My kids at weddings

Sad news. It looks like I've finally filled up my quota of picture space on here. So until I rectify this annoying issue. There won't be pictures. Which hopefully won't last long, because I like pictures! Luckily, what I wanted to share this time didn't have any pictures to go with it anyway.

Aunt C just got married this last Thursday and it was a beautiful wedding. I love going to other couples' weddings and sealings. It reminds me of my own sealing and how special it was. For those of you wondering what a sealing is, it's a bond that as Latter Day Saints, we believe goes beyond this life. We believe that when we are married, that we are sealed to each other for time and all eternity and we get to do this in the temple. Of course, if you have more questions, please find your local LDS missionaries and I know they will love to explain it further to you! LDS.org is also useful for questions!

We had a very long day with the family and loved every minute of it. My kids of course were little studs. Everyone was raving about how cute they were and of course since they're my children, they just ate all the attention up!

After the sealing, the pictures, the little break in between and the luncheon, we finally made it to the reception! A couple things happened here that I won't and don't want to forget:

• As Aunt C and new Uncle J began their first dance of the night as the new married couple, my kids decided to get a bit of attention. E began by dancing along with them at the corner of the dance floor so no one really saw him. He wasn't exactly dancing properly to Beauty and the Beast- he was really breaking it down. As soon as he got tired, he flopped on the ground like a starfish and started to roll himself out closer to Aunt C and Uncle J. By this time people are beginning to notice the 2 year old splayed out on the floor at the happy couples feet. Luckily no one seemed too annoyed except of course Es brother. Are you even surprised? haha. A took his brotherly duties very seriously and went out to retrieve his starfish brother off the floor. A bent down, grabbed Es arm- E didn't move a muscle- and A proceeded to drag his little brother off the floor. I could hear people everywhere laughing at the spectacle my kids were making. Way to ruin the moment guys! You two are just lucky that C and J are good sports and didn't get ticked off at you! I mean, in reality, there's no way you could be mad. It was just too cute!
• Second thing I won't forget was E breaking it down after the slow dances were done and everyone was allowed to dance. He ran his two year old bum out there and started hopping around, throwing his arms everywhere and kicking his feet as fast as he could. The people who actually wanted to dance were so thrilled with their little dance partner that a circle actually formed around him and everyone clapped as he got his groove on! E was so encouraged by this that he maintained his awesomeness for the entire song. A was not to be beat though, he found the circle too and decided to break dance for us. I am not even kidding when I say break dance. He must have seen someone from other wedding busting some moves and he tried to copy them. He was better than me! .... which really isn't saying much.... but still! 

These were the things I won't forget about my kids, I know I also won't forget how beautiful Aunt C looked. There's just something about being a bride that makes you glow and she absolutely had that glow. She was stunning in her wedding dress, she was stunning in her luncheon dress- because I mean seriously, who wants to eat in their wedding dress and chance getting it dirty. Uncle J looked pretty happy too; these two were meant for each other and I don't say things like that lightly. 

It was a beautiful day, full of beautiful happy people, and it was wonderfully perfect! We'll just forget that my feet were crying by the end of the night, because genius here didn't bring flats and had to wear high heels from 9am-9pm. 

p.s. You'll have to forgive me for the crappy writing. It's 1am, I can't sleep and my writing skills are sub par this late or early in the day, whichever way you look at it. Oh yeah- one last thing! I can't forget that I had lots of compliments on how nice I looked too! I love getting compliments since believe it or not, I actually do have a fragile ego. 

They are smarter than we think they are

A few days ago, I had the spectacular chance to actually get out of the house! I know, it's a miracle. The boys and I went to. . . wait for it. . . the Karl's Junior play place! It's right by our house and whaddaya know, it's free!! Being the great person that I am though, I did buy some fries to pay for their services. I learned something new that day about E.

He's devious in ways I did not even know. He's come to new levels of deviousness! He's the master at teasing and quite frankly, with the parent's he has, I'm not all that surprised.

We came in to the restaurant. Ordered some fries and a milkshake and proceeded to the play place. I have this creeping feeling that half you mothers reading this are grimacing at the fact that I even let my kids play on such a dirty thing. BUT I really don't care. I played on them as a child. I loved it. I was happy. I do not have any negative life altering moments that regard play places. And I don't see the point of sheltering my kids from germs to protect them, call me evil, but I feel like building their immune system and having fun while doing it, is a productive day! oh yeah.... if you're grossed out by the fact that I let them play in a play place, you might not want to read on, because its gets nastier.

