Mess Maker

Preston is officially into everything! I don't think it is possible for me to ever get my house completely clean, because I always have someone right behind me undoing it all!

Exhibit A: The laundry. If I ever try to fold laundry and put it into piles when he is around, he will either crawl on top of the piles until they are no longer piles, or pull it out of the basket when it is all folded. Atleast he looks like he is having a good time right?
Exhibit B: The big utensil drawer. He has learned how to open it now and just like his older brother loves to get every spoon, spatula and whisk that he can. By the way, these pictures were not staged, and did take place within two hours of each other! One final picture that is a flashback from about 2 years ago when Carter was in this stage. They must be brothers!

Halloween Fun

Yesterday was quite eventful! We for some reason decided to pack all of our Halloween fun into one day. The zoo was doing "Boo at the Zoo" where they have different booths that hand out candy while you also get to check out the animals. We got there at 9:30 and the place was packed! There was no parking to be found. After parking about 2 miles away, we got into the zoo and got some candy. People were waiting in line for 30 minutes to get a stupid lollipop, it was a bit ridiculous. We found all the short lines and had fun seeing all the animals. No pictures of that since we already have about 15 from past posts. I think we are zooed out for awhile! That night we decided to go to Lehi Legacy Center's Halloween party, the kids had a blast! There was trick or treating upstairs, which Carter was given a glow necklace and was thrilled about it! Then they had a haystack maze with people handing out candy throughout it. Here is us trying to find our way through it...


For dinner they served sloppy joes, we decided to pass, but Carter and Preston loved it. The corpse bride was playing on a huge screen and so it was a movie and food, Carter's two favorite things! Notice how his hair is all wet, he was sweating like crazy in that dragon costume! Preston was the hit of the party with the hot dog outfit. I had SO many people come up to me and ask where I got it, or I would see people nudge their friend and laugh.I thought the costume was pretty hilarious myself. Old Navy, if you were wondering! They also had tons of games to play and Carter had a ball!We needed a date night, and a friend Brett from James' work invited us to go to Frightmares at Lagoon with them. We thought that sounded fun so we said we would go. We decided to look on the internet to see the pricing...$27.50 with $7 parking!!! We quickly called him back and said, We are not paying 60 bucks for a night out. We got my mom to babysit anyway, and were going to go to dinner and maybe to the mall. While dropping the kids off they called back and said they had gotten 2 free tickets for us, so we went. I'm cheap, I know. I haven't been to Lagoon since 9th grade, and not much has changed since then. We rode the REALLY OLD white roller coaster which I think they are tearing down after this season, along with the Clossus or now named Fire Dragon. I was pretty proud of myself because the last few years I have hated roller coasters because I always get sick and have a headache. I was doing great until about 30 minutes before we left we decided to go on the Jet Star 2. Don't do it people, it gave me the worst headache ever! All in all, we had a great time and laughed a lot. I love date nights! It was a busy, fun day for us.

Tagged

I have already done something like this already a while back, but saw Ashleigh's blog and was "tagged" again. The game is you write 6 things about yourself that most people don't know and then you tag six more people to do the same thing. Here goes...
1. I HATE feet. They are disgusting. They smell, have hard, flaky skin, yellow toenails, yuck. I don't like them near me, even if you have socks on. The funny part is that people try to convince me that I will like their feet because they are so well groomed. Sorry to break it to you, but I don't even like my own feet! You know that I really love James a lot because his feet encompass all of the above on said "disgusting" feet.
2. I am a magazine junkie. I love them. Gossip magazines, mainly People, is my favorite. I think this is why I wasn't a reader for so long because I was used to reading a little blurb on a page and being done.
3. I bite my fingernails. I know, it's gross. I have done it ever since I can remember. I actually stopped doing it during both pregnancies, but somehow started back up again. Most of the time I don't even realize I am doing it. The funny thing is Carter bites his nails too now. Hey atleast I don't have to clip them I guess!
4. I am a big journal writer. My grandma got all of the grandkids a journal when they turned 8. I have since filled I think about 8-9 more journals. It is really fun to look back at how boy crazy I was. I love Jon Nelson blah blah blah... :)
5. I know a lot about music. Or atleast I like to think I do. I can be somewhat of a music snob at times.Whenever I need a self esteem boost I have my family play name that tune with me. I always win, which makes them crazy. For some reason my brain seems to retain artists, song titles, and album names. Why couldn't it be math?!
6. I dress WAY too casual. I love t-shirts, jeans, pajama pants, anything comfortable. When I have to be dressed nice, i am scrambling to find ANYTHING in my closet. I am hoping to change this one, I need a new style.

