Another ode to my husband....

Ironically, Matthew got to put to use a couple of the things from the list I'd made about him yesterday. He woke up this morning not feeling very well.....bad enough to call in sick. Then, the girls came into our room when they woke up and Ember was complaining about not feeling well either. We thought maybe they'd feel better after eating. All Ember got down was some hot chocolate before she wanted to go lay down. Within minutes she was puking hot chocolate all over the living room floor. I was upstairs changing a diaper when I heard her and just the sound of it caused me to start dry-heaving. Matthew just came upstairs and asked what he should clean it up with. Oh my gosh he's wonderful!

Ember felt a lot better after "doing her business", but needless to say, we kept her home from school. So we had two "sickies" who were sick enough to be home, but didn't feel yucky enough to not do anything. I was off doing 'throw up laundry" and the next thing I know......

I come upstairs and there's Matthew and Ember playing Rock Band 2 (which Matthew had just gotten for his birthday). We had played a little bit before we put the kids to bed last night but they really didn't want to stop and were asking when we could play it again. We figured we'd be playing again soon enough that we didn't bother to put all of the instruments away. Apparently with everything still just sitting there, these two found it a little too enticing. I love that they're at least LAYING DOWN to play! Oh boy.

The other thing Matthew got to put to use was his cooking skills. For his birthday he really just wanted to stay home and make a nice big steak dinner. I had every intention of having dinner and his special dessert ready when he got home last night, but all sorts of things came up yesterday that distracted me and, well, I didn't. So when Matthew got home last night (ahead of me who was still at the store!) he just jumped right in and started doing stuff. He had an apron on and everything. Logan saw him with his apron and wanted in on the action. So he got one of the girls little aprons and begged me to put it on him. I couldn't resist taking a picture of my two boys cooking! They were too cute!! So here you go ladies.....proof from what I said yesterday that my husband really is the most amazing husband in the world!

Happy Birthday, Matthew!!!

Today is my baby's birthday! I have many "baby's" in my life, but today when I say "baby" I am referring to my biggest baby, Matthew! (Matt to everybody else....except his Mom and sister.) Today my baby is not just a 30 year old, he's BEYOND 30.

I am so happy that his mom birthed him 31 years ago and that he has been a part of my life for the past 9 1/2 years. Here are the top 10 reasons why Matthew means so much to me, or at least the top 10 I can think of at the moment..... In no particular order, I love Matthew because:

1. He supports me in EVERYTHING I do:
2. He makes me laugh. (Most people don't know how goofy he can be, but he is and boy can he make me laugh.)
3. He's an amazing father! (He has so much more patience than I do.)
4. He loves the gospel.
5. He honors his priesthood, and is willing to use it to give me or the kids a blessing any time we need/want one....even when it's not "convenient" for him.
6. He cleans up the throw up messes when they occur at our house. (Maybe this is actually a selfish thing, because if he let me clean it up he'd just end up with two messes to clean up. Either way, God bless him!)
7. He loves me the way I am and doesn't try to change me.
8. He's a hard worker and is a huge example to me of service.
9. He loves that I'm a couponer. Other husbands don't get it, but he does and I love him for it.
10. He'll cook. If it weren't for him, we'd probably eat cereal 5 days a week.

HAPPY 31ST BIRTHDAY, MATTHEW! I LOVE YOU!!!

Tumbleweeds

My sister, Bonnie, is obsessed with tumbleweeds. I've never met anyone else who shared this weird obsession......until now.

Kya came home from school today carrying a tumbleweed and begging to keep it. I told her of course not, but we compromised and now she is leaving it outside, but keeping a small portion of it as a "keepsake". I love her....

Flu shot drama!

Peyton is having a rough time right now. She had been pretty fussy all day yesterday and we just knew she was getting sick. She'd already had diarrhea for the past couple days and had a sore bum from that, and then by 8:30 last night we noticed that she was getting the same goopy eyes that Logan had a couple weeks ago when he had his eye infection. This morning she woke up with very red eyes. So I decided that I should probably take her to the dr. so we can get going on some eye drops and get it over with asap. I've been needing to take the kids in to get their flu shots, so I decided it would be nice to kill two birds with one stone and take them all in with me when I took Peyton.

