Getting ready for Halloween

That's right, we ate Jack O'Lantern stew out of a Jack O'Lantern! The kids loved it. I did too.

We had a pumpking carvin' family home evening. Gwen loved singing her "5 little pumpkins" song and dancing around telling us about the pumkin her teacher carved at school.


This is the pumpkin I did. It was so much fun taking the drill to it. And I thought it was way cute glowing!

Baby Katie is so sweet! She's a month and a half old, but I swear she's still 6 pounds!
Tara did this sweet trick or treating monster.



Ryan decided to carve his pumpkin with me, and my other love, Edward. (He's a vampire and about to bite my neck!)

My friend Brooke and her sister have a photography company and a couple weeks ago, they took our family pictures. They turned out pretty cute.

uh oh

I had a full house today. I was watching my friend Jodi's little girl, Kinlee. I also had my sister and her little boy, Jack over. While Tara and I were down stairs doing our nails, we realized the kids, who were upstairs were being rather quiet. She went up to check and quickly called for me, and this is what we found.




Maybe I should keep the COSTCO box of tampons locked up from now on.

Sunday

This morning, I was concentrating so hard on scrubbing a pan, had my back to whatever was behind me, completely vulnerable. Next thing I know, my head gets yanked back as Gwen takes a running jump, grabbing my ponytail as if she's on a rope swing and says "mommy, I can reach your hair!!!!!" Luckily she really couldn't get a good grip so it didn't hurt, so I couldn't help but laugh.
Also, check out her cute feet! It says that she'll follow in Jesus' footsteps because He's her example. Cute.

Like mother like daughter, I guess...

My little Gwenny bum loves candy! For the past couple weeks, every now and then, I see her eating candy and I'll ask her where she got it, and she'll say "I don't know". When her friends come over, they'll come to me with just one laughy taffy each (so as not to raise my suspicions to high) and ask me to open the candy for the girls. I'll ask again where she got the candy and she'll say, "I don't know". Unexplained, Gwen will be playing with a blue mouth, or I'll find candy wrappers in Gwen's favorite hiding spot (behind our leather chair in the family room). Where could she be getting all this candy? In my closet, I have a shelf that is mostly hidden with the shirts that are hanging above it. That is where I have my excess candy stash. You know the left over candy from Halloween, Christmas, Easter, etc. ONE TIME, I found that Gwen had brought a chair into my closet found the candy and had gotten it down. I quickly said that that wasn't for her and moved it up higher, where she COULDN'T get to it. But that was so long ago. And I saw that she only had a couple pieces in her hands when I caught her. Well one day, Ryan was going to were an outfit that required the wear of shoes that he hadn't worn in a while. When he went to put his foot in it, he couldn't because it was stuffed full of candy! So was the other, along with his soccer shoes and one other pair of shoes that he doesn't wear often! So my smart little girl must have thought ahead and when she had that candy down, loaded up and hid the candy in a place I wouldn't even think to look. Then carefully ate it very slowly so she wouldn't ever be caught with a bunch of candy on hand! I couldn't believe it. We had a pretty good laugh at our crafty little girl.
Here's my little squishiness who has become hat obsessed. Now of course I'm embarassed that you're seeing my dirty mirror, but it was too cute to pass up. He scoots around with this hat barely even letting him see, and if Gwen tries to take it off, he gets so upset.

kissing really is pretty gross

The other night, I had Drake laying on me, and he started kissing me. First on the lips, sweet little baby kisses. It was so cute, I would giggle between kisses and so he would laugh too. The laughing continued, and his kisses became more open mouth and much more slobbery. He also was crawling all over me, rubbing his open mouth all over my face and neck. So more than just cute now, it was really tickleing so I was laughing pretty hard. And Drake just kept on kissing me, open mouth, slobbery, laughing kisses. Now we were laying on the couch, and I could see Gwen out of the corner of my eye just standing there watching us. I'm sure she was a little jealous to see her mom and her little brother having so much fun, but also confused to see me laughing so hard despite being covered in slobber. So I'm assuming she was just wanting to join the fun when she walked up to us and spit right on my face!

My silly girl is too cute! Here she is in her new "kitty" shoes. Just ignore the mess that is my refrigerator.

