Indoor FUN!

Okay well I've been wanting to post this for quite some time I think we did this the beginning of December. We were thinking of new activities we could do as a group (Me, Brandon & Tyler). Brandon said we could do hopscotch and he really wanted to do it outside..but I didn't even want to be out there long enough to draw the thing with chalk. So I got my roll of newspaper and made one inside..we had a lot of fun but-it ripped easily..oh well.



Okay I'm not sure how these videos are going to look..I loaded them first because it takes a while-so this is Marie eating. I think it's WAY cute that she opens up and sticks her tongue out when she's ready..she's a good eater!

On to other updates:
-Eric finally feels better! Thank heavens, he did go to the doctor on Friday and got an antibiotic..not sure if that did it or just time, but who cares he's him again!
-Brandon got his stitches out, everything looks good--however Eric has giving him his pink eye..so we're dealing with that now.
-Tyler isn't very excited about the potty anymore..boo!
-Marie is down to crying about 45 minutes at night and 30 minutes during the day for naps! Yeah! Hopefully I don't spoil her too much at Christmas..I don't want to do this all over again. The first night of over 2 hours was just over whelming!
-I'm in desperate need of a hair cut, but will get one before Christmas. I successfully found a youth babysitter for the boys and an adult babysitter for Marie so Eric and I can get out this week! I'm very excited about that..I just didn't know if Marie would cry the whole time so I thought if I split them up it would be better. But this is a hard job when you live in a new town and you don't know ANYBODY.

Here's a pic of the stitches.

Ready For Hurdles!

When Eric saw that Marie was sitting like this he made the comment that she was ready for hurdles! So I thought I'd share it with everyone. She sits like this to reach further without falling down-I think..but who knows maybe hurdles are in her future.

I just wanted to share my obsession!

Yep! This is it. Almost every single day I want a baked red potato-that of course I cook in the microwave. Cheese a bit of sour cream and TONS of broccoli!! I can eat a regular like 14oz. pkg of broccoli in like 4 meals..it's insane! SOOO good and only about 5 minutes to make it. I'm not sure what the deal is, it's just tasting really really good to me!

One other thing that really bugs me...

This is NOT what your dishes are supposed to look like when they come out of the dishwasher. I thought at first that we needed some Jet-Dry..I bought it-put it in but either it's full or something is wrong with the thing because it was over flowing and wouldn't let me put any in. So does anybody know what to do? It's just gross..we are renting but we already have had a problem since we moved in and I just don't want to be the annoying dumb renters where everything must be perfect or something-I'd just rather figure it out than contact them..but I don't know what to do.

What a Sunday!

Okay-Eric's been in and out feeling good and horrible for about 2.5 weeks. Which is VERY unusual because normally the rest of us gets colds and stuff and he gets NOTHING. Plus he's starting a new job--this has been just lovely.

So yesterday I knew Eric wasn't feeling good-I'm okay-I got myself fired up to go to church alone with 3 kids. We're all ready to go-it's about 10 minutes until we need to get in the car and I decide to go move the truck out of the driveway- (we've got a single width drive)...right when I go to open the door Brandon starts wailing..Eric says I'll take care of it-go ahead. When I get back in Eric is holding Brandon, his hand over his forehead and there is blood dripping! I guess Brandon shut himself in their room and was keeping Tyler out-who knows, maybe Tyler hurt him-we're not sure..but Brandon wouldn't come upstairs so Eric goes down-opens the door and the doorknob whacks him in face-just above the eyebrow and gives him this huge gash! Instead of church me and Brandon go find an insta care place-and get some stitches.

Brandon had to get 3 stitches..he was super brave he kept his eyes open the whole time, basically saw everything..he got a shot and anyway he did a great job!

When we get back-Tyler's taking a nap, something he hasn't done for a very, very long time..and Marie is crying. Eric is asking me what we can use to clean the carpet-Marie had a total BLOW OUT! So Eric had a great time while we were away.

