The Bricker's

Valentines Day

2012-02-16T06:00:00.000-07:00

We had the BEST valentines this year! We kicked our celebrations off the weekend before Valentines with a 'couples only' party-best. thing. EVER! My friend Tess and I decided we needed a night out and thought since it was valentines it would be okay if our husbands tagged along...and then we decided it should just be a party! I took care of the decorating and she took care of the games and we both helped with the food. We opted not to have it be a dinner party because we wanted to do it later at night, so we mainly just did appetizer type things and dessert.

I know the big ol' crockpot in the back sorta throws off the pretty red and pink vibe, but it housed bacon wrapped smokies so all was forgiven. :)

We invited 6 couples which was just the perfect amount of people to have it be fun and loud and crazy, but intimate enough that we could play games and really enjoy each others company.

And of course, what Valentine party would be complete without a little '7 minutes in heaven'???? And yep, you know that was my idea!

We made it totally old school, with a backdrop for pictures and everything for all the dates to get a shot in front of (including having a professional cameraman take our pictures-Tess's dad :) This picture is just from my camera tho cause we don't have ours back yet.) We also took a group shot in the form of a 3 level pyramid. Awesome. I am DYING to see it as we had 2 pregnant women on board!! ha ha!

After talking and eating we played The Newlywed Game and Tess's mom was our host. Funniest thing EVER!!! My cheeks hurt so bad from laughing so hard. We are SO lucky to have such great friends as neighbors, this was such a blast! In this picture, the couple on the left, Kayla is trying to explain why she answered a question a certain way and Caleb is shaking his head in disbelief...we saw this a lot. ha ha!

These two in the back were crying they were laughing so hard.

*And just in case you're wondering...Bobby and I totally lost. We got a total of 2 questions right.
1. Within 3, how many pairs of shoes does your wife own?
-I said 15, he guessed 12.
2. What is the first thing your husband will say he noticed about you the first time he met you?
-Let's just say...he got this right. such a man.

Moving on...

The next game we played was pictionary and we played boys against girls, and they CREAMED us!

Bobby was on FIRE, guessing almost every single one of the guys pictures within seconds of them drawing it on their board. I mean he actually guessed 'Kentucky Blue Grass' with a squiggle of grass drawn in 10 seconds and was right! Who is this man I married?! And where was he during the Newlywed game when he was on my team?!?!

Seriously one of the top 10 best nights I've ever had! Maybe I need to get out more. :)

On Valentines day, the littles woke up to a little Cupid mischief! Rose petals everywhere, treats, love notes, pink milk and a fun breakfast! (the little birdhouses on the table I made for them earlier this month and we've used them to slip love notes in every morning...you can read more about them here.) The roses on the table were given to Kylee and I from our boys the day before because the Bobs was afraid they might die in the car overnight before we got them. :) The red one is mine from Bobby, and the yellow one is for Kylee from Tyler. I'm not typically a flower type girl (well I LOVE flowers, I'd just rather spend the $ on something else) but I just love our tradition of one simple rose.

Cupid's arrow from heart shaped pancakes with sprinkles and cut up bananas.

This particular morning, I left the love notes in their 'love shacks' and Bobby wanted to leave them a note also so he left them on their plates...

In case you can't read it, it says...
"Tyler, I {love} you because you are becoming my little man. You are getting so tough someday soon you will be able to beat daddy. {love} dad."
*complete with drawings of a knife, a rocket-ship and a gun. SERIOUSLY!! I about died. Do you want him to "beat" you or kill you?

Thankfully Kylee's was slightly less dramatic...

In case you can't read it, it says...
"Kylee, I love you because you are sweet and loving when I need you, and tough and crazy when Tyler needs a whooping. {love} dad."

During breakfast Tyler's pre-school teacher called to say she had to cancel school that day because her kids were sick. Tyler was seriously bummed because they were supposed to be having a valentines day party-which they made up yesterday-but when you're that excited about something it's hard to wait!! So I let him play a little game on my phone to cheer him up.

Yep, Angry Birds. He is obsessed and flies through the levels. I don't even know how the game is played. Silly boy.

Later that day, the kids helped me make these cute Valentine Chocolate dipped Oreos for some neighbor gifts. I got the idea from Lolly Jane-and I love how they turned out! And they are soooo yummy!

I boxed them up in little treat boxes (I got them from JoAnns), tied a bow on and added the tag (free printable from Lolly Jane.) -easy peasy!

That night we did our traditional homemade heart pizzas! I looove cooking with the kids and watching them get their hands dirty and having fun-Bobby was going crazy! He kept saying, "but they're getting flour everywhere Angela!" ha ha. I guess it just has something to do with me being with them all day and watching them constantly getting dirty with something!

They just used a cookie cuter to shape their pizzas.

They have pretty simple taste when it comes to pizza. Sauce and cheese for Tyler. Sauce, cheese and pepperoni's for Kylee.

So cute!

The front of her shirt was absolutely covered in flour, but I have no idea how so much ended up on the back of her!

They were happy with how their pizzas turned out!

And we polished off our pizzas with some mini cupcakes! Yum!

As the kids were heading off to brush their teeth, we heard a knock at the door and found a note from Cupid sending them on a scavenger hunt to find their present from him! Absolutely the best part of the ENTIRE day! We just did the same scavenger hunt as last year so you can find it here if you're interested, but they loved it just as much as they did last year and it was a perfect way to end the day!

I hope your Valentines was everything you hoped it would be too! (To read a little more about some of the things we did for Valentines this month check it out here)

January 2012

2012-02-02T06:00:00.000-07:00

I've already blogged about some of the bigger things that have happened this month, but here are some of the other things we've done throughout Jan...

Actually, first, I found quite a few pictures on my phone from December that never got posted so here's a little more re-cap from December! :)

Kylee and I needed to do some Christmas shopping and since Tyler DESPISES shopping (like literally goes into seizures when we pull up to any store) I always have to get my shopping done while he's at pre-school. We were at the mall and Kylee needed a little break to play with some of the toys.

Kylee's dance class did a small dance performance for a retirement home in our area for Christmas. She did SO great-even though her wand broke halfway through their routine! ha ha!

They weren't quite all on the same page during the dance but it was so stinkin' cute and those little old grandmas just ate them up!

Kylee's dance teacher Mrs. Ruth and all her students.

One night when Bobby and I were out doing some Christmas shopping for the kids we stopped at our favorite Chinese Restaurant for dinner. They made the coolest things out of vegetables on our plates!!

Things like this just make me ridiculously happy!!! I'm pretty easy to please I guess :)

One of my most FAVORITE projects that I made last year were some Christmas aprons for the kids. I had NO idea what I was doing, didn't use a tutorial or a pattern, or find them online anywhere and I just loved how they turned out. I didn't ever have time to post them here or on my craft blog, so I'll guess you'll just have to wait till this Christmas to see the front of them, but for now here's a little sneak peak :).

In Jan. our time for church changed from 9:00 am to 1:30 pm. Each time has it's pluses and minuses, but we are loving sleeping in, making fun yummy breakfast's, taking our time getting ready and relaxing. The kids love getting some reading time in with their daddy!

On Saturday Jan. 21st Bobby and I headed down to Salt Lake for the day to go see Brian Regan LIVE! It was one of the Christmas presents I gave to Bobby, and we can both honestly say it was the BEST weekend we've had since we went to Vegas for our 5th Anniversary almost 3 years ago (and even quite possibly better than that)!!

The weekend before this was Kylee's birthday and Mindy, Macey and Royce had come up from Springville to celebrate with us. I had offered to keep Macey for the whole following week after Ky's party so Mindy and Royce could have some time together and get some things done around their house. Since we would be coming down the next Sat. to this concert we decided to meet up in Salt Lake where they would pick up Macey and take our kids for the day, and we would drive down to Springville to pick them up later that night.

Mindy, however, knows me too well and knew I was in need of a little weekend alone time with my hubby and hi-jacked our kids for the night and told us they would bring them back up to Logan Sunday night. It really just made the whole weekend PERFECT!!

First on Saturday we stopped at The Red Iguana in Salt Lake for some lunch after reading some reviews online and OH. MY. GOSH. if you are ever in Salt Lake you HAVE to go to this place! It's a total hole in the wall kinda place and after seeing it, we actually drove away because it looked so trashy from the outside and is in a not so good part of town, but we got brave and decided What the heck?!
AhMAZing!
Bobby got the Enchiladas...

...and I wasn't super hungry so I got an appetizer of Super Nachos. Big mistake. Delish.

Then we headed over to The Gateway-an outdoor mall (never mind that it was snowing like CRAZY!!) to do some 'window' shopping which turned into actual shopping when we saw the Going Out of Business-everything 80% OFF sign on Payless's windows. $130 dollars worth of stuff for $27. Score!

The show started at 3:00 so we got to Abravanel hall at about 2:00. We took this picture about 30 min. before the show started and by 3:00 EVERY seat was full. Totally sold out show!

And yes we were in the very last row...that's the wall behind us. :)

If you haven't heard of Brian Regan, he is a comedian that is HI-Larious! Seriously, look him up on YouTube and watch some of his clips, you will LOVE LOVE LOVE him! He is clean and doesn't swear at all, so I love that you don't have to ever worry you'll hear something offense. It was 2 hours of pure laughing!! His last joke of the show, we were literally-both of us-laughing so hard we were full on crying, couldn't breathe, stomach cramping kind of laughing. I'm almost 100% positive I haven't laughed that hard since high school. I'm a true believer that laughter is SO good for the soul!!

After the show we went back over to the gateway to check out some more stores we didn't have time to hit before the show, and even though Aldo didn't have the boots I've been looking everywhere for in my size :(, we did score some good deals at Old Navy so yay!

After that we decided to head back to Logan because it was snowing pretty good and we have to drive through a canyon to get home-which gets hit really bad during snow storms-so even though it took us about 30 min. longer to get home than normal, we still made it home in time to see a 9:00 showing of Mission Impossible and I LOVED it!! We hadn't eaten since lunch so we were pretty hungry when we got out of the movie so we had to hit up a little late night Taco Bell!

I forget how FUN it is to be able to just go and do things whenever, and wherever, and as late as we want to do them! I love my two little munchkins to death, but every once in a blue moon it's nice to just be Angela instead of mommy.

Since we don't have church till late, and didn't have kids pulling us out of the bed to make them breakfast, we got to sleep in on Sunday and just enjoy a quiet morning together. Not to mention a quiet sacrament meeting! :) And by 5:30 I was beyond giddy to see Tyler and Kylee again! It's amazing how much just 24 hours without them makes me miss them like CRAZY!!!!!

Such a great, memorable weekend! Thank you Elletts for helping us out!

And just a random couple of pictures from my phone to round out this post...

THIS is totally my ky. princess dress, 'pearls', purse and SNEAKERS. She can keep up with the boys, but can be a lady when she needs to be!

We had playgroup at my house this week and one of the neighbor girls wanted to stay and play after it was over so her and Tyler and Kylee decided to have a "picnic" at the "beach"...

...including, snowman sunglasses, mickey mouse ears, princes dresses, sunglasses, princess heels, a Christmas blanket, hairbows and more! Oh I just LOOOOOVE their imaginations! ha ha!

Mom Guilt.

2012-01-27T16:54:00.001-07:00

Mom Guilt.

This week I feel like I've done nothing. Well you know...

I saved superman by gluing his arm back to his body,
I found Rapunzel's long lost shoe-underneath a slice of stale cheese...which was left inside the play kitchen refrigerator for what I would guess (from the texture and color) to be at least 3 days old,
I built a lego batcave in no less than 1 hour,
I attended a dance recital in my living room where the dancer danced to 'Jingle Bells' (a Christmas cd that got left out of the christmas box) over and over and over,
and I'm pretty sure at one point I made a pretty dang good pot of Macaroni & cheese so you know...
it wasn't nothing exactly.

But I've been SO sick this week that I feel like a literal BUMP on a LOG! I look at my house and I just cringe! I look at my laundry piled up to way past overflowing, my kitchen sink full of dishes that I just have no desire to empty, the toys just pushed off to the sides of the room so the kids could go to bed because the thought of having to actually clean their rooms makes me want to dive into a cave, and I look at those 2 little faces and I just feel...guilt.

I didn't play with them enough, I didn't want to crawl out of bed to play princesses and pretend I'm the evil queen that locked the princess in the dungeon, I let them watch hours and hours of TV,-and the fact that I can't even put a number on those hours because I honestly don't know- makes me feel even more guilty.

Even though the hubby's good to try to relieve me of my guilt by telling me that it's okay our kids know all of the characters on spongebob square pants (seriously? dumbest. show. ever.) and haven't eaten a vegetable in a week because I'm sick, I STILL feel guilty.

So by day 3 of having body aches so bad I couldn't move my neck and chills that kept me dressed like I was living outside, on the streets, in the Arctic, and a sore throat that completely obliterated all attempts to break-up fights between the littles because all I could do is whisper (and seriously whisper??...I wouldn't even take me seriously.), I crawled out of my bed because of GUILT. And I played, and I laughed-in a freaky ghost movie kinda way-and I drove kids to preschool and dance, and made dinner, and looked for toys and turned off the TV and worked on reading and writing with them, and read every library book we have (and yes, they are 2 weeks over-due glad you asked!) and woke up to do it all over again the next day. Why?!?!

Mom Guilt.

I think, especially as woman-and I think this is true even if you don't have kids yet-we are so hard on ourselves. We think we have to know how to sew and cook and bake and have a doctorate and never yell at our kids and serve our neighbors and fulfill religious obligations and be an attractive wife with dinner on the table at 5:00 and be in perfect shape and have children that behave like angels and be running at full speed even if we're sick. :) Not ONLY do we have to do all those things, we have to do ALL of them perfectly, ALL the time.

Why do we put all that unnecessary pressure on ourselves?! Is the Woman Police going to come arrest us for not sewing every clothing item our children wear, or for not baking the perfect pie for our sick neighbor, or for weighing an extra 5 lbs because we love cheeseburgers? I think I must think that because I worry about not being able to accomplish all the things I want to do. So I have to focus on this thought:

I can do everything I want to do. Just not right now. One thing at a time.

I think that's why finding balance, and making sure I'm doing other things with my time besides crafting and blogging, has been so important to me this past month. AND I think that's why this week has been so hard because I've been trying to be the perfect mother and I let mom guilt take over when I should have embraced the few ways I was being a good one (like when I turned OFF spongebob-chalk that up for a winner mom moment! go me!)

