Cabin

Thanks to my cousin, Lisa, we've been enjoying this cabin since the weather warmed up in the spring/summer. The kids love it! Of course, you never know if they're going to play "in" the cabin or "on" the cabin. Oh well! It keeps them busy which keeps me happy and productive! :) Crazy kids!

First Day of Snow

Several days ago, we had our first real snow. The kids were so excited to play outside so we got them all bundled up and sent them out back. Preston hated his snow gear at first until he realized it meant he got to play outside. After that, he asked me to put his coat and boots on every day! :) Thankfully Marcos wanted to play in the snow too. The kids loved having him out there with them. What a tease! He kept chasing Dylan around and throwing snowballs at him. The bad part about that is that once Marcos came in, poor Preston became the target of all the new teasing Dylan had just learned from good old Papi. He put snow down Preston's coat and got a nice little lecture from his loving mom about not teasing little brothers who are too young to have a snowball fight. Good times in the snow!

Movie Night

Marcos' brother, Esteban and his wife, Amy, often let their kids have movie night on Friday night. They can stay up late watching a movie, eat popcorn and sleep on blankets together. Well, Dylan thinks movie night is about the coolest thing in the world! One day it just so happened to be a Friday and Marcos decided we should do movie night. The kids loved it and devoured the popcorn while watching some random cartoon movie. Unfortunately, no matter how late they go to bed, Dylan is up at the crack of dawn. At our house, movie night means miserable day for mom with a GRUMPY boy the next day. So until he outgrows that, we probably won't have too many late movie nights. But it was a fun memory for the kids! :)

Horseback Riding

Anthony's dad, David, has a friend who they refer to as Uncle Bob. Uncle Bob owns a bunch of horses and Anthony is always talking about taking Dylan with him. A couple weeks ago, he did. David called me up to make sure it was okay and took him for an entire Saturday. They started at Wendy's for lunch, spent the day riding horses and then ended up at Chuck E Cheese at the end of the day. Seriously, that man is so good to us! It turned out to be a really bad day to have Dylan gone, but we made it work. It was Kamyn's birthday party at Surf 'n Swim so Dylan missed the party, the YW leaders all had planned to go to the temple together and Marcos ended up having to work so coordinating everything that day was insane, but I'm still glad he got to go. I came home from the temple to find out our freezer in the basement had defrosted and we had lost a bunch of food. Thank goodness my family had been around to take it to their freezers and help save what they could. We thought the freezer was completely broken. When it rains, it really does pour and it's been pouring since August around here. We're waiting for the rainbow to appear...any time now! :) No, really we're very blessed, but it has been challenging. But we unplugged the freezer, turned it off and messed with it a bit and it ended up starting to work again. So hopefully we're okay. Hey, at least I have a really clean freezer now! ;) Sorry, that was a tangent, but again, something I don't want to forget since this is my life I'm trying to record here. But here are a few pictures David gave me from their day of fun in the country.

Bushing the horses before they went riding

Feeding Enchanter (his FAVORITE horse)

Look how happy he looks! Dylan loves animals so much!

Lassoing "bulls"

Riding Enchanter

They hooked Dylan up to the horse trainer. Anthony was nervous so he just held on, but they actually hooked it to Dylan's pants. Apparently it was a big hit! The kids LOVED running around at whatever pace they were required and the adults were laughing so hard they had tears in their eyes. :)

Recipe For Disaster

A couple weeks ago when it was still warm outside, the kids decided they wanted to go play in the sandbox. I'm trying to give them every opportunity possible to be outside since I'm sure it's going to be a long winter all cooped up in the house. I went out to check on them and realized they had put water and sand into one of the totes where we keep sandbox toys. Uh-oh! There was also soap from a bottle of bubbles and who knows what else. I tried to give a few ground rules about this project and Dylan politely informed me they were making a recipe for disaster. Seriously, where he comes up with this stuff I will never know. I decided not to worry about it and went back inside. I came back out to find all three kids standing knee-deep in their concoction. It really was a recipe for disaster! I turned my back to walk inside again and Preston tipped over onto the cement, leaving a pretty decent bump and scrape on the back of his noggin. Kind of hard to balance when you're a foot deep in sand, I suppose! I had to strip them all down and throw them in the tub, but at least they enjoyed an afternoon in the backyard! :)

King of the Week

Dylan was the King of the Week in his kindergarten class a couple weeks ago. This is one of those posts that is more to remember than anything else so I just wanted to post a really bad picture of the poster we made to hang in the hall while he was "king." His teacher is just so cute! He loves kindergarten so much. He got to wear the sucker crown and pick a sucker to eat, be the leader for PE and be in the front of the line all week. He LOVES stuff like that. Then on Friday, I got to go spotlight him. I brought a bunch of things from home that remind me of him or are his favorites. I figured visual aids would be best to keep their attention. The kids LOVED it and Dylan was folding his arms, crossing his legs and smiling the entire time. No surprise to any of you loyal readers, but I ended up getting choked up in the end when I told them what a great brother and son he was and how much I loved him. Stupid emotions! He really is my sweet little boy! I don't know what I would do without him!

