Taylor's Halloween Pick

So I'd been trying to convince Taylor to be a fireman for halloween, it's a no go. Today he told me he wants to be a scary, black ghost with scary eyes and scary ears you can't see. I looked up "black ghost" on google and showed Taylor this pic. his reply" Yes mama yes, that's what I want!"

ARE YOU KIDDING ME???

What mormon mom dresses her 3 YEAR OLD in this?

**Edited: thankfully we got to the store and the motorcyle cheap plastic helmet swayed him! Crisis averted!**

Hodge Podge

Is that how you spell that?

Random thoughts and ideas and whatever comes at me right now at 12:10:

1. I LOVE my guilty pleasures... The OC(thank you Sara and Emily), Grey's Anatomy, and Private Practice.

I know there's some sleaze in there, and admitting you have a problem is the first step right??? At the end of the night (or in the middle of the day when the boys are driving me crazy) completely vegging out to those shows MAKES MY DAY!!!

**Remember what Christ said about throwing the first stone...:)

2. My boys are LOTS of fun.

3. MBA school is a drag right now- well for me. Matt is gone lots and we really miss him.

4. I'm grateful for bubble bath and glow sticks- these things keep my boys entertained forever in the bath!

5. I can still fit into my prom dress from my junior year in high school- I'm proud. Granted, I'm not THAT far removed from my junior year, but I have had two kids.

6. Trying to work out sucks, but if I want #5 to ever happen again, I better keep it up.

7. I kinda miss SC??!!

8. We're moving in 15 days. I can't wait. I haven't really settled in here, and I have lots of ideas of what I am going to do once we move.

I think that's all.

So far my favorite housing ad has been this one:

Manufactured double wide home. located in quiet cold a sack. come by and c 4 urself.

It took me FOREVER to figure out what a cold a sack was.

In the past month and a half at least three of us has been sick at any given moment, but usually it's everyone.

Brayden spent one night in the hospital.

Taylor has contracted walking, no running pneumonia. It hasn't slowed him down that much.

Matt sneezes every time he walks into our apt.

Taylor had a virus, which he gave to Brayden ( note the hospital stay) and now to me.

Today I said, "oh my gosh, we're all going to die" after a sneezing/coughing fit all four of us participated in and Taylor looked at Matt and said, "Daddy we die today?" It was so sad/cute. Matt set him straight with " not today but someday."

We think it's our apt... well Matt thinks it's our apt, so we're apt searching in the middle of the freakin' semester... wish us luck! My head hurts so bad I can barely think straight.

Four Years and 5 Days ago...

15 Days and Counting

It's weird to think we've only been here 15 days... but then I see the boxes piled high in the closets and my bare cabinets and I think I've ALREADY been here 15 days and I've accomplished nothing.

We're all sick right now- which is really annoying. Hopefully this will pass soon!

We're getting settled though. It's tough figuring out where to put things- that's the part I hate the most about moving.

13 days ago we did this:


My brother is serving a tw0-year mission in Argentina for our church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Doesn't he look handsome!

7 days ago Matt left for his first day of school.

I've been trying to keep the boys happy, cook dinner with bare cupboards and scrapbook- I'm so happy to be back in the land of scrap booking. It just feels better to scrapbook here!

The camera has had a rest recently, but I got Photoshop for my birthday so I'm gonna get on that soon... promise!

UTAH

So we finally made it. We had three flat tires on the trailer the first day and we had to stop and get an anti-sway bar put on because the trailer was trying to go faster than the truck and it was swerving into the other lanes. After that we were good. We got to Provo Monday afternoon and in a little less than three hours everything was unloaded from our 24' trailer and the back of my dad's truck. Some neighbors saw us moving in and came out to help- they were amazing!

We're trying to cram everything in our apt now, and with some luck it might all fit in. I'll post more when we get settled.

*ps. Matt is going back to BYU to get his MBA, I'm not sure if I've said that here yet... so that's why we're back in Provo.

I'm Absolutely TERRIBLE at packing. When we leave for vacation- I pack an hour before it's time to leave because I hate trying to decide what I can live without until we actually leave. How am I supposed to pack my house up? I've got three days before we leave- maybe I'll just pack nonstop for one day and then crash. Wish me luck!

Lately...

It's been warm, so we've spent time at Carowinds, mainly in the water park. When we can't make it to Carowinds, we create our own theme park here at home and invite friends to join us here.

Love This!

Good Morning!

Wouldn't you be in a good mood if these greeted you every morning! I keep the back blinds open all day because sunflowers make me SO happy! Aren't they gorgeous. One is 10 1/2 feet tall!

July 4th Weekend

(Super long post- it wasn't inteded to be but there was lots I want to remember. Pics are at the bottom- you can skip to those, my feelings won't be hurt!)

Matt had Friday off so we decided to take advantage of that and drive down to Atlanta, GA. We wanted to be back for our church firework show on Saturday so it was just a quick trip.

Matt got home from work around 4:30 and I had just printed off our tickets for the Braves baseball game that started at 7:10... and it's a 4 hour trip down! Obviously we got there a little late but we were there for almost all the action. The Braves won and I think it was a good first experience for the boys and myself at a major league baseball game. We caught the last three innings and the Braves won- Great!