{source}

I do wonder though if mom guilt will ever go away?! :)

A Ballerina Birthday Party!

2012-01-25T06:00:00.000-07:00

Little miss Kylee turned 3 on Dec. 29th and for her first 'friends party' requested it be a Ballerina party. Oooohhhh I couldn't have loved putting this together more!

Since I won the 'procrastinator of the year' award in 2011 (awarded to me by myself of course...anybody else have one of these trophies layin' around?) I thought...why change my ways? In some weird, completely irrational way, I work better under pressure so I put myself in a tiny box of 6 days to plan, create and execute this party. Whew! And I have to say, I only had one meltdown (day of party...I'll explain) so I'm gonna go ahead and chalk that one up for the win category. Booyah!

First I started off with the invites. Of course when it was 5 days, 23 hours, lots of minuets and counting, I had to turn to my dear creative friend Pinterest for ideas and boy did she come through!

I took the idea for the invite from THIS blog and came up with my own little rendition of a Ballerina invite. On the blog I found she has a step by step video you can watch if you're really interested in making one, but here are a few of the pictures I took making a simple ballerina dress using:
-cardstock bodice form (free template found here)
-square of tissue paper
-thin, white ribbon
-double sided tape

After you have folded your square of tissue paper accordion style, you use your double sided tape and adhere it to the front of your bodice attaching the tape right at the waist. You'll want to make sure the folds are spaced evenly to get a pretty skirt form.

The tape should be about 2" so that you have enough to have some on the back.

Turn the dress back to the front and fold down the top half of the tissue paper. Then kinda smoosh (my spell check is telling me that's not a word, but since it's quite possibly the best word in the English language I'm gonna have to rebel) the tissue paper lightly with your finger-you don't want to flatten it completely, just smooshed down enough that the top layer will lay nicely (yet poofy) over the top of it.

Next, f0ld down the top layer of tissue paper and gently give it a little crease to secure the fold.

Now, using the tape on the back of the bodice lay the middle of your ribbon across it.

Turn it over and tie the ribbon into a bow and you're done!

I then used a piece of double-sided tape to attach the dress to the invite.

The invite itself, is a 6x4 pice of light pink cardstock. I used brown ink to darken up the sides and a strip of white ribbon, layered with sheer pink and white polka dot ribbon, across the top. I had some brown scrapbook stickers on hand so just layed a letter K on top of the ribbon for little miss K. I finished it off with 2 hole punches on the top and a matching pink/white polka dot ribbon run through.

The back of the invitation had all the party information:

Then it was time to decorate! On the front door I hung little miss's ballet shoes, using white grosgrain ribbon, behind the coffee filter wreath I had out for Christmas.

I loved the simple little touch adding something personal to her added to the party!

Inside I opted to decorate with...flowers, balloons and food!! I wanted the atmosphere to be frilly, soft, pretty and GIRLY! I went with pink and white for the colors of the party with pops of yellow! I'm a "pop" kinda girl. Two colors just bores me, I have to have something that says, "HELLO!" ha ha!

Using the tutorial found here, from All Things Thrifty, I made these tissue paper pom pom balls to hang from the ceiling, and I have to say I was really disappointed with how they turned out.

The tute wasn't super specific-as far as telling you what kind of wire to buy-so I bought something that was too thick (thanks to the advice from the cashier at Michaels-boo) and the tissue paper didn't bend and fold right because of it SOOOO I didn't get the look I was going for, but it was alright.

My tip to you...the thinner gauge craft wire the better! I would suggest maybe a 24 or 26 gauge.

But back to the food table...the main event of course! :)

Starting on the right end...pink donuts!

Okay they weren't totally pink because apparently to get custom iced donuts you have to place an order (procrastination rocks) so I bought every single donut they had with pink anywhere on it!

Above that we had cotton candy (I hate cotton candy, but love the fluffy texture for the purposes of a party! And 2 dollar store bags filled 10 cones!)

I made the paper cones for the cotton candy using a sketch my husband came up with that made a cone shape and scalloped scissors to trim the edges (can I admit that for the life of me I could not draw a 3d cone shape that worked?! Geometry was NOT my subject. I did however pass cheerleading so...whatev.)

In the back corner I placed a bouquet of yellow, white and pink flowers in a pink vase I found at the thrift store months ago! I added 4 pink rhinestones to the top and white ribbon around the middle and pretended they were just for me.

Going up the center of the table were glass bottles of kiwi strawberry (snapple) juice that I added a slice of lemon to and a yellow straw (smoothie straws so they're thicker-from Walmart). And to tie in the strawberries on the cupcakes, I added a bowl of sliced strawberries in the center as well.

Worst moment of the day. My meltdown. Over cupcakes. But first I'll give you the good news. I made a cute cupcake stand for the birthday girls' cupcake (idea from I heart Naptime)!!

I started with a glass candlestick from the dollar store, a .50 wood piece from Hobby Lobby, some clear gloss paint and yellow paint from Rustoleum. I always spray paint my glass with some sealer first so that the spray paint sticks to it better. And then spray painted them both yellow.

Using some scrapbook paper from Hobby Lobby, I cut a circle the size of the top of the wood circle and mod podged it on.

Then I used E6000 to glue the candlestick to the wood.

And because it was in some serious need of frillyment, I added pink adhesive rhinestones around the edge of the circle and a little ribbon bow around the candlestick.

Back to the tragedy. Baking. WHY do I try?! Why?!

And the worst part is...I didn't even bake them. Mr. Sweet Love did!

I left the "icing" of the cupcakes till the day of the party because I didn't want them to get hard and crusty. Let's just say...what was supposed to be white icing, turned pink, then blue, then purple and then what can be described in the nicest words possible as 'dusty rose' pink. Then the attempted pretty icing swirls on top of the cupcakes turned into diarrhea looking blobs and the icing bag exploded 'dusty roseness' all over my hands, shirt and face. Awesome. I salvaged what sugar mess I had left and slapped it on some of the cupcakes with a knife and a grrrr, and opened the fridge to see what else I could do. I found some whip cream and some strawberries and tried to make something edible (and not completely revulting) of the ingredients that were left and still sanitary. Next time, if there IS a next time, I will be buying cupcakes. Just so you know.

Moving on :). At the back of table, to add a little height, I made some pink and white lollies. (I love this tutorial for making lollies if you're interested!) This one is a 3...for her 3rd bday.

And this one has her name and some sticker ballet shoes (from Hobby Lobby).

To make the pots, I just picked up 2 medium size ones from Micheals (.89 each) and spray painted them white. I stuffed some green styrofoam floral filler in the bottom of each pot and topped with yellow lemonhead candies. The lollies are attached (with double sided tape) to a skewer and stick right into the green floral stuff inside the pot. So simple but I love how much they add to the table!

On the left side of the table I had pink popcorn (white stove top popped popcorn with white chocolate (turned pink using food coloring) drizzled over the top of it) in little popcorn boxes I made, using this template, some scalloped scissors to trim the edges, and then tied a pink satin ribbon around the box.

The stands that the popcorn and cotton candy are sitting on were made from dollar store platters and candlesticks. Take a plastic platter...

...and a glass candlestick and use E6000 to glue together. LOVE the fun color possibilities of this by just using different color cans spray paint!

In the back left corner I added a candy jar I made for my Easter decorations last year. It's just a dollar store candlestick (I swear by these!) glued (using E6000 of course!) to a glass jar I found at a thrift store for $1, that I had spray painted yellow and then filled with pink candies. You could use gumballs, but since it's around Valentines they had lots of pink candies to choose from!

And last but not least, some PINK rice krispie treats! I was going to make my own from this recipe, but luckily it's valentines so they had boxes of these already made and they were cheaper than 1 box of rice krispies cereal!! Deal!

I really love how the whole table came together!

We have a fairly small kitchen-for party throwing anyway!-so I had to set up 2 card tables in the center of the kitchen to eat at. It was a tight squeeze but 3/4 year olds are pretty tiny so it worked ok.:)

I added another vase of flowers to the table, as well as pink plates, white napkins, white dollies, and wands (all purchased from the dollar store!) for each Ballerina.

My FAVORITE thing on these tables though, were the water bottles and the little bowls of lemonheads. Those little "pops" of yellow made me ridiculously happy.

I had the lemonade for the girls over on the food table, but I know some kids are pretty picky about what they eat/drink, so I decided to add some water to the tables and used the mini water bottles (8oz) and strips of yellow polka dot paper.

Just in case the magic of how to adhere paper to a water bottle blows your mind :)...you just place double sided tape on one end of the paper, stick it to the bottle, wrap it around the bottle and place another piece of tape on the end of the strip and attach it to the bottle.

My other favorite (can I have another favorite?!) thing were the placecards I made for each little ballerina. I pretty much exactly copied the one I found here. When the party was winding down I had the idea to double the use of the placecards and use them as thank you cards as well!

Since it was just cardstock folded in half, I just quickly opened up the placecard, wrote a thank you and stuck them in their favor bags before I handed them to the parents. I love getting more than one use out of things.

I love how the party turned out and little miss K was in absolute HEAVEN, but there are a few little details I had planned on doing that I just didn't have time to get done (maybe next time I'll give myself a 7 day window instead of 6...probably not). Like I would have loved to make a cute Happy Birthday pennant banner to hang on the food table and I wanted to make ballerina cupcake toppers (the same ballerina dresses that were on the invites, just stick a toothpick to the back of them to stick in the cupcake) and matching tutus for all the girls, but as the week was coming to a close I had to pick a few dreams to let go of. sigh. If only...ha ha! But you probably wouldn't have even noticed those things if I hadn't said them!

**Just in case you're trying to gather some ideas for your own ballerina extravaganza here are some of the games/activities we did (our party was an hour and a half)**:

1. As the guests arrived we decorated foam tiaras (from the dollar store) with princess stickers, glitter glue, markers, etc.

2. When all the girls were there we did cake, treats and presents!

*please notice tyler's batman mask :)

I didn't want Tyler to feel completely left out, so he was in charge of handing her her presents and picking up the trash. :) He loved it.

3. we played 'Ballerina says'. Like Simon says, but Ballerina says twirl, jump, hop,etc. and if a player does an action when ballerina doesn't say they have to sit down.

4.Then we played Ballerina Relay.
split the group into 2 teams. Have a basket of princess stuff on one end of the room (opposite to where the 2 teams are lined up). Each basket should have an item for each member of the team. You could use princess dresses, shoes, necklace, ring, purse, feather boa, tiara, etc. The first person on each team runs to the basket puts on an item and has to run back to their team. They then remove whatever item they put on and the next person in line has to put that item on, run back to the basket and add a new item. Repeat until all items have been put on and the first team to empty their basket wins.

5. Next to calm them down a bit we played a fairy trivia game. I had a list of 10 questions about different princess/fairy movies or stories and whoever got the answer right got one m&m.

6. Then we made candy bracelets. I used twizzler pull aparts for the bracelet form and a few different candies that had holes in the center (lifesavers, gummy lifesavers, sour lifesavers, wintergreen lifesavers, etc.) to slide on the bracelet.

7. Then we played freeze dance where we turned on some ballet music (using Pandora) and whenever the music stopped they had to freeze. If you don't freeze you have to sit down. We had little girls that didn't quite understand this so mostly we just kept dancing when the music was on and when it turned off we'd wait for everyone to freeze before we turned it back on again. They loved dancing in their own ballerina sized mirror! :)

I think the girls had a really good time and they loved that they got to dance with their wands throughout the party AND take them home! Yay for girly parties and YAY for it being over! ha ha!

Happy Birthday my beautiful Kylee, I hope all your wishes come true!!

Kylee is a Sunbeam!

2012-01-23T06:00:00.002-07:00

Kylee started her first day in primary on Jan. 1 2012. Being that she turned three 2 days before the cut-off I was really nervous to have her start primary and be the VERY youngest in her class (and more than likely in every primary class until she's 12).

Our ward does a really great thing at the end of the year where they bring all the kids that are going to be starting sunbeams in Jan. into primary for singing time during the month of December. Her nursery leaders said she did great going into primary and sitting still and listening so I was hoping her first day of primary would go over 100 times better than her first day of nursery! AND Tyler is in the class right behind her so I was positive she was going to do great.

Nope. I'm not sure why I thought it would be a good idea to walk her in since she does much better when bobby leaves her places, because the second I tried to let her go she was crying-and not softly. I sat down with Kylee on my lap for about the first 5 min. and then Jodi, the 2nd counselor in the primary presidency-and my neighbor- who was sitting with the sunbeam class also to help the teacher with all the criers, said "Angela, just go. I know she's your baby, but you have to go and just let her cry. She'll be fine."

Hmmmph. I don't like it when people tell me what to do, but I knew she was right. Mainly I was just worried that she was going to puke on somebody again and I'd have to buy somebody a new dress. Oh ya, and because it was probably distracting to the person talking. But I sucked it up, sat her down on the chair, kissed her goodbye and walked out the door. I hated it. I walked right into the relief society room and sat down so I couldn't hear her cry. Bobby waited out in the hall just in case there was any...bodily functions emitted. He said she stopped crying after about a minute and her teacher said she did great the whole time after that.

When I picked her up after church she was happy and ran right up to me to show me her picture so I was soooo relieved! The next Sunday she cried again for the first couple minutes and then was fine the whole time and last Sunday she didn't cry at all! Yay!

She puts up a pretty good sassy front, so she can come off independent and tough but she is sooooo shy and sensitive and just needs time to warm up to new things. I'm so happy to have this little mini me in my life. :)

Kylee's 3rd Birthday!!

2012-01-21T06:00:00.002-07:00

Okay who has not said..."I can't Believe_____ is___ years old!" But seriously there is no better way to say it. I can't BELIEVE my Kylee is 3 years old!!!!

Somehow it felt slower with Tyler. (I mean don't get me wrong, I can't believe I almost have a 5 year old!!!) But somehow it all made sense. When he turned 1, and then 2, and so on, it felt...right. Time felt endless. Manageable. It was just him and I so much that I was really there for every moment. I was his entertainment, his joy, his sadness (he really hated baths), his encouragement, his nurse, his buddy, his life.

