Payton's THREE!!!

 Holy smokes!  My little buddy's THREE years old!  How in the world did that happen! SERIOUSLY!  It was just yesterday that he was born for heavens sake!  So weird.  We had a few wonderful celebrations-complete with a SUPER WHY party!  Super why is a kids show on PBS that focuses on teaching kids how to read, and Payton EATS IT UP!  He LOVES it!  I tried and tried to get him to have a Cat in the Hat party, or ANYTHING else really besides a superhero themed party, but he would have NONE OF THAT! He is So into superhero's right now, it's kind of pathetic. BUT, whatever his brother likes, he likes- so that's what we went with!  We had a few of his friends over for a little party, and we had a great time.  We love Payton so much.  He is so completely full of energy that it makes me tired just LOOKING at him, but he is the sweetest kid ever.  He is so sweet, and is always willing to give hugs and kisses (even though most of the time he wipes MY kisses off!)  He is very independent, and can often be found in the kitchen trying to find something to eat or drink.  There have been more times then I care to admit that I have found him in the kitchen pouring himself a glass of orange juice in a brand new pitcher full of juice, or cutting into a brick of cheese with the sharpest knife that I own, or about 3/4 of the way through an entire package of pepperoni.  He loves to eat, that is for sure!  He absolutely LOVES LOVES LOVES to sing, and is always belting out some song and using words that he thinks are right, but usually just sound similar.  I LOVE that about him.  He isn't much into doing things that his parents would ask of him, but he is still a good boy.  We love the little squirt!  Happy Birthday Payton!  We can't believe you're three.

Coloring our Super Why Pictures in order to uncover some SUPER LETTERS

SUPER PAYTON!

The BIG MAN himself!  He wasn't quite into the coloring, but what else do you do for an alphabet party that isn't really supposed to be an alphabet party!  If Payton had his way, we would have given everyone a sword and they could have fought each other the whole time!  Again, I TRIED for a different kind of party, but who am I to deny my 3 yr. old his party request?!

Trying to solve the super story problem!

If you couldn't tell, the Super Story Answer was Happy Birthday 3!!!

Blowin out the candles with some major help from Jack Haynes!

Enjoying our snacks of cake, clementines, cheetos, potato chips and carrots with ranch dip.  All of these delicious and nutritious snacks were chosen by Payton, and they were all a HIT! :) 

CHEESE!

He loved opening all of his gifts and would give a very gratifying OOOHHH or AAAHHH as soon as each present was opened.  Cutest little dude ever!  Happy Birthday Payton!  We love you!

Thanksgiving!

Might be a good idea to get this post on before Christmas TOMORROW!  SO here goes...
We had a FANTASTIC Thanksgiving this year!  It was so much fun.  We were able to go down to Las Vegas to visit my dear sister Courtney and her entire family.  She just had a new baby girl - Libby- and it was SO nice to be able to meet her and snuggle her lots and lots!  The kids had a marvelous time playing with their cousins, and had the ROUGHEST time leaving when it came time to pull them apart! They don't see each other near as much as they want to, which is a real shame, because they love each other so much, but it was really fun to be able to hang out for a few days at least!  We ate- LOTS- and had great conversation.  My ENTIRE family was able to come and play!  The WHOLE gang!  It was so nice to be with everyone- with nothing to do!  It was so fun. Court put on a great Thanksgiving feast, and we were all stuffed to the brim when the meal was over.

The day after Thanksgiving we were able to to on a REALLY fun hike with everyone and the kids had a blast.  It was just so much fun to be able to be with everyone.  I love my family, and wouldn't rather be with anyone else.  Happy Thanksgiving!!!! (better late than ever :) )

      Sorry...my computer's doing really funny things...I can't get any more pictures to download! Sorry...maybe I'll get more on here later. :)  Happy Thanksgiving anyhow!

Fall Fun

Had to document the kids playin in the leaves before it starts to snow.  They had SOOO much fun playing in this GARGANTUAN pile of leaves!  As did Gus...he thought it was pretty sweet too!

Girls Weekend! BOOYEAH!

Thanks to my beloved (Cole, for those that can't figure that one out!) I was able to go on a really fun getaway weekend with my girlfriends!  It was SOOO much fun, and I can't wait for our next one-whenever it is!  Lindsay- my long lost Lindsay- who just up and had to MOVE to Chicago, was able to come into town- hence the girls weekend- and we had such a great time.  We missed 2 of our other out of town-ers, but look forward to being able to see them for the next time. 
So on Friday night, as soon as the hubs was home from work, we all headed out to Heather's Aunt's house who so graciously allowed us to crash at her house so that we would have no kid distractions and so we wouldn't have to pay for a hotel room.  There, we ate, chatted, and crafted the night away!  We stayed up until like 2 or 3 a.m. until we all passed out from being so tired!  I don't know how we ever did this all the time when we were in college!  I'm old.  Anyways...we had SOOO much fun!  These girls are all AMAZING crafters, and I have learned SOO much from all of them!  It is fun to see what these ladies can bust out on any given night ! There's always something to be done right?!?

