Not your average Thankful post

I realized a few days ago that I am thankful for.... drum roll please.... my inability to throw things away! I bet you never saw that one coming :) I was getting ready the other day, blow drying my hair and all of a sudden my blow dryer just stopped working. Luckily I had my old blow dryer that I hadn't thrown away yet even though it would sometimes send sparks at me. And several weeks ago my flat iron just wouldn't turn on and luckily I still had my old one that would only sometimes randomly decide to turn on. Yep. I kept those broken things even after I got new ones. Lucky for me! The most annoying thing is that I haven't had my new blow dryer or flat iron for very long! They really just don't make things like they used to! My parents still have the washing machine that they got when they got married. That's like 33 years ago!!! The dryer did die on them like 10-15 years ago but that is still a long time too!
When I go in our basement (it's unfinished) sometimes I really hate my inability to throw things away. We still have TONS of boxes that we haven't unpacked. Most of them I don't know what is in them. One of them I do know what's in it.... it has my old shoes. I know one of the pairs in it is broken. I tried to fix them several times and none of my fixes lasted. But yet I still refused to thrown them away. And honestly I have no idea what any of the other shoes are, but it's a big box. Someday it will be taken to the DI, with the exception of the broken ones. Don't worry I'm not thinking of still keeping them, they will go in the trash.
Ben just walked by and asked me if I was writing a novel. I realized I've been rambling on about nothing. If you read my crazy nothings I hope you at least laughed :)

See ya next year...

Mountain man! I am so excited I don't have to see him again til next year:

And SOOOOO excited to see him again:

Finally my handsome hubby has returned!! As far as mountain men go I definitely had the hottest, but I much prefer his hair cut and beard trimmed nice and short! He does dedicated hunter now so from the middle of August to the end of October (sometimes later depending on his elk tag) he grows his beard. I think I may have convinced him to cut it in between the different hunts next year. Or at least I'm hoping! It drives him crazy too. The worst part is trying to kiss him through all that hair, it felt like I was just kissing hair not lips.

This weekend I got to go to the Time Out for Women! I love it and have been going every year since I had Hunter (my sister made me go that first time, and I am so glad she did!!) There were tons and tons of talks (I don't know what else to call them) that I really enjoyed, and of course I always enjoy the music! One of my favorite parts was in Brad Wilcox's, he told about him talking to a friend that said that they were a good person so the things like going to church, reading scriptures, etc. didn't really matter as long as they were a good person. His response to the friend was that yes you are a good person but we aren't here to just be good people be are here to be better! I loved it! And so true, it is so good to be a good person but we need to continually be trying to become better. All day every day.
I think I needed a little longer "time out" though because I ended up dumping a cup of water on Hunter at dinner right after the time out cuz he was sitting their whining and not eating and it ended up just really getting on my nerves. Poor kid has a crazy mom, but at least I didn't swat him....right? Well I felt horrible after I took a breather (or rather Ben made me have a breather cuz he took Hunter in the garage to finish eating) and calmed down and did end up apologizing to him when he came in and also apologized to me (Ben had him apologize, although now I don't really know what he needed to apologize for.) Then I felt even worse when later that night he ended up throwing up, so the poor guy had reason to be whining :(
He didn't eat hardly anything yesterday but didn't throw up again until dinner, and only a tiny bit then. So today I made cream of wheat for breakfast, we both love it and I figured hopefully it would be easy on his tummy. He scarfed it down and 2 & 1/2 cinnamon toasts! So I thought yes! he's better! Well... like 20 min later he threw up a ton! Cream of wheat and toast isn't so fun to clean up. Luckily it was mostly just on my hard wood floor, he was heading out of his room and right when he got to the edge of the carpet threw up, some of it sprayed onto the carpet in my room but not much, so I was lucky that way. The rest of the day he has acted pretty normal so hopefully he is done throwing up. I don't do so well with throw up, I always gag and get close to throwing up myself. Anything but throw up doesn't really bother me poo, pee, boogers, blood bring it on! But not throw up!!!! Only for my kids though, other peoples not so good about any of them :)