I hurry and change and get Marie dressed again and we rush off to Sacrament Meeting-because in our ward it's last (normally I'm crabby about this, but worked out this time) Of course it was the week we're welcomed into the ward-at least half of us were there!

So that was our wonderful Sunday. Oh yeah and technically we have insurance but of course we haven't received our cards yet..the place was nice-and said I could bring it in when I had it--but just scary..I mean I don't want to have to pay more than the co-pay!

Sorry no pics of the cut-too much going on for that..and Brandon doesn't want to take his band-aid off to even look at the stitches today-so maybe later we'll see..if there's anything to see.

We do still exhist!

Our new house!

So I know it's been FOREVER since you've heard from me. A couple people have emailed me directly and even writing a tiny note back has seem like a big ordeal. So no promises to do really good keeping up..I'll put in some effort...

I finally have some pics of our house.

This is the open kitchen dining area-not spic and span but for that you'd never get a picture! The kitchen isn't huge but it feels big because it's so open. Our dining table that's been in our basement in it's box for over a year is finally being used!! Yeah!! There is TONS of cupboard space which is wonderful-even behind the chairs on this side of the table there are drawers and cupboards.


This is the living room that's upstairs. Downstairs there's only 2 not very comfortable chairs to sit on-so I spend as much time upstairs and I can.

As for other things-Tyler had a wonderful birthday-didn't get too many awesome pics-he's always looking down but it was fun and he got those sugar letters on his cake and that was all he needed really--well all he needed was to eat the extra's out of the package!

Thanksgiving was really wonderful. We had the opportunity to head down to Utah for the entire weekend and that was just awesome. It was hard to leave, but we're already looking forward to going down for Christmas!

The boys look forward to the finding the numbers on the chocolate advent calendar-countdown for Christmas. They never forget and so far remember what number they need to find for each day.

Marie hasn't slept through the night since way back-and she got sick, before Eric was out of town. It's depressing-since I bet Grayson already sleeps through the night-just because Jessica's kids are good and they sleep like that early! We've tried baby food a couple of times-but I only get an open mouth about 2 times and that's it. She can already eat cheerios and I think I'm just going to start grinding our food and giving it to her-maybe that will work better! I can't believe how fast they grow up!

Well all I can hardly think about these days is seeing family for Christmas, getting the boys an alarm clock so they stay in their room until at least 6am, and getting my hair cut. So those are the thoughts of a mother of three who just moved!

Here are some random pics from the past little while--no good ones of Marie..better get going on those!

I thought this was so silly-I can't believe these even stay on him!


Tyler being blackout..these are replacement slats to blinds that I kept in our house-but he thought this was so fun, they are taped to his head. It hurt each time we took them off-but kept wanting it again and again!


This is a crown that Marie's friend Jasmine made for her! She looks so cute in it!


Another dress up outfit-this is what Tyler lives for, to dress up!

Big Day!

Well moving day has arrived. It was a challenge getting the rental truck and trailor home, then unhitching the trailer and backing the truck into our drive way..holy cow! I'm glad we don't have to do that again.

Marie definitely knows something is up, and is dying for some attention! I'm really looking forward to when Grandma will be with us next week--she can give Marie some attention. Every single time we put Marie down she whales..it's sad but I've got things to do-and I didn't think she'd like being dropped off and me leaving her-if she's crying just when I put her down. It's been good to have Eric here so we can tag team but holy cow..after we move she better settle down or I'll go crazy!!

So the truck was smaller than Eric thought it was going to be-not in actual size but in what his brain pictured it would be and what it really is. So -he's talking about if everything doesn't fit..and how there's more boxes than he thought we'd have..so we'll see how loading goes. I still think it's okay if the fridge doesn't make it, however I have a feeling it's going on pretty close to first--so whatever.

This whole thing is exciting yet stressful-but happy that it'll all be over soon, or at least I'll be unpacking instead of packing everything up!

All has fallen in place

Everything has fallen into place! As far as we know everything is moving smoothly with our house-and the closing date may be moved up to the 17-18th.