I tried to figure out this morning how I could break the news to my kids so it wouldn't come as a surprise once we were at the dr's office. I decided to do it one child at a time. Ember was first. I told her and she started bawling! After crying for a few minutes and me trying to calm her down, she said (while still crying), "Can't they just put me to sleep so I don't feel it?" I couldn't help it, I started laughing uncontrollably which only made her mad. She quipped back at me, "I'm serious! If they put me to sleep I won't have to feel it?" She was apparently quite oblivious to the fact that they would have to give her a SHOT to put her to sleep!

Then before I could get a chance to pull Kya in, Ember went ahead and told her. So then I hear Kya start crying and running to me telling me she doesn't want to get a shot. After trying to console her for a few minutes she turns to me and says, "Mom, do ALL shots use needles?" Oh dear......

And I thought I hated needles......

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth....

BEFORE....

Just in time to be able to actually use that phrase, Kya lost her two front teeth this weekend! They've been loose for a while and I have to admit that I haven't been excited for her to lose them. I LOVE little tiny baby teeth, especially Kya's, and once a kid starts losing teeth they start looking big and old.....and they start going through that "awkward looking" stage....which let's all admit it, no parent looks forward to. She's lost her two bottom teeth so far (which was so long ago that they've fully grown in) and that was fine because when those teeth start growing in you can't really see them. But once you start losing top ones, it's all downhill from there as far as heading into the awkward stage. I actually cried when her first tooth came out. I know, I know.....I'm a dork! But I just get so emotional about my children hitting different milestones and growing up and I wasn't quite ready for this one. And apparently neither was the tooth fairy. She forgot both times and didn't come until the second night!! ;)

and AFTER!

I got to see my cute nephews!

Because of some kind of crazy circumstances that I won't get into.....my sister's two youngest children are living with my brother-in-law's aunt (did you follow that?), who happens to live a few miles from my parents. His aunt is a nurse and works a lot, so every once in a while she has my parents watch the kids. This past weekend was one of those times. I haven't gotten to see them in THREE years and I really wanted to see them, but we had a lot going on this weekend that would've prevented us from going up to my parents to see them. So, my parents came to us! Ember and Kya had their primary program on Sunday and my parents thought it would be fun to come down for it, so they came down on Saturday night and spent the night and then came to church with us the next day. It was so great to see my nephews! They were very young last time I saw them so they didn't recognize all of us of course and were a little shy at first, but before long they were fitting right in. Skyler is 6, so he's Kya's age. And Ashton will be 4 at the end of the month, so he's just a little older than Logan. It was so fun having them here and seeing them again. Hopefully I'll get to see them again soon.

Sunday morning they all dog-piled on top of "Grandpa" to wake him up. Sorry Dad!

I could just gobble this little face up! Isn't he cute!?!

Nap time

There are times when kids go missing and a parent eventually finds them and they're into something making a horrible mess, or they've escaped outside, etc....

Lately for me, every time I can't find my kids, it's because they've fallen asleep in some random, hidden spot.

Peyton's favorite place these days is underneath Logan's bed. She goes under there to "play" (we often find toys left under there that she was playing with) and many times she ends up falling asleep. There are a couple extra pillows under there, and apparently they're too inviting. After all, she doesn't have a pillow of her own! So whenever it's been a while since I've seen her, I'll go and check under the bed. :)

And Logan doesn't typically nap, but lately he has been and as I said, it's just been in random places. Here was his latest from today:

Halloween!

We had a really fun Halloween this year. The weather was FABULOUS, which was great considering my girls were all wearing costumes that weren't exactly meant for cold weather. Logan had already done his preschool Halloween party the day before so I didn't have to deal with getting him all costumed along with the girls that morning. And actually, the girls costumes were so simple that I didn't need to help them at all. (We had borrowed them from a friend of mine....what a godsend! I'm not creative enough to make costumes, and I hate spending too much money on something they wear once. So I was very happy when my friend called and said she had a bunch of items that could be used as costumes and if I wanted to come check them out I was more than welcome. I jumped on that offer! Thanks, Katie!!)

