crazy hair day at school

what more can I say?

random things

The past few mornings we have been making puffy oven pancakes experimenting with different fillings. This day we tried apples, we have also done peaches and chocolate chips.

Time to break out the halloween clothes! I got this shirt and pants at Walmart last year after Halloween for $1.00 each! Score!!

Danny picked her own outfit. Do you love the halloween shirt with hawaiian shorts? I do!

We took a stroll down 25th street and let the girls sit on all the horse statues, Dan loved it! After a nice evening stroll it's fun to pop in to Great Harvest and get some yummy warm bread!

My beautiful mums in full bloom....along with about 40 million bees. They especially love the orange ones for some reason. We can't sit on our little bench anymore because there are so many bees. I guess that's a good thing right? You know, the whole bee shortage thing and all.

ECHO

I'm just gonna totally copy what everyone else is talking about this time of year.....this time of year! I love, love, love it! What could be better than just right weather? I'm a little gleeful rightnow, Nanny is feeling better and life seems just plain normal. Yesterday was Nanny's first day back to school in almost two weeks. The day was great (not because Nanny was gone, I really enjoyed having her home with me) because there was some routine to it. I felt pretty good and that always helps. We had a nice morning, the girls played with each other and I did five loads of laundry. Not only did I wash the clothes but I put them away too! I felt like I had to wash everything in the house to get rid of Nanny's cooties, that meant everyone's sheets, every child blanket, all 25 of them, all the towels, and of coarse the dirty clothes. Dant had a little lesson with screaming bloody murder today. Something set her off and I decided to totally ignore her really annoying behavior. She literally walked around the house screaming in my direction for a good twenty minutes, I pretended I didn't even see her. This continued as we drove sissy to school and back home. I had to put cotton in my ears to get through the ordeal, I thought her punishment would be the sore throat and laryngitis she had when she was done. After 35 minutes of this she was exhausted and I calmly told her if she would like to speak to me in a nice voice that I would listen to her. Not to sound too evil, but it totally worked out great for me because the poor little thing was all tuckered out and I was able to put her down for her nap early. Big one at school + little one in bed = mommy getting lots and lots of stuff done! By the time she woke up and Nanny got home I felt totally rejuvenated and ready to be fun, happy mom again. The girls and I had a fun evening getting our fall/Halloween decorations out. The little neighborhood girls joined in the festivities and had fun trying on the new halloween wigs I got on clearance last year. It was a really good day and I just can't say enough how much I love this time of year. I think Joey was right in her last blog, I think our sweet mama is up in heaven ordering some extra perfect days for us. Thanks mom, we love you!!

Happy fall everyone:)

Beauty and the Beast

Beauty is the beautiful flowers my girls had fun picking from my yard. We had fun mixing flowers to make beautiful creations. Mums, marigolds and petunias, when put together make lovely flowers.


Beast is the horrible virus that has taken refuge in my baby's body. Last wednesday Nanny came down with a fever, thursday a sore throat was added. By friday she added swollen gums to the combo. After a trip to the doctor we found out she has a nasty virus called herpangina. I believe the doctors exact words were "you have a horrible weekend ahead of you". She explained all about the lovely mouth sores that were to come next, boy she wasn't kidding. Poor Nanny! You absolutely can not believe the condition of her mouth. Her tongue, cheeks, gums and lips are covered in REALLY BIG canker sores. I have never seen a better sport in my whole life, she is really taking it like a champ. There is nothing to do but wait this thing out because it is a virus. On the bright side she gets all the ice cream and popsicles she wants, she even has prescription suckers that numb the inside of her mouth. I was going to take a picture of the inside of her mouth, but I didn't wanna gross y'all out.

After the Bronco game

Last Sunday after church Kerry's family came over to partake of our famous game day nachos and oh yeah, the Bronco game. After the game Kaden and I were talking about frogs(don't ask why, I can't remember) and I told him there were tons of frogs to be caught at our river. They had never been to our river and I was only too happy to show it off. I feel pretty lucky to live so close to such a beautiful place. A block to the east of us is a river and a paved trail that runs along side of it, you can also see beautiful photos of our river on Perlas blog.