Good Samaritan

The other night I had promised Gwen a ride on my bike, and I had a Young Womens Presidency meeting to go to. So I figured I'd load up the kids in my bike trailer and ride them the 3/4 mile to the lady's house where the meeting was. I had to move my car out of the garage first to get the bike out, got it out, loaded up the kid's and took the scenic route to Stacey's. The kids loved it, and it was such a gorgeous night for a bike ride. Went there and came home and of course the kids were alseep so I put them to bed. The next morning I went to go to the gym and my keys were MISSING! Oh mylanta! They were in my pocket after I moved the car and then we went for the bike ride. So they must have fallen out of my pocket while I was riding my bike. Sadly I used my spare set and retraced my path and didn't find my keys anywhere. Well that's such a scary feeling - knowing that keys to your car/house are missing out there somewhere. But today, when I went to the gym, the lady at the front told me that someone had turned in my keys! I now have two sets of keys again!!!! A million thanks to whoever turned in my keys!

Palm Springs

I need to give a HUGE thank you to my sweet husband Ryan who let me escape to Palm Springs for the weekend with my BYU girlfriends! We had so much fun acting like we were living in Provo again.


We did karaoke almost everynight. And we proved that you don't have to be drunk to be crowd drawing karaoke masters! All I have to say is we tore up "You Give Love A Bad Name" and "Goodbye Earl"!

This is us reenacting Sonny and Cher's nuptials that took place on these very stairs!!! This is in the hotel we were staying in. We had a two room suite and pulled all the beds into one room and put them side by side to make one huge bed just like in college! ;) Needless to say we didn't get a lot of sleep.

One night Haya's mom (who is unfortunately not pictured) was so sweet to take us ladies out to dinner at an amazing restaraunt! We ate outside at a concrete table that had a FIRE burning in the middle of the table! We may have put some items in the fire just to make sure it was really a fire. And it was. Colette it was so nice having dinner with you and Esther. Thank you thank you!

And of course we brought the clubs for some Palm Spring golfing. Our husbands were so proud! We had so much fun getting away for some girly r and r, but I was so glad to come home to see my beautiful babies! Here you go, now you can see them too!

And when I got home, my amazing husband had the house totally cleaned! And I know I left it in shambles. Thanks Ryan, you're the best!

mall time

Today Gigi wanted to take Gwen to Build A Bear

to have Gwen build a bear. (duh right?) Gwen chose out this

little orange kitty that she was instantly in love with.

She even got to choose out a cute little outfit for the kitty

including ballerina slippers, hello kitty panties and a hello kitty purse.

Then, she needed to choose a name.

Mom and I were spitting out all sorts of names for the cat.

I really wanted Tabitha so she could be Tabby cat, but Gwen

choose Carrot Juice! She was so cute and love carrying her around

the mall in her cardboard house. Then in Nordstrom, the kids had a

blast playing with the silly mirror.

Drake especially loved. In other Drake news. He crawled last Sunday! He is still not what I would call a "cronic crawler" but he does get the hand knee coordination thingy going when it suits him. (when he needs to go through a narrow space) And then totally random question, when are you allowed to leave kids alone in the bath tub? I know we're not there yet with Gwen, but I could be so much more productive....

baby shower time

My super cute sister in law, Jessylee, is due any day now. Today my mom, sisters and I threw her a shower. We had such yummy food: stuffed strawberries, pasta salad, sweet and sour meatballs, caramel creamcheese brownies, etc. So anyway it was so much fun to get a bunch of girls together to celebrate the upcoming birth of baby Katie Curleyhair.
Also, my sister Tawnya whose house it was at, is pregnant! So they are going to need a bigger place so I am finally using my real estate license and am selling their house for them! Crazy.

p.s. i love this band, and am so happy this song was available!

Gwen's first day of PRESCHOOL!!

The big day has finally arrived. Today I sent Gwen off to her first day of preschool. Now I've been looking forward to this day for some time now. Twice a week I will have two hours just to Drake and I to do projects, clean, run errands with just one kid in the cart, and play with my baby. I've been so excited. But for some reason last night before bed, I was so sad. I couldn't believe that



Gwen was starting her schooling today and that every school year for the next 20 years, she's going to be leaving the house to head out into the world. Now that is something I haven't been ready for.Not that I have much to worry about this year. She has an AMAZING preschool teacher with the same values (she's also LDS) and she's in school with at least two other kids from our ward. But still.


