Happy Halloween

These pictures are out of order. Sorry. We had a little Halloween Party this year. Here's Will, Porter, Steph, and Rosie. Will loved his dinosaur costume so much last year, he wanted to wear it again this year. I was fine with that. :) Rosie was a lion, but when we trick-or-treated everyone thought she was a bear. I guess it looks like a bear from the front.

I asked Clark to carve the pumpkin this year because he is awesome at it. He even got out his drill to cut out some of the intricate parts of the belfry. The kids loved getting the seeds and "strings" out of the pumpkin. (His pumpkin won first prize at our party)

Clark wanted a mullet for Halloween so he grew his hair out for a few months. We cut a mullet, but he wanted it longer so we bought a mullet too. We had Will and Rosie try it on.

The kids LOVED Trick-or-Treating!! We only went down two streets, but they got plenty of candy.

Here's a few of us from our Halloween Party. Our friends, Brett and Liz with their daughter Brin. Clark and I. Derek and Jessica.

I Want

1) TWINS!!! That's right, you heard me. I have been baby-hungry lately and I've been thinking how much fun it would be to have two babies at once! I have been reading up on anything that would help my odds and it looks like if I eat a lot of sweet potatoes and dairy, my chances go up 5 times. Does anyone know anything else that would help? Unfortunately, I have NO relatives that have had twins so my genes aren't going to help me much.

2) To have a black belt in Karate. I watched my brother Josh at his Karate performance yesterday and I was so impressed. He is already a yellow belt and has only been in it a year. The teacher said it usually takes 5-8 years to become a black belt (so I could be 35 when I finally get it). I really want to do it though. I mentioned it to Clark and he's all for it.

3) To know where we'll be in 7 months. Just waiting is really hard for me. Clark has another career fair in a few weeks so maybe we'll be a little more certain of our future.

4) To find a bread recipe that actually turns out. Every one I've tried ends up too dense.

I never know what to put for the "post title"

Did I say I would update the blog on SUNDAYs? I meant THURSDAYs. Just kidding! At least I'm updating it, right? ;)

This past week at a glance:

Rosie is such a hoot! She is always doing things to make me laugh. Today, she put her bloomers on her head and walked around saying, "Nice hat, nice hat."

My beautiful sister, Laura had a birthday this week. It's so nice to have her close by. When I ask if she can watch the kids while I run errands, she not only watches the kids, she does my dishes too! She is a dream!

Will made his FIRST ever snow angel! It dumped on us this week and we took advantage. Will was in heaven! He made three snow angels in three minutes.

Here's the promised paper route picture. Man, I look scary! I definitely wouldn't like to run into that thing in a dark alley.

Cantaloupe. My kids love it. I cut it up and then let them suck the rest of the fruit off the peel. I'm bummed that it's more expensive now that it's season is over.

Sorry for the lack of posts

Man, I am getting worse and worse about blogging. I am going to TRY VERY HARD to do it on Sundays from now on. No promises though. ;0)

Life is great! I started a paper route and I actually really enjoy it. I love the cold, crisp morning air and those few moments of stillness before everyone wakes up. I am going to have to have Clark take a picture of me in my "paper route gear" because it is hilarious. I wear a ski mask, a big Carhartt coat, a headlamp, and a newspaper holder pouch.

The kids are growing too fast. (Yes, I am ready for another baby!) Will is such a sweet and busy child. Always playing with his cars, legos, tractors, etc. Rosie is talking so much now. The other day, I counted an 8 word sentence! Wow! She loves going on walks and picking the berries from our bush for the birds.

Clark is doing really well this semester and getting excited to be done with school. We are browsing job options and possibly considering the Navy.

Go pokes! We've won our last 3 games!!!

I turned 27. Notice the cute carrots on the cake? Amy (my lil sis) made them.


Recent pics of our family.

We had Rosie say, "Chinchilla" for the picture. We couldn't get a smile, but she loves chinchillas (because of an animal library book) so we had to make do.

Will on his trike. Need I say more?

Big Time Slacking

Catch up time!! :)

Clark and I celebrated our 4th Anniversary by going up to Hole in the Rock and having a picnic.

Here's my boys snoozing after all our hard work packing up at the end of summer.

Rosie and I at Bear Lake. The kids loved the sand!


Will enjoyed this scooter almost everyday this summer. He was able to anticipate when it was going to crash and he'd bail right before. It cracked me up.



We swam a lot this summer!

Escape

During a casual horse ride at a family reunion, Clark spotted a horney toad (scientifically a "horned lizard"). He jumped off his horse and put him in his saddle bag. When we got back to camp, we showed the toad to Will and it was love at first sight.

