Temple square lights

Well we did our annual trip to temple square, actually the same day we saw Santa. Instead of taking the train all the way down we drove to Chili's downtown and had dinner. We then hopped the train and rode to temple square from their. My pictures weren't the best, it was too cold to worry about it!

We did get a couple nice ones, but really we didn't even get over to the visitors center, it was just too cold! We had already seen the manger scene a week before when we went down during the day on a Sunday, so we didn't really miss much.

After about 30 minutes we hopped back on the train and rode to our car. We then decided to go to my favorite coffee shop, Coffee Connection, for hot cocoa (best I've found in Utah). Well, on the way to that is Banbury Cross. The most fabulous donuts in Salt lake city. We actually call it the haircut donuts place, being that it's across the street from our $5 hair cut place and we usually get donuts after hair cuts.

Well, they were closed, but when they saw us drive thru and turn around, the owner came out the side door and offered us this huge box of fresh donuts for free! It was more that we could eat! So when we got home we invited the Kofeds to come over for a donut party. The kids were in bed, so Ryan and Bethany came over, we put out kids to bed and sat around the table, adding to the holiday pounds and chatting. It was one of those really perfect nights!

A visit to Santa....

As many of you are aware, our visits to Santa are always an event all their own. Take for example the year Tyler asked, every day for a month for a train set. When the time came to see Santa (and I might add this was about 1 week before Christmas because we were idiots and didn't know any better) he jumped right up and we, as stupid first time parents of a talking child at Christmas, waited for the magic words that would in fact re-enforce the notion that we were, in fact, the perfect parents for already having gotten what he was about to say...."I want a train for Christmas".

In stead of that blessed phrase the words we heard tumbling from out child's mouth were....."I really want a rocket!" Uh....excuse us??! A ROCKET?! When have you ever seen or heard of a rocket? so the moment finished off like this...
Mom: "um, Ty honey, don't you mean a train track? Remember??!! With the train that goes by itself?"
Santa: "Oh, did you want a train?"
Tyler: "yeah, but I really want a rocket that goes (and makes a motion with his hand in the looks of a rocket taking off)"
Santa: "ok, well, I'll see what I can do!"
Mom to Dad: "What the, where the, uh, rocket? Where do you get a rocket?"

This was followed by a trip to the toy store to figure out what the heck he was talking about. It turns out that rocket started a good two years of rescue hero toys being shuffled around our house. We should have known. This was a sign of the future. It was our future.

Flash forward to Black Friday, 2008 precisely 4:47am. Alarm rings, Kelly rolls out of bed to get to Target to stand in line for the Lego Mars Mission rock climber thing Jake is dying for. Oh yeah, and the Lego coast guard tower that Tyler is dreaming of. I leave, get to Target at 5am, right on schedule, get in line, wait for 1 hour in 33 degrees because Target is the only store to carry that stupid coast guard tower and they are sold out online. I run, pushing other well meaning parents out of my way, I grab, I go, triumphant to the line, I pay and I sing.....all the way home! I have done it! I have conquered! I have gotten my children exactly what they.....AREN'T GOING TO ASK SANTA FOR!
Suspect number 1. Tyler. Sitting innocently on Santa's lap looking like a doll, telling Santa all the nice things he's done this year. And what does he say, yes you guessed it! The Lego Fire station! Of course! Because they only have it at Toys r us and they are sold out online and everywhere in the valley and out (yes I called Provo too). Except for 1 store. Toys r us in sugarhouse, 30 minutes away on a nice night with no traffic. However, it is 1 hour and 23 minutes away on a snowy night at 6pm. I would know, or rather Brian would know. :)

Suspect number 2. Now that one has innocent to a science. Look at that face. That I've been really good face. That Santa please the only thing I really want this year is....."an R2D2 watch that has the thing that does this (motions with hands) and looks like this and does that thing and you can only get it online, is that okay?"

Santa: "oh, it has the thing that does this (motions with hands)? We'll see what we can do.

Fortunately this is not sold out online. And I will say, at least we've learned. The Santa visit happened 1 1/2 weeks ago, so we had plenty of time for this sort of thing. But I do regret the hours of sleep I will never get back that fateful Friday after Thanksgiving!

A little Christmas Cheer

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Junior Jazz

Tyler has started playing basketball with the Junior Jazz this year. This is right before their first game, I think the common thought here was..."man, they look tough" in regards to the opposing team!
Tyler is number 31 this year. He's the tallest on the team, let's hope it counts for something!

Here we have Tyler and Tyler. And Tyler's dad. Yep, this is the same Tyler that appears frequently on our blog. These two are attatched at the hip during the sport season, we just sign them up together so we don't have to bribe people to put them on the same team!