The first several months after Kylee was born were really hard for me. So mainly I just remember a lot of crying. From both of us ha ha! There were definitely good moments I remember like how SO soft her skin was and the way she smelled after a bath and her little, tiny nose, but it went by so fast. And then before I knew it, Tyler was her everything. And still is. They are very close. They fight hard and they play hard. They love each other so much sometimes I don't even quite understand it.

He is her entertainment 80% of the day, he is her joy, sadness, encouragement and buddy. I kinda feel like I'm playing a supporting role with her instead of the main one. Don't get me wrong she's my girl and when Tyler won't play princess with her (which sometimes he does :) ) or barbies or babies or anything girly she comes running to me and I LOOOVE the time we spend together pretending. AND it's why I'm secretly glad that Tyler is gone for a couple hours 3 days a week at pre-school because during those hours I get to be her everything and it's absolutely EVERYTHING to me! I really REALLY do love that they are so close (so I hope it doesn't sound like I'm complaining!!), but since I don't get as much one-on-one time with her as I did with Tyler as an only child, I just live for those moments of girl time! :) She loves to go shopping with me-anywhere!-and wants me to paint her nails ALL the time. When she's sad I'm the first person she wants and when she succeeds at something I'm the first person she runs to tell. Those are the moments I live for with her because it's when time feels endless and I can dream that she'll by my little girl forever.

It's almost like, since there's two of them, the time goes by twice as fast!!! With an older child it seems like she is growing up so much faster than he did because she has him teach her everything he knows-and he does! Just the other day I walked in his room and he was trying to teach her how to write some letters-love it!

Sooooo, this spunky, firecracker, sass talkin' diva (all covering a very sensitive spirit mind you) turned 3 on December 29. Unfortunately that's not the ideal time of year for party throwing but-as you know-I love birthdays so I had to do something for her!! :) (I have posted the details of her party on my craft blog if you just can't wait till I post it next week here :) )

I hung some streamers outside her door so she'd see them first thing when she woke up! She hated them and I had to part them like the red sea so she'd walk through her door.

I also snuck in her room while she was sleeping the night before and hung some balloons from her bed and a cluster of them on her door and her bookshelf.

We actually woke up before she did so we all went in to sing her Happy Birthday to wake her up like my sister Alisa does for her kids and she was GRUMPY! This girl likes her sleep and was NOT ready to wake up.

The only reason she got out of bed was because Tyler told her the kitchen looked SO great and she had to come see her presents! ha ha!

She had requested pink cupcakes with purple frosting for her birthday so that's what she got! (even though in this picture the frosting looks blue)

Nothin' better than a cupcake for breakfast on your birthday! (or any day for that matter)

After breakfast she got straight to work opening presents from family. Grandma Luci and Papa James sent her a fun alphabet game...

...and the movie Tinkerbell which is her new favorite movie!

We gave her a new baby doll with a hair dreyer and hair accessories (she saw it in the store and wanted it ALL month (dec) long and since Santa didn't bring it to her for Christmas she got it for her birthday-see there's one good thing about having a bday right after Christmas!

Tyler picked this barbie car out for her and I just couldn't say no since I had wanted one every year for my birthday growing up and never got one.

Later that day Macey and Mindy drove up from Springville so we headed to Carls jr. for lunch (kylee's choice).

We ended the day playing some Leap Frog, eating Pizza and watching Cars 2.

Happy Birthday my sweet Kylee. You are a beautiful little girl and I am SO lucky to be your momma. Thanks for choosing me.

Christmas 2011

2012-01-19T15:00:00.000-07:00

Christmas was absolutely perfect this year. Christmas is my favorite holiday/time of year/thing to celebrate/reason for living...you get it.

Every year, as the kids get older, it just keeps getting better and better because not only can they appreciate why we celebrate Christmas and can get themselves in the spirit, they also appreciate the traditions we've started and I think they're pretty close to loving Christmas as much as I do {almost}!

But I have to say...I think this year has been the best Christmas of all since Bobby and I have been married because we got to spend it with my family at our house!! Bobby always has to work either right before (like christmas eve) or right after Christmas so the past several years we've just done Christmas with us and the kids (which we have begun to really enjoy as well!) and headed down to St. George to be with my family the week after Christmas for Kylee's birthday.

But this year, since Amanda would not be able to get enough days before or after Christmas off of work to go down to St. George the family (my mom, dad, amanda and alena) decided to come up north and celebrate with us so Amanda could have family to be with-especially for her FIRST Christmas home from the mission!

The couple days we had together before Christmas were spent going to see a movie (Arthur Christmas-surprisingly cute!!), playing games, lots and lots of eating (which I am NOW regretting-ugh!), making gingerbread houses using graham crackers-do NOT recommend this ha ha!-and lots of listening and dancing to Josh Groban's Christmas CD (LOOOOOVE this-it was my early Christmas present to myself :) and it's quite possibly the only Christmas thing I'm still having withdrawals over not having.)

We decided mom's was the winner!

Little mishap with the cookies and milk for santa...

...all was well though because the kids got him a new plate. They were pretty adamant that Santa get his treats!

Chrismtas morning the kids woke up about 7:30 and we headed out to do presents before our 10:00 am Sacrament meeting service. Kylee was a little overwhelmed by all the stuff going on in the living room I think, so she sorta hung back and watched Tyler before diving in herself.

Santa brought Kylee an art easel and paper which both the kids have LOVED using! they don't use the chalkboard side ever, but they love to pull the paper down and use all the art supplies Grandma got them for Christmas-glitter glue, markers, crayons, pencils, fuzzy pom poms, pipe cleaners, etc-to make some pretty amazing stuff :).

Santa brought Tyler a leap frog video game which both the kids have also had fun playing with.

Santa always fills their stockings with fun little knick-knacks they love...gum, silly bandz, fruit, candy, etc.

Amanda and Alena opening their stockings...

This year Tyler got his first Book of Mormon! Now that he's beginning to read, and is responsible enough to take scriptures to church, we got him his own set of scriptures (which was actually totally at his request with no prompting from us!). He feels SO grown up carrying his scriptures to church and when we read at night he has to have his scriptures in front of him open to the page we're reading. Kylee got a couple Book of Mormon figures, but she is extremely jealous of Tyler's scriptures and they fight over who gets to hold them almost every night so we might have to get her a set of her own before next Christmas :)

Tyler's favorite gifts this year were this Spiderman webshooter from Bobby and I and his Batcave/car/man lego set from his Uncle Mark (not pictured because he opened that present the night before when we skyped with Bobby's family)

After presents and a yummy quiche breakfast (thanks momma!), we headed out to church. Our ward only held Sacrament meeting and when we came home we had zero luck getting any pictures. ha ha! Kylee is usually my eye roller, hang head down, turn her back to me kind of picture taker and the ONE time Tyler refuses to get pictures taken Kylee is all cheesy smiles and loves. Of Course!!

My HANDSOME boys!!

Oh wait there she is. There's my real Kylee.

And we'll go ahead and call that a wrap before anybody gets hurt.

The highlight of the day for everybody though was talking to TY!!!! I haven't been home for the past couple mother's days or Christmas's when he has got to call home, so this was my first time talking to him in almost 2 years!! (he comes home in less than 10 weeks!) He sounded SO great and is doing so well! Can't wait to hear all his fun stories when he comes home in March!!!

The next couple days we hung out, played with toys, went and saw some Elk in the freezing cold, painted nails and danced to some more of my man Groban.

A couple days after Christmas we headed down to Provo to meet Alisa, Skyler, Nate and Bailey who were on their way home to St. George from having been in Bountiful. We met up at chili's for lunch and then spent the whole afternoon at Amanda's apartment opening more presents and hanging out.

Alisa and Amanda gave Kylee her birthday presents since they wouldn't get to be there on her actual birthday. Alisa gave her tw0 princess barbies-Cinderella and Belle which she has played with non stop! Barbies is her absolute favorite thing in the world right now and she plays all day long with them! Amanda got her a new baby doll (which she was in desperate need of since her old baby doll is disgusting!) which she loves to take care of. If she's not playing with her barbies, she's playing babies!

Nate got Tyler Iron Man which was THE perfect gift for him! He has loved action figures for the last year and always has one-or two-in his hand at all times. He took this Ironman to show-n-tell with him his first day back to pre-school!

The sisters did a gift exchange as well and I had Amanda. Apparently from this picture we can see that she was SUPER excited about her new body spray and lotion from Victoria Secret! (sorry for all the very poor quality pictures from the day...next time I'll remember to be in charge of the camera :) )

I guess this was the only picture our camera-man got of my gift from sweet Alena! I love the beautiful necklace and bracelet she got me and wore it to church the very next Sunday!

Just hanging out...

That night we got to go visit a WONDERFULLY sweet family that Amanda is working with to teach them English. They wanted to meet us and make us Hot Tamales for dinner and Oh. My. Gosh!!! They were soooooo good! She made a *HOT* batch and a mild one and I have to say...I pride myself on being able to eat some pretty spicy/hot things but I could not eat more than one of her hot ones! ha ha! The two older girls were SO SO SO kind to our kids and even though Kylee was much younger than them they wanted to play with her and Kylee loved all the attention!

After dinner we headed back to Logan and I spent the next day-all 24 hours of it :) - cleaning, ha ha! But it was SOOO worth it! Ahhhh. So satisfied. So happy. So in love.

I would have to say...

December 2011

2012-01-15T06:00:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of December, the kids and I traveled down to Springville to spend the day with my BF for her birthday! One of the Christmas presents we brought down for Macey- much to her mother's dismay :)- was some princess nailpolish. The girls had fun dressing up in their princess outfits and doing each others nails! They are SO cute!!

I have to say...they did a pretty decent job!

We took them to good old Mcd's for some lunch and they spent a good couple hours playing in the play place!

We did a lot of fun Christmas related activities throughout the month of December (you can read about them here) but I don't have any pictures!! Ack what is wrong with me!! I did however get pictures from our FAVORITE Christmas tradition-going to temple square to see the lights!

Tyler thought it was so cool that smoke was rising off the water in the fountain!

He HAD to have his picture taken in front of the lawn of green and blue lights (his favorite colors)!

...and the blue trees!

Bobby thought it was really cool that he could fog up the lens of the camera by blowing on it and get a foggy picture. Hehe...I love him.

He's quite the photographer no?!

SUCH a great night! Oh man, I just love my little family!!!!!!

We also managed to sneak in a visit to Santa a couple days before Christmas! Tyler was soooo nervous sitting on his lap. He sat with his hands perfectly still on his lap the whole time and didn't move his body an inch the entire time he was talking. When Santa asked him what he wanted for Christmas he spit out, "A spiderman web-slinger" like he had been re-hearsing it for the last 30 min-no emotion, no smile, monotone and quick. You could tell his little heart was beating so fast and his eyes were so big. Haha...He was nervous and it was adorable.

Kylee had NO desire to sit on Santa's lap. She did however want to stand next to him and tell him what she wanted. She was shy but not nervous. She looked him straight in the eye the whole time, answered all his questions and responded that she wanted a baby doll for Christmas in her sweet, shy voice (same thing as last year! She absoultely LOOOOOVES playing babies and princesses-not the dress up kind, the barbie kind-and does so ALL day long!). He gave each of them a candy cane and they were on their way!

December also includes Christmas (obviously :) ) and Kylee's birthday but each of those deserve their own post, so those will be up soon!!

November 2011

2012-01-13T06:00:00.000-07:00

November was a BUSY BUSY BUSY month for us!! For one thing, we did soooo many craft projects! Our fridge and walls were plastered with all sorts of paintings, murals, gratitude trees and different activities from THIS project. We went through 4 large tubes of finger paints and had baskets full of "painting clothes" to wash at all times, it was great!!

Unfortuately it was too cold to paint outside by Nov. so we got used to covering the kitchen floor with newspaper and going to town!

These are their 'hand-print trees with fingerprints for the leaves' pictures.

Just a random picture I found on my camera from November...she's so darling I swear I could just eat her up!! Man she gets away with so much more than she should!

Also random...
Tyler came walking in our room one morning with something he found and asked if this was how you were supposed to wear this "light thingy"??

Well I guess if your name was Chip or Dale it would be.

Kylee doesn't take naps anymore so when I walked in her room one day to tell her that her 'quiet time' was over (about an hour period where they are to stay in their rooms reading books, coloring, playing quietly, etc.) and found her asleep I was SO happy! Just because she doesn't take naps everyday doesn't mean she doesn't need them!!

For Thanksgiving, Bobby's dad and stepmom Mary came out from Missouri and spent the Holiday with us. It was SO nice to have family here for the week and get to relax in our own house! My sister Amanda drove up from Provo the day of Thanksgiving and spent the day with us too and we had so so so much food!!! For the life of me I can't find ANY pictures from our week with the Brickers so when I find which memory card I used I'll have to come back and add in those pictures!

The day after Thanksgiving we took down all our fall decor and the first Christmas thing up was our tree!

It's so much fun to be able to involve the kids now in so many of our fun holiday traditions, they really are what make the holiday's special!!

October 2011

2012-01-11T06:00:00.000-07:00

Ok I think it's official...3 months is the LONGEST I've gone not updating the blog (well...maybe when I was pregnant with Kylee and SO SO SO sick I went longer than 3 months, but I don't really count that) and now that all the holidays are over I'm playing MAJOR catchup!!

For Christmas my mom gave my sister Amanda a book she made for her-using Blurb-of her WHOLE mission. Hundreds and hundreds of pictures and letters all bound into one book and the book is absolutely beautiful and SO well put together! I've been wanting to print my blog into a book for a couple years now but have never really been motivated to sit down and spend the time to do it. After seeing the quality of Amanda's and realizing how special it would be to have all of our memories, pictures and stories printed into a *journal* I am SUPER motivated to start getting ours printed out! Which ALSO means that I am super motivated to keep blogging and keep writing down our memories! Sooooo here's to a lot of late nights in my future :)

October 2010

10/15
Back in October our family home evenings were based out of the first few chapters of Nephi so our scripture for the month was 1 Nephi 3:7. The kids worked SO hard to memorize it! I think they did pretty great for such a long verse! The first video is just of them being...them. :) The second video is of them reciting the scripture. *sorry they're sideways...ugh!

Please note the PURE satisfaction on Kylee's face of pushing her brothers buttons and how she tries to play it off as "love". :)

10/16
I was making dinner one night when a football game erupted in my kitchen! The kids were laughing SOOOO hard! I love that the simplest things make them the MOST happy!

