Recommitted 3.... well, I think it is 3!

So I am going to recommit myself again... I think to simplify it and make it easier on myself to actually post, I think I will forgo the pictures, unless I just have something incredible to share because I have to say I am not the hugest picture taker and I have felt the need after viewing others blogs to have a picture with every post because they have pictures with every post, and I was feeling the need to keep up! But I did have the slowest interent and so pictures took forever to upload, so I am hoping that if I don't feel the need to include a picture with each post, I may feel more motivated to post! We will see..... maybe one day I will be able to take 'write on blog' off my weekly to do list cause I want to do it rather than feel like I should do it! I hear it is wonderful! I do even know poeple who have 3 blogs! I can't even do one- how can they have 3? Anyways.....Did you notice I said, 'did have the slowest interent'? Some how our internet company sent us a letter saying that we could get faster internet for free!!!! For Free! Nothing is ever free! But our speed is like 10 times faster than before, which was a snails pace, so now we are moving at the speed of a quick worm! It is awesome! Another good reason to recommitt myself for the third time to writing on my blog!

O Christmas Tree!

Matt was very kind to me the evening we got our Christmas tree. He could have been really bugged, or said things, but being the better person than myself just smiled and laughed to himself about my particularness! And I say that because we went to our sister-in-laws family house where they sell Christmas tree, the same place Matt went as a child, to get our tree. After we had picked out, paid for and tied the tree to the roof of the car, I decided the tree was too small and we needed to get a different tree, one I had shot down previously! So we got the guys to come take the tree down and luckily there wasn't a restocking fee!! hahaha! We needed more money than we had brought, so we had to go back to the ATM and then went back and got the better, bigger tree!

The better story is that although exhausted at about 11pm Sat. night I got a second wind and decided to put lights on the tree. We did promise the kids the tree would be ready to put decorations on the next day, so it needed to be done. But after about 2 hours and 5 strands of lights later, only a little more than half the tree was lit! So Matt being the wonderful husband he is went to Walmart at 1 in the morning and got 5! more boxes of lights! Needless to say, I didn't finish the tree that night and we went to bed at 2! I finished putting the lights on Sun. morning, although one of the boxes was the wrong type and there is a small bare spot on the tree, but at this point, I don't care!

So last night we invited my sister, Mary Beth, out to help us decorate the tree. I made some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies right beforehand, so we could treat ourselves when we were done. And we played some classic Christmas music and had a lot of fun trimming the tree!

The tree is up a little earlier than usual, but we did feel it was the best time for it to happen. I am glad though too, cause it definitely feels way more Christmasy with it up! And it is pretty and makes the house smell good. Now if I can figure out a way for those under 2.5 feet(Lincoln) to stay away from it, it would be awesome!

Christmas Lights.... And Matt's Pride!

The morning of Thanksgiving Matt put two strands of Christmas lights out on the front of our house. Just over the porch and garage. It looked okay, but very lacking, but what do you do? So the guy down the street from us put his Christmas lights up..... way more than two strands and all around the second story of his home. Upon driving by this Matt declared, "If Kevin can do it, I am so going to do it!" After some talking about it and not coming up with a way for Matt to get up that high, I prodded him, several times actually, to call Kevin ask him for advice, or at the very least to borrow his ladder. So after telling Matt Kevin's number and reminding him to call, he did. Matt said he was only going to ask for his consultation, but as it ended up Kevin was going to be coming up in an hour to help. Sooo.... Kevin comes with ladder in hand and "helps" Matt with the lights. Helps is all relative because while it is true Matt has never hung Christmas lights besides on the gutter and did need to be shown how exactly it all worked, but Kevin basically did everything including take the screen out of the window! So once out on the roof, Matt helped Kevin by basically staying out of his way. Matt stayed as far away from the edge of the roof as humanly possible and rocked himself while in the fetal position till Kevin said he was all done! (although in the pictures it does look like Matt is actually helping) Now you may think I am being mean about Matt, but he was actually the first one who said this! And Kevin is so nice... I kept telling him I am going to bake him a pie, which I actually did this morning... But he kept saying he was glad to help. That night in bed I asked Matt how he was going to get the lights off the tree- he said he was calling Kevin! And poor Matt, fearful of heights and not known for being graceful, probably best he stay off the roof. I said next year, we are not going to ask Kevin for help, either we don't put them up, or we hire it out.

The HOLE....

Anyone who has been to our house has seen the HOLE! It is a product of the mortgage fall out. A builder dug out the foundation for a house in the lot next to ours, but something happened, who knows what, and thus here we have the HOLE! When we first moved in in April, Matt was adamant that Carter didn't play in it, or even near it. The hole was about 10 feet deep with two HUGE piles of dirt next to it. It was a prime little boy play area, but scary. Well, we gave in quickly when we realized that all the other little kids in the neighborhood were always on it! How could we say no? Well, that HOLE sat there untouched.... And then at the first of Sept. Matt when to city council about it and told them about the HOLE! They said the would contact the owner and get a fence up around in it no time. Yeah, well that never happened. And I was kinda glad cause I didn't want some ugly fence up next door. Plus, would that really keep these crazy little boys out of it, or would it make it more of a game by seeing who could climb over it the fastest? But at the end of Oct. on the news one night Matt and I saw a story about a little Toole boy who died after his family and him built a a tunnel in a hill similar to the one we had next door and it colapsed while he was in it. I felt so bad, but I was also MAD!!! This could be our little boys, if that HOLE was not filled in. So we, my neighbors, and I sent mean emails and phone calls to all the city council members and mayor. Although I am not the suing type, I told them if anything happened to my child, I would sue the city!! We sent them links to the news story..... And they finally responded!