On to my second favorite talk. I can't remember who the speaker was, I was out of the room with Aspen when she got on stage, so didn't hear her name. But she told a story (I think it was of a friend but not sure since I wasn't in there when she started) about a boy that was struggling with choices in his life and totally going down the wrong path. His mom prayed to find out what she could do for him and felt that she needed to tell him that she loved him. She felt like she couldn't to his face so ended up going to his room every night when she thought he was asleep and then would tell him she loved him. Well he ended up changing his life and going on a mission and it wasn't til sometime after his mission that she found out that was why he changed his life around. He had actually been awake every night and waited for her to come tell him she loved him before he would fall asleep!
I can't go to sleep unless I have checked on my kids, even if Ben has checked on them I have to actually go and make sure they are tucked in and breathing (again I'm crazy) or I just can't sleep very well. My brother in law ended up watching Hunter so I could go to the Friday part of the Time Out (Ben had a softball tournament) and by the time we got back he had him asleep in his old room (when my sister watched him while I was working in the afternoons she had a porta crib under the stairs the he would always take his naps in, so he has claimed that as his room at her house.) So my sister said to just leave him, but before I could I had to go check on him and even then it was kind of hard to leave him, but so much nicer than trying to get him back to sleep at home! So Saturday night when I went to check on him like I always do I decided I would tell him I loved him too (I tell him all the time and it totally annoys him how often I tell him.) I got a little surprise, he said I love you back! I had totally thought he was asleep and just barely whispered it but he heard and actually said it back! It made me so happy! And you can bet that he will get whispered I love you's from here on out!
There were tons of other great talks but these 2 were my favorite and hit home the most. If you haven't ever been to a Time Out I definitely recommend them, they are very uplifting!

My new blog

I finally made a nail blog! If you want to check it out go to MEnails.blogspot.com

Halloween Adventures

Wow it has taken me forever to post this! We had a great Halloween though so enjoy!

The day before Halloween we carved our pumpkins. Hunter didn't really get into it this year. We have gotten new movies (Chip and Dale rescue rangers) a few days before and he had been watching them when we started carving, I thought for sure he would be so excited, he had been talking about carving them ever since we bought them! He came in long enough to see me gut part of his, pick a pattern, and taste the pumpkin :) That was my idea :) Growing up my dad would always eat raw things like potatoes, corn, etc. So now I always try everything! He saw me taste it and I asked he wanted to. That was the only thing he would come back into the kitchen for, to take another bite! It was so funny!

This was the few seconds he was there after Ben started to cut the pattern Hunter had picked. Notice the power tool? I did some blog reading of how best to carve pumpkins :) Ben used his sawsall (I don't know how to spell it) to cut the top off (only one cuz the battery died and I was too impatient to wait for it to charge) And tried his drill for some of the bigger sections in the pattern (that was his own idea, and I don't think he cared for it cuz he only did it for a few seconds.) Then I used my melon baller from pampered chef, it's a loop like thing rather than a circle so it worked really well to scrape out the insides. It was the cleanest I've ever gotten them! (The blog I saw had a certain tool for cleaning the inside but that was the closest I had to what they had and it worked awesome! So much faster too!)

I thought this was cute of Hunter :) By the way he was pretty much just posing for the picture then left to watch his movie again. Oh and Aspen was napping during the whole thing.

I ended up gutting all 4 pumpkins, Ben wasn't really into it this year :( He carved Hunter's pumpkin and I carved one, then we decided to carve the others after the kids were in bed since it was getting later and we go and visit Ben's parents every Sunday. So we headed to his parents and what did we find....

They were also carving their pumpkins! Ben's sister and her kids now live up in the garage where we lived while building our house. Joslyn was at work, Dixie was busy helping Logan with his pumpkin, so I got to help Landen with his! If your keeping track I gutted 5 pumpkins and carved 3!!!!

Here is our porch after we got home and finished our pumpkins. Ben did the one on the far right and the one on the far left (that's the one Hunter picked.) I did the other two. I love carving pumpkins!!

Ben carved the left one, me the right.

Ben the left, and me the right. We had already carved the other 2 from our pattern books from past years before we thought to look for different patterns online. Hunter was pretty excited when he saw the Mario one :) He almost always picks Mario when he plays Mario Kart on our Wii.

