Birthday's FANTASTICO

So Feb 10 was my birthday and I turned 27! Whaoo! So I thought I'd share a little bit about my day. My sister came down from Salt Lake with her family and it was so nice to have cousins for Seth to play with. She watched my kids that night while Cordelle and I went out to dinner so that was an added bonus. There was only one thing to detract from the day a little. Seth found a granola bar (that was stuck to my neices' blanket...I know gross. He'll eat anything he thinks is candy). The only problem was it was a peanut butter granola bar. And he is very ALLERGIC to peanuts. Well and I didnt think too much of it because I buy granola bars all the time but obviously I dont get the peanut butter ones. Anyways so he comes up to me playing with his lip and I look down at him and its mega swollen....couple minutes later he's wheezing....so I send Cordelle to Maverick for some Childrens Benadryl and I start debating whether or not to give him his epipen (an epinephrine shot). I decide he's getting worse and I should take him and meet Cordelle at Maverick. So we give him Benadryl and at this time his eyes are swollen and he is SO sleepy. Luckily it was almost at the end of the day so we just took him to the pediatricians office and didnt have to go to the ER. But they made me give him his epinephrine there, so that was good practice. And we learned a lot more about what to do when he has a reaction so it was actually very educational. Just sad to see him like that, but man those shots work wonders. Apparently if his lips are swollen that usually means his tongue and throat are too so thats why he was wheezing. But, his oxygen was back up within minutes after getting the shot. And he was just fine. I really should have gotten a pic of him cause he looked just awful, but naturally my mind wasnt thinking that at the moment. Anyways, Crazy huh?
Anyways since my sister was down for 2 days I convinced her to help me paint my kitchen! It was the best birthday present she could have given me cause without her help it would have looked aweful and taken forever. But since she is a pro at painting, we neglected our kids for 2 days and got it done before she left. I painted the inside of my widow frames too and i got to say to get those lines straight was a VERY tedious task, but I think i like the end result. Anyways I posted a picture of my new kitchen. It totally changes the look of your house.
Then Cordelle gave me something I have wanted for so long! There is this massive wall above my stairs and its hard to put anything on it cause it has the stairs and then a half wall in front of it. So Cordelle printed out this massive picture of the Manti Temple (where we were married) and distressed it and then cut it out onto 6 huge squares and mounted it to the wall. It seriously looks incredible. Good job Hunk!
Then to finish off the good week, my little bro came down and hung out all weekend. We had a fun low key V-Day where Cordelle and I both wrote each other hillarious cards and that was pretty much it. It actually was more fun than I thought for making it pretty simple. It was nice. And then yesterday, for Presidents day, we were able to fix up the bikes and take the kids on a big bike ride since it was SO nice outside. But my poor little bro was violently sick with some sort of flu all day, so that was lame for him. But it was still nice to have one national holiday where Cordelle actually has it off work.
Oh yea and then to celebrate my birthday, last night my good friends that I run and play bunko with, came and picked me up for a late movie. It was a blast. It seriously is so fun to have friends to go and hang out with and just be girls while our kids are sleeping and our husbands are home! You guys rock! And even though I didnt go to sleep till 1 last night and am a zombie this morning, nothing would deter me from our Girls Nights. :)