Will named him "Frog and Toad" (after the Arnold Lobel book) and we looked up everything we needed to know about horney toads on the internet.

We fed him ants, put a rock and sand in his bowl, and took him outside during the day to get some sunshine.

To our surprise, after two weeks of loving our pet, he disappeared. We fed him 15 ants that morning and brought him out on the porch to sunbathe. When Clark got home at 4:30 he asked, "Where'd Frog and Toad go?" I said, "Oh he probably buried himself in the sand. He likes to do that." Clark looked at me and said, "No, I don't think that's the case." I quickly raked through his sand and Clark was right, he was gone. We are hoping he just hopped out and wasn't eaten by a bird or something sad like that. We told Will he wanted to go back to his home.

I don't know what happened, but he will be missed. Here's to you Frog and Toad, wherever you may be.

concert

I am so excited! Clark is taking me to a Collective Soul concert tonight. Neither of us are HUGE fans, but he got the tickets free at his work so we're going. I am just pumped to go to a concert with my honey.

Other news . . .

Rosie stayed in nursery the entire time last week. :)

Will is almost completely potty-trained (minus a few accidents here and there)

Our car broke down again :(

I, for the first time, read "Anne of Green Gables" I LOVED it! Such a cute book with such flare.

Tea Party

Great Grandma Anderson invited us over for "tea" yesterday. It was so much fun! The girls made egg salad sandwiches, artichoke dip, pinwheels, and strawberry-banana shishkabobs. Everyone made a hat out of paper. When I asked Rosie if she wanted one, she said, "hmm mmm" so we sat her down and put the paper on her head. When we were taping it, she started crying so we quickly finished. Will was allowed to dress up as a cowboy since he was the only boy there.

Our eyes look a little funny in this picture because we tried to do "red eye" but it ended up blacking them out, so then we tried "blemish remover" and that made it worse.

The mind of a 3 year old

Two Sundays ago, Will asked if Rosie could go to nursery with him. I told him that she had to get a little bigger and then she could go. He thought for a moment, then said, "I know what to do. We take her little head off and put a big head on. Then she's bigger." Oh the mind of a 3-year-old!

On the subject of nursery, Rosie goes to our ward's nursery for the first time this Sunday. Last Sunday, we were in Logan attending Clark's cousin's mission homecoming. We tried taking Rosie to nursery, but after 30 minutes, she decided she had enough.

Going Private

After lengthy consideration, I have decided to go private. I know it's a pain to have to sign in and everything, but I think it's for the best. Plus, Clark's been begging me to since I started this blog. If you could e-mail me and let me know you'd like to keep looking at the blog by June 30th, that'd be wonderful.

On a different note, we've moved for the summer and I was smart enough to bring my camera, but not smart enough to bring my cord that attaches it to the computer. So . . . I'll still be blogging during the summer, but not putting up pictures. Bummer I know.

Girls Night Out and Mom's Birthday

What a fantastic weekend!! Ashley, Jessica, and I decided to have a GNO on Friday and it was SO fun! We went to "17 Again" and it is now my favorite chick flick. It is so cute and such a feel good movie. Then we hit up "Chili's" for molten cakes. We ended up staying until 11:30 then we realized we were the last ones in the restaurant and that they had closed at 11. We continued our girl chat at Ashley's house and didn't stop chatting until 1 in the morning! I haven't stayed up that late in years, but I absolutely loved it. It rejuvenated me, made me so grateful for Clark, and for good friends.

Saturday we celebrated my Mom's birthday by helping her plant trees in her yard. When she moved in, it was all rocks and tumbleweeds, but she has beautiful plans for it. She's planting lilac & rose bushes and elm & spruce trees. Next year we'll put in grass and a garden. Here's Amy, Clark and Laura digging in the dirt.

I am so grateful for my mom. She always sees the bright side of things and gives me hope even if life gets hard. She is beautiful inside and out. I love how we have the same taste in books, movies, clothes, and even lotions. She has taught me so much about love and life. I love my Mom!!

another mouse and fun foods

When your dryer starts making a high-pitched noise, watch out. It may be a mouse!! Yep, we had another mouse in our house. Our dryer started making a weird noise so I asked Clark to check it out. He took everything apart and inside one of the vents was a shrivelled (that might be misspelled) up mouse! Ewww. On the flip-side, I love being married to such a handyman!

Cheese bread and marinara sauce make such fun messes!

