Today is Marc's 31st birthday!

Wow can you believe it?! I just told everyone how old he is, how scandalous!! Just kidding, he doesn't think it's that big of a deal, at least not yet. He said he's not going to worry about age until he is 40, then you are old. Anyway, to celebrate his birthday I took advantage of some free babysitting provided by my mother, and dad-napped my husband. For his birthday (and as an early Christmas gift) my mom gave us some gift cards to JC Penny's so I decided to blind fold him so we could shop for some new things with out kids in tow.

Anyone out there with kids knows how frustrating it can be to try and shop for things (especially clothing) when you have your kids with you; so not having them with us was a special treat. Well, Marc was blind folded the entire way to the store and the only thing that he was worried about was "what if someone sees me and thinks that I'm really being kidnapped?!" Seriously about every 3 minutes he would ask "are there people looking at me?" When we did get to the store and I finally un-blind folded him he was excited to shop with just me! Yay! Part 1 was a success : )

We were both hungry and thirsty after shopping so we decided it was time for dinner. I had originally decided to take him to Braza Grill (a Brazilian restaurant) but after looking at the time we decided to try another restaurant we have been wanting to go to, which just happened to be across the parking lot.

Marc ordered the BBQ chicken, which by the way was half of a chicken, potato salad and fries. He said it was super yummy but the best part was the incredibly delicious BBQ sauce that was at the table. It was sooooo good!

Before we sat down to eat I mentioned to the host that today was his birthday. I was secretly hoping that they would later bring us a yummy dessert and sing to him some silly song so he would get embarrassed . . . well they did bring the dessert but they didn't sing : ( Maybe next year. It was so very nice to be on a date with Marc, to go shopping with out kids, to enjoy yummy food, to talk with out kids interrupting us and to hold hands! I love my best friend and I am so lucky to be married to him. Thank you for all you do Honey and HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

Thanksgiving!!

Thanksgiving was so much fun this year. Amy found this super cute idea to make a 'turkey' out of fruit. The girls (namely Ally and Rachel) had a BlAsT making it and naming him. He turned out to be one TASTY appetizer! : )

Everyone had a fun visiting, and the cousins had a wonderful time playing dinosaurs and ballerinas. There were even times to be silly (as modeled by my mom),

caught with our secret loves (if you know Marc then you know what I mean),

get in a little exercise,

and of course eat lots and lots of yummy pies and apple tart. YUMMO!!

Back to where it all started

On our way to Marc's parents for Thanksgiving we decided to stop at the Mt. Timpanogos temple so we could show the kids where we were married for time and all eternity. Rachel has been asking (for a while now) about where we were married so we were excited to show her and talk to her more about it. The Temple was closed for the holiday but we were able to walk around the grounds. Even in the cold of fall/winter it is still gorgeous and the feeling was very peaceful despite the chattering teeth. ; ) We were also able to get some really cute family pictures too, which is always a bonus. I am so grateful that I married my best friend in the right place, at the right time and by the right authority. Here's to many more years to come!!

My son has a shoe fetish....

Benjamin is such a character!! He LOVES shoes...boy shoes, daddy shoes, girls shoes and mommy shes. It doesn't matter what they look like, or who they belong to he will try them on and parade around the house for a very, very long time. Today we went to the shoe store to find some new shoes for the kids. Benjamin was in HEAVEN! He was running around squealing, yelling "WOW!" and "YAY!!" He kept pulling shoes down and trying them on, it didn't matter that they were like 10 sizes too big. While we were there I found some new high heeled wedge shoes (yes, wedged, because I can't walk in the other kind and yes, they are my only pair) they are super cute and I'm so excited to wear them. Well as soon as we got home who should go running over the shoe rack, pull them off and wear them around then house? Nope not my beautiful princess but my handsome prince. Great blackmail photos don't you think?

