Merry Christmas

So THIS is an ice storm

I've heard about ice storms, but never really knew what they were! Alas, I am enlightened. Holy cow! I was waiting until it was late enough this morning and called my sisters and mom because I wanted to talk to people about the weather! Last night about 7 pm I was outside and it was raining slush and so cold, so I knew what that was a recipe for. This morning when I looked outside, I was so surprised. Our front three steps are covered in pure ice, as is our driveway or "ice rink" pictured below. The car is completely encased! I thought it was frozen to the ground. Anyone looking for a last minute gift for me, an ice pick would be great. I sat there for a few minutes chipping at my handle with my keys. Then I got the car started and scraped forever!

Aren't they so pretty? Here are some bushes right out our door completely iced with a few remaining leaves and berries.

Here is a decent view of the car.

That is the back window rolled down and a sheet of ice over it.

And a little Sawyer...here he is getting his groove on at a church Christmas party! He has been dancing so intensely lately, it's hilarious. Apparently, according to the show So You Think You Can Dance, he krumps.
Hope everyone is keeping nice and toasty. As my friend said today, now I really understand what it means when they say "Utah, the greatest snow on earth." Because it's true!!! Nice and white and fluffy...

And we're back!

Congrats to E on breaking our record for # of comments, he's so popular. For those of you who didn't know, our computer had been broken so I feel like I've been so out of it! I've been able to access the internet through E's laptop, but other than that I've felt so helpless without all my stuff. So this last week my friends threw me a spectacular baby shower, aren't they so sweet! So here is the one of two shots I got of all of us ;) I got some super cute things, ate some delicous mint ice cream with fudge and got to hang out! Thanks to Tamara especially for putting everything together!

To the little funny man. When he wakes up in the morning and from naps he hordes all of the things in his bed, binkys, blankets, babys, books...so I got a mug shot the other day. Here he has two binkys in his left hand, two blankets on his left shoulder and his baby on his right...such a funny boy...today he broke his own personal best and brought SIX binkys down from his nap, they were falling all over the place, so he'd cry and we'd stop and he would somehow manage to hold them all again for a minute, and then another would fall...

Happy Birthday E!

Happy Birthday E!

Happy happy birthday to my love! I have an amazing husband who I am so grateful for, he loves to spend time with us and would choose that over anything in the world, maybe even basketball. A few of his favorite things are BYU football and basketball, The Office, studying, Cadbury mini eggs, Coke, playing any sport, fantasy football, rough housing with Sawyer, food in general, funny video clips, discussing names endlessly with me, and of course Sawyer, baby boy 2 and ME! I hope you have a fantastic birthday, you deserve it.

It's SO magical!

The thought of putting up Christmas is a lot more fun, and actually doing it kinda isn't :) But day after Thanksgiving, we got all the goods out and started the work! It was fun for Sawyer, he loves the lights and the balls on the tree. He takes them off at least once a day. He grabbed one of the balls that first night, and said, "ball!" as he threw it and broke it...he throws the nativity too, but luckily it isn't breakable! Here are some of the decorations. Can I tell you there is no way to take a good pic of a lit up Christmas tree? At least with my camera...oh well ;) The stockings I added our initials to, and I think it turned out pretty cute!It was a nice night, and now that we're our own little family, it's cute to see the traditions starting. We had holiday music on, but when we saw it was taking a lot longer than a few tunes, we watched Christmas Story and part of Christmas Vacation, my two favorites to watch every year. We had to end the night with cookies of course, and if you're wondering how to eat a cookie, Sawyer has a good little tutorial below. Cookie is his new favorite word, surprised? It sounds a little like this. "Cookie! Mo(more)? "

