Merry Christmas!

I thought it was only appropriate to have this as my title since my last post was entitled "Happy Thanksgiving". Yes, I know I'm very bad at this blogging thing lately. (It's on my New Year's resolution list!) :0) I don't have time to post pictures or say a whole lot tonight, but they will be coming, I promise. We're leaving tomorrow to go to Portland for Brian's brother's wedding and Christmas and when we get back I will overload you all with pictures and stories! ;0) (There are always good stories with the siblings and cousins get together!!) I do sincerely hope that all of you have a wonderful Christmas.

P.S. Tammy, I saw your tag and I promise I'll get to it when I get back! ;0)

Happy Thanksgiving!

We hope all of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving tomorrow!! Hopefully you'll be spending it with loved ones and good food, I know we will be!! :0) In order to be ready for the "feast", we made this Turkey Drumstick headbands. I got the idea from Family Fun magazine and it was so simple. The kids LOVED making them and wearing them! Do they make you hungry for some TURKEY?!? :0)

Hair-do favs

If you look on my sidebar, I have links to some of my favorite Hair blogs. If you have days where you just don't know what to do with your girl's hair, check these out!! Here are some of our favorites! (They really aren't difficult and the "hair experts" on these blogs have great instructions on how to do them!)

Bows, bows and more bows

I've been busy making and helping my friends make bows. This is another hobby that I've picked up and it's so fun! Paige sure likes the results, also! These bows are for my nieces for Christmas. Do you think they'll like them? ;0)

Does life ever slow down?

So, I thought (naively, of course) that life would start to slow down a little once volleyball season was over, but, alas, it is not to be! :0)

The kids are keeping me busier than ever. Paige is loving preschool and has her teachers wrapped around her pinky! They are amazed at how quickly she picks up on things and how excited she is to learn. Her favorite song right now is "I love to see the temple". She sings it every chance she gets. If I can get the video to work on blogger, I'll post a video of her singing it. So cute!! Paige is also quite the fireball. She has a lot of energy and has to be "guided" in finding good and effective ways to use that energy. We're working on her sassiness right now and I'm really hoping that it all starts to sink in soon. For example, in Sacrament meeting on Sunday, she told me that she had to go potty and that she wanted to go by herself. I, of course, wouldn't let her because, hello, she's only 3 (even though she thinks she's 16). As soon as I told her that I would take her, she completely went ballistic. She started screaming, saying, "I want to go potty BY MYSELF!" At that point, I try to carry her out but she wasn't making it very easy for me to do so because she's arching her back and trying to get away from me. I finally get her out of the chapel and I head into the bathroom, but she refuses to go in because I'm in there and she wants to go "BY HERSELF". Finally after 5 minutes of trying to reason with her, scold her, threaten her, she goes into the bathroom. She does her business and comes out as if nothing happened and she did nothing wrong. Terrible two's were NOTHING, I tell you!! She can be really sweet, though, has the cutest smile, and has quite the imagination, so we'll definitely keep her. But if any of you have suggestions on how to end these "little" tantrums, let me know!

Austin is such a sweet little boy. His smile just melts my heart and he loves to give kisses. He can have an attitude and loves the lovely word, "No", but hey, who doesn't?!? :0) He has this little puppy that he carries around everywhere. Seriously, he has to have it all day, every day. He had to take it in the car when we were running some errands today. I made him leave it in the car when we went into a store or the library and he was NOT very happy, but he soon forgot about it until he saw the car again and then he let me know that he wanted his puppy. He's talking a lot now and is seriously talking every minute he is awake. He LOVES "Little Einsteins" on the Disney channel and has the "Pat, pat, pat...BLAST OFF" down! One of his and Paige's favorite things to do in the car is "blasting off" when the car starts to move. It's pretty funny!

