiled eggs for the first time in my life!!  Yep, I feel like a big girl now!  Now that I am a big girl, I must thank the little people (or person) who made it possible.  Thank you Brandi for holding my hand and walking me through the process!!

Now tomorrow my daddy can have deviled eggs....hopefully Brandi comes through and makes them :-)

Five Question Friday

I’m still not feeling great, day two of this icky flu.  I’m exhausted and ready for bed at 8:09pm on Friday night, sad huh!  Hoping to be back to normal tomorrow!  I spent most of the day in bed again today, so no blog worthy events occurred.  With that being said I’m participating in Five Question Friday from Five Crooked Halos.

 
1. What is your favorite thing about summertime?

My favorite thing would have to be the HEAT!  I love the heat and humidity that comes with summer.  I live in the wrong area to get much of that, since it’s already June 18th and we haven’t hit 75* yet (a record for us!). 
I love to be able to go outside and be comfortable without a coat or sweatshirt on.  I hate  to be cold, so walking outside and feeling warm is a treat!!  I love to swim in the Harrington's Pool and lay out in the sun! 
Ahhhh…sun please come visit us soon and when you do come, please stay for awhile and not tease us anymore!

2. What is your ideal retirement location (if money didn't matter)?

You probably could tell from my above answer that it’d have to be somewhere WARM!  If money was no object I’d love to retire on a cruise ship and tour the world!!  My family has gone on 3 cruises, with our most recent cruise being this past February where we left from Fort Lauderdale went through the Panama Canal and ended in Las Angelos!  A.M.A.Z.I.N.G vacation!!

3. Do you live in the same town you grew up in?

This is a coincidence because just yesterday I blogged about where I grew up.  It depends on what you consider “grew up”, I spent my first 12 years of life somewhere else, and have lived in my current town for the last 12 years.  So I would say, yes, I still live in the same town I grew up in!

4. What nervous habit did you have as a child that you kicked to the curb before becoming an adult?

OMG, I cannot think of anything.  I’m still a nail biter and cuticle chewer.  I hate to say it but I think those were more adult nervous habits then child!  It’s gotten worse the older I got! 

5. What is the most embarrassing thing that happened to you while on the job?

I took the twins I watched at the time to the park.  I was talking to some other mom’s at the park and suddenly one of them said “isn’t he yours?.  I look over to see one of the boys with his pants down, peeing on the climber.  I have never been so mortified in my life!!  Funny now looking back at it – not so funny at that time!

QOTD 6/18: Where did your name come from?  Was it a family name, were you named after somebody?  Do you like your name?  What about the spelling?  What about your kids names?  Was it hard to pick them, or did it come easily? 
Come check out my Cori's Big Mouth Community on BlogFrog to see what Katie of Katie's Journey, One Cluttered Brain and Jeanette of Sweet Jeanette have to say about their names!  Don’t forget to add your own story!

Never Ever Thought I’d Say This…

but I am soooooooooooo very thankful to my parents for moving us from Kirkland to Duvall when I was 13.  At the time, I seriously thought my life was over, I hated my parents and had a hard time adjusting to “country” life. 

Prior to Duvall I’d lived in the same house for 12 years, that’s where my friends, school and church was.  I was happy.  We were happy.  So what if we were growing out of our house.  I thought we could just sell or get rid of Kelly and/or Alex and we’d be just fine!  I mean we had survived just fine for the past 12 years…what was a few more right?

We moved into our house on the day of my 13th birthday, bad timing huh!  I started school a week or so later and survived.  Not only did I survive, but I thrived in school.  Don’t get me wrong it was super hard at first, I was so anxious I got violently ill over the move.  But once I finally got myself together and got healthy again it was all uphill.  My high school years were great, I felt I got along well with everyone, every clique, every group.  I’m lucky to have been born with a pretty outgoing personality and am willing to start conversations with anyone and every one.  (Hence the name of my blog….Cori’s Big Mouth….I don’t know how many times people have told me to SHUT MY MOUTH!).