Near the river there is a swamp covered by a bridge. The baby cousins(Dan Dan and Korbin) enjoyed their view of the swamp from the nice safe bridge!

If you look under the bridge you will find trolls.....or Nanny and London

You will also find a nine year old boy who is determined to find a frog friend.

After a little trying, a frog is found.

Warning: The next part is not for animal lovers. After all the little kids got a chance to ooh and awe over the cute little frog we decided it needed to go back to it's home. Kaden tossed it back in the swamp and luck was not with the frog. There is one little log in the swamp and I'll be darned if that frog didn't land right on it. Actually his little head kind of bumped it on the way to the water, and no Kaden did not do it on purpose. Below is a picture of the poor little floating frog. We're not sure if he was just stunned or resting in peace, we're hoping for the former! You might have to look really hard to see our floating friend seeing he blends right in with the scenery, you might even have to double click it!!

After the trauma of the frog we walked down the path that leads to the river. Below are some cute twins with some even cuter little girls on their shoulders

Oh, and how precious is this?

I think this is where a river runs through it, I'm not sure.

This was the cutest couple on the river walk that night. How lucky you are to see them!


Happy trails to you!!!!!!!!!!!!

ROCKSTAR!

Nanny and I took a little shopping trip to Old Navy and got her some snazzy new boots. When I asked her what she thought about her new boots she said "they're cool, I look just like a rock star"!

Just right!

This week in Kindergarten Nanny is learning about colors. The teacher sent home a paper on monday detailing which colors would be learned which days. As parents we were supposed to make sure our kids wore the right color of clothes on the right day. Tuesday was gray,white and black day. Wednesday was red and yellow day and today is BLUE AND ORANGE day. Do any of you know my husband at all? Can you say biggest Denver Broncos fan in the world? Nanny was pretty stoked about wearing her Bronco outfit daddy got her last year when he went to a game. She looked so darn cute I just had to take pictures!! Of coarse.

This is mommy's idea for a pose

This is Nanny's idea for a pose

Finally, my turn to gush!

After a horrible week without my computer it is time to blog and blog I must. My cute little five year old started Kindergarten this week and pictures must be posted! Last week I started getting stupid pop-ups on my computer saying I had a virus and they wanted to get rid of them. Well, the pop-ups proclaiming they wanted to rid my computer of it's virus was the virus! Ahhh, I know most of you out there have husbands who are pretty good with computers, my husband is really cute but barely knows how to turn on the thing. This means it was up to me to solve the problem. Yes, I spent hours on the phone with a man from India named "Chuck". I'm pretty sure his real name was not Chuck, I could barely understand him because of his thick accent. After paying Chuck with McAfee $70.00 to remove the virus I was ready to go, unfortunately my computer wasn't. The virus had crashed everything on my computer and it still wouldn't work. Kerry's friend Nate took pity on us and took our computer home to fix everything. Yay thanks Nate!! Anyway, yesterday I sat down to load all of my adorable pictures onto my computer and my camera software wasn't installed anymore, holycow what next. I'm happy to say I've reinstalled it and I'm back in business. Now to the good stuff.

Nanny was so cute walking into my old Kindergarted room, it's so fun having her go to the same elementary school I went to. I'm proud to call myself a former Roadrunner! She just seemed so darn big, she is pretty independent anyway most of the time. It's so nice when she's independent with things like this, there were no tears, no "mommy please don't leave me". That would have made it hard. The first day I picked her up, but the next day she was ready for the bus. The bus won't take her but it will bring her home. I asked a couple of the bigger neighbor girls to help her out on the bus to make sure she knew which stop to get off. She looked so big walking with the group of kids, and also very proud! She loves her teacher and recess. Do you know they don't give them milk anymore? I distinctly remember having a cart of milk rolled in when I was in Kindergarten. Hmmm, anyway so far she is loving it and Danny is not. She's pretty devestated sissy gets to go have fun for three hours a day while she is stuck with boring mommy. It's funny when a milestone like this approaches it really does make you sit back and think about how quickly the time flies by. It makes candy land and hungry hungry hippos matter a little bit more. It really does make me want to put the vacuum away for later and read more alphabet mystery books. Before I know it they'll be in highschool and wont be asking me to play games with them, that does make me sad to think about. I better be fun now so they'll always want to hang out with me!!

front door picture (we couldn't leave best friend Chewy out of the picture)

Nanny standing next to her coat hook

Nanny sitting on her name tag on the floor

this was the cutest thing. Nanny came out the first day holding hands with this girl. When I asked her who her new friend was she was like "I didn't ask her her name".