Logan with his teacher and preschool class. Logan was one of two pirates in his class, but he wasn't just any old pirate, he was Jack Sparrow. He literally refused to allow us to call him a pirate. He would say, "I'm not a pirate, I'm Jack!"

That afternoon I went and helped out in Ember's classroom for their little Halloween party. Then, of course there was the "school costume parade". After that, a couple friends of mine in the neighborhood had a little Halloween party for the preschool age kids in the neighborhood. They live next door to each other and because they don't have their backyards fenced in between their houses, together they have a great big backyard. They had all sorts of games, blow up toys, pinatas....you name it. So I took Logan and Peyton over to that and they had a good time.








Then once Matthew got home I took the kids over to the neighborhood "trunk-or-treat" over at the church, while Matthew stayed behind and made his dad's "famous" chili. We've decided we're going to start making it a tradition to make the chili every year, not only for the sake of starting a tradition, but also because it seems like we generally don't eat dinner on Halloween and the kids end up OD'ing on candy! So this year we did the trunk-or-treat thing, sat down and had dinner, then let Ember and Kya go out and do a little more trick-or-treating in the neighborhood. We only let the girls have ONE piece of candy that night. For some strange reason I somehow ended up going the ENTIRE day without eating a SINGLE piece of candy! People, you have no idea how crazy that is. That hardly happens every other day of the year, let alone HALLOWEEN! Anyway, all in all it was a fun-filled, yet laid-back day.

Carving Pumpkins

I decided this year that I really wanted to start creating fun memories and traditions for Halloween time. I love this holiday and yet it seems like year after year it just sneaks up on us and we don't do anything except scramble at the last minute to find costumes and go trick-or-treating.

I remember having such fun memories as a child around Halloween and one of the things I remember most was the SMELLS. I think that smells are the biggest and best way to create lifelong memories, so I tried to think of what kind of tradition we could start that involved some sort of smell. Well, I LOVE the smell of jack-o-lanterns (ya know....kind of a "toasted pumpkin" smell) and since I hadn't made one since I was probably 6 or so, I thought it would be a fun tradition to start with the kids. It turned out to be kind of a lengthy project, so we had to break it into two different nights. It took one night just to cut the lids and "gut" the pumpkins. And then we did the actual carving a week later. Being the inexperienced jack-o-lantern maker that I am, I didn't know how quickly a pumpkin "dies" after being turned into a JOL. So the fact that the actual carving didn't happen until a few days before Halloween turned out to be for the best. They lasted about 5 days (which included Halloween) and then started turning into "grandpa JOL's"....all wrinkly and shriveled. We've been too lazy to get rid of them yet, so they're still on our porch. After having a friend stop by the other day and tell us that they stink (I don't doubt that they're not very appealing to smell up close, but in my defense I think it was something else in the air that she was smelling), but since then I've been self-conscious about them stinkin up the porch...but still too lazy to actually get rid of them......until now. We're discarding them tonight! After all, this whole idea started out as a way to give my kids an opportunity to make memories associated with a smell and I don't want it to end up being a BAD smell. ;)

Here are the finished products:

Mustache or death?

My kids have been saying some of the funniest things lately and I keep meaning to write them down somewhere so I won't forget them. Well, I just overheard a conversation between Ember and Kya and since I am already sitting at the computer, I thought I'd hurry and post it on my blog so I won't forget it.

Ember: "If you had to choose between having a mustache or being cut in half, what would you choose?"

Kya: "Hmmmmm......."

Ember: "I'd definitely choose a mustache!"

Kya: "Yeah, me too. 'Cause I wouldn't want to die!"

What in the world? That girl thinks of the strangest things. I guess the good part is, if they grow up to be the kind of girl who unluckily grows a mustache, they'll just be thankful they're alive. And if they complain about it, I'll have to remind them of this conversation. :)