Falling Down...Gently Down

We don't have that many trees in our yard and for the most part the trees we do have are still Charlie Brown trees, but somehow we end up with more than our fair share of leaves. Luckily, Dylan has decided raking leaves is his job. He's been out there a few times taking care of his "chore." He actually does a pretty good job. Last year we broke our rake so we had to buy another one and I decided to buy a little one for Dylan. Looks kind of funny with my big boy using the small one and Preston hauling the big rake around. Preston's whole job was basically to frustrate Dylan. He raked the leaves the wrong way, kicked them around and kept jumping in the pile. Poor Dylan got a little feel of my life on a daily basis with a toddler. :) Anyway, here are a couple fun pictures I managed to snap in between helping rake and trying to keep Preston from making Dylan crazy! :)

Halloween

Oh Halloween! With a toddler, you never know what you're going to get. We had already tried the orangutan outfit on Preston once for Dylan's costume parade at school. He wasn't happy about it so I kept him home since I was still sick at that point. Marcos just took Dylan, which was fun for both of them! So on Saturday, I knew it was going to be a struggle, but I did not anticipate the tragic battle that took place. Preston did not want to dress up! I already had to convince Marcos to put on a hat with his normal clothes and go as a safari guy and now I stood face to face with an angry toddler who wanted nothing to do with his costume. We were running late for our ward's trunk or treat and had a million things to do since we were leaving right after that to go to my mom's Halloween get together. Preston kept trying to take off the costume. I thought telling him he was a monkey would help, but it didn't. He walked around the house sobbing and yelling, "Mommy, mommy! Help! I stuck the monkey! I no like it!" Poor little guy! I grabbed a back up costume of tools, a hat and a vest so he could be Bob the Builder, but by that point he was mad about everything. "Fine," I thought to myself. "Then I'm not going to rescue you from the monkey costume!" I put on his Little Einsteins DVD and let him hang out in the car to settle him down, hoping he would forget about the costume. Well, it kind of worked. By the time we started the trunk or treat, he wasn't screaming. I bribed him further with glow sticks, which he was quite fond of, and then tried to show him how to trick or treat. A few cars down when he realized people were putting candy in his bucket, he cheered up a bit.

Dylan was just thrilled with Halloween! He disappeared with friends several times and I had to run around looking for my little ninja. He was darling and after he finished trunk or treating, he went back to the car to help Papi hand out candy. He was just so happy and well behaved the whole day. It was a pleasure to have that little ninja with us!

After the trunk or treat, we rushed up to my mom's house for soup bowls and a little party. Grandpa took the kids trick or treating to a few of the neighbors' houses and the parents just hung out at the house. That was nice! Afterward the kids played in the toy room. It was seriously the quietest party we've had for awhile. Kenya was tired and fussy, but all the other kids got along so well. That's the best! It ended up being a nice, relaxing evening hanging out at the Halloween party, which of course meant that Marcos fell asleep in the chair!

Halloween Party

Dylan and Anthony have been begging for a sleep over forever so I finally figured it was time. We decided if we did it Friday night, we could combine it with a little Halloween party. David (Anthony's dad) is so nice. He took us all out to dinner first and then we had a little party for the kids - nothing fancy, just fun, easy stuff! Dylan and I decorated the house with a few fun decorations. While I was trying to come up with ideas, he went upstairs, got out the crayons, paper and scissors and made a bat to hang on the wall. Gotta love a self-starter! We started the party off decorating haunted houses. Dylan and Anthony really liked doing this themselves. Preston ended up eating his house as we went along so his looked more like an adobe hut at the end. :) We made black cat cookies (well just cooked them - they were the premade ones). The kids also bobbed for donuts, which was hilarious to watch! They were so sticky by the end! We colored Halloween pictures and the kids played. Anthony brought a remote control car so they played games chasing each other around with that and then played soccer too (yep, I just let them kick the ball in the house - talk about a lack of consistent parenting!) After all our fun and games, it was getting late. I put a movie on for the kids and tucked Preston in his bed. I went downstairs to check on them at 11:00. Dylan was sound asleep and Anthony was wide awake ready for another movie. I put one on and finally told him he had to go to bed when he was still going strong at midnight. I knew Dylan would be up early and we would have a problem if he didn't get some rest. In the morning, I made pumpkin pancakes. They were a hit with the adults, but the kids weren't so sure. I ended up making a regular batch of pancakes for the kids. So much for trying to be creative! :) Anyway, it was a fun little get together and helped us all get ready for Halloween.

