Walking in your shoes....

The boys lately have been having alot of fun Walking in my shoes!!!
It has been really silly to see them try to walk in them!!!

What We've Been Up To Lately...

We went to the Draper Temple open house.It was alot of fun!!! We went with one of my best friends and her family she has two kids my kids age (Ben and Cameron).

My favorite part was to watch Ben pull out the pamphlet,

and as we walked into each room on the pamphlet

he would say "check" and do a pretend check mark, to mark off the fact that we saw that room.

The next set of pictures is my attempt to play with hair gel!

I was doing my fly lady cleaning and I was organizing my bathroom

and found this hair sculpting stuff I havn't used in like forever

so I gave the boys Hair-Dos

Happy 50th Lloyd and Boyd!

My Dad and his twin turned the big 50!!!

It was a blast with gag gifts, games, family. food and fun!!!

The last thing occupying my life is food training the baby. We are making sure he'll take bottles and he just started baby food. Matt and I are attempting a valentines date and we need him to be easily feed and taken care of.

Happy Birthday Ethan

Happy 2nd Birthday Ethan!

It is hard to believe when your babies grow up!!! Ethan turned two today and had a wonderful birthday party with all his family!

We gave him the choice of what cake he wanted he wanted SHREIK!!

I think the biggest hit for the evening was the 2 bikes Ethan got. Grandma Jaffa bought the big one and afterwards worried that it might be to big so she bought a smaller tricicle.

TWO BIKES!!! What an awesome Grandma!!

11:15p.m. You'll never see this again...

As a New Years resolution I decided I would get control of my house and get it clean.

I started this 31 Step program from the "Fly Lady" http://www.flylady.net/
I personally decided to take it one step at a time instead of one step a day.
So when I feel I have a grasp on the current steps I will add more.

Well the last step I am trying to master is a "15 min declutter"
You set a timmer and pick a messy area and only spend 15 min and walk away.

The Fly Lady suggests putting two of these declutter times into your daily routine at first until your house is no longer cluttery. So for about the last 5 days I have spent my two times a day 15 min declutter and this is what you get....

Now mind you this is our playroom and it takes the boys about 30 sec to mess it up again!

But I felt so proud to have it organized I had to take a picture!!!

Mr. Smartie Pants

Ethan does the cutest things sometimes. Lately he has done a few things that have really made me laugh and caught my attention to really how smart he is and how he perceives this world.

The first thing Ethan did that made me laugh my socks off, was when Ethan sat down next to me, while I was nursing cameron,and he had his baby doll in his hand and he preceeded to lift up his shirt and put the babies head under it. I asked him what he was doing and he said "shhh baby is eating"

Then a couple of days later (again while I was nursing) I hear a scream coming from my bathroom and I hurry in to find a Naked Ethan with arms and legs flying. Ethan said "Potty mommy"... He had taken off his zipper pj's and diaper and climbed onto a box and tried to go potty all by himself. It took all of my self control not to laugh at him as I helped him (my almost 2 years old) out of the potty he had fallen into.

Ethan is my very independent boy and he now has learned the tecnique of opening doors. So everywhere we go in the house he feels like he needs to open the door and close it for me. So the other day I was trying to put away my "Put away box" from my fly lady plan (I'll explain later) and it took me almost 30 min to put away 15 items or so because I had to wait for Ethan to open and shut the door for me everytime I entered or exited a room. If I insisted on opening a door I had to spend double the time trying to calm him down from a fit.

Ethan is less than 2 weeks away from turning two and I already suffer from "Terrible Twos." I think what makes "Terrible Twos" so Hard is they don't have the communication skills to tell you what they want, but they are smart enough to know how to get your attention. WISH ME LUCK!!!

Pre-Christmas events

I tried to get these events posted before Christmas
but the craziness took over faster than I thought.

Bills' girls night out. I wasn't sure what to title this party, since no one there at the party are bills; the host was a jaffa, her sister is a Gee, the other sister is a Wipple, another sister is a Istook and all their daughters have different last names too. But since the original sisters were Bills before they got married, it became the "Bills Girls" night out. This event is going to be a monthly event that I am totally looking forward already, because of how much fun the first get together was.

The next events were the same night, We dropped off the boys at the Jaffas so we could go to Matt's work party and they took the boys to their ward christmas party. Where they did a "Feliz Navidad" theme party with taco dinner and a pinata. And the boy's favorite Santa Clause!