Thursday we went up to Idaho Falls as a family to look for housing. We totally fell in love with a house-that wasn't supposed to be available until December 1st. However everything has worked out for us to move in the 16th-Eric's first day. I'm stressed-because it's going to be a stressful week next week-unpacking and Eric starting his new job..but it was a blessing in a way because I got a few more days here in Twin Falls. I'm excited about moving on-but it's still sad in a way.

Of course I remembered the camera on this trip-but did we remember to take any pictures...NO! But there will be plenty soon-since we'll be there next week. It has 3 bedrooms, 1 bath and a family room and living room. It's an open floor plan and TONS of cupboard space--totally excited about that!

The boys had coughs last week-this week I've got a cold-runny and stuffy nose at the same time..hoping I'm on the upturn of it.

Today Eric and I both get to go to Sunday School because Eric hasn't been released from his primary position-but he's been replaced..so it's an exciting Sunday it's been a LONG time since we've been able to spend Sunday School with each other!

This is life-enjoy it!

Leaves and Halloween!

Okay-Halloween was fun..of course the Ward Trunk or Treat Eric was out of town for..so that's why he's not in any of the pictures. Poor Marie got left out-she fell asleep so she stayed inside where it was warm and slept in peace. Brandon really wanted me to dress up-so I did the easy spider and was pretty proud since I did it the afternoon before the activity. I think we all had a great time.

This is how Marie wore it for the most part-but still too cute!

Today-Eric wanted to rake the remaining leaves-so he raked the ENTIRE yard into 1 pile! I'm lazy I'd never do that-so it's this huge pile! HUGE..and we've already bagged over 10 bags without this pile..yes part of me is okay parting with the leaf raking! The boys thought I was taking pictures-and started making funny faces-before they realized it was a video!

Tomorrow we are swimming as a family-Brandon didn't really want to finish swim lessons this time-he said they were boring-so Daddy told him if he finished we go swimming as a family. So we are all very excited for that!

Hopefully by the end of the week we'll know where we're going to live! So -we've got some fun things in store for us.

5 Months

Today Marie is 5 MONTHS - I totally can't believe she's that old already..it's just crazy. She's almost a half of a year old-NO WAY!!



Here she is-her practically naked 5 month picture..chunky but not too chunky!

So what have we been up to while Eric's away..not a whole lot of anything that's for sure. It's exciting to think I only have 3 more days/nights to do it all by myself-but I think because of that time's going tic-toc-tic-toc really SLOWLY!!

Here's an example of what has happened while Eric's away-one day Tyler asked if he could eat sprinkles and I must have been worn out-because I let him have some..look at this face..

One day there was 1 empty paper towel roll and we were all fighting over it, it was a Transformer weapon. So I made some more and then nobody wanted the paper towel roll-they both wanted home made ones. Tyler got hours and hour of fun out of these. We raked leaves, let them play in them..then put them in bags--Tyler used his Transformer guns as hands and did the leaves..it was so funny. It wasn't freezing yet-and Marie actually hung out in her bouncy chair for a while while we worked-it was nice.

Here's just some cute pictures of Marie-and the family-because she's 5 months old and this post is for her.
-She LOVES bath time, we'll get it on video when there's more than just 2 hands.
-She LOVES diaper changing time, always has--I think she knows it's one on one time..she's happy hangin' in her diaper but when it's time to get dressed she gets grumpy.
-We haven't kept up on the bottle, I've been told twice now she hasn't been interested..but she already eats those melt away gerber cereal type things-so she can get some food without me!
-She doesn't always have to nurse to fall asleep and I totally DIG that!
-I know there's other things..but I don't have all the time in the world-it is the middle of the day.

I LOVE that she enjoys grabbing her toes-I think it's just precious! Neither of the boys did it, and I just LOVE it.

The shirt says it all-she couldn't be cuter!

Tyler's pushing forward with potty training-so that's wonderful..we're NO WHERE when it comes to poop..but if you have a treat he's totally there! And most mornings he's dry-so that's a triumph already..even though we still wear diapers to bed.