Another reason why life hasn't slowed down any is that Brian was called to be the 1st Counselor in our new Bishopric. No more relaxing Sunday afternoons for him! It's been quite the adjustment for me during Sacrament meetings. I haven't sat down with the kids during Sacrament meeting since Paige was 2 months old. I've always been on the stand to lead the music. I've also NEVER had to get the kids ready for church, go to church and come home from church by myself before. It's not difficult, but oh it was nice having another pair of hands!! Brian's liking this calling, though, and we're already seeing the blessings that come with this calling. I just feel extremely blessed to have a husband who holds and uses the Priesthood worthily. He is an amazing man and I love him so much for his willingness to serve!

OK, I'm really sorry this post is so long. I really need to start blogging regularly again, so I can avoid these EXTREMELY long posts!! I won't make any promises, though! :0)

We love the park!

Cousin Sydnee came to visit a couple weeks ago and it was such nice weather that we had to take advantage of it. Where else would we go but the park!!

Sydnee liked the swings and just scooting on her bottom on the gravel because she didn't like the feel of it when she crawled. Austin found lots of sticks to put in the rocks and of course liked the swings. When Paige wasn't hiding behind all of the trees, she was finding worms. Yes, she likes worms and thinks they're "soooo cute". Silly girl!

Enjoy the pics!!

Do you see the trail that Syd left behind her?!? :0)

Halloween has come and gone

I hope everyone had a great Halloween. We had a great Halloween week. It started of on Tuesday with Paige's Halloween party at her preschool. She was SO excited to wear her Cinderella costume. I didn't get it out until that morning so she would be extra excited and I wasn't disappointed. :0) (If you know Paige, you can only imagine how she reacted!!) ;0) Paige's party was so fun. There were a couple of other princesses and LOTS of pirates. The kids were so cute in their costumes. They played a few games and then had lots of halloween treats. Luckily, Paige decided to save quite a few of those treats for later, or else we would have had a very hyper and probably sick little girl!! ;0)

For Family Home Evening, Brian, the kids and I decided to paint pumpkins (much easier to paint than carve pumpkins with a 1- and 3-year-old!!) The kids LOVED it. The entire time, Austin reminded us which pumpkin belonged to which person. He would say, "Mommy's punkin....Daddy's punkin.....Paige's punkin...my punkin"....over and over and over again. It really never got old, though, because it was so cute how he said it! :0)

On Thursday, Brian, Brian's mom, the kids and I all went to "Boo at the Zoo" and had a great time there. The kids loved being able to go to a zoo again (oh how we miss the Columbus zoo!!) and they got the added bonus of trick-or-treating while we were there! :0) We saw some great costumes (maybe a few ideas for Halloween's-to-come) and just enjoyed unusually nice weather. Paige LOVED being Cinderella and Austin had no say in being "Prince Charming". Paige had it all lined out. She knew she wanted to be Cinderella for a couple months and then she said that Austin had to be her Prince. Some days she said that he had to be the coachman or the footman, but I decided to stick with Prince Charming. When I was getting Paige dressed at the zoo, she was so excited and kept saying, "Mom, I'm going to be a true princess, right?!?" It was too cute.

It was a good thing we went trick-or-treating at the zoo because Bri's mom and I went on a State Volleyball date and were pretty much gym junkies for 2 days. It was so fun watching some good volleyball with my MIL. We always have a great time together and this weekend was no different! I have to thank Brian for taking care of the kids for me. He didn't feel very well and Austin refused to take a nap while I was gone, but he still did it. At times he was not very happy about it, but hopefully he knows how much I appreciate all he did this weekend!! Brian, Brian's dad, and the kids came with us for a few hours on Saturday. The kids actually did quite well considering the loud gym and the crowded bleachers. I've included a couple pics of the kids hangin' out at State V-ball!!

Well, enjoy the pictures and see if you can pick out Brian's favorite costume from the zoo! :0)

Here are a few extra pics that I couldn't resist putting on here. Paige got these glasses at preschool and of course we had to model them!!! :0)

Volleyball has come to an end

Yes, that's right. It happened a little earlier than the teams and I wanted it too, but Brian and my kids are definitely happy to have their wife and mommy back!! Maybe now I can get a few more things done and a few more people visited! I have to give a special thanks to all of my friends and family who watched my kids during practices, games and tournaments. I owe you all BIG TIME! I can't thank you all enough.

