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!

Virus Paranoia!

Man, I might post more often if my computer is this fast. Yay to fast blog posts! So I came down with some crappy bug this weekend. I seriously thought I was going to die (whimpy I know)! Who knows what it was, but it made me slightly (er, completely) paranoid. Marcos took today off work since the Comcast people would be coming to install everything and that can get pretty crazy with kids running everywhere. So...he was my brave little knight in shining armor this morning. I always feel like we will be fine if we catch all the crap going around, but this thing seriously kicked my butt so I decided we needed to get vaccines. Marcos was nice enough to go stand in line for us. He left at 6 a.m. and called me at 7 a.m. to tell me he was freezing but he was about 100th in line. Yay Marcos! I went and got him some hot chocolate and breakfast and then went back since I had to take my turn driving carpool to school...but I kept Dylan. Thankfully it didn't take too long so Marcos just checked him in a little late for school. And Dylan was brave (not that it's scary but whatever...sometimes bribes are necessary) so I promised him I would buy Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. I have to say I was going to post about this anyway, but Marcos informed me my next post had to be all about what a nice husband he was to go freeze so that my precious little babies could get H1N1 vaccines. BUT...the funny part came later. He was on a role and wanted to continue to be a helpful husband so he told me he would go pick Dylan up from school. Okay, we talk about this ALL the time, but apparently I should have given detailed instructions. I got a call from Courtney (Kambrie's mom) laughing as she told the story. Another neighbor was at the school picking up her daughter. She knows Courtney and I switch off picking up the kids from school and realized Marcos must not know he was supposed to pick up Kambrie too when he left with just Dylan. How embarrassing! The amazing part is that Dylan didn't think anything of it. He didn't say a word! Hello kid, are you not used to waiting for her every single day? He told me he was just too excited about Ice Age so he forgot. Anyway, vaccines, leaving children at school, Ice Age and Comcast made for a very full and crazy day! But thanks to my wonderful husband who stood in line so I didn't have to. What would I do without you! :)

BRUNETTE...again!

So I've been feeling a little too blonde lately and was in desperate need of a fun fall color. Those who know me, know I've pretty much had long blonde hair most of my life and been plain and predictable most of that time. I did have a wild, brave moment a couple years ago though when I chopped my hair off and went super dark. It was fun for me, but just about shocked the crud out of my entire family (my "baby" was 9 months old at the time and didn't even recognize me at first :)) so this time I was less dramatic and went for in between. Something darker for fall, but not extreme makeover. My sister decided to style my hair all fancy and curly cute for fun so that's why the hair do is a little more than I would do myself. Anyway, here's the new fall color.

COMCAST BABY!

Okay, so I'm not one to endorse anything, but I have to say, I'm pretty happy right now. I've been a cheapskate (as always) and refused to upgrade anything we had. I hate monthly payments and contracts so I downgraded our directv, our phone and kept our internet where we had it. We've had so many problems with our stupid DSL but I ignored it because overall our bill for phone and internet was relatively cheap. We paid for a new modem twice and for a service technician to come out and tell us something was for sure wrong with the line, but he wasn't sure what. Nice! So even though I'm not one to enjoy salespeople, I listened when the Comcast guy stopped by. They were having a promotion, and yep, I caved. I'm sure when the promotion is over they'll kill me with the price (I'm guaranteed the same price for 12 months and then it goes up by $20 for another 12 so for 24 months I'll be happy). But by then I guess I'll just renegotiate or switch providers. But for now...WA-HOO! My DSL was so flippin' slow! It's no wonder I never wanted to get on this computer. Now my blog actually loads in less than 5 minutes. SERIOUSLY! So yay to having faster internet, lots of channels and all the phone upgrades....for now! :)

Frantic Thursday Moments

Oh Dylan! What am I going to do with you? We are definitely going to have a good talk about this tomorrow! It's been kind of a week...or two. Nothing big, just constant running and doing. I feel like I have been on the go a lot and like my to do list just keeps growing. And I watched Anthony today so I had added chaos. I had great intentions of getting tons of projects done, but I seemed to go from one room to another and never really accomplished much. So I did nothing. Okay, nothing is a relative term. I started out doing the kids' laundry so that's not nothing, but still. The list I had planned to do and what actually took place were completely different.

My intent had been to do the kids' laundry AND all the sheets, but by the time I got finished with their big load I was dead. I hadn't even made the beds because well, I was going to wash the sheets. I finished putting away the laundry to find Preston at the top of the stairs tossing all the bouncy balls in the basket down one by one and yelling "bombs away." Nice! He thought it was so much fun that he continued to toss a box of small board books down too. Trying to make the day fun, I had set up the train track in the family room for Anthony and Preston. They played with it for quite some time, but before long, it was just pieces of track and tons of little trains all over the place. And Preston has an obsession with dragging out ALL of the blankets and trying to walk with them over his head or whatever other extremely dangerous game he thinks he should try. So there were blankets, toys, balls, books, jackets, and shoes everywhere. I hadn't unloaded and reloaded the dishes so the sink was pretty much full and the beds weren't made. Oh, and I haven't cleaned the bathrooms yet this week. Yep, I'm a big slob!

When Dylan got home from Kindergarten and the kids wanted to play outside, I decided it was a great plan. They dug for fossils in the sandbox and pulled the toys out of the shed. Oh, and smashed a bunch of the old tomatoes in the lawn, which I made them clean up and toss back into the compost/garden area. GRRRR!! But because they were playing well together, it was such a good day outside and I was feeling tired and lazy, I decided to do nothing. So I sat...and watched a couple episodes of Glee I hadn't seen yet. I NEVER watch TV during the day so it felt practically criminal sitting there on the couch while my kids played outside, but still I couldn't muster up the courage to face my task list again. So I didn't.