St. Louis and Thanksgiving

The Trip
We decided on Monday night to take a quick trip to St. Louis, so we pricelined a hotel and Tuesday we were off! It's a three and a half hour drive, but when you get closer to the city, you get to see really pretty things and stores, like Costco and malls, that was fun. We got into the hotel, the Hyatt, it was downtown and in the old Union Station, so it looked really cool especially in the lobby, no pics, sorry. We went out to eat at Hard Rock Cafe. How do you eat with a 1 year old? Seriously? Ridiculous! These were at the mall and we thought they were hilarious.
Sawyer "sleeping"
So when we went to bed that night, we wanted to take full advantage of the next day so we could do everything we wanted, and that meant a full nights rest. Well, let's just see how Sawyer felt about that. We had all his familiar stuff, blankie, binkys, things that lights up and plays music. We did the regular bedtime routine and laid him down, and went into the hallway. The room was small so the pack and play is just next to the bed. Well he started to cry, and then he sounded scared so we went in and got him. 99% of the time, I am grateful to have a baby who sleeps on his own, in his own bed and he won't sleep with us. So we tried to put on tv to see if he would fall asleep, no. I carried him around like an infant, singing to him and rocking him, nothing. After thirty minutes of this, we decided he had to go to sleep himself, so we laid him back down and left, and this time no crying. Wahoo, we did it. Wrong. 2 a.m. he's crying, and I am literally a foot from him. I think I got him before he really woke up, because I pulled him next to me and he was asleep in seconds. He tossed and turned the next three hours and woke up at 5 ready to go! He was hitting us and laughing...so we tried the same routine for the next 45 minutes, tv, trying to get him to lay down...finally we put him back in the pack and play and just went around the corner and sat in the dark. Well he didn't cry, but he was playing with his music thing for like 20 mins! We could see him, his eyes heavy and red, but he wouldn't close them! We decided to sneak back into bed, so we crawled to the opposite side and climbed in. And then...he stood up! We were a foot away from each other. E and I were both looking at him, and he yells "hey!" We just froze! So he tries yelling hey a few times, kinda whimpered, laid back down and soon was to sleep! Wahoo!! Long story, I know, but it was so crazy! Then he got up at 8:30, now that's acceptable without all the stuff in between.

The Zoo
The zoo was fantastic! We loved it, FREE, not even to park because we were able to park on the street! When we first came in, we thought we were going to die, no other people and all this rustling in the bushes, so scary. But after an hour we started to see more life. Sawyer loved it, since he's getting all his animal sounds down lately. He especially loved the monkeys, and two that were fighting he thought they were really funny. His other favorites were "nakes". The whole reptile house he was running around looking in different cages, talking about who knows what!

City Museum
This was the craziest place! It is not a museum in the traditional sense at all. There are not exhibits like that. The whole place is made out of recycled materials. It used to be a shoe factory apparently. The first pic is the outside of the museum, and there are hundreds of people climbing and crawling through all the slides and tunnels. There is an old plane, school bus, all sorts of stuff. It's probably 4-5 stories high. The inside is similar, caves and slides, it is such a cool place and definitely a St Louis must.

This is a tunnel that E went through, it was tiny and probably went 50 feet, I have no clue really but it was a good amount. Halfway through you can stick your hand through a hole, so that's the pic with Sawyer.

You can use elevators and stairs from level to level, but they also have slides and tunnels to go from one to the next. As you can imagine, I avoided anything of the sort. I did take Sawyer down one slide.
Does that look comfortable?Sawyer slept the first hour we were there. When he woke up, he sat straight up and pointed straight ahead and said "Whoa". He liked the place instantly! (They also have a circus that performs a couple times a day...no pics)
So you MUST click on the pic below to get an appreciation of where E was and what he was crawling through! And there were 3 and 4 year olds crawling it as well!


The Arch

On our way out of town we stopped at the arch when the sun had just gone down. E and I were much more impressed with it then we thought we would be! It was very cool, we didn't go to the top though.Thanksgiving

Thank you for all your calls on Thanksgiving! We can tell we were loved! Just kidding, apparently the only one who loves us is my sister Amy and her kids, thanks AMY! But I didn't get sad, and you are all lucky so don't pull this stunt on Christmas, because I was so busy the whole day, I didn't even get Amy's call. We had a great Thanksgiving with a few friends, and I think all of our mother's would have been proud. We had all the food covered, I was impressed. Unfortunately I only got about three pics. And, Friday morning, I kept the tradition alive with a friend Megan, and we hit the WalMart (everyone in Kville was there) at 5 am, it was great.

The Adventures of Sawyer

A video of Sawyer and us...although it looks a little long, I edited the whole thing so it should be entertaining throughout! Make sure you have volume, that's definitely important. Enjoy!

IMPORTANT NOTICE: I MISSPELLED INSTALLMENT AT THE END OF THE VIDEO AND IT WOULD TAKE WAY TOO LONG TO FIX ON THE ACTUAL VIDEO, SO I STAND CORRECTED.

HALLOWEEN!

