It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

This morning we had our ward Christmas party. I have NEVER been to a church function that was decorated like this! It was craaaaaazy. Anyhow, here are a couple festive pictures:

We found Morgan's name on the nice list. Surprise Surprise :)

 Yep, Ian is almost as big as Morgan. 

 Family Picture :)

 Ian was pretty happy to be able to dig around in the boxes that were overflowing with giant candies:

 And last, a picture in the snow (its as close as we are gonna get around here. It's 60 degrees outside :) It's a good thing too, cause Morgan doesn't seem to be enjoying it so much! And Ian is being how he is 90% of the time: Smiley!

Holy Moly

So, HOLY MOLY it has been a while since I last posted! You see, I have been feeling like I am very far behind on everything lately: Cleaning, blogging...getting ready today...and I am plain sick and tired of it. But seeing as how Ian makes everything look like this within moments of cleaning:

 I have decided to call it a lost cause for today and move right along to blogging. It's only 2:45...JD doesn't get home from work for another 2 hours so I still have an hour and a half till I have to get dressed anyway ;) What, you know you've had these days!

Anyhow, we have had a lot of fun stuff happen since the last time I blogged. So here's quick, illustrated (that makes it sound fancy) catch-you-up:

In the last month we have been:

Planting amaryllises

   Taking some pretty awesome pictures... (yes my shirt is indeed on inside out AND backwards)

Baking pies

 Chopping down our Christmas tree

 Making crazy faces to match our crazy hair

 Decorating said Christmas tree

 Barring the way for Mom to get to the Christmas decorations

 Climbing up ON EVERYTHING

 Playing Santa

 Crawling around naked (okay, so this one is just Ian and it really only happened once :)

 Playing in the leaves

 Cutting teeth!

 Seeing temple lights

 Pouting inside the end table... (Morgan is weird...)

AND- OF COURSE-

Getting into EVERYTHING!!!

Our Day, Today.

It started out pretty good,

I cleaned and the kids entertained themselves really well.

If you would have asked this morning,

I would have said everything was swell.

And by this afternoon,

the day still seemed just fine.

It had actually been quite lovely,

The kids had barely whined.

So here we are cleaning the truck,

I was determined to make it the cleanest in the land,

Morgan found a marker

and colored every inch of both her hands.

I kept my cool and let it slide,

tried not to be a nay sayer.

I bit my tongue until I tried to put in a cd-

Yes, those are pennies in the player.

Alright, I will admit, 

I kind of flew off the handle,

I got a little impatient,

and sort of began to ramble.

Morgan started crying,

-after all her mom was freaking out-

When she rubbed her teary eyes, I started laughing.

She didn't quite know what that was all about.

But, somebody, anybody please,

tell me if you could still be mad,

when your daughter's tears met her marker covered hands,

and she looked so very super-hero clad?

Halloween Festivities!

I have been actively trying to spend more time with Morgan doing good things, and Halloween was the perfect opportunity to do all sorts of things! I saw the idea of making a "Halloween Tree" online, where you take a fallen tree branch (or in our case, since St George is still so stinking warm that no trees had lost their leaves, let alone any small branches/twigs, you have to find a neighbor who recently trimmed their trees) Anyhow, you take a  leafless branchy twig and make some Halloween ornaments and hang them from the Halloween Tree. So, we made some salt dough and went to town making some ghosts, spiders, witches, and bats. (Morgan even made a Halloween caterpillar!)

 (Does anyone else feel a little ill when they see how old Morgan looks in this picture?)

This year it was so fun to let Morgan draw the face on her pumpkin for her jack o lantern! 

And then, the TRICK OR TREATING!

We went out on Saturday night with Morgan's cousin Celeste. They were both Princesses, Celeste was Belle and Morgan was Princess Peach from Mario Brothers. 

I was Mario and Ian was Toadstool

I was supposed to be Luigi and JD was gonna be Mario, but he ended up having to work :(  He did end up getting home with enough time to trick or treat with us for about a half hour, so that was good!

This is how all my Halloween pictures of Morgan turned out this year. She is always just running away from me.

Except, of course, when she would randomly sit down in the middle of people's yards. Who's kid is that anyway?

By the end of the night Ian was super tuckered out!

Morgan too! :)

Settling in to St. George :)

Yes, it does seem like I tend to post 2 days in a row quite often. I would say it is just a weird thing I do, but the truth is, I am slightly ashamed of being so judgmental in my last post so I am posting this one to get the thing moved down in the blogosphere :)

Since we have moved up here, Morgan's favorite pass time has become hiking. She LOVES it. So, we are pretty darn lucky to have Snow Canyon right around the corner! Here are some pictures of a quick afternoon trip we took up there:

She thinks I am a horrendous mother for forcing her onto the 3 ft high ledge to attempt to get a cool picture.

And, I will leave you with this little beauty:

Funny stuff: September 2010

These are just a couple of the funny conversations Morgan and I had this month:

-There was a cat in our backyard and Howie chased it over the fence.
      Morgan:  "Mom, I want a cat"
      Me: "Me too. But Daddy doesn't like cats, so we will probably never have one."
      Morgan: "Ummm, it's okay. I will teach Daddy to like cats. Lets go get one."

