Scrappin' The Night Away

Last weekend I had the chance to go once again with my gals to a 24 hour scrapbook retreat. We had so much fun. It was a much needed break on my part. It was nice to be around people I know and love so well, and who know and love me. Y'all do love me, right? I mean, we are talkin' about me, so what is there not to love? We pretty much scrapbooked for 24 hours. I did take a 4 hour break to sleep. The above picture features Dianna and myself. You remember Dianna and her loud music, right? Then there's Laura, below. This time she is only pregnant with one baby.
And this is LaRee, the Queen of all scrapbooking. Here are just a few of the pages I made. I did 63 pages in all, making an entire album of our vacation last year to Tennessee. Yeah. Tennessee. That pretty much did me in for my Alphabet tiles. I wasn't able to use any of the other letters to spell anything else. I guess I should have just said TN.

An Egg-Cellent Easter

My sister Kristy and her kids were here from the other side of the country visiting during Easter. It was so much fun to have them here. This was about as serious of a picture that I could get from the kiddos. Above: Emily, Tia, Zac, Owen, Addy, Aubrey

Lauren and her little Addy (dang, I have cute kids!)

Lauren, Kristy, Allyson, Kay & Sam

Sorry Farrah. We missed you!

Sam, Lauren, Allyson & Kristy

How did I get the only low spot in the yard to stand on? Am I really THAT short? Is Kristy really THAT beautiful? HELLO! We have the same genes. Gimme some of dat!

Visiting Papa

Addison

Aubrey

Zac

Emily

Oh, and, yeah. I made really dang cute cupcakes. They tasted good too. Move over Sprinkles, there's a new cupcake in town! Oh, and BTW, Kristy kept trying to steal the mini eggs off all the cupcakes. Totally rude.

I ♥ Your Hair!

I was feeling especially creative when I was doing Aubrey's hair this morning. She has been begging me to do this hairstyle since, oh, about Valentines Day. I kept telling her it took too long and we didn't have time. I decided I had time today. She is so cute, as you can see from the pictures, and so happy to have her hair in a heart.

I ♥ U Aubrey!

Wanna try it out yourself? Click here to learn how.

Monday Morning Musings - Chest Tube Anyone?

Last week, with a tear or two in my eyes, I watched the final episode of ER. Ahhh, ER. My Thursday nights will never be the same again. Last Thursday night, Steve asked me what I was going to do. I looked at him with a look that said, "What the heck do you think I'm gonna do." And he said, "You don't really wanna watch that do you? It's just going to be some cheesy, sappy story line so they can bring all the characters back". And then I looked at him like he was insane and I said, "I have watched that show every week for the past 15 years of my life. I have see every episode! And what? You want me to miss the very last one? THE VERY LAST ONE?!?" And then he was like, "Woah! Fine. Watch it". So I did. Ahhh...ER. Because of you I know what a GSW is. Because of you, I think if it came right down to it, I could intubate someone, I've seen it done so many times. Because of you, I am highly disappointed with the personal appearance of any doctor I am treated by. So long, old friend....

Addy has this Dora obsession. And when I say obsession, I mean I am about to lose my mind if I hear the Dora theme song one more time. The one cute thing she has picked up from Dora is that anytime we go somewhere, when we reach our destination, she gets really excited and starts saying, "WE DID IT! WE DID IT! WE DID IT!" I feel like when I am driving I should be saying, "Freeway, stop sign, big brown library. Freeway, stop sign, big brown library."

I have an extra bedroom upstairs and that is where we put all the boxes that didn't have a specific room they belonged in yet. Mostly they were boxes that when we were on the last day of moving I was just like, "Throw it in a box! Any box!" When we moved in they were all nicely stacked in an orderly fashion in that room. Since then my children have rummaged through every box and now that room is completely trashed. I don't even want to go in there, but I guess I'm gonna have to. I should just put a dumpster outside below the window and just start shoveling everything out.

I bought some socks on Saturday. I went to open the package yesterday and I noticed that across the top was written, "Resealable bag!" So I just lookin' at this bag 'o socks in my hand thinkin', "Who in the world needs to reseal their bag of socks?" So you know what I did? I didn't open 'em by the zipper in the top. Nope. I just ripped right into the middle of the bag. I reached in and grabbed out my socks and then looked at the empty, decimated bag and laughed. Ha. Resealable bag. Not anymore!

Easy, Breezy, Beautiful, Makeup Girl

Sigh.....This is my beautiful, sweet, well behaved, no trouble makin' Addy. She is sitting on her sister Aubrey's bed playing with Aubrey's brand new makeup she got for her birthday. Yeaaaaah, this was fun to clean up. Let me just tell ya'.

WebCam Wednesday - Exploding Joe

Uncle Sam, passing on his skills to the younger generation.

Hula Birthday Emily!

Right now, you are probably thinking, "Wait, haven't I already read this post?" And the answer to that would be, NO! You see, this is how brilliant I am. Aubrey and Emily, their Birthday's are only a few weeks apart. So I talked them both into having a Luau themed party. Oh, yeah. I even left the decorations from Aubrey's party up until Emily's party so that I only had to decorate once. Brilliant, you say? So brilliant that it only took me SIX years to figure it out!

I thought the little girls running around, screaming at Aubrey's party were loud. Oh, ho, ho. The big girls are much, much louder. WOW! And there was a lot more drama with the big one's too. They played 2 of my games and then all chaos happened. After that it was just me, huddled in a corner, rocking myself back and forth, watching my house be destroyed, thinking....45 more minutes....45 more minutes....

Here are some of the pictures from the party. They are deceitfully calm in appearance:

All I can say is, HAPPY BIRTHDAY my sweet, beautiful Emily. And next year, lets just go out for ice cream.

Monday Morning Musings - Drop Dead Fred

Uhhhh, yeah. So it's snowing.

My kids have this obsession with talking like Fred on iCarly. It's very irritating. See for yourself:


You know how my old neighborhood is multiple birthville? There was a set of twins just born a few weeks ago. And I just found out this weekend that another girl is pregnant with twins. My friend LaRee said she and another girl figured that there has been a set of twins born every year for the past 10 years or something like that. KA-RAZAY!!!

I can hear my kids in the other room talking like Fred right now. Have I mentioned before that my house echoes? AHHH CABBAGES!!!!

Yeah, so my kids are out of school today. Why, you ask? Get this. "Quality Teaching Day". What the heck? This is what I say. I'm not stupid. Don't put a special politically correct name on it like "Quality Teaching Day" in hopes that I won't mind that my kids are missing yet another day of school. Just call it like it is. "Teacher Prep Day". I understand that teachers need time to prepare. It's just that when you call it "Quality Teaching Day" that just kind of sounds like you should be spending the day teaching. In a quality manner. Kinda hard to do where there are no kids there to teach. You would think that TEACHERS would know the definitions of words well enough to come up with the proper day off terminology. I'm just sayin'.

Saturday's Road Warriors

We decided to shirk all responsibilities yesterday and take to the hills. We left Addy with my mom, and Steve and the kids and I all spent the day as follows:

Big Brother

Earlier this month I had a Relief Society dinner at the church. Steve was out of town so I was going to take my kids to the nursery that was provided. The only problem was Addy had a bad cough. I didn't feel like I could take her and stick her in a room with a bunch of other kids and let her hack all over them. So I took Emily and Aubrey to the nursery and left Zac home to babysit Addy. I came home and was a little freaked out when I couldn't find Zac. I was calling for him, I looked in every room. Then I checked Addison's room. He had put her to bed and when he started to walk out she said, "Lay down by me Zac". So he did. And he feel asleep with her. It was so cute.