Dancing Queen

M and her class had their dance recital last week, and... well.... just watch.


More photographic evidence, and yes, some will be saved for blackmail opportunities of the future...

I Must Be Crazy.

I have to be. There is just no logical reason I feel like this!! Any sane person {stop snorting in laughter at the thought of me being called sane, Mandy and Sam} would not feel like this, they just wouldn't. What am I feeling?


I want to move back to Utah.


*gasp!*


This is the same crackhead who was soooo excited to move to SoAZ and away from the "bubble" and the snow? Yes. But I miss it. We were watching the local news and they mentioned that it had snowed all day in Salt Lake, and what was my reaction? My heart twinged and I said "aww... I miss snow." Remember, I'm a Canadian, so I'm not a wimp about snow, but one does get tired of it after awhile, but I guess I'm over that tiredness. I miss snow, and it makes me sad that J has never seen a real snowstorm, and that P and M have never gone sledding. When I was M's age I'd already sledded my way headfirst into a cement pole, for cripes sake! Come to think of it, that might explain my personality... but I digress.
I miss the Mormon-ness too. I complained my way all over about that, but in all honesty, I really miss that. I hate walking into the supermarket and having to wave smoke out of my babys face. Plus the shopping in Utah is so much better. One word: IKEA. *swoon* Mum and I used to go there all the time back in Hamilton, to peruse and to have lunch. Great food, so cheap! The housing market is so much better there, bigger houses for about the same as we paid for our house, whaaat.
And I miss the family and friends there. Half of CJ's family lives there, and even though we didn't see them all that often, it was nice knowing they were there. Plus my polygamist husband and wife Sam and Mandy live there, and I miss going out with them and getting looks!
Not that SV is so horrible, it's not. The shopping is eh, Target only gets you so far, but the ward and the friends we've made here are INCREDIBLE, and CJ really does love his job. I wish I could combine the two worlds.
Maybe we'll get back there soon, for good. Fingers crossed, right?
So, to end on a high note, here's something that makes me crack up laughing every freaking time I watch it, it just never gets old. Thanks to Crazyland for making me think of it, and making me snort soda out my nose watching it.

In Honor of the New President...

I had a dream. I dreamt that I was at the inauguration. It was so cool!!! Patriotic flags flying, people crying, cheering, so on and so forth.

But.

It wasn't Barack Obama, or George W. Bush on the stand. It wasn't even the Presidential inauguration. It was our Bishop that was being released, and a new one being sworn in. Fanfare and all. And the {old} Bishops wife was up on the podium with him, he escorted her off to band music playing, as the new Bishop took his place, but not before being sworn in on a Bible by a Supreme Court Justice. Or maybe it was a Book of Mormon... I can't remember. But I remember crying and thinking how special it was to be present on such an important day.

I think I need to stop watching the news so much.

Calming Down...

Ahh... okay. Breathing again. :) Still feeling a bit in limbo, but meh, it's fine.

Parents came for the weekend. Kids were in HEAVEN. It was short, but very fun! Their hotel (which was soooo nice) had an indoor swimming pool, and the kids loved playing in it. P even got used to the water a bit more, and even jumped to CJ's arms. Woo! Haven't uploaded the pics yet tho. We also went on a {long} drive to a lake and had a picnic and CJ and the kids fished, but didn't catch anything. Didn't get M and Ps room painted like we planned, but we had fun and that was much more important.

So, since I don't have any pics of the weekend up yet, how about some of my favorite 365 photos? You can see all of them at A Year of Fish ...

Like A Dog...

Ever feel like a dog chasing its tail, just going round and round and never really getting anywhere? Well... that's me right now, or at least how I feel. I have so many things that I want to get done or do, but as soon as I start on one thing, I start thinking about something else that I want to do. Ugh! I just need to get it cleared out already! Ha.

