lincoln tourist: prairieland dairy days

the day before on our visit to the capital building and roller-skating museum i picked up a little pamphlet on touristy things to do in the lincoln area. low and behold the following day was prairie land dairy days in firth nebraska! it's essentially a completely free open house the dairy farm offers for locals to come, tour the facility, see cows, do fun family-like stuff, and try their food. it was truly so much fun and i'm glad we took the effort and time to go down.

as soon as we got there casey found the spot where they were giving away their cups of ice cream and HOLY COW was that ice cream amazingly yummy. i'm no ice cream connoisseur but that stuff was so fresh and creamy and soft and perfect. maxson agreed too.

there was a huge hay bail castle for the kids to play on.
and casey taught maxson how to catch rain in your mouth (luckily it just barely sprinkled on us and the rest of the day was super nice)

while waiting in line to tour the facility maxson played on tractors

we were so impressed with their facility. it's all family run between 3 families, the place does not smell one bit, there's hardly any flies, and the list goes on. it really was fascinating to hear all the number statistics and methods they go through to get high quality farm fresh milk to the stores (and remember guys, i love my milk). and you can buy this milk straight in our grocery stores.

we ran into lots of friends there too, this set happened to tour the facility on the huge tractor at the same time we did

max played in the corn box for a bit or as i thought, the sea of gold

pretty soon our family will fill up the faces on this one!

i thought maxson was going to love the petting zoo part…he really didn't care a bit to my surprise.

what maxson DID love was this random water game where you pump water and make little floating duckies go through a course into a well area, get them out and go again. tears came when we said we were done with that area.

as seen below they let you take home big gallon zip loc bags of their "prairie gold" or fresh fertilizer, that's some high quality stuff i tell ya.

my favorite part of the day was the chocolate milk, oh my heck how i loved that stuff (and of course, maxson did too)

they gave out some more delicious free lunch. they ran out of buns by the time we got there, but the meat was still delicious and i'm not one to complain about free food. creatively enough, they offered cheese curds as a side to the lunch. again so fun and yummy since you usually don't experience such a thing but stayed great with the theme of dairy

it was such a fun little family activity to go to. non stressful, quaint, local, and just simply fun. i hope we can muster the energy to go next year too with our family 5!

video: this is what we do all day

here's a little video i put together of a normal day at home with maxson. a little bit of our routine and just everyday activities. it's kinda long but casey and i just loved watching it, because of course, to us, maxson is the cutest and funniest child in the whole wide world (ha, i hope every parents feels like this with their little ones). i'm glad i put the effort into this video (this one took more effort than they usually do because there were SO many clips and i had to go through and only pick out little bits and pieces) but i know casey and i will love looking back at it.

so here is maxson, 19 months old on july 3.
i've watched this video so many times for editing reasons and pure enjoyment reasons and i still laugh at the same parts that you can hear me laughing at during the video. i wanted to edit my background voice out of these but chose not to because that's apart of life, my commentary to maxson's life and actions, even if i do sound so totally silly. 

bonus: at the end when casey puts max in his crib to go to sleep you can faintly hear maxson saying "uh oooh, uh oooh" his version of "love you" and my heart just melts at those 2 sounds.

see video here if you can't see it on the blog

songs:
My Darling by Ryan Tanner
Animal Inside you by Frances England
Hourglass by Mindy Gledhill

(if you know of any cute music for my videos please share, picking out songs is the HARDEST part for me because i'm not that into music and artists but know i want certain vibes and feels. i'm looking for some artists/songs that's just cute ukulele/xylophone/whistling/guitar songs with minimal words or cute words or no words all together. if you know any will you pass them my way?)

and a happy 24th birthday to me!
never in a thousand years would i have thought i'd have 3 kids by the age of 24, ooy, ha.

lincoln tourist: the capital building

following the roller skating museum we ran over to the capital building to tour that real fast before maxson's nap. i thought the building was absolutely beautiful and so fun to walk through, totally reminded me of my time spent in europe looking at all those beautiful buildings. we had the best tour guide who was sooooo knowledgeable and not boring at all. i loved learning about it all.

at a couple point when maxson got restless it turned to this:

old legislature room that is now unused

maxson fell asleep in about 1 minute after getting in the car. such a champ when we take him places

we missed out on outing the 14th floor look out deck but will go back another time

lincoln tourist: national museum of roller skating

on a rainy friday this summer i convinced casey we needed to go do something fun and we headed to the national museum of roller skating. yes my friends, it's the only one in the whole US, how lucky we are! the national roller skating headquarters are located in the same building, ha. all the cases were interesting to walk through, maxson thought other wise and ran a muck. but we went, we conquered and now we can say we did it!