10/24
For one of our Family Home Evenings we talked about the Liahona and the importance of making correct choices and being faithful in following the commandments in order to have the spirit be with us. We talked about how the Liahona only worked when Nephi and his family were obedient to the Lord's commandments and it was dependent upon their faith.

For an object lesson we used a modern day type of Liahona-our GPS :)-and were instructed to follow it's directions to get to the temple.

We followed the directions about half the way there and then we thought it'd be a good idea to show Tyler and Kylee that when we don't make good choices and choose to do what we want to do, rather than what we're being asked to do by our knowledgeable guide, than there are consequences. We decided to deviate from the GPS's directions and try to take a shortcut to the temple because we thought that we knew best and that if we ignored the GPS we'd get there faster doing it our way.

Soooo, we chose to go down different streets and turn different ways than the GPS was telling us and ignored it's promptings to turn around and get back on the right street and...we got lost!!! (not really...we knew where we were but the kids didn't so they were lost :) ) We decided we had better listen to our guide and follow it's directions to get back on track on our journey to the temple. They found that it was EASY to find our way to the temple when we made the choice to be obedient and follow the directions on our compass rather than go our own way.

The problem was that our little object lesson ended up working a little too well because by the time we made it to the temple it had just closed and the gates were locked! :(

They had REALLY been looking forward to getting to walk around the temple grounds and Kylee had been so excited "to smell ALL the flowers!".

Then we felt really bad, but they did learn a good lesson!! And because it was fall time and the tress around the temple had lost a lot of big, crunchy leaves we spent a GOOD while playing in the leaves!

10/29
Our ward doesn't do a trunk or treat OR a Halloween Party (which I hate!) so I was happy that the primary put a little activity together for the kids a couple days before Halloween because Tyler and Kylee had SO much fun!

(You can find details on how to make a rag skirt here)

10/30
Carving Pumpkins is always a must in October!!

The only part she was really interested in was playing in the guts...gross.

10/31
Some fun Halloween lunches! (not too healthy I know, but it's what I had on hand to whip up so don't judge mmmmkay?!)

If you missed it, you can see pictures of their Halloween costumes here!

If there's anyone still reading this there will be pictures from November and December coming soon!

My little Trick 'r Treaters!!

2011-11-01T06:00:00.002-06:00

***This might look like the same post I put up on my other blog, but there's lots more pictures here :) ***

Are you sick of chocolate yet?! Nope. Me neither. These two had a BLLLAST this year trick or treating! Last year it was really cold and rainy so they only lasted about one block. This year the weather was sunshine glowing, fall leaves crunching, cool breeze whispering, perfection! My little Kylee had to be drug from house to house last year, and this year after every house would say, "One more house mama!!"

This boy lives and breathes spiderman every day of his life, so it wasn't too hard for him to get into character. :)

I think she pretty much rocked her skeleton princess costume! :)

Some candid Tyler and kylee shots...These pictures are the epitome of my everyday life. No joke...

1. "Kylee hold my hand so I can help you" "um ya...probably not"
2. Crime fighting duo
3.tough guy/gal
4.Tyler stealing lime light...Kylee not happy about it
5. Giving him a good punch in the chest (After he asked for it b/c his "big muscles can take it") and being really happy about it :)

After ringing the doorbell, and waiting in eager anticipation on the porch-their baskets held right in front of them, the words "trick or treat?!?!" right on the tip of their tounge-Tyler would lean over and whisper excitedly to Kylee, "Ky, are you having SO much fun?!" and she would whisper back, "YES!" and nod enthusiastically. They were so fun to watch this year! And they made out like bandits in the candy department. :) We took them trick- or- treating in an older neighborhood and those grandma's and grandpa's just ate them up!

I hope your Halloween was full of candy and laughter too!

Kylee's Halloween Costume

2011-10-28T06:30:00.000-06:00

I finally finished Kylee's Halloween costume and posted all the details on the making of her skeleton princess costume on my Love Sweet Love blog if you're interested!

Lots of updates coming soon! :)

Shamlessly begging for your votes AGAIN! (please?!)

2011-10-21T08:00:00.001-06:00

This was the project I submitted for the 3rd round of American Crafter today and if you have a second I would LOVE it if you could vote for me ONE more time (voting goes thru sun night). This time only 3 people move on to the FINALS!! I have the smallest blog by far out of all 6 contestants that are left so I could really use as many votes as possible! Thanks for being the best friends ever! :)
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I have SO much in my life to be grateful for (like being in round 3 of American Crafter-Eeeeek- Thank you for your votes last week)! And I love that, due to Thanksgiving, the month of November is a time specifically focused on showing gratitude for the amazing blessings in our lives.

Using the theme hands, I came up with an advent calendar that would help my kiddos be grateful for the MANY things their little hands can do. Being that it's Thanksgiving, I decided to create a turkey calendar-using a pumpkin mod podged in fabric, and a gourd-for the base, and used our hands to be the feathers. Dad's and Mom's hands are the the larger feathers that were cut out of craft foam and covered in fabric. My two kids' hands were cut straight onto fabric and sewn onto the larger hands. This way it's a very special, literal reminder, to ALL the members of our family that...Together, OUR hands can help YOUR hands create, explore, serve, celebrate, and show gratitude-the 5 different category's for the month. I then sewed a line between each of their little fingers to create the pockets to hold the "hand" activity for that day that corresponds to that weeks category. And of course, the BEST part about any advent calendar is the candy, so using twine I tied a tootsie roll to each finger for a treat once the activity for that day has been completed!
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Click HERE to vote. The voting poll is on the upper right hand side of the page and I'm contestant #5. THANK you! (also...you can find all the details and 24 activities on my craft blog HERE)

Thank you friends!!

2011-10-17T09:42:00.002-06:00

Just wanted to say THANK YOU so much for those of you who voted for me in the American Crafter competition! I came in 3rd out of 10 which means I get to move on to the next round!! There are now 6 ladies left and this week's theme is FABRIC!

I'm SO excited to see what the other 5 amazing women come up with for this round. Sewing is NOT my forte so I'm pretty nervous, but I'm excited about the project I'm doing and if nothing else, I'm thankful this competition kicked my booty in a creative gear I haven't pushed myself into before! Thanks again for your votes, I soooo appreciate it!!!

Vote for me Again {PLEEEEASE!} :)

2011-10-14T09:12:00.004-06:00

Soooo, I'm back again for round 2 of the American Crafter competition! This rounds theme was House of Order!

For this round I decided to make some little vintage storage crates for all year round. I would super duper love it if you could take a moment and go HERE to vote for them!! :) PLUS, if you're looking for some order for your home, you are not going to want to miss the other 9 projects; those ladies have got it going on!!

You can check out the quick and simple version here, but if you want all the nitty-gritty, behind-the-scene views, you'll want to check it out on my craft blog here.

It would mean so so much to me if you could take a quick sec to vote! Voting will go through Sunday night 8 pm and I'm contestant #3. :)

Family Home Evening ideas

2011-10-12T06:00:00.000-06:00

I'm always on the lookout for new family home evening ideas, so I thought I'd share what we've been doing and what has really worked for us the past couple months. For about 2 years I used the nursery manual and each Monday night we just did a quick 5 min. lesson from the manual. It was perfect for our family with Tyler still being in nursery and Kylee being just a baby because the lessons were geared towards exactly what they needed. About 6 weeks ago we finished the manual for the third time so we thought it'd be a good time to change things up! Now that Tyler is well out of nursery and Kylee will be in primary in January, the nursery lessons are a little too young for them. Tyler needs way more interactive lessons and activities and Kylee needs to start practicing sitting and listening for longer periods of time.

I am a planner. I like to know what's going on, when and what I need to be prepared for. Using the nursery manual was easy in this way...lesson #1 then lesson #2, etc. Simple. I always knew what I was doing and only needed to spend a few minuets preparing. So in switching things up, I still wanted our FHE's to be easy to plan, in that I would know what I was going to be doing every week without spending hours on the internet Monday afternoon looking for ideas for that night. After talking to Bobby, we decided that the best thing for our family (considering their ages and likes and interests) would be to work through the Book of Mormon Stories starting with 1 Nephi and ending with the stories in Moroni. Using the Book of Mormon stories Beginning Reader, I went through and made up a 3 month (Sept.-Nov.) outline of lessons for each Mon. night.

I then made a list of different activities we could do that could work with any lesson (role playing, treasure hunt, balloon popping game, bubble activities, etc.). This way when Mon. rolls around I look at the lesson we're doing, pick an activity off the list and print off any pictures I need, gather supplies, make a quick crafty thing, etc. to prepare for that night. It usually takes about 30 min. to get everything together and our family home evenings have been a HIT! I often catch the kids playing "family home evening time." and tyler actually had a meltdown because it was thursday last week and he wanted to have FHE!

Another problem we had was always singing the SAME songs every week. I really want them to learn lots of primary songs (especially the ones for the primary program), so I made a Bricker Family Song bag that has 8 different songs printed on individual slips of paper (2 per fhe for the 4 weeks in the month), so we're singing a different song every time. Then I try to sing those songs with them during the week so they get to know them better.

The last thing we changed up was adding a scripture to our family home evenings. I picked one scripture for each month, from the lessons or chapters in the BOM that we were going to be covering, and we say it together before the lesson. I printed it off and it sits on our fridge so we can practice it during the week as well. The scripture from Sept. was 1 Nephi 3:7, which is a bit longer of a scripture, and they both almost have it memorized so we're actually just going to keep it for Oct. as well so that they really know it.

During our lessons/activities we will briefly talk about the doctrinal points, but mostly I'm just wanting them to learn the stories and HAVE FUN! I'm hoping that as they learn these stories and grow to love them now when they're little, they'll be able to look back on them when they're older and better understand the principle behind the story and be able to apply it to their own lives because the foundation has been built.

So for example, we started out our re-vamped FHE's with the story of Nephi, Lamen, Lemuel, and Sam obtaining the brass plates from Laban. I planned 3 monday's to go over the story. Week 1 we did the first 2 attempts at the brothers trying to get the plates and ended with the Angel coming to stop L&L from beating N&S with sticks. For this lesson we acted it out using sock puppets and a few simple props.

The 2nd week we finished the story by acting it out. Kylee loved being Nephi and getting to cut off Laban's (daddy's) head and then getting to tackle Zoram (tyler) to the ground and convince him to go back into the wilderness with them. Just grabbing a few "dress-up" things to act out the story with made SUCH a difference to them and made it a really memorable night!

The 3rd week we did a review of the story by going on a Q&A treausre hunt. I would ask them questions from the story and when they got it right they could get their clue to go to the next place. They found these bags of "treasure" waiting for them at the end of the hunt and we talked about how obtaining the brass plates was a treasure for their family and they are now a treasure for us.

The next story we did was Lehi's dream of the Tree of Life. Which was broken up over 3 weeks as well. The first week we quickly reviewed the story from the scriptures and then put together these pieces (that I had already prepared...don't laugh. Okay you can laugh, I'm not the best artist mmmkay!) onto a posterboard. The kids were VERY intrigued by which people were happy and sad and had fun putting them in different spots on the board. I was really impressed by the questions-especially Tyler-was asking and we had a great impromptu conversation about making good choices and consequences!

The second week I busted out a bunch of craft supplies and a large sheet of paper and we got to work recreating the tree of life with our own skillz! Ha ha, the kids LOOOOVED doing this, so far this was their favorite.

We had to let all the glitter paint dry overnight since they don't really have a great understanding of 'a little goes a long way' before they could hold it up for a picture, but here it is! Didn't they do so good?! :)

For the 3rd week, we did a review of the story but this time I made a simple board game on posterboard and cards that had questions. If they answered the question right, they got to roll the dice and move that many spaces forward till they reached the tree! Easy Shmeesy!

This next week we'll be doing the story of the Liahona and we'll just keep on keepin' on from there! I'm so thankful for the spirit that has been added to our home during family home evening and the excitement that they feel when we talk about the stories and prophets. Hopefully we'll be able to keep this momentum up for awhile! :)

What kinds of things do you do for family home evening? Do you have any good websites to recommend?!

Thanks for your votes!!!

2011-10-10T09:23:00.003-06:00

Guess what's rockin' my socks this morning?!?! I found out I came in SECOND place (out of 15) in the American Crafter round 1 competition by ONE vote!!!! Ha Ha so thank you, YOUR one vote made that happen! :) This means that I"ll be one of 10 people moving on to round 2 of this crazy competition!

Our 'House of Order' projects will be up on Friday for voting, so get your fingers ready for clickin'!

Also, I've been posting a different Halloween craft-a-day over on my craft blog so if you're looking for easy, fun craft ideas be sure to check them out!

Vote for me {Pleeeease!!!!!}

2011-10-07T09:30:00.001-06:00

A couple weeks ago I submitted THIS project to audition for a crafting competition called American Crafter on the blog Naptime Crafters. I was picked, out of 99 people, to be one of the 15 contestants. Today is the first round of the competition and moving on to the next round is completely determined by votes! The best part about this competition is that you can vote for THREE (3!) different projects so head on over and vote for your 3 favorites! You don't have to have a blog, be a blogger, or even like blogging to vote-everyone's opinion matters!

This rounds theme was Halloween!

And I promise...the other 14 halloween projects are Drop. Dead. Amazing. These girls do NOT mess around. Seriously you HAVE to go check them out (here)!!!

My entry:
Sound Activated Halloween Pillow

You can see the quick and simple version of my project over at The Competition, but if you're looking for a detailed how-to...check it out on my craft blog HERE!

BUUUUTTTT what good would a 'Happy Haunting' pillow be if it wasn't slightly...haunted?! That's when I had this idea...

1.I took a too-spooky-for-my-taste grim reaper decoration
2. Removed the sound activated device (that when activated by sound, responds by making eeeerie noises and glowing RED!!!)
3. Inserted it into the pillow
4. Cut a small square of posterboard to insert the small LED's into-and used electrical tape to hold them in place on the back of the poster-so that they wouldn't shift around and get lost or smothered by the polyfiber inside the pillow.
5. LASTLY, I cut a small hole around the on/off switch so I can choose which neighbors I'd like to scare up until Halloween :)

Happy Haunting!