Well that's me, take it or leave it! I am not going to tag 6 people. If you want to do it, great, I would love to hear some fun things about you!

Families are Forever

Last week was not the best for me since my Uncle Richard (my mom's brother) passed away on Tuesday. He died of pancreatic cancer at only 59, and was diagnosed less than a year ago. He will be very missed. We had his funeral on Saturday and everyone came over to my mom's house afterward to just be together, eat, and chat. I love my extended family so much, they are so much fun. My uncles Scott and Andy are great storytellers and have us rolling before the night is over. Although it was a hard and sad day, we did enjoy being together. As a side note, I had to give a big thank you to my awesome husband. The viewing was on Friday night, so he decided to stay home and watch the boys. Not only did he do that, he scrubbed the oven and stovetop until it looked brand new! How nice is that? Also thank you to Megan & Alli for watching the boys during the funeral. It was much appreciated!!

My mom and her siblings L to R Chris,Scott,Kerry,Doug, Mary, Andy, and my mom
My cousin April, me , and an old friend Jen

Scarecrow Festival

Sorry about the blogging hiatus, just have not really felt like it. Here are a bunch of pictures from the last week of some of the fun fall festivities we have been doing with the boys. We went to the Scarecrow Festival at Thanksgiving Point on Monday with our friends Leah and Dan. It was a blast! I was pleasantly surprised. Carter loved every minute of it, which made it totally worth it to me. Preston was still a little too young to know what was going on, but did get a pony ride and acted like he was enjoying himself. Can I just say that I love that Thanksgiving Point is so close to my house? They always seem to have so many fun things going on and it is so nice to drive about 2 minutes and be there. We still are thinking about doing Cornbellys Corn Maze over there, but we want to wait until we get a little closer to Halloween. I love this time of year...

While waiting for their pony ride James and Dan took all the boys around the petting zoo while me and Leah chatted in line. I love this picture because Preston is doing his classic move of sucking his thumb and grabbing his hair. He actually prefers it if he has my hair wrapped around his thumb but his own little snippet of hair will suffice I guess. He cracks me up.
A statue of a sheep. What is this about?
This picture is so Carter. We got there and he was all timid and worried about the whole thing. We think he is going to love something, and then he will totally surprise us and act all scared. This was that moment. It only took him about 5 minutes until he heard pony ride for him to snap out of it. He did end up having a great time.
His favorite blow up slide was the shark. This was the whale, but you get the idea. I couldn't believe he climbed up those things. They were high! You could tell where he was when you had a big crowd of kids piling up because they had to wait for the "little kid". Some of the kids tried to climb over him but Carter told them to be nice. I am not worried about him standing up for himself that is for sure! This picture is of him going up the slide...

...and down the slide. He always went down backwards on his stomach. I suddenly had a flashback of him like he was a baby again going down the stairs. It definitely wore the boys out and they both slept in the next day. Wahoo!

Zoo Break

James was nice to give me a break last Saturday and took Carter to the zoo (Preston was napping of course). They had lots of fun while I got to just lay around, finish my book, and procrastinate all the things that needed to get done. I have been in such a reading mode lately, I don't know why. Anyway, here are the cute pics of Carter on his fun day out with Dad.