Tyler is all set with his Kyle Korver socks.

Get it! He almost looks like he's thinking to himself, "Now let's see, do it kick it? No, that's soccer....guess I'd better pick it up!"

All in all it was a fun and fairly successful first game. Although they got taken for a ride by the other team, the final score was 6-4. I loved this more than soccer! More action, more yelling parents for me to blend in with. People love soccer here, but they take their basketball seriously!

Our Gingerbread House

Well we decided to go all out on our gingerbread house this year. Here it is! This masterpiece took us close to 23 hours all together. And yes those are stairs going up to the door!

This is the view from the back. Not to shabby for amateurs huh?

Yeah right! Just kidding! This is one of the beautiful houses we saw at the annual Gingerbread house festival this year! We had a blast seeing the creativity of people with too much time on their hands and no small animals and people around their house to destroy things!

I really liked these bird houses. We didn't get too many pictures of the houses because Tyler wanted to be the photographer and he doesn't take pictures like Jake does so they turned out less than useable.

They had gingerbread cookies with frosting and candy for kids to decorate, here's Ty. I think he had more candy in his cheeks than on his cookie!

Jake didn't even want to eat his, he just liked making it!

Me and my buddy.


Tall and small.

Abby update

I realized I haven't written anything about our kitten Abby. Who actually is now more of a cat. She has been tons of fun to have around. At least for me she is because she likes me!

When we first put up the tree with no lights she loved it! She was laying under it all day all the time and just being near it. Then came the day I put on the lights. She was so mad at me! She would hide in the tree so that when my hand came near to where she was she would pounce out, thru the branches and bite me. Then she went on strike and wouldn't have a thing to do with the tree for a couple of days. She finally accepted the lights and was back to sleeping under the tree the day this was taken.

This one was a weird angle, but we loved the "I ain't doin nothin" look she gave us! She was less that thrilled with the ornaments, which I was thrilled about! I was very worried she would see them all as small mouses that needed to be put in their places! She actually just ignores them all.

I'm sure she'll be less than happy when presents start showing up in her nap spot!

I liked the stretching one because it shows her assult weapons sticking out of her paws. Brian is not her favorite person, so when she's feeling fiesty or just a little cranky, she usually pops those claws out and goes looking for Brian's lap.

I think she purposely gets near him and makes him think she wants to be near him, then when he least expects it, claws in the legs!

Grateful

So today I find myself in one of those sappy, reflective moods. Not my favorite mood, too girly. But here I am, so I'm going to drag the poor, unsuspecting readers of this blog with me. I would like to take a moment and think of some of the things I'm grateful for. We'll consider this the Thanksgiving blog since I, once again, forgot to take pictures of my family on Thanksgiving.

I am grateful for.....

• Brian. Every moment of every day and all the days to come. What could I possibly say to define the depth of love and friendship we share. After all these years, to still look at him in the morning, or over dinner of cereal because I just don't want to cook, or when I see him after a long day and feel like we're the only two people who have what we have, I still feel desperately worried that forever isn't going to be long enough with him.
• Tyler and Jake. Although grateful isn't the word at 4:30am when Jake comes in all chipper wanting breakfast, I am profoundly grateful for these two little dudes. Nothing feels sweeter than two little arms when they wrap around your neck. Or soft little checks pressed against mine. I'm grateful for the laughs, for the tears, and all the mess of emotions and life in between.
• Abby the cat. What can I say? I get deep satisfaction when I'm not so thrilled with Brian and somehow my cat seems to sense the need to avenge my crankiness by clawing his legs. Abby is always there to keep us safe from flys and the occasional pipe cleaner that gets out of hand.
• My home. although small and old and cold and messy and.....oh wait, I'm being grateful here...I never realized how much a stupid piece of land would mean to me until faced with the need to leave it. And the day we reversed that decision and took it off the market was truly one of the happier "material" memories I will ever have.
• My job. Everyone should have the opportunity to serve food to complete strangers at some point in their lives. Nothing else can teach you the value of please and thank you like that can. I am grateful to relieve Brian of some of the burden of supporting a family while he continues to recover.
• My parents. I'm grateful for the best example of unconditional love and sacrifice a person could have. And for the wonderful grandparents they are.
• I'm grateful for my "corn warming bag". Little people with poor circulation should never live in places with cold winters. But if they are silly enough to do it, I hope they have a creation I like to call the corn warming bag to pop in the microwave before bed to heat up their toes and blankies before they get in.
• I'm grateful for the way a Christmas tree can make you smile and cry at once. Why is that? Is it the way the lights look heavenly? Is it the ornaments that reflect the meaning and years of our lives? Whatever the reason, I look at my tree and it moves me in a way most objects can't. I'm grateful for the chance every year to find tears in my eyes because of a fake tree.
• Friends. I've had to re-define my idea of friends over the years as time gets more crunched with kids and jobs and committees, but no matter what, they are the people that love us no matter what. I'm grateful for those people.
• I'm grateful for people everywhere who give their time, money, talents and occasionally their lives for the good of others.
• Lastly, but not least. I am deeply, eternally grateful for a loving Heavenly Father and His son, Jesus Christ. So many moments in my life are what they are because of their love. Everything I have is a result of His grace. I don't know where I would be without my Savior and His Sacrifice for me but I do know, most of the things I'm most grateful for would not be mine.