Matt work party was really nice. They had buffet style dinner and dancing. Matt bought me this new dress (which I just love) for the event.
It was really alot of fun! Matt's co-workers seem to be a lot of fun!

Our ward did a Christmas in Nauvoo theme, It was really kinda fun and they had a great spiritual presentation at the end. (Sorry no pictures of that event0

The next event was a Joyschool nativity and Christmas party. We performed the nativity story, with props and costumes. It was really cute, (I am still trying to find out how to put video on my blog so if you know how teach me).
Then after that we made graham cracker gingerbread houses.

Then the last event was celebrating Matt's Birthday! We went out to eat with his family, then the next day we had dinner with my family. The boys helped decorate the cake. Matt had a really good bithday, after his two parties I also took him out to dinner and bowling on the WII. Ben and Ethan got to sleep over at the Earls! The next day we went to watch Twilight (my second time, Matt's first) which matt loved so much we saw it again last night.

Christmas Downtown

The Lights at Temple Square

has been a tradition for me as a child

and now I get to start that tradition with my children.

The Nativity was a big highlight!

Temple square was just wonderful!

I've Been Tagged

So I guess the deal is to find your 6th picture taken in the 6th month but like Heather (who tagged me) I don't even go back that far on my computer... since I update so often... So I found the 6th picture in my 6th folder!!! It was a sample Christmas card from JcPenny when we got our family photo taken.

I tag... My sister Rachael, and my friends Rochelle and Claudine.
And anyone else who reads this that wants to take on the challenge!

Watch me ROLL!!

Ok so I can't give Cameron all the credit I had to tap him with my foot to help him over but he's getting closer!

A Happy Halloween

Matt's work had a little trick-or-treating party. It was alot of fun and we are all thankful that they did it because the boys got plenty of candy and they didn't have to walk very far or in the rain. Like we did later that night around the neighborhood, or should I say just in the circle up the street. We only hit the one circle because they had one house that gave away hotdogs and next door was a house that did a haunted house in their garage.

Anyways Halloween was really fun!
I think the part the boys loved most was dressing up
because they kept switching...

Ethan

Ben

NOVEMBER 21st TWLIGHT MOVIE!!!

Twilight Trailer in HD

Pun' kin

Last night for family home evening we carved a pumkin for halloween.

Ben and Ethan were really funny about it they wouldn't touch the seeds.

Ben said "it's a yucky pun' kin"

So neither boys would touch it. (Even though I did get both to put their hand in the pumpkin.)

Well in order to make Ben happy about the fact that we were going to cut and "ruin" the pumpkin we had to cut the face using alphabet letters.

So the eyes were C's and nose a U and the mouth a W.

Well Happy Halloween everyone!

Farewell Grandma

I just heard about an hour ago that my grandma has past away. Any death of family is hard and sad but most of us are happy and relieved. She has been in theropy recovering from surgery and her health was just failing. Elaine Richards Earl will be missed. I loved my grandma very much.
Some of my most favorite memories are the weekly visits to her house. Everyone that lived in the valley came over every Sunday and played games and talked. She was always the first and last person I said hi and bye too.

My mother told me that when I was a baby I was attatched to grandma and I would always go to her. This made my Grandma feel especially special since alot of the other grandchildren went to grandpa.

Grandma was one of the most ontime, organized and planned individual. She was also the most loving and encouraging person I knew.

One thing I am amazed about is her strength at the end of her life. Her husband, My grandpa is considered legally blind and deaf, and he has become very scenile. While grandma was in surgery my parents and Aunts and uncles took turns taking care of him... and they eventually couldn't handle it and hired help. This job was my grandma's individually. This proves really how much my grandma was putting up with for years.

Grandma Earl, We will all miss you and we know that your in a better place. I thank God that knowledge that I have. That she is in Heaven and no longer suffering.

Chris and Amber's Wedding

My Brother Chris Just got married to his Highschool SweetHeart, Amber Goodsell. It was a very wonderful ceremony and reception. Everything was very Tasty, lovely and plain out wonderful. It was great fun to see old friends and family. Welcome Amber to the family, we've already had her "Apart of the family" for a year or more now but now she is "Legal"

Halloween Preview

Friday night we were invited to a Birthday Party for Kaleb, Ben's Friend.
Every year he does a Halloween Themed party for his birthday!
So the boys got to Dress up in costumes.
Ben was Diego, Ethan was Elmo and Cameron was a Peapod!

Ben's favorite part was a Rescue Pack!

It will be fun when he can say trick-or-treat and fill his Rescue pack with candy.