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Carter's 4 yo interview

What's your favorite color? Uhhh... red.
What's your favorite food? Macaroni & Cheese
How old are you? 4
How old is Daddy? 20?
How old is Mommy? 3? No... 6?
You think I'm 6? Yup.
What's your favorite toy? Lightening McQueen, Mom.
What's your favorite drink? Milk.
What's your favorite song? I'm a Child of God.
What do you want to be when you grow up? A daddy.
What's your favorite thing to do? I don't know... ummm... color on my paper.
What's your favorite movie? Emperor's New Groove. (That's a new one)
What's your favorite animal? Uhhh... Lasso?
What does Andi do? She says she wants to play with me.
What does Taytum do? She said she wants to eat food and be hungry.
What does Daddy do? He wants to play my games. He does things and makes the food. He goes to work. (PS.... I am pretty sure I can count on one hand the number of times Jefferson has ever prepared any sort of food in our house)
What does Mommy do? She works. You work paper at the house. You help us make food. You wanna give me a snack.

Blog Chain

My friend Sian tagged me in this blog chain. I'm supposed to list 10 things that make me happy and 5 pieces of trivia about me.

10 things that make me happy:
1. My family.
2. Carter & Andi being best friends.
3. Diet coke with lime.
4. The smell of fresh cut grass.
5. Date nights with my hubby (they don't happen often enough!)
6. Reading a good book.
7. Cooking. Really cooking, not just whipping something together with my kids running around my feet, trying to "help."
8. Laughing for no reason. I seriously love to laugh.
9. Traveling. Going to visit family or going on a real vacation. I love it.
10. Crafting. I wish I had more time, money, and resources. Some day.

5 Pieces of Trivia
(I feel like everybody knows everything about me)
1. I love floral arranging. Whenever I get flowers I cut them and rearrange them.
2. I love peanut butter and popcorn, together and separately. I've got a number of delicious popcorn recipes and could eat a whole tub of movie theater popcorn by myself, in one sitting, with ease.
3. I have a phobia of moths. I would seriously rather find a snake in my room than a moth.
4. Me ears are shaped differently.
5. I don't put pots or sharp knives in the dishwasher. I am a huge advocate of hand washing those items.

I tag anybody who is related to me!!!

Fight Nights

Ok, my secret is out. I enjoy watching Ultimate Fighting (MMA). As luck would have it, Jeffeson volunteers out at Driven Gym as their resident chiropractor, owned and operated by Jens Pulver, first lightweight UFC champion of the world. Jefferson ("Doc" as they all call him) adjusts any and all of the fighters out there once a week. They recently hosted "Unleashed" down at Qwest Arenas, and Jefferson was given four complimentary tickets, ground level, four rows back. Now a lot of the fights were amateur fights, but there were quite a few pro debuts and pro fights.
Michelle and I were feeling highly over dressed, slightly under-tanned, and definitely not blond enough. We both forgot our 10" hoops too, dangit! Michelle and Garren, possibly the only two people who would brave the fights with us.

Here we are with Jens before the action:

And anybody who has ever seen any fighting on tv will know who this guy is... "Big John McCarthy." Are you ready? Are you ready? Let's get it on!

And with Thiago Silva... people know him...

Us & Schnake. He's a well known announcer and he will make you laugh.

Story: Jefferson went to the bodybuilding.com expo the day prior to the fight and hung out with Jens in his booth and had some flyers out, etc. That's when he first met Schnake, who took an instant liking to him. Jefferson went to leave the expo a little early since the Driven booth was getting a little crowded. Schnake grabbed Jefferson and asked where he thought he was going. When Jefferson told him he was leaving, Schnake yells in his announcer voice for all to hear, "Ladies & Gentlemen, now leaving the expo is Jens Pulver's personal chiropractor, Doctor! Jefferson! Harmon!" And the crowd went wild! Or at least Jefferson left slightly embarrassed, but secretly loving it. :)

We enjoyed ourselves and saw some good fights. Driven's team did really well and came out with a lot of wins. They will all be thankful when Jefferson heads back out there to do adjustments this week.

Famous Dave's Date Night

Jefferson's little sister Alli got a job at Famous Dave's. We decided to go and show our support and have a family date night there with Jefferson's siblings. It was a crazy table with five adults and seven kids, but luckily all the kids behaved themselves quite well. I love BBQ and enjoyed every bite of my ribs.
Me & Ash & the babes.
Bostyn, Carter & Teage.

