Matty

I just had to do a little blog dedicated to my brother Matty. Anyone who knows him knows that I have been blessed with the world's most incredible brother. There really is no one like Matt, and I'm pretty sure he's everyone's favorite person. Even as a very young girl, I knew it was a blessing to have a brother like Matt, and I only wish that everyone could have had the same privilege. He is seriously the funniest kid I know. My mom was here visiting yesterday and since Matt is in charge of Family Home Evening at my parents house, he called with a special lesson all planned out for us, so of course we had to do it. Then he called later in the evening to see how our lesson went. It was adorable, and so Matt, our little vise and virture cop, as my dad calls him... There are so many sweet things that are so Matt I thought I might reflect on a few of them. First, Matt knows just about everything there is to know about every PG-13 and under movie there is: all the stars, the director, who did the music, what other movies the actors have been in, etc. And along the same lines, he has two of every action figure known to man, and also knows all of their names forward and backward. He can name every President of the United States, number, who their wife was, how many terms they served, if they were assassinated, etc. He is very specific about his routine, eats almost the same breakfast and lunch every day, always has a bowl of popcorn with his afternoon movie, and before bed every night, he eats a bowl of cereal and a glass of chocolate milk. He always sits on his floor with his legs crossed in a hyper extended version of indian style, I don't know anyone else that flexible. He's always cracking his knuckles and grinding his teeth. We're always giving him a hard time for "picking his bald spot," to which he always candidly replies, "it's my business!" He loves his "job" volunteering at the DI. He loves to bare his testimon in church and does so almost every fast Sunday without fail. He has looked forward to being an uncle his entire life, and absolutely loves every minute of it. He is so cute with the kids and they love their uncle Matt! What a guy! So I would like to dedicate this blog to Matt, who, by the way is about to celebrate his tenth anniversary since he was diagnosed with Leukemia! Way to go Matty, you rock!

ode to the flu shot... the thing I should have gotten around to.

I would like to submit that the flu shot is definitely NOT a waste of time. Of course, I didn't get around to getting them for all of us back in October, and we are paying for it this week. Next time I'll take the 45 minutes and get it done, because this is definitely not worth it! So basically all five of us have had a terrible cough, congestion, runny noses, fever, body aches, headaches, and rashy-ness for the last, oh, six or seven days, and every time we think it's starting to get a little but better, we wake up the next morning worse than the day before. Yuck, yuck, yuck... I am so sick of being sick! And also something else I've realized is that moms and dads DON'T GET SICK DAYS! I used to think that my mom never got sick, and now I just realize that she just couldn't take a sick day. And I know exactly how she feels because I am so exhausted after this week, and I feel like crud, but I still have to be up all night with the three little munchkins. Not that I mind taking care of my sweet babies, but it would just be nice to do so without being sick myself. Sorry, I'm a little rambly but my head feels so fuzzy I'm having trouble putting together a coherent thought... The morale of the story is: GET THE FLU SHOT!

I Rock, sorry to sound conceited

So I realized that I never posted anything about Valentine's day, and I just had to pat myself on the back, because for once I really blew Craig away! YES! I am like the worlds worst person at surprises, and so the fact that I totally got him, well, it's a big deal. First of all I told him not to get me anything, because what I was doing was for both of us, which totally threw him. I ordered us snowshoes, we went a few weeks back with some friends and kept talking about how much we wished we had some of our own, and you gotta love Ebay, by the way because I got a screaming good deal! So they arrived about a week before Valentine's day, but I didn't want to just give them to him, like "hey, here are your snowshoes, oh and I got some for me, and I'm a nerd." So, when he got home from work on thursday I sent him on a GPS treasure hunt. He was totally confused when I made him leave with Carter right after he got home and the house looked totally normal, and I made him wait until he got in the car to look in the bag and see what he was doing. I sent him geocaching all over our neighborhood (and yes I set them up all by myself, coordinates and everything!) and he ended up in our backyard, heehee, where I had buried the snowshoes, in what else... the snow! When he came in he was so excited he almost didn't noticed that I had transformed the dining room into a crab feed with a red table cloth, candles, balloons, and everything! It was a table setting that would have made Meghan proud! Once he got over the initial shock of the snowshoes, however, he was pretty stoked about the food. (Carter ate all the snacks I had packed them for their hunt, so he was pretty hungry) We finished off the night with popcorn and candy and a classic romantic comedy in our room, you gotta love Fools Rush In. For once... I got Valentine's Day right, YES!