my little family, all ready for church

we had the most wonderful fourth of july weekend! what about you? i feel so truly blessed to live in this wonderful country, i love being an american, i'm truly proud of this land i live in and all that i enjoy because of brave people who fight for our country. i DO love the USA! i'll be getting to fourth of july photos hopefully soon! but here's some pictures from last sunday:

these 4 little pictures of myself and max make my heart just burst. this smile you see in these is the epitome of my little boy's smile. this is the smile i will always remember. and now whenever i see a picture of me with maxson and that little belly of mine i think "look, i'm with my 3 little boys."

casey got a new shnazzy, custom suit and i absolutely love it. i need to get some detail shots of it soon because it is one great suit for a great price and i want to share it with you. maxson also wore his new (to him) suit that day and my boys looked so good together. i just wanted to kiss them both all over constantly that day.

our daddy is gone most the morning long on sundays and runs back home to get us for church. i'm grateful for a husband who serves so diligently in his calling. i'm also grateful for this time where i only have to get one child ready for church. oh how i love this little family of mine

how to make money when you don't have a job

casey has been so awesome at finding little ways to earn money while we're in dental school. no it's not that much when compared with real jobs but when you're in school and can't have a real job but still have time to find little ways to do things, it's been fun extra spending money for us! some of you are probably in similar situations and i thought you'd like to know of some of these easy ways to earn a couple extra bucks.

1. bing searches- Sign up with this link: If you do something like 15 random searches on bing each day you get points, points add up to money. In 1 month's time you can get about $5 toward amazon if you are diligent at doing it. You can also have 5 accounts per household (ya know, meaning 5 people, with 5 different emails for us that's casey, kimber, maxson, etc) so that's about $25 a month you can earn through cashing in for amazon money. Just do mindless searches on bing by pushing random letters on your keyboard. also if you sign up with that link it gives us more points, so ya know, help a sista out

2. secret shopper- we use Marketforceshopper.com. it is a mystery shopper website that is legit. It takes a little more effort but is still cool to do because you get free meals plus you're paid on top of it! casey really likes to do it, because he likes going out to eat more than i do (fast-food usually). so if your family already does fast food and such often you should definitely sign up for it. we use the app genius scan to take pictures of our receipts that seemed scanned in for when you answer questions about your mystery shop. you can sign up here

3. surveys- here's casey's shpeal he wrote to a friend last summer who asked him about it:

"It is called MTURK, it is a job from amazon as a worker to do like surveys and such. You sign up at MTURK.com and you do have to give some important information it is legit because they have to report information for tax purposes because you will get a w2 at the end of the year. Anyways there are thousands of survey jobs posted on mturk, but to make it actually worth the time the person would need to open up a separate tab and go to reddit.com.

Once in reddit they would search for hitsworthturkingfor, and go to that separate forum that other mturkers post the jobs that are actually worth the time we put in. I have been averaging from 80-100 dollars a week part time since I am in dental school and really don't have time to have a real job. It has been a great part time thing for me so I figured it could be for others too. Let me know if you have any questions about it or if anyone would be interested and that I could explain it to. The reddit site posts surveys that are actually worth your time (at least 10 cents a minute- which, no, isn't very much but it adds up over the long run)."

casey did this for 3 months during last year's summer semester of dental school and earned quite a bit of money. it did take a lot of time and effort on his part, but again, it's not like he was doing anything else once he was done with his school work

4. zapiddy-  zapiddy is an app on your phone that sends you out to stores to take pictures for them and then answer a few questions. They're usually about $4 and really easy. The other day I did a $16 easy one at Sam's club which was awesome. You get money transferred to your paypal account. it's all super easy and right there on your phone, takes less than 5 minutes to do it. you have to check that app pretty often and kinda go right when you see them because they do end fast (i'm guessing once they meet their quota).