It would mean soooo much to me if you could take a quick second and cast a vote for me and my pillow-I'm contestant #10!! (the voting poll is on the right hand side of her blog)The voting ends Sunday night at 8 pm so you have time to tell your friends too :). Ha ha! Thanks a bunch!!

Friday Funnies!

2011-09-30T06:00:00.000-06:00

Who is SOOOO happy that it's FRIDAY?!?! My best friend and her family are here visiting for the weekend and this girl makes me LAUGH!!!! Just in case you need a laugh too, I'm back with some more Friday Funnies to get your weekend off to a happy start! Sit back, relax and remember to laugh-life's too short not to! Enjoy!

(As always, these can be found on my pinterest board here!)

Guilty!

SOOO True! See...

Maybe this is why...

Totally doing this one day!!! ha ha!

You go girl! Or guy. I can't actually tell.

Yep...turkey on white please.

Oooooh snap!

I may or may not have crossed that line.

Wise wise words:

So don't worry about that spilt cup (or whole gallon) of milk on the floor, the crayon on the wall, or the smudge-prints on your freshly cleaned bathroom mirrors. Afterall, do we really need to add a headache to our day?! Laughing is so much easier on the soul!

Thanks for reading, I hoped you laughed! And just so you know-those of you who may check in on my craft blog from time to time-starting monday I 'll be kicking off my October MaDdNEsS event which will be a whole month (every day mon-fri) full of easy, quick, and cheap DIY halloween crafts, treats, etc!

Sunday Afternoon

2011-09-25T22:55:00.003-06:00

Today was a gorgeous gorgeous sunday! It's so nice to have church first thing in the morning so that we have the whole afternoon to spend together-not to mention that it's not in the middle of lunch or naptimes (which we had for 2 years straight!). Since Bobby's in his final year of school, this semester is intense and he is SO swamped. It's been a difficult couple of weeks for us adjusting to life without daddy (& husband!) so Sundays are really a MUCH looked forward to day. After naps today we decided to go over to first dam and feed the ducks. Tyler got to do this for a fieldtrip in school last week and Kylee's been wanting to have her turn to feed the ducks ever since he got to go. It was SO fun to spend a few hours together today! We can't WAIT till December so we can get our daddy back! (for a couple weeks anyway :) ) I can do it I can do it I can do it!

Friday Funnies!

2011-09-23T06:00:00.000-06:00

Haaaaappppyyyy FRIDAY!!! I thought I'd kick the weekend off with another round of Friday Funnies to get myself (and you of course) off on the right foot on this beautiful FIRST day of FALL! So grab a treat, take a seat and get ready to...

Enjoy my friends! (all pics can be found on my Have a Laugh pinboard on pinterest!)

Now go have a good day and laugh a little will ya!!! Who knows WHAT ill's you'll cure :)

I'm so excited to put my Halloween stuff up I can barely stand it and my kids are BEGGING me to do so, so I think this weekend it's all going up cause I just can't wait any longer! I'll be posting pictures, tutorials, ideas, yummy treats and more on my craft blog HERE soon so be sure to check it out!

Kylee's First day of Dance!

2011-09-20T14:00:00.000-06:00

To say that Kylee LoooVveS dancing would be a serious understatement! She has been waiting to start her dance class since I first signed her up earlier this summer. When Tyler started pre-school a couple weeks ago and her dance class still hadn't started yet she was having MAJOR jealousy issues. I tried to keep her occupied while he was at school with trips to Hobby Lobby and JoAnns, but somehow my craft addiction wasn't entertaining enough?? We were both pretty ecstatic that her class started last Thursday and she, with empty princess backpack in tow, is absolutely smitten by her darling teacher Mrs. Ruth (pronounced by Kylee-mwiss roof). Mrs. Ruth is fantastic with these little 2&3 year olds and Kylee wanted to be by her side (or mine) the whole time! :)

Since Kylee doesn't do so well in new situations (reference: threw up on her nursery leader her first sunday) I thought I'd stay and watch all her classes-they're 30 minuets-, but she did just fine and I think she'll do even better if I'm not there. Every time there was a pause, or a transition to a new thing she'd run over to me and her teacher would have to coax her back to the floor.

Other than that she did so so so great and followed all of the teachers directions to a "t"! She was the only one that sat in her "seat" without wiggling or standing up or wandering around the room and she LOVED twirling and spinning during their "free dance" time. The teacher ordered some ballet shoes for her, but they still weren't in yet so she's just wearing her black sparkly shoes. They're a little big on her so she kept having to stop and fix her shoe, so hopefully this week they'll be here. It was so fun to watch and I'm so excited that she loves this time that is just for HER!
(pictures taken on my phone)

1. Making Pizzas (how they stretch :) )
2. Blowing up the circle till it "pops!" (Ky's the one holding the teacher's right hand)
3. Playing with different musical instruments (she's the one to the right of the teacher)
4. Doing spins and twirls
5. Mrs. Ruth getting ready to read them a story (she's the one closest to the camera on the end...I love that she's sitting with her toes pointed :) )
6. More twirls!

I really want to make her a tutu especially for dance so that the next 'to do' item on my agenda, oh I need more hours in a day!! Hopefully she'll continue to love it and enjoy being able to do her very own thing without Tyler!

Pinterest Funnies!

2011-09-16T06:00:00.001-06:00

So today I was just really in the mood to laugh, so I turned to my good friend Pinterest and sure enough she came through for me. I stole-aka re-pinned- these from my friends on pinterest so don't be surprised if you recognize them! Enjoy!

(You can find all of these on my Have a Laugh board if you want to re-pin them too!)

What?! For reals.

Bingo.

Booyah.

Simply delighted. It's what I live for ya know.

Nuff' said.

Ha ha love it!

My husband is THE worst at responding to texts. The Worst!

No words needed. Love.

Amen!

Ha ha!

So true, so true.

parenting at its finest.

...just sayin'

Now go enjoy your weekend and don't forget to laugh because after all...

See ya next week! I have so so so much in store for you...EEEK!

Love Note

2011-09-13T14:55:00.010-06:00

So sometimes I'm a snot. What?! I know, I'm a little surprised myself. But I'm dealing with it. Accepting it. Admitting it. Overcoming it? I wouldn't go that far, but maybe learning from it? Yes. Now I'm trying to learn from it. Being a snot is unattractive (obviously) and annoying at best and I'm learning that the only thing being sassy (the nicer way to say being a snot...I'm trying to help myself out here a little) does is make me UN-happy.

Over the last month or so I've made a really, really BIG, conscious effort to stop being a sass. I sometimes literally bite my tongue to keep from saying something hurtful or avoid making a comment that I know will send us into a 2 hour heated debate. This is especially hard when I {KNOW} :) I'm right and can't stand to just let it go. But I AM trying and I AM learning from my mistakes and I DO have a husband that is patient and shows me love when I DON'T deserve it.

One morning, after an especially *sassy* night, I found this love note it my bathroom drawer after the hubs had already left for work:

What you can't read that?! You don't speak computer cheec? (pronounced shee-k...like geek mixed with chic. Get it? Like the girl version of computer geek? Oh my gosh I'm so cool. Did I totally just start a new word?!) Ok fine...Let me help you out...

Still no? Really? Okay I'll decipher for all you un-computer cheec's. :) It's a QR code, which I'm sure you've seen EVERYWHERE. Back of magazines, newspapers, even my Taco Bell cup had one! They are codes that, using the QR code app on your smartphone(which we just recently acquired due to the non-stop begging of my husband...and we were up for new phones), allows you to scan the image using your phones camera which then gives you a message, takes you to a website, leaves you information about a product, etc. My dear sweet little husband wrote me my very own personal QR code, printed it out, and left it in my drawer(the poor thing just can't help it, he's a computer science major :) ) that, when scanned by my phone, read this:

I was really glad I was listening a couple days beforehand when he explained to me how to use the app!!!(cause sometimes during computer geek conversations I tend to tune out :))

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, so while doing both I taped it up on my bathroom wall to remind myself how lucky I am to not be married to a snot!

I love Bobby for being the opposite of me in almost every way, for not being afraid to be himself and for loving me-and showing it-in his very own, unique way, but most importantly for abiding by this:

{source}

Dry Erase Quiet Book

2011-09-10T16:15:00.000-06:00

This project was first done by Autie from icandy homemade while guest posting here and then Cheri, from I am Momma Hear Me Roar, did one herself that you can find here. The second I saw it on IAMHMR, it went into my 'DO THIS ASAP' file in my head (this was back before the convenience of pinterest-seriously if you are not pinning yet you NEED to be...let me know I'll hook ya up!)

So seeing as I needed some cute scrapbooky looking design for the front of my book, (I mean could I possibly take a plain quiet book to church?! I know right.) I called up my momma, aka the scrapbooking EXPERT, and asked if she wouldn't mind stopping everything she was doing and make me some adorable scrapbook pages for my kids new dry-erase quiet books. She didn't disappoint:

Seriously this woman kills me with the amount of talent that comes out of her teeny-tiny body. I LOVED them and my kids pretty much think they're the bees knees at church as they carry around their very personalized "shhh books"-as my kylee calls hers.

I picked up the binders from Walmart and I chose these ones that had this plastic pocket on the front inside cover. They work PERFECTLY to hold their dry erase crayons (about $4), erasing mitt (that comes with the box of crayons), and snacks, stickers, etc. We're trying to cut down on the amount of snacks we're taking to church since the kids are getting older and don't need food to keep them quiet anymore :), so they know they've got 1 pack of fruit snacks each and that's it. Surprisingly they haven't complained once...too many other fun things here to keep them occupied!

The front of the book has several pages of Christ, scripture stories, pictures from The Friend, etc just slipped into sheet protectors, (set of 25 for $3-4) that they look at during the sacrament portion of our church meetings.

Kylee's favorite primary song is Popcorn Popping so I had to add this picture in her book!

The dry erase crayons work awesome on the sheet protectors and wipe off in a snap so they can re-color every page as much, and as different, as they like!

They LOVED seeing color pages of themselves in their books too!

These were just pictures uploaded to picnik and edited using the pencil sketch tool.

After all the coloring pages are some different magnet activities they can do (for some reason my kids are really into these types of things right now). I found these on THIS website and there are SO many great ideas for boys and girls.

I used a magnet tape roll and just cut the magnet to the size I needed and used less than a roll for both these books. The magnet is stuck directly onto the paper which is then slipped inside the sheet protector, and the magnet on the back of the individual cut up pictures sticks firmly to the magnet on the paper through the sheet protector. Does that make sense? I guess I'm just trying to say that you still get a good magnetic pull through the protector even though one magnet is underneath it.

This way you can change around the pictures and magnet activities in your sheet protectors without having to worry about wasting magnets or ruining sheet protectors that you can use again for a different picture.

For each magnet activity I placed all the loose magnet pieces that go with that particular page in a ziploc bag punched into the top 2 rings of the binder so that pieces don't get lost or mixed up-so far it's worked out great to do it this way!

I also went ahead and threw in a notebook into the back of each of their binders for more drawing and whatnot but neither of them have touched them yet.

I like that the binders also have a short pocket on the back cover to slip any papers they may have got from primary/nursery so we don't have to worry about leaving them under benches, using them to make paper airplanes (that would be the daddy :) ), etc. since we have sacrament meeting last.

It's SO nice to only have to bring 2 simple binders to church with us instead of an overflowing bag of over-used toys, messy snacks, broken crayons, loose papers, and forgotten Kleenex's.

I also really love the versatility that this allows. We've used these for 4 sundays now and they have not climbed down off the bench one time. This book easily occupies them for the hour long meeting and they're usually still begging to use them once we get home (which is a NO!). Buuuttt if they do start to get bored of certain pictures or coloring pages or out-grow the activities, I can easily print new ones off and slip them in and Wam-Bam we've got a whole new quiet book!

Labor Day 2011

2011-09-08T14:04:00.006-06:00

For Labor Day this year we started the day by heading out to the Wellsville parade!

We saw all sorts of fun, interesting, traditional and non-traditional things along the route!

Cowboys...

...and indians (their whooping and hollering scared kylee to death. she hid behind my leg until they were out of sight).

By the end of the parade they had the hang of waving at every passing group of people b/c that's how you get the candy thrown at you!!

After the parade we let the kids ride some of the rides at the little fair they had going on, walked around the booths and had some lunch.

Tyler, Hayden and Daxton rode together.

Kylee wasn't too sure about the train (don't really blame her) so Bobby hopped on and rode with her! What a good daddy she has-as the 2" wide wood slat for the "seat" isn't exactly comfotable! :)

We went home just in time for naps, and ALL 4 of us got 2 hour naps...HEAVEN! Then we made a quick Sams Club trip for toilet paper (not a fun thing to run out of :) ) and ate some pizza for dinner while we were there. On our way home we stopped at the Redbox at McDonalds and picked up Gnomeo and Juliet (I wasn't crazy about it but the kids really liked it)...

...and some ice-cream cones!

Then headed home for a family movie night cuddled up on the living room floor! A PERFECT holiday for us! Love my sweet family!!

1st day {of the 2nd year} of Pre-School!

2011-09-04T20:00:00.001-06:00

Tyler's 1st day of Pre-school (for his 2nd year) was this past Tues. and his first week went SO great! Last year I participated in a joy school where 6 moms took turns teaching 2 times a week for 2 hours. There were 6 kids and both Tyler and I loved doing it. I loved having the opportunity to come up with lessons and activity's and be 100% involved in the learning process right along with Tyler. I loved being able to see how he interacted with others and see how he compared educationally. Tyler loved having his friends moms be the teachers and getting to go to new houses each week. It really worked for us, but all of the moms (minus 1 who moved away) wanted to put their kids in *real* pre-schools their year right before kindergarten. If I could have rounded up another 4 or 5 moms I would have done a joy school again this year because it just worked SO well for all the things I was looking for in preparing Tyler for kindergarten (social opportunities, learning, fun, following directions, listening, etc.). Educationally I feel that he is right where he needs to be at 4 years old (if not a little ahead), so I didn't feel that it was particularly necessary for him to go to a *real* pre-school and the cost of a lot of them is OUTRAGEOUS (not to mention I REALLY love having him home with me. I'm in NO hurry to send him away to school. all that will come soon enough and I just want to enjoy every last pre-school moment I have with him). But I also didn't want him to have NO type of pre-school the year before kindergarten, so when I couldn't get enough moms together to do a joy school I started looking around at some of the *real* pre-schools in Logan.

