11/30/10

I am glad the weekend is over

That is probably not something you hear anyone say.
But this weekend has really been rough.
It started good on thursday, we made a quick trip to Idaho to have Thanksgiving dinner with grandma and grandpa Winward, and Tom and Lori. Thomas and Grayson grabbed onto grandma Winward almost immediately, demanding all her attention. They were in love :) LOL we had to rush back home after lunch, though, because Walmart never sleeps, and Tyson had to be to work by 4pm. (gotta get all those trucks loaded)
(- when Thomas and I went to WM on Wed for grocery shopping, they were hard at work unloading boxes and pallets all over the store. I asked Thomas if he knew where all the boxes came from and he yelled "THE DC" (distribution center - where daddy works) he is such a smart kid!)

Thomas and Grayson were a little edgy from sitting in the car for the long(er) drive, so to keep them happy for the rest of the evening, we put the christmas tree up. they helped me decorate it with colored lights, candy canes, stars and jingle bells. And then they "ooh"ed and "ahh"ed over it for the rest of the night.

Grayson woke up around 3 am and started throwing up. He was sick for about 12 hours, and was able to finally keep stuff down around 3 in the afternoon. by 3 am that night - i was throwing up, presumable from taking care of him all day. I was feeling a little better by about 6pm saturday night, and by 7pm, Tyson was sick.
I will count my blessings that we each got it one at a time, instead of all at once - that would have totally sucked. And I will also count my blessings that Thomas didn't get it at all. he did go to bed early twice, which had me worried that he would be next, but I think we kept him distanced from us well enough that he didn't get whatever it was we were all carrying.
I took the boys to church by myself on sunday. We didn't make it to sacrament meeting, because it had been snowing, so I had to be the one to go shovel the driveway (and move the blockade pile the snowplow pushed in front, making it impossible to get out), and get the suv all swept down (I used our large pushbroom). Then I had to go inside and get cooled down from all the unexpected exercise, and get myself dressed for church, and looking like I hadn't just ran a marathon - )bright red face and all sweaty).
Tyson was feeling a bit better by the time we got home from church.
Monday was filled with getting the house back to some order - like finding juice boxes spilled in the toy room from the time I had given Grayson a drink, but hadn't had the energy to watch what he did with it until 2 days later, and picking up the tissues from all the nose blowing, and coughing, and the books and toys the boys dragged from the playroom to one of us on the couch in the living room to read or play with them, as we lay in our "death" pose.
So now it's tuesday. Things can get better and back to normal now. It will be December tomorrow!!!! The start of the Christmas season! I am doing that Journal Your Christmas I mentioned before. It will give me prompts for everyday - something to think and blog about, and something to spark creativity and my photography to capture our celebrations this year.
So far the only decorations we have up are the tree, and the Fisher Price nativity. I would really like the house to be more festive looking, but I think I am a little intimidated by my brand new walls. I don't really want to poke unnecessary holes in them. And I am not sure what will look good where... i also don't have much, since I kept decorating to a bare minimum in our tiny aprtment, and since I fear Thomas's curiosity and reach...
anyway, it's weird because tomorrow will be the middle of the week already. Then the weekend can come again. Only this time, I am praying for a good one.

11/20/10

Family Picture day


the cold wintery weather couldn't hold out one more weekend. Next time we are taking our family photo in the summer LOL.

Our appointment was scheduled for 2 pm - but we decided to move up the time to 11, in hopes that we could beat the icky stormy stuff. The storm actually woke me up at 5am with all the howling winds and beating rain. I just kept my hopes up that we wouldn't have to cancel. It got calm around 8:45 am (: , but around 10 another storm moved in ): At 11, the sky was threatening, but we stayed dry for a few minutes at least. The boys were cute dispite the cold, windy and drizzly weather. Grayson was not as happy as I hoped, and Thomas was his usual self (active) - but I think our photographer got some good shots. I can't wait to see them and share them!!!

we were supposed to go to mantua campgrounds, for the lovely scenery there, but since weather things were too "iffy" we just did it in a lovely backyard nextdoor to her house. I wanted the NATURE look for our background, so it worked perfectly!! :)

it wasn't my intention to have our family photo so late in the year. I just didn't start looking into pro-photographers until it was too late. It is tough picking just the right one - and by then they were getting all booked up. But I adore the gal we got! She was great with us, she worked around our schedule, and the lousey weather. And I will probably use her again (in about 2 years. by then we will have baby #3 to complete the photo). and I haven't even seen the photos yet. I can't wait!

11/13/10

cookin in the kitchen

At the end of the day, Tyson asked if I felt like I'd spent my entire day in the kitchen. I said "yes", and he said "that is because you did."
my morning started out with washing all the dishes that I let stack up this week (I was extremly tired, no matter how much sleep I got). Then I proceeded to dirty pretty much every pot and pan all over again. I baked several pound of chicken, and then diced it all up and stuck it in the freezer. It really cuts down on my meal prep later. Then I made blueberry muffins for breakfast. The boys ate them, but they didn't WOW - so I will not be using that recipe again. Then I made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (some for us, some for another family I took dinner to later in the day), I made pumpkin pies (for YW in Excellence tomorrow night), and I made lunch for my family.
After Grayson's nap, we went to the local park and raked up leaves and then took them home to add to my compost pile. Is it silly that composting makes me so excited and happy? LOL.
Then it was back to cooking. I made dinner to take, and dinner for us.
To finish off the day, we watched "How to Train your Dragon", and it was nice to sit and relax.

11/12/10

this would make a great gift!!!

http://www.treehousemuseum.org/membership_benefits.php
a membership to the cool Ogden Treehouse Museum for Kids!