Halloween morning my sister invited us to go to story time at the library. After the stories the kids did a parade around the library to show off their costumes. Then after the parade they got to go make spider balloons and get a bag of treats. Hunter loved it! When we got in the car after and I told him what else we were going to do that day he got all excited when I said go trick or treating. Apparently he had thought that that was the trick or treating!

Her is Aspen during the parade. Totally fuzzy but for some reason I thought it was really cute, and I think you can kind of see her teeth in it :)

Me and Aspen during the parade. And by the way I noticed that my camera has a fuzzy spot on the same spot in all these pictures, I think I might need to clean the lens :)

After lots of asking Ben finally agreed to dress up! That decision was made as we were driving to his parents the night before and Hunter told him he should be Spiderman like him. Then I had the great idea that he should be Spiderman, but without the costume, so here is Peter Parker! He really needed a hair cut so his hair was perfect length for the part! (By the way before and after shots of this years hunting beard will be posted soon!)

And what would Spiderman or Peter Parker be without MJ? Sadly most people didn't even know who MJ was, even when we told them. Oh well. As a side note, make sure if you ever decide to use the spray on hair color... DO IT OUTSIDE!!!! My whole bathroom was red. When we got home from trick or treating at 9, the kid's bedtime, I decided I better go clean up the bathroom a little before they came in for tubby time. The red had settled by then and was everywhere! I cleaned the tub, then realized when they got out Hunter would step on the floor so I had to clean that, then realized when he goes to the bathroom he would get red, so cleaned the toilet. Then remembered he would be leaning on the counter when he brushes his teeth so had to clean that. With how red everything was it took me almost an hour to clean it up! It was a nightmare! And then I remembered that I still had it in my hair so I had to clean me before them so that I didn't get them red either! If you look at the couch in the picture above you can see where my nephew left some red from his color hair spray on my moms couch. Oh wait they had cleaned it up from him and then I got it on the couch in the same spot! Sorry Mom!

Here is a close up on Aspen's outfit. What a cute ladybug!

She had a beanie to go with it, it was cute it had antennae on it :) But as you can see it didn't really fit, it barely made it to her ears :)

Hunter getting ready at his first door! Whose behind it?

Grandma! Both of his Grandma's love and spoil him so much that he didn't really need to go to any other houses! Lucky for us he is still young enough that he doesn't really care. So after we went to Ben's parents we went across the street, they make homemade donuts every year. We ate our donuts then headed to Ben's Grandma's just a couple houses down. After visiting there for a little bit we headed to my moms:

I think her costume was the best! When she came out in it I couldn't stop laughing! I thought it was so funny!!

My mom gave Aspen a sucker which she loved! And they played with Grandma's tigers for quite a while. We then went to Ben's used to be supervisor (they just recently moved the supervisor to a different area so Ben has spent most of his time at the water district with him.) He has a parrot and usually dresses up like a pirate :) He wasn't dressed up this year but we still got to see the parrot! Then we stayed and visited for a while. Hunter was playing with their Grandson (who happens to be just a few weeks younger than Hunter) and all of a sudden came running through the living room where we were. I can't remember if I asked him what he was doing or if he just yelled it to us. He said, "I got to go poo!!" And he kept running down the hall, which luckily is where the bathroom was. He must have toilet intuition or something :) It was so funny! And he made it in time! He has only had 2 poo accidents since the time I posted about potty training, I think that's been like a month! I think he is doing awesome! Still no luck on the pee but it sure seems like he is pretty well set on the poo!

Here is the whole family, Peter Parker, MJ, Spiderboy and our baby ladybug!

Happy Halloween!