Anthony's dad was supposedly coming late today so I figured I had extra time to clean up the mess. Plus, Marcos had a work thing tonight so I knew he would be late too. Just no incentive to do anything. So when Anthony's dad called and said he would actually be there at 5, I got Anthony's stuff ready and we went out front to play for a few minutes. No sense bringing him in to my disaster. This is what my world looked like when I heard a sweet little voice talking to David (Anthony's dad). "David, would you like to stay and eat dinner with us tonight?" Gulp. I smiled and he looked at me questioning. "Well, sure. Of course you can stay. What should we have? Should we go get a pizza?" Hello, I hadn't even fixed dinner. I hadn't even thought about dinner yet. I told him I could call Marcos to pick up a pizza on the way home from work, but he offered to go pick one up instead. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

I tried not to look to frazzled as I told the kids they could go play baseball in the backyard so they would be safe while I went to turn the oven on. What I meant was, while I preheat the oven and attempt to make some sense of this mess I had decided to ignore all day. I had maybe 20 minutes...maybe. I took all the toys up and tossed them in the toy room. They weren't put away, but at least they looked a bit contained. I didn't even attempt to make beds. I shut the door to my bedroom and tossed the kids' comforters back towards their beds. I folded blankets, unloaded the dishwasher, reloaded, swept the floor...and in walked Marcos. He was vacuuming the family room when David got back. Holy crap! At least it looked presentable, but it was still so embarrassing. Seriously, I am nowhere near as clean as many of my friends, but I keep a fairly tidy house. But I also don't consider cleaning the most important part of my "job." I have kids to raise and I like to live my life. So cleaning has to fit into my life somehow. I clean up the kid mess (with their help when possible) once or twice a day, do the dishes and straightening up every day and try to do most household chores once a week. If you catch me any time between those clean up moments though, there's no telling how it will look.

I have to say, I'm glad I just went with the moment though. Anthony loves our house and David and Anthony have dinner alone most of the time. I should really invite them to stay for dinner more often. I just have to inform Dylan that he has to ask permission before he so cordially invites friends over on his own. Just because he's polite and sounds very grown up when he talks, does not mean I had any part in the formulation of the plan. So if you get an invite from Dylan that sounds very official, give me a call first just in case ;)

But if not...

I saw a link to this on my friend's blog. I was touched by the words and thought I'd share it here as well.

All Boy!

Dylan is my extreme child. Okay, I hate to label kids, but let's just say that his highs are high and his lows are low compared to many. He's super fun and happy and then really sad or mad. More to come on this. But as such, he can be an amazing son. He is thriving in school, taking it seriously, learning (well nothing new, but paying attention) and has yet to be put on the "power chair" (or time out). To be honest, this shocked me because at home he often visits the naughty mat. The other day, we were playing outside and he was trying to perform some death-defying stunt that I warned him against. When he refused to listen, I sent him across the street to sit on the curb. It was supposed to be the porch, but he gets nervous if he can't see me so we improvised. I played with Preston and he sat on the curb waiting out his time. The kid can make a game out of anything though (a glorious thing I know - we rarely hear "I"m bored mom") but a curse when attempting to discipline. Within seconds, the kid found a pile of grass clippings in the gutter and was digging around during his time out. He was THRILLED when his time out was finally over so he could run across the street and show me the pile of worms he'd found. Seriously, I think we counted 14 from one small dirt/grass pile in the gutter. I told him to move them to my garden (we can use all the help we can get) but he was so sad to leave them. He sat out there watching his worms wriggle around for a half hour waiting for Papi to get home so he could share his find with him too. Yep, he's all boy!

Coupon Jackpot!

I'm going to miss Albertson's. I really am! But thankfully they had another GREAT sale. Maybe the last one. Who knows? Anyway, I've been a bit burned out with coupons and shopping so I've been doing kind of the minimum lately. I happened to mention my burnout to my friend, Courtney, and she told me there was actually a really good sale this week. Thank goodness I checked it out. This would've been a bad one to miss. Even without coupons, this is a pretty dang good sale. There are a million things on sale, but oatmeal and pasta are two major staples at our house so that is what I focused on. I spent $125 and saved $282. It came out to be just under 70% savings, which isn't my highest percentage of savings, but for all this stuff that we use on a very regular basis, it's awesome. I know it's lame, but here is the breakdown of what I got for my $125.

• 24 boxes of instant oatmeal (10 packets per box)
• 10 tubs of regular oatmeal
• 6 bottles of syrup
• 2 packages glad cling plastic wrap
• 1 package glad press n seal
• 4 boxes glad quart & gallon storage/freezer bags
• 50 boxes whole wheat & smart taste pasta
• 5 tubes colgate toothpaste
• 8 bottles softsoap hand soap
• 5 packages steamers meals for 2
• 1 package nestle refrigerated cookie dough

Discovery Gateway

This is why my house is a mess and I'm so far behind on everything - I would much rather play than work. I didn't used to be that way at all, but I'm learning with kids that the mess is always there tomorrow, but sometimes the moments with the kids aren't. But it's probably time to find a balance again. We'll see. Wednesday, I picked up my nephew, Diego, after Dylan got home from kindergarten and we headed down to Discovery Gateway. Those two LOVE playing together and it's perfect because they both have school in the morning. We decided to just pack a picnic lunch to eat while we were there so we would have more time to play. The plan was to eat first (since it was about 12:30 when we got there) and then play, but the kids were too excited. We played first and then ate at the end before we had to go home. Our YW group was doing baptisms for the dead at the temple and our appointment was early that day so I had to get the kids back by 3, drop them off to Amy, and then get home to change and get over to the church. It was a busy day, but really fun for everyone.