I made friends in school, but because of the distance I’d moved from my old house (about 2o minutes) I stayed in more contact with those friends after high school.  I’m great Facebook friends with my High School friends, but it’s those childhood friends that I hang out with and communicate with.  So those childhood friends I grew up with continue today to be my closest friends, pretty funny how that is the case.  Moving into a new home, in a new neighborhood brought new neighbors.  About 6 months after moving in I heard about a family in my neighborhood that had just had triplets.  I sought them out, got hired, and gained a second family. 

Finding Charity and her family gave me the opportunity to get involved with something I was really interested in …. multiples.  A few years after the girls were born Charity took over the local (and statewide) Triplets and More group.  Through this group, I met many, many other families of multiples, many of whom I went on to work for!  Who would have ever thought that a young girl, with an interest in multiple births would suddenly have the opportunity to work and help many families.  Off the top of my head I figure I have babysat/nannied for 5 sets of twins, 8 sets of triplets, 1 set of quadruplets and even a set of quintuplets!  So that is pretty impressive if you ask me!

With all that being said, I LOVE WHERE I LIVE!  I love my home, I love my friends, I love my church, I love my current and past job, I LOVE MY COMMUNITY! 


Thank you mom and dad for making the decision to move us here, even though I often complained….I can’t be more thankful!!  Love you guys!

QOTD 6/17: Have you ever been in the hospital and had to stay overnight?  Have you ever been super sick and ended up in the hospital? 

Come check out the Cori's Big Mouth Community, see what Liz of A Belle, A Bean, A Chicago Dog & Tiny Tots of Teaching Tiny Tots have to say and don’t forget to share your story!

Sweet Emmalee

This post is part of Wordless Wednesday on the following blogs:
Wordless Wednesday’s
Live and Love…Out Loud
Seven Clown Circus
A Beautiful Mess
It's A Blog Party

QOTD 6/16 on Cori's Big Mouth Community on BlogFrog: How far did you go in school?  Do you ever want to go back?  If you went to college, what did you get your degree in? 

Not Your Average Bucket Swings

I would personally like to thank the inventor of the bucket swing!  Many of you may believe that the typical bucket swing is just for a single child – well you’d be wrong!  These make fantastic swings for two babies!!  They are a god-send for multiples and thank heavens that my employers own 2 of them! 

I can easily push all three kids the extra one I often have, with today being Emmalee!  I also had an extra pusher with the help from Maddie!  I think today alone we spent a good 25 minutes in the swings pushing them “higher and higher”. 

   

If you have multiples, or two kids similar in size, I highly recommend this method!  You get twice the swinging done in half the time! I’m sure the triplets find swinging to be a treat, because they know that mean old Cori, loathes, the swings.  Why?  Just look above, once they are in they refuse to get out!  Normally ends ugly, with me pulling them kicking and screaming out of the swing – which in turn makes it 10x harder to get them out!  So yeah, I don’t let us swing that often!  Call me mean!  I call myself smart!

 

 

Don’t forget to check out my QOTD on

BlogFrog about dreaded chores!  Check out what Jaime of The Fields Girls & Vicki of From Our Family To Yours have to say about chores!!

Learning So Much….

over at BlogFrog about the blog-iverse.  I had no idea a site like this existed until I came across it on another blog that I was “hopping” to (hence the BlogFROG – for my readers who aren’t as blog savvy.  BlogFrog is away for you to connect on a site of message boards [communities] to publicize your blog, gain followers and friends!  I have already seen huge growth in my blog in just the two weeks that I have been a member! 

I want to share the lessons I’ve learned to promote my blog, with any of you who may be trying to do the same thing…

1. Be ACTIVE (participate) in lots of message boards within BlogFrog.  I’m currently a member of 20 different communities, and I try to reply to at least one post in each community a day to keep my name out there.
   
2. Reply to comments.  Apparently, if you reply to comments that people leave, they are more likely to come back!  So I have blogger set-up to email me when someone posts a new comment and that includes the person’s email address so I can instantly reply to it.  Unfortunately, Blogger doesn’t really allow “reply” to comment options.
   