Eavesdropping

I know I probably should be doing a post about Halloween but I heard a few conversations today that I just wanted to remember, don't worry though you will get to see our costumes and our awesome pumpkins soon!
Today I was getting ready for church in the bathroom, Ben comes in jumps in the shower, and of course Hunter follows. I still have felt fine with Hunter being in the room when I shower, but after today that may have to change.... Hunter looked at Ben in the shower then says, "Dad you have hair on your wiener!" I about died trying to hold my laughter in! Then he turns around and informs me of his new discovery. Then tells me he doesn't have hair on his and whips it out to show me! Then asks to see mine! Oh the things going through my head!! First thing "Crap he is about to go to church, so hopefully he doesn't go whipping his man parts out to show everyone in nursery that he doesn't have hair on his" Second "Great now I have to explain about the difference between boys and girls!" Third "Now he for sure can't have baths with Aspen anymore" I'm sure their were about a million other thoughts too. After processing for a minute I gave my response of "I don't have a wiener" Hunter "Oh" Me "And yep daddy has hair and you don't." Hunter "Ya!" Me "Make sure you only ever show your privates to mom and dad ok?" Hunter "Ok" And that was it he was done and moving on to picking out what shoes I was going to wear!
The other funny conversation was only a few minutes later when Ben went to get Aspen dressed. I was still in the bathroom getting ready and hear "Dad, here's Aspen's bummy thing" Ben's response: "That's her underwear." I'm sure your thinking what is a 7 month old baby doing wearing underwear? Well I guess bloomers do kind of look like underwear and yep they go on her bummy :)
And just a couple quick updates. Hunter is totally in a my mommy said this phase, the best example was a few nights ago my parents came over and brought dinner with them. Hunter wasn't eating very good and had asked me if he could have candy and I told him not unless he ate his dinner. A little while after that my dad was eating some candy and went and handed Hunter a pieces, and what did Hunter do.... He chucked it across the room and said "My mommy say no! I need to eat my dinners!" It was so funny! None of us could help laughing that time.
Aspen had her shots on Tuesday, they had to do 3. The first one she didn't even cry! The next 2 she did but as soon as she had her bandaids on and I stood her up she was fine and didn't cry again! She didn't even act like they bugged at all! She's a tough little girl! She also finally broke her 2nd tooth, I noticed it on Thursday. We could see it trying to come ever since her first one broke though so it's been pretty sad. Her one lone tooth was far enough in that you could totally see it, I though it looked pretty funny all by itself.
Well hopefully tomorrow I will get our Halloween adventures on here, I've been meaning to since that night :)

Potty Training 101

Don't we all just love potty training!! I think I would take the newborn stage of no sleep over potty training! It's horrible! I have totally cried because of it, and not just once! I can't remember if I have ever posted anything about the potty training adventures so I will just give a short review. For a long time (so long I have no clue when but I know before I got pregnant with Aspen) we have had Hunter go potty before he gets in his bath at night. Otherwise he would pee in it every single time. We got sick of having to get new water for him and what a waste, I mean my dad and my husband both work for water companies :) Anyways... he took to that pretty quick and he knows that that is what happens at night, he very rarely ever forgets and even rarer ever complains about it. We thought that would get him interested in the potty. It didn't but we didn't really push it, we really didn't do much of anything else at that point.

After I found out I was pregnant though I really didn't want to have to bummies (yes that's what I call them) in diapers. So we tried the 3 day potty training thing. It didn't work out so well, we even did it for 4 days. I had Friday off, so we did Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. We were both scheduled to work on Monday but were so wanting it to work that on Monday Ben got of work a little early so I could go to work and we could tag team and still keep to the training. All that really did for us though was made him realize he could hold his pee. The 1st day he peed every 20 min, by the 4th it was more like 2 hrs in between. So we gave up.

Then a little after I had Aspen decided to try again. I took him to the store and we picked out a new candy he had never had (a bag of mini airheads) and named it his "potty candy." This was advice from our neighbor, and also reconfirmed to be a good way by a friend I saw while at the store getting the candy. So we were pumped! Well it didn't last long. He didn't really get excited about it and it was hard since he would want it at night when he went potty before his bath which was not at all the point of the candy. He already knew how to do that, and we were trying to get him ready for bed and he is a super slow eater, it just got frustrating! So we again gave up.

Well a few weeks ago I decided to try the potty chart method. So we went to the store and I let him pick out a toy and some stickers and explained what they were for. I don't know why but for some reason I just always felt like he wouldn't care about a chart. Well he did end up liking it. He would get excited every time he got to put stickers on:

I kept the toy up in the window so he could see it as a reminder but he couldn't get it. And the chart is taped right over the toilet.

