The North Shore

We made a couple trips to Walmart the last couple days and this is the scenery.

The Flight to Hawaii

The kids did pretty well on the flight over. We had a layover and the second flight took off past their bedtime. Tyler gave them both some benedryl and they slept all 5 1/2 hours of it. When we landed, we took a shuttle to our hotel and the next morning picked up our rental car.

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

Send your own ElfYourself eCards

New Moon

Chrissy and I went to New Moon last night. It was fun to spend time with Chrissy without my kids and have fun. We had matching shirts Ü. I think it's going to take me a couple days to recover though.

Buzz and the butterflies

Hadlee said she wanted to be a butterfly, so we ordered a butterfly costume for her and some wings for me to match. The only problem was that on Halloween she kept saying she was a butterfly fairy princess. I guess the dress made it more than just a butterfly.

Close up of the eyelashes, and yes they are real. I think I burned extra calories that night keeping my eyes open.
My brother Davey dressed up as Wolverine. If you look really close, you can see metal coming out of his hands, he is getting mad.
Calvin loved my costume so much he had to put it on when I took it off. He was Buzz 95 percent of the night and a butterfly 5 percent. I think that is the perfect combination of being in touch with your femininity, right?

On Saturday we went trick or treating in Grand Junction. Calvin was hilarious. He wouldn't leave their porch until they closed the door, I had to drag him away. One time he stopped and turned back toward the house and said, "kiss?" I had to tell him that the nice man didn't want a kiss, LET'S GO!!

um......ok???

I have heard that it's good for kids to pick out their own clothes for the day so I have been trying to let Hadlee do just that. But what am I supposed to do when she comes up the stairs, all proud of herself, in this?

I wasn't sure what to do, so I took some pictures. When I tried to tell her they didn't really go together, she protested saying, "MOM, they are both pink, they match." I talked her into changing her shirt and putting a dress over the whole thing before we went anywhere. I love these pictures though, she doesn't care AT ALL that she might look a little silly.

ATTACKED!!!

Sometimes Calvin dishes it out, but today he was the one taking it. Today an anonymous relative was dishing it out. It's on his lower back and you can see almost every little tooth mark. Calvin cried for a minute but was fine and started crying because he didn't want 'the culprit' to have to leave the park. He's a tough little boy!

The results are in

School pictures are back!

The quality on Hadlee's doesn't look as good as Calvin's because I had to scan hers in. For some reason, it wasn't on the disc they game me. Calvin was on both discs. ???

Helper Parkway

A couple weeks ago we went to Helper Parkway for a walk.
The kids liked the tunnels.

I was glad they couldn't read some of the stuff written on the tunnel walls. These young whippersnappers are crazy these days, some of the stuff they write!
Hadlee took this picture, I thought it was pretty cool.

Hadlee

Calvin

I love my sweet boy.

If at first you don't succeed.....

So the last post was mostly accurate except for the last few lines. Julia asked me to make the cake for Saturday and on Friday night I was sure I would be plopping a hideous cake in front of her that looked like those pictures.
The mistake: I think I tried to make it too yummy. There were about 8 small layers to the cake and in between each there was chocolate frosting and caramel (which you can see oozing out it the pictures.) I also thought it would be fun to have pumpkin guts so I cut a hole in all those layers and made some german chocolate cake frosting to go in the middle. I had thought about using a bundt pan earlier in the day but didn't have one and decided I didn't need one. (also part of the mistake.) So, here I am with all these tiny layers with all this gooey stuff in between and the pumpkin guts in the middle and there was just no containing it all. The layers started to fracture and floods of caramel and guts started making there way to the outside of the cake.
Now it's about 10:30 pm on Friday night. I have just wrapped the entire frosted cake in wax paper, used large amounts of duct tape to tape it together, and put it in the freezer to try to stop the oozing. I took it out about 11:30 and removed the wrapping to find that maybe I could make the cake work after all. So I started fixing the frosting that the wax paper and duct tape had done a bit of a number on when the cake started slanting different ways. And before I knew it, the oozing had resumed. I didn't know what to do, but luckily growing up, my parents taught me that 'if at first you don't succeed, figure it out because no one is going to fix it for you.' (isn't that sweet?) I had to make a command decision so I called Chrissy and told her about my caketastrophe, and she was on her way over with a bundt pan in no time. When she got here, I went to smith's, barely before closing, and got some cake mixes and flour (which I was also out of), and returned home for round #2. I was up until 2 in the morning and then worked on the cake pretty much up until the party at 4 on Saturday. So the final cake was two bundt cakes stacked one upside down and one right side up. I cut each in half and just did chocolate frosting in between and put the pumpkin guts in the middle. I think it was around 2 in the morning that I vowed never to make a cake again. I am really not sure if this stinking cake was worth it, but Tatum seemed excited about it and I guess that's all that matters. I was just glad to have something actually resembling a jack o'lantern to give to Julia.

