I absolutely LOVE Halloween - I love the decorations, dressing up in costumes, everything! It was always a big deal when I was growing up. So, if you are into it like I am, you will love this store we recently went to. It's called Spirit Halloween, and it's right at the Jordan Landing for those who live around here, and also one in Sandy and Salt Lake. They seem to be everywhere. They have a website so you can see if there are others around where you live: http://www.spirithalloween.com/
There's some really freaky freakin cool stuff there! My kids loved it, but there is some really scary stuff so you may want to check it out first before showing the kids! Brayden still thought it wasn't scary enough, but I did! They have tons of cool decorations I've never seen before, and tons of costumes too. Pretty much everything is on display so it's almost like a haunted house!
Okay, I keep thinking of things I want to write down before I forget them. I have to add some things Ashton says, and a couple more from Brayden. Even though we are still trying to decipher a lot of his language, Ashton is starting to speak more clearly and is saying bigger sentences.
Brayden woke up one morning really crabby and Ashton kept asking "Brayden, are you mad at me? Are you mad at me? Brayden, are you mad at me?" It was the funniest thing because he said it so clearly!
Ashton's favorite show of all time is "Wow Wow Wubbzy". I think it's a pretty weird cartoon, but for some reason he loves it! They always say "Wow wow!" on it, so now anytime Ashton sees something he thinks is cool he says "Wow wow!"
When we are out shopping for clothes, Ashton will grab something and say "That's nice!" It's usually something pink and girly, I think because that's what he always sees me or his sister looking at!
We've been looking at a lot of Halloween stores and decorations just for fun, and to anything that's scary Ashton laughs and says "That's funny!" The scary stuff doesn't phase him!
That reminds me of something about Brayden. She was totally freaked out almost in tears by a life-sized monster thing that talked at Sam's we saw a few weeks ago, but now she's into conquering her fears. She says she can't be scared when she's 5 (In a week!) so the next time we went to Sam's she wanted to go to that same thing that she was scared of and not be scared. Now she has NO fear! She wants to go into all of the Halloween stores around and she keeps complaining that nothing is scary enough for her!
One quote from Brayden I need to add, today we went out shopping just me and her, and in the car she was talking about dinosaurs, and she said, "I think I know why Heavenly Father put dinosaurs on the earth. It's so we can know about them and have dinosaur museums we can go to." I thought that was a pretty good explanation!
The last quote from Brayden I wanted to write down was actually from a conversation I had with her last year sometime, I can't remember when, less than I year ago though. She was asking about death, and I was trying to explain to her about how your body is buried and your spirit goes to heaven. She was a little confused and said "Kids can go to heaven because they are light, but how do older people? If they are buried in the ground, they are too heavy to go up to heaven." I thought about what she was saying and thought there was a little truth to it. It is easier for kids to get to heaven than adults!
Anyway, that's all for now! I just have to write this stuff down so I don't forget!
Here are some things I needed to write down that Brayden has said in the past week that I wanted to be sure to remember:
We were having a conversation in the kitchen while I was making dinner where I was venting to Brayden about how I just don't like to cook. I said "Why can't I just like to cook? I feel bad because I need to make meals for our family but I just have such a hard time doing it." To that Brayden said, "Mommy, the reason you probably don't like to cook is because you aren't very good at it."
Every morning Ashton wants Brayden to eat the exact same thing he eats. This morning he wanted waffles and kept begging Brayden to have waffles with him, and she finally said "Ashton, I don't like waffles. I only eat them once a week."
We were in the car waiting for Mike to come out of a store, and Brayden said "Mommy, that girl is staring at you. Look, the lady in the car next to us." Then she proceeded to demonstrate how the lady looked at me, looked away, then looked back at me. Then Brayden asked me, "Are you embarrassed?" I asked, "Why would I be embarrassed?" Brayden answered, "Because maybe she thinks you are ugly."
Speaking of being embarrassed, Brayden has recently embarrassed me a lot in stores or restaurants talking loudly about people by us. One example is when at a restaurant Brayden pointed to an older couple in the booth right next to ours and said loudly, "Look, there's lots of old people here!"
Brayden's new thing to say is "so" in the middle of a sentence, like "I am SO not eating that!" or "I am SO not sharing with Ashton, he is so gross!" or "I am SO not wearing that!"
