Friday, November 27, 2009

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving - a day late. Yesterday was very busy with cooking, eating and visiting. Today's been busy with cleaning and decorating. But I wanted to post a quick Thanksgiving blog. Here's Emily singing one of her songs from her 1st grade Thanksgiving program.



We had a great day yesterday - we had dinner at Lynn's with her family, Jill's and Paige's family. Everything was very yummy. Paige, Dan, Steve and I went to New Moon while Jill, Lynn and Dustin watched all the kids - thanks again! I'm very thankful for my wonderful family!

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Ella's dance recital


I'm attempting to post a video from our new camcorder. Here's Ella at her recital last week. Isn't she just adorable!


Friday, November 20, 2009

Top Ten Reasons a Mother CANNOT get sick...

10. Laundry only piles so high above the rim before toppling over and the house and dishes look like they've NEVER been cleaned.
9. What you save on not grocery shopping, your husband spends when you send him out for medicine and milkshakes.
8. Chances are the reason you are sick is because your kids gave it to you and they expect you to take care of them - and take them to dance, come read to their class, attend their school plays, etc.
7. Your children end up watching so much TV that the annoying theme songs all get stuck in your head.
6. The bathroom we were so excited about remodeling sits unfinished and in chaos because although your husband was going to finish it this week, he's now become evening caretaker.
5. You have to call/email 25 families and announce to them that you're sick and have to cancel your obligation to them.
4. It's of course during the same week your baby breaks out in hives and you discover she's allergic to penicillin and you can't get the fast shot or cheap medicine for your strep throat because you're still breastfeeding.
3. Your poor husband goes to work looking terrible because he's been up with the baby for the last two nights - and all attempts at getting baby to sleep all night go out the window.
2. You spend so much time forcing medicine down people's throats and talking to nurses on the phone that your daughter has missed the bus twice this week.
1. In your medicine induced altered state of mental capacity, you think it's perfectly ok for a 4 year old to play with a lamp with a 75 watt bulb. In which case she succeeds in melting a large hole in the seat of the couch.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Family update

Ella and Emily are entertaining themselves with TV and preschool activities and Eden is alternating between squishing cracker crumbs into the carpet and eating them. Guess that means I have a minute to myself! We've been keeping busy, but mostly by holding a screaming 9 month old. Poor Eden has been miserable lately. We found out yesterday she has an ear infection. It was a GOOD thing there was something wrong with her - otherwise she was going to get SENT back! So hopefully she'll be back to her happy, busy self soon. She's also popped out some gigantic upper teeth and has had a cold. Here's some cute pics of her before she turned to the dark side.
Although we skipped out on carving pumpkins this year (we eventually sent the kids out to the porch with markers to decorate them!), we still participated in several fun Halloween activities. We spent a Family Night at the Bean Museum at BYU for their Halloween activities. They had a scavenger hunt, a craft and live animal shows.Emily and Ella wore their costumes to their school parties. Emily's school had a costume parade as well. Emily was Tinkerbell and Ella and Eden wore the hand-me-down fairy costumes from a couple of years ago. I made Emily this tutu and when I asked her if she like it, she said, "Yes. Because my mother made it." Who's been coaching this child?
The Friday before Halloween, we started at the local auto dealership and went trunk-or-treating. We finished just in time to go to our annual family Legacy Center Party and then dinner and activities at our house.
Luckily Fairy Eden was able to get some rest during the party!
His Idol!
For our Halloween party dinner, we had spaghetti and eyeballs, mummy fingers (from Paige - I forgot to take a picture though), wormy drink (from Jill), and a spider cake (from Lynn).
Just a word to the wise...NEVER buy a cake with black frosting!!!!!! Yes, it's absolutely adorable, but turns everyone's teeth, tongue, lips, hands, table, hair, chairs, silverware, couches, floor, couches, priceless heirlooms, etc. BLACK. (Ok, maybe I'm exaggerating a LITTLE.)
For our activities, I had cookie decorating.
Lynn played a TP mummy wrap game.
Jill played dance/freeze and Paige played pass the brain. I also sent them all downstairs to watch the Monsters vs. Aliens TV Halloween special! I hope everyone enjoyed the LAST annual Asp Halloween party! It was fun. Especially when a state trooper stopped by. Such a rowdy family we have...
On Halloween day, we started at the street a couple down from ours and went trunk-or-treating. That is TRULY the way to go trick-or-treating!! All the neighbors were out by their cars ready to hand out treats. We got a ton of candy in just about 30 minutes. One person had a soft-serve ice cream machine and another had a cotton candy machine. It was awesome. I want our ward to do that - we could be done in an hour and not have to answer the door all night! They seemed to be having fun visiting with each other as well.
We went straight from that to the traditional trick-or-treating along our street.
The girls had a ball, of course. We came back when they started to get cold. We always feel bad leaving our house vacant for awhile during trick-or-treating hours. We stuck all our old candy in a bucket on the porch, and lo and behold it was empty when we got back. At least we didn't feel as bad! Eden loved that the girls dumped out their goodies. She was ALL over that!
Ella waiting for her turn to answer the door.
Emily enjoyed sorting her candies.
A wrapped sucker in both fists.
It's too bad that mommy raided their buckets over the next week. Luckily they get tired of candy even if I don't!