M told me an interesting story at bedtime on Saturday. I was about to leave she said "mummy, I have to tell you a story."
Me: "okay"
M: lots of mumbling and wierd word placements, arm waving "the boys.... they were fighting... and they HIT." *mimics punching*
Me: "oh... someone hit you?"
M: "Nooo. The boys. They HIT."
Me: *slightly lost* "Who did the boys hit?"
M: *exasperated* "THE BOYS. THEY HIT."
Me: "They hit eachother? The boys?"
M: "yes!!"
Me: "Oh... why did they hit?"
M: "The boys just hit. Like this." *mimics punching again*
Me: "Oh.... okay."
M: "Yeah. They're naughty boys." *shakes her head*
Me: "Yes, they are."
M: "Night, mummy, I love you!"
I leave, still wondering what exactly we're talking about.

Ah... gotta love kids.

I Hate HTML

Well, took me most of the time I was home today to figure out how to get the three column thing going on in here {smooches to Lacie for listening to my ranting and helping me figure this crap out} but taa daaahhh!!! New blog look for a new year. Score. Seriously, I swear I'm fairly good with a computer, but HTML and I just do NOT get along. At all. A few expletives escaped my saintly mouth while trying to figure this out, I'm not ashamed to admit it.

M is back at preschool, and I'll show my crappy parent side by admitting just how glad I was to see her get on that school bus. P, J and I celebrated by sharing a personal pan pizza at Target. Getting out with just two kids is so much easier than three, trust me. I admit, I'm one of those moms who secretly rolls my eyes at the overdramatic people who complain about getting out with one kid and mutter to myself "I remember those days...". And secretly I wish I could go back in time and smack myself for thinking it was just so hard to get out with one OR two kids. Teehee. Now I'm not saying I roll my eyes at people who have a hard time with two kids, I've been there and done that. It's the people who think they have it SO much worse than anybody else POSSIBLY could, blah blah blah. Really, it's a select few people that I've ever met, and chances of them reading this blog are slim to none, so untwist your knickers, because I'm not talking about you.

Tried to start potty training P this week... yeah. I stopped. My kids enjoy their diapers too much. The boy is scared of the potty, so I had it out in the living room. Well, J thought it was mucho fun and P still wanted nothing to do with it, so that idea tanked. So I set the peepee timer, and about 2 minutes before it went off I hear P start crying, I turn around and he's walking towards me like he'd just been horseback riding for 5 days straight, and there's a zig zag of a pee trail behind him in the hall. Really... crappy parent in me *still* wishes I'd gotten a picture of it. All I could do was laugh hysterically, which instead of making HIM laugh too like it usually does, upset him more. Oops. So I comforted and stripped the undies off of him and slapped a diaper back on. We'll try again in a week. Or more. Another hilaaaaaarious part of this was him calling the Thomas underwear I got him "panties". Oh law, it's awesome. CJ hates it, it's not manly blah blah, but oh my gosh, I crack up. Especially in Target when we walk by the toddler underwear and P says at the top of his high pitched lungs "look mummy! Look! It's CARS panties! Look look! I want those panties!". Even the Target worker was snorting in laughter. Priceless.

Happy New Year!

And, to celebrate the new year and all its potential and possibilities and blah blah blah, I have reopened my 365 blog!

*cue applause*

http://ayearoffish.blogspot.com/

Three pics of three cute kids, what better way to celebrate January 2nd.




Ah, what else.

Oh.

Yes.

Congratulations to the Utes for a games freaking awesomely played. {I think I threw up in my mouth a little typing that.} Yes, pains our Cougar blue blood to say so, but the Utes kicked some Bama butt. That should shut Nick Saban up, and maybe get some more respect for the MWC. So three cheers for the Utes, and BYU alum Kyle Whittingham. {sorry, had to tie the win to BYU somehow...}

Took the tree down yesterday, and spent today wandering around our not-design-oriented enough town looking for fun things to dress up the entertainment center with. I want to decorate with pink and red and cheesy Valentiney shtoof, CJ's a totally party pooper and wants to be klassy. Boo on that, I say! But we found some nice vases which I have promptly put Valentines M&Ms in, which took me too long because I'm anal and had to sort by color, and M&Ms TOTALLY skimped on the white ones!! I had four times the amount of red ones as I did white. Rude. But I got clever and figured out a pattern I like... not that it matters. Grubby little CJ hands will eat them within the week, I'm sure. Although I got the peanut ones too, to use as distraction... we'll see.