Nan and Dan at McDonalds celebrating the first day of Kindergarten.

Now and Then

Ok, so I'm feeling a little bad about my "rant". I really do love all of my kids friends and I really am happy they live by us. I know it would be different if I had good health and if the kids were a little bit older. Most of the kids that come over are four and under so it is more like running a daycare center at this point. I thought I would put some of the cute pics of the girls and their friends up just so you can all see how cute they are.

I know first hand how important and special it is to have childhood friends. After all, I still have many of mine. I think it's great that I can get together with friends I've had since the age of five and watch our kids play. I'm so lucky to still be close to so many of my friends. Lots have moved away and one is in heaven, but I still feel very lucky to have had so many friends as a child. I had a million pictures to choose from, but I thought I'd better not put everyone to sleep with my slide show so I just chose a couple.

we loved kmarts photo booth, I have a zillion of these!

Amber and me in Las Vegas 1990

part of "the gang" Sherry,Jamie,Amy,Rachel.Tami,Tiffany,Amber,Annette,my thumb 1989

Tami and me in our gawkiness 1988

Amy and me 1989

me,Annette, and Rachel in Amy's room 1988

me and Amber in our pool. 80's?

Amy and me at Crystal Springs early 80's

Annette,Rachel,Tami,me,Amber Rachel's house 2008

More Ovaltine please!

Ok, so here's my rant for today. This rant may be about me or commercials, I'm not even sure. Lets start here....
I'm not the kind of mom who relishes in having the whole neighborhood in my house at once. Does that make me bad? I just keep thinking of the commercials from when I was little. You know like the Ovaltine one where all the kids come running into the kitchen screaming "we want ovaltine". The mother very kindly smiles and immediately starts preparing the desired drink. I am so not that mother! Or the one that's on TV rightnow for Totinos pizza rolls, you know the one where the kid punches a hole through the kitchen wall because he's too lazy to walk into the next room to get them. There's no way I'd smile to myself and say "ok"! Or do y'all remember the one where the kid spills punch or something on the carpet and the mom smiles and says "that's okay"! You know she's totally down with it because she's got resolve carpet cleaner to remove the stain. I am the mother that gets frazzled every time the kids have friends over because I spend the whole time refilling drinks, refereeing fights or telling them to close the front or back door. I love that there's literally a friend for my girls in every house on our street, BUT I don't love them all in my house. Truth is I love them at someone else's house! I was going to say I don't even mind it when they're all in my yard, but that's not even true. I always end up outside helping someone get off and on the tramp three hundred times or getting drinks for every thirsty kid out there. Worst of all is when the friends come running in my house to tattle on the other friends and I end up outside telling neighbor 1 to be nice to neighbor 2. By now you're totally thinking "this woman is pure evil and shouldn't even be allowed to have children" right? I think I'm just having a hard mommy day today. It's not the first and it certainly won't be the last!
P.S. I am not endorsing or dissing on any of the above products, I'm sure they're just great.

staycation sequals, shots, and other fun things!

So where should I start? Sequal, shots or fun things. Ah, lets just mix it up a little just for fun!