We were referred to ABC 123 Pre-school by one of the moms in our last joy school group who has sent 2 of her kids there and highly recommends it (not to mention it was BY FAR the cheapest one I could find). Mrs. Jen does it out of her home in a cute little basement room downstairs (and has a KILLER playground out back which is pretty much all Tyler talks about when he comes home) and she admits 12 kids a year. It's 3 days a week for 2 1/2 hours a day, and Tyler absolutely LOVES everything about Mrs. Jen and her preschool. It sounds like she is a great teacher and has a lot of fun with the kids so a lot of my worry (about not knowing exactly how Tyler would do) was relieved. And I have to say I really, really, really LOVE having Kylee ALL to myself for a couple hours each day during the middle of the week! She's so precious and we love our girl time!!

As of right now Tyler can write 10 different words with no help (his favorite being poop which sends him into a fit of giggles every time he writes it, so we've had to go over appropriate places to write that word...like not at church on his primary handouts). He also loves to make-up names by drawing a person and than writing that persons' name above it by writing a combination of any letters he can think of. He then makes me sound out the name of whatever it is he's written down (ex. halstxr-on the paper sitting by my computer) and says, "yep. that's his name." I haven't started doing any serious reading with him yet but he's sorta started to teach himself by sounding out small words he sees (ex. he saw the word 'books' labeled on the front of the book drop-off at the library and read it on his own) so my goal this year is to help push him as far as he'll go with it!

On Thur. Tyler came home with a wood boat that he was instructed to paint and bring back to school with him on Tues where they'll be talking about floating objects. He wanted to get painting right away, and Kylee didn't want to be left out, so I found some wood dinosaurs in my craft closet for her, along with some smocks and paint and they got to work!

Her dinosaur was of course pink and purple!

And Tyler's boat was of course methodically painted with every color he was given, in even stripes and splotches across the boat. Not one wood space was left uncovered and no paint was overlapping-each color placed strategically next to the last color!

I LOVVVE Kylee's feet in this picture! She ALWAYS always always crosses her ankles when she sits down and I think it's so darn cute!!

I Love my kids and I'm so happy I get to be home with them all day and experience every moment of their day with them-tantrums, kisses, snuggles, boo-boo's and all! I'm just trying to soak up every minute of it before BOTH my boys experience BIG changes next year! I hope you always love school and learning as much as you do now Tyler-Love you!

Friends

2011-09-03T20:00:00.000-06:00

We were so SO so happy that the Elletts came up to Logan to spend the night with us last weekend! It's hard going from seeing someone pretty much everyday, to just once a month but we're making it work! Royce, Mindy and Macey got here Friday afternoon and we got right to work with our 24 hour festivities! First, Mindy and I made about 24 jars of strawberry/raspberry freezer jam (I swear I will never buy jam again!)-which I already regret not making more of as I've already given some away! Just as we were finishing Bobby came home from work and we headed off to Firehouse Pizza for dinner-one of the few places my kids actually eat b/c they LOVE their pasta! We got home pretty late from dinner and put the kids straight to bed...

It was so cute to walk out for 2 min. just to come back to them each reading a book in their own beds when no one told them to! I just love these 3 together, but sleeping together ended up not quite working out and Macey left to sleep with Mindy and Royce in Tyler's room about 20 min. after we had put them to bed. ha ha, they had a good time!

While Bobby and Royce delt with the fight of getting kids to sleep, Mindy gave me a much needed cut and color. I miss talking to her!!! :( I'm so thankful for friends!

Sat. morning Mindy and I headed out to Hobby Lobby for a little shopping and to get amazing pedicures!!! We both got glitter toes done and I LOVE mine! They're pinkish/purplish, sparkly and fantastic! A BIG thanks to Royce for watching the kids alone for us since Bobby was working!! When we got home from that Mindy and Royce left to test drive some cars and I helped the kids into bathing suits and we played outside for hours!

We were sad to see them go and can't wait to head down there in a couple weeks for the BYU/USU game!! Thanks for the great weekend Elletts!

Grandma Luci and Papa James come to visit!

2011-09-02T20:00:00.000-06:00

Towards the end of August Bobby's mom and step-dad (grandma Luci and papa James) flew out from Missouri to spend about 4 days with us! Since we only get to see them once a year we jammed our 4 days full of fun! I am so thankful they value their role as grandparents and find opportunities to connect with Tyler and Kylee. Their time here was all about the kids and I appreciate the effort they make to really try and get to know them and build a relationship!

They arrived Thurs. night so Fri. we spent the day at the zoo!

Sat. morning we went over to the Logan River Trail and hunted for rocks...

...threw rocks

...and found worms; which Tyler chased me with trying to throw them on me-a request from his daddy-as I shamelessly went screaming down the trail. My 4 year old has some serious power over me. Whatever...their totally gross, I don't even care that bobby laughed so hard he cried. I'd scream all over again if it'd keep those things away from me.

Sat. afternoon while the kids were napping Luci and James did a session at the Logan Temple and then came home to teach us how to make navajo fry bread so we could have navajo tacos for dinner-yum!!!

Sun. after church Kylee requested that grandma paint her nails PINK PINK PINK!

Monday we spent the whole day at Bear Lake and it was the best day we've ever had up there! The weather was PERFECT to lay out on the beach AND to play in the water and there was hardly anyone there-we had SO much beach, and lake, to ourselves! We buried ourselves in the sand, built a sand castle, hunted for seashells and cool rocks, swam in the lake, flung mud at each other and got tan! :). Typically this lake is really cold, but it was the perfect temperature and both the kids were brave (for the first time EVER) and waded out as far as they could touch the bottom-so fun to have them at the ages where they enjoy splashing around, being thrown around and chasing each other in the water!

Thanks for the great memories grandma and grandpa, we LOVE you!!!!!

Makin' the bed

2011-09-01T20:00:00.000-06:00

Tyler loves to make his bed. Weird right? But SO awesome! He loves to be organized, to clean his room, to put everything in its correct spot and to accomplish lists. Oh my gosh...he's me! But seriously, he really does every one of those things all the time of his own free will. In the morning...or whenever I ask him to do something...he'll say, "okay mom, tell me everything I have to do and see if I can remember." So I'll usually give him a list of 5 or so things I want him to do and in what order they need to be done (some easy/fast things and some things that take awhile so he has to remember for a longer amount of time) and he'll repeat back to me the list one time and go off on his way to get them all done. And then he wants to be praised over and over and over for remembering all of the things and doing them well! Ha ha he's so funny! But the praise is definitely well earned as I am always pretty impressed at his ability to remember and complete his tasks without getting too sidetracked. That he did NOT AT ALL get from me. I have a horrible, HORRIBLE memory-and I get side-tracked all day long, which I just call multi-tasking- so he can thank his smarty pants daddy for that one!

One particular day, my bed hadn't been made yet and he said, "mom, can I make your bed?!" "Sure" I laughed, "go for it!" And I have to say, I was shocked (he's even better than his dad!) Even though the pillows were all turned upside down :), he got the sheets flat, the comforter flat and all the pillows on the bed in the correct order! And I didn't help him with any part of it!

Hopefully this character trait will be one that lasts!

Painting with Pudding

2011-08-31T20:30:00.001-06:00

Oh Summer how I love you!

Cache County Fair

2011-08-31T20:00:00.000-06:00

A couple weeks ago we headed out to the Cache County Fair with our good friends Gary and Tess, and their little ones. They had lots of goats everywhere and Kylee and Tyler had to stop at EVERY little pen and say their hello's. Gross. Sorta cute. Mostly gross.

What is it about water that draws children in?! Puddles, rain, rivers, lakes...Tyler would have been happy to play by this river/stream thing all night. Bobby tried to get him away through the genius tactic of fear, by holding him out straight over the river with his little feet dangling over and his toes just barely getting covered by water. Too bad that sorta backfired as Tyler's right flip-flop fell off and got carried down the river. Lessons were learned by all.

Riding the horses...possibly ponies??...is always one of Tyler's favorite things to do at the fair!

Kylee didn't want to ride a horse so she happily scaled her way up the corral and watched with me from the sidelines.

At first Tyler only wanted to ride the little kid rides like the train (which Kylee LOVED, but was actually too small to ride so the guy only let her ride it once)...

...and the carrousel.

But then when Hayden (just a couple months younger than him) begged him to do rides with her he LOOVVVEED them! He wanted to do every ride as much as he could! I knew he would love them, but no matter how hard I pushed him to he wouldn't give them a try until he got a little peer pressure from his girlfriend. Uh-oh ;) They rode down this long, steep slide thing together (since he didn't meet the height requirement he had to go down with someone who did and Hayden is taller than him).

I went back later and took a picture of it b/c when they were actually on the ride during the day I ran into Michelle from the blog Someday Crafts (a pretty big blogger in the blogging world!!) and was sorta giddy with excitement, and after I introduced myself we talked for a bit and I got a little distracted from the fair...oops, but so fun to meet her!

Tyler and Hayden on the spinning dragon things...I hate these!!

Kylee got to ride the motorcycles with Tyler and Tyler was in heaven!

See how he's gettin' all into the turns! Ha ha, he thought this was pretty much the coolest thing ever! Kylee was scarred (I was surprised by how fast it went and the bikes move up and down as the ride goes) and she started to cry a little bit in the middle, but by the end of it she was fine and said she liked it. I kinda think she just said that b/c Tyler was saying how much he loved it.

A wave to the fans...

They walked like this from ride to ride. Friends are awesome!

Bailey's Blessing

2011-08-29T22:00:00.000-06:00

On August 6th this beautiful little girl was blessed by her father Skyler Ence! (holy cow I miss holding this little thing soooo much!!!)

I was SO SO SO happy Bobby, myself and the kids could travel down for a quick 2 day trip (left Logan Sat. afternoon about 4:30 and got to St. George about 11:30 that night and drove home Monday night) to be there for Alisa and Skyler and share in their special day!

*please note batman in the above and below picture...only way this kid would (relatively) stand in one place.

The Ence Family

My grandparents

Nelson family (minus Amanda who couldn't get away from her recently acquired job teaching at the MTC!!!-yay Amanda! And Ty still out on his mission in Washington.)

The day was ALL about this little princess-EVERYONE wanted to hold and love on her!

I WISH this was clearer-so sweet!

All miss Ky wants to do is hold that sweet little baby, but Bailey doesn't ever quite seem to be on the same page! :(

Sorry Bailey, not one of your better pics, but it's pretty decent of your Aunt Angela and I'm totally selfish like that-better get used to it :)

Not to worry-I had you laughing and giggling like crazy the next day!

You were so sad to see me go-or maybe I ended up being a little too much for you-either way I was sad too, see...

In our quick trip we also found a little time for candy land (which we literally play at least 5 times a day at home)

Grandpa taught Kylee how to draw the letter O and letter T-which she now draws EV-ER-Ywhere.

Kylee got into Alena's mascara and practiced for Halloween. (The boys decided to practice with eyeshadow and lipstick but they were both in time-out by the time I got my camera out)

And lots and lots of Bailey snuggles!

Kylee was SO happy when she finally got Bailey to smile at her! She is still talking about it!!

Right before we left we headed outside to snap some pictures of everyone!

I can't wait to watch these 4 (ages 2 mo., 2, 3, and 4) play and grow together! They are very entertaining to be around! ha ha!

Can we please just take a moment and look at my Tyler's face...that face is the epitome of everything he is. Oh man...

I wish I lived closer to my sister so these cousins could ~~get in trouble~~ play together SO much more!

Kylee holding Bailey's cheeks up "so she can smile too!" She just can NOT get enough of this baby!

We LOVE you Bailey and are so happy to be apart of your family!

28 years OLLLDDDD!

2011-08-04T15:51:00.002-06:00

I turned 28 on July 21st. two. eight. It feels older. I remember 16 feeling older. And 21. 16 because I could legally drive and date. Something about being able to drive myself to work, school, over to a friends, etc. made me feel drastically more mature than I did on July 20th. My dad took me out on my 16th birthday so he could be my first "date" and I remember feeling a sense of empowerment knowing my freedom leash was getting a little bit longer.

And 21 because I got married 3 days after my 21st birthday and something about being married kind of made me feel grown up. Knowing I was starting a journey that I could only imagine the possiblities of was SO exciting, and gave me hope and encouragement, and inspired me to change. Not who I was altogether (because I kind of love me :)), but just certain...quirks. Things I knew about myself that needed *tweaking* in order to be the wife and mother I wanted to, and knew I could, be. I was ready to grow up. Something about turning 21-about that number- that kind of gave me the internal push I needed to embrace the next adventure.

And now I'm 28. And I feel different. I can't explain it exactly. Maybe 10 years from now when I look back to the 28 year old me, and this time in my life I'll be able to pin point exactly what it is that made this year different for me. But just to sort of describe it, I feel...wiser. Which is weird since I'm pretty much as "blonde" as they come and haven't done anything that would increase my brain capacity-educationally speaking-but I just feel like I understand things a little better now than I have in years past. Which I guess, makes complete sense-the older you get, the more knowledge you gain-but it's different than that.

I think that the older my kids get, the longer I've been married, the closer we get to the end of this forever-a-student-life tunnel, the more I think. About everything. Life, motherhood, marriage, the gospel, womanhood, what I want out of my life, what I want to accomplish personally, and so so much more. And I'm just at peace. Not that I'm not typically at peace with myself, but this time it's different. I'm at total, 100% complete peace with who I am as a woman, as a mother, as a wife, and as a person. NOT that I'm even close to perfect in ANY area of my life, but for-literally-the first time EVER I'm completely OK with that. I have somehow in this CrAzY-move once a year-always having to make new friends-constantly trying to figure out my kids-thanking my lucky stars I have a patient and forgiving husband-one adventure after the next-life, I have figured out how to "bloom where you are planted". And I sort of-hold your breath-like my imperfections. As a matter of fact I embrace them. (I actually left a crooked, vinyl quote on my living room wall for about 6 mo because it felt good to show the world-I'M NOT PERFECT AND I'M OK WITH THAT! I only recently took it down because I re-arranged my living room.)