A ran in and started to play first! E was more interested in the food that had just been delivered to us. He sat and ate with me for a little while until he saw his brother playing with some new friends he made and decided he wanted to join. E is just a bit too small to actually climb up the play set "stairs" that they have, so he had a bit of help from me. I had chosen the best seat in the area- or the only seats really. It gave me the perfect view of my kids while they were up there playing. After about 20 minutes of play time, I look up to see E sitting contentedly above my head drinking something. . . Shocked I stood up and like a good mother I looked up and yelled at him. "E! Put that down!! What are you doing!? Put it down, that's yucky! Gross!" He looks down at me with the curious expression on his face, pulls the straw out of his mouth and then slowly raises it back up while staring me down. "E! Right now! Put it down! Gross!!" He stops again, looks at 'his' drink and then back at me, tilting his head slightly to the side he replies in his high pitched innocent tone, "No. Nooooo, " while slowly shaking his head back and forth.

I tried to keep my composure, but it was just too funny! I had to look down and then try to act serious again. I looked up at him again, trying my best to look stern, and again told him, "Put it down." Before I even started to say the words I was laughing. *Not a good idea if you're really trying to get your child to stop drinking some mysterious liquid in someone else's cup and you really don't want to climb up to retrieve him.*

Encouraged by my stifled laughter, E repeats his little "No. Nooo." charade for me again and starts guzzling--through a straw-- the rest of the drink. By now I am so grossed out and aware that he knows I am not going to climb up there to get him, that I just sit down and watch him drink the rest of it while he stares at me in evil two year old triumph. And of course to rub it in a little, he takes the lid off the drink and eats the ice chips! WHICH I am fairly certain some slipped out of his hands a few times before they made it to his mouth.

I am going to blame this personality trait on his Dad. Because I was an obedient child and would never have done something so heinous! That was my sister, M.

My Vacation in Pictures!

 Plus of course, a few extras! Most of you have seen at least some of our Christmas pictures. But it would be against my nature not to share them with everyone who reads this blog!

The day before I went to Oregon, it snowed about 14 inches outside. 

 Ava still played in the snow with her frisbees. :)

The Children's Museum!

Happy not wordy blog post! Happy New Year and Happy life to everyone! It's good to be alive!

Hit a Deer

There are a couple of things in this life that I can honestly say I never thought I would do or would care to do: sky diving- definitely a NEVER in this life, becoming a pro athlete, getting overweight- yup, that's really on my list of nevers, pregnancy doesn't count, hitting a deer aaand working with the elderly. 

A few days ago, on Saturday, I fulfilled one of my nevers; I hit a deer. Or rather, I was a passenger in a car that hit a deer! At the time it was pretty scary, but looking back, it really wasn't that bad. Daddy M, my sister-in-law and I were driving back from a work Christmas party out of the canyon. On the way back I counted 4 dead deer off the side of the road. I was surprised that there were so many! But, I didn't think we would hit one. It wasn't actually until we got out of the canyon that he ran into our deer. 

Daddy M was driving and all of the sudden on the corner of my side of the car there was a deer. It was dangerously close to the road. When we came closer to it, it tried to run away, by going across our path! Daddy M couldn't swerve out of the way thanks to the ONE car in the other lane that just so happened to be right in our way at just the most inconvenient time! He couldn't swerve the other way because there was a pole there. The only option was to break and hit the deer.... 

All I remember is my sis-in-law, very calmly I might add, say "deer." That's when Daddy M slammed on the breaks, the deer hit our car, there was a nasty thumping noise from impact, the car stopped instantly, I screeched and covered my face- I was NOT about to see deer blood all over my windshield, and we all sat there in shock. The eyes came uncovered and I saw the deer disappear under our car and then it rolled about 30 feet in front of us. I was just waiting for the thing to roll over dead, but it stood up! Looked around, dazed, and zig zagged off the road into the field. It wasn't limping and we didn't see any blood, so we were all hoping that we just stunned it and didn't just contribute to an early death. 

Our car on the other hand..... did have some damage. Not a lot, but we are all wondering if there's a deer walking around somewhere with half our headlight sticking out of its back. 

Last of October

 Have you ever seen something like this? Ok- before you answer, let me tell you what you're actually looking at. This is a pumpkin seed that's sprouted. The interesting thing is, we found this seed, INSIDE one of our pumpkins!!! So cool! I'm pretty sad that we didn't get a second pumpkin out of this. That would have been amazing. To open up the pumpkin and see another pumpkin inside!!

And of course I just cannot get enough of my little Things! So I have a few more pictures of them. Sorry for those of you sick of seeing them all dressed up.

 They're just too cute! And I know that some of these pictures are fun for grandparents to see since they're own kiddies are in them as well!

 A was too focused on getting candy, which is why no photos of him with girls were taken. :) By the end of our trunk or treating party, we had some very tired boys.

 Oh! And proof that at least one of us parent's dressed up for Halloween.