Another One Bites The Dust

That's right! Another tooth is missing. Last Thursday, October 29, 2009, Dylan came running upstairs to my bedroom early in the morning to tell me he had lost another tooth. He'd been wiggling it for a while and Marcos apparently helped him get it all the way out. He has informed me that he has three more wiggly teeth. The tooth fairy should be afraid, very afraid! He already lost the bottom two middle teeth and they have grown back in most of the way. This one's on the side. Here is what his toothless grin looks like right now!

Pumpkin Carving

Here it comes. Another attempt to catch up from my pathetic lack of blogging. I was sick people...okay? Really sick! I still wake up every morning with a horrible headache, which I'm afraid means this sucker has now transformed itself into a full-blown sinus infection. Too bad we're out of flex spending money...and money in general. I may have to wait this one out and hope for the best.

Anyway...If you don't know our family very well, you may be shocked at the news I am about to give you. Marcos - my fun, people-loving, party-craving, center-of-attention husband - HATES Halloween! In general, he is good at showing up at pretty much all the holiday parties, but could not plan anything to save his life. But Halloween he could do without all together. I blame cultural differences because I've heard that his brother isn't the biggest fan either, but still. Try to enjoy it, man! Now, I'm not one of those people who has to do EVERYTHING and completely go all out at Halloween, but I love the fall, pumpkin patches, apples, carving pumpkins, dressing up and doing the whole trick-or-treat thing with my kids. So every year I beg him to participate and every year he drags his feet. So this year I gave up. Since I had been sick, we ran out of time to carve pumpkins and I had agreed to take two carved jack-o-lanterns to Dylan's Halloween party at school on Thursday. And I had a YW activity Wednesday night so I couldn't wait for Marcos to come home from work and entice him into helping with my "charm." ;) So Wednesday (the first day I could really get off the couch) the boys and I busted out our free pumpkins and carved two of them up. They are far less than glamorous because the lady said "simple jack-o-lantern faces" so we kept it simple. Dylan begged me to do one scary so we have one nice and one mean pumpkin. I would've done more, but two young boys with knives around was making me a bit nervous. The things I do to create lasting memories! I even roasted some pumpkin seeds for us to eat since Dylan could not stop talking about eating pumpkin seeds.

I stripped the boys down so their clothes wouldn't be filthy, and as you can see, Preston ended up running around completely naked. Good times! Dylan insisted on being the hero, prying the lids off the pumpkins for me, and was pretty impressed with his awesome muscles. We had a great time, even with my virus hang-over and without Papi there to help.

I forgot to bring my camera to Dylan's school party, but it was really fun. The class was having singing and story time before the party started and the mom next to me realized I smiled when Dylan was called to the front. She looked at me and said, "So are you Dylan's mom?" "Yes, I am," I said in my proud mommy voice. "Oh, well, I am Dylan's future mother-in-law. Abby comes home every day from school and tells me she is going to marry Dylan." LOL. I smiled and we talked for awhile. I think I approve. She can be on the list of potential mother-in-laws for my son. But seriously! There are SEVERAL girls in kindergarten waiting for their chance to marry him. We had a play date with another little girl named Kenzie and I overheard the two of them talking. Dylan said, "Well, we're kind of little still." Kenzie: "Yeah, we'll have to wait until we're older and then we could go on a date." Dylan: "We can go on a date when we're 16 or when I go on a mission when I'm 19." Kenzie: "But you're going to marry Kambrie, right?" Dylan: "Yeah." Now THAT is Halloween scary! What's a mom to do? He's still quite loyal to Kambrie, his first love, but he did bring home an art project that had "Aby I luv u" written on it. YIKES!

Do You Ever Feel Like This?

I received this in an email awhile ago and just barely opened it today. Um, the answer is yes. I "miss the boat" ALL the time!