Warning: Long post...may cause loss of interest midway through

What the....January where'd cha go? Here's the recap. January has been crazy busy for us with Cedar Weddings. But its awesome. We went to a bridal show in St. George and got to meet a lot of other wedding vendors....some more fanatic then others. This wedding business world is wild. It was a good experience to do a big show like that but we decided we get more out of our facebook advertising so we'll probably stick with that. Random input thought: speaking of facebook. I got to say that is a big reason my blogging has been suffered. I swear my little brain can only process one social networking site at a time, and because I am usually long winded with my posts on blogger, most of the time I only have time for the condensed version of facebook. Who thought there would be so many people curious about "what I am doing right now..." (between you and I though, I'm not sure they're THAT curious.) :) Anyways it was good timing for the bridal show because I got to sneak over and watch 2 of my running friends cross the finish line for the St. George half-marathon...AND it inspired me. So I decided to train for one myself!! CRAZY!! So 3 days a week I have been waking up at 5:30 and running with these girls so I can run the Hurricane Half in April. I still am not sure I will ever feel in shape enough....and now I am ALWAYS tired, but if I can actually do it I'll definitely deserve a big WOOT WOOT. And that's enough. And now for the youngins. Seth is like all make-believe right now. Everyday we play dress up 3-4 times a day. He is always the robot, I am always the army guy and Jaquelle is always Princess Fiona (we went through a Shrek phase) and if Cordelle is home he is a pirate. Everytime we fight the same bad guys: lions, other robots, dragons and "mean guys." Its pretty funny but it is time consuming. I started dressing up with him and then pretending the robots were going to eat his toys or that we were saving the dishes from the lions if we put them in the sink, just so I could actually get something cleaned during the day. We really need to branch out and start inviting friends over or have him go over to friends homes so I can be more productive in the day. I feel bad though cause every second its, can we play candyland, or chutes and ladders, or lets go play basketball downstairs...I mean he has endless ideas of games to play but seriously I got find him a friend. Lets see, what else. Seth LOVES putting on jammies and every night midway through dinner when he realizes its getting dark outside, he runs and puts them on (at like 6:00!!). One night we had company here and suddenly he disappears for a couple minutes and comes back in his Buzz Lightyear pjs and jumps into the room screaming "BUZZ LIGHT YEAR AND BEYOND!" (He's got the tag line a little mixed up but it was funny). He keeps saying the funniest things. The other night, I am putting him to bed and he says to me so sincerely, "mom, I really like you...(and just as I was about to tell him, "thanks seth," he continued) "BUT, I just really want dad to put me to bed, because i just really want him to." I guess it was nice of him to assure me that he liked me before crushing my dreams of having to put him to bed. Needless to say I welcomed the excuse for Cordelle to do it. Oh yea, (sorry I am kind of rambling) and then when my parents were here watching the kids and we were gone, my mom was trying to figure out where the pizza pan went so she could put it away. So she said, "Seth do you know where your mom puts the pizza pan?" To which he responded without hesitation, "under the pizza." Classic. And Jaquelle, love the little girl,...but man the girl drama has begun. When she doesn't get her way...watch out! She throws the most entertaining fits. Both arms go up in the air and then in sync with her head they fling forward and down, almost like she's is violently worshiping some idol. Its funny. But man, she is all screams right now. However, she is learning new things all the time and has started, and I use that term lightly, to walk...finally. Geesh she's almost 18 months but she still prefers the crawl. She totally understands more than she can actually speak but it makes it entertaining to say something like, "Jaq where is your blankie?" (to try to distract her from throwing one of the previously mentioned fits), only to watch her go across the house, find her blanket in her bed and bring it back to you. Fascinating little people. And then this month we've had tonz of snow so Cordelle and Seth have spent many hours out front playing in it. And my parents came down 3 weekends in a row so we've been able to hang out with them which my kids loved. The first weekend, my parents had a conference in St. George, then they came down to watch our kids while we went to the bridal show and then the next week my dad was applying for a job down here cause he really wants to move to St. George (which would be AWESOME!) We could actually go to the temple and have someone watch our kids. I am not sure its going to happen, but its been fun to dream about with them. Oh yea, and they also brought us down a piano!! My sister had a couple that had been given to her and asked us if we wanted it. I forgot how much I love having a piano in our home till we got it. We are so blessed. Anywhodidlydo, that about sums up January, thanks for reading...if you made it this far. Will I be better in February? Lets not set our hopes up too high.