From left to right- back row: Anna Gordon, Brett East, Laura Cronin, Brittany Call, Stephanie Wessler, Lindsay Moss  Bottom Row: Your's truly, Heather Schafer, Stacie Smith.  Steph Dix came a bit later, but missed the photo opp.  Too bad really.

Britt and Stacey talking GARDENS of all things!  Never to early to start for these two!

Heather BUSTIN out her sewing machine.  SHE is the machine! Crazy this girl is.  Amazing.

Steph W., Laura Cronin, Lindsay Moss and Brett East.  Of the 4, only Brett isn't with child!  YEAH for babies!

Lookin good. Nice double chin.  DON'T LOOK!  Sheesh!  I'm sensitive about that!

The next morning, we finally all rolled out of bed, ate breakfast and were ready to go by 10:00 a.m.  We headed to downtown Denver and hit the shops that none of us are ever able to go to with our children!  Love kids, but they sure do put a damper on things like this.  We had a great time shopping all the quaint little shops on Broadway.  We all got a few things, and had a great time.  We then stopped by one of my favorite restaurants here in Denver- The Hornet.  It's nothing fancy- just a restaurant- but it is REALLY yummy!  We were joined by our lovely friend Cindy Chadwick (not pictured) and had a fantastic time celebrating her birthday!  SO FUN!

Me, Steph Wessler and Lindsay

Ahh....the beloved self portrait!  Nevermind that there were 6 other ladies to take the picture for us!

Laura, Steph Dix, and Heather

Linds and Brett- enjoyin the meal!

After lunch, we headed to a little place called Tootsies and all got pedicures!  It was SO much fun!  It was just a little shop and there were 8 of us.  So while 4 of us got our feet pampered, the other 4 chatted away- and then we switched!  

Cindy joined us for the pedicures along with Aerie Naandi!  So fun they were able to slip away from their families for a few minutes to hang with us.

As soon as the pedicures were enjoyed, we headed Downtown to the Denver Art Museum for the free day!  We opted to spend our money on things we REALLY wanted to do- and take advantage of the things that are free!  We had a great time, but were getting pretty tired at this point.  But we had a great time anyways!

View of the Denver Skyline from one of the Observation Decks in the museum.  SO PRETTY!

After the museum, we all headed over to La Fondue (a fun fondue restaurant in downtown Denver) and ate a fantastic meal!  We ate so much! It was so much fun!  We chatted lots- weird I know! (Cole calls it clucking- like hens!) We had to pound down our dessert pretty quickly because the peeps there weren't the speediest on the planet- but it was still delicious!

Took lots of pictures of Laura- don't know why- but it was funny!

Anna joined us again for dinner- with Steph Dix

Tried LOTS of times to get a group shot  Here's one of the attempts.

THERE it is!

Brett and me- Smoky Joes!

Silly Stacey!  She was able to join us again. Laura, Anna and Steph.

After an inhaled dessert, we scurried over to an improv show down the street, and enjoyed the show they put on!  We were all pretty tuckered out, but had a good time anyways with the peeps makin us laugh!

Gettin ready for the show

Again with the self portraits!

All in all- it was a VERY fun weekend!  I consider myself SO blessed to know all of these girls.  I have learned something very valuable from each of these girls, and can't wait for all the "Girls Weekends" to come!  Thanks Linds for coming into town! 

(Just realized how many pictures there are in this post!  What can I say, I like pictures!)

