Winter in St. George

Haven't posted for a while, so thought I'd do an update real quick. This will be mostly via pictures, and will (hopefully soon) post pics from Christmas, as these are all pre-Christmas pictures.
First off - we woke up one morning - after a night of wind storms and all the leaves were on the lawn. Of course the kids had to play in it and had a blast doing so. Then just a couple days later we had a big snow storm, and again - the kids were so excited and had to play with it. Okay, the adults did too. :) Charly got to parade around school in the Polar Express - she was SO excited to be able to wear her pajamas to school. Then we have Mason having a sweet moment where he was just being calm and hanging out on the couch. It was precious and I had to capture that moment. And Porter, had somehow gotten a hold of some brownies (I'm sure handed to him by his brother or sister). Charly begged forever to go see Santa. We stood in line and the kids were fine - then, the moment of truth. We put Porter on his lap first, he screamed immediately. Neither Charly or Mason would go over to Santa, so we had to lift them and put them on and snap our picture. Funny kids. Finally, dressed up for church, the Sunday before Christmas - oh so nice!!!

BOYS FOR SALE!!!

BUY ONE, GET ONE FREE . . . . two wild, hyper, very busy boys for sale. They will get into everything you own, destroy your most important papers, unload the dishwasher for you (even when you're trying to load it), sit on each other, write on each other, make forts with ALL your couch cushions and pillows (including those on every bed in the house), make beautiful art work on your walls with crayons, markers, pencils and pens, dump out all your dirty clothes from the hamper, climb on the counters and get into the sweets that you thought you hid so well, and more, much, much more. Warning: a short circuit in their wiring may cause them to wake up several times a night - at different times than the other, to ensure you are up ALL night, and they will most likely come into your bed. You may wake up to this in the morning:
In their waking moments - when you think you can quickly take a couple minutes to maybe make yourself look presentable, so you don't feel like you are SERIOUSLY letting yourself go with the more kids you have, you may come to find this:Every good once in a while - you will get the sweetest kisses, hugs, cuddles, loves, affectionate moments from either one of them - without any notice given. They will make you laugh, cry, love, fear, worry like you have never done before. They can give you a look, a smile, a smirk, a snort that will make you feel like you are the most important, fun person in the world. They can make you feel so much love. And come to think of it, if I were to sell them, I'd miss out on those sweet moments, even moments like these:


No, I take it back, I want to keep these guys - I guess you can say they play a big part in making me who I am. And besides - they must have felt pity for me last night - neither one ended up in my bed the entire night - don't even think they made a peep. Thanks guys - I love you both (and Charly too.)
Happy Holidays everyone . . . . .

Black Friday . . . .

Happy Dang Black Friday!!! I'm so annoyed - I just typed a stupid post TWICE and accidentaly deleted it TWICE. GRRRRR - so happy flippin' black friday.

Sleep? . . . . . . . What is that?

There must be something weird in the air in my house because for the past week, or two, maybe even longer my kids just think they need to wake up all night long and come and get in mommy and daddy's bed, and despite the fact that they are continually carried back to their own beds, they keep coming back. What is that all about? Charly's not so bad, but has been coming in at least once a night saying she had a bad dream, we let her cuddle for a while and take her back to bed when Mason shows up or when Porter starts squealing. What is the trick? How on earth do we get our kids to stay asleep, IN THEIR OWN BEDS all night? Porter gets in this habit of waking up anywhere between one and three and thinking he needs to crawl around and play, and this lasts up to an hour or more. It is just oh so annoying, and I am quite tired, quite easily irritated, and not as happy as I could be - don't they understand - to have a happy mom, let mom sleep!!!!!! Mason has never been interested in being in mom and dad's bed, and all of a sudden, here he is showing up several times a night. I try to be patient with it all and think, they are only little for a while, let them cuddle, let them have this, but yet, I AM TIRED - can't we bargain and like give me two nights of full sleep, then they can have two nights of waking us up all night, and so on? Probably not, huh? Darn kids.

Yesterday was the Primary Program, I am a primary teacher so I was sitting with my class and did not get to see my little Charly girl, but I was such a cry baby. The first song the kids sang was I am a Child of God, holy crap, the music started, my tears started, and I was like, come on, Heather, get a grip - then the sweet, little, powerful voices blared out the words (In a good blaring way - it was powerful, and very spirit inviting). Yeah - I pretty much lost it. Dang those primary songs!! It was great - the kids are so sweet and innocent, and hearing them sing of the Savior was wonderful - everytime I thought I had pulled myself together, they were singing a new song. It was great to feel the spirit through these sweet children's voices.

Our October, Halloween (and Nov. 1st) events

So, you will have to bear with me, as I have LOTS of pics that I will be adding. I love Halloween (mostly because it's the start of the Fall and Holidays and I love decorating and just getting into all of the Holidays) but I am certainly glad Halloween is over - it's always so stressful as it gets closer because I'm always down to crunch time in finishing the costumes, but we got them done and had a good night. So here it goes - story with pics:

A week or so before Halloween, we carved pumpkins. Dustin carved like three and spent hours doing so - only got a pic of one. He took one to work before I could take a picture and threw the other one away because it wasn't doing what he wanted it to do - yes, bit of a perfectionist. Anyway, even the neighbor kids got into cleaning Charly's pumpkin out - good thing, 'cuz Charly is not all that into doing it. Mason threw his pumpkin and broke it, so we got a picture of what was left. Porter just sat there like a sweet boy and watched it all. He was just so happy to be outside.

On Halloween day I got to go to school with Charly to help with her class Halloween party - it was fun to be there with her. She was princess by day, and she got to participate in the parade. I warned her before she walked through the gym to walk slow and careful because the shoes she is wearing are very slippery. Needless to say, she did not believe me, and she slipped and fell. (yes, for those that would ask, I teared up), but I just called out her name and gave her a big smile - so the picture where you can barely see her, is her slipping into her fall - poor girl!! Also is her in her classroom watching the other kids parade around, and her kindergarten class.

After school, we rushed home, finished costumes, decorated our garage as we were having a little hang-out/party, got ready to go trick-or-treating and here's some pics of all of that. I'm a weirdo and 'theme' my kids - so they are Spongebob Squarepants (with a jelly fish on his head), Patrick the starfish, and Gary the snail. It all really turned out so cute. D and I were obviously not themed with the kids. Ashley and Bryton (and Chelsea, Ashley's sister) came trick-or-treating with us too.

Porter pooped out, pretty much the second we walked out of the door, so he and his stroller ended up becoming Gary the Snail. Porter slept the whole time we trick-or-treated.
While trick-or-treating we came upon the funniest costumes, also because of who was in them. Here we have Nacho Libre, whom we found out was our manager here over the townhouses, and Pee-Wee (Dan, our neighbor). It was hilarious - he even talked just like Pee-Wee, and Dan that dressed as Nacho even pranced like him - it was great.

Here's our garage and some of the folks that came to our party. Thanks guys - it was a lot of fun.

Porter and Jarom found the 'treat bucket' and helped themselves, it was really cute. Porter even shared a sucker - I couldn't get the camera ready fast enough to catch a picture of that, but the two boys going after the candy was just precious.


The night after Halloween we went to the corn maze at Staheli Farm. There was lots of stuff for the kids to play on and they had a really good time. My sister Lisa and her boyfriend, Greg came down and went along with us. Mason didn't like the 'corn slide' so much, especially because Charly pushed him down, he landed face first and if you look close has corn stuck on his lip. OH, KIDS - what are ya gonna' do?