I feel better. To tell you the truth, I honestly was in the middle of a little pity party. I have to work tonight. On FHE. On Monday. when I usually don't work. The irony is my boss probably thought he was doing me a favor giving me an extra shift. And a dinner shift too. I spent a good hour trying to find someone to pick it up, to no avail.

So I hop on my blog ( you know the drill, see if an entry has magically appeared) and I scrolled down to my slide show and "my soundtrack" was playing. Now I hate to admit this, because now you'll know I'm sappy underneath, but I started watching my slide show and listening to my music and I just cried and cried....and cried. I have so much to be grateful for. what a crybaby! So I have to work one day this week that I normally don't! What am I whining about?! So now you know. This is what provoked the list. And the list is what provoked the smile on my face that was not there an hour ago. I'm grateful for my life and everything that includes, good, bad, and ugly. I hope you had a Happy Thanksgiving.

Halloween

Here's Batman! I think he's a better looking Batman than Val Kilmer, and that's tough!

Doesn't this Ninja just make you want to hum the mortal combat theme?

Ready for trick or treating at grandma's and grandpa's.

Carved Pumpkins

Okay it took me long enough! I finally have the finished product from the pumpkin patch to show you! Jake's was a quick, 10 minute clean and carve job. Tyler's was an REALLY easy clean, due to the size and fact that he's old enough to help. And suprisingly, my green pumpkin was the hardest to clean and carve! Who would have thought the skin would be 5 inches thick!

Jakey didn't like the "guts" he was willing to scoop, but the minute a drop of guts got on him, he was done!

Tyler on the other hand was running around the house singing about pumpkin guts way before we even started the process! Talk about thrilled when his large pumpkin didn't let him down and provided enough guts for ample scooping!

Look at the joy on that face.

here we are. I"m a little ragged looking. The green pumpkin was a beast to clean!

Here are the boys pumpkins. Jake just wanted a nice easy face. Tyler went for, suprise suprise...a pirate.

I decided with a green pumpkin, I'd better go Martha Stewart on that, so I carved leaves.

A word of explanation...

You may or may not have noticed I have added the song "Baby Mine" to my playlist at the bottom of this blog. And yes, you are right, that song doesn't really fit with the rest of my music on there. Let my tell you it's story, and you will get it.

When Jakey was a baby, Baby Mine was the only song I could consisitantly sing that would instantly relieve his stress and make him stop crying. I have no clue why this is. To this day, Jake just has to hear the first two words of Baby mine to get him to stop crying when he's hurt and smile when he's sad. He sings this song to his stuffed animals, his friends, and his brother. I have to say, he is way cuter when he sings it that Alison Kraus is, but I don't have the technology to get Jake's voice on here. So this song has become a regular in our household, sung at least 4-5 times a week. It only seems right that it go on the blog that is the record of our family's life.

Pumpkin Pickers!

We went to get our pumpkins yesterday at Maybe's pumpkin patch! We love, LOVE this place! It's owned by a family that lives right off the field and every year they set up the cutest places to take pictures. This year we didn't actually get too many posed pictures because it was about 49 degrees and windy. We didn't dress well for the weather, so it was a quick trip! Jake fell asleep in the car on the way there, so I got to have a little heater attatched to me for the first few minutes while I carried sleepy Jake around.

Those of you who know what kind of pumpkins are usually sitting on our porch will know that something is a little different this year! Instead of "the great pumpkin" Brian always wanders the patch looking for we have a cluster of little pumpkins. The rule in our family is, when you find the pumpkin you want, no matter what the size, if you can pick it up, you can have it. Need I say more about the picture of Brian and his pumpkin this year?!

This is how strong my Tyler is getting! He pulled me and our pumpkins in a wagon all the way down the road! We were about to hit a pumpkin so I told him to watch out and not hit the pumpkin. Jake, who had already gotten a ride from Tyler said, "Don't bother mommy, he's not very good at watching out for those!"