Here's a close up. I found the chart online, but it only had 5 times going potty on it so I shrunk it and put 6 little ones. Then we made his name in paint, we were pretty excited to find a lightning bolt :) And I let him pick the paper and he helped me glue it all on too. All the different characters had a thing to do by them, they were pulling your pants down by yourself, sitting on the potty for a while, going potty, flushing the toilet, and washing your hands. So he loved that he got to put 5 stickers on every time!

Here's his toy. It's pretty cute, you push the top and his eyes change, then push the wheels and his mouth changes. I thought for sure he would do so good so he could get him...

Well he was excited when he finally got him but it took a while. The first day he went 5 times, then 6, then 1, then 4, etc. He started out like a champ and would have a few good days here and there but lost interest pretty fast. Again I was stubborn and didn't want to give up so I told him the last one had to be a poop one which made it drag out a few days longer and we started just putting 1 sticker instead of 5 when he would pee. Once he got it I have kept asking him through out the day if he needs to go pee but again gave up.

The pee diapers don't bother me too much but the poo ones really frustrate me. He has such big poos that quite often it will come out the back, of course it doesn't help that he is wearing those slip on diapers right now since they have had several sales on them I've been getting those. I also figured they would be good to be like a pull up during the potty training. An example of this was when me and Brandi went to watch Kira dance (she is on the Badgerette team at Snow college) the day before her birthday. That was Oct. 8th, it was at their football game and we made a huge sign (one letter per poster board) that said "Happy B-day Kira Sue" (although the e got lost so it said su instead) that we had people hold up while she danced. Afterwards we went to her apartment and visited with her roommates then went out to eat and came home, it was way fun. Well while we were at her apartment Hunter went poo and you could smell it through the whole apartment! It was very stinky! He started to lay down and I have come to know to check the back of him before he lays down when he has those diapers on so I rushed over and barely stopped him from laying down. Which was very lucky! It was clear up his back, so I took him into the bathroom to get cleaned up.... It was the most poo I have ever seen!!!! It wasn't just up the back it was also up the front and the entire diaper was completely full too! It took most of my wipes to get him cleaned up. And luckily I had brought extra clothes! I never bring extra clothes, it's probably been since he was 6 months or less since I've brought extra clothes on a day trip. It had been raining all week and he can't stay out of the puddles so I had brought them in case he got soaking wet at the game (which ended up not raining on us at all, just cloudy.) I almost wanted to cry on this one, until I saw that it was up his front too, then I almost laughed. I was amazed that little body could produce that much poo at one time. Sorry if I'm grossing anyone out but it was just so crazy!

Well the moral of this huge story is that I think we have finally found some advise that works. It is the hardest advise ever (or at least for us) but it seems to finally be working! Drum roll please......... Just wait til they do it on their own! For the past 3 or 4 days Hunter has done every poo in the toilet! The pee is still not hardly ever but I personally think the poo is a HUGE step! And of what I've heard, that is usually the hardest part for most kids, so I'm totally OK if he learns that first! Almost anytime we are at a store he will end up going pee in the potty, he must think that it's fun there or something. So hopefully he is finally on his way to potty training!

Wild Woman!!

My wild woman Aspen is 6 months old!! Half a year, it's so crazy how fast it goes! She had her 6 month check on the 4th and she was 15 lbs exactly which was in the 30% and 25 1/2 in which was in the 40% I can't remember what her head was but it's percentile had gone down to the 74th or something. So she is starting to grow into her head :) Her are the proof that she is a wild woman:

She now eats baby food! And this weird girl seems to like the veggies better than the fruits!

She is also trying new fashions....

Here is her handsome designer.

She started out with a pillow above her head and one to the side and when I went to check on her this is how she was sleeping!

That crazy nap left her with some crazy hair too!

When I try to put her on her knees this is what she does! And then rolls over.

And she is getting quite a bit of hair on top but not enough to really do much with. I love this picture!

She is a fun little 6 month old girl!!

A few hours after I posted this I noticed that Aspen has her first tooth! I've been wondering if they were coming for a few days now. Last night I was sitting there rubbing her gums for a while and thought for sure that it would be coming soon and today I can now see a little white spot and feel it!!