Nutella is fun too. These next two pictures are a tribute to my Grandma Weatherford. She didn't eat much chocolate, but she LOVED nutella. If you've never tried it, you should. It's a mix of hazelnuts and milk chocolate. It's great plain, as Rosie is demonstrating. Or I like it on graham crackers.

We had a great Easter! Since it was rainy outside, we hid the eggs around our house. Will was so happy every time he found an egg.

We dyed eggs with Betsy and Eric (my sister-in-law and soon to be brother-in-law) on Saturday. Now I have to figure out what to do with all those hard-boiled eggs!

Sad Realization

I usually don't vent on my blogs, but today is an exception. I realized something . . . read on! :)

Tuesday and Wednesday I watched my friend's 17-month-old son, (he's just 2 weeks older than Rosie). It was a lot of fun, but a lot of work! It seemed like at every moment at least one of them was crying and another one was getting into something.

I came to the realization that I'm not ready for another kid. It hit me hard because I've been really thinking I was ready to have another one . . . soon. After this boy's dad picked him up, I just crashed. I didn't do the dishes, I didn't pick up the house, and I went to bed early.

It made me appreciate and feel awe-struck at the women who raise multiple little kids. I've been contemplating whether some women are born with the "power" to have a lot of kids and some women aren't. Or if it's something learned. I'd love your opinion.

Anyway, I do think I will have at least one more child, maybe even two or three more. However, I want to be able to be a good mom and make sure their needs are met before I introduce more kids into the family.

Family

I don't have much to say, so I'm just going to explain the pictures from this week. :)

Here's Laura rocking Rosie. I am so glad Laura lives so close to us! Sisters are the best!

My Mom made an authentic Dominican Republic dish for lunch. It was a bean meadly over rice. It was quite good!

Here's cute Amy watching conference. (I made her pose for the picture)

Josh entertained Will and Rosie by blowing up a balloon and then letting it go and watching it fly. They were CRACKING up!

Rosie found a new love - fry sauce! She was slurping it off of her high chair. It was hilarious!

just more fun happenings

We just got back from some good times with Clark's family. Unfortunately my camera battery was dead before I could take one picture! Quick summary: We went to Flaming Gorge, Clark went golfing, we saw some dear friends and their new adorable son, and ate delicious food - Clark's mom is the best cook I've ever met.

Before we left for Spring Break, we decided to go camping.

Clark's making dutch oven potatoes (the best potatoes you'll ever have).

Around 8 o'clock it started getting cold. Really cold. Clark had the brilliant idea of not staying the night and instead heading home. Sounded good to me, so we didn't end up camping, just setting up our tent, eating dinner and sleeping in our warm beds at home. The next day we went up and hiked around and took our tent down.
How were we able to go camping, you might ask? We got a truck!! Clark is thrilled (and actually I love it too)! Now we can take off anytime and go up to the mountains or we can haul a mattress or any other thing that won't fit in a car. What possibilities! :)

Mops, Blankets, and Balls

Rosie has been a very good helper lately. She loves to throw her dirty diapers into the garbage. Yesterday she carried the mop around the front room and mopped our carpet.

Will was begging me to watch "Finding Nemo" one afternoon so I turned it on for him. A few minutes later, I went in to check on him and I found him asleep under his blanket. What a kid!

This really cute guy asked me to the Brown 'N Gold Ball on Saturday. :) He found a hilarious (or "sweet" in his words) suit at a thrift store. The owner said some guy brought it in and said he wore it in a barber's quartet in the 70's. I tried to find a dress that was somewhat 70's and somewhat modern. We had a great time.

Photo Tag

So you're supposed to go to your sixth folder and then pick the sixth picture and post it. Then tag six people to do the same thing...

Here is Will with my Dad. Will has a special love for his "Papa" and it melts my heart. I love seeing my Dad as a grandpa.

I tag anyone who wants to do this!

Sugar cookies and peach jam

For V-Day, Betsy made the most delicious sugar cookies and we decorated them. Will had such a fun time doing it. If you look closely, he did the ones with all the swirls. I asked what he was spelling and he listed everyone's name in our family.

This is my beautiful mom and beautiful sister helping with the kids.

Here's another beautiful sister, though she really didn't want me to take her picture. She was a peach jam pro. She helped me skin all the peaches and then pour them into the jars.

When Clark came home and saw that I was struggling with mashing the peaches, he jumped right in and helped. First he used a biscuit cutter (the peaches were still pretty firm), then he used the blender. Last he used two long knives, as you can see in this picture.

I learned that you really should wait until your peaches are soft before you make jam. But, it was a great night and the jam tastes pretty good too.