This was Jake's pick of a pumpkin. I love this picture! It's such a Jake face! This look pops up frequently when Jake is getting ready to say something profound!

This was Tyler's love at first sight pumpkin! He wandered the whole patch after seeing this one trying to find one he liked better. He couldn't, so we came back for the can-you-pick-it-up test. I had to give a 4 fingered assistance but he did it!

Then it took two of us to get it in the wagon! That was one big pumpkin! I think we're going to have to draw straws to figure who has to gut and carve this one!

Victory! We all found pumpkins! This little one was Brian's! We'll just have to look forward to next year for him to lift a big one for himself!

Mommy and Jakey with the pumpkins.
Yep, we still like each other!

Can anyone guess who's pumpkin this is? Doesn't it just look like something I would fall in love with?! You should see how "Kelly" this pumpkin is! If I could find a way I would preserve it and decorate all year with it! And no, I'm not going to carve it!

Here's one of the few posed pictures in the "cute" area we got.

My cuties! Jake was in the process of telling us how cold he was. It's really too bad it wasn't warmer, they have the cutest spots to take pictures!

5 things you may not know about me...

This was a tag from Christie and I love it!

5 Things I was doing 10 years ago

• Attending college at Western Washington University
• Planning a wedding to someone I hated (obviously not Brian!)
• Starting an addiction to coffee that was murder to break
• Eating 6 bowls of Rice Krispies for every meal, 8 if I was really hungry
• Buying a Golden Retriever puppy named Emily
  

5 Things on my to do list

• Go to the grocery store
• Take Jake to Preschool
• Go Visiting teaching
• Find my warming bag made with corn, my toes are freezing at night!
• Make Dinner, something with Chicken maybe...

5 Things I would do if I was a millionaire

• Pay off house
• Buy a 2008 black mustang, with leather seats, seat warmers and color changing cup holders
• Donate to the heifer fund
• Invest half of it
• Go to Buckle and buy everything I want!!

5 Places I've lived

• Bellevue Washington
• Bellingham Washington
• Midvale Utah
• West Jordan Utah
• Still here....hmm, maybe I should move!!

5 Jobs I've had

• Mommy (by far the best and hardest!)
• Proud Chili's waitress (second favorite)
• Trader Joe's
• Nanny (Worst job in the world!!! I bet that kid is a delinquent teenager now)
• Bellingham Grocery Outlet

5 People tagged

• Kecia
• Carrie Coleman
• Tanya
• Casey Vreeken
• Ashley Jameson
  

Halloween cookies

Tonight for Family Home Evening the boys and I made and decorated Pumpkin sugar cookies. This also doubled as a birthday treat for grandpa!

Jake was into the 3-D frosting effect as shown. That glob there was about 1 inch high. Yummy!
I just love watching little hands try to pick up individual sprinkles and place them on cookies. Like every one has a certain place to be.
Tyler was mister speedy froster tonight. Hence the fast knife on the left of the picture!
Tyler wanted his cookies to be Halloween sneaky, so he hid the sprinkles, so as to provide a surprise for the eater!

Airing my dirty laundry....

Actually the laundry featured in this post is clean, but whatever. This morning a lot of strange things have occurred to me, which prompt me to show you all pictures of my dirty house. This morning as I was reading through blogs I noticed some thoughts running around in my head. I started thinking, "Wow! their house is a lot cleaner than mine!" and "Oh look, they co-ordinate their kid's clothes" Until I realized, wait a minute, these are BLOG PICTURES... Of course they look good!
Then I read a blog of an old college friend, Bridgette, who recently had her youngest son pass away. She mentioned how grateful she was for how she treated him. She talks about the night before his death, how she and her husband were able to spend extra time with their son, without worrying about sending him to bed. I was so grateful for these tender insights into their life. It reminded me that it really doesn't matter what my house looks like. The reason it looks like this is because I have a sick child right now, and to me holding him while he feels terrible is more important than seeing my living room floor. Life really is so short and in the end of it all, when my children are gone, I will have a clean house, folded clothes, updated blogs, and a weeded garden. Right now, I'm going to enjoy the moments I have with these precious little boys. They are growing so fast!
This doesn't give me permission to live in a pig stye, but I think it gives me ample permission to let it go. I would rather have happy, loved children then a show house. So to the moms everywhere, let's let it go a little more. Just choose to put down the cleaner and build a lego house, watch scooby doo, play barbies (okay that was excessive, I wouldn't play barbies if my life depended on it), we can clean tomorrow, the mess is kind enough to wait for us.