3. Comment on other blogs you visit.  When I say comment, I don’t mean writing “hey, I stopped by your blog, please do the same to mine”, I mean really reading their blog post and then posting a real comment about what they wrote.  Show the writer that you really liked their post/picture/comments, etc. 
   
4. Use Twitter.  I have really starting sending out Tweets.  Prior to BlogFrog, I would send out maybe 1 tweet a day from my phone just about what I was doing.  Well apparently Twitter is one of the #1 ways of promoting your blog.  I tweet after each blog post in hopes of my followers to see it and check it out!
   
   Twitter can be very overwhelming, which is why I never really used it.  But after participating in Follow Friday on A Belle, A Bean, & A Chicago Dog’s community, I learned about TweetDeck, which is a great site to simplify and organize all your friends & followers tweets.  Makes it so much more manageable.  Plus I was able to set it to specifically pull out tweets from certain people (mostly my In Real Life Friends), so I can see what they are doing and not have those posts get lost in the jumble of others!  If you are interested in following me on Twitter, I’m at @cori_shelley.  I love getting new friends!

When I first signed-up they offered me my own community [message board], Cori’s Big Mouth,  so I went ahead and set it up.  Thought I had to, quickly learned I didn’t and they are really hard to get up and running!  Myself and a small group of ladies joined together to help each other build our communities, and I am proud to say my little community now has 50 members!  Now if only everyone would post – ha!  Below is a reel-time feed of my community – come join if you want too!

Each day I have been posting a QOTD (Question of the Day) for people to answer on my community.  In order to get more people to know about my community, I’ve been tweeting about the QOTD and linking it back to my community, I've also been adding the QOTD to the end of my last couple of blog posts.  Today’s QOTD is:

QOTD 6/14: What is your favorite television show on TV right now?   What was your favorite television show growing up?  What is your ALL-TIME favorite television show (can be new or old!).

                                            

You also may have noticed that yesterday I participated in my first MEME (according to Wikipedia, the term Internet meme is used to describe a concept that spreads swiftly via the Internet).  This is where a host blog posts a challenge, questions, or something else and then you can link-up to their blog and appear on a list of blogs who participated! 

On the meme I particpated in this weeks Word Up, Yo! from A Belle, A Bean, & A Chicago Dog’s blog.  So far 17 people, including myself, have particpated.  Check out the entries!  Fun! 

There are many different memes to particpate it, and I find them kind of fun  Another plus is I’ve gotten a lot of traffic coming through my blog, that I want to try more out! 

So there you go, a quick blurb on how much I’ve learned on BlogFrog.  I challenge you to check out the site and maybe join in, especially if you have a blog you want to promote!  Sooooo worth it!

Back To Nursery I Went Today

No it isn’t permanent, just a one day escape back to my old calling!!  Oh how I miss nursery!  I spent 3 years as one of the coordinators before being released and going on to Primary for 9-months and then to Relief Society.  With that being said it’s been 18months since I was back “home”!!  I jumped at the chance to go back for one day!

Most of the kids that are now in the nursery weren’t in when I was, except for a couple of kids.  My favorite Ella Bella and Miss Ellie.  These two little girls were itty-bitty when I left – just barely 18-months old.  Ellie and I had a special bond, I was the first one to finally get her to stop crying and stay in nursery!  This was no easy task, I might add.  It took a lot of work on both my part and Ellie’s to get to that point.

Poor Ellie had such stranger anxiety that she would make herself physically sick.  I’m sure her poor gullet had to be burning from the acid coming from her stomach.  I felt awful for her, but kept in her in nursery anyway.  I knew (and her mom agreed), that the best way for her to conquer this fear would be to ride it out!  We finally were successful (you can read my blog back from that day when I had Success In Nursery with Ellie), and I am excited to announce the Ellie is now a proud nursery go-er!