How neat is that? it doesn't clutter up the house, but is great for the kids!

OR here:
http://www.dinosaurpark.org/

11/11/10

countdown to christmas

I am already getting into the christmasy mood. I had the Young Women's newletter to work on for Dec. and it just begged me to turn on the Christmas music to get into the right spirit for writing a little spiritual thought for it.

Then I saw a facebook post from a scrapping friend for a fantastic project called "Journal Your Christmas" http://www.shimelle.com/classes/841/an-online-scrapbooking-class-for-the-holidays-journal-your-christmas/ so I got signed up for this class. And the online forum for it is already hopping, so I am starting to get my scrapping supplies ready. At first I just signed up to use the daily prompts to blog thru christmas - but the more I get into it, the more I am excited about creating it into an album as well. We'll see how far I can actually get. This will be our first christmas in our brand new home. That is scrap worthy all in itself.

But before I get started on my album, I needed to "warm up" my creativity a little bit. I still haven't gotten back into the swing of things, eventhough I was so excited when I got my scrappy desk, I just didn't have the energy to get to it. So I have made a countdown calendar.

I found the idea online. It uses a mini muffin tin as the base, and I just made simple squares to cover each hole. I used old fridge manets on the back (you know the kinds with ads for businesses on them).

I remember the advent calendars we used to get when we lived in Europe that had chocolates behind each day - this is the same. You can put whatever you want (that will fit) behind each day. I was thinking of an ornament behind each day, that the boys cpuld put on the tree. But that would involve finding 24 ornaments, so I probably won't do that this year. It could also have a scripture about the christmas story and the savior to look up and read. I have a list of scriptures if anyone is interested, I could post it, or e-mail it.

so here is what it looks like so far -- I still need to put the numbers on it. I haven't decided how I want to do that yet. And I also can't decide if I want it to count DOWN from 24 to 1, so Thomas will know how many days are LEFT until christmas -- or if it will just be the dates of the month 1 to 24 (Christmas Eve.) - I might do it the latter way, and then on the inside do more number for how many days that leaves left....




11/9/10

fun weekend part 3

on saturday we drove up to Preston for the Owen family party - an early start on the holidays and Grandma Owen's birthday. it was good for my kids to meet more of their owen cousins. and they had a lot of fun.

and now blogger won't let me upload any photos --- check back in a while.................................
I'm back -- to try again.....
I am having trouble getting the photos in a sensible order - but you get the idea, right???













The lunch was a soup cook off. So we got to sample 8 different soups and then we voted on our favorites. That was a lot of fun!!










On Monday for our family night, we took the boys to see Despicable me in the theater. It's not easy to get our boys to sit for long periods of time, but it was still a cute movie, and they had fun, so it was worth it. Thomas didn't ask for popcorn, instead he wanted a cup of ice. They had that cool kind, that's like little shaved ice balls. but they charged us a dollar (WHAT???) for it - oh well, cheaper than the popcorn would have been. LOL

fun weekend part 2

I love this smile.    (it's hard to capture)

 the computer is making them all fuzzy :(

             "cheese"
                           He's HOLDING STILL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 I wanted him to say something besides "cheese", so he wanted to say Grandma - and he also did it in sign launguage.
 trying hard to capture those EYES - my shutter is not as fast as Thomas's shiftiness LOL
(the scar on Thomas's face is from him playing with a sprinkler in the backyard, and what happened was he stepped on it, and it whipped up and stung him in the kisser (like stepping on a rake handle) - it's fading well, and I hope it will be invisible in 2 weeks when we have a pro photographer taking our family pics)


after our trip to the park, we grilled hamburgers on the grill (probably the last time we will grill this year).  and then we had a movie night.  We watched Furry Vengence - which was cheezy and I laughed a lot.  It didn't hold Thomas's attention like we had hoped, but Grayson (after he woke up from passing out at the dinner table, cuz he refuses to nap at nap time anymore) -- Grayson got a big kick out of all the animals
We made sweet popcorn for our first family movie night.
Here is the recipe:


Ingredients


2 (3 1/2 oz) packages Microwave popcorn

3 tbsp Butter

3 tbsp Water

1 cup Sugar

Preparation

1. Prepare popcorn and pour into large bowl

2. Melt butter in pan on medium heat; add water and sugar. Bring to boil; boil about 3 minutes

3. Remove from heat and pour half of mixture over popcorn. Stir to thoroughly combine. Add remaing sugar mixture; toss to combine.

 
it turned out really, really good :)

next family movie night I am going to attempt white chocolate popcorn :D

Our fun weekend part 1

Tyson checked his calendar at work, and there was only one Friday in the year left to request the day off.  So he took it. 
So Friday we had a fun family day after Thomas got home from school.  His teacher sends him home with a note, so I know how his behavior was.  He brought home a "good day" note, so we really wanted to let him know that made us happy, so we took him to the park.  I loved trying to get some good photos of the boys, the light was great, and the playground was a fun back drop.  And  I actually got a few cute ones out of a hundred or so. LOL.


he can climb like a monkey :)

 merry go round
 "blahhhhhh"
 the space bubble
 slides

 "blow flowers"
 He is learning that you don't put them in your mouth to blow on them.
 the boys like to wear their cowboy hats on wagon rides, so the sun doesn't shine in their eyes so much.

OK, well, dang blogger will only let me do half the pictures, so we'll do more posts just to show our fun weekend.

11/1/10

Mom's Halloween Birthday Carnival!





























Mom's partys are always SO much fun - and we always have too much food :)