Christmas

Christmas was great. As much as I wish we could be with family, it's fun to have it just our somewhat-little family. M and P still don't fully get Santa, but they got that he brought presents and wouldn't come if they were naughty. Great motivation to be good...

It looked like Toys R Us threw up in our house in the morning, it was awesome. We ended up having to get P some plastic totes to put all his Thomas in because we have no more storage left. And I've stepped on quite a few sharp little trains already, and came very close to "accidentally" chucking them through a window. Good thing the shades were closed.

M got a kitchen and seeing her face when she saw it... it was so great. She got really shy as if she wasn't sure it was for her, and then was just SO excited. She loves it. ALL of them love it, actually.

J got some fun toys, but it's hard to find toys for his age that we don't already have in some way or another. Not the best picture, but you can see the load of Thomas crud everywhere.

And what did CJ and I get for Christmas? Tee hee hee hee.... one of the best presents I've ever gotten.

A new TV!!!!!! To sound like TAMN---Squeeeee!!!!!!!!!! Yep, we used CJ's bonus to get a new 42" HDTV. No, we're not being wasteful with money, we did need a new TV as our old one was starting to go, and watching movies with green corners just isn't as fun as on a new TV. We'd had that TV since we were newlyweds, and my parents had had it before us. I'm such a suck and teared up in the van as CJ was donating it to Salvation Army here. What a dork. Sucky thing is, our cable company doesn't have HD channels yet (bah) so we're switching to DirecTV. CJ's like a little kid on a sugar high, thinking about watching the Super Bowl in HD. And now you've also seen part of our house, aren't you all so excited? In all it's white walledness? I should take more pics of this room and have you guys tell me what to paint it, if even to paint it. It's so whacky shaped it's hard! Oops. There I go on a ramble again.

So Angie, Jesse and Staci will be proud, but I've been thinking about getting back into scrapping (both ways, digi and paper) again. I took a big fat break because I was just feeling.... overwhelmed I guess. I had other things going on IRL and in the online world, and I let it slip off my radar of things that relax me. But I'm like a fly drawn to a bug zapper with all the pretty doodads out there for both kinds of scrapping, and I've been collecting a bit here and there. I made a mini album for my friend Kim for her baby boy Spencer, turned out cute. Of course, forgot to take pics of it, durr.

J is finally standing with support!!! And he's figured out his feet and takes STEPS while holding onto our hands!! AND he's crawling on his hands and knees now!! Really, the amount of progress he's made in the last month just makes me burst with cheesy mummy pride. Shelley is so pleased she's letting us go to an appointment every two weeks instead of every week, which is very nice since our copays are going up to $50 a pop. J is also very proud of himself, and loves to show off his skillz anywhere. Little lovebug. He also has discovered that tipping the bowl straight into his mouth is mucho faster than bothering with silly things like spoons or fingers.

Another Fun Visitor!

From Wednesday until today, my mum came to town for a pre-Christmas visit, since she and Richard are ditching the States in favor of the beaches of Bermuda for Christmas. Color me jealous... but never mind. We had a BLAST.
The kids loved having her around.
We made gingerbread cookies.
We decorated gingerbread houses. {and made a huge mess doing so}
We went on drives to look at Christmas lights.
We ate at the peanut house. {Texas Roadhouse to those not speaking P-ese}
We shopped our feet off in Tucson.
We watched Mamma Mia! Over and over and over.
We hit up Target multiple times.
M sang Love Story for her.
P showed her his plethora of Thomas trains.
J charmed the senses out of her.

It was a great time!

I'll have to remember to upload the pics ASAP, which probably means I won't remember til new years.

Maybe that should be a new years resolution, to upload my pics faster....

Speaking of new years, one of my resolutions that I hope I'll actually *keep* this time is to restart my 365 project, but with a different spin. Instead of me being in all the pics, I'm going to try to take a pic of each child each day, and if I succeed, at the end of the year I'll print them in a hardbound book. Fingers crossed I can keep it up this time!

One out of three...

likes Santa.


























At least in our house.

Oh well. We'll try again at breakfast with Santa this weekend. Maybe I'll get two out of three this time.