Last wednesday evening I had the pleasure of spending the evening with three pretty fun ladies. This is really one of my very favorite things to do, laugh the night away with Pam, Joan and Peggy. Mom used to be part of the group, and if I know her, still is! What's so fun about being with these "older" ladies is that you actually feel younger. You can laugh like you did when you were twelve, you know the kind of laughter that makes your face hurt or your side split. Pam always has fun new games that I've never heard of. We played walk the dog and sneaks. Sneaks was actually just like playing spoons but it had fancy cards and little plastic sneakers to grab instead of spoons. Peggy and Joan had never played spoons before and it was hilarious playing until they finally got the hang of it. Sorry Peggy but here is where I make fun of you a little!! Peggy won the first round and therefore grabbed the first sneaker, she wasn't quite sure what to do next. Ok, so I guess I have to make fun of myself a little bit too. Here's what happened....Peggy grabs the first sneaker and on the ball Pam grabs the second. Joan and I are still diligently passing cards to the left because we're oblivious that shoes have been snatched. Well, Peggy seeing that Joan and I are still playing starts passing cards too. I guess she thought she'd go for another four of a kind and grab the last sneaker on the table. Pam was laughing so hard I thought she'd fall right off her chair! Well as if that wasn't funny enough, Peggy starts winning every hand. I mean every single hand played. I'm like "what's up with that, how can you win every single hand?" She proudly turns over her cards and says "see I got four greens." Well, it was a little bit dark on Pam's patio and Peggy actually had 2 green and 2 brown cards! How many hands did she have mixed colors and grab a sneaker? It was hilarious. Well the comedy ensued when Pam and Joan both proceeded to grab sneakers with mixed colored hands. What's so funny about this is last July (refer to last July's post if you wish) we played dominoes out on Pam's patio at dusk and the same thing happened. The "older" ladies kept trying to match up purple dominoes with brown, green, blue or whatever other color they liked. I'm just saying. Next year let's bring out a lamp! Anyway, that was dang fun and long overdue.

Onto the shots. Friday morning Nanny had her kindergarted dr appt. You know the one where they get FOUR shots. I made Kerry take her because I had just taken Dan Dan to get hers last week. How much trauma can a mommy go through? Right after her dr. appt we all headed up to Logan for another staycation. This one was great because the hotel pool was open and we made it to continental breakfast! That one's for you Nanny! It really was fun, we had pizza at Firehouse pizza for lunch then headed to Willow Park. I hadn't been there since the good old days of being in the Riverdale 1st ward. We used to go to Bear Lake as a ward every year when I was young. We would stop at Willow Park and eat breakfast on the way. The girls liked Willow Park a lot. I know they don't have nearly as many animals as Hogle but I liked it because it is so shady and flat there and not too big. Nanny was quite the invalid because of her shots. I only brought the single stroller (stupid me) and she and Dan fought over it the whole time. We finally decided Nanny really deserved it because her poor little legs were so sore. After the park we headed to the Bluebird cafe for some yummy chocolates. We couldn't resist sitting at the old fashioned soda bar first to share a sundae. Yummy!! The highlight of the day was swimming at the hotel pool. We had it all to ourselves! Mommy had fun showing off for the girls. I know a couple tricks from growing up with a swimming pool. Good times. There seemed to be plenty of chlorine in the pool because when we got out Kerry's swim suit was five shades lighter and Nan's swimsuit no longer had purple hearts on it. Holy cow, I'm not kidding you. Their swimsuits literally looked like they had been washed with a whole bottle of bleach!

When we told people we were going to Logan for staycation everyone, I mean everyone said we just had to eat at Cafe Sabor. Ok, ok just leave us alone. We'll try it. And we did, ya they had really good chili rellenos, which is my new love. Their chili verde which I'm also a connoisseur of was not so good. All in all, it was good but Nanny was dramatically lying across three chairs nursing her sore legs and Dan filled her diaper early in the meal and as a result could not sit down. We slept off and on through the night. I had Dan in my bed and Kerry had Nan in his. Both girls throw pretty good punches in their sleep, and they talk jibberish too. After continental breakfast we went to the Gossner cheese store and bought the girls some flavored milk. Nothing better than rootbeer milk, eh? One more stop at Willow Park and we were ready to head home. Another successful family staycation. It's quite a miracle for me to be able to do things like this so I am really grateful to be writing about it rightnow!

Joan, Pam & Peggy playing walk the dog