She's on her own twice a week.
Anyway, she had so much fun today, she "showed and telled" her class her good witch, held the flag for the Pledge of Allegience, and she got a stamp because her light stayed green. Good job Gwenny, I love you!

Labor Day

For Labor Day, we took a vacation...a vacation from our PROBLEMS! (For those who don't recognize that, go watch What About Bob, I promise you won't regret it!) I'm serious, go watch it NOW. We had swimming and BBQing. Oh so much fun. It was a nice 109, we enjoyed it but Ryan's mom who was visiting from Sacramento almost had heat stroke. We kept her inside on a constant watermelon feed.

7 little known facts...

I've been tagged, thank you very much Jennifer! So here we go,

1. I can fit my entire fist in my mouth! Also the bottom of a water bottle between my teeth. (I have a pretty big mouth)
2. I love road trips, but I have a small bladder. So that means frequent stops, or Ryan putting drinking restrictions on me.
3. My sister and I were lost for two days in China and we thought we would never see our family again!
4. I won an AIR GUITAR contest at a Phoenix Suns game, so I got a custom made Fender strat. autographed by none other than the Phoenix Suns Gorilla!
5. While jet skiing at Lake Powell, I crashed and the handle bar went right into my leg leaving a hole in the muscle. So I have a dent in my leg. Fortunately, or unfortunately I'm finding that the "softer" I get, the less you can see the dent.
6. While in highschool, I had a series of unfortunate events that led to my being an expert tire changer. By the fourth time in only a few months, I could do it in about ten minutes!
7. Once while we were living in Utah, Ryan and I were on our way to the airport and we were a little late. A cop noticed how fast we were driving and motioned for us to pull over. Ryan didn't have his driver's license on him so once we got to the side of the road waiting for the cop to pull up behind us, he quickly hopped out of his seat forcing me to get in the driver's seat to receive the ticket. Instead I slammed on the gas and we took surface streets to the airport and then fled the country. (we went to Cancun) That was the biggest high I've ever had!

I now tag Crystal, Tara, Jodi and Tawnya

Utah trip

Last Friday I went up to Utah with my mom, Tawnya, Kolby and Tara. We were there Saturday for my cousin Cindy's wedding. They got married in the South Jordan temple, and it was so beautiful!


Then Sunday we got to go to my neice Marie's blessing. Molly and Darren then put on an amazing luncheon to celebrate. Afterwards we went to my Uncle Tom's and Aunt Debbie's house in Ogden for a BBQ. It was soo good to see my cousins, eat good food, and play Killer Bunnies.

We then spent the rest of the week on BYU's campus going to education week. It was so good to be able to go to classes, get spritually charged, and have time to rededicate myself to being the best wife and mother I can be. I was also able to see so many people I love that I haven't seen in so long!

I am so grateful to my saint of a friend, Catherine LaPorte, who watched the kids while I was gone and Ryan was at work. Also thank you to Collete, Kolby's mom, who opened up her house to all of us. All in all I had such a good time, but was SO happy to see me babies again. I feel like they just grew up so much while I was gone! Is it just me or does it seem like kids put growing on hold until you're gone? But I got the BEST hugs when I got home.

My old man!

August 16th, Ryan turned 30!!!

Of course that was on a Thursday, and he has class on Thursday,

so we celebrated Wednesday. But that was great since

Wednesday, my brother Ethan came home from his mission!!!!

That's Ethan with pops and madre.

Drake reading the wine list.

Ethan served in the Oakland California mission and in that time has learned and grown so much! He is such an example to Gwen who talks about how uncle Ethan just got home from a mission, and "he taught people about Jesus".

Welcome home Ethan, we love you so much!

Now a little bit about Ryan. I just want you all to know that I am so lucky to have Ryan for my husband! He is the best dad that our kids could ever have, and the sweetest husband I could ever dream of. He works so hard, and loves to spoil us. He has such a good voice, and I love it when I see him cuddling our kids singing to them. He is OBSESSED with golfing, and he's pretty dang good at it. He's patient enough to have taught me how to golf, and to take me on golf dates. Ryan is so funny and always the life of the party. His smile and laugh are so contagious. He served a mission in Scotland, has a solid testimony, and is always striving to be a better person. Ryan, happy birthday, I love you!