5. sell your stuff- everyone knows about this but it is easy. sometimes you just stop using things you used to for so many different reasons. so why not sell it to someone else and get money for it! we haven't done this a ton but when we have we're real proud of ourselves, ha. we've used both local Facebook buying/selling groups and craigslist

are there any other little things you do to make a few extra bucks? i'd love to know!

little love letters

(casey read these all in jimmy fallon thank you note style, you should too)

dear maxson's naps: sometimes you confuse me. mostly you're 2-3 hours long. sometimes you surprise me and last 3-4 hours long. and then sometimes you baffle me when you abruptly end after 45 minutes because i flushed the toilet, but then again just last week you continued on for 2 more hours after the fire alarm was tested in our house. naps, you are strange sometimes…

dear chiggers: you are worse than mosquito bites, so much worse! the main reason i am excited to leave nebraska for the summer is to get away from you. yesterday i counted 8 of you awful little buggers. (i saw red dots and assumed that's what you were because there's no way a mosquito could get to that area). you guys are awful and i hate you so much. friends in western states: be ever so grateful you don't have chiggers

dear casey: i know you are kinda of sick of going to school but thank you for working so hard for our family. your commitment to learning amazes me and will pay off in time. i love you oh so very much!

dear twins: you still consume my mind, but with a little less fear now. where will we all sleep? how will we make this all work? are you guys ok with pack n plays, because that kinda seems like the easiest sleeping accommodations for 2 more babies at the same time (ya know, because i kinda want to keep max in his cage crib as long as possible…)

dear street outside our house: why must you tempt my little maxson so much? he just wants to be your best friend but we both know that's not possible. be less exciting to him, will ya?

dear stairs: i sure wish there weren't two sets of you in my home. you make laundry a marathon of  a workout especially now that i'm pregnant, geeze.

dear wallet, phone, and keys: will you stop getting lost already? are you in collaboration with each other to make myself miserable? just stay put in one area why don't ya?

dear home videos and photo albums: i sure wish you guys made yourselves. you kinda dangle over my head all month/year long…

dear bandwagon: we have officially joined your team i suppose. we've been watching the USA soccer games with much excitement at our house. not sure why we were very excited, it was soccer, not to bang on soccer, but ya know, it's just not a HUGE USA thing, get my drift? well it was exciting. casey was hooting and hollering at our house. suddenly he couldn't possibly leave the game for 5 minutes to help in the kitchen, because he couldn't miss any of his favorite sports game (eye roll). the seats on your wagon seem to have a little extra give room which i do appreciate. we're sad you have come to an end

dear Facebook: you are so annoying. when i scroll through my feed, 75% of you is links to stupid articles and such that my "friends" share or like that I DO NOT CARE ABOUT EVER (i've become really good at never getting sucked into any of those links). that's annoying. 15% of you is super annoying facebook statuses of "friends". but it's that last dang 10% of statuses of my real friends that i actually care about and what to know about that makes me stay with you, ugh, i don't like you but you force me to stay friends with you. clean up your act, mk?

dear belly: you are growing at an incredible rate. each week i feel like i multiply in size, it's kinda incredible. still can't believe there TWO babies inside of me as i write this. totally wild. although i will want you out sooner than later, please ignore me and stay in there until at least 37 weeks.

dear computer: you are beginning to become unreasonably slow. you have 21 more months to live and then you can choose to do whatever you'd like. but please, last until then, mk?

dear cookies: 19 months ago my friend brought you to me after i had maxson and i thought i died and went to heaven. i begged her for the recipe but she never could remember which recipe exactly you were. well 19 months later she found you, and shared you with me. i created you in my home 2 nights ago and you are just as amazing as i remember. and then i gobbled you up in 3 days time

dear maxson: you just woke up after a 13 hour slumber and were happy as could be when i went in there, few things make me happier :)

also to my only son: your drinking out of bowls skills (ya know, after cereal) amazes me, bravo son.

dear lover buns: we're going to grow old and die with each other one day and that makes me very happy.

relative finder

A friend in my ward posted this little blurb on Facebook and we found out we 6th cousins once removed! I thought that was so totally cool. So I wanted to share it with you so we can find out how we are related!

This is a fun online relative search created by BYU that is powered from your own tree from familysearch.org. You can create a group and share to see how you are related to someone or run the report against the default groups already created. It is fun to look up prophets, current apostles, and american history people . A group I created for my own tree is "kimber cutler", password "kimbercutler", if you add that group it will display how we are related. Here is the site: http://roots-fb.cs.byu.edu/

Here's a little screen shot of the a few of the US presidents I'm related to:


If you do join, you can then make your own group and share it with friends, don't forget to share it with me so I too can see how we're related!

Sometimes family history stuff really is cool!

ps- casey's info is group "casey cutler" password "caseycutler"
pps- casey and i are 10th cousins once removed, ha ewwwwww ;) he and i had the same grandfather back in the 1600's