Sunny Days!!!

Everyone else in my blog list had a HUGE exclamation as their title...I only thought it fair to add my own. I've been stuck on the Sesame Street theme song all day, just for the fact that it starts..."Sunny Day"...then from there I'm just not so sure. "Keepin' the Clouds Away....duh duh duhhhhh duh duh duh da da dAAAAA Can you tell me how to get, how to get to Sesame Street!"

But I am moving on....

This week we've had some fun times at our house. (and out of our house.)

First of all, we went to the "Sportsmans Expo" in Salt Lake, and had a pretty okie doke time. Here's a pic:

That little thing that Morgan is holding is a 2 month old bear. It was the cutest thing EVER. They had a bunch there and would trade them out when one got tired. They would suck on your finger like a bottle. Cute cute. This was REALLY the highlight of the evening. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy chattin' it up with salespeople, but this was seriously neat. I even had my "hunters' orange" on for the evening. :)

Secondly, it was my birthday...now I'm not writing about this day to brag or anything, just wanting to show off my rockin' birthday hat.

Is this the most BEAUTIFUL hat you have ever seen? I knew it was. Morgan made this for me during the 2 days I was gone for my scrapbooking overnighter. It's totally made out of paper and tape. I was actually VERY impressed with the fact that it stayed on my head. Morgan is very ingenious with her imagination. Way to go Bug!

My day started out around 8am (Chance let me sleep in!) when Chance and the kids came into my room with Breakfast in Bed. There were eggs. There was toast. There was even a brownie and 2 snack cookies (I am not sure why the desserts, but at least my birthday candle stuck in the brownie pretty well.). Everyone sang "Happy Birthday" and then left me in sweet quiet while I ate. After eating breakfast, we went to church for yet another fun-filled 3 hours (well really only 1 1/2 hours) of battling with kids who are NOT being reverent. Okay let me 'splain. Grace actually does really well during Sacrament Meeting now. We're really only battling with my little Crede. He's a bugger when we are trying to be quiet. (but that is a WHOLE 'nother post).

After church, Chance told me he was making dinner. I had all kinds of dinners imagined. Deer roast? Elk steaks? I did NOT know what to expect. Well he made....da da da daaaaaaaa.....Stouffers frozen lasagne with brocolli as a side dish. He really did think things through and went through a lot of effort to actually grocery shop for me. I just gotta say though, that lasagne was SICKENING. Chance kept saying, "Oh, I'm sorry, I thought this was going to be good.". My Mom came over to eat dinner with us, and she was being the good sport of the day. She ate her whole dinner. **dry heave**

Before we sat down to eat, we snapped some pictures:

Morgan was mad at Chance in this picture...who knows why. She is becoming such our little drama queen. (I about said drag queen. Wow.) Anyway, my Mom is holding Crede, and Grace is just excited to be saying "cheeeeeese".

Here's Chance cookin' up our grub. I should start calling him Chef Ramsey. But he'd have to be English and cuss a lot. Perhaps I will call him Chef Chancez (You have to say it with a french accent.) That is lookin' GOOOOOOOOD. Oh, and so is the brocolli. ba da ba CHING


Here's my cute husband enduring my camera shoot. He really hates it when I take his picture. Cute little husband of mine. Thanks for making my birthday a lot of fun. I love you schmookims. (I really don't call him that) I really did have a good birthday thanks to this man.

Now for other items of business.

My Scrapbooking overnighter was a lot of fun, and I'm glad that it's over for another 6 months. It's surprising how much sleep I require nowadays. It's not so much that I'm pregnant, it's that I need a LOT of sleep! I only got about 5 hours, and i was DRAGGING the next day. Wowsers. Well, while I was gone, Chance did a really good job taking care of our kids. He drove Morgan to ballet on Saturday, he actually did Grace and Morgan's hair (Morgan always teases him because he can't do a ponytail holder. He does some boy-scout knot thing instead of pulling the hair through, twist, and repeat.) The only thing I am going to point out is the fact that he put Crede in his "emergency" pajama's that I only use if all his others are horribly dirty, and the laundry is horribly behind. These pajama's have been handed down for generations, (really only for about 10 years, so lets say decade.) and are VERY holey and old. Here's Crede eating his breakfast Saturday morning.


do ya notice his feet? Look a little closer.


closer...



closer...



okay here is a close-up.



poor Crede. You know how irritating it is to wear holey socks. I can't imagine having almost my entire foot sticking out of my pj's and NOT be bugged. I do believe these pajama's have now been officially retired. Sorry little boy!