Brandon unfortunately has some sort of horrible cough. I hope in 2 days it winds down and I won't feel about going to the ward trunk or treat...I NEED to get out of the house..I NEED to go--so hopefully we're all healthy.

No news on the house, we're waiting for the appraisal at this point. I think all is going to go okay.
Eric starts his new job on the 16th..super crazy..I traveled up to Idaho Falls Monday to search for a place-came up empty handed...but there's still some time before we've got to get up there.

I suppose...

I should tell all that Eric and I have decided to take a job in Idaho Falls!! I have to admit I was very not so certain about this choice before we got the offer--but perks such as no nights/weekends or holidays can weigh fairly heavy-considering where we've been for the past 4 years. I'm not going into huge detail on my public blog-but just thought I'd let you guys know.

As far as our house-we did pretty much all that they requested from the inspection- so I'm fairly sure it'll be okay. We just have to go through the appraisal make sure it's worth what we sold it for and we'll be out of here by the end of November.

We're not sure when we're starting the new job, but for sure before the end of the year-and hope to sort of work it out so we don't have to look for temp housing here. It's crazy the end of October is almost here and the end of November is close behind..it's so exciting yet crazy it's all coming so fast!

If you haven't read my sneak peek Halloween make sure you enjoy those pictures!

Sneek Peek Halloween and more...

HALLOWEEN SNEEK PEEK-AREN'T THEY SUPER CUTE!!!

We've got Batman and Catbaby! I keep putting this on Marie so she'll still want to wear it when it's time..I couldn't pass up this picture even though Marie wasn't in her whole outfit!

We carved our one family pumpkin before Eric left-I should say Eric did it. Tyler decided he just wanted to draw on his pumpkin so that's why we just did one. It was fun-and went fairly quick. We got our pumpkins from our nice friend Leanne again-it's so nice to not have to go buy them anymore!

My Mom sent these very cute scrapbooks for the boys-well and Marie but she doesn't enjoy them as much. Brandon opens his to the picture of him with Aunt Leah's dog Rocco--and says Rocco I miss you. It's super cute-I love it, haven't got a video of it yet though.

On Saturday while I was at the temple the boys picked leaves and colored them, Brandon thought this was totally awesome! He wanted to make sure we could see the color on the leaves!

These are a couple pictures of inventive toys I gave Marie yesterday-a basket and a hanger-she did really really well with them. Thanks Marie for being so entertained for me!

Here's Tyler showing off his muscles-I thought he was a cool dude.

Then just some cute pictures...

Marie was super cute in this church dress yesterday!

WHAT??

We were at Grandma's for the weekend and when we get back there's SNOW on the ground. Holy cow! Guess it's time to turn the sprinklers off! The boys had a fun time running around in it before we made them put their pajama's on. I took a video but it's really dark and grainy-but they had a wonderful time. Tyler played in it this morning.

The boys also opened their Halloween box from Grandma this morning-as soon as everybody was up..holy cow they LOVE everything in there. They're both wearing what was in there-and just LOVE everything. Brandon thought the pumpkin sucker should have been a bingo prize he loved it so much!

However the back yard-our neighbor's trees like fell into our yard. See in the below picture..where the fence is to the left of the tree-follow that down and that's how much tree is in our yard. That's just great-we're trying to sell our house and we got big hunks of lots of tree in our YARD.

So this is what's going on here--Tyler really wants to wear underwear like a BIG boy-but it's slow going..we'll see how it goes.

Below's a pictures of Marie being happy and helping me with the laundry!

Ladies Night---and kids

I called my friend Jana to see if I could raid her bow collection so Marie would have more than one bow to wear this weekend--and she mentioned we should give it a go ourselves. She made this cute flower bow-it's just darling. So I had to post it. It's a good likable size. I made a couple littler ones-maybe you'll see them later in pictures.

It was fun to getogether..but Marie was cranky almost the whole time-so we should have gotten together when the children were sleeping..but oh well it was still fun. Thanks Jana!