The pics above are of some of the boys, Carter included, watching the HOLE we filled in! It was exciting to see the bulldozer work its magic! Now we don't have a hole, but the boys have put the dirt lot use and built a little dirt bike track on it complete with some very minor "jumps"! Never an opportunity missed to be a boy! And I love it!

Family Portraits!

I am not speedy with the post- Always about a week or two behind!

I finally downloaded the few pictures I have of our family pictures taken- I am still trying to locate my super sister-in-law who took them and get the rest, but below are a few that were taken! Some of the better ones!

Halloween Part II

I don't know how to put than just 5 pics up per post, so Iam going to just do another posting, or two!

So halloween Part II...... After the trick-or-Treating was over we went to Matt's brother's house for the Borget family Halloween party. We were asked to bring along treat, so I made marshmallow bones!!! I was so proud of myself... see how they kinda look like bones? Okay Martha Stewart's looked better, but none the less, I was pleased with the Jackie Borget version!! My mother-in-law made pretzels that looked like fingers with red fingernails, those were impressive too!

So we ate and hung out, well mostly the kids ate. They had enough sugar that night to last until Christmas, at least. I was okay with it cause I figured they would crash on the way home and go to sleep easily, which they did. Anyways, we ate, hung out and then the games began! First one was to blow the "eyeball", ping pong ball across the line first using a straw. Matt being super cometative challanged me to do it! Of course this was suppose to be for the kids, but we go first. I whoop his tale of course!!! It is all my hot air.. Next Matt challenges his newphew, Jamie, to do it. Mind you these guys, Matt and Jamie, are no little whispy things and so squeezing them into the door way was just funny to watch and then they were off. It was hysterical! The kids get into challenging everyone! Poor Carter finally beat Ella and Lexie, his 3 year-old cousin. But he was happy with that. The funniest was Lincoln who wanted to particpate in the game and so he would crawl around on the floor on his belly with the straw in his hand!!! He didn't care if he was blewing the eye or not. It was soo funny and he was quite proud of his self! So cute!

After another game of pass the ghost, or something like that we headed home- it was late about 10:30, which is way past our bedtimes. It was one of the best Halloweens we have ever had and I now look forward to the holiday much more. Again, we live in a wonderful neighborhood!!

Halloween... finally posting!

Finally uploading my pics from Halloween. I am getting at bad at blogging as I am at journal writing. I don't know how to change my pics to get them in the correct order- I am still working on this blogging thing... hmmmmm.........

Because we had such a busy week prior to Halloween we didn't get to carve or in our case paint pumpkins untill the day of. I kept thinking we would do it one evening that week, but it seemed every night we had a meeting, or something. And to be honest we didn't get to a pumpkin patch until Thursday. I finally found a patch that a local farmer was doing, which I was thrilled about cause I would rather support a local farmer, than Walmart or Smith's. Plus, I think it is good for the kids. So I painted a pumpkin and so did Carter and Ella. Lincoln was sleeping and Matt was at work. It was fun! I think the kids really enjoyed it. I know my kidsa re naked- it is cause I don't let them paint with clothes on becuase we use acrylic paint, which totally stains clothes, but washed off skin easily! And lucky for Ella too, cause she looked like she was painting herself, as well as the pumpkin! Carter's face was painted by the way cause he came from school about 2 hours prior and they had to dress up!

So as you see from the pics above, which isn't the greatest picture, but we couldn't get Lincoln to be still, surprisingly!!!! So it is what it is! But obviously Carter is a ghost, Lincoln a dog and Ella is a cow. Man, the costumes were hard this year- not because I put all this effort into making them, but because you have never heard so many opinions regarding what the kids were going to be. Luckily Lincoln doesn't talk, not a word, yet, so he was easy! And he loved his costume and was so cute in it! So now Carter, every time I asked him what he wanted to be he said something different. Somethings were just too difficult, or required to much effort for me to make, and it just wasn't going to happen. He actually initially wanted to be what he was the 2 prior years, a dragon, but the costume doesn't fit anymore. A ghost was the only thing he said twice and it is luckily easy enough. And Ella, when I bought Lincoln's costume at Costco, like 6 weeks before Halloween Ella was with me and insisted on wanting the cow costume. It was cheap, so I bought it for her. Well, I think for those 5 minutes in the store looking at it was the only time she ever wanted to be a cow... I should have known better. Yet, it was wonderful the I had the costume for her cause it would have not been easy finding one for her in the middle of nowhere Iowa, sorry mom and dad. Ella wanted to be a Princess, like she was last year, which she tons of photos of. And last year she was a super cute princess, but here in Utah, you never know what the weather is going to be on Halloween and so I wanted something warm and not just cute! Unfortunately the costume was too small, which is why she isn't wearing the "hood" of it on her head. When we did try and do that, I was picking a wedgie out for her!!! Charming, I know. The size was 2T-4T and she is a 3T, but lesson learned- try the costume on before the night it is needed!

Halloween in our neighborhood was straight out of 1950's tv!!!! The weather was warm, although it did sprinkle some. The night was perfect because everyone was outside. I am not sure one doorbell was rung all evening. My neighbors sat on their front porch and gave out hot chocolate and doughnuts to the adults and big candy bars to the kids. Two doors down from them were sitting in their driveway with chips, bean dip and doughnuts! The neighborhood kids, which there are million, well, like over 50 10 and under were running all around. It was so fun to see every one's costumes. Several neighbors had haunted houses done up in their basements and all the outsides of houses were totally done up, well except for ours! It was soo fun! We have never lived in a neighborhood like that. Most of our houses had like 10 kids visit on Halloween- doesn't feel very halloweeny when that happens! But Halloween night was one of the best, maybe ever!!! I LOVED it!!!