Ashton LOVES soda of almost any kind, but mostly the hardcore stuff like Pepsi, Coke, Dr. Pepper, and now Mountain Dew! It's not good though, because Ashton and caffeine really don't mix, but Mike's parents left caffeine free Mountain Dew at our house Saturday night and Ashton has been hooked! The pictures below are a collage of Ashton's first time with Mountain Dew. He was being such a goofball and loving it! (In the first picture on the bottom Ashton is in the middle of saying "Mountain Dooooo!")
The other night while I was fighting Ashton trying to put him in bed, he threw his head back and hit my upper lip really hard. It didn't even phase him, but man, it hurt me! My lip was so swollen and fat for the whole next day, then I woke up this morning and it looked like a pen busted in my mouth and got ink all over the top inside of my lip. But, no, it wasn't ink. My lip is bruised. I have gotten fat lips and black eyes from Ashton before, but this is a first with a black lip! Anyway, I didn't want to put up a close-up picture of myself, but I found this one of Paris Hilton (it was all I could find!) and her lip looks a lot like mine, same place on the mouth but mine is more on the inside and darker!
Saturday night we met Mike's parents, brother, and sisters and their families at Fuddruckers, one of our favorite gathering places! Left to right: Mike's little bro Kurt, niece Crystal behind him you can't see, nephews Matthew, Kale, Parker, bro-in-law Scott, Mike's sis Mindy, and Mike's parents Charles and Lori. Oh, and Mike peeking over the booth behind them!All the kids wanted to do was play the claw arcade game. Mike's sister Kara paid for them to do it a bunch of times, and they loved it even not winning anything.Then Mike decided to give it a try with the kids. He positioned the claw and had Ashton push the button, and sure enough, he won a stuffed frog! Being a mean mom, normally when my kids want to play that I always tell them no because it wastes money and you never win anything. So much for that! They will never believe me again!When Ashton first got it he kept saying "So cute!"Then Mike's brother Kurt thought he'd give it a shot and won something for Brayden on the first try!We all went back to our house to hang out, have treats, and play games. Kara got these finger suckers for the kids. Brayden thought they were so cool!Mike tried to teach everyone his favorite game Mag-Blast, but there were so many of us it was hard to stay focused. The boys were getting into it but us girls got a little goofy! It's DEFINITELY a guys' game! Pictured: Mike's arm showing how to play the game, nephew Parker, Mike's sister Mindy with Ashton who was just LOVING all of the attention he was getting, and Mike's mom, Lori.Kara also brought these candy bracelets that had candy eyeballs on them. Brayden ate all of the candy off of one except for the eyeball because she couldn't figure out how to eat it with the string still attached, so Ashton decided give it a try! He kept going back and forth between saying "yummy" and "ewww" because of the string on it. He eventually just popped the whole thing in his mouth, string and all, before he ultimately spit it out onto the floor! Here's a little clip of him trying to eat it. I think we thought it was extra funny last night because we were getting loopy from how late it was! You can tell how well we were paying attention to the game too!
Friday night I found Brayden's very first Christmas dress from when she was just 2 months old and told her she could put it on her baby doll. She was so excited, then she decided she wanted to put on her Christmas dress from last year to match and asked to take pictures.
Brayden decided to put tons of these tiny butterfly stickers on a wall in our great room. She told me she thought they would be good Halloween decorations because they kind of looked like ants all over the wall! There were a lot more than shown in this picture, but I couldn't get a good picture of all of them!
Ashton wakes up a couple hours before Brayden and says, "I want breakfast, I want breakfast!" So, we go downstairs and go through the options and finally decide on something. He eats most of it, then just minutes after I think he's done with breaksfast he comes to me and says "I want breakfast, I want breakfast!" as if he hasn't had it yet! At this point he usually has something in hand, such as cereal or a package of instant oatmeal. I give in because I think he must still be hungry. He then repeats the same thing at least once, then Brayden wakes up and Ashton has to have what she has for breakfast too. After that, the next time he asks for breakfast I finally decide we'll just go ahead and do lunch!
Here is a picture of Ashton's "breakfasts" from Friday. Going clockwise from the left: Captain Crunchberries, pears, Eggos, Corn Flakes.
My sister and I were due only 10 days or so apart from each other with our girls, but her daughter, Breanna, came a week early on Septmber 12th, and Brayden was 2 weeks late on October 7th. The whole week leading up to her cousin's birthday this year Brayden kept saying, "It's supposed to be MY birthday!" and "My birthday is supposed to be first!" (Even though they live 1000 miles apart, there's competition between them like sisters, well, mostly Brayden is the competitive one!) I told Brayden, "Well, Breanna came early and you were really late." Brayden then said, "But Mommy, I was still packing!" I asked "Packing what?" She said "All my baby stuff!" I don't have a clue where she came up with that. It's kind of funny because Brayden is the biggest dilly-dallier I have ever met, so it's no wonder that it even started in the womb!