Here's the girls ready for church.
Ella had a tea party with her babies!
E&E playing with our worms for preschool.
Eating "worms"!
Unfortunately, I wasn't as brave about the worms!
Steve spent Halloween painting the bathroom this pretty green. The next week he spent sanding the cupboards. It was a messy job.
Here he is modeling the color we're going to stain the cupboards.
Cute Ella wanted to go outside the first snow day. I really thought it would last about 5 minutes. But she stayed out there for about half an hour!We're learning about animals this week in preschool and the girls are enjoying the themed playroom.
Aspisms:
**Yesterday, Emily was invited to go to her friend Braydon's house. I asked Ella what she wanted to do special at home so she wouldn't be sad. She quickly replied, "Fold underwear!"
(OK, I laughed my head off, but I did understand the premise - we'd just gotten home from Walmart with a new package and she really wanted to play with them!)
**On Sunday, I was trying to keep Ella reverent during sacrament so I asked her, "Why do we eat bread?" She said, "Because the prophet wants us to eat healthy foods!"
**Ella is very cute praying for Jesus, the prophet, Bishop Morgan and Santa Claus during every prayer.
**Emily often comes home from school and tells me her day was PERFECT! Oh that makes me so happy! She just LOVES to read, she's gotten a perfect score on every spelling test, she does really well in arithmetic, is in math enrichment program and loves her teacher!
**Emily is loving her Saturday art class. Ella is loving her dance class. Although I'm getting annoyed about the hair and make-up specifications for their performances. All the other mom's are seriously taking notes, while I'm just seeing dollar signs about the products she's "recommending" we buy - including tights, Got 2 B Glued hair gel, clear plastic elastics, Mary Kay eye color and lipstick, etc. That's all on TOP of the $85 costume I had to buy!
**Eden's been having trouble at night again- surprise, surprise. Of course, she had to get sick right after we started working on getting her to stay in her bed. She has the craziest "Wookie" cry - as Steve calls it. She's very good at that weird trilling!

That's all I can remember for now. Have a great weekend!

Friday, November 6, 2009

Our home - upstairs bathroom edition

Well, I was thinking about the last 6 years and 2 months that we've lived in this home in American Fork today as I started my day of trying to declutter and clean. (It's hard to be such a pack rat!) I thought it would make a good journal entry to talk about some of the things we've done to our home. I'm going to just start in one room - the upstairs bathroom.

-Hired some mudders to fix the hole in the ceiling.
-Repainted the walls, ceiling, doors and trim.
-Replaced the non-existent towel rods, toilet paper holder and sink aerator.
-Later replaced the entire faucet.
-Replaced the rusty vent cover.
-Hired an electrician to fix the faulty outlet and install a dimmer switch while he was at it.
-Replaced the toilet tank because the lid was cracked.
-Removed the fiberglass shower walls to get to the shower plumbing.
-Hired a plumber to fix the leak behind the wall.
-Re caulked the shower walls to the wall.
-Re caulked the shower/tub.
-Replaced the non-existent shower head.

Phew... and now here's the new plans for the bathroom...

Step 1: Repaint the walls and ceiling (Walls done in a pretty light green - with a coat of primer as well to go over such a dark purple! Ceiling should be done tonight.)
Step 1.5: Replace the toilet. (Not an intended project. However hubby tightened the bolts too tight and broke the tank. Since Home Depot doesn't sell just tanks - at least at 8:59 when they are hurrying their customers out the door - we got a replacement. Me thinks Steve DID have this as an intended project since he purchased a toilet with a rating of 10 out of 10 for "Will flush any size toy your kid tried to flush down it". So, Mark, you are now invited back to our home:)
Step 2: Sand and stain the cupboards.
Step 3: Remove vinyl flooring and replace with tile. This will be our first tiling project - anyone want to help?? We're thinking Thanksgiving weekend.

Three easy steps, right? Wish us luck! (I'm wondering how many .5 steps we'll end up with!!)