Poor poor baby! ER Visit #1

So- I was proven wrong this past Halloween.  It wasn't Payton that I took to the ER first...it was my dear sweet Lincoln.  The poor guy, after coming home from the Trunk-or-Treat, and having a nice warm bath to get all of the face paint off of him, had quite the ordeal.  He was the last one out of the bath- Cole was bathing the kids and I was out in the family room preparing for my lesson the next day in Young Women's.  Payton got out first and Cole was in his room getting him dressed.  We had been having a squirt gun fight while the kids were in the bath, and when we finished with the fight, Cole put the squirt gun up on the ledge in the bathroom.  When Cole and Payton were in the bathroom, we heard a HUGE thud, and a quick WAIL!  I jumped up faster than I even knew I could, and was in the boys room as Lincoln arrived as well- with blood STREAMING down his face/body!  He had totally put his teeth entirely through his lip, and it was gushing blood.  Cole and I knew immediately that it needed stitches, so we located where the after hours clinic was and Cole headed out with him.  It was SOOO hard for me to stay home and not be there with the sweet little dude.  But Cole was exactly what Lincoln needed.  Lincoln is pretty much over the moon for Cole.  They were only there for a couple of hours too- which was pretty good I thought!  He got two little stitches on his lip.  The doctor informed us that they don't usually stitch up lips when it is on the PINK part of your lip, but do when it is on your skin.  Luckily, Lincolns was on the EDGE!  So, he had to get 2 little blue stitches, and his lip looks great.  We go back in a few days to get them taken out.  Link has been quite the trooper through it all.  The one thing he said when they were in the car and Cole was concerned that he had a concussion and was trying to keep him awake was "Dad...I really wanna show my friends!"  It was then that he knew that he would probably be alright.  Let's hope that our next trip to the ER isn't for quite some time!

So sad!

Look at that lower lip!  And it isn't even swollen!  This is how it looks all the time.  You could trip a wire with that thing! 

Good shot of the two little stitches.

Such a sweet face.

Happy Halloween!

We had a VERY fun Halloween this year, and the kids were SUPER cute to boot!  First, Lincoln had a fun dress up party at school to which he exclaimed "Mom!  I was the ONLY superhero!  Can you even BELIEVE IT!!!!"  He really enjoyed his costume this year- as did Payton.  These AWESOME capes were made by my uber-talented sister Courtney for Christmas last year, and they have not come off for a solid year!  For the past couple of weeks, I have been letting them wear them wherever we go- because otherwise it's quite a fight, so that's been pretty fun/interesting.  Morgs was a duck to begin with, but then when we decided to decorate our car like the "Bat Cave" for our ward's Trunk-or-Treat and I made Bat Masks for both Cole and I, we decided that Morgs needed in on the "super" action as well.  Thus the birth of SUPERDUCK!  She was pretty dang cute if I do say so myself.  The Trunk-Or-Treat was SURELY a treat this year!  There were lots of people there, which makes for lots of candy, which in turn makes for happy kids.  Lots of great costumes, fun friends, and halloween candy make for a spooktacular night!  We did some fun games inside the church for the activities before the big trunk-or-treat and the kids weren't so sure.  They decided that it would be best- and for SURE more in character to just run around the gym tackling each other, and trying to "GET" each other.  Many wrestling matches were broken up.  But they sure had fun! 

Cutest Duck EVER!!

The "Supers"

They had a donut on a string eating contest, but Payton did NOT think that was the best idea in the land.

They also had an apple pushing contest- you had to push the apple with your nose.  Payton said that he wanted to do it, so I joined in the fun- but Payton- instead of pushing the apple with his nose- decided to eat the apple while it was on the ground!  I swear this kid has more personality than anyone!  SO fun.

Big fan of the sucker!

Trick or TREAT!

The Superheros with their friend Thomas.  Jack (Thomas's brother) wasn't in the mood for a picture!

SUPER FAMILY!!!

And of course...Gus was a superDog.  If you can't tell, he is wearing a little cape.  (Which he didn't love and tried to get it off the whole night!  But we must keep up appearances eh?!)

Morgs and her Betrothed....Logan Wessler.  It's SO dang cute!  Logan says a few words- one of which is "MO" every time he sees Morgan!  TRUE LOVE!

  
  The next day, we went to a fun little going away/Halloween party for our friends the Schafers- Whom our kids will miss TERRIBLY! (and mommy of course!) and then came home to a SPOOKY Halloween dinner!  We had soup in homemade (yeah that's right...HOMEMADE) breadbowls, Halloween Jell-o Jigglers, and some spooky green punch.  It was so fun, and Lincoln was WAY excited that he could even eat his bowl!  He thought that was pretty spiffy.  We decided not to go trick-or-treating, so we stayed home and the kids had a "special movie night" and they chose to watch Monsters Inc.- an appropriate Halloween movie if I do say so myself!  We had a great time, and the kids are already scheming up their costumes for next year!  Happy Halloween!

You mean I can EAT the BOWL!!?!???!

Morgan eating her fill

Payton pointing to the Bread Bowl.  He thought the soup was the Beezneez!

The Jigglers...which didn't work out just right.  I didn't have FOUR pkgs of gelatin like it calls for!  Talk about sugar overload! The boys/girls all loved these!  SPOOKY!

Morgs dug on the jello too.  She will eat just about ANYTHING!