Not a single person has come to look at our house-so that's depressing. There may be a job opening with a friend of Eric's that's in Idaho Falls..so we're not sure about that-and I guess there are more jobs available in OK, they informed us today--so we're keeping our options open, and we'll let you know if we're given any offers.

Bows

Yesterday I decided Marie's 4 months and I really need to get some bows in her hair. So I broke down and bought some. They are expensive like $3-$5. This one still looks BIG to me, but I'm trying to branch out. I requested some smaller ones be made..so there may be more coming-but I thought I'd share my new adventure.

Beef Stew

The original plan was to make a pot roast or stew-and with left over meat make shredded beef enchiladas. It didn't work out so well-this stew was really really good and really easy that we gobbled almost all of it up! I'm still sad about me enchiladas-but I'll get over it.

So this is a crock pot recipe and let me say I'll NEVER make beef stew on the stove again-this tasted great! I had some red potatoes a neighbor gave us out of their garden-I didn't even peel them and it was great.

2 pounds stew meat cut in 1 inch chunks
1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
1 clove garlic, minced
1 bay leaf-I didn't have-I added 1 T. white vinegar instead
1 tsp. paprika
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1 onion, chopped (I just put some dried minced onion in)
1 1/2 cups beef broth
3 potatoes, diced
4 carrots, sliced
1 stalk celery, chopped

Place meat in slow cooker. In small bowl mix together flour, salt and pepper; pour over meat and stir to coat meat with flour mixture. Stir together the broth, garlic, bay leaf or vinegar, paprika Worcestershire sauce, and onion. Pour over meat-add the veggies.

Cover and cook on low-10-12 hours or high-4-6 hours.
I had to thicken with corn starch-but it was yummy!

I hope you guys can enjoy it too. I liked that you didnt' have to baby the meat and seer it first and all that-just drop it in and enjoy later!

Stuff

Yesterday Eric didn't hear anything-but I guess the OK guys are done, so that's not so great. At this point we don't see moving with the current company-but we're still applying for any positions within the company that are available. We're just looking everywhere-but he's got until Jan plus severance so there's still some time.

Daniel is visiting us, and it's been really fun to catch up. When we are together we're like siblings and it's just a lot of fun-we really need to see each other more often. Thankfully he was able to find some of our kitchen tile and bring it up--we cracked one of our tiles thought we had extra-but didn't and couldn't find the tile anywhere..Eric even drove to Pocatello to find it-but it wasn't there. So that was fabulous-the boys were working on getting the grout out and clearing the rain gutters.

During spare time Daniel jumped on our neighbors trampoline with Brandon and Tyler. They had a blast and he can do flips and they LOVED watching that. So today was a pretty fabulous day-plus I got to go to the broadcast without kids--YEAH!

Children's Festival

Wednesday night was the local colleges' Children's Festival. We were only there an hour but we were able to make and fly kites, stand in line to hit a pinata but of course there were too many kids-but we got to eat the candy; paint a mask and race in the 3 legged race. The boys had so much fun!

Here's the boys learning how to make a kite.




The kites were nice because I can't say it was really that windy and yet they really got them in the air-so they were perfect! Too bad Brandon broke his today at our house..but it was probably 1 whole hour of fun, and it was FREE.


Here's just a beautiful picture of how I look holding Marie.


Here's the boys ready to run the race-I didn't think Brandon and Tyler as a pair would be good. So it was Tyler and myself and Brandon and Eric. However I was wearing Marie-so what were we doing the 5 legged race?? It was okay because I knew Tyler wouldn't be able to go very fast. I told Tyler which leg to step with and he did a great job, we just weren't as fast as the others. Eric said that Brandon just hopped the whole time-kept the leg tied to Eric in the air!


Here's the boys this morning checking out their masks. They painted them last night-but they weren't dry. They had fun for a little while wearing them and pretending they were skeletons. For once Tyler was scaring Brandon-usually it's the other way around!


This is just a picture of Marie-it was a bit chilly in the morning when we took Brandon to preschool and she just looked so cute..and she's getting so big! And she was actually smiling while the camera was out.