And lastly,

Here's some pictures of Grace. She is now getting up in the morning and going STRAIGHT to her dress-ups. She layers and layers them until she looks like a little marshmallow. And you KNOW you can't go anywhere without sensable heels.


I particularly like the pink hat that's been put on either backwards or upside down...I'm not sure which. Does the name Christopher Columbus come to mind? Yankee Doodle? Napoleon Bonaparte? That's it. Napoleon Bonaparte. He was only about as tall as Grace is....so lets go with that. :)

How's that yogurt Grace?

Well I'm leaving with good potty news. The elmo underwear was a big success, and Grace is now OFFICALLY potty trained. I still have to give her either a cookie, or chocolate everytime she poops, but I think that's a SMALL sacrifice in my opinion.

Well goodbye, and Happy Potty.

A Little of This....A Little of That.

Does anyone else ever have the delima about which words, if any, to capitalize in their post title? Just wonderin'.

The last week has been pretty uneventful, but I'm updatin' anyway.

Chance:

He's been starting to go "Shed Hunting" more and more. If you don't know what shed hunting is, let me fill you in. You drive up to the mountains, you park your truck, and you walk around for 5 hours looking at the ground for deer antlers that have dropped. Now does that sound exciting? I sure think it does. But here's the thing. Chance LOVES it, and finds some really cool and big horns that way. Here, I'll show you a couple of pictures. Chance is going to LOVE the fact that I've, once again, used a deer in my blog. You're welcome.

These horns Chance actually found during the "Antelope Island" shed hunt. Pretty nifty, 'eh?

Sometimes Chance even makes stuff from his finds. This is an elk antler lamp he made. He's even made some tables, and smaller table lamps. He is actually pretty talented. I just don't like this stuff spread through my house, which is why he has his own hunting room. He can decorate however he wants in that space.

One side note, Chance wants to name our unborn (sweet and innocent) baby, Shed, if it's a boy. Uhhghhmm. Now. I love you Chance, but I just don't see it. Chance has made a deal with me. He will let me name our baby, Emma, if it's a girl if he can have full reign over the boy choice. I am just not sure that I'm ready for that kind of commitment. We're still in the negotiation stage, so I'll have to keep ya' posted on this one.

NEXT!!!

Emily:

I have been trying to stay sane here in my house of Toddlers. I like to refer to my life as Toddlerland. There are some days where I honestly feel like I do the same thing over and over and over. My kids don't age, I don't age, it's just the same day over and over. Kinda like the movie Groundhog Day. I am looking forward to Summer. HOLY COW I am looking forward to Summer. I think wintertime is hard with little tikes. What can you really do? Movies? nope. Library? nope. The Mall? (no money?) nope. Any ideas anyone?!

Lets see. I have been getting ready for our scrapbooking overnighter this weekend. I'm actually pretty excited for it this time. I have my laptop, and some scrapbooking software called "Memory Mixer" and I'm going to start scrapbooking that way. I'm trying to figure out how to post ya' an example, and when I figure that out, I'll be sure to let you know.

And lastly, I have this lovely C-PAP machine to use at night. It came as a result of my snorin' study (see previous post). The plus side? I don't snore anymore, and I don't get horrible headaches in the middle of the night. Yay. The downside? Well let me first just SHOW you what this thing looks like:

It almost looks like something not of this world. That blue band thingy wraps around my head to keep the face mask over my nose and mouth, and the tubing blows the oxygen continuously through the night. Every night (and this NEVER gets old, let me just say) Chance will say, "Where are we flying to tonight?" Nice. It has also given me some nice face-marks in the morning. It's TEN TIMES worse then bed-sheet face that we all get on occasion. Ah well. Let's move on.

Morgan:

Our little 6 year old just lost her very first tooth on Friday. Morgan is such a girl. For about a week, all I heard was, "Mom! Look at my tooth! It is SOOOOOO loose!" This would always be followed by me or Chance saying, "Morgan, do you want us to pull it out?"...which would always be followed by tears and running away. On Friday Morgan walks upstairs crying. I said, "What's wrong?" She said, "I don't want my tooth to be backwards!" She is near hysterics. So she opens her mouth and her tooth is completely turned around backwards. I said, "Are you SURE you don't want me to pull it out?" Morgan: "NOOOOOoooooooooooooo" (as she runs away). Well about 10 minutes later she comes running downstairs and proudly announces that she pulled her tooth out. Whew! (only about 20 more to go.)