So I realized I hadn't posted any Halloween yet! What the?? So here we go, there were many events. My little "wives club" SAA had a trunk or treat, and Taylor and Sawyer learned the best way was to stay in our trunk and take our candy...(He is a monkey, but it was hot so he just has a t-shirt on here.) From his photo shoot including our Halloween Card.

Ever since E and I have been married, so for five years, we would go to my sister's house every Halloween and trick or treat with her kids. It was special for us and for them, and we were all missing each other this year. So Amy and I decided to take some pics of us, and she printed them off so they could take us trick or treating with them :) Hence, the little captions. Garen is our nephew, and a couple of years ago I made a rule that they had to give us candy, and so I based it on their age. Well Garen became quite obsessed with this, so I've always teased him about how much he has to give us and whatnot. He thinks it's funny, so that is what the caption on E's pic means.

Our ward also had a carnival type activities and a trunk or treat. Poor Sawyer has had pretty bad ear infections the last couple of weeks, so he has been sleep deprived. Although he wasn't sad over any of these events, probably not as animated as he might have been.

At the begining of the month we went to a corn maze. They had tons of stuff, a bounce house, straw pile, corn cannon (my fave), hay ride and a maze! Well we apparently beat the record because they said it was 18 mins, and we timed ourselved and it was 17 mins! Wahoo! E was busting through that thing, I was impressed. The corn cannon was hilarious, you shot corn through this tube thing into a field with targets. However, no one was shooting at the targets, there were probably 8-10 cows that everyone was aiming for. And it was no secret, the guy who was manning the cannon would say, "Oh you almost hit that one!" We didn't hit any, and we didn't see anyone hit one, but we were close! It was funny, I have footage maybe I will get it up later.

Sawyer being a daredevil with his skull and bones cap on.

Sorry to embarass you E, but this was too funny. I see him walking up the stairs with all of this the other night, and I was laughing so hard I had to get the camera. He has a glass of grape juice, with two chinese new year's cookies on top, and the ENTIRE bowl of Halloween candy! He didn't just grab a handful, I was mocking him quite a bit, but when you look like E, it's all good. I can promise if this was me, the picture would've been deleted off of the camera, memory card, hard drive...etc.

Sawyer helping make some Halloween frosting. He was dipping his binky into the powder sugar and putting it into his mouth. I realize this pic looks quite dangerous and you might call DCFS on me, seeing as he is about 4 feet off the ground with loads of knives behind him, but I promise I was right there with him the entire time, only stepping back to take the pic!

Check it out!

Okay so Halloween is almost or is over, but you need to check out our Fresh Poppy Design blog. My sister made the CUTEST treat, to die for!!

GuiLtY

So I started feeling guilty last night writing in my sometimes journal. Here my second son isn't even born and I am already feeling like I'm neglecting him! I label all my posts, and if you look (on the right side of the blog) it has my labels and how many posts fall under each label. Of my 40 something posts, Sawyer has 24, by far the most (which he is in every one of them, just that I labeled the ones that were specifically about him). Not that this is bad, he is our only baby for crying out loud, it's just that maybe it should be called "Sawyer's Every Moment" blog :) So I thought, hey, why not blog about someone else for a change!

Today S and I went to the storage to get his clothes from "up to 6 months" so I could see what I might need for baby boy 2 since I am going to town soon. As I was going through the baby clothes I got really excited! I have been really overwhelmed thinking of a new baby in the house, I haven't stopped to enjoy it as much as I should! I just started thinking of this little guy in my tummy, who is getting increasingly bigger and bigger, and I just want to meet him! It's crazy thinking of bringing a whole new person to the world. I am looking forward to snuggling this little guy and smelling that newborn smell....plus it means family will be visiting!

So here is to Baby Boy 2, still unnamed and dutifully searching for one, WE LOVE YOU!

PS The pic is of the super cute quilt my mom made that will be for him, or one the same with different fabrics. She invented it all herself, isn't she fab? Also, his due date is January 10th for those of you wondering...

Scrapping Bug

I am wanting to scrapbook anytime I can lately! And too many things are preventing me :) The first is a ton of journaling, talking all about him as a one year old and some funny stories and about his personality! The second page was from a photo shoot when he was 10 months old at Gardner Village done by my fantabulou sister Heather and third was this May when he was super sick! Last is "The Adventures of Sawyer" which I just printed in an 8 x 10 and put in his little reading "nook".