The eve before New Years...alright enough with the semi-funny titles

We are lame. We had our first New Years Eve without friends. Okay, I am just kidding. Well not really kidding about the New Years Eve without friends....and the lameness is debatable. But it actually wasnt all that bad. We threw a mean party for ourselves. (and mostly it was because our kids were kind of sick and we didnt feel it right to invite people over to our germ infected home just to appease our need to feel like we have friends). That said, Cordelle didnt go to work and so we had the whole day to do whatever our little minds could imagine. Our neighbor boys Craig and Chase (who I might add are Seth's idols...one is 8 and the other one is 11 and they adore Seth and are so sweet to him) had Seth and Jaquelle strap themselves into a sled so they could pull them around in their new little snow ski in their backyard. It was so cute. What boys this age would do that? They seriously are some of my favorite kids. Anyways Seth had to be bribed to get in (of course) but then wouldnt get out for all my motherly persuasion of candy and movies waiting at home. He loved it and loves being with these boys.
Anyways then we took the kids to see The Princess and the Frog. Which I might add was for no better way of saying it...LAME. And I am not one of those anti-Disney movie people. Come on, I have a 3 year old, I hunt out good disney movies like Seth can sniff out the one peice of chocolate in my church bag I got from Relief Society that I was secretly waiting for a quiet second alone to divulge into. And it was freaky. Seth was half scared, half weirded out by the vudoo shadows throughout the whole thing. And I was just bored. Lucky for Cordelle, Jaq was rediculously squirmy so he got to see bits and pieces of other movies as he walked the the corridors of the movie theatre. (Corridors...yes that sounds cooler than "halls"....I'll start using that more, "the church corridors," "Corridors: cough drops") ---Ha! That one was for me. Anyways where were we? Oh yea, so after the movie, we went to the store bought like $35 worth of junk food, pizza, and icecream (all of which I vowed to stop eating the next day...it is the most popular day to start a diet and I always do the most popular thing...) We spent the night eating and lounging. But then, we put our kids to bed....and fell asleep with them. LIKE AT 8:30! Cordelle woke up at like 9:30 and we decided we should at least watch the ball drop on New Yorks time (10 for us). So we did that, but then were too wide awake to go back to bed, so we started a Bourne Trilogy marathon. And eventually watched all three Bourne movies. It was pretty fun. I fell asleep right before midnight but faintly heard my phone signaling a text by some party goer stating the obvious, that it was now 2010. It was fun for it to just be us, but next year we're throwing a sweet partay because obviously we cant stay up past 10 without some sort of motivation greater than issuing in the new year. What did ya'll do?

The Square surrounding the Temple

Alright so we braved it up when we were up north and took our kids to Temple Square. It was SOOO cold. I am not sure I can even explain the coldness. Matter of fact when I got back into the car, I put my hands by the heater to warm them up and all of the sudden they started aching so bad I thought I was going to cry. Has this ever happened to any of you? My mom said it happens all the time, something about warming your hands up too quickly after being really cold. Anyways I was a much bigger baby than my kids were who loved every minute of it. Anyways here's the pics (for you mom)."Its freezing out here mom"

Us. Dont look too closely. I tried to fix the red eye on our eyes in iphoto...and now we all look posessed.

Sis Kris, Ma, and Me

Us plus Cordelles parents

Alexa in the back, Anna, Mason, and Seth ( he loves these guys...probably his favorite people in the world...got to love them cousins).

CHRISTMAS!!!!

This Christmas we were of course up north, but we decided to spend Christmas morning with Cordelle's parents who are leaving for a mission in 2 weeks!! We thought it would be a great opportunity to spend some extra time with them and we were so glad we did. I think they enjoyed having us spend Christmas morning with them as well. Seth was SO funny to watch open gifts. He has the best facial expressions and was so excited. Jaq just wanted to rip the wrapping paper until it was completely off, after which, she cried until we got her a new present to unwrap...the cycle continuing. (Should of just wrapped up empty boxes).

Oh but here's something weird, but that describes Seth to a "T". When he first woke up Christmas morning, we told him "Seth come see. Santa came and brought you some presents!!" I dont think he heard a word about presents, because all he did was start crying and refused to come upstairs because of Santa. I remembered that he was terrified of the fat red man but I didnt think he would put two and two together on Christmas morning. Finally I convinced him that Santa wasn't actually STILL here. He just dropped the presents off and then left. That much information got him up the first set of stairs till Cordelle's dad said, "looks like Santa came" to which he remembered his previous fear and once again started crying and retreating to the basement. I finally broke down and told him the gifts werent from Santa, that they were all from mom and dad, just so I could get him in the living room to open them....so much for fun Santa business. But that's Seth. Hopefully he'll forget my secret next year. However, once he saw the presents he had no reservations going to town on them. But hopefully this fear of Santa will subside by next Christmas.Seth in front of our tree

Jaq in front of our tree

Christmas morning....no tree cause G&G Morris have everything stored up for their mission

Oh yea, and for Christmas this year Cordelle printed out my blog to a book! It is awesome. But I realized there a many gaps where I didnt write. So this year, now that I am going to continue to print out my blog as a journal, I think I am going to be much better at updating the blog! Thanks hunk!