I am in a different place at 28 than I was at 27. I can't ever say I've been in a bad place in my life; I've been extremely fortunate in that way, but today I am different. Not sure how else to say it, because I feel like comparing these two places, would be like trying to compare Alaska to Hawaii. Both beautiful and good in their own way(from what I've heard and seen pictures of-ha ha!), but very different. I am confident in a way I have never been. I am sure of who I am and I Love me!

This is not to say that I don't have bad days, or meltdowns, or question my parenting methods, or feel like a failure because no matter how honest to goodness I try, I will never be able to cook like my husband, because I absolutely do have them. But now I don't worry when those days come or let those emotions defeat me. I accept them. I allow myself to feel the emotion, I let my husband try to fix my problems (he's a guy, that's what he does, why not let him give it a go? I certainly haven't found the right way...and come to find out-he's usually right. ugh), and then I just let go. I guess in short...I'm a lot less high-strung than I used to be. And whaddya know? Life's a whole lot more fun that way.

So 28. Nice to meet ya, I'm glad you're here.

Summertime

2011-08-01T10:00:00.001-06:00

I can NOT believe it's already August! I remember walking outside one day at the beginning of May and being ELATED that it was finally warm enough to go outside without a coat, and now I feel like coat weather is right around the corner for us again-ugh!

Stores are stocked with sharpened pencils and notebooks, and aisles are lined with everything the freshman college student needs to survive their first year away from home. I miss all the sand toys, the beach towels, the water guns and sunscreen being the first thing I see when I walk into any retail joint. Just another harsh reminder that days like these are almost just a memory of 2011....

When we haven't been outside soaking in every ray the sun puts out, we've been....
Playing with this Monster Lab kit I won on a blog giveaway(retail value $19.99)!

It gives you everything you need to create a 'monster lab'. First you color all the different monster pieces...

Then you put them in the oven and they shrink down-this was definitely their favorite part!

Then you use the different knick-knacks they give you to put it all together how ever you want.

They were pretty proud of themselves and we had to leave it on display on the kitchen table for a week! ha ha!

One weekend in July we traveled down to Springville to stay the night with the Elletts. Ky missed her best friend!!!

This last week we had a special visit from Grandma and Amanda! There will be a separate post on this later, but here's a fun photo collage my mom put together!!

One of our favorite things to do is go to the Library! Tyler HAD to show Grandma and Amanda how great he is at playing 'the skeleton game' on the computer

Summertime is tan lined bodies, popsicle stained chins, consistently dirty bare feet, flip flops, little bodies sticky from bugspray and smelling like sunscreen. Cups full of ice cold lemonade and driveways filled with sidewalk chalk stick figures. Tired eyes at the end of a busy, outdoor, run till you can't breathe filled day and then falling exhausted into bed with an 'I love you mom', barely audible, coming out of their tiny, kissable lips . I think I know what the next 30 days will be like at our house. Summertime.

Big Girl Bed

2011-07-31T07:00:00.001-06:00

July 4th weekend we changed Kylee's crib into a "big girl bed" as she has been so desperately asking us to do for months. I had actually been wanting to wait until she was 3 because I figured if she's not trying to climb out and she's still sleeping good at night why change a good thing?!

We put Tyler into a toddler bed when he was 2 but that was because we needed the crib for Kylee. Things went great when we made the switch with Tyler but Kylee is a lot more...energetic than Tyler so I wasn't eager to change things up so quickly with her. Her nap taking was minimal at best (about once a week-despite my efforts to give her one every day) and I knew that if I put her in a bed she could get out of at will, I could kiss those naps goodbye for good!

Finally we gave in because she wanted to sleep "in a bed like Tyler" SOOOO bad! And she has totally surprised us with how great she has done!!! She naps every.single.day. and hasn't tried once to get out of her bed and play with toys. She still sits in her bed in the morning and calls for us over and over till we come in and tell her she can get out of bed. We're working on that because that was the main reason we wanted to put her in a bed she could get out of! So every night we tell her, "kylee, in the morning when you wake up you can just get out of your bed all by yourself. Don't call for us to come get you, just come in our room." :) Her little independent personality is loving this and we love that she did so great!

4th of July

2011-07-29T10:00:00.002-06:00

Our 4th of JULY was AWESOME!!!

We hosted a neighborhood party at our house (well for a few blocks in our NH) and there was a GREAT turn-out! At one point I counted 50 people in our little front yard! ha ha- it was so fun and we met a lot of neighbors we hadn't introduced ourselves to before!

About a week before the party my friend, Tess, helped me pass out these invitations to the neighbors since she knew a lot more people than I did.
Tied up and ready to go they looked like this...

Once you untie the ribbon, the popsicle sticks make an American flag that give the details of the party.

I found the idea here, and painted the sticks white, white/blue...

...and red/blue and red.

Then I lined them all up to make their individual flags and used star stickers on the blue paint. After I added the party information they looked like this!:

Tie them all together with ribbon and you're good to go!

The kids LOVE to paint with me anytime I'm outside painting! I love watching the difference between them as they create things. Tyler is always very methodical and patient and makes sure that every last white space has been filled in on the paper-with minimal overlapping. Kylee like to paint the same spot over and over with different color paints until there's a hole in her paper from so much paint. She LOVES color and wants to use every color available. Tyler pretty much sticks to 2-3 colors on one page.

We had 2 grills going with BBQ chicken, burgers and hot dogs and everyone brought a side dish or dessert to share-yummy yummy food!!

Here are a couple fun and easy things I did to make our party really "pop"! (get it?...like fireworks go pop :)-ha ha I know I know)....

I made these quick and easy patriotic utensil holders with scrapbook paper and sticker stars from Michaels...

The kids thought these ring pop treats were fun! (idea from here)!

Fun, patriotic drink-idea found here! (I dipped the rim of the cup in lemon juice and then dipped the cup in the pop rocks. The drink is cranberry juice mixed with Fresca.)

Strawberry flags (strawberries dipped in white chocolate and then dipped in blue sugar crystals)

After dinner and a yummy cookie cake dessert...

...the kids were ready to do sparklers (or sprinklers if you talk to Kylee)

When it got dark enough to do fireworks I passed out firework watching treats (idea from here). Twizzlers for the adults...

...and the ring pops for the kids!

I LOOOOVVVVEEE fireworks!!!! And now that UT approved the kind that can actually go in the air, I have to say, we put on a pretty good show! (we may or may not have had some "fun" and/or homemade fireworks too...just sayin' next year you should probably come to Logan! :) )

And what party would be complete without the potato gun?!?! Bobby (and a few other men) happily provided the entertainment between sparklers at dusk and the fireworks at dark!

Can't wait till next 4th of July...you will come celebrate with us won't you?! :)

Meeting Baby Bailey!

2011-07-26T06:00:00.000-06:00

Even though Bailey surprised all of us with her grand entrance 2 weeks early, and I was lucky enough to be there and meet her so soon after she was born, we had already planned a week long family vacation down to St. George the week after Alisa was due. And just because I had already kissed, held, loved on and ooooodled over baby Bailey didn't mean we couldn't go back so the rest of the family could do the same! (Okay really just Kylee...and me :) )

And boy did she! She could not get enough of "baby baywee" and was peeking looks at her every chance she got.

She was smitten!

The rest of our week included:

swimming in Grandma's pool.

(quick pop rocks snack!)

Going to see Cars 2 (BOO-not impressed! Tyler thought it was OK but Kylee was bored out of her mind)

This was the *happiest* picture we got in front of Mater...Oh my Kylee, what do I do with you?! She was not happy she wasn't going to be in the picture by herself.

Holding Bailey every chance I got. I LOVE LOVE LOVE when they just snuggle up and fall right to sleep...oooohhhh I just love her!

Receiving some surprise gifts from Grandma! She's the best! :)

More sleeping and loving :) (please note her sweet little grip on my shirt-that's one of my favorite things about little newborns!)

Reading books...

Playing (aka racing) trucks and cars ALL over grandmas kitchen/dining/living room.

PEDICURES thanks to mom!!!! (anyone else hating how fantastic Alisa looks 3 weeks after having a baby?!)

Alisa and I with the same shoes, same color polish, and almost identical design... ha ha love her! :)

And OF COURSE the Splash Park! Wouldn't be a summer trip to St. George without it! (Bobby took all of these using all sorts of different settings on our camera...)

(yep they're mostly of Kylee...Tyler and Nate were busy playing at the park)

Bailey and Uncle Bobby. Are you sure you're not ready for #3 babe?! Newborn baby looks pretty good on you ;)

And {literally} right as we were walking out the door to head back home, I finished up this little project Bobby and I had been working on while we were there for Alena! Kinda wish I woulda taken it home for myself! :)

And now I'm having baby bailey withdrawls :(. Hopefully we'll be able to go back down in a couple weeks for her baby blessing!!

Happy Birthday Mom!

2011-07-25T06:00:00.000-06:00

****The following is a portion of the post I wrote on my other blog for my Mom's bday June 20th, but just like the father's day post, I can't NOT post this here too!***

I am SO excited to wish my mom a VERY HAPPY 50th BIRTHDAY!!!!!
I took this photo of my GORGEOUS mother 2 weeks ago while we were waiting for my little sisters baby to be born at the hospital!

She now has FOUR grandchildren and has been at the hospital for each baby that has come into her family. That is the kind of person she is. Dependable, compassionate, positive, helpful, thoughtful, loving and encouraging (to name a few :) ). I kinda love her a lot!!! Happy Birthday Mom!

*****end of post.

A Few things...
1. I HOPE I look as beautiful, peaceful, happy and content with my life as she does at 50.
2. I DREAM to be the kind of creative, passionate, loving person she is at 50.
3. I BELIEVE she is the epitome of perfection in every way.
4. I LOVE that she is MY mom and MY kids grandma...not everyone can be so lucky.
5. I WISH her all of the love, happiness and health in the world for the next 50 years!

Father's Day 2011

2011-07-24T06:00:00.000-06:00

****The following is from a post I posted on my other blog for Father's day so if you've read it already sorry, but I can't post about Father's day there and not here too!****

Our Father's day (although rainy) was perfect! Great church service, long naps, steaks on the grill for dinner with our best friends and a sweet gift from the kids (ie ME) :).

*photo edited using picnik
*Poem: Walk a Little Slower Daddy

I am so thankful for good men in my life. I'm thankful for a father who treated my mother and his children with respect. I'm thankful for a husband that would never curse at, or raise a hand to, me or our children, and that they will grow up without fear as a constant in their lives. I'm thankful for the safety I feel from him and for the love that abides in our home because of a father who takes his responsibility to preside over his family in love and righteousness and to provide the necessities of life and protection for his family seriously. Although I have to give myself a little credit because after-all I did choose him. ha ha :)

Happy Father's day (and happy birthday today!)to my dad: (him and I circa 1980...)

And to my Sweet Love:

******end of post.

I know I blabbed on and on a *little* above about how fantastic he is, so as to not be too lovey dovey, I'll just suffice it to say he's a stud. A total, off the charts, all around S.T.U.D. And my kids are pretty much the luckiest darn kids around. They think so anyway...

Love these "outtakes"! :)

Alisa's Baby Shower

2011-07-22T23:54:00.007-06:00

I know I'm so far behind in posting but I'm going to 'POP' these posts out as fast as I can (starting with the oldest 'events') to get caught up! Speaking of 'POP', that was exactly what little Miss Alisa did the day after her baby shower! (ok I know...totally 'corn'y but I just can't help it ;)...The older I get the more like my mother I become :) )

A couple weeks before Alisa was due her cute SIL, Amy, threw her a baby shower (on June 4th) in St. George. Bobby was so sweet and ~~offered~~ agreed to take the kids for the weekend so I could jet down for a quick girls weekend and attend Alisa's shower! (Mom, Amanda, Alisa, me, Alena, my grandma)

So cute!!!!

A couple of my favorite of little Bailey's gifts were this adorable pink and brown bikini:

And this diaper bag her M.I.L. MADE for her! It is seriously too die for adorable and it came with a matching car seat cover!

This was my gift to Alisa(picture taken before I left Logan-It was wrapped much cuter when I gave it to her:) ) a wipes case, wipes band and Q-tip jar. You can find the tutorials on how to make them on my craft blog here.

I was supposed to be headed home first thing the next morning (June 5th), but when Alisa called to say that her water had broke (she called me FIRST-at 3 am-but I didn't answer. I was asleep people don't judge me) I wasn't going anywhere till I saw and held that precious little bundle of pink! Waiting in the hospital lobby-SOOOO excited!

I just happened to be in St. George when Alisa went into labor with Nate too, so I felt so lucky to be there for Bailey's birth as well!! Kicking us out of the room cause she's gettin' ready to push! :)

Tammy, Skyler's mom, introducing Nate to his sister for the first time. (I felt SO fortunate to be apart of all these special moments! I LOVE family!!!)

Welcome to the world little Bailey; these girlies love you more than you know!

Drive-In Movie Cars

2011-07-14T15:00:00.000-06:00

So if you frequent my craft blog I'm sure you've already seen this project, but I wanted to share it here too because it was something fun I did for the kids and we've already made some fun summer memories with them! I wrote this post up as a tutorial (that's why there's a step-by-step below) because I was guest posting on another craft blog and I'm just copying that post and putting it straight here for ease :). So if you're interested in making one too read on!

Drive-in Movie Cars!

The great thing about this project is that it can be as simple or as fancy-shmancy as you want it to be! All you need to start is a cardboard box!

We (mr. sweet love and I) decided we wanted the car to have a little "hood" of sorts as you can see above, so we cut a separate, small strip of cardboard, folded down the edges of the board to make a table-top shape, and hot glued those edges to the inside of the box.

And since these fun little cars will be ~~hounded~~ played with by toddlers we thought it might be good to give it a little extra piece of support by hot gluing another piece of cardboard under the "hood" and to the front of the box like so:

Had our box been a typical brown box I wouldn't have painted it, but the only box we had was white and yellow with writing all over it, so I decided to give it a quick coat of Rustoleum's semi-gloss white spray paint. A perfect canvas!

Next I added wheels using paper plates lightly spray painted black.

And Mr. Sweet Love added a tail pipe using a roll of toilet paper spray painted silver and then cut in half.

And what drive-in movie would be fun without snacks?! With kids that's a definite MUST, so I added a snack box to the side of the car using the bottom porion of a baby wipes container (I spray painted mine red but you could totally leave it white!) and attached it using office clips.