Friday we packed in as much as we could. We started with the world's largest aquarium. It was AWESOME!!! The boys loved it and so did Matt and I. If we lived in Atlanta I would buy a season pass and go every week! Right when you walk in There is a tank of sting rays and sharks that you can touch- so neat.

After a few hours there we went over to the CNN Center for a tour. It was neat to do, not life changing, but a cool experience- not worth a season pass! :D

We got to walk through Olympic park on our way to the Coca-Cola museum. neat to do once- again not a season pass attraction.

We got directions to a southern diner for dinner. On our way Matt drove us all over town to try and climb up the Olympic torches that are placed throughout the city. They were all closed so he was sad. his thing anytime we go somewhere is to get a bird's eye view. you don't know how many buildings we've tried to get into and get to the top floor to see the view. I guess that's just his thing- it makes me laugh.

We saw Georgia tech and even got to get down on the football field. There was a ball that Taylor found so he took some time practicing his routes on a real field- his dad was so proud!

Saturday we went to the zoo which was really cool. The boys loved it and i loved the pandas. They had a lot of animals and since we went in the morning it wasn't hot or humid yet and all the animals were out and about.

We started our drive home but stopped at a grocery store to get some lunch. While Matt was checking out a BIG black lady came rolling up in a mechanical shopping cart. She looked at Brayden and pinched his leg and started kissing his hands. She said "Oh my, boy you are a fat tub of lard! You should go with me to Weight Watchers, I've already lost 5 pounds." It was SOOOO funny!- but maybe you had to be there...

We decided to drive through Augusta on the way home and since we were there we figured we might as well try and find the Master's Golf Course. Well- an hour later and 20 pictures of the back of a country club that we thought was the course- this is all we have to show for it. They have it COMPLETELY secluded. On the very outside of the course they've planted bamboo and it is so thick there's no way you could see anything!

Continuing on our trip (wow this has gotten to be very long-winded, sorry) Matt wants to play disc golf at the International Disc Golf Center. It ends up being out in the middle of nowhere but he got to play, so he can check that on off his list.

Overall- great trip, great family time and relatively cheap. We loved Atlanta and the weather was great but all the "natives" said it was so rare for it to be that nice.

**For the life of me I can't switch the order of the pictures. Everytime I try it freezes my computer.

Camping

So we've wanted to take the boys camping... and now it's summer and SUPER hot and humid here in the south! We decided to do a test run in our backyard to see how they do. Thank good ness that's what we decided to do. We started off by setting up the tent and cooking smores- on our grill. They're not quite as good as over a wood fire.

Taylor enjoyed playing with the fire starter and Brayden found his little spot in my garden (which reminds me I need to post about) and played in/ate the dirt.

We bathed the boys, put them in pajamas and went out around 9:15, it was still 83 outside. I took a few books to read and some glow sticks and off we went, the whole ten feet off our back deck.

We read and said prayer and laid down. Matt fell asleep within thirty minutes. Brayden would lay down just long enough for me to think this might be it- he may be out and then he's laugh, or shriek and roll over and crawl all over us. We were generating so much heat it had to be 90 in the tent! Taylor and Brayden played while I tried to pretend to be asleep and see if they would copy me. It did not work. By 11:15 I was done, so I took Brayden inside and he immediately went to sleep as soon as I laid him in his crib.

I went back out side to Taylor and Matt and put the baby monitor on the porch. Well, Taylor kept crawling on me and putting his feet in my face to be funny so at 12:15 we both went in. I told Matt we were leaving and he didn't come so I got our bed all to myself!

At 7:00 Taylor woke up and went outside and woke up Matt. I got to sleep in the A/C and sleep in- what a great night, well kinda!

Girl's Camp 09

So because I'm the YW president in our ward I had the chance to go to Girls Camp this year. Since I've been home I've decided that this is definetely something I need to attend every year! It was so nice to be around just girls. Once my boys get older and smellier I bet I'll really be begging to go! The camp director this year was so fun and LOVES to dance. We had music on all day long. Things got a little crazy but it was such a blast! I was the 4th year level leader (15 yr old girls) I had the BEST girls at camp. We all got along and had a ton of fun together! Thanks for the fun girls!

4th Level Girls


Sandy Abbot our Camp Director



Rock Hill Ward YW



Some of my 4th Level girls

Me and my "besties" MaKenna and "Wicky Wicky What"

4th Level girls after they washed their hair in the rain

14 Layer Cake

So for a Young Women's object lesson I needed a very "desirable" chocolate cake. The other day on Bakerella I saw this one and thought that would be PERFECT!!! Well, I didn't document the whole process as well as she did, and mine definitely did not look as good as hers does- but it sure tasted great! My secretary's 9 yr old daughter was there last night and had a piece and said it was the best cakes she had ever had and begged me to give her mom the recipe. It was so cute. The girls were all excited when we cut into it and saw all the layers... that was my favorite part too! The layers were covered in a chocolate butter cream icing so it looked prettier, YUM!