 Can you guess who I am? Probably not that hard. HERMOINE!!! And lucky for me- I can re-use almost my entire costume for other events.

Halloween was lots of fun this year. I promise this is the last post of Halloween business.

Whew! We can move onto some other events in our lives!!

Carvings Part II

Pumpkin carving is serious business. It's SO serious, in fact, that it deserves a whole second post... and possibly a 3rd, once I actually take a picture of our other "stair-ee!" pumpkin. Fall has to be one of my favorite seasons purely for the fact that we have SO many holidays that follow Halloween! We get Thanksgiving! Christmas! and New Years!! It's great!

The pumpkin you see her is Aunt Ms and As pumpkin.... and yes, he actually did choose that pattern. Although, I'm pretty sure that he didn't know what he was picking out at the time.

The last two photos are my favorites. The one with As dorky smile in it had a conversation that went a little something like this, "Smile normal A".... "No! A not like that! Just smile normal for now." ..."A we can do a silly picture next, cummon!" . . . after a few minutes of frustration from Aunt M and I as we try to make the 3 year old smile like everyone else, I came up to him with my fingers in 'flick' pose to see if the idea of getting him in trouble would make him listen.... it didn't.... it actually produced the next picture. That would be As. "I've just been threatened" face and by the looks of it, he thinks I may have blackmailed him, cut off his teddy's thumb and mailed it to him with a note saying, "you're next if you don't send the money!" Aunt M is just going with the flow and following As lead. :) ....or maybe she's his body guard and that's the "I'm going to shank you if you come closer" look.

We have a lot of looks in this family. It can get confusing to translate sometimes.

Thing 1 and Thing 2

So I've been feeling a bit bloggy today. It's an orgy of new news! And I love that I have so much to share! If I had self control I would chill and post this in a few days, but lucky for you, I have no self control... .so for your happiness, here is the 3rd post of the day.

We went trick or treating at Ms work today and the boys enjoyed dressing up quite a bit!

We are epic. You don't even know!

Their favorite part of getting dressed was putting on the makeup. They watch me put mine on every day, so when they got to put theirs on, it was a special treat!

Once we arrived at Daddy's company, we had to wait outside because some genius decided to pull a fire alarm. *face smack!* But we managed to get some choice photos of the boys. :)

They're supermodels, you know it!

 Quick run through- We have our lovely Aunt RIN who was E's carrying buddy. He was only interested in being carried, because supposedly he's 'scared' of all the stations. In his defense though, some of them were pretty terrifying- for an 18 month old at least.

 scared face!

 We're trying to get him to smile here. Little stinker wouldn't do it. But you can see the hint of a smile there!

I was asked several times where I got my costumes from. And I was able to tell them that I am so epic, that I made their costumes. I have to admit, they didn't take that long and they weren't that hard. But still, I am epic.

It's Carving Time

My favorite part of Halloween is carving pumpkins!!! If I had the most awesome tools and all the $$ in the world. I would carve a pumpkin village for my front yard and lay in the middle of the town in pure happiness! Unfortunately reality brings me to only buying 3 carving pumpkins and the most elementary tools. BUUT each year we seem to manage! This will have been A's 3rd? or 4th Halloween and every year he has NOT wanted to touch anything. A usually informs me that the inside of the pumpkin is 'Dross!' and 'Yutkee!'  (gross and yucky) This year though! We actually convinced him it was fun!!

 Here A was quite impressed with Aunt M's gut scooping skills! The only thing I was thinking while he had his mouth wide open was, "Don't touch my couch with your nasty hands!"

 

 Aunt M was helping A with his pumpkin. She helped him choose a pattern, which when she was done carving it, actually scared him. And his brother! haha

While we were carving our pumpkins, E was eating his dinner, so he joined us a bit later. He did not even hesitate to stick his hand in a gooey, slimy pumpkin hole! I think E will be a master pumpkin lover in his later years. For now though... he's the de-gutter and the seed spreader. Yes. That's what he did. Found a spoon and scooped up all the seeds we were saving, so we could roast them, and he stuck them all over the place. Mostly back inside the pumpkins.

 Such a serious little stare. He was really focusing on his pumpkin task and smiling for me was just too much. He obliged by looking up and then quickly going back to work. :)

 Once A's pumpkin was done, he quickly jumped in and helped me with mine. He is a very good helper now that he's not so focused on staying clean!

At some point in the process it looks like A may have lost his pants. The picture above... they're there. And then now... gone! What're ya gonna do? When a man wants to be half nakey, they're going to get half nakey.

We have a recording of our pumpkins and their finished product, but for some reason they won't upload. So, tonight I'll take some more pictures so you can see our fantastic patterns!