Morgan drew a picture for the tooth fairy, and put that and her tooth under her pillow that night. Well the tooth fairy made 2 attempts to visit, but was thwarted each time by a little girl who was NOT asleep! Finally around 5am the tooth fairy made her appearance, tried to get the 81/2 x 11 piece of paper out from under the pillow SILENTLY, and slipped the dollar under there. An hour later when my girls woke up (see previous post for my morning issues), Morgan was so excited to see her dollar. Here's our little toothless wonder:

Grace:

Grace has been up to her ususal. Getting into stuff, being goofy all the time, and goin potty every once in awhile. I think you can really consider yourself "arrived" as a Mom when you find yourself sitting with your toddler in the bathroom cheering her on, "you can do it!! go poop!!" And when the blessed moment finally arrives, you are sincerely excited for your child. We usually celebrate with chocolate and cookies. We're making progress, and I have even bought elmo underwear for Grace when she can keep her pull-ups dry. Gotta love pottie training. **gag**

In this picture Grace has some residual Skittle on her face from going potty. Oh and there's also some on her shirt. We're still learning how to eat them without drooling all over the place.

Another funny thing Grace has started - happens at bedtime. She will sit by her open door, line up her baby dolls right next to her, and read books to them. She will usually do this for about an hour before relenting and going to sleep. During this hour, she will sing at the top of her lungs. Her very favorite song goes like this. "A B C D E F G noonowmoooomalllaaaatadooooo". Sometimes she sings her Mom and Dad song too. It goes like this, "Mom likes meeeeeeeee, Dad likes meeeeeeeee" and the tune varies each time it's sung. last night I took a picture of her babies all lined up after she fell asleep. On my cute detector, this is about an 8.

AND LASTLY.....
Crede:

He's been talking up a STORM. He can now count to ten (before Grace I might add), and he says 4 letter sentences to me. I'll get him up in the morning and he'll say, "Pajama's all wet Mom." because the lovely Walmart brand diapers he wears to bed have leaked once again. If any of you have ever watched "Sid the Science Kid" on PBS, you'll understand this next little dooha. In the beginning of the show Sid says, "There's Gabriella!" And she says, "Watch what I can do!" Then she does some cheerleader dance. Crede walks around saying, "ya ya hooooo! ya ya hoooooo!" and sounds just like her.

Hmmmm.....Crede has been buddying up with his big sister for some more exciting mischief, and has been spending a lot of time in timeout. I'll go get him out at the end of it, and ask, "Why did Mom put you in time out?" He'll totally tell me why. The last time he said, "Jumped on the couch." Yep he's a genius.

Well now, if you've read this much of my post, you must really enjoy hearing the ramblings on of my family. Enjoy your day, and know that I'm here in Toddlerland enjoying myself thoroughly.

When did ignorance become such a BAD thing?!

When I was about 7 years old, I thought the idea of a lemonade stand was GENIUS. How else could I make a fortune?!! I thought a lot about it, and approached my mom with the big question. Do you know what her response was?

"You can't sell lemonade because you have to have a sales license."
"How can I get a Sales License?" I ask.
"I really don't' know!" She replied.

Well I grew up thinking I would never be able to make my brilliant business plan, of owning my own lemonade stand, come to be.

Fast forward...oh 23 years. (yes I am now 30 *yikes!*) Morgan and I were sitting in the kitchen and she decides that she wants to color. My mom gave us a bunch of OLD template pictures from the 1950's because she finally cleaned out her filing cabinet. WELL. Morgan wanted to color them. One of those said pictures had some "cut-outs" where you could make your own little paper doll. Morgan looks at me and asks,

"Mom what does this tell you to do?"
I look at her and say, "You're going to have to ask Grandma. I'm not sure HOW that works."

So at what point did I become my MOM?! Sometimes I think it's just easier to say, "I don't know." rather than spend 20-30 minutes explaining why and how and who and what to my kids. I am really crossing my fingers that I am not the only one that has this issue at times.

And while I'm confessing, I might as well warn everyone about a phenomenon that attacks me sometimes. I'll be sitting in the kitchen with my 3 kids (or on the couch, or ANYWHERE.) when all of a sudden, KABLAM! there's this incredible force pulling me into the privacy of my bathroom or my bedroom (whichever is empty at the time), locking the door, and sitting in the blessed silence until my kids figure out which room I'm in. Then all I hear is, "MOM! MOMMMMMMMMMMMM" with the little fingers sticking under the door. I can't explain these phenomena, but they are pretty much unbearable. There's no ignoring them.

Well I'm off to play referee with Grace and Crede. He's head-butting her at the moment. I love these memorable moments.