My cute little boy!

So, I just have to tell you how cute Austin is right now! He's saying the funniest things and makes me laugh so much every day. Paige is at preschool right now so Austin and I went to a couple stores. He wanted to be a big boy and climbed into his carseat by himself, but that's not all he wanted to do...he had to do up his buckle all by himself. "I do it, Mommy!!" he said. With just a little help from me, he did up his buckle and then said, "I did it!!" three times because that's how many times we had to click his seat belt. He had the biggest smile on his face! He said it so clearly that I just had to laugh. Oh, how I love this boy! He's also very into "Little Einsteins" on the Disney channel. He pats his little hands on his lap and says "Bast op" (Blast off, for those who aren't familiar with "Little Einsteins"!) :0) So cute!

Question

OK, I've heard from a couple of you saying that my blog isn't looking right. I know when Brian uses Mozilla Firefox to check the blog it doesn't look right, but when I'm using Explorer it looks fine. Do most of you see it correctly on your computers, or is it just the "Firefox" users that are having difficulty seeing it? It worked fine before I changed the background, but I don't know if that's the reason or not. Just let me know if you have suggestions/solutions.

Snow already!?!?!?

We woke up Saturday morning to this. (Take note of the trike and the basketball in these pictures.)

When I got home from my volleyball tournament it looked like this (Brian had already wiped off the railing, by the way!).

This is what it looked like Sunday morning. Do you see the trike and basketball now? This was such a crazy storm. My parents and in-laws almost always get more snow than us, but with this storm, they had flurries (ended up with a few inches) and we had this...around 10 inches! Crazy!!

When we heard that a storm was going to come in, we got out our winter clothes. Paige and Austin LOVED these hats (thanks Grandma Buhler!!) Have to love the suckers, too! :0)

Paige has been going through a "clothes" phase, especially with her jammies. By this I mean that she puts on jammies for bed the night before and she ALWAYS comes upstairs the next morning with a different set of jammies on. On Sunday she woke up in these jammies which are definitely NOT winter-type jammies. I had my slippers on, Austin had his slippers on and Paige wanted hers on, but her horse slippers are too small. She decided that she could settle for my fuzzy socks. She thought they were hilarious, as you can see in this pic!! ;0)
This snowstorm dumped wet, perfect for snowmen, snow. After naptime, we all went out to make a snowman. Paige informed us that we couldn't make a snowman...we had to build a snow princess instead, namely, Aurora. So that's exactly what we did. Brian and I are pretty proud of ourselves! :0) Of course Brian had to put a "chest" on the princess. We had to tone it down a bit when we noticed how "busty" she was and thought it was a bit too much. These pictures were taken before the "edited" version. :0) After the snow-princess making, the kids got on the sled and enjoyed having Brian take them around and around our backyard. He definitely got a workout doing this. The kids didn't want him to stop!

Isn't this Aurora the snow princess, great?!? Paige sure thought so! :0) We even put a crown on her! ;0)

Volleyball pictures

We had an amazing photographer, Nema Blanchard, take our volleyball team pictures this year. She did such an amazing job. She's based out of Pocatello and is the sweetest person you'll ever meet. As you can see, she does amazing work.

Here's both the JV (in red) and the Varsity (in black)

Coach Bowman and me

Funny story - When I met Carol the first time, we got talking and she told me that she grew up in Murtaugh. I told her that my dad grew up there also and then told her his name. She seriously about dropped dead at that moment because she went to school with him. She's a couple years younger, but when your graduating class is 15-20 people, you're pretty much in the same class! ;0) It definitely is a small world!!

My JV team
This cat would not move, so Nema just went ahead and included him in the photo shoot!