While we were at the shoe store we found Rachel not 1 but 2 princess pairs of shoes. You know. . . the sparkly kind that only princesses wear. She is the excited owner of a beautiful silver and gold pair of shoes (which you can't see in the pictures unfortunately) and she is the thrilled new owner of some princess dresses. She picked out the blue one and when we tried it on at the store she was so excited, she danced, jumped and twirled around...how could you say no to that?! The dress is actually supposed to go just below her knees, obviously they didn't make the dress with petite girls in mind did they? It's all good though, we'll just trim a little of the tool off, then it will go to her ankles and last her a very long time!! One major bonus of having petite children: their clothes last longer ; )

So when Marc came home from work Rachel promptly declared him a Prince and he needed his princely attire. With the help of Grandma Dorothy they made him a crown and "the things that go on the back." (that's what Rachel called it) What a cute pair huh?

Oh, and yes we did get Benjamin a new pair of shoes too, don't worry I wouldn't/couldn't deny him that!

Autumn Time

I'm sure I've said this before but Autumn is my FaVoRiTe Season . . . EVER! The smell of Autumn is my FaVoRiTe smell, I love to hear the leaves crunching under foot, I love the coolness, I loved bundling up, snuggling under a blanket, apple pies baking, fresh pumpkin bread . . . mmm, there are so many things to love!!!

As a tribute to Autumn I bring you a song, it's a wonderful song, I know you know the words!

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It's autumn time. It's autumn time.

The leaves are falling down.

It's autumn time. It's autumn time.

It's all around the town.

It's autumn time. It's autumn time.

There's yellow red and brown.

It's autumn time. It's autumn time.

Bright colors can be found.

Almost done!!

Okay so we are not quite done but we are so close it is certainly worth blogging about. After having my house torn apart and upside down for 6 weeks we were finally able to get things back to some normalcy. We did run out of time this last weekend so there are some things left to do like finish organizing things, caulking and finish a few pieces of quarter round but that is easy enough and will be finished this week.

While we were moving stuff out of the office this tall bookshelf broke : ( But because we have spent enough money on other things there was no way we could afford to buy another one to replace it. Marc said "it's okay we can just stack the books on the floor until we can get a new one." I was not okay with that plan, so on Thursday I spent some time in the morning fixing the bookshelf. Now it is even sturdier than it was to begin with. Yes, I am proud of myself : ) Benjamin enjoyed 'helping' me fix the shelf and put the books back on.

In the office (where most of the damage was) there was a section of wall under the window that had some water damage. We knew about it and stopped the leaking right away which was a few years ago. We were hoping that we could just paint over it and not worry about another fix. Well we were wrong. As I took the roller and ran it across the wall it crumbled. . . At that point my heart just sank into my stomach, now what do we do?! Well after a quick call to my mom we came up with a simple solution. Because it was plaster we scraped off that part of the wall until it stopped crumbling, then took some sheet rock mud and filled in the hole. It took a couple of layers and hours of drying time but then we sanded it and . . .

VOILA we have a patched wall. It's not perfect, but nothing in this house is perfect so it matches just fine : ) We did finish painting around the patched part so we could finish the room. We figured we could easily paint just that little part after the room was back together. So now I have my little sewing spot back!!! YAY!! I can't begin to tell you how excited I am to NOT have all of that stuff upstairs where the kids can get into it every minute of every day!

This is the 'office' side of the room before the computer and filing cabinet was moved back in. It gives you a really good idea about the painting job we did. We left the trim the color it was before (which was the same color as the walls) and then we picked a nice BRIGHT white for the walls. The room it 100 times brighter than it was before and I LOVE IT!

In the bathroom this is the wall where that nasty, icky plaster stuff was that we didn't want to fix with more plaster and we were scared to rip it out and put sheet rock in for a few reasons.

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1. Plaster sucks!

2. There is nothing to attach the sheet rock to

3. If we took it down the rest of the way we most likely would have had to take down more walls to make it work.

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So instead Marc and Dad pushed back what was left of the plaster, and then screwed some boards up there in a very MaGyver sort of way. After that was up Marc put on some wainscoting, some quarter round and a corner piece. After slapping on some paint we think it turned out great! Yes there is still some caulking to do and the light to put back up but hey, doesn't it look good!? Oh and speaking of painting the white on the walls didn't match the new white paint we put on the ceiling so we ended up having to paint all of the white walls in the bathroom again!! It has been a few years so I guess the white did dull but still that was a little annoying. Even with that though, I'm so glad we have some order back into our house, I'm glad we have new pipes and a new water heater. Our next project. . . fix the holes in the furnace room and rip down the rest of the ceiling. But that is gonna have to wait a little bit, ya know until our pocket book stops hurting. ; )

I found some zip-ties for Benjamin and I just love them!! Why?