Josh & Andi.

4 out of 5 siblings... come July they will all be here! (Abbey gets off her mission)

Then we were trying to get a picture of Josh with all his nieces and nephews to commemorate our date night and for some reason all the kids were acting like their food was laced with crack. They were out. of. control. Take a look:

Utah....again

We headed down to Utah last weekend for the double baby blessing of my niece and nephew. My entire family was able to make it down and we had some good times.
We headed down to temple square and Deseret Book on Saturday. We only spent a minute on temple square to let the kids go up and see the Christus. I knew Carter and Andi would enjoy that, and sure enough, the rest of the day Carter kept asking to "go to the room where Jesus was in outer space." We got a good laugh over that.
At DB everyone got to pick out a book as a Mother's/Father's day gift from my parents. And the grandkids all got to pick one out for making us all mothers and fathers, or simply because they are the grandkids and my parents love spoiling them. My mom read to the kiddos while the grownups perused the books.
The hotel we stayed at had a pool (and delicious fresh baked cookies in the lobby all day every day) and Taytum took her first swim. She really enjoyed it and would do full body kicks like she was trying to swim away.

The weather was horribly cold the whole time we were there so we were looking for places to go that the kids would enjoy, and what better place to let the kids go wild than at Chuck E Cheese?! It was kind of ghetto, but the kids loved it, of course!

They held the blessings on Sunday in the clubhouse in Summer's neighborhood. It was so personal just to have family and close friends there. It was a very special occasion and wonderful to hear the sweet blessings these babies received.

Here is all of my side of the family. It will be outdated in less than a month when Sharon has her baby!

Mommy Moments

They always keep me laughing, that's for sure.

As Jefferson walked out the door today Andi held up two fingers and said, "Freak out Dad!" (I think she meant, "peace out")

We had our first thunder storm a few weeks back, so we turned out our living room lights and watched all the lightening. My kids loved spotting the lightening. Well, Jefferson ran outside to grab something so it wouldn't get wet and Carter yelled, "Shut the door Dad, you're going to let in the McQueen!" He knew it was one of the names of Lightening McQueen...

A Very Merry Mother's Day

I am so blessed to be surrounded by such amazing moms. Not only my own mom, but my sisters, sisters-in-law, and mother-in-law, all provide such amazing examples. Each parents so differently, yet have such great qualities that I am striving to attain. Thanks for being great examples and for loving being a mom. And thank you mom for the best example of how to exemplify motherhood! Who knew you would have to do even more mothering once we left the house and had kids of our own?!

(and Alli, I know you're not a mom yet, but you will be soon, and you have great characteristics and qualities that will help make you an amazing mother. Happy future mother's day to you!)

And of course, what is mother's day without the ones who made me a mom?! I love these little ones. I love being a mom.

And a shout out to this amazing man! He supports me 100% and makes me feel like I am the best mom around.

"The dead duck day"

(It's from a movie, I'm not just being callous)

It all started on a cold, windy, snowy/hailing, spring day. I was busy doing some dishes quickly before my kids got up from naps and we headed out on errands when I looked out my window and there was a cute baby duck waddling across my yard. "How cute!" I thought, until minutes passed and there was no mommy duck. I watched it waddle around a bit and then finally make its' way to the back corner of our fence and nestle down a bit. "Bad mommy duck!" I think. Well, shoot. What am I supposed to do with a baby duck in my backyard. I have tons of errands to run, I need to clean the house a bit because we have friends coming over for dinner and my brother is staying the night. I decide to wait until we get back from errands to do anything in case the mommy duck decides to make an appearance and claim her poor lost little duckling. Mind you, it is a very blustery day. So when the kids get up from naps I let them go outside and take a peak at the duckling and we put a bucket close by, to which he snuggles up next to to block the wind.

We return from about 1 1/2-2 hours worth of errands and the baby duck is still there. I decided to call Zamzows because they sell baby ducks and chics and whatnot. Surely someone there can tell me what to do with this duckling. The Zamzows man told me what to do and told me I only had to take care of this duckling for four weeks, after which it could be returned to the wild and it would know just what to do. "The perfect pet!" I think. I only have to take care of it for four weeks! And this little guy is so stinking cute and my kids are in love. The Zamzow man then asks me how long it's been out there and after I tell him at least a few hours he sounded less than hopeful that this little guy would live because he was sure to be mighty sick.