Check out this AWESOME cake I made.

Tatum just turned 2 and Julia asked if I would make a cake for her party. She wanted to do a Halloween theme and after I thought about if for a day or two I decided it would be easiest to make a cake that looked like a jack o'lantern. So I spent pretty much all day Friday on the cake and into the wee hours of the morning and this is how it looked...(drum roll, please.)
I included a few angles so you could get the full effect of just how awesome it was.






When I showed it to Julia she teared up a bit. I think it was because she was so overwhelmed by my hard work and that it looked so much like a jack o'lantern. Isn't Tatum just the luckiest to have an aunt like me?

Hadlee reading

(Probably kind of boring unless you are a grandparent.)
Don't forget to pause the play list.

Don't mess with the master.

Me: Hadlee do you want a quesadilla for lunch?
H: No, I want a cheese sandwich
M: a quesadilla is like a cheese sandwich only better
H: I know it's a round thing, I just want a cheese sandwich with bread
M: Oh, I didn't know you knew what it was, okay

10 minutes later with a cheese sandwich on her plate and a quesadilla on mine.....

H: Hey can I have a piece of your quesadilla?
M: sure
H: Can I have 2
M: You eat your cheese sandwich and then if you want more I will give you more
H: I just want a quesadilla
M: Hadlee, you are so fickle. You are a fickle pickle
H: you are fickl-er
M: you are fickl-est (she looks confused) That's right Hadlee, don't mess with the master.

What an amateur. I didn't even have to pull out fickl-er-est or I'm rubber and you're glue.

School picture day, hooray!

We got Hadlee ready for her picture, we curled her hair and put on her cute outfit. I told her we were going to go get Calvin and then go get their pictures taken. She had quite a swagger about her with her cute outfit and hair all done, you could just feel it radiating off of her, so I shouldn't have been surprised to hear her say (while tossing her hair), "All the boys at Calvin's school are going to think I am so cute."


They got to pick prizes from grandma's office. (the perks are never ending) Calvin got a frog and Hadlee got a necklace.

Relief Society General Conference

I had never been to the Conference Center before so I was so excited when Jenny called and asked if I wanted to go to RS General Conference with her. It was such a great experience to hear the commotion of the room turn to utter silence as the prophet walked in. I enjoyed the talks and just being able to listen without any interruption from my children (I never get to just listen). We were seated right behind 3 rows of hearing impaired women. I was so overwhelmed by the 60 women in front of us all signing the hymns together that I could barely sing. It reminded me that we all have trials and blessing and sometimes I may feel like my trial are unbearable, but they really are always possible to bear.

Ryan watched my kids (and his) while we went and it was amazing how well he handled it (SuperRyan). They had a Woody doll and Calvin loves Toy Story. Not only did Ryan watch my kids for 7 hours, but they let Calvin take Woody home with him. He didn't let go of that toy the whole way home and has hardly let go of him since.

Calvin and Woody, right side up or upside down, it doesn't matter.

A letter from Ellah

This week Hadlee got a letter from her cousin Ellah. I am happy to know that the days of pen pals are alive and well, I thought it was so cute to see how excited she was about the letter and so cute that Ellah wanted to write her one.


She wrote her back but we didn't have any envelopes so hopefully we will mail it tomorrow.

An actual conversation with my little guy

He is not so little anymore, but he will always be my little guy. Every once in a while something happens and I see rays of hope shining through him. I have mentioned before that he has started talking in sentences, but tonight we had a actual conversation!! This is how it went.

Me: (yelling from downstairs) "Calvin"
Him: (yelling from upstairs) "What"
Me: "come here"
Him: "okay" (footsteps on the stairs), "Where are you?"
Me: "right here"
Him: (turns to see me) "Oh, hi"

I guess maybe it seems stupid that this was the moment today that made me the happiest but it was. I look forward to many more conversations with my sweet boy.

Who wouldn't want to live here????

I am starting to feel jinxed because we have had 3 offers on our house and none of them have worked out. I have been getting requests for pictures now that our house is done. Well, it's been done for a while so it about time I post some pictures I guess. I did the best I could to find before pictures, some of them have kids in them (or Tyler), but hopefully you can get the idea.

The living Room before:

This one is after we had taken the wall down that is in the picture above.

The living room after:

The kitchen before:



The kitchen after:
The bathroom before: (I think our camera was broken but you can still see how scary it was.)
The bathroom after:

I didn't really have before pictures of the bedrooms but here's the after pictures.


The front of the house. We revamped the front yard.


Picture this full of weeds without a sand box and that would be the before. (the sandbox is under the tree house.)