1. The ties stay one no matter how much he tugs at them

2. He now has a tie for church

3. He looks so grown up!!

And yes, that IS 3 teeth in the bottom you are seeing in that picture. He is 16 months old and now has 5 teeth...they all came 1 week apart. And there are more working there way to the surface. He is having a lot of fun figuring out how to use them too. I gave him an apple slice the other day and instead of just gumming it, I could hear him actually biting into the apple.

Okay so I tried for 2 days to upload the video of the kids singing (and doing the actions) to the song "The Wise Man and the Foolish Man" and it still won't up load. I'm a little frustrated. I'll try again later. Benjamin didn't do the actions to the second verse but Rachel sure had a great time showing off. : ) I think it's the cutest thing when little kids find a song they love, then they learn the words and actions to them. How cute!! I remember when Rachel was Benjamin's age her favorite song was the Alligator and Monkey song from nursery. Rachel has learned the words to so many songs and loves to sing them no matter where we are. A few days ago I had to go downstairs to get something and Benjamin got sad. So she started singing "Called to Serve" to make Benjamin happy (it's the only song that has worked to calm him down since he was little). It just melted my heart! And today while we were at the grocery store she was walking along side the cart singing at the top of her lungs "Called to Serve." I walked along side of her and just smiled (how could you not!?) and several others smiled back at me. One lady came up to me and said that her last son had gone into the MTC in March and hearing Rachel sing that song just made her so happy! Maybe in her own way Rachel was being a little "missionary" herself. All I know is that I'm one proud momma, I have been blessed with one cute, smart, strong willed little girl. She is defiantly a leader. : )

Here is a video of Benjamin and Rachel being Dinosaurs. Something that happens...quite frequently at our house.

'Pirates' at work

We are finally feeling better after being sick for 14 days so we decided to continue with our patching jobs. Once everything is dry we will sand, paint and then put our house back together. FINALLY!! Don't get me wrong having new pipes and a new water heater has been nice but having my house torn apart and upside down the last few weeks has been a headache to say the least.

The kids were having fun 'helping' us...I use the word help, very lightly. It's a little crazy trying to do house repairs and keep the kids entertained. Honestly though they did really well. They had fun playing, being pirates then when all of that became boring and we found them underfoot covered in mud we turned on a show.

We did get quite a bit done this weekend though so I do feel better :) I told Marc that we would not decorate for Christmas until the house is put back together and I would prefer it be done before Thanksgiving...so maybe that was a little more incentive for him.

Here is a little video of Benjamin showing off his growing vocabulary. There are several more things he can say, point to and more animal sounds he can mimic but he wasn't into showing off that much tonight. Also his favorite song from the Primary Songbook is "The Wise Man and the Foolish Man." Whenever we come downstairs he sits on the couch and points to his head because he wants us to sing it (yes he can do all of the actins too, it soooo cute!!) I tried to get that on video but missed my opportunity, maybe I'll get it another time.

Don't ask...I don't know

There are 2 things I can count on when it comes to Rachel:

1. She can totally be exasperating (what 3 year old can't?)

2. She can sure give us a good laugh!

While we have been sick the last 11 days she was the first one to get better so she has had to put up with a very boring mommy and daddy, thus creating an opportunity to find entertainment for herself. Well with all of the blowing of noises we ran out of tissues so we reverted to the good old roll of toilet paper :) Benjamin got a hold of one of those rolls and un-rolled a major portion of it. We put what we could back together but not before Ms. Rachel grabbed a very large wad and stuffed it down her pants leaving a nice long tail of toilet paper hanging out. I'm not sure where she ever came up with that idea but she loved parading around with it for quite a while. This was a moment that gave us a really good laugh at a much needed time. Man I love that girl and I am proud to call her mine! :)