I miss my nursery calling and working with the little kids, but I got lots of “oh we missed you’s” and “Relief Society wasn’t the same without you, don’t leave us again!”  It felt great to feel missed and needed!

 

 

 

Be sure to check out my QOTD on BlogFrog on your blogging!!  How long have you been blogging?  What made you begin?  What's your favorite part about it?!

This post is the first time I am participating in a linked blog game and am sooooo excited to do so!!  I’m participating in a new word game, Word Up, Yo! hosted by Liz of A Belle, A Bean, & A Chicago Dog, and some blogging friends of hers.  Each Sunday they’ll post a new WOW! (Word Of Week) to be used in a blog post the following week.  This is the first week, and as you probably figured out the WOW! is gullet.  Come join us for some word fun!!  Okay….let’s see if I can do this correctly…..

The Big 2-7 for Jaime!

Today marked Jaime’s 27th birthday…man that is OLD!  Poor lady!  Oh well, I guess she has a lot going for her, so life’s not so bad :-) We celebrated this afternoon in the BEAUTIFUL sunshine [insert Hallalujah Choir].  Yes, ladies and gentleman the sun was shining today!  Even better, its supposed to be warn (between 67*-80*) for the next week [insert Hallalujah Choir]!  Sorry Jaime, I’m getting off topic – and I know this post is an ALL JAIME POST …. so back to the party!

We hung out, outside all afternoon and the girls played with Madeline and Brendan from next door, and the rest of chit-chat and ate!  Jaime requested my dad’s famous fajita’s so we enjoyed a delicious dinner!

 

 

 

The Birthday Girl!

 

 

 

 

Beautiful Emmalee

 

 

 

 

Maddie x 2

 

 

 

 

 My adorable baby sister Alex

 

 

After dinner came presents, Jaime SCORED on gifts!  Lucky girl.  Makes me anticipate my birthday in only 73 days!! 

      

 

Emma quickly learned from Maddie how to bring mommy the gifts!

 

 

 

 

Thanks Emma!

 

 

 

 

My Dorky Dad!

 

 

After presents we did cake.  Now, Alex is normally a FANTASTIC baker!  People request her cakes, cookies, and other goodies, but for some reason this cake did not turn out.  Don’t get me wrong, it tasted fantastic, but it looked awful!  It kept falling apart and took three jars of frosting to somewhat hold it together!  Poor Alex was mortified, but we ate the cake anyway!

 

 

The Cake….doesn’t look so bad here!

 

 

 

 

Again, note my dorky dad!

 

 

 

 

Make a Wish!!

 

 

 

 

   The poor AFTER of the cake!

 

 

Birthday’s are never perfect in the Benson household, but they are always memorable and fun!  Happy Birthday Jaime hope you birthday was awesome!!

 

 

Be sure to check out my QOTD on BlogFrog about Twitter & Tweeting!

Room Redo: Phase 3

I accomplished the 3rd phase of this massive endeavor.  On Monday I completed phase 1 and Wednesday I completed phase 2.  Today I painted my accent wall, the pink color I picked out a few days ago. 

Prior to painting the pink wall, I was really excited by my paint choice, however after I had painted around the baseboards, ceiling line and corners, I was really seconding guessing my choice of pinks!  I love the brown I painted my room, but the pink looked almost Pepto Bismol like.  Wasn’t really feeling it.  Oh well.  I had the paint.  I was ready to paint.  I was GOING to paint.

After the first coat I really wasn’t liking it, but decided to let it dry.  Luckily as it dried the color became more of what I was hoping for.  After the second, I was liking it more and more.  I can’t honestly say I love it 100%, but it’s growing on me – and trust me – I don’t want to re-paint it.  So I’ll stick with it!! 

Monday, I think I am going to tackle the dreaded ceiling.  Totally not looking forward to that one, but it needs to be done!  I did however, get my room rearranged today!  But you’ll have to wait until the grand reveal in a few days :-) I’ll leave you guys waiting in anticipation ….. (ha-ha)