Christmas Eve Nativity

This Christmas my family finally decided to do a lot more things centered around Christ than just be the "Gimmie Gimmies Gifts" that we had previously characterized ourselves to be. We did Christmas for a family enstead of sibling gifts and then we actually did a nativity re-enactment (which was SO FUN). I know most people read the the bible story or do something nativity-like regularly on Christmas Eve like good Christian families should, but my family had kind of strayed into Babylon so-to-speak the last few years and Christmas was simply family drama and alright "lets see what you got me."
This year everyone was there (except for Mark who is still in Hungary on the mish). And it was so fun. We had Christmas Eve at Tallies new house and it was perfect for our manger scene with angels above...see pics. I keep telling myself its just too hard to pack up all the gifts and do Christmas up north every year, and that I really should just stay home and have Christmas with ourselves....but when I am up there....especially over Christmas Eve with my siblings, I dont know its just so much fun, and it would be lame without them all. And it would be lame for them without us too...we are the life of the party you know.

Me (pre-costume) and Jaq (post costume) as a sheep

Joseph (Mason) and Mary (Anna)

...and Baby Jesus (Gaven) watched over by a very protective, motherly angel (Tallie)

The Shepherds with their sheep

The wise men bringing gifts (of apparently Hershey's chocolate chips)--Brett, Neal, and Scott and my dad who narrated

Angels: me, Tallie, Krista (my sisters) and my mom

All of us Mason clan. Oh yea, notice that Seth is the ONLY one not dressed up? Anytime anyone came near him with a robe, sheet, or anything that resembled a costume he threw a fit! He wanted nothing to do with looking like a shepherd or anything about this nativity business. That's Seth for ya.And then I had to add this one cause it showed the wilder side of Christmas Eve. My mom gave all the grandkids these colorful, squooshy ball things and they had pillow fights with them. It was pretty funny.

2nd child guilt

So I keep finding like a million pictures of Seth when he was younger, and I am starting to realize that whole 2nd child syndrom is hitting in hard with the photographs. So I thought I would post some pics of Jaq, just so that she has proof she was a one year old at one point....and she's just so darn cute!

Move over Martha Stewart....but dont go to far cause you have some great ideas

alright I am finished! Heres the projects I have been working on in November and December. And all sarcasm aside, I really have begun to like sewing! Its been fun! (up until now sewing has pretty much been non existent in my life) The quilts were probably a once in a lifetime-never-again thing..but at least their done. :) Whahoo!

Ah Seth!

Quick post cause aparently November/Thanksgiving was just like any old month/day and I have done nothing to documenting its actually taking place. But because it is now December and almost Christmas, I know it took place and will hence sum up my November as being full of average days with a side of JUMBO projects. Most of which have consumed sewing (yes, SEWING) scripture bags, and TWO QUEEN size levi blankets which are supposed to be given to my children for Christmas but because of the literal blood, cursing, time, hand cramps, quilting frame catastrophe, pin poking and shoe marks across my fabric incidents that have occurred in the creation of these blankets, I am seriously considering not giving them to them until they would fully be able to appreciate them; like when they are 80 and trying to crochet a comforter with arthritis hands and hemorrhoids or something, but by then they'll probably have crocheting machines that do it all for them, so they still wouldn't appreciate my determined hard work. Ah well. Pictures to come.

And here's something I just wanted to remember so I am including it here on the blog.

Seth: Mom you are such a good girl.
Me: Thanks Seth
Seth: You are such a good mom too.
Me: That is so nice Seth, thank you.
Seth: You are so pretty..... (and then a pause while he stares at me)... "See, you have hair."

Ah how nice it would be to think like a 3 year old and have the only requirement for being pretty be, having hair. :) Love that kid.

Oh yea, I forgot about Halloween

So here's my kids at Halloween. Sorry for the low quality pics but I had to take them from my not-so-wonderful camera phone. I love this holiday, its so much fun. And besides Seth forgets he has candy after a couple of days so by default I get to eat it all. That and since he's allergic to peanuts, I get all the best, "poisonous" candybars anyways. :)


AAAARG!! A happy Halloween.

And a not so happy halloween.

My graveyard treat!