Brayden had been begging me for months to let her get her hair lightened with me. Mike finally said, "Well, why can't she?" I asked my hairdresser if she ever highlighted little girls' hair, and she said she did and even had clients younger than Brayden. She just does very few and subtle highlights. So, last night Brayden and I had our first mother-daughter salon trip, which was so much fun! Brayden's hair turned out so good, it is very subtle, not platinum like she wanted orginially, but she loves it! And I think it was mostly just fun for her to get to do something that Mommy always does!
Scary!
Modeling her newly highlighted hair!
To top off a fun relaxing trip to the salon, we came home to a clean house and freshly baked cookies! I love my hubby!
Brayden was so cute and insistent that we leave a note for the tooth fairy to bring something to Ashton for losing his tooth even though we didn't have the actual tooth that was pulled. She was also very specific about what she thought the note should say.
Here is the note we left under Ashton's pillow last night.
The tooth fairy came and left a dollar!Ashton with his dollar!And then he threw it on the ground. What else would a 2 year old do with a dollar?!
On May 14, 2007, exactly 2 weeks before Ashton's first birthday, he lost his balance and fell into a railing post upstairs in our house and jammed one of his teeth up into his gums and somehow at the same time bit through his tongue. He had to get his tongue stitched back together and everyone at the hospital kept telling us how rare it is to need to stitch up a tongue. We also took Ashton to the hospital dentist and he said his tooth that was jammed up looked fine and would come back down on it's own, which it did. We could tell by teeth marks in our railing post that Ashton had hit both front teeth, but the other didn't seem to be damaged from what we could tell. Poor kid, though, he had only recently gotten those teeth and already damaged them! As the year went on, being an active little boy, he would fall or run into something, and both of his front teeth started chipping away. I'm guessing it's because they were already weakened from his accident so it made it easier for them to just break. He ended up with very jagged front teeth, and at his last dentist appointment the dentist told us they were decaying pretty bad and he'd need to be knocked out to have work done. So, today was the day. His appointment was at 7:15 this morning. I felt so bad for him, he didn't know what he'd be in for today. Mike took him, and he was so good up until they put him under. What the dentist first told Mike is that they would either put a crown on them, or fill them and cap them off, and I was so excited for Ashton to finally have nice teeth. However, I got a call from Mike telling me they couldn't save one of the teeth, and we had a choice to have both taken out to be symmetrical, or just one. I just cried, I felt so bad he would be losing a tooth. We chose to keep the one that could be saved, but all I could picture in my mind was those wild bully kids in movies that are always missing a front tooth. I think Mike thought I was silly to cry over it, but I just am sad he will be toothless for 5 plus years! Mike actually thought it was kind of funny. Anyway, so I had to accept that and maybe in the future we can think about a replacement tooth, or just get used to it. Poor little guy! Mike said when Ashton was waking up from being under he thrashed around like a monster. He then just kept throwing himself around and he got a bump on his forhead and scraped his face. Being put under seems to be so hard on little ones. I felt so bad he had to go through all of this. After getting home, I just layed down with him and after about a half an hour of being home he was doing a lot better, a little tipsy, but happy. Today he is only allowed to eat soup, applesauce, and popcicles. I'm sure he'll be okay with that! I'm glad it's all over now. I just hope I can stop feeling bad about my little boy being toothless!
Here is the railing post Ashton fell into last year. You can see his teeth marks in the post.
WARNING! Graphic images below! The next pictures are of Ashton after his accident when he bit through his tongue. The first is right after, the second is from after he got stitches.
This is what Ashton's teeth have looked like the past year. Yeah, he even nursed with those teeth! Ouch! I think they were actually even sharper before. In this picture they had kind of filed down a little. This was when Ashton first got home this morning. He was still really out of it. Here he's feeling better and is even cracking his first toothless little smile!There's a big smile! There's kind of a film on his one fixed tooth that makes it have a bump on it that is supposed to go away, and where his other tooth used to be is still swollen, so it should look much better later on.Brayden has been so sweet helping Ashton, getting him things he needs and reading him books.