Cool Picture huh? Face to face with a snow leopard (I think) James thinks it is a jaguar. Which one of us is right? Anyone know?
He wanted to ride on the elephant's trunk but then got scared and wanted to get down which gave the crowd a laugh. "Get me down Daddy, get me down!"
The albino crocodile again(I posted a pic about 3 months ago), but a way better picture on this post. I am not a very good photographer I admit it, James kills me in that department. It must be a guy thing.
Carter was so scared to go down this slide last time we were there, but James said this time he didn't give it a second thought. Go figure.

Flower Farewell

Here are all of the annuals that I dug up out of my yard this morning! It was a sad day to pull all of the happy yellow flowers out, but I didn't want to wait until there was snow on the ground. I also didn't realize how many weeds that had grown in the last little while. Morning glory is the bane of my existance!!
Now for the bulbs...my favorite flowers, tulips! I only bought this small pack to see if they come up in the spring. I am new to this whole gardening thing so it is all trial and error. I am glad I got this project overwith. Saturday's duties are now weeding the backyard and getting CLR to get all of the rust water off of my fence. Thanks Lehi City!! We shall see how much I actually get done...

Carving Pumpkins

Family Night=Pumpkin Carving. It is amazing to me that we started this blog about the same time a year ago. We have pictures of us carving a pumpkin with Carter and I am 9 months pregnant with Preston. Weird. Here is Carter sitting next to "his" pumpkin, with Preston's on the bottom step and Mommy and Daddy's on the top step.
We are proud of our pumpkins! (I look weird I know)
I love putting candles in them to see their faces glow. Happy Halloween!

Hand Me Downs

Strike a Pose
Having fun together
Preston's signature move-Grab the face!

Since the first snowfall happened last week, I decided it was definitely time to put away the shorts and tshirts and get out all of the fall/winter clothes. I found the box for Preston of Carter's hand me downs and it was so much fun looking through and finding all the cute sweaters etc. that Carter used to wear. Having two boys close together has really come in handy! This was one of my favorite shirts that Carter had, and I am happy that Preston now gets to show his cute self off in it too. They are so funny together. Preston loves to bug Carter in any way possible, I think it is to get back at Carter for bossing him around all the time! In case any of you were wondering, Preston is no longer my little vampire. He has grown a front tooth, so now he just looks like a jack-o-lantern (see bottom picture). I love my boys!!

Who do they look like more?

Family Night Phantom

Tonight for family night we decided to continue a tradition we do every Halloween since we were first married and living in England which is "The family night phantom." You bake three plates of cookies or any goodies with a little note telling the person they have been tagged. They then have to deliver goodies to three more people etc. You deliver a little note with the goodies with a picture of a "phantom" to put in their window to let others know they have already been done. Carter loved baking cookies with his Dad and we had so much fun ringing the doorbell and watching to see if they saw us or not. In one instance they totally caught us red handed because their little girl had been looking out the window and said that someone was coming. Dangit. Oh well, it was fun anyway and is a great way to make your neighbors feel loved!

Triathlon #2 Complete

Last Saturday James finished the Pleasant Grove "Viking Tri" all to raise money for the Pleasant Grove Highschool swim team. It was a blustery 37 degrees outside with 30mph wind gusts! This was a backwards triathlon in that they ran first, then biked, and finished up swimming in an outdoor heated pool. The run was a cross country course with some good climbs in it. The bike was only 10 miles but had two good climbs and alot of biking into the wind! I only got to watch the last leg of the race, so all of the pictures are of him in the pool. It was freezing! We busted out the coats and warm socks! He finished 10 minutes faster than his last one in July, so he is improving dramatically with every race. Once again, my brother in law Carl participated as well and shaved three minutes off his time. They both felt that this course was a lot more difficult than the Logan one which was all flat, and nice weather. Good job boys! James finished in 1 hour 18 minutes (as seen from the picture at the bottom) and Carl finished in 1 hour 6 minutes.

Time to jump in the pool and swim