Well, we were up for the challenge and we brought Kirby inside (named by Carter), made a nice little ducky home out of a box and towel, and placed him by the fire to get him nice and warm (95 degrees). The little guy was not doing well, we could tell, but we held out hope. The Swensens came over for dinner and attempted to nurse him back to health with a dropper full of sugar water. We showered him with lots of love....

And lucky for us, the mom duck returned that night while the kids were sleeping and took Kirby back home with her! The end.

Oddly enough, I am the most devastated about the end of our pet days. I really liked little Kirby and actually find myself glancing in the backyard in hopes of finding another stray duckling. Carter now looks for baby ducks instead of bugs outside. :)

I love to see the temple

We went to the Boise temple with the Apples a few weeks back for FHE. We packed a picnic dinner and enjoyed the beautiful tulips on the temple grounds. The kids loved all the flowers, but were disappointed that they couldn't go inside. A kind man at the security station brought over a picture of the temple for all the kids to take home. We tried to explain what goes on in the temple and explain to Andi (for the zillionth time) that we do not get married every time we attend the temple. Doing ordinances for the deceased is just a hard concept to wrap your head around when you are that young.
Carter took this last shot. He was a little antsy to get back to running around....errrrrr... I mean reverantly walking the temple grounds, so it's a little off center.

Tay @ 9 months

Taytum hit the 9 month mark. She is sitting much better these days and we keep thinking she's going to start crawling any day now. We have thought that for well over a month. She spends the majority of her time on her hands and knees rocking, rocking, rocking. Her knees will get some forward progress every once in a while, but the hands haven't quite figured out what to do.
She is much better at grabbing things and can now feed herself finger foods. It's so nice that she doesn't whine every time I stand up from feeding her and leave her in the high chair because now she can feed herself. She has also just learned how to wave. It's pretty cute.
This poor girl has had two double ear infections within a month of each other. She also just got her first tooth on May 1 (bottom right). So, she's been a bit crabby. Actually, really crabby. We've had a few rough days where nothing will appease her. She's had Tylenol and doesn't want to sleep, eat, be held, or be on the floor. She's on a stronger antibiotic this time around, so we're hoping that does the trick. We can also see that she's cutting a second tooth, which isn't helping matters.

We finally put her in Andi's room this past week and they have been doing great. Andi leaves Tay alone and they both go right to sleep. Taytum has talked a few times in the night, but it hasn't disturbed Andi at all. I love seeing my girls in their room together at night. As Andi would say, "They're da girls!" Just before that we stopped swaddling Tay because she would just get so twisted up in her blanket and it would just make her mad. We discovered all she wanted to do was sleep on her tummy. Don't you just want to nibble on those chubby legs?!

The rest of April...

My girls in their matchy matchy.
That was a particularly warm spring day (not sure where spring went after that) so we had the Corrigan family over for BBQ and let the kids run through the sprinklers:

Pirate Party Numero Dos

Since Jefferson wasn't with us on Carter's actual birthday we decided to throw a little birthday bash at home and invite some of his friends and cousins. Here is my second try at a fondant cake. It is not at all what I had in mind when I started out, but when Carter came down the stairs the morning after I made it and just said, "WOW!" I didn't care so much that it wasn't what I had in mind. He loved it.
When the kids first arrived they made pirate dog tags decorated in pirate stickers. Then we had to complete their pirate ensemble and give them a gold earring and eye patch. Then they just played pirates (and soccer) in the backyard. Whose idea was it to let a bunch of one eyed preschoolers run around together? Why don't we just give them sharp pointy sticks too?

Next we played pin the treasure chest on the map. Anywhere on the map will do. Anywhere in the vicinity of the map will do too. After they hit the target they got their own treasure; gold necklaces and a diamond ring (pop).

Then we had dinner... hot dogs and the works.

Teage & Andi:

Bostyn & Carter:

Ben & Alec:

Bailey & Ryker:

Ty:

Zach:

Cake time:

The present swarming:

A little post party pirateering:

Andi with her cousins and aunt. (yes, that is her aunt Sophie in the middle)

If there is a purse around, Andi will sniff it out! This is Carla... Grandpa Jon's new gal and Andi's new best friend.

Everyone had a swashbuckling good time! Thanks to all our little pirates who came to celebrate!