I hope I don't sound like I'm bragging, we definately are not perfect in our marriage, as no one is. I just wanted to take time out to appreciate Mike for all he does. I just don't think I tell him enough.
Last night we were up really late just watching shows together, and since it seemed like it had been forever since we did that being so busy lately, we just kept pushing it later and later. We were so tired, and I think Mike felt bad because he's the one pushing us to stay up later, so when we got into bed he rubbed my back until I fell asleep. I thought that was so sweet especially since I know he was so tired himself. He is so giving that way, and whenever he does things like that I remember all over again why I married him seven years ago!
Another thing, I'm not sure who has seen the Chevy Traverse commercial that was played during the Olympics, but I have it posted below. When Mike and I first saw it we both looked at each other and laughed. It shows a guy ironing a girl's dress and cleaning the toilet, and at the end it says, "It's everything you've ever wished for...and then some." The reason we laughed is because Mike does that stuff regularly. I can't iron at all, I always end up burning anything I try to iron, so Mike always does it, and he is the one to always clean our toilets. He also is the cook of the house. This is probably making me sound really bad. Our deal is if he cleans the toilets, I'll clean everything else. I do cook also, but not real well and it's not something I really enjoy doing (except I do love to bake!), but Mike has a talent for it and loves it. So according to that commercial, my husband is everything I've ever wished for...and then some!
I do have to add, Mike thinks this commercial is way cheezy, and I don't think he wants anyone to think he's that sappy, so for the record, he's a much more toned down verion of this!
We went to the fair last night and had tons of fun! The first thing Brayden wanted to do that she loved last year was go to the little farm they have where kids pretend to do farm work and at the end they get paid and can buy something in a little store. It's really cute!Rides!Hot air balloon ride! I think this was one of the kids' favorites!On The Ferris Wheel, Brayden held onto me so tight, she was a little nervous!I felt so dumb on this helicopter, I couldn't figure out the seatbelt for the life of me, so the little kid next to me had to help me out! Sad, I know!This is what Ashton did the whole time on the haunted house/pirate ride, he was a little scared!Brayden was so mad she had to ride the green dragon instead of the blue one she wanted! Look at that pout!Okay, so call us crazy but we let the kids have cotton candy on the way home from the fair. The experience just wouldn't have been complete without eating cotton candy! They were totally loving it! This picture of Ashton cracked me up, I don't think he knew what to think!Brayden was excited to show me her "monster fingers"!
Since I am fairly new to the blogging world I had never been tagged before until today by my friend Denae. It's actually pretty fun! Look at the bottom of this post to see who was tagged next! The rules are you have to take 10 pictures of the following things and you have to do it right away. No cleaning, fixing yourself or the kids, etc. These are pictures of right now!
The Kids: Every time I get on the computer the kids attack me. For these pictures I didn't even have to go to them because I'm like a magnet as soon as I sit down!
Here's Ashton begging for something as always as soon as I sit down at the computer!
Brayden also decided she needed something as soon as I got on the computer...
I had to add this picture of Ashton because he did this when I was going around taking pictures for this post. What good would this post be about my normal everyday life if he didn't make a mess somewhere in it??!!
Me: I hate close up pictures of me so this is hard for me to put up for everyone to see, but I guess I gotta do it!
Bathroom: We actually have four bathrooms, so I decided to pick the one bathroom we hardly ever use to take a picture of which is our basement bathroom. There were no rules about that, right??? Maybe I'm cheating, but this is all you get!
Closet: Here is my closet. I just organized it recently so it's helped to keep it more neat.
Shoes: These are my favorite shoes. They are high like I like them, but pretty comfy too. They go with everything and I wear them all the time! They've gone through two summers and are still going strong!
Fridge: It's time to do some shopping!
Sink: This is how my sink ALWAYS looks. Just kidding! We always at least have one dish in there but I just happened to clean it today! Phew!
Laundry Room: All I can say is, pretty exciting!
Favorite Room: I couldn't decide on one favorite room so I am putting up two. One is my bedroom which can be very peaceful when the kids are occupied and haven't messed it all up like they like to do. You'll notice we have a microwave in our room. That's so I can warm up my rice bags to snuggle up with at night because I am always freezing! Anyway, my other favorite room is our theater room. It's where Mike and I like to have our alone time to watch movies and shows together.
Dream Vacation: For me a dream vacation is anywhere warm with a beach close by! Last year we took a trip to San Diego with my parent's and youngest brother, Cameron. We all had so much fun! I tag Adrianne and Alesha.