The only thing left is to go to town decorating the front in whatever car style you can come up with! I used a black marker to draw on the designs and can lids for the headlights.

And just to personalize them for the kids (my kids love to see their name everywhere! ha ha!) I added some quick license plates to the back with their name and age using cardboard wrapped in foil and then hot glued to the box!

Toss in a fluffy pillow and a comfy blanket, and you're ready to throw a movie up on the projector outside (or inside!!) and have a fun family movie night!

Now go have yourself a WHEELY good time in your DIY drive-in car!

"Real" updates coming soon-promise! :)

Bacon Wrapped Smokies

2011-07-13T15:30:00.000-06:00

I do not cook. Like ever. Well...I used to cook. There was a period a few years back where I was determined to be Mrs. Betty Homemaker.

I only had Tyler, who was just a couple months old, I had just recently quit my job to be home full time, and had a husband who was balancing work with school, family and church responsibilities, and I knew that it was time for me to step-up and fully embrace my roll of wife and mother by becoming the epitome of perfection in every area that entailed. Sewing {fail}, baking {fail}, nursing my child {fail}, being all dolled up with dinner on the table at 5:00 when the Mr. came home {fail}, cleaning {pass-I LOVE to clean :) }, cooking {A for effort, but C- for quality}.

After a couple of months of me trying my darnedest to be what every 1950's woman could somehow achieve without batting an eye, and my husbands earnest attempts to be sweet and kind towards my cooking (he would often say during dinner, "this is really good, but I bet if you added a little bit of _____ next time, or just a teaspoon of ______, it would be perfect.") I was finally fed up and said, "Fine, if you think you can do it better than do it!" And so he did. (He is REALLY REALLY good too!) And from that moment on I have never cooked again.

Okay, like the random meals here and there if he can't cook dinner but let's be honest my meals typically consist of frozen lasagna's (hey don't knock 'em, Stouffer's knows what they're doing), frozen pizza's or McDonald's. I can also make a pretty mean quesadilla so... boo yah.

Now all that being said, there is ONE thing I cook that Bobby has never tried to take over from me, tell me to add anything to, or change it any sort of way. Yall should fell real cool that I'm about to share my one and only cooking talent with you-Bacon Wrapped Smokies. Meat on top of meat? Heaven on a toothpick is what they should be called.

If you take these to any function where men will be present these (and you) will be the HIT of the night. If you're single...ladies this will get you a man guaranteed! I've made these for Halloween parties, thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, SuperBowl, birthdays, and every party for my husband's work. And for summer BBQ's these would be the perfect addition! The original recipe is from Allrecipes.com , and here is my version with some step-by-step pictures.

Ingredients:
1 lb bacon sliced into thirds
1 package (14 oz) beef cocktail wieners
brown sugar

Directions:

First I pour the entire package of smokies into a ziploc bag (juices from bag included) and pour about a 1/4 cup of brown sugar on top. Shake the bag so the brown sugar coats all the smokies and put in fridge to marinate for at least an hour (sometimes I leave it overnight).

Next cut your bacon into thirds like shown. (I like to stick my bacon in the freezer about 15 min. before I cut it to firm it up a little because it is MUCH MUCH easier to work with when it's cold!)

Oh, and for as many times as I've done this, I've found that Hormel's Black label original bacon is the BEST kind of bacon to use (taste and ease wise) for this recipe.

Next, I take one strip of the cut bacon and lightly coat both sides with brown sugar.

Then I take one smokie and roll it up inside the bacon and place a toothpick through it to hold the bacon.

I put them all into a bowl and then drizzle the brown sugar marinade from the bag of smokies all over the wrapped smokies and let it sit in the fridge (covered) for a couple hours.

Set the oven to 325 and line a pan with foil (this makes clean up a snap!) and place the smokies evenly spaced on the pan. I then sprinkle just a {tad} more brown sugar over the tops of all the wrapped smokies and cook for 40 min.

I like my bacon crispy so when they're done cooking I kick the oven onto broil and let them cook about another 5 min to really crystalize that sugar and make them a dark golden, bubbly, brown!

If they're not going to be eaten right away, I put them in a crockpot on warm/lo to make sure they stay nice and tasty!

Please please make these, your bellies (and your husbands) will thank you! ha ha! That being said, you will {probably} never see another recipe on here again! I hope you're having a beautiful summer day wherever you are!!

Pinterest-Need an Invite?

2011-07-12T15:29:00.000-06:00

I know I'm the last person on earth to jump onto the Pinterest Bandwagon, but that's kinda the story of my life. I never thought the fads that crossed my path were cool until months (sometimes years-not gonna lie) after they had been debuted. Slap Bracelets, facebook, big hair (I'm from TX), skinny jeans (still not real sure about that one), and I still don't do the twitter thing. See what I mean. I'm just cool in other ways :).

However I am SO happy to have finally caught the pinning fever. It is SO easy! Let me just tell you; in a word document saved on my computer, I had FOUR pages of saved URL links for projects I wanted to remember to try. All-in-all this method served its purpose, but going from that to Pinterest was like going from having a pager to having a cell phone.

A lot of my saved links didn't have the title of what the project was, so sometimes when I wanted to find a certain project I had saved I had to go through 2 pages of links just to find it. This saves ALL that time! I spent all night Sat. night going through my saved word document and saving each link into my pinterest account and now I can find my projects easily because I can see the picture. Genius! How did I not do this sooner?! Trust me on this, if you have thought about doing it sign up now, it is so fun! Aaaand, for added convenience, they have a button you can put right up on your toolbar so anytime you see an image of anything you like on the web (clothes, food, crafts, shoes,etc), you just click on the image and then click the 'pin it' button on your toolbar and you're done! Saved forever for you to reference back to in the future.

Just for an example here are 2 of the boards I have on pinterest (you can create boards for any category you like-giving you even MORE ease to find what you've saved...aka pinned-I'm still new at this :) ) This is part of my 'artwork' board:

This is part of my 'for the home' board:

You can also follow along with other peoples pinterest boards so if you see someone has a similar style as you, you can follow them and when they update their boards it will show you what pictures they have pinned and you can re-pin them to your board if you want. This may sound confusing, but it's the easiest thing ever and Pinterest has a great help board that will answer any questions. Just get started, I promise you'll love it!

The silly thing is that you have to request an invite (which is what I did) and it took 2 weeks for them to accept it and invite me to sign up. The cool thing is that when I signed up they gave me 6 invitations that I can pass along, which would mean you wouldn't have to wait to sign up! (oh and signing up is FREE!) So if you're not already pinning let me know by leaving your email address in the comments and I'll send you an invite! (I'm not getting anything for this, it's just something I wish I would have had so I didn't have to wait!!!)

Let me know if you do sign up, or if you already have an account, because I would love to follow your board and see what you're pinning!! If you want to check out more of my pictures on pinterest or follow along with me just click HERE!

First ER visit

2011-07-07T17:41:00.001-06:00

Today I am SOOOOO thankful for healthy children. I think too often we take for granted health as we go about our typical days of diaper changes, making meals, playing legos, dress-up and having tea parties. I think at times I can be overwhelmed by the tasks of my day and forget to be grateful for EVERY part of my children-even the tantrums, the meltdowns, the bickering and the defiance's. :) Because even though hearing my daughter scream non-stop at the top of her lungs because she can't have a popsicle for breakfast can be frustrating, it means that she is alive and healthy!

Today, Kylee had her first trip to the ER today. (thankful Tyler hasn't had too yet!)

It rained for quite awhile this morning and while we were running across the parking lot from our car to the sidewalk Bobby, who was holding Kylee, slipped on the sidewalk and fell. Kylee arched her back and flew right out of his hands directly to the concrete below (about a 3 ft fall) and smacked the back of her head on the ground. It was all we could do to keep her awake for the next hour and then she took about a 20 min. nap. She was awake off and on for the next hour and then woke up vomiting. We called our doctor's office who said to take her into the ER if she vomited again. About a half hour later she vomited again and since she had been extremely lethargic during the times she was awake we decided to go ahead and get her checked out.

After a chat with the doctor, a couple pokes and prods, and a CT scan the verdict was: Mild Concussion. (She was terrified during the scan and it made me SO sad! I hated seeing her so scared, but she was brave and stopped crying after I told her a few times to just look into my eyes and hold my hand. I think I needed to hold her hand as much as she needed mine.)

It wasn't severe enough that we had to leave her overnight at the hospital to be monitored, but the doctor did advise bed rest for the next 24 hours. And to wake her up every couple hours throughout the night to make sure she responds and wakes up! As of right now she is doing GREAT (watching Scooby Doo and eating a banana as we speak :) ) so I think we have every reason to be optimistic!

Moral of the story...never take for granted the health, happiness and love of your children or those you love. My dear friend Jaime from Crafty Scrappy Happy recently shared this quote on her blog and I think it fits my situation perfectly-

Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are...

I wish you all a very normal, treasure filled day! :)

Root Canal

2011-07-06T21:54:00.001-06:00

Today I had my first ever-memorable-root canal. I say "memorable" because technically I've had a root canal before but I was only 3 so I didn't remember that I would want to DIE. Okay maybe I'm being a smidge dramatic but seriously...ouch. This is the picture Bobby took of me right after they were done. Yes I totally made him be there.

I am not at all ashamed to admit that I am a major wuss. Like I request the epidural before I've even felt a contraction, make Tyler kill bugs in my house if Bobby's not home (he thinks it's totally cool so why not make his day?!), and would never ever tell a waitress that I don't like the food I've been served, even if it's cold, flavorless or the wrong order kind of wuss.

I'm not a fan of being uncomfortable physically or in my surroundings so I tend just to play things safe. When I had to sign a waiver at the doctor's office that said I wouldn't hold them accountable for over 10 different "this could go wrong" scenarios I knew I just chucked my 'do all things safely and by the rules' book out the window. Insert Bobby does not have a choice in whether or not to accompany me. Not that I really had to persuade him to come when he found out I'd be on Nitrous Oxide. (Yep, I'm one of those people. I would have taken full sedation but his office doesn't offer it :) ) He really was great to have there though! Whenever I'd wiggle my fingers he'd hold my hand (like during each of the THREE shots they put into my gums to numb them) and he kept his hand on my leg the WHOLE time. I did have him laughing pretty good at one point...don't remember why but I'm sure he'd be happy to tell ya! I watched 27 Dresses on the TV on the ceiling and almost fell asleep at one point because they had the laughing gas turned up so high (it wasn't kicking in at the beginning so they cranked it up pretty good!) That sorta freaked the dentist helper person out (sorry I don't know all their technical names) and she started shouting at me "DONT fall asleep!" ha ha. Good times.

But I have to say, all things considered-now that it's been 10 hours-it wasn't the most awful thing in the world (being beaten only by child birth). I had a jamba juice for lunch, an ice cream cone for dinner and a 2 1/2 hour nap after I got home while Bobby watched the kids. (using the term "watched" loosely since I woke up to him sleeping on the chair across the room from me). The left half of my face was numb for about 6 hours (which was awesome-totally freaked Tyler out) and now my tooth hurts like crazy but it's nothing a little (prescribed) medication won't help with! :) Ha ha! I'm hoping in the morning it won't be as sore because I'm starving and would really like to eat without wanting to cry!

I have to go back in in a couple of weeks to get the crown put on and I'm hoping that won't be as traumatic of an ordeal. If you have any horror stories I DON'T want to hear them! If you do however want to bring me a jamba juice I would love you forever! :)

My Country Tis of Thee

2011-07-04T13:43:00.002-06:00

My country,' tis of thee


sweet land of liberty,


of thee I sing;  


land where my fathers died,  


land of the pilgrims' pride, 


from every mountainside let freedom ring!


Happy 4th of July!!!

Update?!

2011-06-30T09:15:00.003-06:00

Hello my dear neglected blog! I seriously cannot believe it's been a month since I've given you some love...all I can say is WE LOVE SUMMER! I really am sorry I haven't been better at posting, I've got some GREAT pictures and fun things I want to post and I WILL be updating soon-hopefully around mid next week (after we get home from St. George, after our 4th of July party, after my root canal next wed :( ) but it will be update OVERload I promise!

But in the meantime, I wanted to let you guys know I'm giving away a super cute bubble watch on my craft blog and the giveaway ends tonight at midnight!

I really love it when somebody I know wins because the whole reason I blog my crafts is for my family and friends so PLEASE come over and enter, I'd love to see you win!

Best Friends

2011-05-31T00:04:00.003-06:00

Macey and Kylee have known each other since they were 4 and 7 mo old. They are best friends which works out nicely since her momma is my best friend.

We see them almost every day (no lie) and in 8 weeks they'll be moving. We are going to miss them so much!

I think I'm ready to be done with this college thing (soon!! :)) because I can't take anymore people I love moving away (or me moving from them). I'm just ready to be in one place for the rest of my life and have friends that never leave me! Well...a girl can dream right?! ha ha! We're going to miss you Elletts!

David and Goliath

2011-05-25T07:00:00.002-06:00

2 Mondays ago for Family Home Evening we read THIS story from The Friend. The kids thought it would be fun to act out the story of David and Goliath (like the family in the story did) since we had just recently read that story in our family scripture study. So this past Mon. night we got all dressed up and did just that. It was so much fun and the kids really got into their parts!

Kylee was supposed to introduce our characters, but she was a little annoyed that we couldn't just start already!

When I asked her what she wanted to be in the story she promptly replied, "The Princess!". Sure, why not? and I was the narrator. :)

Goliath challenging the Israelites to fight him.

The terrified Israelite princess. :)

David listening to Goliath rant while simultaneously making the decision to have faith in the Lord that he will be protected as he fights the giant.

Preparing to throw the rock from its sling.

Yay! The giant fell down from a blow to the forehead by a simple rock. :)

David then takes Goliath's sword and chops of his head. Beautiful.

Celebrating their victory!

We then talked about how we can always have faith in the Lord to fight our own "giants" and know that He will protect us as long as we are faithful in keeping the commandments. I see lots more theater in our future. :)

Blog Swap

2011-05-24T06:00:00.001-06:00

Today I'm doing my first blog swap (I post a tutorial on her blog while she posts one on mine) on the blog Little Lucy Lu. I'm SO SO nervous about it so I'd love if you'd come over and say hi! I'm doing a tutorial for a DIY Solar Lantern, come check it out!