- When we woke up this morning she starts pulling board games out of a box and asking me to play one with her. I told her we had to clean up the game upstairs from last night before we could have breakfast, and maybe after breakfast we could play a board game. We are cleaning up Blokus from last night and this happens:
      Morgan: "After we clean Blokus we can get a different board game out?"
      Me: "Probably not till after breakfast. Maybe we can play a game that doesn't make a mess, like Simon Says."
      Morgan:  "I wanna go first! I wanna go first! Simon Says, 'Mommy, go downstairs and get us a board game."

- I came downstairs and Morgan has poured a bag of Goldfish crackers into 3 separate bowls from her play kitchen and is "making dinner". I sit down at the computer and say:
    Me: "Can I have some of your delicious goldfish dinner?"
    Morgan:  "Sure. Here's one"
    Me: "Thanks!" (I pop it into my mouth)
    Morgan: "Sure. It was on the ground."

The Last Year Or So...

It has been a year, at least, since I have had a decent night's sleep. This time last year, I was about 3 months pregnant and already having a hard time sleeping. Add to that Morgan's uncanny knack for waking up regularly and I can honestly say I don't really remember the last time I actually slept a night through.

Ian has been a bad sleeper since the day he was born. I remember sitting in the hospital laying him in his bassinet and thinking, "I am not going to hold this one all day because I want him to be able to sleep without me." Yeah. Right.

This is a basic breakdown of our average day:  Ian is grouchy and cranky because he fights sleep so bad. We are talking the kid will not even lay down in my arms, the only time he falls asleep is when he gets so exhausted that he literally slumps over sitting up. And the moment I lay him down, he's awake again. If it is not within moments, it is most definitely within the half hour.

Then, there's bed time. Oh and by the way, let me preface all of this by saying that if I leave Ian in his crib while he is awake, he will, without fail, crawl into the side of the crib repeatedly. He comes out with his head and face all red, bruised, and on a few occasions he has even had a goose egg. So, that said, I don't know how letting him "cry it out" will ever work. Okay, so back to the bed time routine:  We don't have one.  I hope and pray he will just fall asleep and let me sleep.

Alright, now I am at the point where I feel like I need to explain myself. You know, excuse away all my bad mommy behavior. We don't have a bedtime routine, I still nurse him at night, and yes, he still sleeps in my bed. I know that everyone of these issues is probably causing its own set of issues all on their own, but that is where the biggest problem comes into play:

  How can I be consistent with anything when I am so sleep deprived that I sob in my bed when he wakes up for the fifth time at 3 o'clock in the morning?

And don't even get me started on how I react to JD when he tells me to just go put him in his crib- since that is all my husband wants to do to help- tell me what to do.

Oh, and the other problem I would love some advice on is that him and Morgan are sharing a room. I don't know how it is going to work for me to put him back in his crib and go in and out of there 5 times a night without having a double fit from the two of them- no wait, make that a triple fit once you throw me into the mix.

That's it. That's all. Just a random rambling of my newest crisis.

Chubbsters like to Eat. Duh.

I could say this post is about me, because, well, I do love to eat :) But, for the most part when I am talking Chubbster these days, I am talking Ian. The kid is 18 pounds and counting at 6 months old! So, it should come as no surprise that he is 100% content to eat and eat and EAT.

 The first couple of times he would grab my hand or the spoon and shove it into his mouth. Now he just kind of chills and waits for the next bite cause he has faith in his Mama to not starve him :)

Processing the flavor...

Hey, that's not so bad after all Ma!

Who woulda guessed?

As a mom, I try to remember to do fun and exciting things with Morgan every now and again. They are usually what I blog about.
The good days.
Today was good, but I have nothing exciting to report. I have no colorful pictures to post.
But I do have a story I never want to forget.

Here we are, driving along in the car (why do all the good stories always happen in the car?) and Morgan has been quiet for a while. I am starting to worry a little about her falling asleep in the middle of the evening she's been quiet so long. I guess she was just reflecting on our day because she says,

"Mom, thank you for helping me crack that egg."


What? Huh? Oh yeah...that egg I let her crack at 8 o'clock this morning for breakfast. It's 7:00 now...I'm thinking, "What made her think of that?" And then I realized I can do all the big giant fantastic things in the world that I want and I am sure she will remember some of them. But it sure doesn't hurt our relationship to let her crack an egg every once in a while either :)

Bumpy Slides and Astronauts!

Today I was doing the dishes and Morgan yells,

 "HEY MOM! COME RIDE MY BUMPY SLIDE!" 

This is what I found:

She then proceeded to explain the slide to me and said,

"This pillow is so you can land on yours head, like this"

Ian could tell how silly his sister was being:

Morgan insisted I give it a go, so this is a picture I took while I was takin' a ride, on the bumpy slide!

So then Morgan decided she had to take pictures from the top too!

So, I let her have a chance taking a picture of Ian's first trip down the bumpy slide. Looks riveted, doesn't he?

Earlier today Morgan asked me if she could be an astronaut. I told her that was a good idea, and she could pretend to be one if she wanted to. She replied with an emphatic

"Mom. I. CAN. NOT. BE. AN. ASTRONAUT. BECAUSE.

WE. HAVE. NO. STARS. OR. PLANETS!!!!!"

So I told her we could make some if she helped me clean the house.

 (yay for bribery!)

We made ourselves a cardboard rocket too...