Cousins

So Hannah and Carter are super lucky because they actually have a cousin they can play with, and they LOVE it! We spent the weekend with Craig's fam in Idaho, and I don't think these kids stopped, except for sleeping, the entire time. They literally ran circles at Grandma and Grandpa's house, with their cousin Luke. It is almost comical to see the kind of trouble three toddlers can get into together, especially when all of them are stinkers! For instance: we are trying to potty train Carter right now and he's been doing okay, but his cousin Luke got potty trained a few weeks ago and he even goes standing up! So guess what Carter wanted to do? The only problem is, that Luke is already about 3 inches taller than both Hannah and Carter, and has no trouble reaching, not the case for Carter. So on Saturday, when Carter had a poopy diaper, I went to get the gear to change it, and when I came back, both boys were nowhere to be seen. Uh oh... I finally found them in Grandma and Grandpa's bathroom, with the door shut, Carter's diaper on the floor (poop and all), with Carter standing up in front of the toilet, and Luke standing next to him like his little mentor. Once I got past the freak out over whether there was poop all over the bathroom, (which miraculously there wasn't) it was hilarious. I can't wait to see what these little guys get themselves into as they get older! Well, maybe I can wait...

in the mood for love

I would like to submit that I have the world's BEST husband. I'm pretty sure that he is the best man in the world. Last night he proved me right again. Our stake holds a Valentine's dance every year, we went last year and it was okay, kind of a Napolean Dynomite version of a dance, if you know what I mean... but nevertheless I wanted to go again this year, mostly because I love any excuse to dance. Well anyway, we decided that it probably wouldn't work to go because I don't want to leave Ethan with a teenage babysitter when he's 3months old. And I didn't want to ask one of our friends, because they wanted to go to the dance themselves. Oh well, I thought, maybe another time. But, yesterday morning there was an invition taped to the cupboard in the kitchen when I got up, inviting me to an "exclusive occasion..." When Craig got home from work, we put the kids to bed and then he told me to go upstairs and get all dressed up. He came and got me 1/2 an hour later, and when he brought me down the entire family room was transformed into a dance hall. There were pink and red streamers everywhere, balloons, candles, a table with cookies, strawberries, and punch, and music playing. Craig was all dressed up and he said that since we couldn't go to the dance he decided to bring the dance to me! He even made a special CD of our favorite dance songs. It was so much fun, we danced for about an hour, had treats, and I even taught Craig how to swing dance. We ended the night with U2's "With or Without You" taking us back to our high school days! It was perfect. And the kids have had a blast playing with all the balloons this morning!

Library Books

I took the kids to the Library with my friend Miranda on Thurs. It was pretty fun. Eagle Mountain has a little teaspoon of a library down in the city center, so there was hardly anybody there, and we were a little bit less nervous about the kids making too much noise. Anyways, it was pretty fun and the kids each picked out 4 books to bring home. Yikes, 8 books I have to keep track of and make sure they don't rip, I think I'll return them asap! They've been so cute and excited about their library books, toting them everywhere, and wanted me to read to them constantly, especially the horse books! We went in to check on Hannah thursday night and she was sleeping with her book propped up in front of her and her baby under her arm. A total Hannah moment.

Baking Bread

Today I taught the kids how to bake bread. Okay, so I taught them how to dump the flour into the bowl without spilling, crack an egg, and they even learned how to mix flour and yeast. It was pretty fun, and they were the two cutest helpers I've ever had. It's so fun to watch them get old enough to do all sorts of new things. Hannah never ceases to amaze me, everyday she does something completely new. She loves to make up songs and play with her baby. She totally mimics me when I'm taking care of Ethan, this became a little bit of a problem when I would nurse because she would want to feed her baby the same way...so we got her a bottle to feed her baby with, he he. Carter on the other hand is always eating. I have to find a new creative place to hide his favorite foods so he's not constantly stuffing marshmallows down his throat, but he always gets past my defenses. Ethan, he's just a sweet, happy, giggly baby! But anyways, back to the bread... after it was done and we were eating it with dinner, Hannah kept saying, "Mommy, this bread is so delicious, we made delicious bread!" It was so cute!

Super Tuesday- get out and vote

I just wanted to encourage everyone to get out and vote today! With everything that is going on in our nation (war, recession, etc.) this is one of the most important elections ever! Make your voice heard! I feel very strongly about the candidates this year, I've researched their politics and policies, as well as their track records, and I know who I am voting for! I encourage everyone to do the same. Don't let others choose for you!

Post-Op

So I had my surgery, and it wasn't so bad. Well, at least at the time... my mouth is killin now, but at least it wasn't so bad the day of. In fact, it was quite hilarious according to Craig. I don't know if it's because I'm so small, but apparently the drugs they gave me had a very strong effect. It took almost 3 hours after the surgery before I was all the way awake. Poor Craig had to put my sweatshirt on me in the office, and I was totally out of it, he said it was like trying to dress a full size baby, totally floppy. And then he had to carry me into the house because I was so out of it, I didn't even wake up. All I know is that I woke up in our family room a few hours later with an ice pack wrapped around my head and gauze in my mouth. I looked like a deranged Jacob Marley. But the pain and the swelling weren't too bad on Friday or Saturday, so I thought maybe I was the exception, ha ha. About 3 am Sunday morning I woke up to a throbbing mouth and when I went into the bathroom to take a lortab I looked in the mirror, and it looked like a cross between Bugs Bunny and Alvin the chipmunk, scary. I guess I'm not special after all... so now I'm just waiting for the swelling to go down and the throbbing to stop, hopefully it won't be too many more days. I'm kind of getting sick of yogurt and pasta roni. It was really cute though, because I couldn't nurse Ethan the day of the surgery, because of the drugs so Hannah got to feed him a bottle. It was adorable and she was SO EXCITED, to feed her "baby broder."